Bruce sat behind the wheel of a stolen truck, blasting the radio with the windows down, as he drove.  He wasn’t paying attention to the road.  He had zoned out and was driving on autopilot, barely aware of how beautiful the Kentucky landscape was under the silver-blue light of a full moon.

Twicks sat beside him in the passenger seat, looking out the window.  He was not paying any more attention to where they were going to Bruce was.  To him, life just felt like a cycle anyway, so why make a big deal of seeing the sights when you were destined to come across the same things eventually?  He only had one thing in mind:  completing the cycle like he always did.  Nothing mattered much but reaching the end of the repetitious journey, to start again.

He scratched his face, never looking away from the shoulder of the road.  He satisfied he itch but didn’t seem to notice until he was digging so deep into his cheek that it hurt.  It was enough to bring him out of his daze for a moment, as he looked down at his fingernails.  There was a little skin curled up under the middle nail.  He couldn’t see well enough to tell how much if any was stuck under the others.

He sighed at the sight of the skin under his fingernail.  He used his other hand to inspect his raw, inflamed cheek.  He stuck his fingers together and pulled them apart several times, and he was distantly glad that it wasn’t bleeding.  He noticed that his leg was bouncing, though.

We better be getting close to the end, he thought.  He looked at Bruce.  “Hey, man, have you seen anything around here?”

“Dunno,” he said.

Twicks stared at Bruce.  His glassy eyes showed that he had lost all purpose in life…except one.  The one that had Twicks running through this damned, endless cycle.  He saw Bruce run his tongue against his front teeth—what was left of them, at least.  An old tooth that had no business still being lodged in his head wiggled at the tongue’s prodding like it was finally being evicted from his mouth.  Twicks knew that was where he was headed, but he didn’t care.  Life was short, so he might as well have the most fun he could.  If I can’t take my body to the other side, what do I care how it gets to the line? he often thought.

“What do you mean, ‘dunno’?  You stupid?  Where are we going?”

“We’ll know it when we see it.  I’m in the same boat as you, Twicks.”

"Yeah, well, we’re taking on water,” Twicks said, poorly trying to hide that he didn’t like that answer.  Actually, it really pissed him off, but Bruce was right.  They were both on the same sinking ship and they were after the same thing.  Twicks leaned back I the seat, thinking that if they both didn’t complete the cycle soon, he might regret what he did next.  He wondered if he could really be blamed if it came to that.  After all, he did have a need to satisfy.

Bruce picked up on how upset Twicks was, and said, “Ya know, you never once told me why your name’s Twicks.  Why do they call you that?”

Twicks looked at him.  Bruce thought he looked a little more even-tempered, but not by much.

“Because I’m one Twicksy motherfucker,” he said.

It made Bruce laugh, but only he found the humor in that.  “Good nough for me!”

They drove for about ten minutes until they passed a subdivision with a fancy stone wall on either side of the entrance.  Flawlessly trimmed rose bushes dressed up the wall other than an elaborately carved plaque illuminated by a dim spotlight.  According to the plaque, the place was called South Haven.

Bruce looked at Twicks.  “I think we found it,” he said.

Bout damn time, Twicks thought.

Bruce turned the truck around and headed back to South Haven.  It was surprising that this wasn’t a gated community as nice as the houses peeking over the wall appeared to be.  They were all beautiful homes, but what struck Twicks were the houses with the cylindrical outcroppings that reminded him of English castles that he had seen in his previous life.  Bruce turned into the neighborhood and was just as taken aback as Twicks.

“Would ya look at this!  What would ya give to live in one o’ these bad boys?” he asked.

“I’d give up three nuts.”

“Three?  Somethin you want to tell me?”

“I’d have to cut off both of mine, and one of yours,” Twicks said.

“You motherfucker!” Bruce said, laughing.

“Let’s just get this done.”

“You choose.  Which one do we raid?”

“Keep driving.  I’ll let you know,” Twicks said.

Bruce nodded.  Twicks had a good intuition about these things.  Whenever they went on their errands to steal something to sell for money to come full circle, he always knew when and where they could score.  It was rare that they did not come away with enough to keep from doing this again for at least a month.

Bruce took a right turn and drove slow as Twicks surveyed the houses.  It was nine o’clock, so most people would still be awake.  He was looking for a house with no lights on, no cars parked outside, no hint of a dog, and preferably no neighbors that might be courteous enough to watch out for each other when they were gone.  Twicks doubted that the people who lived in this neighborhood would be too concerned about each other.  He didn’t think that any of the houses here would sell for anything less than four hundred thousand, which made him think that most of these people would either be too wrapped up in their luxury toys—or too consumed with the debt they racked up to live here to pretend they were wealthier than they really were—to care about what was going on around them.  That wasn’t necessarily the case, though, and that’s where his gift of junkie’s intuition came in handy.

“Stop!” Twicks yelled.  Suddenly he knew they were in front of the right house.

