The way the lad’s head was nodding was strange considering he was awake. On the third dip he slumped almost completely but a shout stopped him from crashing his forehead against the floor. In the day-dream from which he had just been startled a fine mist of heroin swirled in the light above the skeletal heads. Fields of people all stretching and swaying. They reached up for the dust as it passed. Millions of them all desperate and grasping and trying to catch the wind. The dust pulled up from them all the warmth. Thin hands let go of each other as they reached. The dust and the massless rotating with the earth. The minutes and the days and hours. The slow turning of Heaven and hell. A passing that pulled the person right off the soul. Devoured the wine in the blood. They were emptied. There was nothing left when with a great wrenching sinewy rip the body’s bread parts like Velcro ever smaller and smaller. The flesh crumbling into the  room with the floating brown powder.  Only the bones are left. Burnt black against the light. The shadow cast from a flickering flame beneath a spoon.  

“Throw another cup of bash in lad. Lad? Lad? Lad!” Sticky said raising his voice. The lad’s head jerked as if from sleep but as usual he did as he was told and scooped a cupful of the white chalk-like powder from the barrel and added it to the heroin already in the bowl. Sticky was folding it in with his surgical-gloved hands. Caressing it. Like a chef tenderly mixing the last of the flour and coco. Some people used blenders. But not Sticky. A blender would lose a bit in the mixing. 

More dust spiraled upwards into the solitary beam of light that cut through the lad’s small back bedroom. The light allowed in by a chink in the vertical blinds. Sticky and the lad knelt on the laminate floor. Hunched over the bowl in the near empty room. Prostrated above the alter. Chanting in the beam of light. An old brown leather armchair in one corner and a steel hydraulic press by the window. 

“We will have to test a bit.” Sticky said.

“I’m not smoking it.” The lad replied. 

Sticky laughed. It wasn’t a kind sound. “I mean check to see it’s running clear with the bash. Come on lad this is not your first time.” 

The lad forced out his own laugh. It sounded empty and made him feel hollow. A thing far away. His thoughts pulsating like heart beats into the world. “I’m already a bit floaty from being in this room” he might of said. 

The dust got everywhere. Into every pore. Every crevice and wrinkle. Antagonised every receptor. They did once wear masks when bashing up but not anymore. Sticky had explained that it was always a good idea having a bit in your system. Judges go easier on grafters that are selling to feed their own habit. But the lad didn’t sell it. Hated the stuff more than most. The lad had watched as it killed his mother and put him and his baby sister into care. But Sticky was one of his oldest mates and he needed somewhere to bash up. And the lad still owed him a few quid from years back. So that was that. 

He kept on mixing in silence for another minute then satisfied it was bashed evenly he removed the gloves. Tossed them onto the leather armchair. 

Then rummaging in his tracksuit bottoms Sticky took out some foil and a lighter. At this point a kilo of Bobby had been mixed with half a kilo of the bash. Bobby was another name for heroin. Heroin a.k.a Bobby Brown a.k.a Bobby. The bash was taken from a large wooden like drum. Almost a barrel. Stamped across it something in Chinese writing. No not stamped. Burnt. Like the markings from a branding iron.   

A hot nourishing dirty smell. The heroin on the foil bubbling and hissing when Sticky put the flame beneath. The brown powder now liquid slithering elegantly across the shiny surface. Like a rat snake hunting on a pool of mercury.