The Language of Fear

Unrelenting precipitation hung over San Francisco like a moist cloud, a heat fog found inside an oven that’s been left on too long. For the last ten days, the temperature had remained lodged in the nineties and was showing no signs of weakening. In one decayed section of town, a series of bus graveyards filled block after block, the stripped carcasses bleeding rust. German shepherds patrolled the lots and kept vagrants and runaways from living inside the buses, which technically were still city property. At the end of the graveyards stood a shabby apartment building, a memorial to this dying place.
 
Inside the apartment, a sick man was trying to decide whether he was dead. The piercing wails of a crying two-year-old bored their way into his skull, reemphasizing that he was unfortunately still alive. Veins he didn’t know existed pulsed, pounded, and threatened to burst out of his body. A migraine tore at his skull, while his eye sockets throbbed. He was wrapped in fever, and the ribs on his right side threatened to snap every time he upchucked. Even his teeth hurt. Every time the child cried, it felt like someone set off an air-raid siren inside Frank Banks’s cranium.
 
He felt like the ill-fated survivor of a shipwreck floating in an invisible sea of distress and nausea. Waves of misery slapped against his skull. There was no hope for his future, only prolonged suffering. Try as he might, he couldn’t get off the couch because his weary bones ached too much.
 
Frank’s battered stomach felt wrenched, squeezed. It felt like someone was forcing a thick, hairy hand down his throat. No air or relief would come as the hand slowly made its way down into Frank’s stomach. Greedily, the large hand scooped up fistfuls of his intestines and pulled his guts back up his throat. He tried closing his eyes, but they were stuck open. They had been for over sixty hours. He desperately wanted to be free of his dark, crawling flesh. Frank leaned forward, mouth opened wide, and braced himself as yet another small amount of sour bile came out.
 
He wanted to be high right now.
 
For the past fifteen years, he’d been fighting a losing battle with drugs. Today marked the third day he’d lasted without any smack. The first day hadn’t been that bad, but now he had some serious shakes and sweats. He vomited at least six times an hour, or tried to. The dry heaves were worse than vomiting. His throat was raw and his mouth ached. He couldn’t remember the last time he had put food in his system but the concept of eating was unimaginable. Again the baby’s screams threatened to grind his skull into powder.
 
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
 
The baby’s volume increased.
 
His watering eyes stared blankly at the syringe in his bony hand. He’d melted down and injected some sedatives, trying to calm the withdrawal symptoms. He knew through experience that only smack could take his pain away. He played around with the point in his hand, hoping for some miracle to happen. Of course, nothing did. The jones was only going to get worse.
 
He didn’t want to quit heroin. It was what he lived for. It was his meaning, his reality, nothing else mattered. He didn’t love his woman, and he sure as hell didn’t love the child in the next room. There is no room for love when survival is the name of the game. The kid had cost him money, and money equals drugs. Drugs were essential to Frank’s survival. And besides, the child didn’t even look like him.
 
He’d met the bitch through a mutual friend, and there seemed to be something there. For her, he was someone, anyone, to be with. Everyone needs love, or so the story goes. At seventeen, she’d been hooking for the past two years, and it had taken its toll on her. Her youthfulness had been sold off in the front seat of cars and inside fleabag motels. She looked chiseled, stale, twice her age. For him, Lisa Lewis was just another scam, and it wasn’t very long before she was supporting his habit. Pimping was the only type of work Frank knew, although he really wasn’t a full-fledged pimp in the true sense of the word. He was a fast-talking junkie fooling a silly girl. Like any good bullshit artist, he had her believing she was better off on her knees than in school.
 
She also believed that in his own strange way he loved her.
 
Frank had only one love in life, drugs. If Lisa was willing to sell herself to support his habit, more power to the cunt. He was willing to run the lovey-dovey game on her and had for almost two years.
 
But if she really loved him, then how could she do this to him?
 
