Edge Walking. Chap 10: Butter. Pure Freakin' Butter.
#10 of Edge Walking
"Edge Walking"
By: Cauldron O Boyfur
Notes and Warnings: While this chapter of "Edge Walking" does not include any yif, I feel that I must catagorize this under ADULT due to the fact that it revolves around crack cocaine usage (not to mention that the main character spends about all of Chap. 10 in his undies). Crack is the epicenter of this piece, and the penmanship goes into tedious detail about usage of the drug, including the preparation, paraphernalia, smoking, and feelings which encompass the drug's high. For this reason, an extended warning is aimed at those readers who may have used the drug in the past and are in the lifelong process of trying to stay clean and sober. If, while reading, you feel urges to use, then I implore you to not to continue on reading. I'd put my head in an oven if I caused someone to relapse on this menacing drug.
There is a mentioning of the album "Trick of the Tail" in this chapter. This is copyrighted to the band "Genesis", 1976, and was originally released by Atco Records. I'm using it without permission, but I doubt I'll be sued over it, so whatever.
Chapter 10: Butter. Pure Freakin' Butter.
Characters:
Jamie: 16 year old white bunny. Male.
Carwyn: 22 year old orange fox. Male.
Four inch by four inch sheet rattling and rustling with a reverberating sound, metallic in nature. Jamie always believed that if aliens spoke gibberish, the lingo would sound akin to aluminum foil being contorted by earthling paws. Especially paws of a crackhead.
It was Carwyn who was tediously making divots in the metal sheet (careful not to puncture holes with filed fox claws). In the meantime, Jamie (fresh from the shower, wearing only black bikini briefs and his Star of David necklace) gazed in awestruck reverence at the glass vial bridging his thumb and trigger-paw. More accurately, the bunny's very dark brown eyes were visually stapled to the contents of the vial. Gorgeous pebbles, with ultra-light yellow hue like a bleached banana. Eyes of the teenaged bunny were jacked open as tarsier eyes, unable to subdue the excitement of beholding the most glorious grams of crack cocaine he'd ever come across.
"You want me to shape the tooter, or do you wanna do it?," Carwyn asked.
Jamie spoke, yet failed to answer the question. "Good God of and in heaven, this rock is un-friggin-believable." The boy's white paws were so jittery with anticipation, one could have mistaken him to have already been bewitched by the speedy pebbles.
Carwyn smiled, with firsthand knowledge that his bunny buddy wouldn't be let down. "Just wait till you taste it," the fox forewarned, taking hold of a pencil. It was one of those large, cigar-sized novelty pencils, something Carwyn had won years ago with tickets from playing skee-ball at the arcades. Just the perfect size and shape to construct a freebase tooter.
Roughly five inches were unraveled from the foil's roll before being cut off. That sheet was taken in orange paws and re-wrapped around the pencil. Tightly, like a strait jacket. Very tightly, as to not allow space between rolled layers for the oily smoke to seep into and crust up (thus, subsequently, pretty much wasted).
Unsheathing the pencil from it's aluminum jacket, the hollow cylinder was an trumpet announcing the commencement of drug time. "Alright. Almost done here," a fully dressed Carwyn told his underwear-clad friend. "All we need now is some music. Jamie, pick out something to spin."
"Awesome," Jamie said with jaunty excitement. Finally putting down the crack vial, the bunny now took a glance at the big cardboard box housing dozens upon dozens of 12 inch vinyl records. As a fan of some older 70's rock and 80's electronica, Jamie was curious to flip his way through the collection and see what his friend's musical tastes consisted of. He also wanted to play one, as he'd long missed the record player from his childhood days, a record player which had been pawned off for a little hunk of crack which only lasted his mother twenty minutes. He wanted to watch a record spin around and around while listening to the subtle earthiness of vinyl sound, as opposed to the polished and oftentimes over-trebleized mixing accompanying the remastering jobs done for most CD releases of old time albums. "Um, would you mind if I put a record on the turntable instead of a CD."
"CDs. What are these CDs you speak of?," Carwyn said with a sarcastic laugh. "Dude, all I really have are vinyls, so yeah, that's what I expected you to play anyways. Notice how I said 'pick out something to SPIN', not 'something to PUT IN.'"
Leaving the crack vial on the bed, Jamie hopped down from Carwyn's bed to make his auditory decision. As he perused through the records, Carwyn opened the glass tube and expelled the rocks onto a mirror right next to where he was sitting. With an exacto knife, he lopped off a tiny chip of crack from the largest of the rocks, and placed it in one of the divots.
It seemed that the two had nearly identical interests in their choice of musical acts. After making his way through the "Yes" albums, Jamie broke into smile at the stockpile of "Genesis" albums that Carwyn had. Every studio and live album, from the band's first obscure outing in the 60's (with the fox Peter Gabriel at lead vocals) to the final pop-oriented album they made with the bear Phil Collins at the helm of the mic. Jamie settled on the first Phil-sung album, "Trick of the Tail", which featured the quartet still engrossed in their artsy, progressive-rock phase, before selling their souls to the demon of throwaway, radio-friendly pop. Pulling the record from it's sleeve, he handled it like a baby, touching only the edges of the album, prudently placing it upon the rotating base. The playing of one of his favorite albums, however, was hindered by the inability to register where the ON switch (or button, or whatever) was.
