Creep

Dawn & Dark Pt. 1 (Dark)

Summer 2025

“Tell my mom we got this at a club.”

These are the last words she will ever speak.

She’s dying.

On a carpeted bathroom floor in her aunt’s partially-finished basement, she’s dying.

The shower is running, a vain attempt at revival, and she’s dying.

He attempts CPR, believes he feels a pulse, but he’s not sure.

She’s dying.

For a couple days they consume an over-the-top cocktail of illicit substance, threading the needle of up and down so that the celebration never stops. Cocaine, counterfeit Xanax, and alcohol for her, all of the above and powder fentanyl for him.

He isn’t supposed to be here. Up until now, their domestic life has been constrained to the home of his parents, an eighty-something couple who insist that she be out before bedtime. She moved into the odd layout of her aunt’s basement two days ago and he’s been laying low inside ever since.

He’s a good-looking kid, well-dressed and with a thick head of brown hair that seems to effortlessly fall into place across his brow. His five o’clock shadow adds to the “not-trying”facade, providing contour to his prominent jawline.

He’s nearly six feet tall, slim, not muscular, and his face carries the disaffected vibe of a free spirit, someone that’d be fun to talk to.

Upon closer inspection, his expensive clothes look slept in, dusty, and bear the cauterized holes of butterfinger-ed cigarettes and fumbled glass pipes. The contour of his jaw is due not to a confident nature, but to the sunken hollows of his cheeks, years of poison carving away the full face of his youth.

He’s slim because he forgets to eat.

He’s trying to get pressed Xanax (bromazolam, an analog of alprazolam, the sedative compound found in prescribed Xanax) in bulk, make some money selling them. Otherwise, he subsists off of his parents’ donations.

He’s nearly forty years old. Not quite a “kid”, I guess.

She is in her twenties, an aspiring singer and the light of her mother’s life. Her father killed himself when she was young, and so it has been just her and mom for most of her life. They are close, and mom believes that there are no secrets between them. Mom believes that daughter never used a hard drug until she met this guy. I think mom is correct.

In the two days after the move, she uses more Xanax than he thought was humanly possible. He’s surprised by her tolerance, impressed even, and only becomes concerned when she appears to blow out her knee during an intoxicated fall. Concerned, a little, but mostly annoyed.

She begs him for fentanyl, but he denies the request. He was in this exact situation once before, several years ago. That time, he acquiesced, and woke up the next morning to find his girlfriend dead at his side.

She’s out of control, saying strange things. He believes she tore her ACL, and she has trouble walking. She keeps on dancing, though, hobbling around and singing despite the damage.

He emerges from the shower to find that she has removed the fentanyl from his “stash”, a toiletry bag that he made no effort to conceal. He thought his “no” would be barrier enough to stop her from taking any fentanyl.

As he exits the bathroom, she is standing on the bed, her arms held out to the side as if she were preparing for crucifixion.

Maybe she was.

She holds a “trash can” in her hand- a thumbnail-sized transparent purple container with a flip-top lid- holding the innocuous white powder that will be her demise.

“Tell my mom we got this at a club”, she says, before lifting the can to her nose and inhaling.

This final hit takes the bones out of her frame.

She loses structure and topples to the floor.

He tries to wake her up, drags her into the bathroom where he turns the shower dial to “cold”. He has trouble with the drag, but manages to get half of her body into the cold stream. It’s no use- her central nervous system is shutting down, failing to maintain all of the vital involuntary functions that we might sometimes take for granted.

He has more xanax in the pocket of his expensive pants, and the water transforms them into a white sludge. He drags her to the bathroom floor and begins what he believes is CPR. He’s done this before, “many times”, and believes his lifesaving skills to be proficient.

They are not.

At one point, she opens her eyes, and he believes he sees recognition in her look. He believes he feels a pulse.

At one point, she was alive.

He phones a friend, a seemingly responsible adult who works for the federal government. She cannot understand anything he says. He is crying and saying that he fucked up, but she cannot decipher exactly what he wants.

She texts him to call 9-1-1.

He does not.

He texts another friend, another government employee.

“Bring narcan now”.

Friend #2 is at work. As such, Friend #2 texts and advises him to call 9-1-1.

He does not.

Instead, he texts his mother and asks for money over CashApp. Mother complies.

Still no call.

Instead, he sends Mother’s donation to the man who supplied him with the fentanyl that just killed his girlfriend. The man arrives at the aunt’s house an hour or so later, leaving after a few minutes.

She is dead, now.

She had a pulse.

And now it is gone.

Her eyes opened.

And now they will never see again.

He waited over an hour to call for professional help.

When the timer started, she was alive.

And now she is not.

This is HIS story, the best he could conjure to absolve himself of legal blame. I am certain that there is more to it. If I’m wrong, if his recollection is true and accurate, it’s still despicable.

He admits that emergency personnel, professional lifesavers, may very well have kept her in this realm.

He didn’t want to burden the system with something he felt he could handle on his own. Lesson learned. Next time.

He wasn’t supposed to be at the aunt’s house, and wished to avoid the awkward situation of having police and firemen showing up. Bullet dodged. Face saved.

He doesn’t have the best relationship with law enforcement, and thought that he could avoid a little discomfort if he kept them out of it. He’s aware that our state has a law preventing the prosecution of a person that calls in an overdose, but knew that we would take his drugs in the process. He thought he could have his cake and eat it, too.

He’s furious when I ask him if he feels responsible for her death.

“What kind of fuck shit is that to ask someone? What about ME?”

I explain that the question of personal accountability may be the only question that truly matters, the only one for which he must search for answers. The addiction cannot claim full responsibility for this, cannot cover the cost of the calculating and scheming that led to an hour-plus delay in calling for any real help.

Instead, he debriefs his tactics- should’ve had narcan, should’ve done a better job hiding the fentanyl, “next time I’ll…” and “at the end of the day, she’s an adult”.

“Of course I’m sad, but…”

Addiction is a small part of this equation. There is something darker here, sinister and predatory, multiple dead girlfriends and him without a scratch. Worse, it appears that he introduced this one to the briefly-lived lifestyle that killed her.

It’s fucking vile.

The lesson is there, vivid, about the dangers of no self-reliance and a lack of personal accountability, but I take a few days before I choose to see it. I don’t want to move past my disgust at this mewling shadow, he who gambled with her life, who watched the bright spot of a mother’s life as she faded away on a carpeted bathroom floor. He who bought more or paid off a debt before calling to have her body removed from the house. He who has lost two prior girlfriends to overdose, one of them under almost identical circumstances. He who had the audacity to be indignant when asked if he felt remorse, who will not accept responsibility for his actions and inaction.

He who could have done something.

He who could have said he’s “sorry”.

Her mother has never heard from him. He did not attend her funeral. Understandable, I guess.

Understandable, but not acceptable.

I’ve talked to him for hours, dancing the dance and exploring the depths of his twisted perspective, searching for the contrast, the flame that will illuminate the meaning behind this tragedy.

I don’t find it with him. Perhaps it’s not there, or perhaps I’m not yet skilled enough at the search. If he cares, I’m unable to sense it, despite wanting to, despite desperately grasping for a semblance of remorse or redeemable.

I find remnants of a spark in videos sent to me by her mother- short clips of her, singing, smiling, happy, alive, snapshots of a joyful capability, of potential.

I find the inferno in my discussions with mom, whose enduring love for her daughter and best friend are the heartening dawn of this dark affair, the life-changing lesson brought on by this tragedy.

Continued next week.

Thanks for reading.