Hell Within -- Chapter Nine: The Addict -- Scenes 1-3

-Chapter Nine: The Addict-

-1-

It was a tedious and emotional drive back from Atlanta. Her petition to have Dr. Ambrose’s license pulled for sexual misconduct had been squashed based on lack of evidence. What a smug bastard he was.

It was over.

After everything that little bitch had put her through, she was going to get her way.

And as she pulled her Altima into the gravel driveway before the trailer, she eyed the white escort station wagon, and she lost it.

She pulled her car to a stop, leaned her head against the steering wheel and cried like a baby.

Now, she had to accept some hard truths.

She had been a terrible mother.

Mandy was gone, and she probably wouldn’t see her again.

There was no amount of atonement that could ever erase the damage she’d done.

And all of it was the result of a seventeen-year-old temper tantrum.

Terra collected herself, opened the door and climbed out of her car.

And as she crunched across the gravel toward the trailer and past the escort, she noticed the dried blood on the passenger’s side seat of the escort and she stopped and looked at it.

Why had she not noticed that before?

Why had she sat in the living room with her mouth shut and her arms folded and let Davy do that to her daughter?

She didn’t know what made her do the things that she’d done. The only thing she did know for sure was that she needed crank.

-2-

Terra green settled in her desk and then looked around the classroom.

It wasn’t a typical college classroom like what one might see in a movie but highly reminiscent of a high school class full of metal desks, a wooden podium placed squarely before the blackboard, and a table off to the side.

And the room was full of students. It looked as though many others had decided to take the night Economics 101 class in hopes that the professor might go easy.

She scanned the faces of the other students but saw no one that she recognized from her other classes.

As she sized up the competition, another man walked in through the open door in the back of the room, and her eyes landed on him.

He was a bit taller than average and well built with dark brown hair, a medium tan, and a thick mustache obscuring his upper lip. He looked to be not much older than she -- in his early to mid twenties. The look of him reminded her a bit of Tom Sellick from Magnum P.I. -- a show that she never missed.

But he was dressed in a manner that reminded her of Miami Vice -- pleated white slacks, a white tank top with a black button-up shirt unbuttoned and draping over his shoulders.

She hoped that he would sit somewhere near her.

Instead, he closed the door behind himself, tucked the thick manila folder he carried under his arm and made his way around to the front of the classroom where he opened the folder on the table, stacked the documents within the folder and placed them squarely in the center. Then he turned around, stuffed his hands in his pockets and eyed the class.

"Good Evening. My name is Ben Eaton. No reason to call me anything other than Ben. I’m just a lowly grad student. I’ll be lecturing in Dr. Burns’ stead. If you’ll notice the. . . ."

Terra’s eyes glazed over.

She’d taken classes taught by grad students before -- almost all of her 101 level classes had been conducted as such, but she’d never had an instructor like this.

". . . know what you all have to deal with, and I won’t be a bit offended if none of you show up for any of the lectures. There are two grades in this class. . . ."
* * *
Terra stopped dead in her tracks in the foyer of The Scholarly Pub. She saw him across the room hovering over six upside down shot glasses and one full. He picked up the full shot glass swaying in place for a moment, and then he took a deep breath and tossed it back making a wry face.

Terra closed the distance, and as she approached she noticed something she had not seen before -- a wedding band on his hand.

She stopped just before him -- a bit disappointed.

"I didn’t know you were married," she said.

Ben turned his shot glass upside down on the bar and pivoted toward her. There was a spark of recognition mixed with confusion on his face as he eyed her as if he knew her but couldn’t recall how.

He held up his left hand and eyed his wedding band still swaying in place and then he looked back at her.

"Not for much longer, I think."

And then he turned around and motioned for the bartender.

"Why?" she said.

He turned back toward her. She could tell that he was hammered. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly out of focus, and there seemed to be a bit of a delay in his cognition's.

"Do I know you?" he said.

"Yeah, well, not really. I’m in your Economics 101 class."

It took another moment for him to process what she was saying but then she saw a bit of relief wash over him.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Terra is it?"

Terra was flattered. Out of forty or so students, he had remembered her name.

"Yeah," she responded.

And now Ben seemed to be checking her out.

The bartender came by and sat another shot glass of gold liquid before him.

"I’ve been married since I graduated from high school," he blurted.

"No way!"

He nodded and picked up his shot glass and took the napkin from beneath it.

"Almost six years."

"So what’s the problem?" she said.

He huffed.

