The first of many. It's a new school year as I sit in the patio of my high school. The parking lot is just sixty yards away from where I'm sitting. F8D99N pulls up and I recognize it immediately as my friend Guifi”s car. A white mini van with custom rims that I tease him about. Guifi is a weird name, and since it means dream in some ancient language we just call him Lucid. For now on I will refer to him as Lucid because it's simpler to pronounce.

7GHJ9N I resonate the car's license with my long time crush. That's what I do I memorize license plates for fun.

I watch her step out of her Honda but I am quickly snapped out of my haze when Lucid comes over and throws his back pack at me. “Tonight's the big night. Are you ready for a pay day.” he says referring to the concert tonight.

“If it includes money I'm always ready” I say. In a small town like ours there is not much to do for the youth, so anytime there is a public event that isn't held by some church, the whole school is bound to go.

“So did you get what you needed?”

“Easy as pie. I just had to make a few phone calls” I replied. He joins me on the floor and brings out a magazine and starts eating candy.

Two years ago I started dealing drugs to help my unemployed mother with the bills and now that she's away I do it to survive. I don't like the idea of drugs as much as I like the idea of money. I only sell two type of drugs and that's ecstasy and pot. I sell these because I believe these are the drugs that help open your consciousness and heals your aura. I'm all about spreading awareness. The government lies, aliens built the Pyramids, television brainwashes people, and things of that nature. I have my theories about the government. I choose not to grasp so heavily on any crazy ideas. Mostly I believe in the human body just a manifestation of energy and that's why I live the way I do.

I'm not one of those guys who is all “make love not war” because I believe that there is order in everything. Chaos and Peace have to coexist. If there is no war maybe God would get bored with us. I also believe there is no problem a good book can't fix.

I look around in the hallways of my school and see slime and angst written on people's sleeves. I have no idea why these people idolize these petty celebrities that have no talent. Horror movie fantasies are all coming true because when I look at the zoo that is my school I see brain dead zombies. People get the idea that if you have money or good looks you can get somewhere in life. Trust funds run out and style doesn't get you money in the real world.

The bell rings and lunch is over so we all go to our sixth period class. My sixth period class is Algebra. The teacher spits when she talks and her lecture was full of precipitation I presume. I have a seat in the back so I lay my head down and ponder things. Things normal teens do not care about.

I think about the TV programs that show people getting drunk, having sex and using drugs. I don't own a television because I hate to listen to people destroy themselves. I believe god played doctor on the seventh day and diagnosed the planet with a case of humans. Sadly it's fatal.

I stop my thoughts and start thinking about the money I'm gonna make tonight. Drug dealing is all math and lies. It's a get rich quick scheme that is the most dependable stock one can invest in. See what you do is you start off with around three hundred and fifty dollars. You find a good supplier that is willing to trust you enough to make a deal. The deal that you make is you get a half pound for the price of a quarter. Fifty percent off. When you sell that whole half pound you will have made a hundred percent profit. You take seventy five percent of the money and give it to your supplier. Fifty percent of that being for a new half pound and the other twenty five percent being for his cut of what you sell. You in turn get to keep twenty five percent and that's your profit. You just repeat that til you make enough. There is always going to be clients in a small town waiting for you to sell them relief. There are a lot of teenage mothers in my high school because there is nothing to do but have sex and do drugs.

I have a few clients long time clients. Here is my system to not get caught. When I first get started I didn't know who I could trust. So I came up with a signature for my product. A childhood card game called Pokemon came to mind. When you buy a deck of Pokemon cards you get a few good ones and a holographic one if your lucky. Mostly there is a lot of useless cards like energy cards from each kind of Pokemon. So I had a box of Pokemon cards, a lot which were useless “energy” cards. So I took all the Psychic energy cards. I bend the top right hand corn over. So I have one trust worthy person I give him a card and two extra for him to give anybody he fully trusts. Since probably a lot of kids have these cards I know which one are mine by the bent corner and a white dot on the back. He wouldn't notice a the white dot on the back and he would assume the bend in the corner was from it being in my pocket. So when he or any of his friends try to come with a card I would be able to tell if I could trust them or not. That is my system. It works for me and I like it.



