The Big Click: May 2013 (Issue 8) by The Big Click

The Big Click: May 2013 (Issue 8) by The Big Click

Author:The Big Click [Big Click, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Big Click
Published: 2013-05-07T19:22:32+00:00


© 2013 Tony Mason.

About Tony Mason

Tony Mason is a British writer who lives in London. He studied history at university and did various manual jobs before beginning a career in IT. He writes in collaboration with award-winning novelist Dreda Say Mitchell and their work has included a contribution to the MWA anthology Vengeance, edited by Lee Child. They are currently developing a drama series for British TV.

Through the Fish-Eyed Lens

by Joe Clifford

The battered ’87 Dodge Rampage chugged and sputtered up the steep incline toward the drop-off at the Dellinger, the old motel atop 3rd Street. Curled into the dark hillside beside an all-night diner, the single-level, ranch-style court overlooked the freeway, hovering on the edge of the Point, the last borough in the city where you wanted to break down or get stopped, either by police or homeboys, with an eight ball of crystal meth wedged in the wheel well.

Cole always hated coming out here, banks of fog smothering midnight streets too damned quiet. It wasn’t just that the trek took forever, or how the route wound through rough-and-tumble neighborhoods, or even that the Dellinger itself looked stripped straight from the set of Psycho, complete with flickering neon vacancy sign, cadaverous groundskeepers and ghost house vibe. In a city of freaks, the Dellinger Motel was the freakiest, a drug den that catered almost strictly to methheads, and everyone knew that shit turns you into a pervert. Cole had walked in on everything from amateur gangbang porn, to cross-dressing old dudes fucking blow-up dolls with vibrators sticking out their ass. He could only imagine what they’d see tonight. And he wasn’t in any mood. Cole had gotten the papers earlier that afternoon.

“Got any smokes?” Davy Jones asked. Davy Jones’s real name was Bowie. No one knew his first name. Everyone called him Davy Jones. Everyone in their little gang had a nickname. Another reason the scene felt played out to Cole. Giving yourself nicknames isn’t cool after the 5th grade.

Cole dug the tiny glassine bag from his dirty jeans and dipped a pinky finger in his personal stash. He brought back a bump on his long, yellow fingernail and snorted hard. Didn’t do jack. He’d been awake too many days; the meth had lost its potency. Doesn’t matter how pure the quality, you reach a saturation point. Awake isn’t awake. Asleep isn’t asleep. The only rest you get comes through the film of fish-eyed lens. The drug stops working after a while, no matter how much you jam up your nose or pump into your bloodstream. The body’s involuntary mechanisms take over, triggering shutdown, like a master switch override, desires be damned, marooning you in a liminal no-man’s land. Like being married without the sex, eating food and not being able to taste anything, all aggravation, no joy.

Cole passed the cigarettes.

He turned his head out the window, used hubcap shacks, 24-hour Laundromats, fluorescents flickering by like the pages of a little kid coloring book, everything outside the lines, nothing colored as it should be, reds instead of green, browns in place of orange.



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