Bruce slammed the breaks, and the truck lurched forward despite its slow speed.  Bruce yanked the door’s handle up and swung the door open.  He tried to roll out of the truck, but the seatbelt held him back.  Twicks pulled him back into the truck.  He was very strong for his size; that was just a side effect of running around the track they were on, though.  Bruce grabbed the door and pulled it shut and he rolled back into the cab, and Twicks slapped him a good one on the back of the head.

“The fuck are you doing?” Twicks said.  “We gotta do this smart.  If the meth has scrambled your brains this bad, I want a new partner.”

Bruce looked at Twicks through solemn, glazed eyes and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, man.  I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Twicks looked around.  No one was outside.  No dogs were barking.  Hell, not even many of the lights were on.  Between all five of the other houses that immediately surrounded this house (the two adjacent houses, and the three facing them across the street), only three windows were even lit.  It looked like the old junkie’s intuition was still good after all.  The final determination would be if the house was clear and there was good loot for the taking, but they would know that in a moment.

“Pull into the driveway,” Twicks said.

Bruce didn’t say anything; he just did what Twicks told him.  Twicks turned off the radio and unbuckled his seat belt.  His nose twitched.  It often twitched when he stated needing a fix, when he needed to complete the cycle.  He squeezed the tip of his nose and gave it a gentle twist that still made him sniff and his eyes water a little.

“You alright?” Bruce asked.

He seemed distant.  Twicks thought the distance in his voice meant that Bruce needed a fix more than he did, which worried him.  If he got to jonesing too bad during a raid, he would probably screw everything up, and they’d be a in jail and have to deal with detox there.  It was bad enough on its own, but when you are worrying about your losing other virginity while you’re detoxing—Twicks refused to think about it.  He just hoped that Bruce would be able to keep his shit together long enough to get in and get out with stuff they could pawn.

“Yep, we just need to be quick,” Twicks said.

Bruce undid his seatbelt and killed the engine.  Twicks was rummaging through the glove box.  The last vehicle they had taken to run errands with barely had a glove box worth mentioning; this one felt like the Grand Canyon by comparison, and they had loaded it with so much junk, Twicks had to dig through glass pipes, lists of places they had hit and pawn shops they had sold to, and a few things the previous owners had stuffed in there.  He found what he was looking for—a little black box—and he looked at Bruce, putting his free hand on the door handle.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They got out of the truck and headed up the driveway to the front door.  Bruce tried the doorknob.  It barely moved, so Twicks opened the black box and took out a long thin metal pin and a pick.  He put them in the lock mechanism with all the finesse of a classical painter creating a masterpiece.  The lock clicked and rattled before it finally rolled over with a loud clunk.  Twicks pushed the door with his pin and pick held steady, which barely took any force.  He thought of it like in invitation you needed to perform a secret handshake to receive.

The foyer was empty, and it didn’t sound like there were any pets running around.  The mister and misses weren’t having date night, either.  That was good.  It meant that Twicks’s junkie intuition was still on point.  He stepped over the threshold cautiously, though.

“Give me a flashlight,” he said.

Bruce patted himself, and said, “Shit.  I’ll be right back.”

He ran back towards the truck, and Twicks shook his head.  After this run, Twicks was going to have to part ways with Bruce.  He was getting worse, and he couldn’t take him jeopardizing their operations.  He wasn’t sure how he would take the news.  It might be an easy break, maybe with a few fuck-yous from Bruce, but if it came to it, Twicks thought he would had to take a more direct route to getting rid of Bruce.  If it had to go that far, everyone else would be rid of Bruce, too.  That felt extreme, but—

The only thing that matters is completing the cycle, Twicks thought.

He disturbed himself at that.  He never imagined he would be willing to go that far for the sake of getting a fix.  He didn’t realize that he had come that far.  “Junkie intuition” was no longer just a joke.  He couldn’t help it, though, at this point; he was too far along to back out, and getting help wasn’t a viable option.

Fuck that, he thought.  A bunch of self-righteous assholes lecturing me about how I’m hurting me and everyone around me.  No way.  If I really need to, I’ll fix my fucking self.

Could he though?  He felt confident when he thought it, but he never explored the concept any farther.  It always conveniently ended on a positive, can-do note, and he was fine with that.  But if he was ever asked if he didn’t delve farther because he was scared of what he might find, whoever asked would find that the addicted optimist could quickly turn into a surly weasel that would be as vicious as he had to be to stop the conversation.

Bruce ran back from the truck with two small flashlights in hand.  He gave one to Twicks, who almost jerked it out of his hand.  Twicks felt a twinge of regret as soon as he had the flashlight in his hand.  Bruce looked at him with empty eyes that were not unlike a sad puppy’s eyes; maybe he knew what was coming right after this job.  Twicks hoped he didn’t, but the look surprised him.  It meant that even though Bruce was long gone from being functional without those funny little crystals, a trace of his humanity still existed inside him.  Twicks knew instantly that it was going to be hard to kill him if he had to, but he shook his head and banished the thought.