Another painful surge of dry air rushed out of his O-shaped mouth. Twitching uncontrollably, Frank’s beady eyes searched around the apartment for something, anything, to sell. The tiny, stinky apartment was a roach motel. There was nothing besides scattered garbage and diapers. No TV, no stereo, no telephone. Everything was already in hock except a loud humming refrigerator that nobody wanted and the tattered couch that he was glued to.
 
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he yelled, clutching his right side.
 
Another burst of nausea swept through him as yellow liquid rushed up his throat and landed on the floor. He stared at the small puddle of bile on the rug and left it for Lisa to clean. Fuck it, it was her fault he was in this condition. Why should he have to suffer just because she wanted out of prostitution? If she hadn’t decided to try something as stupid as finding a job, she’d be out pounding the pavement, sucking cocks for cash. Hatred became the focus of his thoughts, and he wanted her to feel the way he felt right now. He wanted to hurt her so badly that she’d never pull this shit again. Uncontrolled rage flowed through his pin-cushion veins, and using all the strength left in his weak body, Frank lifted himself off the couch. An unspeakable thought flowed through his mind.
 
He knew how to hurt the bitch and get a fix.
 
He tried erasing the thought but couldn’t. It actually made sense in a perverse way. He dragged his feet along the littered floor, pacing back and forth until he reached the bedroom doorway. This was insane. How could he even think what he was thinking?
 
Easily. Never trust a junkie.
 
Frank’s bowels, which had been constipated cement for months, began to drip ever so slightly as he looked down at the crying baby. He felt no instinctual familial bond between them and even less hesitation. He scooped up the wet, crying baby and hightailed it out the front door.
 
Overflowing garbage cans decorated the front sidewalk. The putrid stench rising from the cans made Frank gag. Each step made his head pound even worse than it already was. Open pores released buckets of sweat, and the T-shirt he wore quickly soaked through. For all the sweat it caused, the twenty-pound child could have weighed two hundred pounds. The invisible monkey on Frank’s back was an additional burden, especially when it began biting Frank. Thick phlegm floated up his dry throat, and every few steps he hacked loudly. He felt shin-splint aches as he dragged on. His calves were throbbing, every vein and muscle ached. The shakes immediately intensified. One tiny injection, and all this pain would be gone, he thought, desperately trying to keep focused. Squinting painfully, he made his way past dingy, decaying redbrick apartments.
 
After an eternal ten minutes, he finally reached his destination. The apartment building was another run-down excuse for low-income housing, improperly maintained and dirty. Rubbish and empty crack vials were strewn everywhere, as were thousands of discarded cigarette butts. Drug fiends frequented the building’s basement, roof, and hallways every hour of the day. The building’s graffiti-caked stairways were a revolving carousel that never stopped spinning.
 
Slippery and desperate, he sneaked into the five-story building. The lobby smelled of urine. Miraculously, the baby girl stopped crying. Frank heard her burp and hugged her, trying to comfort her. She softly cooed her thanks before dozing off. For a split second, the addict thought about what he was doing and almost stopped. As rotten as it was, he continued blaming Lisa. She’d forced him to take these drastic measures. He found the empyrean stairway and began ascending. The steps seemed to be made of thick, wet sand. With every painful step, he sank farther into the stairs.
 
Marbles of sweat ran from his pimply forehead down his ski-slope nose. Snot was dripping from his nostrils. Frank tried using his shoulder to wipe his nose, but the movement made the baby burp again. When he finally reached the third floor, he had to stop, puke quickly, and catch his breath. He walked down the hallway and stopped at door 308. The double-reinforced steel green door was well known by Bay Area junkies. It sold the much-needed medicine twenty-four hours a day. Heart thumping, he softly knocked four times.
 
“What?” asked the voice from behind the steel door.
 
Frank was stuttering uncontrollably. Whole words refused to come to his mouth. More snot dribbled out of his nose. Finally he blurted out, “It’s Fra—it’s Fra—Frankie Banks.”
 
The hinges squealed as the door slowly opened. Frank stepped back, wiped his runny nose, and smiled at the huge doorman, who stood well over six feet, at 260 pounds. A thin black beard surrounded his large bulldoggish face.