10,
1,
3,
11,
8,
25,
4,
5.
Numbers. The numerical value of my name, to be exact. Jack Hyde. Numbers had become my escape. No, that's not right, they had become more of a barrier, really. They offered protection, they never changed, they never turned their back on you, and they would never try to kill you. But they mostly gave protection. They kept sleep away.
Sleep had become a different kind of evil these days. Nightmares. Isn't that how all those cheap movies begin, nightmares? I never had any monsters, or "falling down a big hole" kinda dreams, always something more sinister.
Penance, takes me back to those days when I went to church, an old dogma about self-inflicted sorrow to pay for past sins. I just called it sleep. Sleep was the bane of my existence. For with sleep came the nightmares, nightmares of what I have done.
There was an out, there's always an out. SPANK, a designer drug made for the rich brats in Shoreside. It began as a safer alternative to Ecstasy, oops. SPANK had it's own little closet of demons, in the form of mind shattering after-effects. Proof lay drooling in the gutters of Portland, where the Staunten and Shoreside cops dropped off junkies. SPANK was a dirty, dirty thing, with documented links to about every known mental disorder… and a few unknown ones too.
It was my forbidden fruit, always on my shoulder, urging me to take one. SPANK let me sleep, nightmare free, but then again, nightmares are the lesser of two evils…
I hadn't slept for three days now. It's funny, after 72 hours of sleep- deprivation, a person is legally insane. That was old news.
Three, what a terrible number, three suns and three moons. When moon #3 finally arose, I was forced to pay. They say that when a person doesn't sleep for days on end, his tolerance for deprivation goes up. Lucky bastard. Three was one of the few constants in my life. Two nights of fighting sleep, counting, thinking, singing for god's sake! Only to lose on the third night. I couldn't escape it. It had begun.
I was in the same bed, the same shoddy apartment. Above an old ceiling fan spun. The fan was a metronome, scratching a loose screw on every rotation. It was amazing how an old fan could be so precise. It spun perfectly, flying weightlessly through the atmosphere of my humble home, the tattered brown cloth wrapped around the blades fluttering against the air. But then the screw came. In one moment, the blade's perfect flight was ruined, the screw cutting into the blade, slowly ripping it apart. I knew one day the blade would fly off its anchor, sending it spinning into oblivion.
But that day wasn't today. Tonight actually. Things were entirely different back then, but so much the same. Sleep was still the problem, it was the chalice full of warm relief always out of reach. Every night I sat in my hovel, praying to a God I never visited, for morpheus' brew. It never came. Maybe that was for the better. The night had quickly become a dangerous place for people like me. One would think that the night would be the safest place for a thug like me. One would be wrong.
Things were getting messy lately, some masked vigilante was seeing to that. He was tearing into the city's underbelly like it was today's catch. He was ruthless, a machine of blind justice. He walked in, took care of business, walked out. Never said a word. Even worse, he was good. After two months, no one had touched him. No bullet had pierced his flesh, no explosion had stunned him. Not even the cops, fat with mob money and dripping corruption, could track him down.
I felt personally afraid though, more than just some regular thug striding down the street. All the victims, I mean all of them, had been at least acquaintances of mine. Most were just crooks I'd met during "business," most of them.
Tony Caprini was shot and killed a week ago. Tony and I came up together. We were the Trenton Boys. Two young guys that saw GoodFellas, and had a dream. A dream of being wiseguys, a dream of not having to work every day of our lives only to be lower class nobodies. We started a gang, real small time stuff. Jacking cars, a little prostitution, a little extortion, nothing big. Until one day. We were tipped off that there was an armored car from out of town coming in. The thing was full of hot stuff, I'm talking military grade weapons. We knew that no other gang had the slightest inkling about it, so we hit it. Tony and I did it personally. We both took a bullet in the right shoulder to do it. Those scars became our bond. After that, we were big time. Tony sold the weapons to the Leon family and he was as good as made. I didn't have the brains like Tony, he was the frontman, I was the muscle. I let him handle business. He took care of me, got me jobs, made sure no one messed with me. Life was good.
But he's dead. I still don't understand how it happened, Tony lived in a fortress. His pad in Shoreside where he died was tailor–made to prevent assassinations. His front door rivaled most bank vaults. Just to get past the gate required a security code. It didn't add up. The police report said that the door was unlocked. Tony let him in. Why would Tony let that bastard in?
That was a moot point now, Tony was dead, he'd been so for a week. I even remember the night, my insomnia was acting up like it never had before. That brings me to the real problem.
