Dose
By Mia Shade
Summary: With drugs, enough is never enough. With Reid, an overdose is inevitable. Struggling in the dark aftermath of Tobias, JJ and Reid begin to bond, to slowly heal—until the night that his addiction wins in an overdose, and JJ is the one who finds him.
Disclaimer: It's not mine; I'm just borrowing the characters.
Author's Note: I am a massive fan of Chuck Palahniuk's work (he's the fantastic guy who wrote the original Fight Club novel); he has an incredibly distinct style, and this story is an exercise in emulating it. As a result, it is going to be very dark, with run-on sentences galore and repetitions of ideas; it's all purposeful. I'd love it if you told me what you think; I know this prologue is terribly short, but I already have the next few chapters written, so the first should be up in a few days.
"And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had…" – Tears for Fears, "Mad World"
--
Dead Dream Thoughts (Prologue)
1. (Dead or Dreaming?)
When you hear the screams of young girls, the echoes of their last horrifying moments—when those phantom sounds wrap around your heart like vines full of thorns, then put your hand into your messenger bag and touch the coolness of the two little bottles inside.
When the crime scene photos throw you violently into memories that you'd rather forget, clutch the bottles in one hand, discreetly, squeezing them like a pimple, until the glass is slick with the sweat from your palm.
It's a game, see. A choose-your-own adventure with no choice.
When you wake up in bed and have to clamp one hand over your mouth to muffle the yell of terror that is rising in your throat, then go to your kitchen, brew a pot of coffee, and spend the rest of the night in your boxer shorts, strung out on caffeine, staring at the two bottles of milky-clear liquid on your kitchen table. Try not to think.
The following night, repeat.
When your boss has to call your name four times before you're aware of him, find yourself a syringe or two.
When the smell of fish—any fish—sends you to the nearest bathroom with a gripping nauseous fear in your stomach, then sit on the tiled floor and cradle the bottles in your hands and curse the stupidity that made you leave the needles at home.
When that thought scares the hell out of you, play the game some more.
When you forget the sound of your mother's voice, when all you can hear are terrified cries for help from victims you never knew, and when you've gone five nights sleepless and can barely recognize the faces of your friends…
When all of this becomes too much, knot your thinnest tie just above the vein in your elbow, draw a few milligrams of Dilaudid into a syringe, swab your arm and the needle with alcohol, and inject.
When you've pushed the syringe away from you, close your eyes and sleep.
The following night, repeat.
--
2. (Dream or thought?)
At first, she doesn't notice.
She just thinks she can stay up later, wake up earlier, and it's more productive because she doesn't seem to have a problem with getting less sleep. She does twice the paperwork and doesn't bat an eye; she finishes late at night and has time to watch TV.
At first.
Funny how what you don't know really can hurt you.
And then comes the first night, the first long night of total insomnia, and then another and another, nights of her sitting on her couch in a pale silk slip, watching TV so late that it turns into morning before she realizes it. Flipping between the slasher movies and the old black-and-white romances, the horror stories and the love stories; flipping until they merge into one.
A horror story and a love story.
This isn't just about her. It's about him, and her, and the frightening bond that they will share.
It's about being paralyzed by the viscosity of chemicals and the velocity of trauma, and in this suspended motion time slows, runs backward, skips over; it's some twisted reversed thing that is too strange to think about in clear terms, like when you run a song backwards to find the hidden messages among the Psycho string movements and the gnarled, choking voices. Something fundamentally not right, but not quite wrong.
This is about Tobias Henkel, whose love was also horrifying.
When she reflects back on it later, she realizes that that's what her life becomes: a horror story and a love story, an amalgamation of the two genres; a mutant; a midtone, a romantic terrifying scramble for meaning.
The only question that remains in her mind is: is she the love or the horror?
But that isn't how this story begins.