The bodega is empty, save for me and him. I feel him long before I see him.
His aura is smoke-bomb blue. When it wafts around the corner towards me, it feels like a miracle. Divinity in the dead of night. He’s by the breakfast aisle. Skims a finger over some off-brand margarine. Under cheap fluorescent, a plume of cobalt detaches itself from him, beckons at me. I stare for a moment, first at the color then at him—the lithe, athletic frame that commands it. An aura is a premonition. Color mingled with static mingled with a pulse. Or just a sign that drug has started pushing into brain. The batch of heroin I shot up last night felt different, and this must be the aftermath. The city’s kiss of death. Or perhaps I’ve achieved clairvoyance. I blink twice. The plume is gone, but he’s still gilded in blue. Glance up. Colored filters have been installed in the ceiling’s luminary panels. Blue filters have been on the rise in Philadelphia because it makes it harder for junkies like us to find our veins. Hold a hand up. Blue as well. I take a bounty bar from the shelf and shove it into my pocket, even though I hate coconut.
My nose prickles with crumbs of wet cocaine, and I sniff. When he turns my way, I stuff my backpack with pringles and instant ramen. Avoid the security cameras. Footage is memory, and memory opposes full and immutable change. My current situation is transitory, and I will do anything to keep a blank slate until I metamorphosize into a better person in brighter city. Until then, the opioids keep me sane while I tolerate grubby fingernails, thrift-store flannel, the roiling mixture of cheesesteak and cadavers in the summer breeze.
A yelp makes me turn. The lithe boy is holding the obese check out guy at gun point. He sees me and grins, strange and manic, and I think he just might fire. The man tosses over some measly bills from the register, and he lowers the weapon, reaching for a bottle of Grenache and uncorking it with his pocketknife.
“Grab what you want,” He calls out to me. “Coast is clear.”
Ignore him. Head towards the exit. Scoffing, he picks up a roll of wrapping paper, twirls it like a bat and smashes up a shelf of half-priced gin.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” He yells at me.
Realizing an open, the clerk dives under the counter and re-emerges with a small hand gun, just as I yell at the lithe boy to duck. Instead, he pirouettes out the sliding door at half-speed, skidding across the linoleum like a slapstick act, bottle of wine clasped between two fingers. The store alarm goes off just as the doors hiss shut. I walk slowly towards the register. The checkout guy fires a shaky blank at me, and I hate that I don’t even flinch. I mumble an apology and rush out into the night. Footsteps sync with mine from behind and I turn around. It’s him, cheeks flushed, dregs of a smile pulling at his lips. He pulls his toque off, baring a head of vermillion curls.
“Hey, nice work back there.” He says. “I take it it’s not your first rodeo?”
“Doesn’t seem like yours either.”
He winks and holds out a hand. “Alastair.”
I don’t take it. “Hale.”
He eyes my bag of spoils. “So are you planning to share?”
“What?”
“After all, I did create a diversion so we could both escape.”
He speaks a little too quickly, words peppered with a false enthusiasm. Something in me tanks when he starts scratching at his elbow and rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
“Sure, I guess.”
“You got a place to crash?”
I lead him towards Falls bridge, where I spend a few minutes hauling out my soiled sleeping bag out of the Schuylkill river. There was storm earlier, and my other possessions are either scattered or soaked. I search behind the pier for emergency supplies I had stowed away but they’re not there. It’s almost midnight and a layer of smog shimmers over the river. I squint again at the water. Below that hazy demarcation, two black trash bags bob around in the river, upended like punctured parachutes. I facepalm but he doesn’t leave. Instead, he vines an arm around my shoulders, then wades into the water, holding the soaked trash bags above his head like a conquest. Supplies reacquired, we settle on the river bank, shoulder width apart. He passes me the bottle and I take a swig, and wince. I’ve always hated red wine. It tasted like blood gone bad. But the rim is still warm from his lips, so I press it to mine again, tipping my head back but stemming the flow with my tongue.
“Not bad for a corner store, huh?” He remarks, scanning the label. “What is this? Bottega? Score.”
“The wine wasn’t necessary. Neither was the gun.”
“The gun was a necessary distraction. And the wine a well-earned indulgence.”
“You could have been caught.”
“But I wasn’t.” He counters. “I should have been but I wasn’t. Nothing can touch you if you’re smart and fast enough. And the checkout guy was a total moron. Who the hell doesn’t pre-load for a night shift in Philly?”
