The segmented chrome bodies of silverfish skating in long serpentine undulations across fetid bench top. Icy beer pulled from locomotive shaped icebox foams upon the stiff upper lip of the literate junkie. He traps them in a shoebox, screwing up typed sheets of his poetry for them to feed upon and closes the lid upon their steely gazes.
A shiny black automobile with gooseneck detectives inside glides past his apartment far below on the tarred nervure of street. They stare up and roll cigarettes as he pounds away at the stiff keys of his portable.

Sure, he can feel the heat closing in.
The insects in his stomach take flight on razor edged wings at the mere hum of dicks in back-alley cruisers. He feels pupae hatch within cerebrum knowing that his dealer is a huckster all too prepared to hoodwink him. But most of all he feels the incessant bites of blackened pinchers within his flesh as the junk falls from his mind like a dead songbird from a shit-stained golden perch.
The dropper rolls in spilt liquor upon the coffee table and the plunger is pushed steadily down.
He sees himself reflected within glass of hypodermic and then his true self as a red carnation of addiction blooming within the syringes body. He hears the blunt brachiosaurus plodding footsteps of the law climbing the termite ravished internal staircase of his apartment building.

The junk ejaculates into his veins as his every pore closes so that they may drink from within. His head lolls and a praying mantis clinging to the frayed electrical cord of the bare light bulb above stares down with bulbous eyes as it chews upon its partner. The record player skips over Mario Lanza in dry metallic clicks. Harsh knuckles molesting wood of front door.
Detectives on doorstep, dishes in the sink.
The hollow clink of the hypodermics cylindrical body hitting linoleum below and rolling under couch. Tourniquet slipping from arm to lie below as the husk of a serpent, again just a leather belt.
Thoughts still revolving around those silverfish that eat his words, those silent critics. Chasing each other’s tripod tails and grinning below silver plates of head armour. They fight and fuck in his closet and tumble in protoplasmic insectile copulations through his cutlery drawer. Cold pizza pie on grease stained cardboard and authoritative tone muffled by the front door as the dicks outside become impatient.

That miasma of emotion tunnelling as a habitual mole through the twisting subterranean woven world of his arteries. He has a map of the metro subway system surfacing as hammer hungry veins in the cleft of his arm as he pulls a lucky strike from crushed packet. German cockroaches scatter from below pizza slice as he pokes at it disgusted now not needing food for the hammer has a fire in the back of his throat that replaces his every need. His senses explode, osculating from him in long ribbons of orchestrated feeling. He can hear the murmur of those trench coat wearing woodlouse upon his welcome mat and smell their Old Spice aftershave. He can hear the moans of counterfeit pleasure from the whore next door and smell her sex as he is reminded of that time when he had walked in on his mother masturbating.

His father had caught a home run slug in the leather glove of his heart during the war three weeks earlier and the junkie, then just a kid, had ditched his afternoon at school. Running along the gravel road to a home static with suppressed emotion his dusty little shoes pounding the ground and his books swinging on the tether of belt that bound them. The autumn breeze warm against his sun dappled face and blowing dead leaves in small eddies along the roadside. His shoes had clapped across the midday porch and the double doors swung inward under grubby little palms. His pupils had become mouths vicariously devouring the scene before him.
His mother upon couch with her wedding dress hitched up upon her large thighs. A tattered brown photograph of his father in a military uniform gripped white-knuckled and the other hand kneading her exposed genitals. Her moaning severed, she had taken flight from the couch, a scowl cutting her forehead in two, her bare feet mauled the distance between them. His confused, awkward smile slapped from face by back of coital smelling hand. The excitement of feigning illness for an afternoon at home spilling from his face with the blood that seeped from swelling lip. His mother had dropped weakly to worn knees howling her grief as she rocked his head against her empty hot water bottle breasts. His blood had stained her wedding dress with scarlet blooms. She would hang herself in a fortnight. Swinging lazily in the cellar as the rope creaked sorrow.

His blood stains years later would be scrutinised by workers at the Chinese Laundromat as they argued what exactly the caked maroon streaks were upon yellowed mothball and marzipan smelling material. They grin over chemical vacuum steam as they agree that it is the blood of broken hymen from the night that was an epilogue to the dressmaker’s skilled hand.

Cockroaches take flight on shiny translucent wings as the front door splinters under shiny shoe and suits with cyclops revolver arms held aloft penetrate the dimly lit hallway. Lucifer match before drawn features lighting lucky strike as salmons in trench coats fill the room. Their fishy beaks clacking as they read him his rights and bulbous eyes on the sides of scaly heads scan the apartment from below homburg frowns. The snarl of handcuff upon wrist and the animal of addiction clawing with bloodied teeth and claws within as his face is divided by wide fist.

The flare behind his lids reminiscent of how a page of poetry earlier had caught fire as it curled onto candle from the paper wind bar of typing machine. The way it had flared under a hot spray of Johnny barleycorn dime-store scotch cast upon the flames in a futile attempt to quench them. The fire had spread as a quick infectious literary apocalypse and devoured his words just as he is hoping the silverfish will in their shoebox accommodation.
Fat bulls with sunken necks like male pigeons in full courting display shunt him from grimy apartment so that latent flatfoots may search for exhibit a, b and c. the silverfish tipped from their holiday suite and crushed underfoot, the typewriter dusted for prints to match with those upon a home-made special that had recently been fired.

The literate junky starved of both pen or sharp watching the striped curtain of peeling, black bars refuses his one phone call and curls up upon the grey mattress. Bedbugs skip over his skin as he contemplates the revolvers hollow pop as it tore open his brides forehead on their honeymoon two nights past.

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