Julia's Altar

[Tyler Durden]

Im pretty sure im gonna change the ending of this story but im not sure. Anyway, enjoy!

I pulled the Julia?s needle from the skin of my arm a few seconds ago. I?d forgotten it was there and when I had looked down a red wire thin stream had run it?s way down my arm onto the bed. As I look down at it I can still see the tornado of wasted morphine spinning like water down a drain, inside the thick glass cylinder. The shades are drawn and the sun is sinking down behind them. When I turn my head just right the thick hued orange light emits from the window. I flinch and shudder. I?m not sure whether it scares me or keeps me alert.

My legs are going numb as I sit Indian style on the bed. Julia?s hair is a strawberry blonde curtain on my lap. I?ve said Julia?s name a few times out loud to her and to myself. I keep hoping either she will wake up or I will. Julia hasn?t moved in 20 minutes since she handed her needle to me. I can feel the foam seeping out of her mouth dripping on my ankle. The return of feeling to my mind and body frightens me almost as much as Julia?s stillness.

Morphine shapes your whole body into a castle of considerably pleasant nausea. Every part of you just stays tight lipped and stubborn like a spoiled child. Control is so laborious that I drool indifferently as I push my legs clumsily off the bed. Julia?s head plops down on the sheet and all the foam and saliva in her mouth spills out all over the sheets. On the carpeted floor, sobbing like a dog on my hands and knees, I want to call someone. Nine one one maybe if I could get my fingers to move, but as I stumble onto the ground I have to focus all my concentration on sitting up. It takes a few minutes for me to stop saying her name.

Julia?s needle is compromised of glass and a distorted reflective metal, which, upon staring into it, pinches your face into a tight funhouse pucker. The needle reaches out as long as an index finger and at an angle, will only flash a dull glare. It might?ve been bright once expelling every glint of light that managed to run its way across. Countless plunges into warm flesh had dulled its arrogant shine. Penetrating those same scabbed over holes in a consistent rhythm of injections. Seconds, minutes, airless hours buried, neglected far within Julia?s arms or wherever she happened to abandon it, while slipping into that sweet surrender.

That dull thin point and its clouded glass cylinder had pierced and plunged into Julia in sporadic sessions of euphoria countless times. Now I leer at it, my head against the wall, legs curled up under my chin to catch the wet vices of my pathetic retching. My eyes closed and my hand clutching at the skin of my forearm, pierced and clotted.

I run my hand over Julia?s bare back as I kneel beside the bed. Her skin is a warm wet slab; a bruised purple curtained by the pale, almost transparent layer of white flesh of her lower back. I pull her shirt back down over her as I reluctantly take my hand away. I run my fingers through her thin blonde hair draped flatly over her shoulders and the mangled blanket beneath her and I want so desperately for it to be warm. I want her to sigh, engulfed in the intravenous ecstasy her needle had once again efficiently delivered. But she lays motionless trapped in that still quiet sleep.

Julia begins to roll slightly as I slowly pull the dust ball covered cotton blanket from beneath her. I force myself to look at the chipped white painted wall across the room until she has rolled completely on to her back and the bedspread is in my hands. I close my eyes and turn them away from the bed as I fling it out to cover Julia?s body. Her shape from under the covers seems to recall some royal Egyptian funeral ritual to my mind.

The goddesses were so beautiful that to cremate them was incomprehensible. But yet it was disrespectful to look upon they?re carcasses regardless of how beautiful they remained. White cloaks were draped over the bodies and left alone there to ascend to the heavens within they?re temples. The servants of the goddess, who cherished her more than any lives they could possibly lead, were often enclosed in the temples with the body.

I stare at the shape for what could be any amount of time before I lift the blanket from the bed and peer underneath. I climb under the blanket next to Julia, helplessly clinging to her. I pull the blanket over us.

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The alarm clock goes off at six forty five and echoes as I drift from sleep to wake. The numbers, seven zero one, blink in a steady rhythm and I look down at Julia lying under the covers. I pull them back slowly.
She faces the ceiling. Her expression of terror is watered down by the stillness of her face. The circles beneath her eyes, normally a lucid purple, are darker than I?ve ever seen them. Deep blue craters in her skin just clinging, drooping from her eyelids. The purple beneath the skin of her back has drifted to her face. It surfaces at her lips in a smooth potent violet.

