Vida Nocturna Part 15

Turning to Vapor THE DESERT. LIFETIMES here, the fruitless searches for fresh blood. Desolate landscape stretching for hundreds of miles under the full moon, in every direction.

No blood here.

A dry creek bed. Wide cracks in ancient mud.

Nothing.

But no. Something. Something liquid. Flowing.

A trickle somewhere, that unmistakable sound. A crack fills, spilling over to the sandy soil, filling nearby cracks. And the smell! The dizzying, luxurious smell! Blood.

Sara steps in. The blood rises past her ankles, then her knees, stimulating her flesh with its oily touch. She cups it in her hand, its wondrous coppery essence filling her mouth, her nose, her lungs. Its heavy, acidic taste promises the mystical fulfillment she has been aching for.

Delicious energy floods through her as she drinks and drinks.

It stretches from bank to bank. It spills over. She fills herself, delirious with the power of all those myriad lost souls. She floats, the bank she stepped from is now gone as the blood stretches from horizon to horizon.

She watches Alexander through her darkened windshield. He looks up. He sees her!

No.

He lights a cigarette. He starts his car.

Alexander's huge black car roars to life and spins in the street, bearing down on her as she sits helpless in the Benz, smashing, crashing, killing- No. He's driving away.

Time to go.

She took another pair of Mummy's pills, an upper for energy, a downer to keep her from screaming in terror, washing them down with a little Five Star vodka.

Her stomach sloshed as she climbed out of the car, forcing her numb feet to move down the sidewalk.

There was only one intercom b.u.t.ton with no name listed next to it. It clicked on when she buzzed but there was no voice. She started talking anyway.

"I'm ... I'm Biff's girlfriend. You've met me before. I need to talk to you."

Silence.

Finally a buzzer sounded and the door unlocked. She went around behind the stairs and descended to the unmarked steel door at the bottom.

"What do you want?" the m.u.f.fled voice asked from the other side.

"One ..." Sara cleared her throat. She could do this. "One ounce."

Silence again.

The door opened to the same red-tinted abyss she'd entered the last time she'd come here with Alexander. The raspy "Come in" admitted her to the entry area she'd waited in before.

He closed and bolted the door behind her and stood staring, appearing only as a silhouette in the red glow coming through the open curtains. She could only make out the shape of his balding head with its stringy fringe.

"Now," he said, "tell me why you are here." His voice was really just a whisper, a saw cutting soft wood.

"I need an ounce."

"An ounce? An ounce of what?"

"Of c.o.ke."

"What makes you think I'd have something like that?"

She kept her eyes forward. "I figured Biff probably had a reason for coming here," she said. "You're the one they called Iggy. It didn't look like you two were old friends just catching up."

"But we are old friends. Very old."

"Yeah, well, I guess I thought maybe you'd like to have a new friend."

"No. I don't want any new friends."

"Look," she said, too sharply, too fast. "I need this ounce."

There was another pause. Iggy's gaze made her shiver.

"You could be a cop," he said.

She lowered her chin and rolled her eyes up at him, taking a step forward. She licked her lips and lowered her voice. "I'm sure there's a way to show you I'm not a cop." Slowly she raised her hand to his forearm, stroking gently. It was thin, smooth, and hot, like running her fingers along a curling iron.

He sneered, shaking his head. "No, there's not." His burning hand grabbed her shoulder, turning her toward the door. She shrugged it off. "No. Please! I need this ounce!"

He stared at her again. She was breathing heavily.

"Isn't there anything you want?" she asked, running her fingers down the side of his face. He grabbed her wrist, pulling it away from him and turning, forcing her toward the floor. She gave him a weak smile, dropping to her knees. With his free hand he slapped her, three times, each to the left side of her face.

Her eyes widened. His smile was sinister but amused. Now he was the one breathing heavily. He let go of her arm, staring at her a moment.

She pleaded with her eyes.

"Get the dress off," he said.

She reached behind her, undoing a b.u.t.ton. "So you'll give me the ounce?"

Iggy slapped her twice more and then kicked her, swinging his foot upward between her legs. The left side of her face burned. "I won't give you s.h.i.t," he said. "But maybe I'll sell you something. Once I know you're not a cop."

