All For More (Or Less)

These notes to myself from my prison cell have helped. But I am still lost and my defense has yet to get off the ground.
I have appealed to the process is killing me
(slowly)
I hate this real fiction business.
But it is what it is.

I remember coming out from a place where I was hidden underground. I know what I was doing and I know all about the sins that I had committed to be where I was.
I was sick, of course. I was unforgivably young and inexcusably lost or led astray and ignorant because yes, I was not a victim, nor was I kidnapped.
I took the bait.
I had to hide because I had people looking for me. And I knew what would happen if they found me. I knew that while I posed or postured, and aside from a small pistol that I had acquired with no clip and only one bullet—the beating I’d have received would have left me broken and my face disfigured because in the art of war, no one stops, just because their enemy has fallen unconscious or screamed in pain.

It was oddly a night when all who called to the Lord attended their midnight mass to celebrate the birth of Christ.
I was never born into this way of believing nor would I allow myself the faith it took to believe in anything so pure or wholesome. Plus, it seemed that wholesome ideas or purity would otherwise leave me vulnerable to the accompanied demons who equally looked to possess or infect the people around us.

Do not believe that mental illness is not contagious. Do not assume that doubt and deceit cannot infiltrate the hearts of the innocent. 
It’s true.
The Devil does know us well.
I remember coming out from beneath one of the neighborhood bars, which was over on Frost Street and Merrick. I remember hiding behind boxes, in case someone came down to the crawl space. And no one ever came here. There was nothing down there but boxes of empty bottles that were stacked about the boxes high on a dirt floor.
It was cold outside.
I remember this.
I was alone and the paranoia nearly killed me. I had used up all the tricks in my pocket, which were nothing more than a few bags of narcotics, which I cooked to endure in a more smokable version. I was smoked out to say the least. I was skin and bones and hardly strong enough to move any of the boxes I the crawl space down below.
My life was about to change too. My choice of euphoria was about to switch from one degree to another.
I remember the warnings. And I remember swearing that I would never do half the things that I had already done. So, bother?
Why care if I abandon myself even further? Why worry about the opiate gods or how they accept their trades for souls?
Why resist the things leading me to nod lifelessly, or being beaten to the point where I was swaying into the spiral, which was a beautiful and seductive demon. This was known to me as the horse, which galloped through my spine.
I never thought this would be me.
I never thought that I could fall this far or be so lost.
I was good once.
I was a little boy.
I was innocent too.
I was gullible to say the least, which is something that turned me or stained me, so-to-speak. And yes, the stains were like poison to me.
So was the painful realization that I assumed I was deserving of the crimes against me, that I was stupid, or that I was diseased, somehow.

Why else would I have been abused?
Why else would I have been born as I was?
I swore there was an injustice against me, and that I was only deserving to be in the lower end of life’s cycle, and thus, this would always be me.
I would always be a bottom feeder, but weak, and somehow meaningless in the better or brighter parts of the world.
I never asked for this.
I never wanted to imprison myself but actions emulate feelings and feelings emulate our chemistry

I don’t know why I was where I was.
I don’t know why I abandoned my post as a good person. And I don’t know why I have allowed decades to pass and my youthful trauma to survive as it did.
This is what caused my downward spiral.
This is what spun me out of control and yes, this is what led me to my sentence in Purgatory.
I never thought I would fall that low, —but to be clear, I had fallen lower and further and deeper than I ever assumed would be possible.

I finished my batches that came with a fast-paced high.
But be advised, freebase is an evil thing. This causes a terrible fiend to come out from the depths of an internal hell. This caused me to crawl across dirty floors so that I could investigate the ground to see if I dropped little pieces of cocaine to keep my bliss and to promote the numbness down the back of my throat.
If you’d have asked me about heroin, I’d have told you that I would never do something like that.
If you’d have asked the younger version of me, or the version of me who was pure and eager to laugh and play, or if you’d have asked the little kid in me, before the age of realization and before the bullying took place; that little boy would have never done any of these things.
But that little boy was used by others. That little boy was picked on, laughed at, hurt, and that little boy woke up to the realization that a grow man used him at such a young version that in his heart, —that little boy assumed that he was filthy and unlovable, or otherwise an item to be used for someone’s young boy fetish.

No one asks for this.
No one wants this.
I wanted to find peace, but my peace turned against me and fell like dying angels that fell backwards and upside down with each blast I took from a pipe—but ah, how the dying seemed to die slower when the heroin came along. Everything died peacefully and I could have died too or been placed somewhere else, unobjectionably, and if I had died, then I would have died in a nod and not felt it anyway, right?

I remember doing the last of my bags, which the dope gods offered me from a spot in the Bronx.
The packets were marked with the word “King”, and the contents were small to be honest. But it didn’t take much to wallop the soul and put me in a state of synthetic hibernation.
I found myself wrapped in the corrosion of a soft cocoon—and this was good, for a while.
This was good enough to help me escape the tolls from the cocaine demons and their rituals and keep me from that internal fiend who just wanted more.

I remember the night as it was. I was walking away from my hiding spot, and I recall seeing a bright star above a church in my little town.
I remember how cold it was. I remember thinking this was like viewing myself in the emotional mirror because I knew what I was doing.
Christ was born on this day and born into this world to bring the light of life; yet I was exposed to a terrible darkness and dying alive like some kind of zombie who nodded to the ground.

I knew that I had abandoned all that was good for an evil dose of something that I assumed would somehow make me feel better.
I loved the word redemption. Yet I feared that I could never be redeemed.
I was diseased and filthy.
I was used because I was usable and weak or unworthy enough to be loved in the best regards.

I knew someone who used to shoot heroin and talk about the bible.

He told me, “never get into the pins, kid,” which I never understood because he was pushing a pin in his vein and setting up right in front of me.
Then he would recite verses to me.
He was a bible school kid once.

“Never let it get this bad,” he told me.

I never thought anything would be as bad as it was when I crossed through the doors of this prison.
But Purgatory is always welcoming and the demons love to find new people to infect because again, their symptoms are contagious and the sickness is incredible.

I have to get out of here . . .
“But you signed the contract, kid.”
“Leave me alone, Beast.!”
The beast laughed, “Leave you alone?”
“Who else would you have, if you didn’t have me?”

I don’t know, Beast.
I just know you’ve killed me enough for one lifetime.

“Wanna bet?”

No . . .
but I’m sure you have more tricks up your sleeve.

“Well, I do aim to please.”
Of course you do.