by Stephan Crown-Weber
The traffic far off barely registered. Some people or maybe the entire apartment complex grounds had a bug problem and Misty was wigging out: the July night was all a chrrr-chrrr-chrr of cicadas and crickets as she shouted into her pay-as-you-go phone. Kendra nevertheless seemed to hear Misty’s real voice instead of the voice on the phone as she confirmed her stay one last time. With a metallic squeak, Kendra opened the next door down, as opposed to the one Misty was standing in front of; Misty spun around with surprised fright and and after seeing the smile, she cackled. When Kendra let her roll past with her luggage and had fully closed the bigger interior door, Misty told Kendra all in one breath that she would pick up after herself and Kendra could keep a “full half” of the stuff they were gonna cook together.
They went shopping at Walmart with Misty’s new EBT card. Then hit up a second Wal-Mart a few miles further up the road to double their cough syrup supply. They made little batches of crank in two-liter store brand cola bottles they had picked up after they chugged some of the coke and emptied it into pitchers in the fridge. The foolproof way to cook meth that they were double secret about, which Misty would name to somebody she knew as the quietly smartest girl in chemistry but you just know that they’d be double tricky with the spin of an orb and try to get in on the scheme or act like they were the accusing real one to no one you wanted to deal with whereas they would make her out to be a nobody and not even a hippie who may as well been the star of freedom for all that she’s struggled through with daddy drama and precious memories! Heheh! You know it!
The pair managed to not catch the bathroom on fire or get any burns on their bodies and a hit had them up in the living room until four in the morning dancing to Hot 102.5 turned down low so the neighbors couldn’t hear them through the walls of the duplex. Toward the end of the night they were just rocking back and forth on the couch next to two bean bag chairs that they agreed were pretty uncomfortable. But Kendra wouldn’t get rid of them because her boyfriend was supposed to come pick up his stuff any day now—all the while insinuating that he felt bad for little ladies who took up all this space in Section 8.
Misty could hear her own voice heading from scratchy to so hoarse she had to whisper. Like she should have been pop punk in the insane mission to the crazy. Meanwhile they got to talking about what they would do if they won the lottery or won a lawsuit. Heh! Kendra said she would definitely move to Florida. She had heard good things about Pensacola. Fried shrimp. And crazy good airbrushed t-shirts with a cartoon of your face on them that the artist would draw right next to the ocean, the oversized head jittering like a galloping Jimmy-like go-kart the destroyer. Real Mexican cuisine too. And the blue Gulf against white sand beaches like mouth wash. Plus you could get weed with a doctor’s note down there and if you knew the right doctor…heh.
Misty just shook her head and managed to get out the line: “Ain’t gonna happen. I’m sorry ta say. That’s just the way it is. You’re trapped up here for the cold winter from hell. I bet you ain’t left this town or Lexington in years.”
“I’ve been to Cincinnati and Louisville quite recently. Fuck you telling me it ain’t gonna happen. I’ve got a lot of good luck stored up helpin’ folks. I’m givin’ you a place to stay is what I’m talkin’ about. And if you won the lottery you’d fer sure help yer friend.”
“Shit. You tellin’ me off and now you’re all about how you want my help.” The last word came out with a croak and Misty laughed at herself for being a real scratchy soul speaker of the living bell.
“Excuse me. This is a drama-free household. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
“Oh, I can bring the drama if I want. But I ain’t gonna.”
“Then don’t bring the drama.”
“I won’t.”
“I hate drama.”
“You love drama.”
“You can leave.”
Misty finally shut up. No way was she going outside even if the night was warm enough. Would’ve gone deaf from the summer bugs not to mention they’d crawl all over you for the Halloween nightmare film of it to establish that you were hexed or anything but—heheh.
After a few hours of keeping her eyes mostly closed, she was still in Kendra’s house and the TV was playing Doctor Oz—like it had come on on a timer. She was under a Pooh Bear fleece throw and a mamaw-style afghan that looked like it had resale value. The AC was cranked up so high—heheh. The blinds were drawn and she hadn’t seen anybody looking in the windows even though the neighbors had been shouting first thing about somebody being a loser and someone else being a slut. Kendra’s cat was needling her leg with her claws. Good cat. Kind of reminded her a little of cutting her wrists. She felt so down after her high yet so fluttery that she just wondered.
