Continuous Rest

"I don’t want to be a part of whatever’s going on here, like, this is fucked up rich person shit, this is none of my business."

I didn't even really want to go to the party, but I went anyway. It was at a friend of a friend's place, downtown, spacious, definitely out of my price range. It was this guy's birthday or maybe he'd gotten engaged, or promoted, something like that, I never really figured it out. There was almost no one I knew there, and the people I did recognize I didn't want to talk to, or else they didn’t want to talk to me. But there were a lot of beers in the fridge, and no one seemed to care how many I took, so I hung around a while not really doing anything, just drinking, avoiding eye contact, until this one girl, early 20s, tweaker eyes, never seen her before in my life, cornered me in the kitchen and started talking.

"Yeah so listen, right.” She had to sort of talk-shout over the music. It was a struggle to hear her sometimes. “I was at this girl’s house yesterday, and she’s like super rich, or from this rich family, like super rich, oil money or something, her dad’s still alive so probably a trust fund type thing, you know, anyway she’s got this place way out in the hills, this super chic like, ten million dollar house, amazing view, infinity pool, probably full maid service, you know, the whole deal. Like something you’d see on some Pinterest moodboard type shit. Anyway, I went there with this guy Brent I know, he does some dealing, mostly just in our circle and stuff, but he did some landscaping work up there over the summer and somehow he turned that into some sort of arrangement, like he’d been going out regular but was always like, weird about it you know, like I wanted to tag along sometime and hang out with this, like, cool rich girl, right, and maybe she’d want to buy some of my clothes, I’m a fashion designer, I make handmade clothing, screen printing and stuff, it’s just a side hustle but maybe she’d even want to invest, you know, and then I could get more serious about it. But Brent never wanted to let me, he was always really cagey about it, but then we were hanging out yesterday and he got a call and it was her, or I guess it probably wasn’t her, but I thought it was her, so I asked again, and this time he was like sure, come with me, fuck it. He said it would be fine and no one would care but he’d been up for like two days coked out and shit so I thought that might be bullshit. Like I’m not stupid, and Brent can be an asshole sometimes. But I figured it would be his problem and I wanted to meet her and I mean, it was fine, like I’m here talking to you right, so it’s not like I was wrong. So we went up there, I let him drive me and he started getting quiet real fast in the car like he was regretting it, like, before we were even out of the neighborhood. And then so it’s like this whole time on the drive, and it ended up being like a good forty-five minutes on just like bullshit windy back roads and I’m like Is this gonna get fucked up am I gonna get human trafficked right, you know, the normal things to think about.” She laughed loudly. “But we finally get there and I’m like, Brent’s not that much of an asshole, and it looks like something out of a like, Modern Home Living Magazine here anyway, these people are in another fucking universe from me anyway, they don’t even know I exist, so I just follow him inside. He doesn’t even knock, the door was unlocked and he just let himself in, which I guess must be the normal procedure. And it really was like something out of a magazine. Like, it was amazing, perfect, spotless, like, ready for the photoshoot, tastefully arranged bowl of fruit on the kitchen island and stuff even, like total minimalist lifestyle influencer stuff, and we’re just walking through it, through this girl’s like whole perfectly and fucking like spotlessly inhabited Pintrest aesthetic luxury home, just looking at shit, because there’s no one fucking around. Just total silence. Like not even any pets… anyway we end up just sitting on this fancy gray couch in the living room because Brent says this is where we’re supposed to meet him. And at first I’m like okay but then I’m like, what do you mean ‘him’? And he’s like, the Doctor, like I’m fucking stupid, like I was supposed to just know he was dealing to some fucking doctor, who I found out later is this super sought-after private practice guy, so I don’t know why he would need Brent for anything, like, I’m sure he could ask one of his fucking dozens of rich celebrity drug addict patients for a connect if he really needed it, and I mean dozens, like, I looked it up, but no, he’s buying from fucking Brent, who’s fucking nobody, you know, he’s fun, but he doesn’t like, know anyone, he’s as small time as you can fucking be. God. Anyway, I didn’t find out about all this shit until later because right when I’m about to ask him like, what fucking Doctor, the guy, the fucking Doctor himself walks in and I can tell immediately he’s not fucking pleased that I’m here. I mean, he didn’t like, say anything, but I could tell. He doesn’t even look at me, even, and Brent starts talking, trying to introduce me and explain why I’m here and shit to this man who definitely does not want me to fucking be there, but he doesn’t notice because he’s still coked up, like he did a couple bumps in the car, and his eyes are all red and purple around the edges and shit, just going on and on, like barely coherent, and the Doctor cuts him off and is like, ‘Do you have the stuff?’ and Brent’s like yeah sure man yeah sure sure man yeah of course man sure man like seriously bugging out, and then the guy puts up his hand in this like, weird gesture, and Brent shuts up like immediately. Just stops dead like the guy had shot him and the guy turns around and starts going up this flight of stairs that I hadn’t even noticed before and Brent follows him and I follow Brent because like, fuck, what else am I gonna do, right? And upstairs is this big, open room but it’s like, super dark because there’s blackout shades pulled over all the windows. Like it’s the middle of the day, and it was really sunny too, yesterday, remember? Like a bright summer day, right? Well you wouldn’t have fucking known it there. You couldn’t have said if it was day or fucking night. I like, thought a fucking thunderstorm had come up or something all of a sudden it was so dark but no, every window was just blacked out and there were just a couple lamps that barely gave off any light at all for this whole big upstairs like, area. And there’s this recliner near one of the lights and I thought there was just a pile of blankets on it at first but then I saw there actually was someone wrapped up and buried in all of them, and I realized it was her and she was just like this frail fucking shadow of a bitch. Like she looks like a strong wind could blow her away, just totally pale and stringy and feeble-looking. And the Doctor I guess finally decides to, like, acknowledge I exist then because he turns to me and starts giving me this spiel like ‘she’s my patient, she’s very sick, her condition is very serious, do not to agitate her, do not talk to her, she must have continuous rest’ but I can see her looking at me and she’s got this pleading look to her like she wants me to come over there, like she’s fucking begging me to for some reason. And at this point I’m thinking like, this is so fucked, this whole situation is so fucked, I can’t believe Brent dragged me into this, he’s such a fucking asshole, I don’t want to be a part of whatever’s going on here, like, this is fucked up rich person shit, this is none of my business. And it’s true, Brent’s a fucking asshole. Like, I’m definitely not responding to his texts for a while. But this girl is so pathetic looking I can’t just ignore her, you know, I’m only human, so when Brent and this Doctor go off to another room to finish up the deal or whatever, probably do a couple lines and shit too, the Doc has that rich cokehead look about him, you know what I’m talking about, anyway they go off and I immediately go over to this girl, I just can’t help myself. I go over and she grabs my arm and starts fucking whispering to me, all this crazy stuff like, she’d been thinking about hell, and reading about hell in some old book her dad had given her and stuff and just, like fuck, on and on. She told me she thought, fuck, what was it… ‘I think Hell must be like the dusty old storeroom of a department store, where you’re a mannequin that’s been taken off the shop floor, because you’re dead. And you just spend eternity like that, in this back room, and no one ever comes in. And some of these rooms are totally dark, and you can’t see anything, but in some of them a bit of light will be leaking in from under the door, or if you’re really lucky, there will be a dusty window behind some shelves somewhere, so you get to see the days passing, and it breaks up the monotony a little bit. There’s no logic to what sort of storeroom you end up in, it doesn’t matter if you led a good life or a bad life or even an evil life, we all end up there and it’s all totally arbitrary, and even if you are lucky enough to be put in one with a window, you can’t move, and you can’t speak, and you can’t breathe, and you’re just there forever, for eternity. And it just goes on, and on, and on…’ Something like that, like she just would not shut up, just went on and on like that, totally crazy shit. I had to literally fucking tear myself away when I heard the Doctor coming back, like, she left fucking scratch marks on my arm, see?” She sticks out her arm for me to look at. It’s true: her skin is scored with a pair of red, angry scratches. “Crazy bitch, right? Like not that I’d trust that Doctor with my shit, but she’s clearly got something fucking wrong with her, he wasn’t lying about that. Anyway he showed us back downstairs and seemed a lot more chill now that the deal was done, told us we could stick around for a bit if we like, but we had to be quiet, he said. Brent just wanted to get out of there, though, and so did I, obviously. Like I didn’t wanna stick around and have that guy find out I’d ‘agitated’ her. I didn’t even think to bring up my fashion business, but she probably isn’t even allowed to make like, money decisions and there’s no way the doctor would’ve gone for it so I figure it doesn’t matter. In the car later I asked Brent what he actually had sold the dude and he said carfentanil. Can you believe that? Fucking carfentanil… I don’t want to think about it.”

“Right,” I said.

“You wouldn’t wanna buy a shirt with the mom from Calvin & Hobbes smoking weed on it, would you?” She was trying to pull up something on her phone, probably her web store.

“No,” I said.

Later, I happened to run into her again, almost literally. I was coming out of the bathroom, where I’d just been violently ill. When she recognized me, her eyes widened a little and she tried to grab my dick through my jeans. She used the arm with the scratch marks on it. I decided it was time to go.