It wasn't easy being an addict.

For the past three years, Nick Ashby had fought in vain against every man-made pleasure. Some days he would lay in his room, sweating against the sheets, shitting out every intoxication. Others he wouldn't sleep at all as he sat with strangers, his lips grossly melted to the end of a stem, A small Plexiglas tube used for the consumption of Crack. One end is conveniently stuffed with Brillo (a tough wiry sponge) and topped off with a rock, while the other end receives the willing addicts lips. At night he would stalk the streets in his '62 Chevy, eyes open for the closest dealer. He would rest hard on an elbow struck half out the window, eyes edging back and forth, snagging on only the bright objects.

He had eyes of a sunken pallor, and teeth twice as brittle as the snow he meticulously snorted. His reflection reminded himself and others of bed sheets that had gone out for a long jog, out of breath and sweating. It took him awhile to recognize the awful smell that seemed to haunt him to be his own. Showers came once a week, and even then his mind was too slammed to be reminded to use soap.

Apparently it wasn't easy being an addict and taking showers.

He cursed repeatedly and watched as the last of his opium went up in a lackluster breath of smoke. Nothing could save it now; and it was the last of his supply until Krip got back with more. Shit on fucking me, he spoke without thinking, without speaking. When he was this high on drugs, it wasn't just thinking to him anymore, it was speech without lip. Everything wasn't just anything to him, every action entailed a sentence-long description when he was high.

Through the thicket of bamboo that grew outside of his window, he watched a small girl of about 10, with yellow ribbons tied tightly to her golden hair, bounce a yellow ball against the pavement of the street. She is going to get hit by a car if she does that. He watched hypnotically with eyes wide as the girl slammed the ball on the dotted yellow lines. She smiled to herself, and - I need a hit.

He played with his bleached hair, running his fingers through it until he caught himself in repetition and slipped a hat on. His hair lay trapped under the red cap and stuck out around his head like greasy stalagmites. He got up. Sat down. He rose again and wrapped his arms around his chest and began to pace. This was a very common thing for him to do.

He began to search the house for cash. The 'simple' Irish man upstairs Sean, he would sell him something. All he needed was eighty-five dollars for a cheap 8-ball -- a ball of cocaine that could draw at least 60 lines at a time, depending on how much money was offered.

Ripping apart the pillows and cushions, the couch was the first thing to be attacked as he tore his fingers into the cigarette burns and ripped the fabric. During certain phases in his life he would hide drugs around the apartment, deathly paranoid that the cops were waiting around every corner, through every door. And, if not the cops, some stranger with psychic and telekinetic powers who mysteriously would know about the crack in his hat, the pot in his shoe.

He had peeled back the fabric on the couch, exposing the springs and wooden frame. It grinned at him with inanimate defiance, as if tempting him to look deeper in its gaping maw so that it could close around him while his attention was elsewhere. The innards lay thrown about the room, and he kicked through them to empty out a draw, spilling contents to floor.

Rounding back on the window he stared at the spot where the little yellow girl had played ball before.

Her name was Amy and she wore yellow ribbons in her hair.

That afternoon she carried a plastic ball around with her, bouncing it on pavement and wall as she walked home. She laughed to herself, thinking of only those things that ten year old girls think of -- purple dinosaurs and pink elephants. A habit she made was saying 'Hello!' to strangers whom she passed on the way home.

'Hello!' she said to a tall woman who walked with a brisk step in the opposite direction. 'Hello!' she said again, and the woman turned around, a frantic look in her eye as if being watched. The woman's name was Krip, and she never once in her life wore yellow ribbons in her hair.

Amy watched as the strange woman patted her pockets, nodded absently to herself and began to jog away from her. 'Goodbye!' Amy giggled again to herself.

Amy's mother was a temporary vampire at the moment, leeching off the child's happiness, the bottles neck. She had sent Amy out into the city to secure a few moments of peace and quiet while she nursed her perpetual hangover. That was fine with Amy though, she enjoyed the City's uncountable wonders, the interesting people she said 'Hello!' to, the numerous yellow taxis, the places where she bounced her ball.

Amy's father had been a strict man, who during her fifth year alive had been hit by a car on his motorcycle. An enormous Italian man who wore his leather jacket like a second skin. A Vietnam veteran, a family man. He beat Amy's mother mercilessly while he was alive, and even in death her beat her still, as she sat around slowly drinking away the last of their money, the last of her life.

But that was fine with Amy. She turned down an Alley and began to bounce the ball against the temporary graffiti. Later that night after the police and paramedics came to take away Amy's body, someone would spray paint a mural on that wall. A beautiful landscape, the ground in black, the sky in blue, the sun in red. The artist said to the homeless who resided there, that:

'Yo, it represents the oppressive nature of the different social classes. The black man, it's my kind, slowly pouring its slick oil into the ground, drowning the seas. Not on purpose though yo, we don't hurt on purpose. We just do what the blue, that's the feds, the suits, the whites all high and mighty in the sky, tell us to do. The sun is all that grows us, tells what the sky is going to do in the morning, noon and fucking night. They're the people who run this city, the mob. Damn Japs, yo. Ya understand?" The drunk didn't. The artist grimly stuck him and left him where the body of Amy was found hours earlier.

It was true what he said though. In that city at that time, the black class had control of the underground, the trafficking. The whites had all the superficiality of teenagers, turning their backs to the other disgusting races. And the Mafia, run by the sly Mr. Chong, was the pace maker in the dead City, occasionally supplying just enough to make the streets work.

But that was fine with Amy. As long as she had her ball she was fine. She didn't even mind when strange black hands came around her waist and hoisted up her dress, slid down her panties. 'Hello!' she said to the hands that came and made her drop her ball. It had happened before, except before it was just her mother's new boyfriend. But she supposed, this must be a friend of his who wants to play with her a bit before taking her home.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw ball roll down the Alley, bump against the alcoholics legs. She squirmed and tried to run after it as it rolled away. But her mommy's boyfriend's friend wouldn't let her go and she began to scream as the man inserted himself in her, and began to cry as her ball was picked up and run off with. Amy was very materialistic. Amy was the blue paint, begun to run into the black. Amy was an American.

Krip stopped to put her hair in a ponytail, tighten her sixteen-holed leather boots. She patted the goods in her pocket and let herself into Nick's apartment. She never did like this place, centered in what was called 'The Cage,' a washed up Red Light District. Such was the name that anyone who took residence in this part of town either died here, or became so engrossed in their drugs that they didn't mind staying for the rest of their lives.

The couch reminded her of a snapped ribcage, the frame like bones, the fluff like torn flesh, the mid-seventies red leather spoiled blood, caked into the floorboards. She sighed to herself and bit into a strand of hair that had stuck to her lip. Nick stood leaning against a chair, eyes framed on the window, eyes darting back and forth against the street.

"This is the bust!"

Nick spun around, eyes wide with fear. He grabbed the chair and spun it around to defend himself.