Doctor Oz was talking about a diet miracle. A lot of people were on the keto diet and getting impressive results. They were losing their bellies and butts like that. They could eat bacon. Big, juicy steaks. Butter. They just had to cut out the pasta and potatoes. Not fruits and vegetables. A woman strutted on the stage and said her body was now a “fat-burning engine.” Because the diet turned on a secret part of the body.
Kendra came into the room from her bedroom. She looked fried like she should have showered and gotten her mousy brown hair done but hadn’t. “What’s your plan for today?”
“I ain’t got any plans. Junior gave me my mail, and I got a new EBT card yesterday.”
“This really ain’t the place for you to eat it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m guessing you’ll be moving on.”
“I don’t need to,” Misty said. “I’m all set. I’ve got my mind focused on the keto diet. Doctor Oz is saying it’s a winner. I guess I could buy some fatty stuff and cut out the chips.”
“But you won’t be doing that here, right?”
“I’m hopin’ I can.”
“Well, you’re not gonna. You understand. I’ve got company coming,” Kendra shouted.
“Like hell you’ve got company comin’. This ain’t a place to entertain guests.”
“You’ve been staying here on the regular. You’re company. But not tonight.”
“Who’s your guest, hostess with the mostess? Heheh.”
“I ain’t sayin’. All I’m gonna say is I need you to clear out.”
“Sounds like you’re lyin’ and bringin’ the drama.”
“I ain’t bringin’ the drama. You’re bringin’ the drama ‘cause you don’t wanna leave.”
“I’m perfectly fine with clearin’ out. I just hate liars. I can’t stand it when people don’t tell the honest to God truth. And I can feel the lies comin’ off of you like a stink.”
“You’re the one who stinks.”
“Now you’re bringin’ the drama.”
“I ain’t bringin’ the drama. I’m just tellin’ the truth.”
“Like hell you are.”
“You said you can’t stand liars and I’m telling you you stink.”
“I smell perfectly fine.”
“All that smokin’ of yers screwed with your sense of smell. I’m here to tell you you don’t smell good.”
“Well can I at least take a shower and change my clothes here?”
“I guess,” Kendra said. “But you need to clear outta here.”
“Oh, I’m gonna. I hate drama.”
“Maybe you don’t read enough. You need to get out of here. Why don’t you take yourself up to the libary?”
“Maybe I will.”
“Well, where else you gonna go?”
“That’s none ya business.”
Misty took an angry shower and made sure to use a lot of soap and shampoo just to get back at Kendra. She thought in the jittering freeway of dizzy-go-silly about how one night each of them had promised to destroy the other if they ever snitched. Kendra was too tricky.
She checked out her tattoos in the refogging mirror after she had swiped at the fog with a cleanish towel. She had a cat with a crown on it and the name of her dead daughter, “Sierra,” over the picture of an angel. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Goddamn it. She could use another tattoo for the stillbirth she had. Kody. She would get a huge angel with the name Kody on his back, maybe on a motorcycle cause she knew for sure he would have liked bikes. She had had a plan back then to straighten out her life and get more situated both times with child support and selling speed on the side. God wanted her to be free. That’s why the world is tricky. They don’t want you to know about being happy when they know they can take you down all the way in the game for full control.
Misty put on some of her backup clothes, a black dress that she kept in one of her bags in case of a funeral or what have you and cleared out of there with all of her suitcases after petting the cat and figuring out that Kendra wasn’t going to come out of her bedroom to talk to her. She looked at the meth and figured she had already packed enough. Misty went wheeling west until she hit Main Street, then rolled south wishing it wasn’t so hot. She didn’t have a watch and her phone didn’t charge right last night at Kendra’s but she was pretty sure it was only around noon with the sun being overhead and all. She wheeled all her stuff into Kroger and used her EBT card to buy a tall bottle of peanuts in addition to a can of iced tea to trick them into thinking she was caffeinated. She had to explain how she was paying to the checkout clerk and she could just feel the woman behind her wanting to scoff and say “I can’t believe people.”
She looked back at the lady.
“Can I help you?” the lady asked.
“No, you can’t.”
"OK,” the woman said with her voice rising and falling and rising like she honest to God looked down on her. She looked about fifty and kind of rich with capri pants and a silk shirt with flowers on it. Like she really thought she was great. She pursed her lips like she was stopping herself from saying more than that.
“You have something to say?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Misty cleared out of there and ate straight out of the glass jar in the parking lot. It felt so good to eat just a little and know she had limits.
