Void

It was half past four in the afternoon when I stirred, peeling myself off a sticky mattress. Major Havoc was still out cold, sprawled across a makeshift bed with the oblivious grace of someone who had welcomed the sunrise with ketamine. My own plans for the morning—or what passed for a morning—were simpler: finish the last cubic centimeter in the syringe waiting on the cluttered nightstand.

In the center of the room stood a tent, pitched like some post-apocalyptic statement piece, complete with half-unzipped sleeping bags spilling out onto the floor. It was absurd, but absurdity had become our default aesthetic. The air was thick with the humid aroma of stale sweat, synthetic chemicals, and faint traces of burnt plastic. A battered stereo on the floor crackled with life, looping Elder Moss—first the jittering, insect-like tones of Fernsong, and then, as the needle punctured my shoulder, the haunting crescendo of Beneath Still Waters. The music seemed to deepen the plunge.

The water in my mind was thick and brackish, like mercury. It swallowed me whole, pulling me downward with a gravity I couldn't resist. My ears popped, and my thoughts unraveled, each one a separate thread in a tangled ball of greasy, dead hair. Then, as if the swamp itself rejected me, I was expelled upward—into space.

The room was silent, save for the pounding of my heart, loud and frantic like an unsteady metronome. Yesterday's speed lingered in my veins, accompanied by a faint, buzzing paranoia that I'd grown to tolerate. My vision cleared gradually, though the edges of reality still trembled. The paper cranes we had painstakingly hung from the ceiling months ago began to stir in an invisible current, breaking free one by one. They fluttered toward the open window, where the late-afternoon sun glared down, unrelenting and judgmental, on our mess.

I lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, letting the sharp burn in my throat pull me back to myself. The walk to the bathroom was like entering a different realm, the cool tiles beneath my bare feet an unwelcome reminder of reality. The ketamine haze offered a brief, refreshing reboot, like restarting a malfunctioning computer. And so, the day began.

This daily ritual—this dance between escape and survival—had lost all novelty long ago. Nothing felt special anymore. The magic, the childhood thrill of discovery—it was gone, hollowed out by time and repetition.

"Tri-Fed is a treasure," Major Havoc declared later, his voice carrying through the room. He was holding court with his usual sidekick, Spike, a wiry, restless guy who was all sharp edges and poorly-hidden ambition. "You can't get pseudoephedrine like this in Russia anymore. I'm blessed to live in Ukraine."

To them, they weren't junkies; they were superheroes, rebels fighting their greatest nemesis: boredom. Their self-styled "headquarters" was nothing more than this crumbling apartment, its peeling wallpaper and stained carpets bearing witness to countless nights of experiments, schemes, and disasters.