I had been clean for about three years now. Heroin is a really shitty thing. Back when I was about twenty, I got hooked. Hard. My uncle was the one who actually got me into drugs to begin with. A little weed when I was fourteen, some pills at sixteen, coke at seventeen and at twenty, well, heroin. At about twenty three, I decided that I needed to turn my life around. All it took was a little taste and it became my life. I eventually decided that enough was enough and checked myself into rehab when a close friend of mine died of an overdose while I was in the room, and I took the needle from out of his arm, and shot myself up.

Something that really helped me on my path to recovery was fitness in general. Of course when I was just starting to quit, I would want to relapse, but then I’d go to the gym and see if I could make myself better. I don’t want to say that I’m muscular, but I’m muscular. Long story short, the owner of the small branch that I frequented, a man who became a close friend of mine and one who I was very open about everything with, really saw that I had a passion for this and showed initiative and, well now I’m the manager.

Now, the peculiar thing about my uncle is that he himself wasn’t addicted to anything, scratch money. No, that son of a b**** just sold them, to kids, at an outrageous markup. He didn’t make an outrageous amount, but he certainly lived comfortably, seeing as in the inner city kids were all too happy to get their hands on something new. He was always kind to me when I was with him, whether this was because he was my uncle and he wanted to have a good relationship with me or that it was just another part of his sales pitch I guess I’ll never know. Both of my parents worked, and so I grew up spending a lot of time with him, and he became a real authority figure in my life.

In a way, I entirely blame my whole addiction on him. I really thought, at the time that he started me on drugs, that he loved me, but when you love someone, you don’t want anything bad to happen to them, in fact you usually wish good things upon them, but heroin is pretty much the antithesis of good things. Honestly, I thought it kicked ass the first time, but since then I was just chasing a high. Riding the dragon to feel normal, and in a way, I loved how simple things were. Yes I had to do some questionable things for money, but I saw it as a normal thing to do. It wasn’t

And so here I am now, sitting in my car, letting it idle outside of my uncle’s house. I’m crying, just thinking at the three years of my life completely stolen from me. The streetlights on this street are off, but I can see the house well enough from the nearly full moon beaming down. Cricket’s chirping fills the otherwise empty and dense July air with a seemingly monotonous drone. Blooming lilac meets my senses as I inhale, gaining the courage to go through with what I intend to. I run my hands along the old and cracking leather interior of the seat. Buckle and unbuckle my seatbelt again and again. I check my phone. 9:13. “Now or never” I murmur to myself.

Before I can stop myself, the car door is closing and I’m walking up the steps to the porch. I get to the door, consider knocking, but realize that this could be my only chance to kick down door. I kick down the door. My uncle is sitting in his underpants and a wifebeater, his fat face illuminated in a blue glow from the TV, a finished microwave dinner is sitting to the left of him on a table.
“Jack, what the hell are you doing?” He shouts louder than I would have expected.
“Oh, sorry Uncle, just thought I’d stop by for a visit.” My satchel is at my side. I reach into it. Before I can remove anything, my dear uncle has a gun on me.
“Jack, put the goddamn satchel down. I want you to tell me what in god’s name you are doing.”
I chuckle. “You really don’t get it, you dumb piece of s***.”
“No, what are you talking about?” I notice the hand holding the pistol is trembling.
“I’m going to take something out of my bag, it’s not a weapon.” I slowly withdraw a stack of posters from my satchel.
“Wh.. What’s that?” He nervously asks.
I take the posters, and show him the side with the pictures on them. “Tommy Grey, seventeen, addicted to cocaine, shot in a liquor store while attempting to rob it, a dime bag was found on him.” I drop that picture to reveal another, of a smaller boy, one with soft features and deep blue eyes “Lamar Smith, 15, tried heroin a couple times, upped his dose too much and killed himself. Please stop me if any of these children look familiar to you.” I spit at him.
“M… Maybe, ok, I might have sold to one of them a couple ti-”
I cut him off before he can finish speaking “Jackson Taylor, got hopped up on acid and jumped off a building, he look familiar? Come to think of it, I've seen him a couple times around, nice looking kid.”
“Is there a point to this?” He has the gall to ask me if there’s a point.
“Is there a point? Is there a f'ng point, is that what you just asked me? You ruin peoples lives. You introduce such a dangerous and harmful substance early on in their lives, and it f's people up Tony, it really does. You are a sorry excuse for a human being. I know you. You worked your ways on me, but guess what asshole? I’m clean. Three years. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, and your name keeps popping into my head.” I throw the stack of pictures at him. “These are all the people you’ve killed. How does that feel? How does that leave your conscious?”
“It. . .Well I jus-”
“I know, you’re going to feed me some bullshit story, tell me you’re just making a living, well guess what? It’s not anyone’s fault but your own how bad your life is. I need to make sure that you never hurt anyone. Ever again. Put the gun down Tony, I’m faster than you and stronger than you and while you were listening to me you didn’t notice me pull mine.” I feel it in my hand, my finger itching for the trigger, like it has for so long.
“You don’t have to do this Jack.” He whimpers at me, pleading.
“I don’t think you really understand. This is not for me. This is for them.” I gesture to the pictures.
“Please.” He begs. His arm lowers, and he drops the gun, looking me in the eyes.I hold my hand steady, point it at his head.
Relief floods over me.