06 POV Susan meets Mads Gun to Groin - NEW 1318

A chill runs the length of my spine, causing a tingling sensation in my fingers as the man who once tried to kill me slides into the booth only inches away. His meaty thigh touches mine and I recoil in disgust. I do my very best to hide my extreme hatred of this man. Meet Madison McCormack, people who know him call him Mads to his face and Mad behind his back. He is a beast, no other word describes him better. He's so overweight he makes obese people look slim. He has a permanent layer of sweat across his brow that he constantly mops with a handkerchief I believe was last washed in 1992. He's a professional mouth breather with the most rancid case of gingivitis known to man. Despite his behemoth size, Mads can move quickly, and when angered his temper is murderous. 

I keep my sight fixed on Michelle sitting directly opposite me, but in my peripheral I catch Mads looking at me curiously, sure that he knows me from someplace, but evidently he still can't quite pinpoint where. 

It was thirteen months ago that Mads tried to kill me with a hot-shot - a drug laced with drain cleaner or some other heart stopping chemical. At the time I was using and I owed him money. Not a lot. A few hundred I think? My memory from then is faded, which in a way is a blessing. If truth be told, I'd prefer to forget more than I have of my past. But maybe remembering is a part of healing? If we forgot our ills we'd be far more likely to repeat them. 

I had been avoiding Mads on account of my debt. I had seen him beat up other users who owed him money and had let their debt run too long. That's why I was so surprised when he finally caught up with me and he wasn't angry at all. Quite the opposite, if anything he was far more congenial than he had ever been. Looking back now, that should have been a warning sign. But when you're using, the power of the need for the next fix obfuscates all rationale thought. 

He told me not to worry about the debt, that he knew I was good for it and that I would pay him when I could. I remember the exact words he used, I trust you. Which I remember thinking seemed such a strange thing for a dealer to say to a user. He gave me another vile of H with a snide smile and told me to try to get him the money by next week. I recall nodding as earnestly as I could with no intention of ever paying and walked away thinking just how lucky I was to score. 

The joke, I was soon to find out, was on me. The moment I injected it I knew something was wrong. There was a burning sensation up and down my arm, imagine a thousand angry ants eating your arm from the inside-out. I had heard of dealers getting fed up with not being paid and handing out hot-shots before, but in my naivety I never thought it would happen to me. But there it was, happening in that very moment. 

My heart beat accelerated rapidly, which is the the complete opposite of the effect of heroin. The pharmacokinetics of H causes your heart to slow, not accelerate. My vision started to falter, going black for a second, then returning blurry, only to go black again a few seconds later. My hearing also oscillated between muddy, as though I was buried underground, to suddenly bright and brilliant, as though I had been magically bestowed with the virgin ear drums of an angel.

I don't quite know how I did it, but even in that incredibly debilitated state I somehow managed to piece together that - Mads was trying to kill me, and that I had only a matter of seconds before I passed out. The paramedic that resuscitated me said that my heart had stopped for a full minute as he had revived me. Had I not made the emergency call when I did I'd've been another statistic. 

You would have thought that coming that close to death would have been enough for me to kick the habit for good, cold turkey, there and then, but it wasn't. Later that night I found myself scoring again and that was when I realised I had truly hit, as the celebs like to call it - rock bottom. That was when I sought help, that was my pivot and somehow, I haven't looked back since.

"So what ch'you girls want?" Mads asks after a moment of shuffling his huge frame into a semi-comfortable position. 

Michelle keeps his sight fixed on her interlaced fingers that rest in her lap. Mads looks my way, breathing that sewerage breath on me. 

"I think there's been a bit of confusion, we don't actually want anything."

Mads' raises an eyebrow at this. He looks quickly from Michelle, to me, me to Michelle. In a beat he's read the situation. 

"You don't, she does, and she dime'd me, so why don't you just run along to your NA meeting and let us do what we gonna do."

"All due respect Mads, but we're good."

Mads turns his entire upper torso to face me. A feat of contortion I wouldn't have thought possible of a man with such a sizeable frame.

He takes me in again. His look of confusion turning quickly to one of recognition. "Susie, sue, shit, thought I recognised you! It's been a minute, how long you been off the reservation?'

"Thirteen months, two weeks, four days, and...' I look up at the wall cock hanging above Michelle's head, '...thirty two minutes.'

"Well ain't that the damndest, what'd you' find, Jesus?"

I stare blankly at this creature, imagining a cat toying with a mouse before it snaps its neck. 

Mads makes no mention of the hot-shot, no mention of trying to kill me, what he does remember is...

"You owe me some. I seem to recall looking after you, gave you a lot on tick."

He produces a ratty notebook from his pocket and fat-thumbs through greasy pages until he finds something etched in his chicken scratch hand-writing.

"Yeah, here you are, Susie-sue. See, you owe me three hundred and twenty four plus vig."

I lock eyes with him and hold his red-eyed gaze. I want to scream in his face, I want to tell him what I think of him and where he can go. I want to yell out loud for all to hear that he tried to kill me with a hot-shot. But instead, all I muster is, 'I don't owe you shit.'

"Yeah you do. It's right here in the book, and this book don't lie." 

Michelle casts me a look, I catch her gaze, but only for a moment as she looks back down to her hands in her lap and keeps her sight fixed there, I think of a child willing a boogie-monster to vanish.

"Tell you what," Mad continues, "I'm feeling generous, you know, getting reacquainted with an old friend, let's call it a flat five hundred you owe me." 

"I don't owe you anything." I repeat. This time I say it a little quieter, almost as though I'm speaking to myself.

"Oh, but you do, see, right here..." He gestures to the scribble in his notebook, "...this says you do. And you wanna know what else says you do?"

Before I have a chance to retort, Mads produces a Glock handgun from one of his multitudinous pockets, and using his obscenely vast frame to shield his actions from all other patrons he presses the muzzle hard into my stomach.