“Someone who believed he wouldn’t need it.” I want to hit him. For turning us from survivors into criminals.
“Then he deserved what he got. That’s the thing about Philly. Everything is clearer here. The world tapers down to only two questions. When can I get my hands on the next shipment of dope? And who do I put a bullet into to get it?”
“Speaking of, my stash is soaked.”
Alastair swears loudly and retrieves a razor and a small resealable bag from his jacket pocket. He cuts the heroin into two jagged lines on his thigh and snorts hard, clamping the bridge of his nose. He lets me snort the other line, and I savour the intimacy of my forehead bumping into his crotch. His scent knots into my temple, wisps into my brain. A double hit. I gather some loose cardboard pieces and discarded curtains from a trash pile nearby and assemble two makeshift beds. He crawls up into one, pulling the torn, filthy fabric over his face. I sleep fitfully. Dreams embryo but don’t fully form. Alastair isn’t next to me when I wake, bruised and aching from the cold.
He’s leaning against the furthest pier, back towards me. Drains the wine while watching cars raze by, headlights pinwheeling over his features. Corkscrews of smoke from his joint twine into the air, blue rather than grey, dissipating with the onslaught of light.
*
1am. Alastair takes me on a graffiti tour. Caricatures of politicians and warped quotes are right up front, scrawled on the street walls where everyone can see them, done by artists who couldn’t bear to have their existential crises go unnoticed. I’ve seen several groupies working on tags and throw-ups but Alastair claimed to be a real pro who only did heaven-spots: dangerous sky-high locations such as buildings and rooftops. We slip into an unlocked apartment complex, sneaking through the stairwell then into the fire exit leading to the roof top. His masterpiece was a mural of the city stretched out across four walls, half-done; a part of it stencilled out with white pen and marker, waiting to be coloured in. A portion of the Ben Franklin Bridge tinted with spray paint. He had coated an entire wall in black, crowned with silver specks. I glance down as Alastair worked; vertigo turning the cityscape into glittery mush. The roads were clogged as usual. Jaywalkers weaving through the cracks, bags over their heads shielding them from the drizzle.
“You’re in charge of colour measurements.” He tells me, tossing some cans my way.
I pull out some paintbrushes and acrylic paint from my bag that I salvaged from the storm earlier, and wave them at him.
“Well, how about that? A painter, huh?”
“Aspiring art student.” I tell him, and he grins back.
When we roll on another layer of black, slick like tar, I spot the reflection of the moon lurking between the bricks. I dip the brush into a pot glow in the dark paint, circle it with a ring of stars, dotting silver all around, locking it in place. With each brushstroke, a strange clarity novocaines through me. The kind of high I used to get sniffing bleach. A sense that the entropy of decay has been halted, grappled, stemmed.
“You’ve been in the city a long time?” He asks.
“Born and raised.”
“Got any connections?”
“Not really. Not since my Dad shot himself. He was in the trade and got into trouble with the cartel.”
The first time I discovered my father’s nocturnal activities was when I had just turned ten. He was cutting sheets of ice on the kitchen table, mumbling percentages under his breath. I grabbed a kitchen knife, begging to help but he shoved me out of the room. I thought he was baking because the meth looked so much like the caramelized sugar on the candy apples we got at a carnival the previous weekend. The next day, he shot himself after the cartel put a hit out on him. I found him sprawled out on the kitchen tables, a pool of blood soaking my abandoned math worksheets, which I submitted the next day after claiming it was cranberry juice. I couch surfed for months then eventually turned to the streets. I strode past knifings and shootings, like an observer in a live museum. I huddled amongst shell-shocked tourists during protests and police bombings. Pretended to dial loved ones when I was really playing Bejewelled. I thought some method acting would coax out the fear, but true danger always seemed out of reach, evanescing out of my periphery just as I shouldered into the fray.
Kensington was the epicentre of the trade. I needed something strong. Something that would even out the corrugated walls of my insides. Dealers introduced me to heroin, said it was the purest on the market. The high was a rush of heat and ice; a purge. I trembled with every hit. A long due reboot for my lagging system. Ennui and intoxication became indistinguishable, my Venn diagram of emotions all blurring into one. There were always others around me, more fucked up than I was, wrapped in goodwill blankets and murmuring obscenities. I wondered if that was the peak of euphoria, a complete severance from your own body and mind. To get a free sampling of death only to walk away leashed with a grenade in your gut, fastened with a pin that only you can and will pull. I could still make out their faces through the haze, whereas I was nothing to them. A white cast from the streetlamps or just an outline in their solitary dark.
