Chapter 23: The Descent

The descent wasn’t a fall; it was a slow, sickening dissolve. Time ceased to be a linear thing and became a jagged, fragmented loop of cravings and crashes. I stopped counting the days in Pattaya; the calendar had blurred into a smear of neon pink and grey concrete. I had become a ghost haunting the streets of my own life, a junkie whore whose only purpose was to feed the chemical fire screaming in my veins.

The mirror in the dingy guest house - when I could remember where I was staying - showed me a stranger. The soft, estrogen-filled curves that Vanessa had sculpted and silicone and breast implants that Uncle Eight had paid for were wasting away. My breasts, once pert and surgically enhanced, now looked like hilarious balloons on a skeletal chest. My hips, once widened by fat transfers, were now sharp angles of bone draped in sallow, translucent skin. I was skin and bones, a walking corpse with platinum hair that had turned brittle and yellow, matted with sweat and street grime.

My memory was a sieve. I’d wake up on a stained mattress, the smell of stale cigarettes and old semen clinging to my skin, with absolutely no recollection of the previous twenty-four hours. I’d find bruises on my thighs I didn’t recognize, or a handful of crumpled baht notes in my bra that I didn’t remember earning. The drugs—the meth, the yaba, the cheap synthetic cocktails—had eroded the boundaries of my mind. I didn’t sell my body because I wanted the money; I sold it because the withdrawal was a physical torture, a thousand needles stabbing into every nerve ending, and the only way to stop the shaking was to let some stranger use my holes.

I missed most of my shifts at the Gogo Bars. The manager had screamed at me, the triad colleagues had laughed at my pathetic state, and eventually, the door was shut to me. I was no longer a “special project”; I was a liability. So, I took to the sois, the narrow, suffocating alleys of Pattaya, walking the streets like a stray bitch scavenging for the next hit, living in a constant state of semi-withdrawal. My muscles twitched uncontrollably, my jaw was locked in a permanent, grinding clench, and a cold, oily sweat coated my body regardless of the heat. I would stand on the corners, my eyes wide and bloodshot, flagging down cars with a desperation that was visible from a mile away. I’d lean into the windows of passing taxis, my voice a hoarse, pathetic whimper.

“Please ... five hundred ... just five hundred baht ... I’ll do anything,” I’d beg, my hand clutching the car door.

But the tourists, the fat Caucasians, Europeans, Australians, Russians, those arrogant, sneering expats, could smell the desperation. They didn’t want a broken, shaking junkie; they wanted a fantasy. And they had a million better choices than me. They’d look at my sunken eyes, my trembling lips, and the way I practically threw myself at them, my sallow complexion, the needle tracks on my arms, my yellowed and bloodshot eyes, and they’d simply roll up the window with a look of disgust. I was too far gone. I was no longer a luxury; I was a warning.

One Tuesday, or maybe it was a Friday, I couldn’t tell - while looking for marks, I wandered too far into a construction zone, a labyrinth of half-finished concrete shells and rusted rebar. I was shaking violently, the craving for a hit making my vision swim. That’s when they found me. A group of five Thai construction workers, their skin darkened by the sun, their clothes stained with cement and grease. They smelled of cheap cigarettes and raw masculinity.