Junk-Pure

By Forrest Armstrong

There is a place where the matter in the air alone chokes pedestrian. Buildings run alongside a bleak road that never sees use. A body of water languid green like a dead jungle stands in the center, shattering into receding shards of glass at the first solemn touch.

At night giant embryonic bandages hang suspended from the clouds. Sinners traverse them like a catwalk with the invincibility trance up. Tonight, as I walk under the starlit sky, I see one get cocky and drop to the cement twenty yards below. He pops like a water balloon, latex skin flaring against the impact, blood whiplashing in the air like a fountain waterfall. I throw a lit cigarette into a gas well and watch the whole block ignite.

No one notices. That's the best part about living in a city that's in the later stages of decomposition. The city's falling apart everywhere; a skyscraper comes down here, a street combusts there: What's the difference?

One sinner lowers a bag of pitch black H on a fishhook with a note attached: "Pure satanic junk, straight from you-know-where: replace on hook with a twenty spot and it's yours, baby, shoot wisely…" I've seen someone try to cheat a dealer by grabbing the bag and taking off with it. The dealer doesn't usually have much to stick around for so he has no problem taking a swan dive onto the junky and snapping his spine… as long as the punk who tried to cheat him dies it was worth the suicide.

When I step under the catwalk a shadow blocks me out. A star pulsates anti-energy overhead, light spinning into the nucleus like a garbage disposal. Thick smog the color of Satan's underbelly drapes dense around my ears. I walk through the streets in a haze…

*** *** ** *

I stand in front of a mirror masturbating to myself masturbating to myself masturbating to myself etc., when my visage disperses and a black face like a bull with horns comes into focus. I jump back in recognition. Quiver-pull up my pants.

"What's wrong, kid," Satan says. "You knew I'd come for you eventually. Think you could live on the lip of hell forever and I wouldn't even notice you?"

"No, no, of course…" I stumble. "Drink? Tea? Anything?"

He steps out of the mirror. He's even more terrifying when he takes shape, the same sheen of power as a prize-horse. "You never touch junk, eh?"

"Not yet anyways, sir, but at your suggestion I could begin immediately—"

"You don't think my junk's any good?"

"I'm sure it's the best there is, sir, it's just—"

"It ain't about the junk. Christ, stop shittin' your pants, kid, I'm here to talk business. You're still alive and resting on the razor's edge. God's hands and mine stand equally outstretched on either side, so I ain't here to claim you just yet. Sit down."

I sit down fast and he continues, "Now listen kid, surely you assumed the Devil's got his agents, right? I got dealers laced throughout the city but I ain't omnipotent, you know? I only know what I see, and sometimes it ain't the whole story. Dealers try and skim off the top, you know what I'm sayin'? And some will go even further. I got guys I supply who think they can compete with me. So it's your job to weed out these faggots and turn ‘em in. You're an insider now. You fake dead. You walk the beltway of sinners at night and you get to know these assholes. Then you nark ‘em out."

He turns and starts to walk away.

"Do I have a choice?" I say.

"No you don't have a choice, you fuckin' loser. I'm the Devil." He walks into the mirror and again I can see my reflection, sheer-white.

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Junk-Pure

By Forrest Armstrong