Soryn could smell colors, and he didn’t really know how to feel about it. Red didn’t smell like cherry; he originally thought it would but it smelled as if the smoke from a raging firepit was being blown in his face, leading a burning trail through his nostrils and creeping back out through his ears and mouth. A light stream of smoke was slowly pouring out of his lips like he was a burning incense encapsulated in a fancy porcelain statue, with only one hole for the fumes and smoke to exit.
He knew where he was, which wasn’t normal for how gone he was, just a bit more and he would be gone; he knew it was that easy.
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“Hey… I’m proud of you. You know that right?” The voice was soft, almost angelic like, to Soryn. He normally loved her voice but right now it just felt like muddied words he had heard a million times before. It was getting old at this point; he was tired of hearing ‘I’m proud of you,’ and ‘you’ve worked so hard, blah blah blah.’ He knew that once he fell back into the cycle no one would have ever cared enough to actually notice and helped. The only times they did was when he almost died.
“Yeah, I know.” He managed, his vocals tired and raspy, almost as if he had been screeching into the abyss for hours until he almost lost his ability to even make a whisper. Soryn looked like a mess, slumped into the passenger seat of the beat up car his cousin drove; his eye bags even had eye bags — he clearly got minuscule levels of sleep, but that wasn’t what anyone was talking about, it was always, ‘we will watch and help you don’t worry.’ They never did.
“You know mom wants you to stay at her house, you should be with someone rather than just go back to your apartment.”
“I told you, I have to get back to work and Aunt Evie lives over an hour away. I can’t do that, I’ll be fine.”
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All Soryn could feel was his heartbeat in appendages. The palms of his hands were throbbing with a distinct, thump thump thump, at the same pace as every other place in his body. He felt like so much blood was running to the tips of his fingers that they might blow off at any moment — he could see it happening — they would explode cleanly from the first knuckle, just the meat, exposed bone still attached but blood spilling so fast he wouldn’t even be able to register it before passing out. The meaty flesh of his fingers with the tough, keratin nails still attached to the failing finger would shoot off at a speed he could only see in the blur, before it would stick itself onto a wall, or a window, or his singular lonely lamp that didn’t even turn on anymore because he couldn’t bother to go buy a new bulb for it.
He didn’t seem to know how to move his mouth anymore, so calling an ambulance was out of the question — not that he could reach his phone, that he had thrown across the room earlier, anyway. Soryn felt wet too — not damp, wet. He couldn’t tell if it was his sweat or if he had dumped water on himself earlier and just didn’t remember, but that didn’t matter at this point; the water was crawling over his skin, tugging on the hair his legs carried and making a damp patch on the couch he was sprawled out on. Normally he would be embarrassed, but his mind couldn’t focus on anything else except his heartbeat in his fingers, the sweat pooling below him — on him, and what seemed like his entire body being held beneath a blanket of lead, condemning him to this ratty, stained, old couch for the rest of eternity.
He would rot here. Soryn was sure of it.
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His job was a walking nightmare. Well, to Soryn that was; he knew others had it a lot worse, but Soryn hated cooking. He used to work up front but he started to look ‘too disheveled’ for the customers, so his manager just shoved him in the back out of pity, but kept paying him the same. In the grand scheme of things, Soryn knew he would be so much worse without it, but that didn’t mean he ever wanted to step back into that dingy joint everyday — it reeking of children’s sticky hands and axe body spray from all of the slimy teenage boys that liked to loiter inside with just ordering a soda and getting more refills than allowed. The only reason he was still here was to barely stop himself from being evicted, he never paid on time, but his aunt knew the landlord, so he was shoved in the cheapest, dingiest apartment in the complex after his first time in rehab. Luckily because the area surrounding it was sketchy, he not only paid dirt cheap (when he could pay), he also got his fix real easily.
Right now however, he was hurting for money, and he owed his guy at least one hundred bucks for his last gram; he was lucky he knew his guy well or they would have not let him just pay fifty on the last deal. Honestly, Soryn knew he couldn’t make rent this month if he paid the hundred and bought more, but he was going to anyway because his aunt would pay most of his rent if he asked — she always did.
He was a zombie on his feet, pale and sickly appearing with his brown eyes bloodshot and drowsy; he wished he had something in his system, but he couldn’t risk showing up to work high and getting caught again, so he exhibited the only ounce of self control he actually had left. Maybe the lack of his fix was the reason he hated working so much? Maybe it was just the fact that he couldn’t sit at home and drown all his own pent-up aggression, sorrow, and worries into the powder he put in front of himself every single day.
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He felt himself spiraling again, as the feeling wore off mentally but his physical form was still stuck in a single place, a single thought, a single sight, the ceiling. He hated his ceiling, it was bumpy, rough, painful when he reached up to touch it. When he was standing, he could use the jagged spikes to ground himself, but that was when he could actually stand up. Times like this he wished he could call her.
Damn, he loved his mom.
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“Mama?” Soryn’s voice was small, breathy, it always was when he spoke to his aunt.
“Nothing baby,” his aunt smiled down at him, brushing his matted hair out of his face, “just go back to sleep, you are being moved into rehab tomorrow, you need your rest.”
His head nodded before he could even process her words, body sinking back into the hospital bed. It felt simple right now, in the arms of his aunt, just like when he was little. He was too ashamed to be around her for the past couple months as he spent his nights with his nose against a table, snorting that line of powder he couldn’t live without anymore. His withdrawals weren’t horrible at the moment, but he knew that would change the second she left his side. This woman raised him, cared for him when his parents left this world, became his mother, but when he was fully coherent; he couldn’t call her ‘mama’ anymore.
God, he wanted to; he had called her that for as long as he can remember, and he knew it tore her apart when he stopped, but he couldn’t stomach it anymore. He was a failure. He wrecked his own life, and if he kept giving her the mother role, it would become “she didn’t raise him right,” and not “he messed up his own life.” Soryn knew this was all his fault, caving when someone asked him, continuing to buy, accidentally miss-weighing and overdosing; all his fault. It’s not like he got the laced stuff — he made sure of it — if he was going to go out, it would be due to his own stupidity and not because he would get laced with fentanyl. He wanted to be blamed; he needed to be blamed, yet, his mama kept trying to support him. Trying to save him.
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He wasn’t making it out of this one this time, was he?
Maybe Soryn didn’t want to make it out again, his mind was dripping out his forehead and he wanted those feelings to be his last moments. He wanted to think of his mom, not disappointed in him, but thinking of the better moments while lowering his casket. He didn’t want to leave her, but he didn’t want to be saved again and watch her grieve the little boy who turned out to be this mess. He didn’t want her to blame herself for his spiral into the lines upon lines of powder he spent his entire being trying to get again and again. No matter how many times she tried to save him, reach out and guide him out of his own mess just for him to ram headfirst back into that pool of despair and drugs he was drowning himself in.
He wanted his mama to remember the little boy who ran up to her with scraped knees, who held him in her embrace through rough nights after his parents passing; the boy who still called her ‘mama’ because he loves her and wants her to be proud of him, and be proud of herself for digging him out of the holes he always fell into.
He wasn’t that boy anymore, and Soryn had come to accept that. Maybe in his next life he would be? Or maybe he would be condemned to hell? Soryn didn’t care, he just wanted to stop making his mama suffer, and cry over the grave of the child he once was.
He wouldn’t see a hospital room this time, no withdrawals, no rehab and the drive home, all that would be left was the lights behind his own eyelids before everything went deathly black.
He definitely wasn’t making it out of this one this time.