School ends and I get dropped off at my home by Lucid. I throw down my back pack and rummage through the fridge for a sandwich. Since I live alone my uncle comes over and checks on me at least once a week. He's a old philosopher type man. He walks to the fridge and grabs a beer. We sit down and he ask if I would like to play a game of chess with him.

I admire my uncle and his obsession with chess. Chess is a metaphor for life. Make the right moves and you have the power. Every move has to be contemplated and planned if you want to be victorious. Manipulate and exploit the lesser people, the pawns, and protect the important people. I make moves the affect the other players decision and moves and then bang, checkmate, your dead.

“Goodbye dude” my uncle says. He and I have a inside joke where I'm training him to speak more modern. Otherwise he wraps everything he says in metaphors and he will sound like a college professor. He goes over to his truck, H7OFG5, and before getting in he throws up a peace sign. I chuckle at his attempts.

My uncle has been the only family I have since my mom has been in and out of rehab for her drinking addiction. She would spend time in rehab and then get sent to a psychiatric hospital for running away from the rehab. It was the cycle much like that of a werewolf because she always did get sicker around the full moons.

I shake the thought of my mom out of my head and walk over to my room to take a small nap before the concert tonight.

In my dream I'm crippled still while sitting with my legs cross in dark body of water. It feels nice until anxiety drills a hole in my chest and I feel something dark, something evil coming towards me. I panic and I can suddenly move my body again and I throw my fingers to my eyes trying to pry them open. The scene changes and I'm in my driveway crawling on all fours. My mouth as dry as sandpaper. I have this blue vomit coming from my mouth and my nose blows blue snot bubbles. I cry out for my mother and then I collapse.

I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the night stand by my bed. I grab it and answer without looking who is calling.

“Hello whose this?” I choke out as my voice cracks.

“Arch is that you? You sound like s***, you alright?” my friend Curtis asks on the other line. My supplier. My branch of the network of drug dealers in Texas.

“Yeah I'm fine, what's up?”

“There's a meeting and the warehouse tomorrow and it's mandatory. I'll pick you up at ten. Something about some new product.”

“Cool” I say and hang up. I let out a long exhale and imagine all my tension being released along with my carbon dioxide.

I hated these meetings. More especially I hated who I had to go with. Curtis was a big overweight black silhouette of a person. He had a dark sense of humor and I had no doubt he had probably done some of the horrible stuff he joked about. He dressed nice in polo shirts and black pants all the time. He just never acted like he would dress. He seemed like maybe the army would have been a better career choice for this guy.

Once every six months we dealers would have to go to a meeting and get talked about a new product. The pot I sold now was called Odin's Beard. It had almost gold looking strains of hair that made it look like a green and gold beard hence the name Odin's beard.

I shower real quick and put on some fresh clothes then call Lucid. Within minutes Lucid knocks on my door ready to head to the concert.

We pull up to a old teen center where people rent it out to throw concerts and birthday parties. I see the segregated groups of each social preference. The metal heads, the goth kids, the rebellious preps and so on. My town has a big metal scene and that's the only kind of concerts we have in this town. I make my rounds to my trusted customers and hand out new cards to people who look trustworthy. I hand the mollies to Lucid and he goes off to sell them. Then as if it was traditional I bring out a joint and smoke with some first timers. I see a girl named Anna come towards me and I feel with hope because I know if she's here then my crush is probably here too. As if my thoughts were spoken aloud she, my crush, comes over and sits next to me.

Her name is Christina and her presence takes my breath away. I hand the joint to my right and gaze at her. I search the depths of my brain to find something, anything to say to her. I finally decide to say “ Hello Christina, always pleasure to see you”.

“So you sell this stuff?” she says referring to the weed.

“Yea, why would you like to try some?” I reply nervously hoping she won't think I'm hitting on her, which I was doing.

“Sounds fun. Let's take a walk and smoke one” she says and by this point I'm surprised. My first instinct is that this is some kind of sick joke and one of her friends put her up to this. It just doesn't make since that a girl that beautiful would talk to the likes of me.