She rolled up the hill past the Hardee’s, the Arby’s, the CBD place, the Five Star gas station. She could feel herself sweating and wished she had deodorant. But a little sunburn would be alright.
There was Mark in the computer lab of the library, a few tables down from some arguing kids. He had the outline of a lightning bolt tattooed from his right cheek up to the right side of his forehead. She had smoked a little speed with him a couple times. Somehow he had been on the line until very recently at a place that made conveyor belts. But they finally tested his pee and he didn’t see it coming and didn’t have fake pee lined up and he had prayed and prayed, maybe to Satan and the God above himself at the same time for all the good it did in this world of evil and maybe she had laughed inside when he told her they had let him go. He had said he would sue them and she had just laughed in his face when he announced his plans. You know it!
She collapsed in a seat next to him. She could feel herself looking ugly under the big dirty fluorescent lights high above in the ceiling. At least she was supposed to when he told her she looked awful. “I’m runnin’ on very little sleep,” she mumbled in a way that still activated a rasp. “Just leave me alone.”
“Awww, sweety. You ain’t doin’ so hot.”
“I’m doin’ just fine. Thank you very much.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, you want some?”
“Want some what?”
“I got stuff if you know what I mean.”
“I ain’t lookin’. You need to reconsider the path you’re on.”
“Like shit I do. We’re together in this,” she shouted. “You’re still doin’ it.”
There was no way he could have quit. You could just tell the way he threw his eyes around the room with that lean self of his. He would have been a monster without meth and smack.
“Excuse me,” someone said.
She looked up and he looked up with a double jolt. A man with a clipboard and a nametag was standing over them. He was plump in the face. Ha. “We’ve received some complaints about the noise and would appreciate it if you turned down your volume.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t shouting.”
The librarian narrowed his eyes. “Thank you for understanding.”
“I wasn’t shoutin’,” Misty muttered.
“OK,” the librarian said and walked away.
She felt like saying something smart about it being a free country and all but she had seen the librarians give people trouble before. She got out her library card and logged in to the computer. She clicked through the session approval screens and opened Internet Explorer as soon as Windows came on. What was her Facebook password?
“What do you think my Facebook password is?” she asked Mark.
“No fuckin’ clue. Your favorite color?”
“No, that ain’t it,” she said. “It’s somethin’ else.”
“Maybe it’s the word ‘password.’”
“I have no idea,” she said. She typed in the word “password” next to the email address that she no longer had access to. Hackers had messed with it, she suspected. Her gmail account had kept telling her it would send a code to a phone she no longer had access to. The tricky thing was that if she tried to replace the phone, they would probably do something about the phone bill she hadn’t paid. Big old swoop of the greedy against little old Misty.
Misty celebrated with her arms when “password” turned out to be the right password. She had six new notifications. Two new friend requests. And twenty new messages.
One of the friend requests was from a man named “Trace Lowell.” She had never heard of him. He was tired with white hair. Pink skin with liver spots. But maybe he wanted to buy. She looked him up and sure enough he lived in Nicholasville. She accepted his request and sent him a message immediately. “What do you want?” She turned to Mark and rasped: “You ever heard of a Trace Lowell? Seems like a secret signal. Heheh.”
“Nuh-uh. Could be trouble,” he said, as though managing her as his number-one problem.
“How do you know he could be trouble? You been lookin’ at my Facebook?”
“It’s always trouble when it comes to you and people,” Mark chuckled.
“I’m sorry. I am sayin’ no to the drama.”
“Excuse me. I am going to have to give you more encouragement to quiet down,” the librarian whispered. He was standing over them.
“I’m sorry,” Misty whispered.
Next up were her messages. She had gotten one from her niece LaTonya. LaTonya just wanted to know whether she was doing all right.
LaTonya was a loser. She was going on all the time about how she was gonna start at BCTC in the fall. Misty remembered when they called it Lexington Community College or LCC. Last Chance College. Always the bad kids. The dummies. It was some kind of scam. She was working all the time at Burger King making practically nothing, thinking she was so great. She would get her nails done professionally. And she was all over Facebook eating at Cattleman’s Roadhouse with her best friend. Baked potatoes and big old burgers. Almost a very keto diet, she wanted to say, but she went for the bun and lived with the consequences. So she opened up her Facebook profile and scrolled down to the last picture LaTonya had taken at Cattleman’s.
