Earth. Vancouver (Previously of the fallen Nation of Canada).

Isi couldn’t recall if this was a protest or a party.

The hotel suit was wall to wall bodies. The smell of cheap wine and the peppery aroma of Source filled the space. Blue clouds of the drug wafted over head, stuck against the ceiling and clogging the room with an azure haze. The young man to Isi’s left, dressed in a green suit, bowtie loose around his neck, brought the metal cylinder he held between his finger to his chapped lips and blew the smoke out his flaring nostrils.

“Hey, I liked the robot, would you go get the robot?” he asked, eyes glazed, words slurred.

Isi shook her head. “Sorry bud, show’s over. Ended about three hours ago.”

“Shame.” He took another puff, this time holding it in his mouth until he coughed and it came spiraling out.

Music blared from the speakers on the far wall. A strobe light turned the crowd into glitchy silhouettes as they danced, spasmodic bodies grinding against walls, flesh, and air indiscriminately.

She’d already gotten two noise complaints, but the hotel wouldn’t kick her out. She made them too much money. Isi had performed her ventriloquist show in their bougie bar for three straight weeks and she still drew a crowd. The booze was overpriced, and the food was sub-par, but people came nonetheless to watch her make a puppets' lips move as she contorted her voice and cracked jokes, often at the expense of her audience.

A young blonde staggered up to her on too tall pink pumps and shook her hand, told her she’d done a great show, asked if her black braids were extensions. They weren’t. The woman moved on.

More people came, shook hands, offered varying levels of coherent congrats. She didn’t know their names, some faces were vaguely familiar, people who’d seen her show more than once, but their names never stuck.

After the tenth fan Isi forgot how to smile.

She stood, excused herself, and pushed through the crowd toward the balcony. Her bracelets jingled, and her long beaded earrings bounced against her collar bone uncomfortably. All her clothes were an act, a uniform for the stage. The more Native she looked the more bars would pay to put her on the stage.

It had bothered her at first. It was like they used her culture for profit. But didn’t she? She’d never seen a reserve, never spoken a word of Mi’kmaq. The tattoo of the National Mi’kmaq flag on her wrist that she’d had to Google search for the artist still itched. She knew nothing about her “culture”. All she knew was that she had dark skin, narrow eyes, black hair she’d kept shoulder length until last year, and that any club in Vancouver would pay her a small fortune to put feathers in her hair and make her puppets smoke the bong she’d had made to look like a totem pole.

The balcony door stood open. She kicked off her brown moccasins and stepped out onto the square of concrete that was shockingly cold against the bare soles of her feet. It was empty so she closed the glass doors behind her, cutting out some of the noise of the mob inside. As she put her back to the glass she realized she was gasping for breath—another panic attack.

She shut her eyes and pushed the nausea down. It felt like an elephant sat on her chest. Her hands shook and her lungs screamed for relief.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The night air was humid and the sky starless. Isi grabbed the tinted red-glass barrier of the balcony and looked down. Thirty stories up. Thick smog filled the streets, making seeing the bottom impossible. Not for the first time, she considered jumping. This thought, more than anything, calmed her. No more panic attacks. No more lies. No more being blinded by stage lights, looking out and wondering if the audience was still there. Her only fear, and the thing that stopped her every time, was the possibility, no matter how small, that she might land on someone and take them with her.

Isi squatted, her feet pressed to the balcony and her forehead flat against the red glass. She grasped the cord and bead choker at her throat and pulled. It snapped, beads bouncing off glass and concrete before rolling through the gap beneath the barrier and plunging to the ground. She coughed, then closed her eyes and tried to take deep, deliberate breaths.

She’d been to several shrinks already, but they’d all told her the same thing: Source. The miracle drug—the miracle drug you couldn’t kick.

Not just recreational! Source is medicinal, chemical, and spiritual! The slogan was painted on buses next to a photo of a slutty nurse, slutty chemist, or slutty nun; they took turns riding the main routes through the downtown core.

Isi had watched her mother waste away. Shooting up Source night after night, blue liquid in clear syringes. They’d held a kind of magic to Isi as a child. The magic potion that made Mommy dizzy. She’d thought her mother had needed it to live. Maybe she had.

Isa still remembered the cold December night when she’d sent her out to pillage dumpsters for used needles. While digging through a bin outside a sports bar where they’d ring a siren every time someone scored, Isi found a beaten old toy robot. It was blue, gold paint added to look like it had buttons and gears. It had big eyes and a single antenna on its head, the other broken off, leaving a jagged piece of plastic she’d cut her arm on. She still had the thin, barely visible scar that snaked down her forearm.

The toy was well dented from being repeatedly dropped. Isi turned it over to examine the back and found a piece of plastic similar in shape to the tab of a beer can attached to a cord. When pulled a mechanical voice, just like the ones in drive throughs, would say: “Hell-o, my name is Auto.”

She’d taken the toy home but quickly killed the batteries. She never asked her mother for more. She never asked her mother for anything. The thought had never entered her young mind that her mother was someone to ask things of. Instead, she’d begun imitating the choppy voice herself, making it say other things too, phrases she’d heard on late night television or from Source ads. People liked it, thought she was funny or endearing and she began doing it on street corners and earning a decent pile of change. She sought out other dolls with more malleable limbs and expressive faces and over the years made a good living from her ventriloquism, a word she hadn’t learned until she was a teenager. She liked to make people smile and laugh and clap. At the beginning she hadn’t been very funny, but they’d laughed anyway, because they’d needed to.

The Mega-Corps had begun paying wages in Source. Money was worthless. A lot of people would work for the drug. If they didn’t shoot it, they could always sell it. In a matter of years, the Corps had turned half the world into junkies and the other half into dealers. And the worst of it was Source wouldn’t kill you. No matter how much you ate, smoked, or shot directly into your bloodstream you wouldn’t OD. On Source you were more likely to starve or walk out in front of a bus. Perpetual zombies who’s addiction had no form of mercy, no end—not even if you wanted one.

I need to get out of here, Isi thought. Out of this hotel, out of this city, out of this skin.

She looked up through the red glass. The city was never dark. Neon lights glowed over every door, on every rooftop, advertising a smorgasbord of cheap entertainment and subpar pleasures. Yet one sign managed to stand out amidst the light show. Isi had noticed it before but it didn’t normally flash. The blue fluorescent bulbs must have been dying, making the image blink erratically. It was a crucifix. A big blue crucifix on the eve of a tall stone church.

Isi looked at the gaunt figure of Jesus on the cross and couldn’t help thinking how much he resembled a junkie. But unlike most junkies, she thought he looked sad, like maybe he wanted to jump too.

She wondered if at this ungodly hour of the morning, she might find a priest awake.