“My name is Harold and I am a dope fiend,” Harold clinks his manacles in front of the children in the classroom.
The children gasp at his ghastly appearance, his dark inset eyes are forever scarred into their retinas.
“I just thought that I was… better… when I was using the chems…”
The teacher gives a frown, and the guards outside take notice.
“But I wasn’t, I was just seeing things, I was always seeing things. I was always thinking things….
“That weren’t true… I don’t know how to explain it.”
The children now have all begun to frown, some of the smaller ones cry at the tragic tone of his story, even if they don’t fully understand the implications of his words.
“I started using because I didn’t like myself, plain and simple. I hated myself so much that I destroyed myself,” he holds out his pale, veiny hands, marked with holes from syringe use, “In such a horrific manner.”
The teacher is now getting worried again, but for totally new reasons, Harold is thrashing about at the front of the room and her own head is too near to his wild charade.
“Children, play soccer, run in the sunshine,” the police have come in to haul this junkie away, his arm reaches out to the children as he his dragged away, “Love yourselves, you are exquisite!”
The policemen shake their heads in a shared laugh at the junkie’s sense of high drama, they toss him into the street outside the school, “Sentence served.”
Harold pulls himself up and brushes himself off, “I’ll have you know,” he lights a cigarette, “That I’ve been clean for two weeks.”
The policemen laugh, “You look like it,” one of them says, “You look like a goner.”
Harold turns, heads to the food stockpile to get some water, “I’ll get better,” he says to himself.
But he doesn’t believe it.