First homework assignment

Our first assignment for my new writing "class" was to write a 2,000-word short story taking part of our life and fictionalizing it. Here's the first draft, so leave some marks about it so I know where to go from there. (Remember, this is a work of fiction.)

The Watcher
By Brian Krans

At first I didn't think all of the blood could have been mine. Then I realized it must have been, I was the only one in the room.

The droplets formed a trail from the closed door to my chair. They crept up from there and followed up my chest as high up as I could see as I looked down with my chin dug into my chest. God knows where the trail began.

You would think I would have noticed how much I had been bleeding. The funny thing is when you're on the tail end of an all-night meth binge, you fail to remember certain things. It's worst when it's a bad batch.

You don't forget where you put your keys, but you forget you have a dog that hasn't been let out since yesterday morning. You have your dealer's number memorized, but you don't remember how to use the phone. You forget the importance of brushing your teeth, showering or even changing your soiled underwear.

You forget that the key to being the first officer on the scene is securing the perimeter and checking for the wounded. You forget what "the fatal funnel" means. You forget that Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are actually fictional characters.

What you don't forget is that the key ingredient to making methamphetamine is common household cold medicines.

Half way through your Police Officer Operations and Procedures final, you remember that you forgot to study. That was the whole reason I cooked up.

Somehow I'd remembered I had to work today.

So here I am, sitting in a chair in front of a sea of TVs inches in front of my face. The cameras are watching the customers. I'm watching the TVs. I'm not really watching the customers. The black casing on each set seems to be expanding and shrinking, in and out, a rhythmic breathing that makes me nauseous.

I couldn't feel my face or the trickling flow of blood from it. I was dumb to how much scratching I'd been doing on the top of my right leg, at the exact point where it met my ass. Now, hours from my last bump, the drug was wearing off and that one spot burned like hell as my jeans heated up between my inflamed skin and the leather chair.

My heartbeat was in my ears.

I should call Tony. He's swing by and drop off a few bumps to get me through the rest of my shift. Just enough. Not too much. It's not like I'm a junkie or anything. But I haven't seen him in months. Still, I remembered his number.

My mind returns to the blood. Maybe it started after I walked passed the registers. Maybe the flow began just as I entered the office. Maybe the little red dots started only where I could see them.

Still, I hadn't done anything to make it stop yet.

The first time I had done any sort of drugs was at David's birthday party. That must have been months ago because I remember it had been snowing then and everything was green now. That's where I met Tony and that's where I got to where I am now.

Six hours into the party and I could barely stand. I've always liked gin, but I've never trusted it. It was a big enough party where you knew almost everyone, but there was still plenty of people to meet. We all knew who Tony was before any of us met him. Somehow, I started talking to him near the keg.

He wasn't very discreet about where he got his money, and that's why David invited him. It was his birthday and he wanted to party. All I know was that I said, "You buy it and I'll try it."

The first bumps were in the bathroom off of the toilet tank. Three guys crammed into a shitty little college party house bathroom with a line of people outside, snorting tiny piles of what looked like crystalized cum. I still don't know why I said I'd do it.

Think of a night of drinking and the hangover that follows. The bad ones. The ones where you're tongue is swollen in the back of your throat and you shit black coal lumps. You're mind has been erased except for the little swishes of flashing memories.

Take that and you're still not close to where meth will get you.

The fern in Tony's apartment. The Rob Zombie CD cover. The one with "More Human Than Human" on it. Taking a bump off it.

Coming down just long enough to know it was time to go back up.

Going to the ATM. The little money I had was going for another gram. Money other college kids were spending on food and flat beer in cramped basement house parties I was forking out to keep the party going. The party that was Tony and I and whatever friends of his he knew were holding.

Sunlight stinging my eyes, washing out all details. Everything becomes two-dimensional, a flat copy over a flat copy. People on the streets were nothing more than walking magazine cut-outs.

Walking forever. Red Converse Chucks. Some blonde named Carla. Her doing a line off my stomach and puking on my dick. Daylight again. Night. Day. It doesn't matter after long enough. All that matters is getting more.

That's what I'm feeling right now. I've locked myself in a room with nothing more than my bleeding nose and my wall of TVs. A voice over the loudspeaker calls for "Nathan to the Paint Department. "

Nathan.That's not my name but I know they mean me. It's our store's code word for Loss Prevention. They need me to go to a certain department because an employee suspects someone of stealing. I'm not going.

What the hell could people steal in the Paint Department?

I lean back in my chair, grabbing the remote control board for the cameras and punch the numbers three and eight. The view on the third TV from the right in the fourth row moves with every wiggle of the joystick. I search around and find no one there.

