Spoilers: This is a Star Wars/Trainspotting x-over, contains
many spoilers for Trainspotting.
Summary: Mark Renton finds his way back to an old friend.
Feedback: Yes please, and mature criticism welcome.
The sickness has started: the cramps, the chills, the nausea,
the delusions. At least I'm not so far gone that I can't tell
that they're delusions. Unless I'm imagining that they're
delusions.
Shite.
They're all here with me, everyone, they won't go away, I close
my eyes and they're still here. My room, with the trains
dancing drunkenly on the wall, has suddenly grown the size of a
football field; the angles are all wrong and shifting. I think
I'm going to vomit.
Begby's beside me under the sheets, stinking of scotch,
threatening to kick in my head unless I get off the junk.
Sickboy mocks me from the corner, while Spud sits chained to
the doorframe, silently blaming me for not getting sent off to
gaeol with him. Baby Dawn's crawling along the ceiling, looking
so alive until her head does a 180, staring at me with those
dead eyes set in that rubbery shrunken face, mouth open. She's
hungry.
Oh God, I'm so hungry for a fuckin' hit.
Somebody get me a hit. I'll do anything.
Oh God!
MOTHER FUCKING CHRIST!
It hurts...My guts are eating themselves, chewing out through
my skin.
SOMEBODY HELP ME FOR GOD'S SAKE!
Help me.
Then everything spirals, Tommy, Begby, Sickboy, Spud, spinning
so fast, then it grinds to a halt like a bad Underworld video.
Everything freezes, warped and silent, then I feel hands on my
skin. The touch sends a jolt straight through my body,
awakening the sex drive the heroin had killed off. Not Diane's
young hands, bigger, but not Sickboy's either. They're strong
hands that cool my skin and warm my insides. I hear a voice,
soothing in my ear, piecing my shattered head back together. He
sounds like a Brit. Fuck why I'd dream up a Royal wanker while
I'm coming down.
He whispers to me, like he's inside my fucking mind.
Pada-something. Sounds like a side dish in a curry-shop.
Then, images more fucked up than anything I've dreamed up while
high, start flashing through my head from some spastic
film-projector.
Me with some 80's poofter haircut wearing some white costume,
looking like a House of Style fashion victim.
What the hell would I have to shoot up with to wear a ponytail
and a braid?
Fighting someone with a flashlight.
Fucking some guy, only it's five million times better than
fucking.
We didn't have enough time.
For a second I feel like I've just taken a pure shot of junk
straight to the heart, attaining the perfect high I've been
trying to get all these years. The feeling that everything
around me is being separated into tiny microns, and I can feel
every single one. I can feel completely part of all of the air
and the bed and whoever the fuck is sitting beside me, touching
my forehead. It's what I've been looking for all this time and
then-
"Mark!"
I'm jerked back to hard, cold, reality, with dad standing over
me, rambling about getting me an AIDS test. I should close my
eyes to sink back into the sweat-soaked sheets, but incredibly,
I feel fine. I feel fucking great. I feel healthy and strong,
like I can control every -- what's it called -- synapse in my
body.
But I'm cut off now, alone, though the craving has waned. I'm
depressingly sober. Fuck.
Three Months Later
Yeah, so I'm walking down some crowded street in New York,
which is a hell of a lot more confusing than London. After
making my fortune by the whole business of ripping off Begby's
drug money, I figured it would be best if I stayed out of
Scotland and London, especially because I don't fancy letting
Begby make my balls into lampshades.
I'm feeling better. I'm HIV negative, I eat, I've got a fucking
boring real estate job selling shitty apartments to naive
pricks, a shitty apartment, a normal life. Still, I've gained
weight, and I feel myself getting stronger every day. Though,
every once in a while when I can't sleep, I start to get this
feeling. Like I'm wonderfully high, seeing every piece of the
universe coming apart and wrapping around me. Like I'm not
alone for a moment. I think it's something in the water. My mum
always did warn me about America.
I look around me, and I try to immediately spot the junkies, my
former brethren. Yellow skin, clouded eyes, twitchy skin, and
hungry stares. When I first wandered into this city, I was
amazed that everyone walked right by them, never looking down,
blind to anyone outside of their world. Now, I find myself
doing the same thing, deliberately looking away from the
shaking meth addict on the corner, and not even spotting a
dealer until someone makes a buy right under my nose. Still,
this is what I chose, though sometimes I wonder why. I'm so
fucking bored.
I'm on my way to do some grocery shopping, believe it or not,
and I plan to by more than tins of soup. I made a list and
everything.
Suddenly, something in my head screams, "Turn around you prat!"
The same scream that used to warn me of a copper heading right
straight for me.
I turn around, getting jostled by the moving pedestrian traffic
that doesn't even pause for me. Sure enough, there's a copper,
plainclothes, leaning against one of those ridiculous looking
square American squad cars. I almost turn right around to run
like hell, out of habit, until I remind myself that I'm a fine
upstanding citizen here, with a temporary American Visa and
everything. I even pay taxes.
The cop is odd looking, with a short beard and moustache, and
long hair pulled back in a ponytail, though I've become
accustomed to seeing strange sights in New York. The cop's eyes
are piercing as he meets my stare, and smiles slightly in
recognition. He starts walking towards me.
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