I step out of the bed, placing my bare foot onto the ground and the sickness bites and holds into my gut. I crouch down sitting with my back against the bed and the sound of the alarm beats into my head monotonously.

My hands cover my ears. I stand, not with any kind of energy but with an adrenaline surge of anger. And tear the cord out of the wall. The sickness returns as the anger fades and forces me to crawl. I stumble into the bathroom clutching my gut, only at level with the toilet and drink the water from it. Once my parched throat is wet again I splash the water against my face and force myself with a feral groan onto my feet. Through the hole in the mirror I can see a vile inside the medicine cabinet. I don?t bother to open it, reaching my hand inside the hole. The skin on my index and middle fingers breaks on the glass and thick red blood drips down onto my palm.

I wrench the vile open, feverishly and dump its brown powdered contents onto the counter in thin lines, pulling them, burning and itching into my nostrils. It?s been months since I?ve had to snort. Pain in my nose rips its way up my sinuses and fades into a vortex of numbness as it reaches my head. I sit down on the toilet and wait for the pain in my stomach to subside.

Walking out of the bathroom clear and painless I expect Julia to turn and point those gray pools of heaven towards me. I put my hands up and brace myself in the doorway and wait for her to ask me to cook one up for her. For her to tell me the needle is in her shoe. For her to beg me please. She doesn?t say anything. I don?t get to scream at her. I don?t get the bathroom door slammed in my face. I don?t get to tell her I?m sorry.

There is a brutal knock on the door and time seems to stop as I wait for it again. My heart strains in my chest in fear of whoever is behind that door, and from the amount of powder I just inhaled. Julia used to sell to a lot of different users. Especially when it came down to rent time. We would always manage find some gray skinned pathetic addict just begging to be ripped off. Who ever it was on the other side of that door, the thought of it being one of those hollow eyed, loose shirted street demons scares the breath out of my chest. I crouch down in the door and pray that who ever it is doesn?t begin to scream for Julia. But another part of me just waits on the edge of curiosity, wonder what is on the other side. Whether it?s my landlord or some desperate fiend scratching his finger nails down to bloody stumps. These sidewalk creatures have no qualms about slitting your throat for a quarter worth. I hold my breath and wait for the knocking to stop.

I hear heavy steps clunking away from the door and down the hall, and I want to believe a pair of high heels is making that sound but it could just as easily be a pair of boots. Big boots, for a big person, waiting to come in here and take Julia away. When the echo of footsteps disappears down the stairs I crawl on my hands and knees into the bed and curl into that dejected fetal cling against Julia.

The sweet stale fragrance of cigerettes has started to drift from her body, and I?m tempted, almost begging myself to see if the inside of her mouth retains that familiar taste. It is dawning on me that she is slowly slipping into being the shell of the person I love. I slide my hand under Julia?s shirt and run my hand across her smooth stomach. All the warmth, breath and life that made her my angel, has faded and I realize it for the first time. I want to ask her who was outside the door.

Julia?s betrayals in life didn?t have much effect on me I?m sure except for a larger degree of withdrawal. But in death she has betrayed me in the worst possible way. She has left me with the unknown. I want to hate her for that but her skin is so soft and cold.

I stare with my head against Julia?s abdomen. I stare at the light from outside which seeps through the crack beneath the door. I watch just to make sure the pair of feet doesn?t appear to eclipse that familiarity I am trying desperately to rely on. I stare at that door for hours until I fall asleep.

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The smell wakes me. Not the screaming of the neighbors that vibrates through the paper-thin walls. Not the quiet piercing sound of cars honking in the traffic outside. Not the gun shots. The smell. The sour sweet scent that lingers and tangs like bile on the back of your throat. Lying under my head is the pale green rotting shell of my Venus. Her glow gone and replaced by the stench of a decaying animal. But my disgust is with myself. My goddess lies here on her altar. All her glory and beauty for me to cling to in this wretchedness. Here is perfection, and the only thoughts I can muster are disgust.