I return the controls to my desk, never fully turning around in my chair.

Some noise comes from behind me. It sounds like a pair of sneakers whisking across the very top of the carpet. I've been hearing stuff like that all day, so I ignore it.

I look at my shirt again. The dots are getting darker. All of them. I think the bleeding's stopped on it's own, but I wasn't ready to call Tony. I hadn't seen him since our last time together.

No, this round of fun came from my own hands.

Now in my fourth semester of criminal justice classes, I was finally learning the good stuff about being a cop, which after working retail store security for sixth months and my latest pharmaceutical adventure, had me second-guessing my future career choice.

You can make methamphetamine at home and you can buy all of the ingredients right here in the store I was supposed to be watching.

Cold medicine. Anhydrous ammonia. Tubing. Rock salt. Matchbooks. Batteries. We had it all.

Yup, here at Fleet Farm we had everything you need to manufacture your own stimulants or blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City. And if you applied for a store credit card today, you could save up to fifteen percent on all your purchases. Thanks for shopping Fleet Farm.

Instead of going the traditional, and highly caustic route, I opted to invent my own way of isolating the pseudeoephedrine out of the cold medicine tablets.

Last night, right before I turned the key as the last person out of the store, I walked over to the Personal Aids Department and pocketed twelve boxes of Sudafed. I had no idea how much I needed, so I over-stole, cramming the boxes in my messenger bag.

No one checks to see if Loss Prevention is stealing. No one watches the watchers.

At home I mashed up the pills on the kitchen counter with a rolling pin. I took the mess of powder and loaded it into the coffee maker, running water through and getting a twelve-cup batch of pink slop. You could drink just that, but you better have an excuse for the emergency room doctor why you're puking blood.

Instead, I put the carafe into the fridge, light up a cigarette and go watch Family Guy in the living room. I should have been studying, but I figured with twelve hours before the final and a batch that was almost done, I had the time to relax.

Family Guy, King of the Hill and The Simpsons. All reruns, but it was just long enough for my pink liquid to turn into soapy white sludge. I pour it onto a cookie sheet and slide it into the oven, which is set at a mere one hundred and forty degrees. Just enough to dry it out.

After two episodes of That 70s Show, I'm set. I have about an ounce full of already-cut and powdery study fuel. I separate my first line in the pan.

I lean over.

I take a breath.

Exhale.

The powder careens up my right nostril, sending a rush of stimulants and pain to the back of my skull. My throat is clogged with the taste of kiddy aspirin and shit.

I cough.

I gag.

I nearly throw up, but I can't blink.

I am no longer tired whatsoever.

The rush was better than the first time. Better than with that first bump off the toilet tank at David's house. Better than any bump with Tony. And I had a whole plastic bag all to myself.

I sit back down on the couch with my bag in hand. A few more minutes of TV won't hurt. Neither will another line. Fuck, make it two.

Twelve hours later and I'm writing about things I didn't study. The advantages and disadvantages of a two-man squad assignment. Dispatching information. Standard booking procedures. It's all blank, except for the section on methamphetamine manufacturing.

The testing hour ends. And I bump again afterwards. The bag's gone by the time I go to work.

And here I am, staring at my wall of TVs, watching everything and nothing at the same time.

And I hear that noise again. Shoes on carpet. This time it's followed by a cough. I'm positive it wasn't mine. I turn slowly in my chair, wiggling my nose to loosen the crusted blood inside.

The first thing I notice on my desk was the open box of BBs. It was starting to come back.

I had, the whole time I was in my office, forgotten something pretty fucking important.

He sat in the chair a few feet from my desk. He'd been there the whole time I had. This kid, about nine or ten years old, continued to sit silently, slouched in the chair behind me.

Everything was clear, no longer copies over copies.

I had grabbed this kid in the parking lot after stealing a single BB out of the box. On camera, I watched him pop open the milk carton-like container, shake a single copper bead into his hand, look around six times -- three each direction -- and pop it in his shorts pocket.

Now I remember the only reason I didn't let the kid go was because I couldn't understand why he'd take just one stupid BB. That's why he's in my office, staring up at me like a little shit head. That's why I thought I didn't have to pay attention anymore. I met my one-shoplifter-a-day quota.

My only question was whether I called his parents yet. Or worse, the cops to come pick him up.

His feet barely touched the ground and his kicking feet made the whisking noise again. Outside his little, faint cough, he didn't say anything. Until now.

"Mister, what's wrong with your nose?"