Deafening Silence - Part IV

Continuation from Part III.

“Yo Jim, its Alpris.”
“Wassup, girl! How you doin’?”
Jim’s drunk again, she can tell... typical.
Alpris runs a hand through her tired hair, pressing her Nokia urgently to her ear. She tries to speak quietly to avoid speculation as she responds:
“Do you have any more DMT? I only need a gram.”

Within half an hour, Jim arrives outside the house. Alpris is waiting for him, perched on her stone fence, lazily flicking a cigarette. In her other hand, warm in her lap, she holds the roll of fifties. It’s a heavy and warm bundle in her grip, and feels as though it’s vibrating with anticipation in rhythm with her heart.
Dave parks his midnight-blue Subaru to the curb, gets out and withdraws something from his pocket. His Nikes make crunching and grinding noises on the footpath as he approaches her. It seems almost deafening in contrast to the silent night, so he hushes him.
“Sorry,” he whispers. He hands her the small bag of yellow/white powder, and she passes over the money. As they make the trade, she wishes more than anything that they could smoke it together instead. 
“Thanks a bunch, bro.” Alpris looks up at him.
He returns her gaze with a lopsided goofy grin, and she thinks he may even be high too. Alpris feels a glow ignite inside her. He drove here, under the influence. Jim is dear and daring, her best friend.
“Not a word to anyone, okay sis?”
She salutes him. “I was just about to say so.”

 

The clock strikes eleven p.m. and Mum is leaving for work. On her way out the door, she hands Alpris a tightly-rolled tinny and pets her shoulder.
“Just roll a few for him, okay honey?”
Alpris plays it safe. “Mom, it’s pathetic, it really is.”
Mom shoots her a sympathetic smile. “I know, but...”
She stops herself. There is great sadness in her eyes, and Alpris feels a pang of guilt; but then it’s replaced with a rumble of courage that erupts in her chest.
“I know, mom. Don’t worry; I’ll roll it for him. Where did you buy the weed?”
Her mother hesitates.
“Mom.”
“I bought it from McAllister, okay?”
Perfect. McAllister had a bad reputation on the streets for selling dodgy drugs. He sold everything from marijuana to hallucinogenics to party pills. He even made a killer two-thousand-five-hundred profit with heroin last week, Jim had said. Everything was going to be fine.
And the bag of DMT, light with only a gram’s pressure, weighed heavy in the pocket of her cardigan. She hoped Mom couldn’t smell it...
Alpris reached forward and hugged her mother tightly. “Have fun at work,” she whispered.  Mom laughs lightly. “I will.” And then she is gone in a rush to get to work on time, leaving behind only her J’Adore by Dior scent. And with that, Alpris carries the drugs to her room and begins her concoction.

Snip, snip, snip. Chopping the weed with a pair of steel scissors that are so cold to the touch, she gasps with the first contact. She hacks firmly at the rolls of forest-green buds until they become fine crumbs. Then she extracts the bag of DMT from her pocket, opens it and inhales its familiar scent.
From her own experience, Alpris knew that Dimethyltryptamine was much harder to smoke than hash, and had a horrible burning-plastic smell to it when it was smoked. But he wouldn’t notice, would he? He would be too occupied with chasing the hit. The empowering hallucinations would pop up before he had time to prevent them.
I’m doing the right thing. It’s purely for revenge. Nothings gonna happen...
She tips the small Ziploc bag so that the crumbly yellow and white powder coats the chopped marijuana. Then she mixed the two substances together carefully with the point of her scissors, careful not to get any on her bare skin. Then she used the edge of the scissor blades to sweep the potent concoction into the fold of the rice paper. It looked like there was more DMT than marijuana in it, but Alpris shrugged and rolled it into a perfect joint anyway. That would be enough. Then she rolled several more joints for a therapeutic exercise before tucking the empty drug bag into her pocket.
Her mind raced with expectancy and impatience, but she was more than certain in her heart that she was doing the right thing.