She dropped the purse to the floor, undoing her b.u.t.tons and slipping her arms from her dress sleeves. She stopped, looking up. He slapped her again. She unhooked her bra, letting it slide down her arms to the floor. He circled her, a hungry predator antic.i.p.ating the kill.

"Hmmm," he said. "A little on the small side. What are you, about a 'B' cup?" When she didn't answer, he continued. "I figured you for pointy nips, not those flat little nubs." She started to turn her head toward him but he slapped her again. His arm reached down from behind her, fondling her right nipple. It hardened between his fingers. He snickered to himself, squeezing harder. She gasped. He squeezed harder still. A few tears welled up, spilling from her eyes. He let go of her flesh and came in front of her again, his bald head shining dully like a mushroom in the rain, staring with wide, excited eyes and an eerie half smile at the tears on her cheeks.

"Follow me," he said. "Leave the dress and the bag there."

Sara started to stand, pushing the dress past her hips. His hands burned into her shoulders, pushing her back down. "No," he said. "Crawl. You can leave the panties on."

The dress had already fallen past her knees. She put her hands on the floor, crawling out of it as she followed him through the curtains and toward the red light. It shone down from a pair of heat lamps, illuminating a small table. He sat on the edge of a filthy mattress next to it, crooking a finger at her like he was calling a dog.

She crawled to him. He reached under her, pinching both nipples this time, and pulling her up to a kneeling position and letting go, slapping first one breast and then the other. Then he pushed her forehead backwards. She shuffled her knees back but he grabbed the waistband of her panties, roughly sliding her toward him again.

"Stay there," he said. "Just bend over backwards for me." He pushed her forehead further back, then lifted her chin. "Put your arms back, there you go. Make a bridge. Yeah. Now up on your feet. Keep your hands down. Spread your knees apart."

His too-hot fingers slid between her legs and into the panties, slithering between her pubic hairs all the way up to the waistband. He flipped his hand over and closed the panties into a fist, yanking hard and ripping them but not completely removing them. She winced as some of the hairs came out.

Sara shuffled her arms and feet, fighting for balance as he gave another violent tug, finally dropping the ruined panties on the floor between her legs. She started to lower her hips.

He slapped upward from underneath her. "If I want you to move, I'll move you."

Sara arched her back to support herself only on her hands and feet again. Her arms and legs began to shake. She adjusted her position slightly.

He grabbed her knees and spread them roughly apart, causing her feet to slip on the concrete. Her shoulders. .h.i.t the floor hard as her arms spread apart. He pushed her knees down and apart. The skin along her spine tensed as it contacted the cold concrete. He lifted her feet so that they were suspended at the same height as her knees, keeping her flat on her back. "Hold these like this," he said. "Use your hands."

She lay on her back with her hands cupped under the backs of her knees for a long time, shivering on the cold floor.

"Hold yourself open. I want to see how pink you are." She lowered her hands, reaching between her legs and opening herself fully.

He was breathing hard, but in an artificial, forced kind of way. "Keep your feet up." he said. "I can't see much when you put them down."

Sara raised her feet as best she could without using her hands to brace her knees. Tears rolled down her face and around the back of her head to her hairline. A lighter flicked. He was sucking something through a tube. She stayed frozen as he held his breath.

The room filled with a strange vapor when he exhaled.

"Now get up here and suck me off." She complied at once, flying up from the frigid floor. She approached on her knees, discovering that he had already removed his pants. His flaccid p.e.n.i.s was partially hidden under his shirt, and she took it in her hand. He smelled like a train station restroom.

Another slap, to the same side of her face.

"I said suck it." His voice had a drifting, detached quality to it.

She opened her mouth, leaning toward the limp little member. He laced his fingers through her hair and pulled her down, burying her nose in his pubic hair. She sucked hard, moving her head up and down a little, but it never got stiff. He melted into the mattress, riding out the peak of his high.

Sara tried releasing his p.e.n.i.s and slipping away from him. His other hand laced through her hair, trapping her, and he moved her head back and forth until she felt something slippery discharge into her mouth. Then he pushed her backwards, hard, leaving her sprawled and naked on the floor.

She stared at him, her mind drifting from thought to thought. Iggy's power. Iggy's high. Her ounce. Alexander's voice, telling her how it took more c.o.ke to satisfy her. Iggy's high, like nothing she'd ever seen. Her ounce.