They headed inside.  Twicks closed the door before turning on his flashlight, and Bruce followed suit.  Immediately to the left was a staircase, and on their right was a living room befitting of the neighborhood.  The living room set alone must have cost this family at least ten thousand dollars.  The first place was surrounded by marble, and the base of the fireplace was an ornate rectangle in the floor that was filled with blue chips that looked like glass and dazzled in the flashlight’s beam and reflected beautiful blue fractals around the fireplace.  The television was huge.  It had to be at least a seventy-five-inch flatscreen, and Twicks knew instantly on the way out they had to get that.  Bruce passed the flashlight around the television and was amazed not only at the amount of movies and hardcover books around it but also just how expensive the shelving itself looked.  Twicks saw that up ahead, in the back of the house, was a kitchen area, which he expected to be no less impressive than the living room was.

Bruce looked at him, and said, “Thank God for that junkie sense o’ yours!”

Twicks laughed.  “Thank the drugs,” he said.  “That’s where it comes from.”

Bruce asked, “You wanna start down here, or check upstairs first?”

“Let’s look upstairs.  If we find anything worth taking, we can bring it down here.”

Bruce nodded.  “You got it.”

He started up the stairs.  Twicks turned to follow him but stopped.  His flashlight passed over a yellow reflective surface he hadn’t noticed during the preliminary sweep of the treasure trove just behind the front door, and he caught the reflection in his peripheral vision.

“What’s up?” Bruce asked from halfway up the stairs.

“I thought I saw something.” He shined his light directly at the source of the reflection, hoping it wasn’t a dog or a cat that had crept up on them in silence.  He thought it was a little high for that, but who knew?  Cats were twicksy motherfuckers, too, and it could have been slinking along on a shelf.  He felt lucky when he saw that it was just a doorknob that would open up a space under the stairs.  “We might want to check out that room under the stairs when we come back down.  It might be a storage room for the really expensive shit.”

“Good eye, man!” Bruce said, going the rest of the way up the stairs.

Twicks followed him.  The upper level of the house stretched to the right.  Twicks wondered if being in a bottleneck like this would be a fatal mistake if the people that lived here came back, but would it really make a difference if the upper level expanded to the left and the right?  He thought it really didn’t, not unless there was another staircase in the back, so they could escape, run around the house, and hopefully drive off before the cops arrived.  It was much more likely that they would be screwed no matter what if they came home.  There was a strange truck parked in their driveway!  Of course, they were going to call the cops as soon as they saw that.  But it was Friday, and given the money these folks obviously had to blow on whatever they wanted, they were probably out at a country club buying meals and drinks that cost ten times what they should tonight.

Bruce opened the first door on the right.  It was not the first door in the hallway, the first one was about three feet before it on the left side, but he had a fixation with the right side.  Twicks never figured out if this was conscious or just a side effect of the meth that made him do things a certain way, lest he have a mental breakdown.  He thought it was the latter, but that was just another “good enough” answer to things that didn’t pertain to completing the cycle.

Twicks opened the door on the left, slowly, just in case there was a little tike in here sleeping.  The designer probably intended for this to be a bedroom, but it was a game room, fleshed out with every console, more controllers than a game store, and a huge library of games.  Twicks’s eye lit up.  This was a jackpot itself, and if they could get some of the stuff from downstairs too, they might not have to pull another stunt like this for about five or six months, as long as they didn’t blow all the money on a huge cache of drugs at one time, in which case they’d get so high they’d overdose.  If their heads didn’t explode first, that was.

In his pre-completion sobriety, Twicks had faith that they could be that responsible with the money.  Hell, the drugs were just a fun thing to do.  He was getting along fine without them now, right?  These were things he told himself towards the end of the cycle, conveniently leaving out the fact that he was stealing to make sure he could buy more drugs.

Despite that, he thought, If we can get that much from this job, I won’t have to deal with Bruce.

He unhooked the television from the gameroom, took it downstairs, and set it near the door so that when they were done, they could just toss everything in the truck and be off.  He set the television down near the door and felt his nose twitch.

Before the twitch even happened, he tightened his face, trying not to let it happen, but his nose didn’t listen, and it twitched hard enough it felt like it was being pinched weakly.  It was a sign that he needed a fix much worse than he would have liked to admit.  Worse than he ever would admit.  He rubbed his nose hard with the butt of his palm and winced as he flattened his nose, thinking, Dammit, this better be over quick.  I need this to stop.

He was about to go back up to the game room and take the consoles (he didn’t know if they were the latest ones, but they looked flashy enough for a quick buck), but he stopped by the door under the stairs.  He saw the reflection again but it was removed about ten inches from the wall.  He wanted it to be a hallucination from being sober too long and the stress of putting up with Bruce, but it wasn’t.  The door stood ajar.

The air must’ve opened it, he tried to tell himself, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong with that door being open.

He took a tentative step towards it, keeping his flashlight trained on it.  Although nothing was in the crack in the door or around it, his heart was racing, and he wanted to get back in the truck and smoke, but his feet kept dragging him closer to the door against his will.  When he was about four feet from the door, he reached out, thinking Oh fuckin hell, man.  Why am I doing this?

