Manhunt. Volume 4, Number 6, June, 1956

Addict by W. E. Douglas

They strapped him down. Soon the winter started inside him, and the spiders came...

With the prick of a needle, a rainbow exploded. Reds bassed into corals and corals to fuchsia. Yellows sopranoed with maize, then all harmonized with the alto blues into one exquisite rhapsody of joy. Then the whole swelled and thundered against his ear drums as the greens and browns, the silver and gold added their individual songs until, with the pure power of beauty, the music drove out the hurt and forced the gnawing pains away. Then, and then only, was Henry Towridge happy.

Naturally, this was not known to the arresting officers who found him. To them, Henry Towridge was just another skinny, pimple-faced addict who lay, doped up on narcotics, in an alley.

“Look at his eyes,” the first cop said, shining his light across the pupils.

“Yah — like pin heads,” the second said. “He’s gone but good—” Then, more to himself, “I wonder where he’s at?”

“Don’t know,” answered the first. “But give me a hand. I know where he’s going.”

So, like farmers stacking grain, the cops swung Henry into the back seat of the prowl car and were on their way.

They didn’t want Henry at the station. “He’s under the influence,” the Sergeant growled. “You know better’n to bring him here — take him to county.” As The Law carried Henry out, the Sergeant shouted, “And place a hold on him, yuh hear!”

“Sure,” the first answered, “I hear. I hear.”

But Henry didn’t hear. Henry was hopped up — far away in the never-never land of dope. Henry was splashing around in clouds of colors, with every fiber of his body aglow and tingling with the sounds of beauty. He didn’t feel The Law carry him into the hospital. Nor did he feel the orderly undress him. Henry didn’t know anything of the real world until the next morning, when he woke up in the high white bed, to the smell of disinfectant, his wrists and ankles locked in leather straps. Then he knew and started to cry. Henry had gone through the withdrawal from drugs before. He knew what was coming. Henry had good reason to cry.

It started with breakfast. The ham and eggs, juice, toast and coffee started Henry’s stomach splashing and tossing. “I don’t want it,” he said to the nurse. “Take it away.”

“But it’s good for you, Mr. Towridge,” she persisted. “Just try—”

So Henry did. Maybe food would stave off the sickness. Maybe it would stop the sickness from coming at all, maybe it — but no. It filled his stomach after two bites. He pushed it away and the nurse left.

The dicks came around ten that morning.

“How many bangs a day were you taking, Sonny?” Big Belly asked.

“Wasn’t taking any,” Henry said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. When am I going to get out of here? You got no right to hold me.”

“We have a right,” Cigar said. “And come off that ‘you don’t use the stuff’ routine. Why, your eyes are bloodshot already. And your nose is starting to run. So how about it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henry sniffed. “Leave me alone.”

“Ok,” Big Belly said. “Ok. Guess we were a little too soon. We’ll be back later, Sonny.”

And they left Henry to his unrest of legs and arms and to the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Out in the corridor, Cigar turned to Big Belly. “Well what do you think?”

“About five decks a day, I would judge, seeing he’s starting the withdrawal so soon... Yep, a good five bangs a day.”

A low whistle. Then, “That’s a lot of dope. Wonder where he got it?”

“That,” Big Belly said, “is what we want to find out. We’ll give him a little time, then we’ll come back.”

The day went slowly for Henry. There was the unrest. He couldn’t seem to get his legs in a comfortable position. His arms and hands felt leaden with a pressing, dull pain. His stomach was nauseated. Even his eyes, ears and head felt heavy, swollen and away from him.

Later the chills started, uncontrollable violent shivering. They cracked his teeth together until they sounded like a riveting gun and sent the winter racing up and down his thin frame. “It’s part of the game,” he thought, “just part of the game, but Lord bring on the spring.”

And summer came suddenly into his head, like an unmerciful blast from a furnace. The fever — a roasting, consuming fire that poured the sweat from his body and parched his lips and released the fluids from his nose. Then a moment of fall and quickly winter once more, then spring, hell, fall and winter. Hours of changing seasons, days of grass and sun and devils with spears that probed the leg muscles and punctured the arms. Then suddenly winter again, with its howling winds that beat against his ear drums and formed words like you would hear from a radio at the bottom of a well with its tone all fouled up.

“It’s been twenty-four hours, Nurse. He’s progressing normally so far, but watch him closely the next twenty-four hours. He’s entering the final stage now.”

“Is there anything we can do, Doctor?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all? I mean, he’s in such pain.”

“The only relief for him is drugs, Nurse, and he’s had too much of that already. No, just watch him. If he goes into shock, call me.”

Then the summer with its boiling sun came once more to Henry, burning out the voices and leaving him in a sea of nausea. The volcano in his stomach started growling and snapping again, churning and erupting the nothingness up and past the constricted neck muscles, through the gags and chokes and finally emptying nothing on the white pillows, just another of a thousand other dry heaves. “I want to die,” Henry gasped. “I want to die now, die, die, die. Please, before the worst comes.” And the nurse left the room, biting her lip.

Down the hall she went, deep in thought, steered by habit, turned into the brightly lit room with table and chairs and the aroma of coffee pungent on the air. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she asked the blonde that had her shoes off.

“About what, honey?”

“That boy in five, the one that’s going through withdrawal. Isn’t there something?”

“No,” the blonde said. “Nothing, honey. Just relax and watch him.”

“But it seems so cruel.”

“I know,” the blonde smiled, “but you’ll get used to it. There’s no other way. They have to kick it themselves. Besides, this isn’t his first time and it won’t be his last. They never quit, so relax and have some coffee.”

“No, no thanks. What do you mean, ‘kick it?’”

And as if in answer to her question, a grunting scream split the air. The blonde nodded her head at the cry and said, “There’s your patient, honey. He’s started. Go see for yourself.”

Henry was into it now, really into it. Every drug-starved nerve in his body was screaming out its need. It was as if his fingers and toes were being ground off by an emery wheel, his arms and legs bitten by a million sharp-toothed insects and his chest and stomach eaten slowly by the rats. Even his ears were crawling with the scratching lice. Uncontrollable twitching twisted his face into hideous masks and the sounds of the insane growled out of his throat.

Now the spasms came. His arms shot up, suddenly, as if pulled by a giant rope, trembling and straining against the leather straps. His eyes bulged and neck muscles corded with effort. Then his legs jerked up. The knees reaching for his chest, but stopped just short by the straps. And the grunts and the growls and the screams as he kicked his legs out flat. Again the same, and again and again, and again. While all the time the spiders are eating his eyes and filling his nose. Hour after hour of the jerking and twisting in this living hell until, with God-given mercy, exhaustion takes over and Henry passes out.

“He’s not in shock,” the doc says. “Let him rest, he’ll be better tomorrow.”

And he is better — very weak, but through with it. So the police are allowed in.

“Want to tell us now where you get the stuff, Sonny?” Big Belly asks.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henry says.

“Get your clothes on,” Cigar says. “You’re up today for being under the influence.”

So Henry is dressed and led to court. He enters a plea of “Not Guilty” to the charge and gets a bail bondsman to set him free. An hour later Henry is in his room heating up the white powder and spit solution in a spoon. A hypodermic sucks up the liquid through a piece of cotton. And with the prick of the needle, a rainbow explodes...