Misty elbowed Mark. “You can see her smilin’ in the pictures with her fat rolls and her chubby face. And she’s taken out loans for school. And she’s payin’ rent. I know she’s got credit cards and they’re goin’ up, all the charges.”
“She’s got credit,” Mark said. “Impressive.”
“I hate you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You’re crazy,” Misty said. “That girl is on a bad path.”
“You are actin’ kind of crazy,” Mark said. “Why would you be so upset about looking like your niece.”
“Shut up. I hate you,” Misty said. She could feel the evil rising off of him. He was probably thinking the worst things about her. “Do I have a place to stay?”
“I’m going to have to ask both of you to leave,” the librarian said.
Misty stood up. “For what? For talkin’? Everybody’s talkin’ in this damn library. It’s a free country.”
“I’ll find someone else to talk to you about leaving if you don’t want to hear it from me.”
“Oh no. I’m fine with it,” Misty said, feeling the blood rise to her face. “I’m ready to get outta here.”
She looked over at Mark. He rolled his eyes at her. “Do I have a place to stay?” she asked.
“I guess,” he said. “For tonight.”
They got up and left as a tall beefy librarian twice the mass as the first one came up and watched them and said, “Thank you for cooperating.” They were out in the hot parking lot and headed toward Mark’s place.
“Thank you,” Misty said.
“Shut up,” Mark shouted.
They smoked together in his kitchen, which looked spooky on account of there being no pictures of anyone he knew and looked like it was blond wood and rickety straight out of one of those rent-to-own stores. But she wasn’t gonna say anything like that. She felt more and more like she had superpowers and wanted to dance. So she shimmied. Mark looked at her all funny. “What’s your problem?”
“I don’t know what I’m doin’,” she said. “I just feel like dancin’.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m OK with that.”
They turned on the TV. But she couldn’t pay attention. She closed her eyes and imagined she was speeding down the interstate to Florida. Going around a corner. And another corner. And another corner. Mark pulled her in and kissed her.
“No,” she said.
“My house. My rules,” he said.
“I don’t wanna!”
“Fine then,” Mark said. “But you’re not sleeping in my bed.”
They got real quiet and just listened to a soap opera on TV. A girl hated another girl and didn’t want her to come to the party. A man in a tuxedo nodded at her intently and the camera zoomed in on his face. Another girl was bringing the drama and telling her frenemy to stop messing around with her fiancé. She said she needed time to rekindle the romance and it would be a heckuva lot easier if her frenemy got outta the way.
Misty caught about half of this because she was going through her contacts and started sending out messages, got a couple of lols and no thank yous, and started to fret that she was done for.
“You know anybody who wants to buy some stuff from me?” she asked Mark.
“For a smooch and a roll in the sack, I’ll tell you who” he told her.
“I hate you,” she shouted, as she remembered to plug in her phone.
“I hate you more,” Mark said all lovey dovey. He was such a big smoker he’d made his voice all gravelly so he thought he was a big and bad tough guy with the deepest voice when he was one of the worst like a broken evil doll, she thought with a laugh.
When they canoodled, she thought she would cry. And she immediately was like: “Who can I talk to right now who’d really be interested who I don’t already have a number for?”
“Tammy. The twins.”
The twins were a rough bunch. They had mean, sour faces and for some reason had tried to join the military but dropped out of boot camp pretty quick. Both at the same time. You really had to wonder.
“Just letting you know we got in a shipment of the purest stuff,” she texted to one of them when Mark gave her a number.
One of the twins got back to her and asked: “Who dis?”
“Misty.”
“Ur stuff aint worth jack shit.”
Nobody else got back to her and she wondered if her phone was broken or hacked, like maybe people were deleting her messages as they got sent out but it looked like they were still there in the conversation window.
Mark went out to get a sandwich from the gas station. He said he wasn’t feeling like making one. Said he wanted pimento cheese.
Misty wondered if she should kill herself. But wouldn’t she go to hell? There ain’t a Florida in hell. She got angrier and angrier thinking about Mark. About Kendra and the twins and everyone. People were definitely spreading gossip about her. She could totally see them talking trash about her diluting her speed with bad chemicals to make a quick buck when it just wasn’t true. She had learned a lot about making it in the last couple years, unlike some people. Crazy to think there were people who would lie straight up and down about her to start drama. She was sure Mark was gonna be gone for a while, and she smashed her bottle of peanuts on the counter and it hit with a thud and she threw it on the ground and it finally shattered into a few useful pieces and she laughed at herself because she had gotten so worked up she hadn’t removed the peanuts and she stared down at her wrists.