A muffled rushing sound answered him through the walls, and he fell back and almost lost his flashlight.  He thought his heart was going to explode in his chest before whatever was behind that door could do him in.  Nothing came out of the room, though, and Twicks sat on the floor listening intently, trying to figure out why he wasn’t dead.  The rushing sound was water…it sounded like…a toilet flushing.

That dumb sonofabitch, he thought, knowing Bruce had to be the one to flush the toilet.  He’ll get us caught!  They’ll examine his piss!  At least…it’ll be his and not mine.  It didn’t really matter that Bruce leaving DNA evidence would lead the police to him if they checked the droplets he left behind from that trip to the bathroom.  If they caught Bruce, he might rat out Twicks.  The first plan Twicks had for Bruce seemed like the only rational option again.

He picked himself up, trying desperately to contain the rage boiling in his brain, but failing miserably, and headed upstairs.  He was four steps from the top, sure that as soon as he saw that blundering idiot, he was going to punch his teeth out, when that blundering idiot stepped out in front of him with his arms full of loot.  It caught Twicks so off-guard that he had to grab on to the rail to make sure he didn’t trip on the stairs.

Bruce was holding a jewelry box that by itself must have cost at least two thousand dollars, never mind what trinkets it must have inside.  He had found two gold watches that must have been the husband’s; he was wearing one on each wrist.  Several of his fingers had large masculine rings on them, and he had a tie around his head.  Twicks thought that was more for Bruce’s own entertainment than it was to sell, even still the tie was a wonder itself, with such a sheen it looked oiled to Twicks.

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Bruce was holding his flashlight in his mouth, so when he spoke it was a garbled mess that sounded something like “Wha oo hank uh iss?”

Twicks took the flashlight from his mouth.  “What was that?”

“Whatdaya think o’ this?”

“Nice work,” he said clapping him on the back.  “Set it near the door where I put the other TV.”  Then he slipped the flashlight back into Bruce’s mouth.

Twicks meant the compliment, but he was unsettled that Bruce had all that stuff.  How could he have grabbed all of it if he was using the toilet?  Maybe he grabbed it before he wizzed.  It was a terrible explanation, given the short time they had been in here, but he thought it was plausible enough to lay the issue to rest.  Twicks went ahead and tied up the wires connecting the consoles.  He was wrapping the last of the cords around his hand when he heard Bruce yell:

“Hey, Twicksy, you catch this?”

He hated being called that, but he let it pass.  He wondered if the door was open wider than it had been when he started back up the stairs to give Bruce what-for.  He grabbed the consoles so he wouldn’t waste the trip and struggled down the stairs, because they were piled so high in his arms that he needed to use his chin to balance them.  When he thought he had cleared the stairs, he felt around with his foot to make sure that if he took another step, he wouldn’t destroy all the treasures in his arms and bust his chops, which were starting to ache in the background.  He set everything down in the growing pile.  He chuckled to himself, thinking, Wouldn’t it be funny if they came home just before we started loading this stuff in the truck?

Bruce was working on the huge television in the living room.  He looked over at Twicks, and asked, “What did you find under the stairs?” nodding to the door that was now completely open.

Twicks looked at it and felt like he needed to use the toilet now.  “I never looked.  Did you open it?”

“I thought you forgot tot close it, or maybe you needed help getting something outta there.”

Twicks shook his head.  Bruce yanked the last cord from the back of the television, and Twicks cringed, thinking he was going to break it, half-hoping he would electrocute himself before he realized that he needed Bruce to get this stuff into the truck.

Bruce set the cords on the ground and said, “You wanna check it out?”

“We’ll be cutting it close if we do,” he said.  “Maybe we should just leave with what we’ve got.”

Bruce thought about that proposition for a moment, but then his face lit up.  “Nah, Man.  What if they buy gold, like you hear about on the radio all the time?  Looks like these folks would be the type to buy it, and it could be hidden in here.”

“You’ve been listening to too many of those radio commercials about buying gold coins.”

“Do you have any idea how much old gold coins might be worth?”

“Do you?”

“No, but if they have them, we should take em!”

“These people aren’t fuckin pirates.”

“Just one quick look.  If we don’t find anything good, we can go.  If we find some gold coins, we’ll either get a shit-ton for them, or we can pretend we’re kings.”

Twicks fancied that idea.  King Twicks, his meth-addicted majesty, reigning over junkies everywhere.  They would bow before him, seek his wisdom, and live by his law in a land devoid of sobriety.  He was tickled by that fantasy.  “Fine,” he said.

Bruce got a little spring in his step as he strode around the couches, and headed for the door.  Twicks followed him but without the enthusiasm.  He was amused at Bruce’s flashlight beam dancing along the ground as he went.  Bruce stopped in front of the doorway to wait for Twicks.  The door itself was resting against the wall.  Twicks’s light caught a small wet patch that Bruce had just missed stepping in.

“The hell is that?” he said.

