We sharpened our needles on stones.

flash fiction

I used to keep a shaving blade in my mouth. I was injecting into big veins by then, the ones in my legs, injecting at a 90-degree angle. When those veins collapsed, I injected into my groin. I had abscesses coating both ankles and kept a piece of razor blade in my mouth. When the neighbors or the cops caught me stealing, I would cut the insides of my cheeks and pretend to vomit. The crowd would see the blood and think they’d thumped it out of me and would leave me alone. I come from a middle-class family. Seventeen criminal cases against me. I was the sixth most notorious criminal in Delhi. Car theft. Armed robbery. Norphine. Promethazine. Benzodiazepine. At university, I only smoked heroin. Then a friend incantated the names: Norphine, Promethazine, Benzodiazepine. We broke into a pharmacy. Within six months, I was injecting five times a day. Fifty milliliters a day. One-quarter cup of liquid. I had abscesses coating both ankles. My sister threw me out. That night, I slept on a bus stop bench. I felt ant bites, felt them prick like needles. I yearned for what was to come, puffing out my nostrils, the alcohol smell, and then the pirouette; craving more and more, the nonbeing, until I craved again. On the bench, no puff came. The only dancing came from the ants. They wanted my ankles.

I dreamed I was sent to prison for a third time. There was a Bollywood star with us in the men’s section. The pretty Bollywood star and me, loving the prick of that needle.