Trentanyl

The car splashed through puddles of the morning’s rain driving through downtown Raleigh under a new moon. Eliza’s eyes were closed but she managed to say something along the lines of “I think we should keep going I don’t want to go home”, although it was sufficiently slurred through the Alprazolam and Tito’s that Trent didn’t bother to respond. His mind was where it usually was those days, on the sort of pressing problems that require oceans of thought and emotional processing and therapy for a sensitive person like himself to get to a point where they no longer needed to think about them. He said, “I think my dad only has a few weeks left”. Eliza’s reply was a sort of muted “oh” which signified simply that she was aware of the emotional severity of the statement, but not in any way concerned or affected, and potentially even just a little bit annoyed that Trent had ruined the mood by saying what he did. Her smile became slightly restrained and she looked out the window away from him. “He might have had a shot if he had quit drinking a while ago but now that he knows he’s dying he’s just always drunk and it means that whenever I talk to him, he’s basically not even there”. Trent thought but didn’t say that he felt the same about his dad as he did about Eliza in that moment. Selfish resentment that the person didn’t care enough to be present with him masquerading as unselfish concern for their wellbeing. Being not all there now Eliza declined to respond. Her forced half-smile surrendered into a blank stare. Having taken a risk by opening up the way he did, Trent was hurt to discover that there was no real human comfort to be found in his heavily intoxicated ex-girlfriend that night, and as his fears of being alone with his pain were confirmed, his mind stopped holding closed the doors that contain violent thought. He wanted to drive the car into a tree but that probably wouldn’t do the trick and there weren’t any tall bridges in the area. Gunshots were heard softly in the distance as they drove in relative silence through the night, Trent’s knuckles turning white around the leather steering wheel.

He parked in front of her house and unlocked the door. He had to shake Eliza’s shoulder a little bit because she had fallen asleep. They were both aware of a certain discomfort between them, but only Trent was sober enough to be able to feel it. “Bye Trent”. “Yeah, bye Eliza”. He wanted to cry but not enough to do it, and instead just sat there and frowned. The thought had been lurking for months now. Really, it had never stopped lurking since the first time he put a needle in his arm five years ago. But as the door closed and Trent’s loneliness was made explicit, the thought up and jumped at him the way a Golden Retriever does when she’s happy to see you. It was like a warm embrace, gentle and terrifying, between miserable emptiness and the quiet voice of death. Trent knew immediately that he wouldn’t be able to shake or ignore it this time. As a sort of compromise between the angel on his shoulder (don’t throw away eight months) and the devil (you never wanted to be sober to begin with), he decided he would call his dealer, even though there was little chance of her picking up at 2am. The phone rang twice before he heard the voice say, “yeah I have some”.