"How do you turn this thing on?," he asked, with his back still turned to Carwyn. He heard a reply given, but it wasn't the fox's voice. No, instead, his bunny ears picked up the sound of a flicking lighter. He turned around to see Carwyn already fulfilling his chemical hunger, the tooter in his mouth dangling down, hovering an inch above the foil where the crack rested upon. An inch or so under the foil's belly was the lighter, melting the rock. Carwyn inhaled upon the sight of smoke, slightly moving his mouth to the side, chasing the gravity-defying oil, which was running from the lighter's heat. He pretty much got it all, dropped the lighter to take the tooter out of his mouth, and kept his breath held. He'd held it, allowing the smoke to molest the alveoli in his lungs, then discharging it back into the air.
"What you gotta do is pick up the needle, and bring it to the right until it clicks on," he said after taking the maiden hit. It took Jamie a few seconds to even realize that Carwyn said anything, as he felt slightly pissed off at what the fox had done. 'Selfish son of a bitch, I should've gotten the first taste,' he thought to himself. Jamie didn't even see how much his friend took for himself. For all the bunny knew, Carwyn could've smoked a whole rock (although the smoke quantity let off certainly suggested that it wasn't that grand).
"You wanna hit?," Carwyn asked, breaking off another piece.
'What kinda question is that?,' Jamie thought to himself. 'He knows I want some, hell, he even brought it up at the breakfast table to get me excited.' Bringing the turntable to life, and placing the needle at the vinyl's edge, he said, "Um, yeah, I do." There was a twinge of dissatisfaction in his voice as he walked back to the bed, with the cocaine-appropriate song "Dance on a Volcano" hammering open the album.
The chipped pebble was already placed on the aluminum base. Jamie took hold of it with anxious paws, hoping that the high hopes he had for the crack's purity wouldn't disintegrate into disappointment. With tooter to the right side of his twin teeth, Jamie lit up. Simply from the way it melted, he could tell it wasn't cut with anything but baking soda, and the baking soda it was cut with wasn't much either. It was more like the offspring of crack and base-cocaine than typical Phurrydelphian street crack. It smoked, but didn't sizzle or spatter in the process. The oil dragon merely disappeared into smoke, which Jamie vacuumed into his mouth. Catching all the smoke, another inhalation sent the vapor down his larynx. Even before exhaling, the bunny already felt something. More accurately, feeling diverted from his lips, teeth and gums, slightly numbing him up to the nose.
Watching Jamie emit smoke, Carwyn asked, "So, big boy, how was it?"
"Amazing," Jamie said. He hadn't actually felt the effects of the drug in that short a span of time, but due to the melting, the taste, the creaminess of the smoke, and the numbing of his oral cavity, he could already tell that when the rush would set in, it would be no less than stellar.
"Nice. Well, we're gonna finish it all off before going into work, so let's get it on!," Carwyn exclaimed. Cutting a piece for himself, he added, "Nice album choice by the way."
"Yeah, I'm a huge Genesis fan," Jamie decreed.
"So am I. First concert I ever went to was at the Vet to see "The Way We Walk" tour. Thirty-first of May 1992. Still the best concert I ever attended, although, probably like you, I think their older stuff from the seventies blows away their more recent stuff."
Plating his gaseous meal, Carwyn took another hit. But it was Jamie who was beginning to feel the ethereal elation. Elevated heart rate, a sense of newfound wonder, an inexplicable fight-or-flight response taking hold of his body as adrenaline and endorphins began jostling his jouncing nerves.
Armed with chemically constructed wings, Jamie chose flight.
On the second hit, he coughed; quite a rarity with crack. Now he really felt it. He'd be chasing the high the rest of the time, he knew it, but still, he felt wonderful. "Butter! This stuff is pure freakin butter!"
Jamie never cared for heroin, or any other opiate. He'd used it in the past, felt it's euphoria, and experienced the temporary life-hiatus which enticed its users, but still, it didn't do it for him. Watching the movie "Trainspotting" and hearing the famous otter actor, Ewan McGregor state about heroin's euphoria, "Take the best orgasm you ever had, times it by a thousand, and you're still nowhere near it," made Jamie think that the Scotsman must've been having really shitty sex. The long-ear found much more satisfaction in pawing off than in a hit of heroin.
It was crack which he craved. While opiates ensnared their users in the palm of Death, crack brought life. An abundance of it, and, in the case of overdosing, an over-abundance of it, to the point where the user's body shuts down in shock, experiencing more life than God had intended for any of his critters and creatures.
Of course, achieving such lofty heights, one would never want to be grounded ever again, which is why crack was the least satisfactory of all drugs. Why it was the most addictive of all drugs.
As high as Jamie ever got, it was never enough, until he was swimming through the clouds of heaven. He'd never made it, yet never learned. Always, "Just one more hit, and I'll be there." Be it a thousand hits later, he still wasn't there, but it was always there in the next hit. Always one more until he'd be sated.