She fully understood a few minutes later how either she was gonna die in a pool of blood or it just served Mark right in the dizzy game of man versus woman and the powerful versus the little and the blessed versus the rest! You know it! She walked around his kitchenette leaking blood everywhere and halfway considered using his full supply of square paper napkins to mop up the blood—maybe to spite him—heheh. She let it drip onto his carpet in his living room and marched into his bathroom and let it pour onto his counter, his sink, his table, his clothes. She felt amazing and dizzy. She lay down in his bathtub and closed her eyes.
The door squeaked open. “What the fuck! Misty! What the fuck!”
Mark stomped around everywhere in the house shouting “Where the fuck are ya?” Finally he pulled the shower curtain open and she looked up at him.
“You suck!” she said.
“You’re in deep shit with me.”
“Like fuck I am. You rapist. It’s whatcha get.”
“I am not a rapist. You wanted to sleep with me, ya hoe.”
“Like fuck you ain’t a rapist. Coercive just like the worst a ‘em.”
“Well, now what are we gonna do?”
“I’m gonna fuckin’ die in yer bathtub, yer majesty king of the cocksuckin’ hoebags who all get tricked by ya.”
“You gotta go to the hospital.”
“Nuh-uh.” Misty held up her bloodied hands in the bathtub and smiled at the thought that her black dress would still be wearable.
“You are one piece of shit. I was gonna help you make some sales.”
“I’m gonna go to be with my kids in heaven.”
“You honestly think yer goin’ to heaven? Yer a creature from a hellscape.”
“God forgives sins. And He knows I been wronged.”
“You are nuts. People who commit suicide go to hell automatically.”
“Whatever. God’s gonna sort it out.”
“All right. I’ve made up my mind. I kinda wanna let you do yer thing but I don’t wanna get mixed up with the popo. I bet you’ve hidden drugs all over this house just to spite me.”
She listened to Mark make the call, gave the address. He just said she had slit her wrists. And he didn’t seem to act like it was funny and that she’d bifurcated from the trick of the joke to the joke of the trick where she was pure and a real hard-life jester.
“Now yer in deep shit.”
“I wouldn’t do you like that,” she said. “But you’d deserve it. It’s whatcha get.”
“What the fuck is yer problem? I give you a place to stay and you go ballistic.”
“I’m done. You’ve spread so many rumors about me there’s no way nobody’s gonna buy my stuff anyway and yer fuckin’ attitude is really somethin’. It’s a wonder I ain’t been banned from the library from the way you acted.”
“The way I acted? Honey, it was all you runnin’ yer mouth.”
“Like fuck it was. Let’s stay focused on the positive. I’m gonna have a gravestone with the word Mommy on it and that’s gonna be that. You won’t bother me ever again.”
“You are crazy. They’re gonna lock you up and pump you full a God knows what.”
“I’m leavin’ this world behind. I can feel the other world comin’ close… Babies, I’m comin’.”
Mark got out of his crouch and looked down at the floor. “You realize how much I’m gonna lose cleanin’ this place up.”
“Puh-lease—ain’t nobody get their deposit back from their landlord.”
“This place looks like a fuckin’ murder scene!”
“Fuck you is all I’m sayin’.”
The ambulance wailed closer, and she felt pretty shitty thinking about what they were gonna do to her. The paramedics knocked on the door and Mark led them in. They sterilized the wounds and wrapped her in gauze and bandages and helped her up. She smiled looking down at the linoleum floor as they walked her out. They were tracking her blood everywhere.
She was in the emergency room north of town for three hours or something. They checked her fluids, put her on an IV. The doctor said she was lucky. He looked so ugly with his bald head and glasses, except he at least looked rich.
Misty needed to die soon. And this wasn’t the place to do it.
“I am one lucky girl,” she said. “I’m feelin’ a lot better.” She laughed at herself and shouted, like she was a super queen putting the stink on every popular word: “You know it! I’m me! I’m free! There ain’t no you to me! Hahahaha! Now y’all just gotta let a girl out so she don’t turn mean! Haha! I’m a good person. It’s all a bunch of tricks. Haha.”
______
Stephan Crown-Weber is a writer and translator based in Central Kentucky. He is at work on a novel of Kentucky-mummy rebirth. Stephan is @crownweber on X and @cornwebrew on Instagram.
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