I had drifted away the moment that I tried opening up. My body shuddered as I backed down a tunnel away from Lyla. My voice continued to trail on without my permission as I fell into a void of black. I felt weightless, devoid of all feelings. 

“Stop, no!”

A knife plunged into the gut of someone I knew, their voice familiar. I jerked up from my race-car bed and looked left to right. I listened closely and could hear the soft sound of my mother breathing deeply in the other room. She was asleep, something I was struggling with at the time. 

“James,” A voice whispered in my ear. It was my father.

“Dad?” I looked around the room but didn’t see him anywhere. I stood after throwing off my covers and put on a pair of khaki shorts and a grey t-shirt. I made my way over to the window and slowly opened it. I took another look back at my bedroom before dropping onto the grass. I walked down the street of our neighborhood and into the nearby city limits. As I walked I noticed smaller details I hadn’t before, the cracks in the street, the smell of smog and burnt rubber. I made it to the edge of the city when I heard another gasp.

“James, please,” My father coughed from where he was and I broke into a sprint. I could somewhat hear which direction it was coming from and headed that way. I found myself in an alley between two dingy buildings. The old structures were made of brick and metal I-beams showed in between each wall. A dumpster full of garbage sat against a wall. I listened closely and heard grunting from farther into the crevice and pressed on. I crossed an empty city street into another alleyway and could hear my father more clearly. Hands slapped against asphalt as he, I assumed, crawled towards any sort of hope.

I stumbled and found him on his stomach, face resting against the ground. Light glistened off of the wet concrete as I ran to his side. I flipped him over and held his head in my left hand. My other hand touched around his chest lightly where the wound was. Tears ran down my cheeks uncontrollably and my mouth contorted.

“Dad, how do I-“

He shushed me and grunted in pain.

“It’s too late for me, Jimmy,” He took a quick inhale. “But you are going to do great things,”

I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed. My senses exploded with sound, smell, vibrations in the ground. My father’s body went limp as I looked up to see him.

“Dad?”

No answer.

“Come on, wake up!”

Vibrations shook my feet from behind me.

“Dad!”

A police officer gasped and took his hat off of his head behind me. I turned to face him and tried for a second to stop my cries.

“Help, my dad,” I looked at him and scrunched my eyebrows. “Help him!”

The officer shook his head and took interest in the pool of blood two feet from my father. I turned back as my father’s body already started to get cold, his warmth leaving him. Another sob exerted as I buried my face once again. As I closed my eyes, they shot open again and I saw myself in the mirror of my bathroom. I stared back, but felt nothing. It was a few years later, and my mother had gotten a smaller apartment on the wrong side of town. I clicked open the door to the living room and was greeted by her. She tried to smile but it diminished quickly as she shouldered her purse.

“Gotta get going now, Jimmy,” I could feel my younger self cringe at the nickname. It never sounded the same since my father had said it.

I nodded and we walked out the door to the hallway. The lights in the ceiling were a yellow-green due to the mold growing on the bulbs. The walls were pasty and had numerous stains, the floors a plain concrete. A couple sat two doors down, needles discarded at their feet. One of them, a girl, slowly dropped her head to the other’s shoulder. I looked away as I heard her heart rate increase drastically in my ears. I held the side of my head as I tried to block it out. I didn’t know how to tune it out back then. Her heart stopped and I looked back at the spot. She still lay there, motionless.

“Mom,” I said, tugging at her sleeve as she locked the door behind us. “We need to help her,”

“Let’s go sweetie,” She looked at the couple and glared. She pulled my shoulder and directed me the other direction. I tried to fight, but she kept spinning me around when I tried. I gave up my efforts and we continued to the stairs. On one of the landings, a man in a hood lurked in the corner. My mother avoided eye contact, but I kept an eye on him as long as possible. I could hear the muscles in his face as he lowered his brow.

We left the building and I was shoved into my mother’s rental car. I sat in the passenger seat and peered out the window as my mother climbed into the driver’s seat. She pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. She pulled one out, lit it, then took a long drag. The sound of a black sludge in my mother’s lungs made my body shiver. The scent of smoking filled the car, causing me to cough at the smell alone.

She started driving and I continued to look out the window. I took attention to the streets of the Slabs. We had only lived there a few months now, forced to relocate after mom missed a few rent payments. 

“James, can you hear me?” The voice scared me, but my younger self did nothing in reaction. It wasn’t from this memory, and sounded like it was coming from a tunnel. Distant and filled with reverb. I tried to think hard about ripping myself from this Hellish nightmare, but my mind wasn’t strong enough and my thoughts were instead that of the things I saw on the way to my mother’s favorite bar. 

The doors of the car unlocked and I threw mine open. I waited on her to reach the other side of the car to start across the lot to the bar. As she did, her eyes rolled.

“Damn,” She grumbled.

I turned to look at the door and saw a familiar face approach from the front doors.

“Tiffany!” I shouted and ran forward. I extended my arms for a hug, and the social worker accepted it gladly. She smiled and squeezed while bent over. She left the hug and tried to keep her smile as she turned to my mother.

“Loraine, I thought you skipped town,”

“Not yet,” She said.

“You haven’t called me back about that inspection, or taken another drug test for us,” Tiffany informed her.

My mother had tried to get a job and tested positive for an assortment of narcotics. They informed Child Services and Tiffany had been breathing down her neck since, and for good reason.

“I haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Mom excused. “Not enough time, as always,”

“You have enough time to go to the bar,” Tiffany pointed out, glancing at the doors and then back at my mom. 

“I’m not having this conversation with you right now,” Mom growled as she walked past Tiff. I followed, afraid I would be punished otherwise. 

“You should at least get a babysitter, a bar is no place for a kid,” Tiffany called. My mom raised a finger behind her as she kept walking.

We entered the dark bar and found a seat in the middle of the room. My nostrils flared at the smell of alcohol. My mother waved at a man across the room and he made his way over. She then flicked her hand at me and shoo-ed me away. I slid my chair back and trudged to the dart board, a game everyone in the bar would never go near while intoxicated. It was my usual pass time while I was there.

I listened in as I threw a dart and it landed in the small circle around the bullseye.

“Do you have it?” She asked, tapping her foot.

The shady man nodded and I glanced over to see him passing her a bottle of pills under the table. I quickly turned my attention back to the board as my mom’s gaze went side to side. She sniffled and put the bottle in her purse. I threw another dart, this time with more force, and it went straight into the red circle in the middle. I looked back over and threw a dart blindly. It flew and hit the end of the last one, the one in the middle, and then fell to the ground.

The man had gone and my mom looked at me with a smile. I didn’t reciprocate.

The scene changed and I was walking out of the bathroom once again. It was a common spot for me to go whenever she got high, the acoustics inside made every loud noise outside seem far away. The echoes would pierce my hearing but eventually dissipate and I would be greeted with silence for a small period of time.

I knew what was going to happen next, and racked my brain to stop it, to leave the dream. My vision flashed and I saw the rails of a hospital bed, the beeps of a EKG. My brain interrupted and I was greeted with an image of my mother, her eyes half open and her breath still, just as her heart was. I could smell the chalkiness of the pills she had swallowed on her breath, mixed with cigarettes and alcohol. I felt tears welling in my eyes as my sight returned to the real world, finally.