Bruce looked at it but didn’t say anything.  It looked like water, but maybe a tad thicker.  Still, he was fixed on it.  Just junkie stuff—they found the dumbest things amazing.  Twicks sat on his hams and studied it briefly, not daring to put his fingers in it.

“This must be from when you flushed the toilet, you mook.  Poor folks must have a leak in the ceiling here.  Think we should leave them a note?” he joked.

“Huh?” Bruce said.  “What are you talking about?”

“The flush.  I heard it when I first came to check this fuckin door out.  Nearly gave me a goddamn heart attack.”

“Oh,” Bruce said.  It was all he could say.  Twicks could tell from the way he said it, as if he honestly didn’t know anything about a toilet flush.  “Sorry, Twicks.  I—I didn’t know.”

Twicks swallowed hard at just how genuine Bruce sounded.  He stood up, and Bruce watched him.  Twicks didn’t look into his eyes, he was afraid that if he did, Bruce would see what he had planned to do to him after they pawned all the stuff they stole.

“We might as well check it out, ya know,” Bruce said.

“Why not?” Twicks asked, still avoiding his eyes.  “You check the kitchen?”

“Nothin in there.  Just a bunch of pots and pans.”

Twicks nodded and gestured towards the doorway.  “After you.”

“Thanks m’lord,” Bruce said, and went inside.  Twicks followed him.

The room itself was an odd, nearly barren enclosure.  Shelves were fixed to exposed wall studs.  The shelves were holding up dusty old books and knickknacks.  The shelf in front of them had a large candle at both ends as a bookend.  Bruce shined his light on the line of books, most of them didn’t have titles on te spines, but a few did.  Those were the creepy ones.  They had titles like The Things We Fear at Night, Tales from the Dark Side, and May the Sun Rise Soon.

“You think we should leave?” Bruce asked.

Twicks wanted to laugh, but he was going to have fun with Bruce while he still could.  Hopefully, he could squeeze in a few more pranks before their partnership had to end.  “I think they just like spooky shit, man,” he said.  “You can’t tell me you haven’t had some bad trips that scared the piss outta you.”  Bruce just shrugged in agreement.  “But ya still keep using.  We both do.  Same concept.”

Twicks started looking around at the rest of the room.  His light landed on the shelf to the right of the doorway.  “Gwoahshit!” he screamed, falling into the baseless darkness.  Bruce reached out and grabbed his left arm as his right hand seized a rail like it represented the border between life and death and he wasn’t ready to cross.  In some ways, that was accurate.  Bruce pulled Twicks up.  He looked at the descending rail he had grabbed, wondering why there would be a rail in a dinky little storage room like this.  He lit up a staircase that wrapped around the corner of the wall, which was just cement instead of studs from there on.

“Would ya look at that?” Twicks said.  “Sumbitches are trying to kill whoever comes sneaking around in here.  They probably leave the bodies down there, too.”

“What scared you so badly?”

“That fuckin thing right behind you!”

Bruce turned around and looked.  He let out a startled, squeamish sound at the sight of what nearly killed his friend.  It was a ragged cloth doll that looked like it was at least a hundred years old.  Dirt had been ground into the cheeks, and one of its eyes had been torn out and was now hanging on by threads.  The pink bonnet it wore over its thin, bundled strands of blond hair was frayed and had a flaky-looking, burgundy patch in the middle that spread into what little hair poked out in front.  Her right arm was gouged and cotton was spilling out of the wound.  What was most disturbing was the way the doll’s head was cocked to the side, and her stitched mouth was open in a hopeful expression that, despite the dangling eye, seemed to ask, Do you want to be my fwiend?

“I’d hate to see her on a trip,” Bruce joked.

“She’ll probably come next time to eat our souls,” Twicks said.

He studied the doll for a minute, enraptured by the dry burgundy mess, right in the middle of its head.  He went a little closer and attempted to touch it, but he couldn’t make his hand move the last few millimeters.  His finger quivered, and he put it down immediately to ensure that Bruce wouldn’t see and make some dumb joke about it.  He shook his head, and the shake turned into a shiver that made its way down his back.

“It’s blood, man” he said hollowly.

“Someone probably cut themselves playing with it a million years ago and didn’t clean it.  Let’s just go down here and have a quick peek.”

Twicks agreed, and they went down into the darkness.  The stairs creaked under their feet, and when they got to the landing, Twicks felt a strong desire to turn back and leave with what they had.  He thought they were just wasting time, and they were already going to make enough either to kill themselves or to keep living for a very long time (in Twicks’s case, at least).  However, he said nothing, and followed Bruce, but the alarm sounding in his head only grew louder at the base of the stairs.

Their flashlight beams swirled about in every direction looking for anything worth stealing.  It was strange that the basement was actually much smaller than the floor space o the ground floor.  It was only about the size of the living room.  Bruce was the first to start investigating further, but a metallic clattering upstairs spun both of them around fast enough that they could have dudge a bullet.

“The hell was that?” Twicks said.

“It sounded like some pots and pans falling.”

