Addiction

Chapter 2
Last Friday Night

Today: Morning

2- Trying to connect the dots

Don’t know what to tell my boss

Think the city towed my car

Chandelier is on the floor

Ripped my favorite party dress

Warrant’s out for my arrest

Think I need a ginger ale

That was such an epic fail

-Katy Perry; “Last Friday Night”.

Damien woke up on the floor of his apartment, having rolled out of his bed while sleeping, again. The alarm clock woke him back into the real world at either the worst possible moment or just in the nick of time depending on one’s criteria. Damn it, another one of those freaky dreams.

He looked down at his hands, covering his urine soaked sheets and underwear, his member pulsating as it began to weakly ejaculate into his underclothes. Looks like the alarm hadn’t woken him up in time, after all. Even though he had stopped humping his hands in his sleep his dick had been aroused past the point of no return without the few finishing strokes at the climax. Now his semen just sort of leaked out over him instead of outright shooting out. He had ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

Damien picked himself up off his floor and disentangled himself from his pissed bedsheets. They were cold and reeked and matched his equally piss stained mattress. He’d have to break out the spray cleaner and Febreze when he got home from work today unless he wanted to go to sleep smelling of urine instead of just waking up reeking of the stuff.

Gingerly he poked the carpet where he had woken up for wet spots. It wasn’t too bad, Damien thought. So the sequence of events last night were that he had peed the bed and then fallen out, instead of the other way around. That seemed like a small mercy at the very least.

Maybe he should buy a plastic bed sheet if this was going to keep happening. Most people would have done at least that much by now- within the first two weeks- of nighttime accidents. But Damien had been living in a state of denial for the last few months. Each time he woke up wet, he told himself, would be the last time. Now, he had woken up after having a wet dream after wetting the bed that same night. Damien had had a double wet dream.

A gurgling from his bowels told him he had more problems to deal with at the moment and he rushed off to the bathroom, urgently tugging at his strangely thick underwear. He began to fart a little as he waddled his way to the toilet pulling and yanking, but his underwear wasn’t budging.

“Oh fucking hell!” Damien cursed. He had sewed himself in! What had once been a set of children’s bedsheets decorated with images of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends had been mutilated and cutup last night and now was sewn around Damien’s buttocks and crotch.

Clinching his teeth and butt cheeks to stem the tide, Damien found the crudely sewn together seams on either side of him and ripped them open with his bare hands. Now that he was sober he didn’t care about how the trains had looked “cool” the night before and he wasn’t about to go for the hat trick on soiling himself.

Damien tucked his thumbs into the waistband of his newly acquired tighty whities, all six pairs of them, and yanked them down to his ankles so that he could sit on the toilet properly as God intended. He hadn’t even rested fully on the seat before the sounds of solid waste hitting water and rude noises coming out of his backside filled his ears.

“Aaaaaah”, Damien sighed with significant relief. What the hell had he been thinking last night? Well, that wasn’t quite the question Damien wanted to answer. He knew exactly what he had been thinking the night before.

He had been wandering around Wal-Mart while high, as usual of late, and was wandering through the underwear section. Then, the brilliant idea had popped into his head about how boring grown-up underwear was when compared to little kid underwear. There was no point, really. Adults should get to wear Underoos too, and not just at Halloween or something. Then, in his manic state, Damien had decided to forego his toy habit that night, and instead bought a pack of men’s briefs, some Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends bedsheets, and a home sewing kit.

It turned out that having no practice really did mean that he wasn’t very good at it. But he figured out a way to cut the sheets up and stitch them around himself. After he poked himself in the hip one too many times trying to make his new underwear, Damien had gotten the idea to give himself a few layers of protection. So, he just layered the entire package of tighty-whitey’s over each other and wore them all at once. It created the problem of making his new homemade underwear too baggy without the bulk of all the extra pairs, but Damien didn’t mind at the time. He didn’t even mind how he had basically sewn himself into his own underwear making it harder to go to the bathroom. He had just sat on the floor, surrounded by his toys, binge watching episodes of Rugrats and Sesame Street on Netflix, while he ate three bowls of Captain Crunch. Finally, he had yawned wide enough to know it was bedtime, and trudged off to his bed, bravely falling asleep with a full bladder.

Damien was well aware of what he had thought the night before. Other mind-altering drugs typically just brought parts of yourself to the surface by reducing inhibitions. People tended to say what they really thought, albeit less coherently, when they were drunk. People who were paranoid while stoned were generally only a little less paranoid while sober. So why was this drug doing this to him?

