Basement Jack

Clark Merrefield

March 2006

In the 80s Ed and I were high-powered stockbrokers, you know, living the high life. We had so many women it was insane and the cocaine was just flowing like a beautiful white river of happiness. But, those good times didn't last (they never do). I was soon on the brink of self-destruction, literally, on the brink. My wife left me. My kids hated me. My best friends deserted me.

Except Ed. Ed was a real savior. He brought me cocaine and Taiwanese hookers when no one else would. He got me into heavier drugs, like crack and heroin, and found me a nice youth hostel to stay in when I couldn't pay my mortgage and all my expensive things were repossessed. When I viciously attacked the chambermaid in a belligerent rage and got kicked out of the hostel, Ed was there to let me crash on his front lawn. He brought me jars of peanut butter and packages of saltines as I nearly suffocated on my own vomit. His wife hated me, but Ed reprimanded her on my almost unconscious behalf.

ED: "Hey, this guy is my best customer, leave him alone."

Eventually Ed moved me into his basement, where I live now. It's wet down here and fungus grows on the walls and invades my lungs. My sanity grows more and more tenuous each passing day and I pound on the door for what seems like hours, but Ed always brings me back to reality:

ED: "Listen, you need to stay in there, you need to get better! Now, here's another quarter bag."

And he slides the delicious whiteness underneath the door. I'm quiet again. I can hear everything in the house. I can hear Ed’s wife as she opens the cabinet underneath the sink. I imagine she’s looking for orange cleaner, the kind on that late night infomercial. The one with the guy who gets as excited about orange smelling cleaner as I do about getting high and punching a brick wall.

I shuffle across the basement and try to keep my balance and my feet slip and I twist myself around a support pole for some support of my own. I’m under the bathroom. Ed is in there. I know his step, it’s heavy and it beats inside my skull. His feet stop and I hear a sound but I can’t make it out. The sound gets louder and then recedes, like a bell curve. There’s water dripping into a puddle on the unfinished mud floor and it dawns on me that Ed was taking a leak. Even Ed takes leaks, I think. I just sigh and hug that pole for a while until I hear Ed again, he’s moving. He’s stopped in the bedroom.

Ed takes out a bag of pow(d)er candy and sprinkles some dust onto his marble dresser-top. I can feel my eyes bugging out of their sockets and I’m sweating hard. Ed cuts it with a lovely sharp razor and makes it into lines that he deposits into his nose using a pink hard plastic straw. Ed feels good again. He leaves the bedroom and meets his wife in the kitchen. He kisses her and squeezes her breast and her ass.

ED: "I’m going out for a bit."

ED’s wife: "Where are you going, little man?"

ED: "I’m gonna go and I’m gonna buy a Ferrari and pick up a college freshman and bring her home. But first I’m gonna get some things for our friend."

ED’s wife: "Her?"

ED: "We’ll see."

The door shuts and the latch clicks and Ed is gone. I await his return. I throw some mud against the wall and I pour some WD-40 on the floor and run my hands through it. It’s dark and rich and I want to eat it, but I’m not hungry. There’s a hammer over in that corner and a handsaw over in that corner. Up on the ceiling I see dusty old spider webs and cockroaches in between the slats of the floor above. There’s a space in between two of the slats but all I can see through it is yellow and white. Up the stairs is the door that never opens and to the right is the window that allows Ed to give me bread and peanut butter.

I look up and then I look down and I must have lost some time because I’m squatting in the corner taking a shit. I stand up when I’m done and wipe with my hand my ass and wipe with my wall my hand. I mean, "I wipe my hand on the wall." I go over to the little gray shelf Ed built me before I came here and I configure my old trusty needle. I heat up my stuff with a black lighter that says "3" on it and put it all in the reservoir. I push it in and when it mixes with my blood I get sleepy.

Then I’m someplace else. Not quite asleep. But definitely not awake. I’m definitely not alive, but definitely not dead. I’m in a womb and I’m waiting to be pushed out because I know it’s coming, but I want to stay in here a few more minutes. I thumb around with my fingers on the walls, which are full of mucous and darkness. I put my fingers in my mouth and they taste salty, the good kind of salty. I curl up into a ball and feel my smooth face with my feet until I feel hands on my head pulling me into blinding whiteness and then back onto the basement floor. My arms won’t move and my hips and legs won’t move. I’m in an incubator and I’m paralyzed, so I sit there until the numbness in my limbs stops.

Then my eyes are awake and my brain is turned on. There are people running upstairs. I look up through the slats and the yellow and white is flickering like a thousand eclipses. People are yelling in an official language, I mean, they’re very official sounding and they’re going through the kitchen and into the bathroom and through the door into the bedroom. A woman screams, it sounds like Ed’s wife. I always liked her and I was sad to see her go.

The people run back through the house, through the bedroom, into the bathroom, into the kitchen, they all file out, yelling, "Go! Go! Go! Go!" and then the doors slams and the latch clicks and I’m alone. I sit down on the steps, which are made of splintered wood that goes into my feet, and I stare ahead into the twilight darkness of the basement. There’s water dripping and a bird outside is chirping. I’m looking around, and I’m still alone. There is literally no one there and I’m partially terrified and partially ecstatic. I grab the railing and splinters break into my palms. My hands are scraping the wood and the wood is scraping my skin as I climb the stairs, one at a time, just one at a time. A big splinter lodges itself into my left foot and another into my right foot, but nothing is going to stop me. I reach the top step and I turn the door handle, it’s cold and damp. The handle goes all the way and I push on the door, but it’s stuck. I push again, and then I ram it with my shoulder, but it’s stuck. I kick it with my feet, driving the splinters deeper into my skin, but it’s stuck. The door is stuck. The door is locked.

Clark Merrefield lives in Brooklyn in a loft with a big white wall that got completely graffitied during a kick-ass party.