Sick to my stomach, I rise from her altar. It is dark outside and the machines have come out to cater to the men. They make sounds out on the roads that reach into my head and pull the comfort and quiet from its walls. They reach behind my eyes and tear at anything their serrated claws can lacerate. I can only imagine the light being worse so I leave the light switch off, stumbling into the bathroom. Even with the light off I can see my skin stretched out over my cheekbones so the sharp corners poke out of my face. The cabinet is filled with empty vials. We used to turn them over on they?re heads to show that they were depleted. An army of vacant vials lined up and not one to make this sickness go away.

I lurch over to the dresser in the room being careful not to touch the altar and pull the drawer open. I strip off my thinning putrid rags and pull fresh clothes on. Beneath the clothes is our gun. Black and iridescent like solidified oil as I hold it up out of the drawer into the light of the city outside. My new clothes fit loosely but I?m indifferent. I pull the clip out of the gun and the click makes me to my stomach. The sour smell is stronger now and my head begins to throb. I push the clip into the gun again and stuff it down into the back of my pants. As I reach over to the dresser to pull the key from the counter it the light beneath the door begins to slowly eclipse in the dark.

The knock slashes against the inside of my head and I can almost feel the fluid dripping down from the wound as I step back apprehensively. The hinges twitch and scream as metal scrapes against wood, warping the thing wood of the door. Shaking and keeping that chill at the bottom of my spine where it belongs. I lose my footing and stumble back against the bathroom door catching my grip. The knock comes again. I crawl into the bathroom and slam the door inside pressing up, helpless and shivering against the sink. A voice comes from the outside. I can?t even hear it and I begin to shriek helplessly, spittle falling from my lips.

I reach up and turn the faucet on as hard as it will go to drown out the screaming and that miserable rapping of knuckles against the door. I wait there; knowing the gun is pressed against my lower back. Knowing it?s loaded with a full clip of 16 shots. Knowing all I have to do is pull the trigger, and I tremble. The cabinet door beside my head trembles and taps incessantly in the terrified rhythm of my body. I focus on that rhythm and wait for the noise to stop.


I?ve been sick against the cabinet door several times now. A puddle of clear stomach fluid has found its way across the panel wood floors under the door and into the room outside. I lean against the bathtub, unsure if the knocking has stopped, and unable to focus on anything but the sound of the water running in that TV static discord. I reach up and turn the water up and wait to hear the voice, and the pounding. There is none.

The door is heavier than I remember as I push it open into our bedroom. Pitch black except for that line of orange light beneath the door. The orange light that reaches out as far as it can, across the floor until it stops just before the bathroom door. Where I kneel staring at Julia.

I crawl over the light carefully and climb back into the bed, shaking and shivering from trembling of my insides. The smell is stronger now and along with the unbearable, searing pain in every conceivable part of my body to accompany it, it is impossible to fall asleep. The lights of the city are piercing needles on the insides of my eyelids and I begin to gag uncontrollably on the emptiness of my stomach. I roll onto my side and hug myself as I stare at Julia. My angel?s eyes aren?t gray anymore. They?ve receded from her sockets somewhere into her head. That is all of my goddess I can bear to look at and I close my eyes.


Somewhere between consciousness and repose, I retch on my own tongue with a start. I roll over in one swift nearly painless motion to see that the orange light on the floor has been eclipsed by something outside the door. It comes louder now, as if there are multiple hands reaching out, and pounding on the door to the altar to take my goddess away from me. The light and the doorknob begin to shuffle and with my I push my twitching hand behind me. The cold press of the gun is still retained against my lower back.

There are voices outside now. Some part of me wants them to be female; some part of me wants to hear high-heeled shoes outside that door. But with the thick baritone mumbles I know without faltering that they have come to take her.

I pull the cold black weapon from behind me and with one of the last ounces of strength in my body I lift myself against the wall in front of the bed. I look down at her. Her black eye sockets and purple peeling lips. I inhale her scent, the caustic scent of her shell as I lean down to press my lips against those cold crusted lips. She is more frigid than any cold I have ever known. Outside the door I hear a jingling (of bells?) and the high pitched indistinguishable notes vibrate into my already excruciating skull.

Tears, warmer than this room has been in days, burn they?re way down my cheekbones. The doorknob begins to turn; the orange light from beneath the door, stretching around the reflective brass. As the door begins to open and the orange light floods in I close my eyes. I lift the gun and pull the trigger.


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This is his Head

[erisesoteric]

Nice, Tyler, very nice.

[Chilimuffin]

ahem. wow.