Cocaine Kiss

Charlie Boer

© Copyright 1999 by Charlie Boer

I am a seventeen year old high school student, currently enrolled in creative writing. This is a story we had to do for class, and I wanted other people to take a look at it.

The aroma was so divinely sweet. It lit up his senses as a breeze in a cool summer rain. Every smell was a new and foreign bouquet, yet it warmed him with an ironic familiarity. He felt safe and shielded as he walked through the beaded curtains and into the bedroom. He was completely invulnerable to the rest of the world. The flame on the blue wax candle in the corner flickered as his tall, dark figure passed by. The incense that had been lit just a few minutes earlier, smelled of cinnamon and a fire he had certainly smelled somewhere before. And then the sweet smell of perfume, so inviting to him, smelled like innocence. Yet something in his mind said it reeked of sin and destruction. He turned the corner to the bathroom, oblivious to the horror that lurked before him. Now the stench of death filled his mouth and nose. His girlfriend, Sharla, lay still on the bathroom floor as if she were molded. She lay lifeless, the color drained from her cheeks, while the warm bullet that had just passed through her heart smoked on the floor next to her. She was wearing only a robe and the slippers he had given her one year ago. Two tears dropped from his eyes and followed an untread path to his lips. He rushed to her and kissed her as if she were Sleeping Beauty ready to waken. But Sharla did not awake, and more tears accompanied his first two. He felt for a pulse, but his finger remained still. Hope was lost. He scanned her body for a clue as to who was behind this murder. Everything looked normal, except for the white powder on her lips and around her nose. The sugar substance stuck to her lipstick and to the sweat still running down her motionless face. He kissed her again and tasted the mix of salt from his tears and the bitter tasting powder, which left scrapes along his tongue as he swallowed. It was a taste he remembered from

college when he used to do coke. Sharla was the reason he stopped doing drugs, and he knew she wasn’t using the drug. Sadness turned to hate for the person who had killed the woman he loved. His biceps flexed as he picked her up and left the way he had come in, taking her to the street for help. He passed through the bathroom door and into the bedroom, then passed the candle in the corner and through the bedroom door. This time the candle flickered out, concealing the curved shape of a killer standing in the opposite corner. He had been too preoccupied with the wonderful smell of seduction on his way in to notice the other woman in the room. The door shut behind him as the cold rush of autumn hit his face. He laid Sharla on the ground, pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed the police station. He slipped the poem he had written to her in her bra and kissed her one last time. As he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he vowed vengeance. The ambulance arrived first and then the first policeman. “What is your name?” the policeman asked. He was too preoccupied with the driver pushing the white covered stretcher into the ambulance. Again the policeman questioned “I said. What is your name?” He wiped the last tears from his already bloodshot eyes. “My friends call me Ruff.” He awoke the next morning, as if waking from a nightmare. The window he had opened the night before had shut, a new layer of snow covered the ground. The night before he had fallen asleep without changing his blood stained clothes, this morning he didn’t change either. He was operating mechanically, no feeling showing on his face, and he slipped out of his apartment without even waking his dog.

His mind was focused only on vengeance, so he headed towards Sharla’s house to begin his own search for clues. “Maybe the police had missed something,” he tried to convince himself. As he pulled into Sharla’s driveway, he noticed the yellow tape surrounding the place she had last rested. He ducked under the tape, kissed the ground, and walked inside. The scent from the night before still lingered in the air, and he was further saddened with the memory of the girl he loved. He opened a window and the smell escaped through the screen. Now, clear headed, he began his search. He sifted through drawers and closets for some sign of the killer. He found nothing, even as he grew more determined and vigorous in his search. Still he found nothing, as his organized search changed to chaos. He wanted to know what the walls had seen, what had really taken place. He rushed through every room in the house. Frantic and disgusted that his search had yielded nothing, he stopped and cried. Tears poured from his eyes as he sat at the table in her bedroom; he was truly alone. He wiped his eyes and knelt on the ground, and there it was. The clue he had been longing for, searching for, for the past two hours. A Superman lunch bag filled with coke, the same coke that he had seen and tasted on Sharla’s lips last night. “Weird, who would ever keep their coke in a Superman bag?” he asked to himself. “So whoever it was must have known Sharla pretty well, because she was letting the killer do coke in her house. And now I’m going crazy, talking to myself, solving a mystery like Sherlock Holmes. Dammit, what am I going to do?” He grabbed the bag from under the table and left Sharla’s house. His cell phone rang, as he was on his way to the police station to drop off what he had found. He let it ring twice, cleared his throat, and answered. Masking his grief and sadness, he said “Hello.”

