Free The Spider Inside by Elias Anderson

the ladder
through a once-in-a-lifetime combination of his own luck and the stupidity of
other people to dealing directly with Xander, should have known better than to
hang out with a fucking low-life like this. This was why Gomez was so much
better, and this was why Nik would be better. All he needed was a break, and
he’d be able to take a step up himself, and start moving the kind of quantities
that Gomez did, and make some real money.
    Inside Martin was sitting on the couch and Paz was on a
chair.
    Lance and Paz, Nik thought. Holy fuck it was a miracle the
cops weren’t camping outside. Nik could not think of a bigger pair of cop
magnets than these two fuck-ups. Paz had already been popped twice, once on a
drug charge, once on possession of an unregistered machine gun, and that third
time, which was really inevitable if you looked at him, would be Paz, locked up
for life. He needed to conduct his business and get the fuck out of here as
soon as humanly possible.
    “What’s up Paz?” Nik asked. Paz didn’t say anything, was
intent on a system of dominoes he’d set up on the coffee table.
    “Nik, hey brother, how goes it?” Martin asked. Nik saw
immediately that this had been one of the rare times Martin was tweeking. This
annoyed Nik; he was normally pretty accurate with his pigeonholing and didn’t
like surprises. This was even worse than a surprise, it was a complication. It
would be one thing if Lance and Paz had been here to score, because they could
then conceivably leave in the near future, but it looked now as if they were
dug in for the duration. Nik briefly considered leaving and coming back later,
when the others weren’t around and Martin was so stoned off bong hits he could
barely stand. When he was stoned he was notorious for selling heavy bags.
    “I’m good, man.” Nik said. “Yourself?”
    “I been up since like...yesterday, brother. I’m fucking
spun, man.”
    “Wow, an all-nighter, huh?” Nik asked, acting as impressed
as Martin was obviously hoping he would be. Fucking idiot, Nik thought. Nik had
been up now for just over sixty hours. He could feel the crash coming like a
huge wall of black polluted water. He still had time, he wasn’t worried about
it, but he could sense it just the same.
    “Yeah, man,” Martin was saying. “Let me tell you it’s been
awhile since I’ve been this high up. So what’s, uh, what’s going on, man?”
    “I was hoping to--”
    “Come on, sit down, brother. Commune with us.”
    Jesus Christ, Nik thought. Even on speed he talks like a
fucking granola-eating nature fag. Nik thought for a moment of taking Martin
back to his house and handcuffing him to a chair and putting some headphones on
him, shoot him up with some high-end ice and play death metal non-stop while
beating the shit out of him for twenty-four hours straight, see if he could
just once and for all kick the fucking hippie out of him.
    Nik sat down and lit a cigarette. Lance cut himself out a
heavy bump, one of the same size for Paz and one so small it was hard to see
from where Nik was now sitting. That third one would be for Martin. Nik didn’t
mind that no one had offered him any, he was still way jacked from shooting up
earlier, but did miss out on the pleasure he would have gotten from declining
the offer, had it been made.
    Lance did his and passed the mirror to Paz who did his
without looking up and then handed the small mirror to Martin who carefully
wiped the end of the tooter off before putting it in his nose. He bent to the
mirror and breathed out, scattering his little pile.
    “Fuck,” Martin said. Lance handed him a razor blade and
Martin took care to bring it back together into a neat little pile. It was a
whole fucking production with this nimrod. He took several deep breaths, head
turned at an extreme angle so it was as facing as far away from the mirror as
possible without him pulling an Exorcist move and spinning it around on his
neck. He finally put the tooter back up