Copyright © 2011 Mike Jones
ISBN: 978-1-4660-1955-3
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London... The City… 2020
I had a really bad headache, the room was going round and round. I could see cockroaches coming down the walls and rats all over the floor. I looked up and I could see snakes coming out of the ceiling. They all seemed to be coming towards me. I tried to run but my legs felt like jelly. I was on the floor trying to get up but I couldn’t. It felt like everything was happening in slow motion. I felt so heavy, so tired and I had a really bad pain in my head. A great big snake lunged towards my face. I jumped. I fell off the sofa on to the floor. I was having another nightmare. It seemed like I was having these nightmares almost every night.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Was the sound in my head, but it wasn’t in my head it was at the door. I dragged myself up from the floor and went to see who it was. I looked through the spy hole and saw my friend... well, he wasn’t my friend but what he had with him was. I opened the door a little.
“Have you got the money?” Whispered the man at the door with the hood of his coat hiding his face.
“Yes, just a minute.” I reached into my pocket, took out the money and gave it to him. In return he gave me a packet of my little friends. I call them my friends because they make me feel better and at the moment I could do with feeling better.
Before I could close the door the man was gone. I dragged myself back to the sofa where I collapsed. Wasting no time I took out one of my friends and popped it into my mouth. As I sat there I noticed the sound of the television, it had been left on all night.
“There has been another death of a celebrity due to drug overdose. In the last 6 months there has been an increase in people dying from drug overdoses and nobody seems to know why that is.”
Without warning I had a sharp pain in my stomach. I felt sick and dizzy. What’s going on? I was supposed to be feeling better not worse. I felt like I was dying. Then all of a sudden it was all gone. No pain, no dizziness and no sickness. In fact I had never felt better. Wow! What was that all about? I have never had that reaction before. I noticed something was different. I felt on top of the world.
“I need some fresh air... I have to get out of here.” I jumped up off the sofa and grabbed my coat and went out.
“It’s cold but the fresh air feels nice.” I looked at my watch. It was coming up to about seven o’clock in the morning.
“I’m starving. I think I’ll go and have some breakfast.” I haven’t done that in a while. I went to my local café bar. It’s always open. It never seems to close. Whilst I was sitting there, I overheard two people having a conversation.
“I don’t understand it,” said one of the ladies. “My brother is a drug addict. He’s the last person that would get involved in drugs and last week his friend who was a lawyer died of a drug overdose. I can’t believe it!”
Something strange was going on. I had no idea myself how I had become hooked on drugs. I had to get to the bottom of this, but first I had to go and see my Mother in hospital. She was dying of terminal cancer and I hadn’t seen her in a while. The hospital was in walking distance so I set off on foot. On the way I noticed that there were a lot of down and outs, people living on the streets. There were people sleeping in doorways, on benches and in front of shop windows. There were also children amongst them. I knew it was bad, but for some reason this particular morning it was more noticeable. This day I was more alert, it was like I had suddenly woken up.
“I can’t believe that the streets of London have turned into this.”
As I was looking at two children sleeping in the doorway of a shop, I could hear a car radio behind me. The car had stopped in the road by the traffic lights.
“There has been an increase in crime, robbery, break-ins, muggings, prostitution and most of these crimes seem to be linked with drugs.” I turned around and moved closer to the car to listen to the rest of the news broadcast but the car drove off.
Ten minutes later I was at the hospital.
“Can I see my Mother, Mrs Doyle?”
“Who are you?” asked the lady at reception.
“I am Jack, Jack Doyle, her son.”
“Hello Mum.” There was no answer. My mother was in bed in a room, laying on her back with her eyes closed. I tried again
“Hello Mum. It’s Jack.” A moment later she opened her eyes.
“Jack, is that you? You look different.”
“Yes it’s me.” And then I looked in the mirror to check that it was me and I got a bit of a shock. I looked a mess. My hair was long and tangled and I needed a shave... and come-to-think-of-it, a wash wouldn’t have gone amiss.
“How are you Mum?”
“Well you know. As well as one can be.” My mother was a tough old lady, she never complained about anything. I felt a bit guilty because I hadn’t been to see her in a while.
“Hello Mrs. Doyle,” said the nurse in a cheerful voice as she came into the room. “It’s time for your breakfast.” She wheeled in Mum’s breakfast on a trolly and then started to feed her. As the nurse fed my mother with her breakfast I sat and watched and started to reflect on the happy times I had with my mother, and now it was so sad to be losing her like this. I started to think about my life and what had happened to me earlier that morning. Somehow I got hooked on drugs and now I felt like I had never been on them. I felt great. I took the packet of pills out of my pocket and examined them closely. They looked different from what I was used to taking. I wondered where they had come from.
“All done!” said the nurse. “Can you help your mother to drink her orange juice?”
“Of course I can.” And then the nurse left the room. Whilst feeding my mother with her orange juice I suddenly thought. Why not give her one of my pills. And before I could think anymore about it, I popped one into the glass. I fed the orange juice with the pill to my mother and then I sat back on the chair waiting anxiously. Then suddenly my mother screamed out with pain in her stomach. I grabbed hold of her and I told her that it was going to be OK. She grabbed hold of my hands and squeezed them really tightly. At this point the nurse came rushing back into the room.
