Cannabis --1968
A/N: Hello all! I'm writing this on a whim, so forgive me if it sucks.
I don't own Death Note, only the plot and the computer I type this on.
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1968, a time when the drug culture was at its peek, and riots foretold of the chaos that was to come the rest of the following century and those after it.
My hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of an old, beaten up smokers jacket as I stepped off of the large Grey-Hound bus. A sigh escaped me as my legs started to move on their own. People moved around me, every person of different shades of coffee: from the darkest chocolate to the palest cream. San Francisco in all its glory.
My pack of things rested heavily on my back: a grey-black typewriter, a month's worth of clothing, and money would be all I needed. San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district was my destination; my boss' words still ringing in my head.
"Yagami," Charles Madison, a forty something with a drinking problem yelled from his office doorway, pronouncing my last name incorrectly. I looked up from my typewriter before shuffling to his smoky office. I coughed once.
"Yes sir?" I asked, standing with my hands neatly folded in front of me. Charles threw me a bus pass. My hands fiddled with the small slip of paper before I looked up at my boss whom was busy lighting a cigarette.
He glanced over at me, and then sighed, smoke tumbling out of his mouth. "I want you to go to San Francisco and research on those…people…who live there." Obviously, Charles wasn't happy with the way the counterculture had been taken on as 'normal' with the American populace.
I looked down at the red and white bus pass that lay in my palm. Mentally sighing, I stood and walked out of the office.
I stopped suddenly, standing in front of a street sign that read 'Haight-Ashbury'. A large grin overtook my face as my hand tightened around the straps of my bag.
"There's a bathroom downstairs if you need to use it." I walked behind a stocky, and hairy man, my eyes taking mental notes of 710 Ashbury. "The guy you're gonna board with is kinda…nuts, but he's a good guy." The man shrugged, as if it were a normal thing for someone to be 'nuts', and lead me up a narrow staircase. Other people hobbled down past us, carrying banjos, a few drums and a steel guitar. I raised an eyebrow.
The man, who's name I later learned was Jerry Garcia lived in the apartment below my shared one. He said that he and his friends had stared something of a band called 'The Grateful Dead'; today, I'm still a fan. "Yeah…the guy says his name is just the letter 'L'; I wouldn't piss him off, just in case." We stopped in front of a large white, Victorian looking door. Jerry sighed and pounded lightly on the wood. We heard a loud thump, then a hastily whispered curse; it sounded almost like someone was wading through large sheets of plastic wrap. I gulped thinking, Oh god…what have I gotten myself into?
The door opened a crack so that only a large black, owlish eye peeked through. It zoomed from Jerry to me, and I could see a black eyebrow raise. Jerry coughed and then smiled brightly at the paranoid freak. "Hey man, this guy…" Jerry raised a bushy eyebrow at me, indicating that he didn't know my name.
"Light." I said, still staring.
"Light. He needs a place to crash, and you're the only one available that I could think of…" The person inside sighed and pulled open the door widely so that we could see inside.
The room was large, and at one time clean. Papers hung from the walls and notes had taken--it seemed--with purple crayon, trailing off the paper and onto the walls. A large crumpled up plastic sheet lay strewn over the green carpeted floor. A small, compact couch was pushed out of the way over by the set of three window seats. There were pieces of half eaten cake on the green upholstery.
Jerry chuckled, his be speckled eyes swiping across the room as mine had. "L…don't you know that this is kinda…dirty?"
The strange slob raised a black eyebrow, as if the question was ridicules. "No." His voice was a low monotone. I took a glance at my new 'roommate'.
I could see that he was skinny, and his back was slightly hunched. Raven coloured hair stood out in all directions on his head; a creamy white face with a delicate nose and pale pink lips. His eyes though were like pits, black and seemingly endless. The strange man wore dark denim jeans, frayed at the heels from constant use, and a stripped black and green sweater with a white button up shirt underneath. I saw that he was bare foot.
Jerry had left us with a mumble of when the rent was due, and left me standing in the hallway, looking like an utter boob. My unfriendly roommate stood in the doorway, staring at me like I had a growth spurt from my forehead.
He turned away, shuffling into the room and began to rummage through one of the endless boxes (as I saw upon further inspection) that lined the opposite wall from the door. "I have to get paper," He muttered to--I thought--to me, pulling on a large wool lumberjack looking hat over his head. "Do not touch anything. Oh…" he turned his endless black eyes onto me. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Welcome to San Francisco, Light."
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Geh! So, tell me what you think. This is my first Death Note fan fiction, so I don't know if I kept them in character! Yeah, they live above Jerry Garcia (how rad would that have been?!) This fic was inspired by Rufus Wainwright's song "Go or Go ahead". It's an amazing song.
Again, tell me what you think ('cause I'm a review whore, okay? --laughs--)