We walk over to a set of bleachers and I pull out a doobie. We sit and she discuses how she and her friend wanted to try it. She talks with such angelic expressions I tune out what she's saying and just watch in awe. She said how she thinks she wants to go to school for creative writing. The conversation carries on an I dread the finishing of the joint because I fear she will leave once it's done.

I don't know how we got to the subject or if I was just real high but I tell her about my dream. I try to sugarcoat the part about me vomiting out blue stuff. I watch her facial expressions as she paints a mental picture of what I'm saying.

She explains that she knew about this stuff. She would always have weird dreams so she bought a dream dictionary. She said blue represents innocence and that I was losing my innocence. A grin stretches across my face and I say a cheesy line. “Trust me honey I lost my innocence a long time ago”. My face flares red in the brief second waiting for her to respond to what I said. I fill with relief as she chuckles.

“I have this theory about dreams. The ongoing wow is happening now. Reality, in the simplest terms is composed of past, present, future. They are all happening simultaneously and it's sad because even the best possible outcome ends in death” I say anxiously.

“I like how you think. You're weird.” she says adding insisting purpose to my life.

She catches up with her friend after buying dime and I look for Lucid to tell him about mine and Christina's chat. I search everywhere and then I resolve to go inside the center and look for him. Inside a band is on stage screaming about heartbreak or death but I'm to occupied to care. I walk out to escape the music when I see Lucid being carried out by two very large Hispanic men. It's really dark but the light makes a shiny shape appear on one of the mans belt. It's a knife and I know these people.


Oh s***! Oh s***! I think as I pace back and forth waiting for a thought to reveal itself to me. Those guys a dealers too. They work for the cartel. They think they can come and deal when we had first dibs. I need to call Curtis. I dig my shaky hands into my pocket and pull out my cell. I have Curtis on speed dial. I click talk and the ringing starts. One, then two, then three rings, the phone goes to voice mail. “Hey it's Curt, I was going to answer until I saw it was you” says the automated voice mail. Any other time that would be hilarious but I hang up and call again. This time he answers.

“Dude I'm busy what do you want asshole?” he says breathing heavily. Sounds of a girl's voice is in the background. I'm guessing she was whats keeping him busy.

I explain what just happened and the words he said expressed my feeling towards my whole day. “F*** f*** f***!” he exclaimed. “Okay I'll call the boss” he says causing instant relief to fill inside me. We hang up and I brace myself for a fight. Even though I'm sure it won't be a fight as much as a beating.

I run around the center for a little while looking all around for the two thugs and my friend Lucid. I finally spot them carrying him as his feet drag to a white van. They are going to take him, kill him, dispose of him. I feel with panic as these thoughts bubble in my brain. I look around for a answer to come to me.

I see a few hipsters sitting on metal folding chairs and I hatch a idea. I asked one of the hipsters if I could borrow a chair and I guess he saw the panic in my eyes because there was no hesitation. He handed me the chair and I folded it like wrestlers did when they fought. I ran straight for the biggest thug and hit him in the back of the head as hard as I can. He stumbles and I'm scared shitless that I hit this man with a metal chair and he only lost balance.

He drops Lucid so that the smaller thug has to hold Lucid by his arm like a child. The larger thug throws his arm to the back of his head and checks for damage. I notice that his arm has the word Hernandez tattooed on it. When he looks at his fingers there is red wet substance on his hand and I fill with temporary hubris that I did actually cause some damage.

Lucid pushes away from the smaller thug and starts sprinting away from the van. My eyes follow Lucid for a moment but then I turn back to Hernandez. As soon as I do a fist meets my gaze and I fall to the ground. I feel like such a b****. I get kicked all over and along with the pain of being hurt I feel betrayed that Lucid didn't serve as back up.

The pain sinks in and becomes a vibrating feeling all over my body and I feel drained of my essence. I show my splinter twisted teeth as I plead. As if to grant my wish the thugs stop and I see why. I'm losing consciousness and before I close my eyes I see Allen, the boss.