Tiffany’s familiar voice answered, “I’m so sorry, I heard about Sharla. You must be so upset.” Answering the obvious, he replied, “Yeah, I’m devastated.” Tears began to flow and his voice became more muttered. “I have never been so alone before.” “I feel like I just lost a sister,” Tiffany interjected. “Maybe you could come over later, and we could keep each other company.” He had known Tiffany for many years. They were friends before but had grown apart when Sharla and he had started dating. She had always been infatuated with him. It made him uncomfortable, but she was friends with Sharla, so he had kept his feelings to himself. Somehow, he had always known how she felt. But he had no one else to talk to, so he accepted her invitation. “I’ll come over after I stop at the police station” he said as he turned into the parking lot. “Just come in, I’ll be in the kitchen,” she answered before they hung up. Walking through the glass doors at the entrance to the police station, he met the same officer with whom he had talked the night before. “I went back to Sharla’s house and found something you might want to take a look at.” Surprised that Ruff had done his own investigating, the policeman questioned, “So what did you find?” He pulled the superman bag from his pocket and responded, “I found this underneath Sharla’s table. The detectives must not have found it. I know that Sharla never does drugs.” The officer grabbed the bag and examined the powder. “Ruff, sit here a second. I’ll run down and get a fingerprint analysis from the lab. It’ll only take a minute.” The officer walked to the back of the room and into the lab.

Ruff took a seat in the waiting room and waited for the officer’s return. The officer appeared ten minutes later holding a sheet of paper in his hands. He approached Ruff and gave the results, “The fingerprints on the bullet we recovered from the crime scene and the prints on the bag are an exact match. Do you know who did this?” He had no clue who owned the bag. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out who it was.” He stood up and walked through the doors, the way he had come. “Well, be careful. And when you find out who it is, let me know,” the officer sarcastically shouted as Ruff walked through the parking lot. Rain knived through the night sky, colliding with the ground as the droplets meet their final resting spot. Lightning streaked down from above, as if to signal a warning to him as he walked to Tiffany’s door. He opened the door and a familiar smell rushed out to greet him. The sweet smell of perfume smelled like innocence. It was like the perfume he had been so enticed by last night before Sharla’s death. Candles burned in the hallway and led to the kitchen where Tiffany was sitting. “How are you?” he questioned. “I just need some company. Come and sit down. Do you want anything to drink?” “No thanks.” He walked to the chair next to hers and sat down. She began rubbing his back and sat down in the other chair. “Don’t think about Sharla anymore. She is gone, and there is nothing you can do. I’m sad too, but we have each other to talk to. It’ll be all right.” He became bothered by the fact that she had forgotten her grief for Sharla so quickly. He watched as her hand grabbed his. “Please don’t,” he yelled and pulled his hand back.

“Calm down, you’re way too tense. I’ve got something for you,” Tiffany remarked. He was now staring at the candle, as if in a trance. He remembered the candle that flickered in the corner of Sharla’s room last night. He didn’t notice the Superman lunch bag that Tiffany pulled out of her purse and had set on the table. His trance was broken by the sound of her snorting the coke. He looked towards her, as she leaned to kiss him, her lips covered with the powdery white substance. “What the hell are you trying to do?” he roared and pushed her back in the chair. He knew it was she who had killed Sharla. She reached in her purse and grabbed the gun that had been used for the first time the night before. “If I can’t have you, no one can!” she exclaimed as she pointed the gun at his face. He was ready and reacted quickly. He grabbed the gun and turned it on her. The trigger pulled back, and an explosion of sparks filled the air. The noise shrieked through the room and out the walls. It deafened him for a second. The smoke cleared, and Tiffany lay motionless on the ground, shot through the heart. He felt for a pulse, but there was nothing. This was the ultimate vengeance. He took one last look at her cocaine kiss and rushed out of the house. For the last time, the candles flickered out.