The continued escalation of the tales of nicotine inhaler cough drop babies makes the papers as Lupe spills coffee grounds down rotten kitchen sinks in hellhole backwater burgs. Lupe has just walked in from some other country, a sun-soaked golden beach where her tan is heightened by ultraviolet rays. I do the math in my head and realize she’s here to show off her body.

“No money above board,” she tells me. “They caught Erickson down Grand Central.”
“Guy made moves on me,” I tell her. “Touched me in inappropriate places. Mentally, not physically. But what’s this about him going down? I heard he was already down.”
“He’s turned then because he was back on the street right away.”
“Well I’ve got business,” I say, tapping my injection spot on my elbow. “You understand, of course.”
“Thing to do out there is to find yourself a citizen on the stuff,” she explains to me. “You do what you have to do, they already got the prescription so you don’t have to burn down no croaker. But like I said, you do what you have to do.”
“Are you saying you kill him?”
Lupe stares out the window and says, “I don't care for implications.”

The city is in great flames, a hold over from the riots a few days ago. Finally the need had grown too much and the junkies had united fleetingly and struck out to score by any means necessary. First the pharmacies were razed and plundered and then the hospital. I remember seeing a man run and fall into the shadows under a fire escape. Unsure if he was one of us, I approached and he took a shot at me. He shouted out, “Don’t come no closer, I’ve got a good hiding spot.”

The city had shut itself down on holding out. Liquor could only be bought with a special permit and then they’d try to prosecute you if you gave any of the liquor away. It was supposed to be part of a crackdown on drugs but it was much deeper than that. This was obviously a well-planned attack on free will. People are afraid to talk in public, not just avoiding the topic of prohibition, but avoiding talking about anything, even sports.

First the autistic began to disappear, slowly filtering out in the dead of night, a parade of police cars with no lights or sirens silent. Then was the parapalegics and those missing limbs. The junkies were next on the list, that was the word on the street. So there was a united effort to break free of whatever it was that was going on. They rampaged the streets, fighting with police in riot gear, giant centipedes crawling from the sewer and dragging off whole units of men. There were fires in parks, people bursting into flames rather than be taken by the cops. The cops, for their part, would fire indiscriminately into any crowd of more than five people, would move in with clubs as tear gas spread down the line, and would trample anyone that fell down. There were no arrests, public or private. This was a cleansing mission, search and destroy.