"Fuckface! Over here." Suddenly, a blaring voice woke me up from my thoughts as I stepped inside Sharky's to the familial hustle and bustle of the bar.
I looked up to the sight of everybody already at our usual table on the right-hand side. A table that was placed extremely close to the pit and gave us a great view of the bloody fights that took place. Ever since my first visit I had found myself at Sharky's more and more often, with it becoming the place we almost always started our evenings at. Mostly because of Lewis and Jamie and their almost unhealthy addiction to anything involving fighting. Loving nothing than to become enthralled or even participate in the brutal brawls that took place. Pit fights that In the many times I had been here I found myself participating in quite a few times. Mostly due to peer pressure from the others, with them giving me scathing looks filled with disdain whenever I tried to weasel my way out of a fight.
The majority of the fights I took part in ended with myself getting my absolute ass kicked. An expected result when taking into account I was fighting grown men who were twice my size. That's not even taking into account my physical condition, which had continued to plummet and worsen as time passed, making any strenuous activity I did feel ten times harder than it used to. Overall, it was surprising I was even able to squeak out the couple wins that I did.
Yet, despite the initial excitement I felt, the more fights I partook in, the less excited I found myself feeling, until by my last fight a week ago, I was almost bored. No longer did I find my heart beating in exhilaration or my blood pounding in my ears, like when I fought Matthew. The fights had become something closer to a chore than anything truly enjoyable. Something I had to do if I didn't want to be mocked or humiliated by the other guys, specifically Jamie and Lewis, whose love for fighting seemed to have only grown stronger.
That was something I had realised over the past month I spent hanging out with everyone once the excitement and uniqueness of what I was doing had faded. How little I had in common with them all, both personality and hobby-wise. Most of the time, I found myself wondering if we took away the alcohol and drugs, drugs that had now become commonplace in my life, would I even be able to consider any of them my friends.
'Probably not.' I thought with a bitter smile as I gazed at the group.
Jamie and Lewis were psychopaths in the making, constantly talking about fighting, and in Lewis's case, killing. Every night, they would try to start a fight wherever they could, an easy task with Jamie's extreme anger issues and Cindy's manipulations. Manipulations that showed she was just as much of a psychopath as Jamie and Lewis. She loved nothing more than to manipulate others, constantly flirting with anyone she could, not because she actually liked them, but to try and wind up Jamie and start a fight. Truthfully, I didn't believe she even liked Jamie romantically, just that she enjoyed the control being with him actually gave her.
Out of the five of them, it was only Clark and Alice I somewhat got on with, yet even still, we had nothing in common, leaving any conversation we got into incredibly boring and usually lead to us just discussing whatever happened to us the night before. Overall, I couldn't help but compare the time I spent with them to the time I used to spend with Sam. How I never found myself getting bored with him and would wind up crying from laughter by the end.
"Adam what the fuck are you doing? Hurry up over here, it's your round next." Realising I hadn't moved since entering the bar, too lost in thought, I quicked shuffled past the bustling crowd of people and made my way over to everyone, doing my best to forget my previous thoughts.
"Hey man, how was work?" Clark immediately asked the moment I sat down next to Alice and gave everyone a nod in greeting.
"Same old, same old. You know how it is." I replied, knowing that they didn't. After spending so much time with them all this past month, I ended up learning quite a lot about them. Such as how my initial assumption that they were all from working class families like myself was horribly wrong. It turned out that all their families were rich, hence why they could easily afford to spend day after day drinking and partying without a single worry about money or cost. A fact that every time I remembered brought up past feelings of envy I hadn't felt in a while.
Conversation soon flowed between us as time slowly passed. Throughout it all, I tried to get rid of the boredom I felt and have fun with the others. Yet with every repeated story that was told, I found myself wanting to smash my head harder and harder against the table. Quickly, I looked to my right to the only other person as silent as myself this evening. To Alice, who was staring at Lewis as he retold a story we had heard a hundred times before with that blank look on her face that I had come to associate with her, making one wonder what she could possibly be so lost in thought about.
"What's up with you? You alright?" I asked, noticing her stare was even more vacant than usual.
"I could ask you the same thing." she replied as she turned to me, a smirk on her lips that brought up an array of mixed feelings.
My relationship with Alice was bizarre, to say the least. At least I thought so; to Alice and the others, it seemed completely normal - Just one more thing that differed between us. After what had happened at the club the first night we met, I stupidly thought it meant the beginning of some kind of relationship between Alice and myself. Or at least some form of romantic connection.
However, I later found out, after one extremely awkward conversation the following night, that Alice wasn't the relationship type, preferring to just 'have fun' as she promptly described it. For the next couple of days, I wanted to die of embarrassment, unable to even look her in the eyes without my face lighting up like a Christmas, but eventually, after far too many drinks, I was able to move past what happened. Though it still didn't change the fact that I still wasn't sure how to talk with her some days.
"I don't know," I said honestly, releasing a sigh. " I think I'm just bored, to be honest."
"Did I hear someone say they're bored?" Jamie's voice boomed from my side as he wrapped one of his muscular arms around my neck and all but crushed my windpipe, apparently having been eavesdropping without our notice.
"I got just the thing for you bro." And with that, he pulled out a small cylinder tube from inside his jacket. A cylinder tube I was more than familiar with.
"No Jamie. It's way too early for that." I replied while trying to push his unmoving arm from my neck. Yet even as I spoke, I couldn't take my eyes off the cylinder, knowing inside it contained the solution to my problem.
Jamie, seeing my captivated stare, shot an insufferable smirk. "Whatever you say bro. That just means more to me." And with that he left, dangling the cylinder in front of my eyes like I was a fucking dog before he headed to the bathroom.
As I watched him leave, I tried to stop myself from following, trying to distract my mind with anything and everything around me. But as the seconds continued to pass by at a crawling pace, all I could think about was how good it would feel to finally be rid of this ever-present boredom and depression I was growing far too accustomed to, at least for the night. And so, embarrassingly, I quickly stood up and followed after Jamie, doing my best to not look in the direction of Alice where I could feel her penetrating stare directed at me.
"I knew you would come. You know the deal." Jamie said mockingly, standing back up from his bent position over the sink. Wiping his hand along his scrunched up nose with a frightening smile painted on his face.
A part of me knew I shouldn't, that it was bad for me and probably lowered the already small life expectancy I possessed. Yet I needed it, to escape from the shit show that was my life and all the mistakes I had recently made that continued to plague me. Mistakes that I had no one else to blame but myself. So after handing him a twenty dollar note, I marched my way past Jamie without another glance and leant my head down towards the sink, snorting a long strip of cocaine from against the metal plate in the container in a single breath.
"There you go man," Jamie shouted as he slapped my shoulder hard, forcing me to place my hands on the sink for support. "Pleasure doing business with you."
I didn't reply, too busy enjoying the feeling of the stress and worry I had accumulated leaving my body, evaporating away and letting me finally relax. But not for long, as it was soon replaced with a deep sense of self-hatred that started to swiftly form within me for taking the drugs, even though I was trying to quit.
I knew I was starting to develop a problem; the time between each high was getting shorter and shorter, with it only being less than a few days since my last one. I truly did want to stop, not wanting to be led to an even earlier grave than expected. But as each day passed since my last high, I was assaulted by each failure I had ever made. Feelings of guilt, sadness, regret, envy, and hatred burned with intensity inside me. And so, with a deep sigh of defeat, I stood back up and trudged my way out of the bathroom and back to the table alone, doing my best to get rid of all my negative thoughts and only focus on the euphoric high I was feeling.