Mioko sat at the back of Machine City, surrounded by her negatives. She could still smell the acrid airborne particles. Flash the other pajama-clad tenants. The pair of red fuzzy dice swinging from the top of the Chinatown Dragon Fighters ladder as it nudged its way upwards towards the scorching 3rd floor hole.
This third coffee was finally allowing her to keep her eyes open for minutes at a time now. She knew a bar was the last place she should seek refuge, but she couldn't help it.
"She lit it herself." Morris had tapped two fingers to the crook of his elbow, making a shhhhh sound as he pushed down an imaginary plunger.
"Hey fuck you Hacking, I've been clean four and a half years."
Yes, her confederate addict ex-lover still managed Machine City, but Wednesdays were his night off. Besides, she and Trey had a strictly business relationship now. It’d taken her all to climb from that bottomless pit of co-dependence in the first place.
And Machine was one of the last establishments in the LES Mioko still recognized. For the longest time the dive had even managed to repel the droves of glassholes, knowing they'd just as likely get spit on as served by the hardened barmaids, but these days seedy was à la mode, and the pair of juiced-up Jersey bros in dress shirts fawning over their blonde counterparts looked right at home. Mioko watched one of the blowhards fondle a designer hole in his Barbie's skinny-jeans, wondering if he'd go all the way. But then Mioko couldn't help recoil the second he did.
Her gaze snagged on the bathroom door. She'd spiked more needles sitting on that dirty little hole of a toilet than she cared to count.
"Listen. You need to answer my questions, ma'am," the firefighter had said.
"I could smell something. Gasoline maybe…"
“Rotten eggs? Or, did you leave a burner on?”
“I’m not… “
“You close your window before you went to bed?"
"I can't remember."
Not a soul to turn to in her blackest hour since she'd kicked the junk. Only a charbroiled wreck in a city she'd come to loath. Even the bridge and tunnel foursome were making a break for the door. Mioko’s pair of rent controlled apartments and whatever ashes remained of their contents were the only proof she even existed.
She'd been twenty-one years old the day she'd moved in. Her first apartment in New York. It didn't matter that taxi drivers refused to drive down her street. It was the only place she could afford, and she was steeled by the hopeful notions young ladies dream when they decide to go it alone in the big city.
Foolish notions it turned out. Mioko had emerged from her new place that first morning to find dozens of emaciated junk-fiends lining the corner of Stanton and Ludlow, a bucket lowering from an apartment window above; a hundred thousand dollars of smack being moved on her corner at a drop, with two drops daily.
It was barely a week before she chased the dragon that first time.
Another month before she snorted a line.
Six months in, she was shooting china up her veins at every opportunity.
The bartender looked across at her. The only customer left. He was ready to close.
"Another coffee?"
She looked down at her mug.
Yes, the apartment was a piss hole, but it was her piss hole. Surrounded by a community of artists and drug dealers and bowery bums. Back when even the building landlord, Moshe's father, Cyrus Axlerod, was a part of the scene. He'd let the drunks sweep the buildings for a buck, and was even chummy with Fatso and TJ, the dealers moving most of the junk on the block. That was before Cyrus’s heir apparent took over, and the whole real estate game went nuts. The trust fund bitches moved in and started opening cute little dress shops. Ludlow became just like every other street in the city: loud and corporate and overwrought.
And for some reason that's when she and Trey had finally decided to stop using--which turned out to be a terrible idea, considering what they had to sober up to.
How long had she held her death grip on this mug of congealing brown upper?
"No, that's alright. Thanks."
At first it had felt just like getting a cold, mucus building up until she was incessantly clearing her throat. But soon she was shitting, spitting and pissing all the fluids out of her body. She'd never felt like an addict. It was just something she did to get off. Like rubbing out an orgasm. Only worlds better. But ten years of banging crystalline alkaloid into her body had taken it's toll. She had no idea what to do with her new clearheaded reality. Except wallow in self-hate. Till one night Trey had brought home that old plastic camera. An eyelevel Brownie 127 someone had left at the bar, which barely even cranked negative without ripping the roll in half. Yet for some reason, every snap of the shutter had helped her feel again.
It was clear to her now that she'd simply substituted one addiction for another.
Rousing herself, Mioko carried her salvaged negatives out into the spring morning air. It somehow felt strangely like the beginning of any other arduous day.
As she opened her apartment door, twenty years of history stared back at her, charred and blackened. She couldn't help herself; she sat down at her table and wept. She wept for every inch of furniture she'd pulled off the streets. For every painting. Every note from a lost lover. For the Brownie camera that was now a puddle of plastic on the shelf. The Japanese fan her neighbor, old Sal, had given her before he disappeared, saying it reminded him of her tattoos. For every unsent letter to her parents. Even for the antique Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on her fridge she so loved to hate, which had been transfigured from a faded pink and turquoise to an illegible brown sheen. She couldn't help it, a smile started to curl the edges of her lips. Those bastards just refused to burn.
Her eyes moved along the charred walls, the crisp blinds, the blackened spiral on the floor where the flames had eaten most deeply into the linoleum. The pattern evoked the coiled shell of a pet snail she'd had as a child.
It took all her effort, but pressing down, her thigh muscles engaged and Mioko managed to stand. She wasn't a hopeful twenty-one-year-old anymore. But she'd been through worse.
Pulling open the charred cabinet door, she reached for a roll of industrial garbage bags--at least one thing had made it through the fire intact.
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
UPDATE - LOOKING FORWARD: CHAPTER 09
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
Bush/Cheney brings me back. Feels like so long ago now. Ironically, when I first wrote that down, it was inspired by a pin featuring a different Bush and running mate Regan/George H. W.
Pins on fridges, words in computers. This is how we record our world. Make it tactile, or at least seemingly so. There’s something particularly pleasing about watching the passage of time, through the lens of ideas long mulled over. Prospective is a dish best served cold after the heat of the matter has escaped and it’s even too late for hindsight.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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