Fear and Loathing in Whitechapel
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #181. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Now this.
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I was somewhere deep in Whitechapel, south of Shoreditch, sitting in the ER for the fourth hour in a row, when the drugs began to take hold. At first, it just felt like a slight head rush, a little sign that maybe I had done too much. But, not long after, the hunger struck – a deep, endless pit in my stomach that needed to be filled. There was only one thing that could satiate me. I was a vampire, and I needed to feast.
But what could appease such an insatiable hunger? I could remember sliding the needle into my stomach all those hours ago, pumping that life changing drug into my subcutaneous pasture. But how many units had I done? And why was I only feeling it now? And what was I doing in the ER?
Oh, right . . . getting more drugs.
Fundamentally, I liked the drugs. They kept me going when I felt lethargic, but they made me lethargic when I took too many. That normally happened after the fear took hold, the fear that I had overdosed on my other favorite vice – I needed balance.
The ER in Whitechapel felt like an odd place to find myself off my face, stupid and ravenous. Snickers bars glared at me, dick veins long since removed. Maybe I should just rip the red Coke bottle out of the hands of the young woman to my right. As the cola sprayed across the room, soaking her from head to toe, I wondered what Jack had thought about a century and a half ago, as he excised their insides. Do you think the blood flowed Diet Coke?
Wait . . . where was I? Oh right, an NHS building, in Whitechapel, south of Shoreditch, the East side of London. It didn’t cost me anything to sit in there, except my time, and time was something that I was losing quickly as my woozy head swam with the number of hours, minutes, years I had been sitting. How could the sun have already set? And more than once? As I looked back out after staring at the swimming floor, I saw that the sun was back in the sky.
When was it that I had last pierced my skin with one of those sterile needles? Surely within the last decade, right? The piece of plastic sticking out of my side could hold the answers – my cyborg appendage always gave me the information I needed. As I lifted up my shirt, seeing it stick out of my stomach, I expected green LED numbers to stare out of me, glowing from my belly like some sort of neon daemon, pulsing my number, but found nothing.
Of course – I remembered: the numbers are actually on my other appendage, so I pulled out my phone. The recent update left me confused, and I clicked randomly, hoping to find the right app in a world full of illustrated squares. Finally, the numbers appeared as if magically: 145.
Wait, that didn’t seem right. I shouldn’t have the hunger or the spins or the dumbs at this level. Something was wrong – I stared again at the plastic growing out of my skin. Had it betrayed me? I was starving. I looked fiendishly at the donut sliding down the gullet of the mustached walrus across the hall.
I decided to pull out my other needle, this time sticking it directly into my fingertip rather than my stomach. Sure, this one would hold the answers, and yes, I found the right number: 52. I needed another hit. I swung my bag open ferociously. This time, the drug of choice came in small, multicolored capsules that tasted sweet and sour. Some took the shapes of fruits while others looked like ghosts. Fistful after fistful I shoved into my mouth, chewing so loudly I shocked my British neighbors who could only watch in horror and amazement as I slammed the pills back. The pills’ insides covered my unbuttoned gut, fully exposed and covered in granules of candy coated crusts.
As my head slowly stabilized, adjusting to the drugs that brought me back to my right mind, I wondered, what am I doing here, at the Whitechapel ER? Oh, right . . . I was getting more drugs.
Now that the hunger was cured, I suddenly heard my name being called. I went back with the nurse, explained my situation, and after six hours and ten minutes, I walked out with my prescription in hand. I went to the pharmacy and picked up my drugs and slid the cool, sterile needle into my stomach. There it was – another few days of life, but that just meant that there was another chance of developing the hunger. I needed to keep the balance. I just need to make sure I stave off the hunger as long as possible, because if it came again while I was in Whitechapel, only Jack knows what I would do.
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Noah Springer is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. You can follow him on Twitter @noahjspringer.