“Did you check the kitchen?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Did you check the fucking kitchen?”  Twicks was aware of the severity in his tone, but he wanted to drive the point home to his screwup, junkhead partner that if they were not careful they would be spending at least the next five years in prison if they were lucky, which they probably wouldn’t be, since they had paraphernalia in the glove box.

“Yeah, there was a frying pan and some other stuff drying on a towel by the sink.  What is your problem?”

“I’m not detoxing in jail while some big ol’ bastard makes me his wife because of you!”

“You won’t.  If you want to wait upstairs, do it.  I’m having a look down here.”

“Fine.  I’ll leave you here after using the bathroom like you did.  Were you thinking about the DNA evidence you might leave behind?”

“I told you, I never used the fuckin bathroom.”

Twicks stared at him.  He knew Bruce was dead serious when he said that.  He knew because Bruce was getting pissed, and now that he thought about it, Bruce did stop at a Burger King about thirty minutes before they stumbled on to this place and he had not had anything to drink since, so he probably didn’t even need to pee now.

Twicks stumbled around saying, “I—I’m—I…sorry.”

“You know me, buddy.  I got this.  Go wait upstairs.”

That stung, being called buddy.  It was like being the hunter that happened upon Bambi’s mother and having to look into the sentient little deer’s eyes.  Twicks couldn’t think of anything to say.  He just went up the stairs while Bruce poked around in the darkness below.

Behind him, he heard a muddle whimpering sound.  He thought he recognized the sound from a dealer’s house he had been to a long time ago when he first started speeding.  He only went to her three times.  It would have been only once, but there was the matter of finding another dealer, because the one that helped him get started had gone to prison shortly after introducing him to Carol Dewitt, who went by Christmas Carol when she was dealing.  He remembered hoping to God that the cooking wasn’t done inside the house, because she wasn’t alone when she was dealing.  Her little partner in crime had to still be nursing, swaddled in makeshift diapers that looked like they were made of old t-shirts with the neckline sealed up with duct tape to catch her shit.  The thought of involving a kid—no, a baby!—in this living hell was too much for Twicks.  It was bad enough that adults got caught up in the cycle he was stuck in, but that was their choice.  He had the option to turn it down the first time it was offered to him, but he had lost all sense of meaning and direction in his existence and it was just something to do at the moment.  He was okay with that, because it was his choice, and he was aware of what getting hooked would mean.  But the baby…What choice did she have?  That beautiful little girl, who had the potential to carve out a great life for herself if she just had a little luck, a little drive, and a few good people to help her when her luck was off, didn’t deserve to be reared in this meth house.  The first time Twicks bought from Christmas Carol Dewitt, she was holding that crying baby in one arm and a bag of speed in the other, and it hurt his heart to see her innocence being tarnished before she was even old enough to know.  In that moment, he got a certain feeling that she was doomed to grow up either to deal like her mother if she was lucky or to be in the same boat he was before she was sixteen.  He pitied Christmas Carol’s baby so much, he came close to giving up the speed.

But not close enough to grab hold of sobriety.

The desperate muddled noise he was hearing was very close to the sound of Christmas Carol’s baby crying the first time he bought from her.  It finally sunk in that it really was a baby crying, but that wasn’t possible in this basement, let alone the house—they had done a loose interpretation of a sweep of the house to make sure that no one was here.  It was too much:  he began to panic and dashed up the stairs as fast as his legs would let him.  He tripped on the lip of the landing at the top and busted his chin on the floor.  His teeth clattered together and drew tears to his eyes, and his flashlight escaped his grasp and turned off as if by its own accord.  He picked himself up haphazardly and lurched for the door from memory.  He hit the door hard, and nearly fell again.  He felt around for the doorknob, as the baby’s cries, which had turned to desperate, all-out sobbing, grew louder.  His hand was smacking the door until it finally hit something hard and cold.  He tried to turn it, but it only rotated about a sixteenth of an inch or so.  Holding the doorknob tight, he hit the door hard with his free fist repeatedly, yelling:

“No!  Goddamnit”

Bruce yelled back up the stairs, “What’s wrong?”

Twicks composed himself, took a deep breath and tried to sound calm as he yelled back, “Don’t worry.  I got it.”  He paused for a moment before adding, “I just really need a fix.”

“Ain’t there some in the truck?”

“Yeah, but just a bowl’s worth.  We’ll share it.”

“I knew you were a good dude, Twicks.”  He knew Bruce meant every breath of that.  It hurt just as badly as being his buddy.

Twicks knelt to find his flashlight, pretending that the panicked riot in his head was not about to spill over the barricades and take him over.  He was on his hands and knees patting the ground in a frenzy.  He could still hear the crying infant, and sweat began to bead on his forehead.  His hand landed on something soft.  It felt like a small pillow that had been washed so many times it had almost disintegrated.  He knew what it was without having to see it.  It was that old ratty doll.  He dug his fingers into it, seizing it like a savage, and hurled it into the wall.  He expected to hear the muffled explosion of cotton erupting from every ancient seam, but the doll didn’t explode.  It was hurt.

