a dark spirit holding a magic wand

Okay, due to popular demand (by which I mean, one anonymous commenter and my friend E) I am going to post an interesting story from the past. Last time I did this, I got quite a few comments about "you're back in the game" and "this didn't just happen you liar", so I'll repeat that this story is from the past. That means it already happened. For further clarification to those of you who don't understand English or just can't fucking read, I went to dictionary.com to help y'all out:

past (adjective)
1- gone by or elapsed in time
2- of, having existed in, or having occured during a time previous to the present; bygone
3- gone by just before the present time; just passed

In case you still don't get it, I will date my story. I might get some details wrong, but it was a long time ago so anyone who was there (Elliott) feel free to comment on what I fucked up on. Happy reading.

winter 2004, age 18

It was me and Elliott (aka 'E') hanging out in a state that is not Florida (but nearby!), and we were quite bored. Aside from a mountain of methamphetamine and some Steel Reserve 211, there was nothing to do. We were barely legal adults and were finished with our childish drug-fueled adventures- we were ready for bigger, badder, more "adult" drug-fueled adventures! So we got in his Range and started driving. We didn't have a particular destination in mind, we just drove (no stops necessary when there's a shitload of crank in the vehicle) until we realized we were near Tampa, Florida. Neither one of us had ever been to Tampa so we decided to finally stop and see what there was to do.

We looked around for the downtown area, figuring that was where the action (if any) was, and found a small, ghetto-looking town called Ybor City, aka downtown Tampa. There was a strip and it had a bar adjacent to a Cuban restaurant and since rice and beans followed by some whiskey sounded like a great idea to both of us, we parked the truck. We pulled out the needles for the first time that week and did a decent shot of speed before entering, since nothing gets an appetite going like being all tweaked out. At least for us.

We walked into the Cuban restaurant (I do NOT remember the name of the place, although I do recall a huge tile mural covered in colorful fish, which overstimulated my meth-addled brain), a little paranoid, thinking that everyone was going to know how fucked up we were and stare at us. Our fears were unfounded- the only people in there not tweaked out were drunk or nodding out, and I'm including the employees. E and I took a seat in the corner so that we could count and rearrange sugar packets unmolested until our tweaked-out waitress brought us menus.

I made a valiant attempt at reading the menu, but the words were shaking worse than my hands so I looked to E for assistance. He told the waitress to bring something delicious and some beers, which we pounded down in seconds. When the bill came, it was the menu fiasco all over again and we couldn't figure out what the hell the price of our food was. E left a random handful of tens and twenties, and we raced out of there and directly into the next-door bar (with a quick stop in the Range, of course, for another shot and to rustle up our fake IDs).

We sat at the bar, which was filled with just as many tweaked out/nodding/shitfaced folks as the restaurant, and started pounding down Jagerbombs. When the barkeep told us to leave, we suddenly noticed it was 3am- and we had gotten there around 6 or 7 in the evening. We stumbled out to the Range so that we could go home, but neither one of us could grab the steering wheel in two tries let alone drive anywhere. So we decided to take a nice walk around the unfamiliar ghetto to sober up. Great idea, right?

We wandered shitfaced around Ybor City until finding ourselves standing in front of what looked to be a housing project. Or possibly a crackhouse, I'm still not sure. It was 3 stories and surrounded by huge double-humped curbstones, which I wanted to sit down on for just a minute. E reached into his pocket to show me two prepped rigs, which sounded like an even better idea. So we went behind the project/crackhouse and hit that shit up.

The minute I pulled the rig out of my arm, I realized that shot had been wayyyyyyyyyy too much for my already-overloaded body to handle and I was teetering on the edge of cardiac arrest. The entire world went upside down and all the colors changed and got brighter. I couldn't breathe, but my heart sure was beating. I heard a voice saying something, sounded like "eh itegur." Didn't sound like E's voice, so I looked up. I heard the voice again, only now I understood the words: someone was saying "hey white girl." But I couldn't see a person, all I saw was a dark shadow ending in a long shiny object. My cranked up brain gave me a logical explanation for this phenomenon: it was a spirit holding a magic wand. I reached out to grab it.

Suddenly I was pushed to the floor, hard, from behind. Just as my face hit dirt, I felt something whizzing over my head which culminated in a *whack* *thump*, then my hand was forcibly grabbed and yanked very hard. I saw E's face, his eyes wild, staring at me through my fog. He was the one pulling on my hand, screaming "run! Run Michelle, fucking run NOW!!!"

When someone I trust tells me to fucking run NOW, I fucking run NOW. I half-ran and was half-dragged by E down Nebraska Avenue, away from where the "dark spirit" had offered me the "wand." Of course neither of us knew the Tampa city streets from our assholes, so we ran away from rather than towards anyplace. Finally, we saw a taxi and E practically jumped on the hood trying to get it to stop. That was when I looked over at him and for the first time realized that he was holding one of those huge curbstones... and it was covered in blood.

To this day I'm still amazed that the taxi picked us up, although the Benjamins thrown into the driver's window probably didn't hurt much. I asked E what the fuck had just happened, and he told me to just chill. By our description of the tile mural outside a Cuban restaurant, the cabbie was able to take us back to the Range. It didn't matter how fucked up we were, we had to get out of this town before something bad happened. When we finally got to the car and E was driving away from Tampa, we lit up a blunt to calm down while E explained what went down.

Apparently my dark spirit was a scary looking black crackhead, and the magic wand was a huge fucking switchblade. E, who was just as fucked up as I was apparently, decided to take fast action. He picked up one of those huge fucking curbstones that surrounded the project, pushed me down to the ground, and swung that curbstone over my head and directly into the face of my would-be assailant. Then we ran. Why he didn't let go of the heavy-ass curbstone while running, he couldn't tell me except to say "my fist was clenched so hard, I forgot I even had it... I couldn't feel my hand except to drag you." Now that's a good friend AND a hard ass motherfucker, am I right? We never went back to Tampa.

That's my story. Remember, it happened in the past, when there was no baby and I didn't have a year clean. All right E, was that a good story that made you sound gangster enough? And it's true to boot.