Alastair doesn’t probe, simply shrugs and holds out a fist for a sympathy bump. We stop for a break and share a joint, then snort what’s left of the cocaine. He lets me slip my hands into the pockets of his hoodie when it gets colder, but tenses when I nip at his neck with my teeth. I want to fuse into him, reassemble into a crucial appendage rather than a whole other body.
“I want to go somewhere far,” I tell him. “Somewhere without any concrete. Somewhere where it feels like everything can be swept away by the wind.”
“I think I know just the place.”
He leans back into me and hums into my ear. The mural is so bright that it hurts to look at it. But in it, I can see all the nooks of the city. Places I thought I had forgotten. I’ve walked the city’s parameters countless of times, only to find myself looped back to where I began. A hexed maze; concrete arcing over all the exit points. His sweat warm and briny against my lips, the grainy skyline shifts from bleak to mysterious. Our tongues meet, wet and urgent, words slipping through friction. The aftertaste of dollar store breath mints freezes my tongue and I can almost pretend I don’t taste the acidic pine it masks.
“We’ll finish it tomorrow,” He says, tugging my hands tighter around his chest. “There’s somewhere I would like to take you.”
I press a hand against the still wet paint. My fingers come away slick with gold.
*
3am. The Gulch is an abandoned railroad track right down Kensington Avenue. Despite being a stone’s throw away from the city centre, it was a cesspool of urban depravity. Its silence unnerves me. I forgot what quiet felt like. The techno-grunge pummel from the strip clubs were my nightly ambient. Tents and couches set up on either side, next to of the wide sprawl of dried weeds. Barrels of fire lit from kerosene-soaked rags burn from a distance, druggies leaning into the flame to light their joints. Up close, an anaemic glint films their eyes. There is something rabid and primitive in them that makes me look away. When they lean back into their tattered lawn chairs, smoke pluming from their lips, I can’t tell if they’re dead or alive. Then the moment passes and they contort, shifting into a restless catatonia. They leer at me, huddling protectively over their fire. After all, it is fire that fuels their life cycles. Sparks their weed and liquefies their meth. Eviscerates their bodies when their sustenance turns lethal.
Alastair struts ahead of me, navigating the dark like he can see through it. I trip over used needles and condom wrappers, my foot lodging itself in a broken bird cage. Aerodynamic laws don’t apply here. Simultaneously descending into the ground and levitating upwards towards the sky, our forward march warps in this new space. Disembodied hands grope at Alastair in the dark, and he clasps them back, laughing. My stomach simmers at that, like an allergic reaction to cheap champagne. He turns to a girl and guy with matching lip piercings and a bicep’s worth of tattoos and waves them over.
“Rex and Kara, meet Hale.”
They both give me a brief nod, before turning back to Alastair to chatter on about hitchhiking plans. They managed to snag a ride to Pittsburgh tomorrow and wanted him to tag along.
“What about the mural?” I remind him. “We have to finish it.”
“Screw that.” He grabs me by the shoulders and looks me in the eye. “Come with me. We can rent caravans. Get high on Mount Washington. Ride a Ferris wheel on a beach. Finally get the hell out of here.”
I don’t know why I can’t make my mouth say yes. I think of the mural. Of the rooftop and how we were higher than satellites. So far up that the carnage sounded like crickets. So far up that religion didn’t seem quite so absurd. He’s still looking at me. I picture future nights. Our toes peeking out of the rips in my sleeping bag. Snorting cocaine off the divots in his hipbone. Smoke unfurling out of his joint during sub-zero dawns. Champagne and Cheetos for dinner. Faces on the street morphing each day depending on the cast of shadows or what was in our veins. I think I might have to visit the mural every day from now. I think I might vanish in a real city, among all that glass and gleam. I think I might need a playlist of pandemonium to edge out that clean silence. I think he might look different in the light. I know I would despise him if he did.
Kara digs her nails into his shoulder and slips him three sealed plastic satchels that he pockets. He hooks an arm around her neck, and plants a wet kiss on her lips. I tune out the conversation, the whole world converging on a chipped plum fingernail grazing the swell of a bicep, background softening. I look up into her absinthe coloured eyes, crinkled with triumph. Her black tank top is torn and moth-eaten; her jeans completely ripped at the knee. I want to hit her. Grab a used needle off the soiled ground and jam it straight into her eye.
“Hey, let’s hit up the overpass again. Finish that throw up.”