Three months ago, I found a good sleeping pill. When the local pharmacy can't prescribe anything good, turn to your friendly SPANK dealer. Actually it happened on accident.
I tried SPANK way before then. It was strange, I never felt any craze in my mind, never got the twitch like everyone else. While most people were bouncing off the walls, I was cooled out, relaxing. I never really got hooked either. It was fun, kinda, but not so much that I couldn't stop.
But then three months ago, I couldn't sleep. It was three in the morning, and again, the sandman was a no show. I rolled over and was greeted by an uncomfortable pang in my right side. I had a left over hit of SPANK in my pocket from a trip I was on a few weeks ago. I popped it. Sleep came. Problem solved.
That's what I thought. The next day I woke up, tired and sore. But I sure as hell felt better than when I stay up all night watching reruns of MASH. That's how my addiction really started. Not because my body wanted SPANK, because my body demanded sleep.
That's how I got started. Since I've been able to recount the whole story, something must be wrong. I took a hit an hour ago. I've never had to wait this long before. I'm out. Damn. Hmmm, maybe Kim could get me some.
Kim was kinda my girl. When I say kinda I mean, we go out and all, but she's also a whore, so really she's everyone's girl. That didn't matter. She does show honest affection towards me. The fact that her sister was one of Staunten's biggest SPANK dealers only sweetened the deal.
Lets see, it's one o clock, Kim's with clients now. Hmmm…. Her sister Lee is at the Kenji Casino right about now, I could hit her up for some.
Kenji was a rough guy. He was a Yakuza boss and let everyone know it. His little body seemed too sizes too small for all his anger. That bastard would cut off peoples hands, or worse, if they didn't do the job. He was all about honor, and if you dishonored him, you might all well get on the train to marble city.
Off to Kenji's it is then. I would have to be careful about how I talked to Lee. She deals her wares without Kenji's approval, using the casino job as a front. She worked the cash booth, lacing SPANK into certain bills. When a customer wanted SPANK, they would give her their chips in a special way, three reds; one at a time, three whites; one at a time, and three blues; one at a time. So far the system was sound, she wasn't dead after all.
When I pulled up to the casino, things seemed wrong. Like there were too many cars parked up the street. All were nondescript, in a sharp contrast the red and white flares of the Yakuza stingers that populated the casino parking lot. The air was too still, I wanted to get the stuff, and get the hell out of there.
1,
3,
11,
8,
25,
4,
5.
Numbers. The numerical value of my name, to be exact. Jack Hyde. Numbers had become my escape. No, that's not right, they had become more of a barrier, really. They offered protection, they never changed, they never turned their back on you, and they would never try to kill you. But they mostly gave protection. They kept sleep away.
Sleep had become a different kind of evil these days. Nightmares. Isn't that how all those cheap movies begin, nightmares? I never had any monsters, or "falling down a big hole" kinda dreams, always something more sinister.
Penance, takes me back to those days when I went to church, an old dogma about self-inflicted sorrow to pay for past sins. I just called it sleep. Sleep was the bane of my existence. For with sleep came the nightmares, nightmares of what I have done.
There was an out, there's always an out. SPANK, a designer drug made for the rich brats in Shoreside. It began as a safer alternative to Ecstasy, oops. SPANK had it's own little closet of demons, in the form of mind shattering after-effects. Proof lay drooling in the gutters of Portland, where the Staunten and Shoreside cops dropped off junkies. SPANK was a dirty, dirty thing, with documented links to about every known mental disorder… and a few unknown ones too.
It was my forbidden fruit, always on my shoulder, urging me to take one. SPANK let me sleep, nightmare free, but then again, nightmares are the lesser of two evils…
I hadn't slept for three days now. It's funny, after 72 hours of sleep- deprivation, a person is legally insane. That was old news.
Three, what a terrible number, three suns and three moons. When moon #3 finally arose, I was forced to pay. They say that when a person doesn't sleep for days on end, his tolerance for deprivation goes up. Lucky bastard. Three was one of the few constants in my life. Two nights of fighting sleep, counting, thinking, singing for god's sake! Only to lose on the third night. I couldn't escape it. It had begun.
I was in the same bed, the same shoddy apartment. Above an old ceiling fan spun. The fan was a metronome, scratching a loose screw on every rotation. It was amazing how an old fan could be so precise. It spun perfectly, flying weightlessly through the atmosphere of my humble home, the tattered brown cloth wrapped around the blades fluttering against the air. But then the screw came. In one moment, the blade's perfect flight was ruined, the screw cutting into the blade, slowly ripping it apart. I knew one day the blade would fly off its anchor, sending it spinning into oblivion.