“Why don’t you want to be fwiends with me?” it asked in a voice like a four-year-old girl’s.

A large drop of sweat became too heavy to cling to his brow and it made its way down his nose.  His breathing became labored, but he couldn’t bring himself to scream.  His hands just moved faster trying to get his flashlight.  He heard the sound of old stuffing compressing and scrunching, and he knew the doll was moving.  It was almost completely drowned out by the sound of the crying that it seemed only he could hear.  He felt the metallic cylinder he was looking for and snatched it, but before he could pull his hand back, two cloth limbs fell on top of his hand.  He screamed and jerked his hand, which launched the doll against the door.  This time the impact was solid and sounded closer to what he expected the first time.

“Why you hert me?” it asked.

He turned around and pushed himself back in one swift movement and landed against the wall opposite the door.  He turned the light on and shined it in front of him.  He swept the beam back and forth looking for the possessed toy.  He found it huddled in the corner with its arms covering its face.  It brought them down slowly.  The stitched expression had changed.  Both the good eye and the dangling one had a downcast look, and the mouth’s stitches were now a jagged frown.  There were small moist patches under each eye.

Jesus Christ, it’s crying! He thought.

“Why did you hert me?” it asked again.  “I wanted to be fwiends and pway.”

“I’ve danced with enough demons, thank you,” he said.  He kicked it hard and he felt the cloth squish around the flat soled shoes he was wearing.  He drew his leg back and saw the little doll’s bonnet was crimson with blood from a fresh head wound, and her new jagged mouth was spilling blood, too.

The doll looked up at him, and her expression changed while he watched in terror.  Her eye drifted up to meet his with an evil gaze filled with hatred and vengeance.

“This is a fun new game,” she said.

The doll fumbled to her feet and started towards Twicks.  He mouthed, “What the fuck is going on?” and the stitches twisted up into an open grin.  It tried to fall on his leg, but he pulled it close and started getting up.  The doll fell face first on the ground, but scrambled up so quickly it almost looked like it dropped into a pushup position to launch itself forward with all four limbs.  It leaped and caught ahold of his shoe.  Before he could kick it off, it was shimmying up his leg.

Twicks danced frantically, trying to shake the doll, but it kept climbing.  It stopped at the collar of his shirt and slammed its face into the base of his throat just below his Adam’s apple.  The mouth was too small to just tear out chunks of vital flesh, so it hung there gnawing at his throat.  It still hurt like a thousand little needles pricking him.

His fingers wrapped around the upper portion of the doll.  His thumb and first two fingers gripped its tiny neck, and the last two fingers tucked under one of her arms.  He screamed as he pulled her away from his throat, and she started gnawing on his forefinger.  He looked down at her with an incoherent rage that replaced his humanity.

He sunk his teeth into the side of the doll’s head and squeezed the body as hard as he could.  He tasted blood in his mouth, and it delighted him.  The doll shrieked as he yanked it apart.  Its head tore away.  The cacophony of the infant’s crying and doll shrieking stopped at the same time.

Twicks spat the doll’s head out and tossed the body beside it.  His hands, chin, and upper chest were covered in blood.  He was panting, relishing the gruesome victory.  The taste of the doll’s blood was still in his mouth, wondering if this meant he was capable of cannibalism, when he heard a shrill cry from what sounded like an older child (he couldn’t discern any gender), followed by Bruce’s screaming and a tumbling of boxes.

Twicks saw flashes of light darting all over below and knew Bruce was in serious trouble.  Despite having contemplated his murder, Twicks rushed down the steps to see what was going on.  He stopped on the third step from the bottom and looked around, but he couldn’t see Bruce’s flashlight beam anymore.  He took a tentative step, and a set of bony fingers seized his ankle from the space between the steps and jerked backwards.  Twicks fell forward, putting his arms up to protect his face.

He hit the ground hard.  He heard Bruce yell to him: “Watch out!”

He shined the light in the direction of Bruce’s voice.  Bruce’s thin body had taken a thrashing.  He was bleeding from his left ear and had lacerations running up his arms.  His shirt was ripped in several places.  He was running at full speed with a hatchet raised over head.  He swung it hard, and Twicks braced himself, initially thinking that Bruce was swinging it at him.

The hatchet hit something above Twicks that made a loud, wet, organic sound like the juicy crunch of stepping on a beetle.  He was sprayed with brown, slimy gore.  He got to his knees, and Bruce yanked him to his feet.

“Get your junkie ass out of here!” Bruce yelled, pushing him towards the stairs.  “I got your back.”

“What about you?  You better make it out of this.”

Bruce just smiled at him and shoved the hatchet into Twicks’s chest.  “Hack the door open.”