“It’s way too dark in there, dude.” Rex says. “I was doing tags a few nights ago and nearly fell ass-first into incoming traffic.”
“That’s because you were high.” Alastair laughs. “And you need a flashlight, you idiot, the head lights aren’t bright enough.”
“We’re not you, man.” He salutes Alastair and jabs my arm. “This guy is a legend. He used to scale the heavens. Skyscrapers, bridges, you name it.”
“Maybe we can get a slushie after.” Kara drawls, continuing to paw at him like a disgruntled cat. Her pupils dilate when she looks me, and stumbles away in an alarming zig-zag.
“Sure, sweets.” He nudges me. “You coming?”
*
4am. We scale the fence into Somerset station, hobbling along the open tracks into the gape of the overhead pass. Alastair shoves a flashlight between his teeth, pulling himself over before helping Kara. Rex’s masterpiece is disappointing, a bunch of teal bubble letters floating in a fuchsia pink smog. The three of them shake cans of spray paint and outline each letter with darker tones, enhancing their 3D effect. A pointless act. The train would bolt by too quickly for the passengers to even get a clear view, not to mention that it was pitch dark in there. Deemed as relatively sober, I was made the designated lookout, in charge of scanning the dark for any sign of cops or listening out for any incoming traffic. I kick at the pebbles lining the track and watch Alastair grope at Kara’s hips while spray painting a craggy red heart above the pink text. Rex had harnessed himself over them, starting on the roof. The larger flashlight pendulums on a string around Rex’s neck, the select illumination highlighting their separate features. His eyes, her nose. Her cheek, his lips. Moving together and pulling apart.
Then I hear it. The slow groan of the tracks. A dull whine. I lean towards the sound, making sure I didn’t mishear it. The rubber band in my chest tightens, the coil of heat starting to quiver and migrate. I curl myself up into the wall, pressing my spine hard against the concrete. On the opposite end of the tracks, Kara is laughing with her head tipped back, hands around the rope of Rex’s harness. Alastair swats at her ass, egging her to come down. From my vantage point, she’s the only one in the danger zone. They’re stoned, reflexes dulled to the point that they don’t even respond to the oncoming headlights. The screech of wheels on track finally sent them reeling back, Alastair clawing wildly for Kara’s hand, but it’s too late. She’s hanging off the harness, a writhing marionette, screaming as Rex tries to yank her towards them. It’s the last thing I see before the train rockets between us, all wind and sound that I almost don’t hear the orchestic crunch of a body on top of a carriage, followed by a punctured wail.
When it passes, Alastair is on the ground with his head in his hand, faces inches away from the filthy ground. Rex stares up at the broken harness, the rope snapped off at the root. I try to re-arrange my features into an approximation of grief before crossing the tracks and sliding my arms around Alastair. We look for the body, but it’s too dark and we give up eventually. I try to reach for Alastair’s hand on the walk back but he balls his fingers into a fist. There are no words of comfort, all I can think about is how everything beautiful scatters at some point, comes apart at the seams. The city is a paring knife and I need to keep him intact. When we reach the gulch, Alastair shoves me to the ground, one hand closing on my neck and the other pinning my hands behind my back.
“You had one job. One fucking job—” He rasps, eyes misty with some inscrutable emotion. I squirm under his weight, and his grip tightens until my air flow is cut off. Then something shifts in his gaze. He spits on my face.
“You’re meant for this city.” He says. “Stay here and rot.”
I scream, raw and savage. Jerk my head forward and bite him in the shoulder. His grip loosens on my neck. I pull one free and clip him hard across the jaw, seconds before his reflexes pry him back into sharp recoil. He rams a foot into my knee, shattering the kneecap. His lips are swollen, blood trickling down from his nose into the cleft of his cupid’s bow, even though I aimed for his jaw. He takes in slow and rugged breaths, pupils shrinking when he tries to focus on me. So tender that it sends me over the edge. I flip him over, clamping him down with my legs and pounding my fists into his face. He struggles against me but he’s no match for my savage, uncontrollable blows. Silence the soothsayer and the prophecy is broken. The rest of The Gulch’s occupants rouse from their trance, herding around us like starving zombies.
Then, the sirens. Loud and shrill. I hear them for the first time. Tires raze the wet tar roads. Headlights descend on us, like dawn on the underworld. The cops are yelling at us to stay down, and I catch a few DEA agents among them. Alastair is still on his back, eyes closed. His face is a bloody pulp, barely recognizable. I have to taste my fingers to make sure that the red isn’t sugar sweet. Like candy apple glaze. I whisper to him that we need to run, but he only murmurs something intelligible, a stray hand clawing at my arm. I try to haul myself up, but the world distorts. Hands close on my shoulders just as I stumble, pinning me down as the black draws in like blinds, shutting out the light.