This was the closest to heaven that Jamie had ever come with crack. He and Carwyn had ripped through over three quarters of the stash, before the fox called a temporary halt, going into his bathroom to take a leak. Nearly the entire fifty seven seconds that Carwyn was out of site, Jamie contemplated taking a hit, though it wasn't his turn. The addict in him said that it wouldn't be wrong, easily justifiable when considering that Carwyn had inconsiderately taken the first hit for himself anyway. Jamie assuaged those thoughts by rerouting his attention to the music, listening to the lyrics of "Mad Man Moon" which were ever so poignant to his current drug-induced situation.
"When the evil of a snowflake in June
Could still be a source of relief.
'Oh, how I love you,' I once cried long ago
But I was the one who decided to go
And search beyond the final crest
Though I'd heard it said just birds could dwell so high.
So I pretended to have wings for my arms
And took off in the air.
I flew to places which the clouds never see
Too close to the deserts of sand
Where a thousand mirages, the shepherds of lies
Forced me to land and take a disguise..."
Carwyn refreshed, came out of the bathroom. Sitting back on the bed, looking to the mirror, where the rocks lay, was the immediate action he took. He studied the dwindling stash for a moment, certain that there should've been more.
"Were you smoking while I was in the bathroom?"
"What? No."
"Are you sure?," Carwyn asked like a stern parent.
Jamie was getting annoyed, falsely accused for stealing something which he didn't, even though he was thinking about it. He should've taken some after all, if Carwyn was going to put blame on him anyway. He snapped back, "What the hell do you mean, am I sure? I didn't touch anything."
"OK," his friend replied in a tone that said 'Thief.'
Knowing that Carwyn wasn't convinced, Jamie used his last refuge. Taking the Star of David in his palm, and stating with conviction, "I swear, I didn't touch any while you were in the bathroom."
Seeing the pendant enveloped in the Jewish boy's paw, Carwyn said, "OK, OK, I believe you." This time it was said with belief of the bunny's words.
Black cotton against white fur. Hanging his head down, that was all Jamie could see. The black bikini briefs which Sheila (who was currently in her room, shooting heroin) had bought for him the previous afternoon, snugly housing his midsection and all it's contents. Contents which didn't amount to much.
"Why did Sheila buy me black underpants?," Jamie asked Carwyn, who was brushing his hair.
Still looking at the mirror, Carwyn answered, "I don't know. Why, what's wrong with them?"
Jamie kept his eyes on the nearly-neglectable bulge between his legs. "Well, cuz they say that black clothing makes whatever it's covering look smaller and thinner."
"Yeah, so? What's your point?"
"Well, why'd she choose black then. I mean, isn't it, you know." Jamie blushed, about to bring up one of his more self-conscious problems. "Isn't it, like, small enough anyway? Why does it need to look smaller in black clothing?"
Now Carwyn put the brush down turning to look at his friend, who, although tweaking from the crack they'd just finished, was hunched over. "You're not talking about your dick, are you?"
"Yeah, I am. It's small."
A sigh came from Carwyn. "Jamie, let me just tell you, in my business, I've already been with bunnies. Full grown male bunnies, a good amount of em' and I got news for you, they're all small."
"But I'm small even for a bunny," Jamie said in defeat, sinking further into his own self-pity.
Strangely, Carwyn put on a smile. "It's not small, it's just... it's cute. And it's cuteness makes you even cuter. And you are cute, Jamie. I mean it. You're really friggin cute. You've got a body to die for."
'I am dying for it', Jamie thought to himself, recalling all the times he'd hunched over a toilet with fingers down his throat, going to the depths of hell (the back of his esophagus) to prevent himself from gaining any weight. To prevent fat from tarnishing his body. A body which others, like Carwyn, claimed to be cute. A body which Jamie could only pinpoint flaws in, and hate himself for.
In physical terms, he was all ready for his first day of bartending alongside Sheila. No longer in just black undies anymore, Jamie had changed into his work clothes, which really didn't consist of much more. Just black short shorts held up by black suspenders. His shorts were so short that had he been wearing boxers instead of bikinis, the leg openings would fall far below the bottom of his outerwear. He'd be wearing just that, all day, serving food and drink to horny, homosexual furs whom he'd never met. Wolves, bears, and others who wanted nothing more than to bang his bunny brains out.
The clothes made him feel sexy, no question, but they didn't help to mollify the phantasmagoric cataclysm of fears ricocheting around his thoughts. Mentally, he wasn't sure he was ready for his first day of work at the "Cha-Ching" Gentleman's Club and Cocktail Lounge. Yet, prepared or not, he was going to go and begin a new phase of his working life. He'd do it, not only for himself, but on behalf of his coworkers, the best support system he could ever ask for. Nikodim, Carwyn, and Sheila. He'd go to work and bartend his cottony tail off for them. They, who housed him, who befriended him, who were providing proof to Jamie that God was listening and responding to his prayers. They, who loved him as one of their own.