Damien asked himself all of these questions as he got up from the toilet and kicked his soiled layers of underwear across the bathroom floor. He’d pick those up later, he told himself. He was probably lying, but it made him feel better.

He dragged his feet to his kitchen past the three to four garbage bags just waiting to be taken to the dumpster outside his apartment complex. They were all filled with empty plastic jugs, tubs, T.V. dinner trays, and cardboard packaging: The remains of previous meals, consumed in mass quantities. That was another side effect of his better living through chemistry: strange food cravings.

He grabbed one of the gallons of milk in his refrigerator. He had at least three in there, he knew. He kept them to the left of the gallons of apple juice and above the tubs of applesauce and Jell-O Chocolate Pudding. His freezer was fully stocked with Kid Cuisine microwavable dinners; mostly chicken tenders and macaroni and cheese. Damien’s pantry contained little else but different sugary cereals. The garbage bags contained the remnants after Damien had binged in the middle of the night.

If it wasn’t milky, fatty, or sweet, Damien had little interest in it these days. This fact was becoming more evident as Damien was developing a bit of a tummy. He hadn’t been to the gym or even taken a jog in months. He thought drug addicts were supposed to lose weight, not pack on the pounds. He took a swig from the milk jug as he high stepped into his living room over toys and packaging that he hadn’t bothered to throw in garbage bags yet.

With his free hand, he swept away the scraps of children’s bedsheets, thread and scissors that he had left over from his kindergarten Frankenstein experiments the other night and sat down on the couch. It had become a kind of workbench last night. When he was high, Damien was just more comfortable sitting on the floor. He had even praised his inherent genius to himself last night when the layered underwear made for a comfortable cushion, thereby negating the one advantage the couch had over the floor when watching television.

He turned on his X-Box and went to Hulu. He scrolled past episodes of “Fraggle Rock”, “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, and “Spongebob Squarepants” and put on “The Daily Show”, if only so that he could have some white noise of which to think. The new host wasn’t as good as Jon Stewart, but then again, who was? Damien took a swig of milk and looked around his living room floor.

Actually, he couldn’t see the carpet for all the toys scattered on the floor. There were Elmo dolls, teddy bears, cardboard books (some of them chewed on, just to see what it was like), Duplo blocks, rubber balls of all sizes and levels of bounciness, Mr. and Mrs. Potato head pieces, and a couple of toy cars designed for ages three and up. If Damien had looked at his living room with fresh eyes, it would have looked like a special episode of “Hoarders: Pre-School Edition”. Instead, he justified the clutter as “comfortably lived in.”

One corner of his living room now had a darkened stain on the carpet from when he had accidentally knocked over a bottle of bubble solution and hadn’t bothered to clean it up. Was it even possible for soapy water to cause mold and mildew? It was beginning to smell like it, but Damien had lived like this for long enough that he had become smell-blind to the stuff. He was used to it, so his brain just filtered it out now. His nose may have twitched a little bit when he first came in from work, but then the smell quickly “went away”.

That was thing about this drug; this “Re-Lease,” as Levi had called it. It didn’t affect Damien’s fine or gross motor skills, but it did greatly enhance certain parts of himself while reducing his inhibitions. While high, Damien still thought just as quickly as he normally thought; nothing was dull, but his thoughts drifted in unpredictable directions.

First came the almost manic high, when everything was great and even the worst parts of his life either had an upside or just didn’t matter in the big picture. His senses were magnified shortly after. Colors were brighter and more vibrant. Music was louder and more upbeat, even the sad stuff. Fluffy, furry, smooth, hard, and soft all became things that mattered to Damien. Sex and masturbation were just the best. Masturbation might have become even better than sex because he didn’t have to worry about pleasing anybody but himself.

Then, came the amazing ideas and the impulse buys and the cravings.

Shitty comfort food like mac ‘n cheese and Jello-O pudding cups became the best thing ever. Steak? Why have steak when you could have a McDonald’s hamburger and fries? Especially a Happy Meal that came with the free toy. Vegetables? Fuck vegetables! If he wanted to eat healthy, that’s what milk was for. He didn’t even need chocolate to enjoy his milk like some of those other losers with no willpower. And apples? Don’t even get him started on apples. Damien had found himself able to comment on the taste, texture, and consistency on a spoonful of Mott’s as if he were a judge on a Food Network show.