Right now, the level of distress on his face was insurmountable, and he’d just about succeeded in twisting the tip of his napkin into a cone.

"She’s a pimple on the ass of society."

She laughed, and he looked at her. His expression told her that he wasn’t joking.

"She doesn’t want an education, won’t get a job. . . . She thinks I don’t know about her pothead friends."

"That sucks."

He nodded. "No shit. I’m working fifty to sixty hours a week, teaching two classes, and working on my master’s so she can spend all of the grocery money on drugs."

"Well, what do you do for fun?"

He eyed her with resolve, plucked the Winston out of the ashtray before him, took a heavy drag, and then downed his shot.

"Smoke cigarettes and drink Scotch."

She laughed.

He sat the glass back on the table and dropped his wedding band in it, and then grinned at her.

"Well, I was wondering," she said. "I’m here with two other girls, and they want to go to a club that I can’t get into."

Ben eyed her. "You want to do something?"

She nodded.

Ben nodded. "What the hell."
* * *
Terra found herself sitting outside of a Winn Dixie in her Pinto watching.

The automatic doors opened and Ben Eaton and his wife marched out into the parking lot with Ben’s wife pushing a shopping cart full of brown bags.

She got out of her car, closed the door and inched toward them.

Halfway down the parking lot, Ben stopped in his tracks with his eyes trained on Terra, and her heart skipped a beat. She felt dizzy and nauseous, but this had to be done.

Ben’s wife, who had been lagging behind him with the cart caught up to him and she read "Who’s that?" from her lips.

Ben shook his head.

Terra stood up as straight as she could and took a step toward them trying to appear to have a bit of dignity, but her knees were as wobbly as an old, wooden chair. And she didn’t recall having ever been quite so nervous.

Ben’s wife said something else to him; she appeared a bit agitated now. Ben shrugged her off and started straight toward Terra with his wife following in his tracks. Sensing his wife behind him, he spun around and barked something at her, and then he turned and closed the distance.

And when he reached her, he took Terra’s arm and led her out of his wife’s earshot.

"What in the hell are you thinking?" he said.

She stared back at him dumbly -- half hoping that he’d read the answer on her face.

"Are you trying to fuck up my marriage?"

She folded her arms and looked away from him.

"Talk to me," he pleaded.

She looked at him and licked her lips and then looked away from him again.

"What goddamnit? I thought that we agreed that what happened was inappropriate, and that we’d not see each other again."

She looked straight into his face.

"I’m pregnant."

And now the pressure was more than she could bear. She felt as if the whole world was bearing down on her as Ben’s mouth fell open and he took a step back from her.

He looked over his right shoulder at his wife, who looked as though she were staring in at him from an operating room.

She hated herself right now. It was just one night, and she’d regretted it ever since. There had been a coldness the next morning from Ben that had made her feel like a whore, and he hadn’t been able to look straight at her since.

Why had she gotten drunk that night?

Ben leaned in close to her like a lawyer whispering to a client.

"How could this be?" he said.

She rolled her eyes and looked away.

Ben glanced back over his shoulder at his wife again, and when he turned back toward her, there was new resolve in his face.

"It’s not mine."

Terra’s mouth fell open.

There was no other sound in the world at that moment, the whole thing had frozen. The only people in existence were her and Ben exchanging glares and God and Ben’s wife peering at both of them.

"Jesus Christ," he pressed. "You picked me up in a bar. How am I supposed to know how many other men you did that with?"

Her right hand clapped against his jaw so hard that she knocked the sensation out of it.

Ben gaped back at her, in disbelief.

It was as though the shock of the experience had knocked her soul from her body and now she was only a helpless spectator watching her life unfold.

"Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on," Ben’s wife demanded.

Ben looked back over his shoulder at her again, and for the first time Terra looked straight at the other woman.

She wasn’t beautiful; she looked like a little country girl that had accidentally managed to entangle herself with a jewel. And she was quite obviously stoned out of her gourd.

A hot tear rolled down Terra’s cheek as the other woman insisted that someone clue her in again.

Terra turned and marched back to her car and left Ben and his wife to pick up the pieces.

-3-

Henry saw her now.

The woman was haggard but she had good bone structure like a woman who might have been pretty at one time but had been afflicted with hardship.

And she acted as though something was wrong with her. Her movements about the room were jerky and confused and she kept speaking nonsense to herself.

Henry wasn’t hidden well, yet she hadn’t noticed him.

He found this game most amusing.

Most amusing indeed.

(Continue to scene 4)