But that day wasn't today. Tonight actually. Things were entirely different back then, but so much the same. Sleep was still the problem, it was the chalice full of warm relief always out of reach. Every night I sat in my hovel, praying to a God I never visited, for morpheus' brew. It never came. Maybe that was for the better. The night had quickly become a dangerous place for people like me. One would think that the night would be the safest place for a thug like me. One would be wrong.
Things were getting messy lately, some masked vigilante was seeing to that. He was tearing into the city's underbelly like it was today's catch. He was ruthless, a machine of blind justice. He walked in, took care of business, walked out. Never said a word. Even worse, he was good. After two months, no one had touched him. No bullet had pierced his flesh, no explosion had stunned him. Not even the cops, fat with mob money and dripping corruption, could track him down.
I felt personally afraid though, more than just some regular thug striding down the street. All the victims, I mean all of them, had been at least acquaintances of mine. Most were just crooks I'd met during "business," most of them.
Tony Caprini was shot and killed a week ago. Tony and I came up together. We were the Trenton Boys. Two young guys that saw GoodFellas, and had a dream. A dream of being wiseguys, a dream of not having to work every day of our lives only to be lower class nobodies. We started a gang, real small time stuff. Jacking cars, a little prostitution, a little extortion, nothing big. Until one day. We were tipped off that there was an armored car from out of town coming in. The thing was full of hot stuff, I'm talking military grade weapons. We knew that no other gang had the slightest inkling about it, so we hit it. Tony and I did it personally. We both took a bullet in the right shoulder to do it. Those scars became our bond. After that, we were big time. Tony sold the weapons to the Leon family and he was as good as made. I didn't have the brains like Tony, he was the frontman, I was the muscle. I let him handle business. He took care of me, got me jobs, made sure no one messed with me. Life was good.
But he's dead. I still don't understand how it happened, Tony lived in a fortress. His pad in Shoreside where he died was tailor–made to prevent assassinations. His front door rivaled most bank vaults. Just to get past the gate required a security code. It didn't add up. The police report said that the door was unlocked. Tony let him in. Why would Tony let that bastard in?
That was a moot point now, Tony was dead, he'd been so for a week. I even remember the night, my insomnia was acting up like it never had before. That brings me to the real problem.
Three months ago, I found a good sleeping pill. When the local pharmacy can't prescribe anything good, turn to your friendly SPANK dealer. Actually it happened on accident.
I tried SPANK way before then. It was strange, I never felt any craze in my mind, never got the twitch like everyone else. While most people were bouncing off the walls, I was cooled out, relaxing. I never really got hooked either. It was fun, kinda, but not so much that I couldn't stop.
But then three months ago, I couldn't sleep. It was three in the morning, and again, the sandman was a no show. I rolled over and was greeted by an uncomfortable pang in my right side. I had a left over hit of SPANK in my pocket from a trip I was on a few weeks ago. I popped it. Sleep came. Problem solved.
That's what I thought. The next day I woke up, tired and sore. But I sure as hell felt better than when I stay up all night watching reruns of MASH. That's how my addiction really started. Not because my body wanted SPANK, because my body demanded sleep.
That's how I got started. Since I've been able to recount the whole story, something must be wrong. I took a hit an hour ago. I've never had to wait this long before. I'm out. Damn. Hmmm, maybe Kim could get me some.
Kim was kinda my girl. When I say kinda I mean, we go out and all, but she's also a whore, so really she's everyone's girl. That didn't matter. She does show honest affection towards me. The fact that her sister was one of Staunten's biggest SPANK dealers only sweetened the deal.
Lets see, it's one o clock, Kim's with clients now. Hmmm…. Her sister Lee is at the Kenji Casino right about now, I could hit her up for some.
Kenji was a rough guy. He was a Yakuza boss and let everyone know it. His little body seemed too sizes too small for all his anger. That bastard would cut off peoples hands, or worse, if they didn't do the job. He was all about honor, and if you dishonored him, you might all well get on the train to marble city.
Off to Kenji's it is then. I would have to be careful about how I talked to Lee. She deals her wares without Kenji's approval, using the casino job as a front. She worked the cash booth, lacing SPANK into certain bills. When a customer wanted SPANK, they would give her their chips in a special way, three reds; one at a time, three whites; one at a time, and three blues; one at a time. So far the system was sound, she wasn't dead after all.
When I pulled up to the casino, things seemed wrong. Like there were too many cars parked up the street. All were nondescript, in a sharp contrast the red and white flares of the Yakuza stingers that populated the casino parking lot. The air was too still, I wanted to get the stuff, and get the hell out of there.