In the last three months Damien had spent way more on all this kiddie shit, food included, than on the rest of his living expenses combined. He had had to call out of work sick so he could go pay his power bill twice because he’d been past due and he had had similar problems with his landlord. But that’s just how he was when he was high on “Re-Lease”.

After the manic high of energy and great ideas, came the self-satisfied sloth. Damien always ended his night on the floor, cuddled up with some stuffed animal or another, or eating crappy kid food, binge watching T.V. that was cheerful, easy to follow, and fun. It felt good, like he was slipping into a warm, lazy, bath. He even had an idea of binge watching the Wiggles until he could recite every lyric of every song by heart. That could be fun.

It was only in the mornings, when Damien woke up, wet, from some strange dream about being cared for as a baby by some weird lady he’d never met (“Mama dreams,” as he’d begun to think of them) that he’d felt there was any real downside to popping the pills that Levi had given him. Then, comfortable sloth had been replaced with a kind of sick, cynical apathy. Right now, Damien knew that his apartment looked like hell and that he should clean up after himself. Had there been an actual child living here, protective services would likely be taking the kid away. Damien just didn’t give a shit.

He’d clean up later, or save some money and pay a cleaning crew to do it for him all in one big sweep. Three months of living terribly could still be scrubbed away in an afternoon by a team of professionals. But later never came. It was easier at this point in his life for Damien to just pop another pill and make the world go bright again for another few hours. Usually, he’d just stumble through the day at his office job, do just enough to make it seem like he was being productive, and then drive back home and pop another pill to get his “Re-Lease”.

Speaking of work, Damien realized, he’d better get ready for another day of drudgery. Toys weren’t going to buy themselves. Damien stood up to get dressed, feeling a slick, yet sticky feeling as his cheeks slid together. He turned around and saw the brown stain on the couch cushion.

“Fuck,” Damien cursed at himself. Or more appropriately, “Shit.” After emptying his bowels in the toilet, Damien had forgotten to wipe himself. He stared down at his crotch, noticing that a few beads of urine still clung to his pubic hairs. He hadn’t cleaned himself up at all. There’s no way Damien could show up to work like this. He set the half-empty milk jug down on the floor, promising himself that he’d remember to put the milk back in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t spoil, and trudged back through his bedroom and into his bathroom.

The smell hit his nose immediately. He hadn’t even remembered to flush. Damien looked down at the present he had left himself, wanting to puke, and instead pressed the handle down. He went over to his bathroom mirror and took a look at himself. He didn’t like what he saw. There were bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, and he really was starting to get flabby around the middle. He sighed and then smelled his own morning breath traveling right under his nose. How revolting. At least he hadn’t vomited. When he vomited all the blood vessels in his face tended to burst at once, making him look like some kind of zombie from “28 Days Later”.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It was still as a smooth as it had been a few months ago. Damien still didn’t need a shave. That was at least one good thing about this stuff: He hadn’t had any new facial hair since the night he started. Something in the hormones or chemicals or other “science stuff” he assumed that retarded hair growth. He hadn’t needed a haircut either, come to think of it. His dirty blonde hair just stayed in a permanent state of “mussed”.

The little prescription pill bottle caught Damien’s eye. The pill bottle was unlabeled and likely just something to store the little happy pills in. These definitely weren’t Vicodin or any other pill you could get from a pharmacy. Before Levi, Damien hadn’t even heard of the drug, it was so new. So technically, there was nothing illegal about the stuff. But, he’d left the medicine cabinet open last night and was now facing certain temptation.

“Fuck it,” Damien said to his reflection, as he reached for the bottle and popped the top open to pour a little red capsule into his open palm. He popped the “Re-Lease” into his mouth, and held it under his tongue as he turned the water on and jumped into his shower. He opened his mouth and let the hot water fill his mouth before swallowing both it and the pill. Then, he turned the temperature up to scalding and started using the water and his bare hands to clean his ass.

He washed his hands thoroughly in the shower and just let the hot water continue to cascade over him. As he felt the pill start to take effect, his thoughts becoming more positive and his body beginning to feel a certain glow, he popped his right thumb in his mouth while he scrubbed his crotch with his left hand using the bar of soap. He started peeing in the shower without realizing it as he scrubbed himself clean.

“How did it get to this?” His voice echoed in the shower as his urine stream mingled with the water in the shower.