Junk Love.

twenty-two.

Sometimes cigarettes taste like chalk. Or a bad trip will render Mel near catatonic. When that isn't enough alcohol thins her blood, hollowing her veins, until her body and mind refuse her. Despite the side effects she's starving for more insatiable in her vices.

A temporary fix lends Mel buoyancy from leaden demons dragging her six feet under. Their gnarled fingers seem to fit just right in her darkest crevices. There's always one more time convincing her to soar on a magic carpet of toxicity. To ease away from it all even with a skull and crossbones flag spiraling over her smoggy vessel.

Crisp November air rolls in like static electricity. This time of year always puts Mel on edge. Brittle leaves crunch under foot like bones. A season symbolic for the dead and dying. On the streets, a constant reminder this cold bitter winter may be her last. Perhaps as it should be.

She's been here before. The chasm. An unforgiving void where everything she tells herself is a falsely tuned lullaby dried up into intense cravings. Sadness fills her edges so chronic it becomes cancerous. A part of her wants to slip deeper into it. To stop worrying about what happens next and who will be standing next to her when it does. Just the void. Her only friend.

Before Carter's jail sentence and Dalton's beating, she was enamored by hopefulness. Foolishly believing she could amount to more. Or that Carter would be the best thing thats happened to her. Since then she's lost her home, her guitar, her livelihood. Perhaps Carter was only the bullets to the gun she's been holding to her head all these years.

Lost in thought, Mel dances with the flame sputtering from her lighter. Little galaxies pop on the mangled plastic covering wrapped around it. Heat scorches then sizzles each time she caresses the flickering edge against her fair skin. Watching it bubble with morbid fascination.

Without another alternative, she visits the only door that has stayed revolving in her life. Calvin isn't home yet. She sits on his front step, using her duffle bag as a thin buffer between the freezing concrete. Browned leaves skipping down the alley is her only soundtrack as Mel blackens the skin on her forearm.

Burning herself is a release. Something, maybe the only thing, she feels in control of. Even after minutes turn to hours of waiting, Mel lingers like a haunting. Playing with the lighter while sipping from a cherry vodka shooter unable to cross the barrier blocking her mind from reality.

She barely noticed Calvin arriving home until the wheels of his bicycle crunch across the gravel like the cracking of little bones. Mel lifts her head slowly. He stops at the porch, taking out one of his earbuds then tilting his head quizzically.

"Hey Cal."

"Mel." He feigns nonchalance as he hooks a wire lock around the handlebars. "Been here long?"

"Long enough."

A man of few words, he sits next to her on the step then lights a cigarette. Plumes of smoke drift like gypsies from his lips. There's something so magnetic about him and she shifts her legs uncomfortably.

Calvin uses his thumb to push his glasses higher on his nose. "I haven't talked to my dealer yet this week."

"I'm not here for your drugs." Mel's tone is soft and bland.

His olive eyes bore into her with laser precision. She's caught him off guard. "Then why are you here?"

You. The treacherous lie nearly slips from her control. But she stops herself unwilling to decide what she wants anymore. Everything inside her has gone hollow and grey.

"Do bad things happen to good people?" Mel asks, gesturing for his smoke to take a drag.

"I guess." He shrugs like he wants to shake her question off like an ant crawling up his arm.

The cherry of the cigarette melts down and the paper crackles with it. Mel speaks through an exhale of smoke. "I don't think I'm a good person."

Calvin takes his cigarette back, snuffing it out with the tips of his fingers. "That's my line. Remember?"

Shrinking in on herself she tucks her knees under her chin. "I wish you didn't have to see me like this."

"Hey." To her surprise, he cups her chin under his icy palm. He gently massages his thumb across the puffy part of her cheek like she's a painting to admire rather than a whore to define. "It will be alright, chérie."

The affectionate nickname has her quaking in his gaze. "I miss you."

It happens as suddenly and as fatal as a wreck on the freeway. Loud and messy in her heart. She's clenching her fists around his flannel shirt like a life preserver as their lips collide. Mel tangles her tongue around his with the same primal desperation of a boa constrictor, sucking the life out of him, and leaving them both breathless. Calvin doesn't taste the same -- his touch now acidic as novacaine.

"I can't do this." Their lips break apart with an awkward smacking sound.

"Mel."

"No." Shaking her head she scrambles for her duffle bag and hoodie. It was careless to scatter belongings. To become comfortable like she'd be able to stay.

"But Mel, sweets, you don't have to run."

Not even his pleading can break through the wall she's put up. Calvin still leans in, close enough for her to hear the electric guitar of whatever rock song blares from his headphones. Suffocating, Mel sucks in a deep breath and tries not to cry.

"I can't be here." Mel persists.

Mumbling apologies, she shoulders the strap of her bag then scrambles away. Drunk and numb she nearly trips face-first off the front step but, the further she gets down the alley, the surer her stride is.

Outside of the complex she leans against a street lamp trying to catch her breath. Nothing makes sense anymore. Being with Carter then losing him while still having him has fucked up the wiring of her head. Old comforts now reduce her to a dizzying fit of panic and she can't keep her head up above water long enough to figure out why.

It's tempting to wander back to Calvin's porch. He doesn't deserve to be a victim to her mental breakdowns. But the tangled web of her own thoughts holds her captive. Hitching the strap of the duffle bag higher on her shoulder Mel continues to walk on a hopeless journey with no end or beginning.

☯