Night time in Tuscawilla Park, particularly during the summer months, is sticky and humid; the sweaty darkness teeming with delusions and apparitions as headlights blink in and out of view; sirens echo in the distance along with the buzzing of mosquitos, the chirruping of crickets, the croaking of toads in the park’s many ponds all coalesce into a crepuscular choir of cold-blooded pests and vermin whose volume rises and falls between each injection. The cab of the truck is sticky with sweat and the smell of filthy sex, and countless needles and many months worth of various trash items litter the floor.
The shadows are alive, whispering of danger and temptation. The drugs are running low -and so are my spirits- as I flip the cab light on to probe for a vein. My arms and hands are sore and dotted with little scattered clusters of track marks. It occurs to me that I am dying.
I see my face in the rear-view mirror, its features sunken, gaunt and pallid. My grimy forehead and wild bloodshot eyes are reflected hopelessly into view. I try not to think about it. Moments later, I find a vein and forget I ever cared. The bell is ringing again, and the fire is rising in my throat and behind my possessed eyes. Brimstone? No, vinegar. I’m no longer human. The shot wears off slowly, and I sink back into what’s left of my skin: another screaming abomination, misshapen and unclean, lurking in the lurid dark and longing for a fix that won’t last.
Towers of Rust 