*
I wake to the stench of disinfectant and vomit. Leather bonds strap me to a rickety cot, the material grazing my bruises as I thrashed. A jet of lamp light sting my eyes. A grim faced nurse bends over me, examining my arm with rubbery gloved hands. How long have you been using? What is your current residence? My tongue flops uselessly in my mouth as I try to shield myself from the light.
“What’s your name?” She finally asks.
“Hale. Hale Asher.” I slur.
“Have you been using heroine exclusively?”
“No. Cocaine too. But mostly heroin.”
She removes her gloves. “Hale, you’re in Centre City Recovery. The last batch of heroin you had purchased two days ago was laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid about eighty times stronger than morphine. It usually causes erratic behaviour and hallucinations. How has the past twelve hours been like for you?”
I look down at my fingernails, still caked with Alastair’s blood.
“Your test results are back. I can see that you’ve chased that with cocaine about six hours ago, which sent your system into delayed action free fall. You were hyperventilating when the cops found you.”
“I just need a bit. Please.”
She smiles, her bottom lip puckering up. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible. Just lie back, I promise you’ll feel better soon.”
“I want to leave.”
“We have contacted your aunt and she has requested to pay for your treatment. You’re aren’t eighteen yet. Minors can’t leave of their own accord.”
I turn my head to find Alastair in the bed next to mine, face wrapped up in bandages, only the tip of his nose exposed. There’s talk about a coma, but I don’t catch much else. I’m just about to drift off when my nervous system starts its revolt. I’m freezing and burning simultaneously, the plummet fusing with the rise. A bonfire swells in the cavity of my chest, a defibrillator with a liquefied charge. When I scream, I hear the sound of body against metal, bones grinded into the tracks. I taste blood in the back of my throat. I thrash about involuntarily, forcing my weight against the bonds, aggravating my sore muscles. The same nurse as before prods at me with tense gloved fingers like I could be contagious, slips a needle into my arm and I slump back onto the pillow. The rest of the Gulch’s inhabitants get carted in. Faded denim dusted with white. Heads would perk up at the newly perfumed air, inhaling deeply as if they could draw the particles into their lungs. A final hit of the precious remnants before they were flushed down the sink.
When the nurses vacate the room, I root through Alastair’s backpack and scrounge up the last bit of cocaine hidden in the inner flap. Cut it with the tip of a thermometer. Snort it off a meal tray. He’s so serene, so damn angelic that I kiss him again one last time, before slipping out the window into the fire exit. It’s the end of November. The pavement stings my bare feet and my weak left leg forces me to limp. I catch a glimpse of myself in a shattered rearview mirror. Pale, albinotic blonde. Desaturated and dead. The rain turns everything hazy but I follow the light. I take slow steps—the ground might cave in from the pressure—down the Badlands into Broad street, scaling the fire escape back up our rooftop. When I reach the end, I finish the mural with the last of my acrylic paint. The paint sparkles as I put in the finishing touches. Buildings and windowpanes gleam in the darkness, almost protruding out of the brick. There are no harsh lines in this world, only brushstrokes and finger paint. As I press my burning forehead against the icy brick, my legs finally give out. A light sheen of snow has started to fall. I pick a clover shaped snowflake off my eye lid and put it in my mouth, melting it on my tongue.
I must have dozed off because I startle awake when a tremor runs through the apartment complex. Voices ricochet. Shrill panic. Some kid must have set off a sparkler bomb. I don’t know what makes me stay put—the fact that an eternity of sleepless nights has finally caught up to me or that the throbbing pain in my right leg has soothed under the snow. The scaffolding creaks. Will it cave or hold? The city already knows, but will keep you waiting like a taciturn lover. Always until it’s too late.
To my right, the sun is starting to rise. Skittle red, and with a vengeance. From my vantage point, it’s still the size of an eyeball. I could reach forth and pluck it from the veiny sky. Swallow it whole. A phare for my blind writhing organs, supernovaing within me until I implode. Light haemorrhaging out through every orifice. Every pore.
–
Rowan Siah (she/her) is a writer from Singapore. She is currently working on a novel and a short story collection.
© 2026, Rowan Siah
Halfway Down the Stairs 