Fiend by Peter Stenson

but the situation—me saving KK, me proving that my inability to quit smoking shit a year before doesn’t mean I’m useless. The vines on the carpet try to ensnare my feet. Like everything always has—drugs and jobs and friends and family, all holding me back, and I see that now, me running to save the only thing I still care about. I’m Chase Daniels the motherfucking hero, and I’m on the third floor and there’s a group of them trying to break into
my
girl’s place, trying to claim
my
girl as one of their own.
    Pump, shot, pump, shot.
    Typewriter is doing the same. We’re both screaming. I wonder if he’s having the same trip—a two-person shooter arcade game versus the entire world.
    They’re stumbling and I’m yelling, Who’s giggling now?
    I see my first fully exposed ribcage. The boy can’t be but ten. He’s just white ribs and Scooby-Doo underwear and a twitching left foot.
    Typewriter and I stand over four bodies.
    I am Tarzan.
    The door opens before I can knock and there she is, KK, my Jane, KK, the most perfectly imperfect woman I’ve ever seen. She’s standing there with a chopping knife. She’s wearing a white cami, tighter than hell, and her breasts make the smallest of bumps. She runs toward me. Or maybe I run toward her. We’re hugging, crying, telling each other, I’m so glad you’re alive. Her perfume has changed to something murkier but when I press my face to her neck, it’s still KK—her breath, her skin, her sweat, all of it sweetly grounded in an earthy base—and I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy.
    Maybe I’m telling her I love her.
    Maybe I’m kissing her neck.
    KK backs away and points to Jared on the couch. He looks horrible, pale and sick, girl-jean skinny, his black hair shielding half of his face.
    I tell KK we need to go.
    Help me get him to the car, she says.
    Typewriter steps into the apartment. He’s jamming shells into his shotgun. He’s telling me we need to go, he can hear more coming.
    I grab KK’s wrist. I could wrap my fingers around it twice. She must have been shooting shit for a goodly while.
    Now, let’s go.
    Jared.
    We can’t. They’re coming.
    I yell to Typewriter to guard the door.
    KK’s nothing but snot and shaking bangs. I tell her we need to go right fucking now.
    Help me get Jared into—
    He’s turning. He’s done, baby. He’s fucking turning.
    Two more, Typewriter yells.
    Three shots fill the efficiency.
    I yank on KK’s wrist.
    Stop, she yells.
    I stare at KK. Her face is the same as it was when she told me that she was finished, that she couldn’t stand by and watch me kill myself. I’m replaying that morning, even though I don’t want to. KK stood at the end of our couch in nothing but a pair of kitten-print panties and a baby blue tank top. I’d skipped bed that night, told her I couldn’t sleep, and spent the early-dawn hours smoking speed, not even getting high, just right, just adjusted. She told me she couldn’t do it anymore. That she was leaving. Going back to treatment. I laughed. I told her she couldn’t quit. She’d gotten on her knees then and rested her face on the side of our couch cushion, like the simple act of keeping her head upright was too draining. She begged me. She said, Chase, I’m on my fucking knees begging you to come with me, to get clean. We can do this. We have to do this. And I sat there with my stupid stem in my hand and a blister on my lip from the hot glass, a dick rubbed raw, and a life I’d once again suffocated the fuck out of. I sat therestaring at the only person I’d ever really loved, and told her I wouldn’t stop using.
    I know now, standing in her apartment, that it’s the same thing. I either choose the path I always do, the one that leads me to being alone wanting to straight-up kill myself, or the one where I do something for somebody else.
    I go to the couch and drape one of Jared’s lanky arms over my neck. He’s got a sloppy track mark from his greedy haste to