Chapter 4: Gratian

He goes home, but that solves nothing.

Gratian’s stint in detox began mostly in silence. His body was shaking involuntarily for the first few hours, or at least that is what he perceived. Little flames all over his body, just below the skin, vibrating and changing location continuously, leaving him pained and feeling unbalanced. His stomach was a balloon of fetid, toxic waste pushing out, tensed, pressuring his lower abdomen with the pain of desperation and futility. His ears were flaming and his feet were numb. He didn’t want to chat.

Jacob, either because he had been hooked up to the tubes and needles longer or because his toxin was of a different variety, did want to chat, however. He was more upright than Gratian, slightly less inclined. He was chipper. He was a young man with curly hair that defied the descriptor. His hair was more frenetically loopy than curly, and it shot out in haphazard directions, framing his annoyingly smiley face.

“How you doing, bud?”

Gratian, through the brain haze and persistent physical discomfort, made a promise to himself to ignore this unwelcome acknowledgement of his presence. He focused on a steady, slow, breathing rhythm, reserving the remaining attention to avoid retching.

“You look pretty shitty. What you get into?”

Shut up, you little weirdo. Goddamn it.

Gratian was not a friendly person. He seemed like a friendly person, but he was not. Friendliness was a tool of advancement, or at least used to be until it stopped working.