The Whispers

18: Laughing

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one." - Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwriter.

I don't know how many days Harper has been here but tomorrow is Monday, we've eaten most of the food in the house, and I've spent all day drinking some murky liquid I found in his box. He lied about it being the last time giving me things from his box - he broke that promise not an hour after he made it. He had gotten himself some kind of cannabis skittles and felt bad for not sharing. It made me sleepy. I finished the rest of them when I woke up, much to his dismay.

He's made himself at home. He leaves pee on the floor and never puts down the toilet seat, ate most of the food I had bought previously from stealing mom's wallet, and has taken to lounging around shirtless and hasn't showered in god knows how long. Part of me almost wants to tell him to get in better shape but another part of me wants to just continue what we're doing and ignore the mess being made.

We have a routine at this point. When we wake up we take something from his box and won't talk until it starts to take effect, which takes anywhere between about three seconds to forty-five minutes. Once whatever we had from the box does kick in, depending on how we're feeling, we'll do anything from watch TV to try and glue things to the wall to make our own rock climbing gym (which we've tried twice now and it always ends in complete disaster). One time I took an unknown substance and hallucinated the floor turning into some kind of abyss, but I'd much prefer that to the bugs talking to me. We will end up kissing and going further but always stop before we're about to have sex - sleep is always close after that.

I took some white pills, they're candy coated and taste better than most of the other stuff. Harper is currently passed out on the couch. I checked to see if he was dead and he isn't. Thank god, that would have been horrible. He just needs to sleep off whatever he had and wake up.

I wonder where he gets all of his substances? He's in a new town but somehow the box is still fully stocked of different coloured pills, powders, liquids, plants, and gummies. Does he sell the stuff? Does he have a supplier from his old town?

I stumble on my way to the floor when I see an ant. I hold my head above the creature and listen for whispers but they don't come. They never come when I take what's in the special box. It's magical.

There's no way that I can describe how good it feels to be on that shit, the only thing I can say about it is that it absolutely fucks with your body and sometimes you have no control over it.

Something minor that the little white pills do is force me to laugh. It's not too bad, though, at least I'm not uncontrollably shaking like yesterday.

I laugh at it. I see the ant stand on his back legs and laugh more. It's obviously trying to communicate with me but it's not working. I love how it's not working. I should be like this all the time.

I hear a knock at the door. It startled me and I fall to the ground, my head ending the ant's life. I wipe it off my forehead and smear it on the table edge, making a mental note to jar it later.  You'd think I would be hurt or sore from the impact but I didn't feel any different.

I walk to the door. Maybe it's my mom, finally coming back to feed me. Maybe she's back and grovelling on her knees, begging for forgiveness for leaving me and her daughter who was stabbed. I can ask her if Maggie was really adopted or if the doctor was delusional.

"Dallas?" He's standing in front of me, a frantic look on his face, his phone is his hand. What is he doing here?

"You weren't answering my calls," he blurts loudly. "I didn't know if something happened to you or not."