Lethe Bashar’s Novel of Life

 

This was Lethe’s first crack house.  He had never been to a crack house before.  He was still a virgin to the degrading, soulless substratum of crack and its defenders.  It wasn’t the type of place he ever thought he would have the opportunity to know first-hand. 

 

 

The screen door slapped shut on his finger.  “Ouch!”   The made a sound like the crack of a whip, and the barbed wire pierced through his flesh.  As blood trickled down his fingertip, Lethe made a sour, disappointed face, and stuck his finger in his mouth. 

 

Then heard a voice, “Close the door.” 

 

The door was closed. 

 

“The other door.” 

 

He turned around.  The stale stench of narcotics assaulted his nostrils. The fog inside the room was nauseating.

 

There were three torn-up couches staggered against the walls and half a dozen people lying helplessly on the floor.  From a certain angle, it looked like they were kneeling in prayer.  From another angle, the bodies appeared to have endured endless electric shocks, and now their jaws stood open and their eyes stared fixedly into space.  The rest of the people in this room resembled dolls awkwardly propped up against the furniture.  The host of eyes in the main room looked everywhere at once, seeing nothing.  These people were only half-alive, and their looks gave Lethe an eerie, despondent chill up his spine.

 

First of all, who were they?  And, second of all, why did they congregate here to crumble up and die? 

 

Luckily, nobody recognized him.  Meaning, nobody recognized his presence in the room.  They were lifeless and void of human interaction, yet they held the resemblance of life.  He felt as if he had just stepped into Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.  But what sort of exhibit was this?  None of these people were famous.  None of them represented entertainment, sports, or public figures.  Their ashen faces blurred together and their clothing was rancid and smoky.  Despite all the loathing these waxworks evoked, Lethe grew more and more fascinated with them and their peculiar lot.  He once heard the phrase, “The cycle of poverty and addiction is the doom of every generation.”  Perhaps Madame Tussuad could create a room in her museum to represent that . . .

 

Out of nervousness, Lethe lit up a cigarette and one of the bodies on the floor twisted itself up his leg like a grasping, mangled vine.  He gave the open hand a cigarette.  After it got its light, the body melted back into the floor.

 

There were two children also in this room.  The children had more visible life, more restless energy.  Each of them about six years old, they played their video games and cussed each other out.  The mass of addicts swelled in the background but hardly disturbed their game.  Lethe tried to communicate with one of them, but he was far too absorbed in the Killing Fields of some digital warzone.  

 

In the back of the apartment was a kitchenette.  Two bare legs, goose-pimply and raw, hung from the countertop.  A black light emitted a purplish glow on the figures huddled next to the refrigerator.  As they took hits from a pipe, they moved in such perfect syncopation that the ground beneath them also seemed to be moving.  They sank lower and lower into pools of shadows.  Then convulsed coughing tore them apart and large plumes of smoke rose over their heads.

 

 

Lethe studied the crack heads more carefully.  They were in a trance just like the kids playing video games, and the elderly, unemployed lot at the 7/11, playing slots. 

 

In the main room, the wallpaper was peeling.  Through a hole, Lethe could see into a narrow bedroom.  A plastic mattress was pushed to the back.  A pile of broken junk lay scattered, DVDs, electronics, children’s toys.  Amid the heaps of squalor, a sunken face looked back at Lethe.  Lethe moved away from the chink in the wall, startled by the needy eyeball.  She was isolated in the narrow bedroom.  Icy blue rings circled her eyes, and her teeth were yellow.  Lethe couldn’t get the image out of his head.  Was she locked up in there? 

 

But a couple minutes later he realized the door wasn’t locked, and people were going in an out of the ransacked bedroom, people who barely said a word and who looked like zombies.  They also had rings around their eyes. 

 

          The screen door cracked its high, sharp whip, and Lethe jumped from the couch for a second time.  A bumbling clownish thug stumbled in.  He played the House Jester.  Relishing his own jeering, taunting role, the thug danced around in the center of the room, tapping his shoes on the floor, and moving his arms and legs up and down as if controlled by marionette strings.

 

Where Lethe should have appeared humble, he instead put a smirk on his face.  The Jester’s dance provoked him and he had the urge to dance along.  But then the Jester stopped and said:

 

“Give me your money.”

 

“I don’t have any money.  I’m waiting for a friend.”

 

The thug hopped around merrily again, slapping his leg.  “Ain’t no friends in this house.  This is the House of Mammon.  An’ you better have money . . . ”

 

Muffled laughter erupted from the heap of slumped addicts.  The thug continued to jig and taunt.  His immaculately white sneakers produced a scrappy sonata on the plastic tile.  He repeated his threat:

 

“You better have money.”

 

“I told you I’m waiting for a friend.  Sonny told me to wait here—”

 

The thug turned to his semi-conscious audience.  Belts of laughter emitted from the swarm of addicts.

 

          “You friend’s with Sonny?”  The Jester asked, lowering his tone.

 

“Yes, I am,” Lethe said.  “Is that so hard to believe?”

 

“Not so hard as this”.  The Jester whacked Lethe with his cellphone.  The lifeless crowd broke into belly laughter.

   

          Sonny appeared.  He saw what was going on and pulled Lethe out of the hurly-burly.

 

          “He’s with me,” he said.  “He’s with me.  Leave him alone.”