the war on drugs

This is a short story that I wrote ten years ago. I clicked on my old blog this morning looking for a particular picture and saw all these drafts of short stories that I either never finished or just never published. Probably because these didn't really fit in with my mommy blog persona. All of them are pretty dark, so I'm thinking they might fit in better here. Re-reading them I truly understand why I never posted them for my fellow mommy bloggers.

So I present to you, unnamed story #1. This is a work of fiction and any names and situations (and personality traits) are purely coincidental. This event didn't happen ten years ago or any other time in my life. 

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

My brother texted me at midnight.

120 mg of adderall and i can't stop moving.

I laughed in spite of the text. Oh, my younger brother. Never content with life. Always trying to get the next fix. At least he's only hurting himself and no one else. I can respect that. I texted back.

You're never going to sleep again. Why did you take so much at once?

Cody told me to.

To my knowledge, Owen had never taken anything speedy. His preferred way to deal with life was whiskey. And I would slide a couple xanax to him from time to time, although after that one time I left him alone in my house and he ate everything including my "emergency Totino's pizza," I stopped leaving him alone in my house with benzos. So it was a bit amusing to think about him pacing around his house until morning. Like a normal person, I put my phone in airplane mode and went to sleep, fully expecting a novel worth of texts in the morning. I was not disappointed.

I'm hyper as hell 12:14 am

i work tomorrow and can't stop. still going lol 2:41 am

i'm goign to freaking rave into the night. drank a 750 ml of whiskey and dont feel nething. just ready to attack the day. Go go go go 3:10 am

i'm still up. haaven't even laid down and i'm getting ready for work. 7:49 am

Waking up refreshed and ready to take on the day, I was definitely not jealous of his position. I decided to give him some space and texted him later in the day to ask how he felt, but he didn't answer. Instead he called me back later.

"Hey Owen. Why aren't you asleep?"

"My jaw is so sore. I don't know what I did to it."

I start laughing. "Of course your jaw hurts. You took a crapton of amphetamines."

"So?"

"So you were unconsciously grinding your jaw all night long."

"I'll be ok?  Are my teeth going to all fall out? I really think some of them feel a lot looser?"

"Yeah. You're fine. For future reference, you need to back down on your dosage and maybe chew some gum. Otherwise you're just going to be cranking on your jaw again."

I hung up the phone and laughed about it with my husband. My family dynamic with my younger brother has been a pretty close one since adulthood. We both are kind of black sheep of the family, albeit I am a bit more secretive about things than he is. He often comes to me with random problems that he wouldn't feel comfortable confiding in with our other brother. In fact, my two brothers don't really get along at all, and I am often playing mediator in heated situations. I honestly don't know when this shift happened, because Owen used to drive me crazy when we were younger. 

The next night I got a text from Owen.

Plz ask Duncan what to do about a locked jaw.

Oh yay. This should be fun. Duncan is our older brother who is, conveniently, a pharmacist. Duncan is a bit of a follow-all-the-rules kind of guy. He's smart, and friendly, but he plays by all the rules, all of the time. I knew that I was going to get a lecture of some sort, even if I didn't give away all the details.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Duncan, best brother ever!" (Best to start off positive.)

"Hey, Lou. What's going on?"

"I have a work related question for you."

"Ok. Shoot."

"What do you do for a locked jaw?"

"How did you lock your jaw?"

"Oh. It's not me. This is for a friend."

There was a long pause. I could hear him sigh. He knew where this was going.

I decided it was best to just rush in at once. "Listen to everything before you start speaking, because this question is for a friend. It is not my problem, so don't go jumping to any conclusions. My friend took some adderall and initially their jaw got sore, but two days later it is officially locked up."

"Was this your friend's prescription to take?"

"No, but-"

"Your friend shouldn't take medicine that doesn't belong to them. Haven't they seen the anti-drug commercials lately? The government is really starting to crack down on drug abuse."

Now it was my turn to sigh. "I know this. But my friend knows that my brother is a pharmacist and they thought maybe you could offer them some unbiased help. Obviously they were mistaken."

"Tell your friend to take some ibuprofen to help with inflammation. They should try and keep their jaw as relaxed as possible, and use a warm compress a few times a day. It might take a couple weeks, but their jaw should slowly begin to loosen. And please, please reinforce to them not to take other people's medication."

Then he hung up without saying goodbye. Sometimes I really understand why Owen doesn't get along with Duncan very well. I passed along the info to Owen, who didn't seem very excited that he didn't have an immediate solution.

When I turned on my phone the next morning there was a text from the middle of the night from Owen.

come over asap

I tried calling him, but there was no answer. So I threw on some clothes and headed out the door. Owen lived about twenty minutes away, but I got stuck in traffic and it took close to an hour. I knocked on his door and there was no answer. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in. I could hear muted noises from the back bedroom, so I followed them. I didn't want to walk in on Owen doing anything compromising, so I knocked on his bedroom door. It was immediately met by silence.

"Owen?" I called out.

A second later a man's voice that I didn't recognize answered, "You can come in. But watch your step."

I opened the door, but didn't go further than the doorway as I took in the sight. Owen was restrained to his bed with various chains, and caution tape draped over his body. He looked at me with fear in his eyes. As I slowly edged closer it was then that I noticed the tiny man on his chest with a megaphone. The tiny man was wearing a shirt advertising the current anti-drug campaign.

"What's going on?" I asked the tiny man.

Yelling through the megaphone the man said, "This young man has ingested large quantities of substances that do not belong to him. His teeth have been cemented together, as well as his jaw permanently fused so that he cannot partake in this illegal debauchery anymore."

Dumbfounded, I probed further. "How did you know to find him?"

"We are part of a government funded project. Whenever someone receives a class C prescription, the doctor codes their body with a special repellent that keeps us from hatching. When someone takes a pill without a prescription, their body doesn't host the repellent and we are hatched from the pills. We work from the inside out, insuring that these drug abusing scumbags have to find a better hobby with their time."

As the tiny man finished his little speech, another man crawled out of Owen's mouth, pushing his lips apart like heavy curtains.

"What happens when your job is finished?"

"I don't know. I've never been hatched befo-"

And at that moment, the two tiny men spontaneously combusted.

I looked at Owen, who shrugged, and motioned towards a bottle of whiskey and some tubing in the corner of his room. Ah, whiskey enema. I guess some things never change.