“What’s happened?” shouted the nurse. I said nothing. My mother stopped breathing. Then all of a sudden she took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
“Wow! What’s going on? I feel great,” she said.
“What do you mean you feel great?” asked the nurse.
“Well I do,” and she got out of bed and started walking around the room. The nurse was astonished. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“Jack, what’s going on? One minute I was feeling like death warmed up and now I feel like an Olympic athlete.”
“Mum, I know how you’re feeling. I’m feeling the same. I don’t know what’s going on but as soon as I find out I’ll let you know. I’ve got to go now. I’ll see you later.”
On the way back to my flat I phoned my partner Olga. She, like me was also a undercover police officer. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in a while. I thought maybe she might know something, but her phone was switched off. I left a message for her to get back to me as soon as possible. When I got home I put the key in the door and before I could open it I felt someone behind me.
“Don’t move! Open the door,” said the voice. And then I got pushed inside. “It’s OK, I don’t want any trouble,” said the voice. The man was standing by the door in the shadows with the hood of his coat pulled up over his head hiding his face. He looked like the man I had seen this morning, but they all look the same don’t they.
“I need your help. I want a new identity,” said the man in the hood. “I’ve been watching you for some time now and you’
re the only person that can help me. Let me explain. I introduced myself to you this morning with the form of a pill and as you have discovered this pill is a cure for your drug addiction. It’s also a cure for all major illnesses.”
“Really!” I said. “That’s fantastic.”
“Well you would think so, but it’s not. The drug dealers and the drug barons are not happy. They are worried that if this pill gets out, they’re going to loose shit loads of money so they need to find the person responsible for this. The government is also not delighted with this pill because it would mean they would loose a phenomenal amount of money in the form of lost tax revenue. Less legal drugs would be sold and lots of people working in and associated in the drug industries would loose their jobs. People would live longer which would mean more money would be needed for pensions.
“So both the drug barons and the government agencies are trying to find me and I don’t think they want to sit down and drink tea. I am going to take money out of their pockets and they don’t like it. The word on the street is they want me dead.”
“I don’t understand... Why do they want to kill you?”
“Because I’m the chemist. I’m the one who has created this pill.” At this point the bathroom door burst opened.
“Toxic Ted, I have been looking for you for some time now,” It was Olga. She had a gun in both hands pointing at Ted.
“Olga. What are you doing here?” I shouted.
“I have my orders to kill you,” she replied, looking in the direction of Toxic Ted the chemist. “No, wait. Let’s listen to what he is saying. Continue!”
“I worked secretly for the government for a while so I know their dirty secrets. I developed an addictive drug, which could not be detected. Without the knowledge of the general public the government started to put it into food products to improve sales. People love these products. They can’t stop buying them. These food products have quite a lot of tax associated with them, which means lots of money for the government.”
Toxic Ted moved into the room and sat on the sofa. He removed his hood and then continued with his story.
“The drug barons got hold of this secret drug and they adapted it so that it’s more addictive, nicknamed shugar, consume once and you’re hooked. To get new clients, dealers would go into pubs and clubs and put this drug into peoples drinks.”
“Yes,” I said “That explains how I got hooked.”
“Not quiet!” said Olga. “It was me that got you addicted to shugar. You were getting too close to finding out government secrets and it was my job to make sure you didn’t, until now.”
“So you are a government agent?” I replied.
“Yes that right, don’t look so surprised,” said Olga.
“So now what?,” I said.
“Well, now I have to kill both of you. But not here.”
I couldn’t believe that Olga was a government agent. I had known her for many years. She has always been reliable, trustworthy and is always there when you need her.
“Knock, knock, knock!” It was the door. Who was at the door?
“Stand back. Get back,” said Olga. “Get to the back of the room.” Toxic Ted and I moved to the back of the room and Olga went to the door. She looked through the spy hole but there was no one there. She waited a moment and still holding the gun in one hand she slowly opened the door. She looked around. There was nobody in sight. Then she looked down and saw a package on the ground. What could it be? Olga was curious. She bent down slowly while keeping one eye on us and picked up the package and brought it up to her face for close inspection. Well, that was her first and last mistake. The package was a bomb and as soon as she picked it up it was armed. It blew her head clean off her body and made a terrible mess of the rest of her. Toxic Ted and I got blown off our feet but were OK. The apartment started to fill with smoke so we made our escape through the bathroom window.
The word on the street was this bomb was meant for me. The drug barons were trying to kill me. The body that was found at the scene was unrecognisable. Although an autopsy wasn’t necessary, by the time they put the pieces together and discovered that it was Olga’s body Toxic Ted and I were many miles away. I knew that the drug barons and the government agents would not stop until they killed us, so Toxic Ted and I took on new identities and disappeared.
I got news that my mother, to the surprise of the doctors made a complete recovery. Her cancer like me had completely disappeared.
THE END
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This story was written by – Mike Jones