Twicks hesitated, until Bruce screamed for him to get a move on.  Twicks ran up the stairs and turned back when he heard Bruce howling in pain.  He had been pinned against the wall by some inhuman abomination.  It was a spider-like creature about the size of a seven-year-old with a bald head that looked human enough, but its flesh was desiccated.  It had four spindly arms and legs with knees that bent forward like elbows.  It was tearing Bruce apart; its spindly limbs were moving so quickly that it was just a blur of sickly, yellow-brown flesh stabbing Bruce.

Twicks wasted no time reaching the top of the stairs.  He tried to kick the door open, but it didn’t budget.  The noise got the attention of the arachnoid abomination killing his friend, and he heard the legs clicking up the stairs.  He panicked and drove the hatchet into the door near the knob as hard as his atrophied muscles would allow.  He brought the hatchet back to hack into the door a second time but noticed the clicking had stopped.  He glanced down the steps and saw that the abomination was turned around.  He knew it had to be preoccupied with Bruce.

“Get through that goddamned door you fucking idiot!” Bruce yelled in a shrill, pain-stricken voice.

Twicks thrust the hatchet into the door again, and it cracked open.  He kicked the door open, leaving the hatchet stuck int the wood.  The door swung open and hit the wall.  Twicks looked around as he exited into the first floor of the house.

Several pots and pans were thrown to the ground in the kitchen and crashed in the cacophony of metallic pings and pops.  The same scurrying clicks that preceded Bruce’s evisceration came out of the kitchen and headed for him.

Twicks made a mad dash for the door, when it occurred to him that this entire speed run was about to be wasted.  He trained his flashlight on the piled loot in front of the door and saw the ornate jewelry box Bruce had picked up.  Bingo! he thought.  As he ran by the pile of loot, he knelt just long enough to scoop it up.

He threw himself at the door.  The scurrying abomination sounded like it was right behind him.  Come on, come on, come on, he thought.  He twisted the knob hard and the mechanism engaged and withdrew the pin.  He pulled on the door and stumbled as his feet tried to carry him out just as the door was swinging open.  The abomination let out a shriek like a wailing child, and he slammed the door shut.  It hit the hard enough that he felt the impact’s vibration under his hand, and the muffled sound of its pain made him smile.

He spit the last of the blood from his mouth (his adrenaline high had put him in such a daze that he wasn’t sure whether or not the blood was his own or that demonic doll’s), and hurried into the truck.  He knew it would be unlocked because they never locked the truck on runs.  That way, they could be in and out quickly, and if things went south, it would make escape that much easier, not having to think about unlocking the door if the sirens were approaching.

Twicks just couldn’t remember if they usually left the keys in the ignition, since Bruce always drove, except the time he made Twicks do it because they had gotten into a fight over Bruce’s monopoly on driving privileges.  That night they had almost gone to jail, not because they were caught in the act of theft, but because Twicks had run a stop sign and they had a pipe under the seat; had the policeman asked them to get out of the car, they would have had to choose between saying they had stolen the vehicle and saying they didn’t know it was there and being charged with felony drug charges.

The gods of junkie luck had smiled upon him.  The keys were in the ignition.  He cranked them forward, and the truck rumbled loudly.  He set the jewelry box in the passenger seat, put the seat belt around it, and sped off.  He drove for several miles, barely breathing, just trying to put as many miles as he could between him and that hellish house.

When he finally allowed himself to breath freely, he thought, I can’t believe that thing took Bruce out before I could.  It made him feel guilty that his friend had died shortly after he had plotted his death.  He tried to tell himself that he shouldn’t feel bad, because he hadn’t wanted him to die so savagely.  If it was up to him, Bruce’s death would have been quick and merciful.  He probably would have told him he had something planned out in the woods, maybe checking a meth-head commune, and when Bruce wasn’t paying attention, he’d pull the trigger and blow his brains out through his eyes.

Twicks looked down at the gas gauge and noticed it was almost empty.  He saw a gas station up ahead with only one little, gas-sipping sissy car filling up.  It would be out of there any moment.  He pulled into the gas station and waited for the sissy car to leave, pretending to fiddle with the radio.  He took a credit card out of the glove box (Bruce said he had snagged it from a wallet he found earlier), and put it in the machine, hoping that it wouldn’t prompt him to put in any personal information to use the pump.  It didn’t.

As he waited for the tank to fill up, he thought, Why am I letting this get to me?  Junkies die all the time from overdoses.  Hell, we’re lucky that we haven’t been shot by some gun-toter during a break-in.

He looked up at the meter and laughed.  It was at forty dollars and climbing.  Judging by the size of the truck, it was going to be a lot higher.  I feel bad for the chumps Bruce ripped off.

He sighed and continued his previous thought:  The cycle we got caught up in is a death sentence any way.  Maybe it makes us animals, too, so I shouldn’t feel so bad that he’s gone…especially since I was gonna help him with that.  It’s just…how the cycle ends.

The pump stopped at thirty gallons, and a cost of more than a hundred dollars.  He got back in the truck and drove off to stop at the budget apartment he had shared with Bruce to wash the blood off and change his clothes before looking for a pawn shop that was open at all hours of the day.  As he drove off, he wondered, When will it be my turn to exit this cycle?