"Iggy," she said, "I-"

He stopped her with a raised palm. "Wait."

She went back to the dark entryway, fetching her dress and bra, and stuffing the destroyed panties into her purse and redressing. She sat on the floor, watching him in the red light until he glanced at her.

She tried again.

"Were you ... smoking c.o.ke?"

He rolled his eyes to look over at her but said nothing for a while. His body pooled on the mattress like melted candle wax and his head rolled slightly as he stared into s.p.a.ce, his eyes gla.s.sed over in ecstasy.

She looked around the room. There was a safe in the corner, locked. And a little bit of c.o.ke out on the table. But there was no way out unless he undid the combination lock.

Eventually he regained some composure, sneering at her briefly before fumbling with a gla.s.s tube on the mattress next to him.

"No!" Sara said, her voice desperate. "Don't start again yet. Please."

He peered inside the pipe bowl, wincing. Then he set the pipe down again, craning his neck toward the table.

When he made eye contact - making her feel even colder and more violated than putting her mouth on him had - she asked again. "Was that c.o.ke powder you were smoking?"

He shook his head. "Can't smoke c.o.ke powder. Flame's too hot. The c.o.ke burns up. You have to freebase."

"Free base?"

"Yeah," he said. Iggy's voice took on the same hypnotic, persuasive resonance her father's voice had. "c.o.ke powder is pure c.o.ke with an acid attached to the molecules. That's what makes it powdery. To smoke it, you have to get the acid off of it. You use a base to neutralize the acid and free the c.o.ke, so it's called free-base.

"A base...?"

A small sound escaped his throat, crackly like a bug crunching under a shoe. "You know, a base. Like acids react with bases in chemistry? They're opposites?" He was looking at the ceiling.

"Oh. I've heard of that. So what base do you use?"

He struggled to his feet. After taking a moment to get his balance, he shuffled over to the table and picked up a bottle of ammonia, moving it slightly from side to side as he raised it for her to see. She wrinkled her nose. "You smoke ammonia?"

"No, you dumb -" He sighed, placing a hand on the edge of the table to steady himself. "Ammonia is a stronger base than pure c.o.ke is, so it grabs all the acid that used to be attached to the c.o.ke." Sara narrowed her eyes, peering at the bottle of ammonia. Iggy sighed again. "Look. I'll make some and I'll show you. Just watch."

With amazing dexterity for someone who had been a quivering ma.s.s on a mattress so recently, Iggy filled the jar with water, then swirled the mixture around and around until the powder had dissolved. Then he took a dropper full of ammonia and held it above the jar, adding one drop at a time. A milky substance formed in the clear liquid with every drop of ammonia he added. He stopped when additional drops stopped producing any more of the milky material, then dumped in a small amount of some other liquid and put a lid on the jar.

"What's that?"

He didn't look up. "Ether." He shook the jar vigorously, and the clouds disappeared again. When he stopped shaking it, one liquid floated on top of the other. He used another dropper to suck up the top liquid and drip it onto a plate, then put the plate under the red heat lamps to dry. White crystals were already forming around the edges as the ether evaporated.

He had another plate on the table that had already completely dried. Crystals had formed all over it.

"Can I ... Will you sell me some of that?"

His cold smile was like an ice pick in her chest. "You can try it for free." She watched as he loaded the pipe. He licked his lips. "It's amazing- a super-fast way to get c.o.ke to your brain."

She tried to smile back. "Faster than a speeding bullet," she said.

He approached her, this creature who had nearly suffocated her with his p.e.n.i.s, his instructions gently rolling from his mouth and through her brain in soothing spirals. "Take a few deep breaths to load up on oxygen first," he said. "Otherwise you'll breathe it all out too fast and waste it." She breathed in and out deeply several times. He held the pipe to her lips. "You just heat the outside of the bowl to melt it into a vapor. Never get the flame inside the pipe. That'd burn it up. Ready?"

She nodded. He flicked the lighter and she sucked down the saccharine fumes. She could smell the stuff more than she could taste it; it was sweet but insubstantial, chemical but not completely unfamiliar. Part of her brain kept trying to identify it more completely as the vapor continued to pa.s.s her tongue.

With powder, it took more than a minute for her to feel the effects. This stuff flooded her system in a few seconds! And every second it was increasing.