surly ghosts of malevolent ancestors: snorts and chuckles, disembodied and mean-spited, "I told you sos."

coke fiend scraps library card across mirror. gleans enough for two large lines, or three small ones. vacillates. chooses three—two for now, one for later, after he washes his ass and before he heads to the bars to look for a girl.

fiend showers, does last line and leaves for bars, but to look for dealers, not women.

fiend slowly opens bar door, simultaneously sees a bartender who has eighty-sixed him and also a dealer. pauses, stands in doorway, one eye peers into smoky dive, rest of body presses against cold steel door. drunkard exists, knocks fiend to ground, curses him, threatens him with an asswhipping.

fiend picks himself off the ground and goes around back to the beer garden, appropriates the remainder of an abandoned drink, disgusts patrons. scans for dealers, finds fiendish fellow travelers—all eyes darting with maniacal desperation. A fellow fiend whom he had hustled out of 90 dollars charges him, smacks him in the face, knees him in the groin. fiend flees.

fiend tries bar across the street. buys a half from one dealer, a second from another. runs home, snorts in all. runs to atm; insufficient funds, remembers items in hock, knows he no longer possesses anything pawnable. goes to a third bar. finds ugly yokel, alone, uncomfortable, drinking imported beer—disposable income—and, thus, perfectly ready for exploitation, initiation.

excited, "Oh, here we goes!"

yokel whoops it up. crushes cans of beer against his own head and screams "that’s the motherfucking ticket, goddamn it! call that dude of yours again, while i run to the atm." fiend is quite high, almost happy. dealer, with due condescension, delivers. yokel screams, "fucking A," snorts a line, drops dead. fiend frets, grabs phone to call ambulance and realizes that he’d best deal with this in the morning. grabs dead yokel and drags him by feet into closet. closes door. opens doors, drags yokel out to remove his remaining cash and stupendous amount of coke that the yokel had purchased. returns yokel into closet.

five, six, seven, nine, twelve lines, heart beats a bit too fast, needs a break, he opens a beer and decides to turn half of the remaining coke into base. phone rings, sarah wants to get high and doesn’t want to stay in the shelter tonight, can she crash there if she brings a little something something with her? Answers rhetorical question and drops dead.

dead yokel is outraged, "Hell no, you don’t get off that easy, you bastard, you." beats fiend and beats him some more as they hover over the fiend’s abandoned body, a few yards from the tunnel. yokel stops beating fiend, grabs his ghost and then shoves it into the rear of the fiend’s own corpse. fiend sputters to life, coughs and realizes that sarah has been banging on his door and screaming, "Let me in you bastard."