01.101 Temperance

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, New York, United States

Jade crossed another place off her list.

She was heading to the fourth place on her list, a so-called underground bar which had strange rumors about it. She had been searching for hints of strangeness all day, for signs of magic, and the first three places had been a complete bust. The first one was some sort of weird sex dungeon. That had been more than a little embarrassing. The second two were just goth kids running around playing witches.

This one was a bit different and Jade kept a hand on the pepper spray she had borrowed from Ella’s drawer. At the last place one of the girls had complained.

Jade listened to the recorded conversation and took notes.

“So… you guys haven’t seen anything out of the normal?” Jade had asked. It had been exasperating trying to get this group of giggling high schoolers to respond.

“Hey, don’t step on the pentagram. We spent like… ten minutes on it.” One of the guys said.

“Are you on something?” Jade was so sick of this.

“Yeah, you want some?” The guy pulled out a blunt and started lighting it up. Jade eyed the blunt, and then with a somewhat exaggerated sigh, took a hit.

“So… anything weird?”

“Nah. We were just going to do some incantations and then, well, probably get it on.” A girl answered. “The wax is just so… hot.”

And then one of the girls eyed her and added with a very obvious sort of languor, “kind of like you… Hey. you wanna stay?”

“A very flattering offer. But no.” Jade put down the blunt and stepped on it and then took a real look at the girl, stoned out of her mind, pale skin and black makeup, dressed in goth black from a Hot Topic, and maybe fifteen.

“Come on. After Chrissy stopped coming we don’t have a fifth for the pentagram. And you gotta have five.” The girl pouted and picked up the stomped blunt and the boy lit it again. “Hey this is good stuff. Not as good as Chrissy’s but good.”

“Yeah Chrissy’s stuff was the best. All crystal light. It was like everything was too real…”

Jade had almost skipped over the last, ready to leave, but it reminded her of something.

“Did you say crystal light and realness?”

And now she was on her way to the drug supplier for the missing Chrissy. In Hunts Point at night. Which was not the smartest idea she had ever had.

She got off the subway and started walking down Simpson Street and then across Sheridan. The tenements were mostly dark and a few street lights dimly lit the street. A few cars drove by with young men drove by blasting music and they catcalled her but she ignored it, and they kept going.

Eventually she reached the address. It was next to the food distribution center and a park with several tombstones and statues in it.

The building was decrepit and a sour-smelling, homeless man was sleeping on the sidewalk right outside. She carefully stepped around him and entered the building.

She could hear people yelling in one apartment as she stepped by quietly. Then another apartment had the sound of television, it sounded like a 1970s blaxploitation film. Then she got to the elevator, another metal grate door but this time not restored and squeaky. The elevator shuddered as it started up and seemed to inch up the building to the 28th floor. The eleventh floor came, and she made her way down the hallway to 28K.

There was guitar music coming from underneath the door.¹ Oddly incongruent with her surroundings. She went to knock on the door and it opened at the push, creaking with noise a haunted house would envy.

As soon as the door cracked open, the light from inside flooded the hallway, casting into the sort of stark relief that Jade had never witnessed before. The cheap grain of the wood of the door suddenly was the entire history of the trees it had come from, particle board compressed from a forest, seeds that sprouted from the ground in some nameless place. The metal door handle in her hand felt like the bauxite ore and the silicate rocks that it formed from. Even the air lit up by the light had a depth that didn’t exist before, as if she could see in three dimensions for the first time.

There was murmuring inside and the door swung open and she saw people reclining on couches and others circulating among them . One of them motioned to her to come in and Jade stepped in without thinking and the door suddenly shut behind her.

“Welcome.” The persons voice was deep and resonant. “Here… have some.” Jade looked down to see it holding a syringe filled with what looked like water, but just slightly glowing. She looked around the room again and saw trays scattered throughout, the syringes glowing and providing light to the room.

She watched as one person took a syringe and injected it straight through his eyelid into his eye. He squeaked with a bit of pain and then slumped. Jade watched as he suddenly opened his mouth and what looked like a glowing butterfly flew out, it flapped its wings for a few bits before dissolving into crystal sparkles.

There were a few half-hearted claps and cheers. The dealers continued to replace trays with more and a steady stream of them were going in and out through the swinging door to the kitchenette.

“I… I was just looking for Chrissy?”

“Have some.” The person seemed insistent.

Jade looked down and around and almost ran. But she felt like it would be dangerous to leave. She took the syringe from the creature and looked at it.

She worked the skinny needle in her hand and managed to unscrew the needle. She turned her head to the side and carefully plunged the syringe, feeling the glowing liquid run down her neck and down her shirt where she had purposefully avoided putting it into her eye.

The dealer had ceased to regard her as soon as she had started to inject. Jade sat down and pretended to slump. She flicked some of the liquid into the air and a small rainbow of sparks shot up to the same half-hearted applause.

And so Jade spent time in the room, pretending to do magical drugs and trying to find out what was going on.