The Cough Syrup Temple

Addiction, Creativity, and Abandonment

Photo by Ana Paula Grimaldi on Unsplash

You could get free drugs at The Cough Syrup Temple, sometimes, or bond with one of the tame squirrels, or you could die.

There were rules at The Cough Syrup Temple, written on a dry erase board propped against a fridge that didn’t work and whoever was the least faded did their best to enforce them.

Rules got broken at The Cough Syrup Temple, just like they do in groups of people who are stainless steel and tie clip sober.

Someone at the post office told Ruthie, some Normie, some Real Estate Money Fetishist, that 1409 Bessemer was an abandoned house.

She corrected him.

“It’s far from abandoned. It’s loved.”

Slatter spent nearly every day at The Cough Syrup Temple, and had a request, an every day reminder, last dying wish:

“If I OD at the Cough Syrup Temple, drag me down to Dunvayne.”

Every house on Dunvayne was abandoned, except for one where the Invisible Man slept sometimes, when he wasn’t asleep in the bed of the burned out Ram next to the dentist’s office that had walls, but no roof.

The Invisible Man had lupus, covered himself like Claude Rains, protecting himself from the sun while he begged Jezynowka to comfort him and kill him.

Slatter made him meals that he mostly vomited, and she wrote poetry about the vomit and everything else.

If anyone at The Cough Syrup Temple knew that Slatter entered a contest, nobody talked about it, so maybe all the people who got so high they never talked knew.

Slatter won the contest.

She giggle drooled and told everyone she was Lesbian Poet of the Year, and she thought she won ten thousand cash.

She asked everyone at The Cough Syrup Temple what they thought she should do with the ten grand, and to write it down, small, next to the rules on the dry erase board.

Suggestions #7 and #9 were: Buy Dope.

Down at the library, Slatter took a Zoom call with the woman from the contest who explained that Slatter was marvelous, but they didn’t have a Lesbian Poet of the Year, they had scholarships for deserving writers to attend a two month workshop in Maine worth ten thousand dollars.

Her room and board would be covered, but she had to get to Maine.

Slatter was escorted from the library, still swearing, sweating, angry and dope constipated.

Fighting was against the rules at The Cough Syrup Temple, but when Slatter came back Ruthie and Brittle were beating up a newb for killing and cooking a squirrel, which wasn’t written on the rules, it was just assumed that no one would.

Slatter got in a few good kicks, but realized she wasn’t doing it to avenge the death of the squirrel. 

She wrapped the squirrel meat in foil, grabbed a notebook from under the subflooring of the bathroom, and walked down to Dunvayne.

The house where the Invisible Man liked to sleep had a new steel door, a new No Trespassing sign on it and a For Sale sign.

Slatter didn’t know it, but the person whose picture was on the for sale sign, was the guy Ruthie met at the post office.

Feeling the first whispers of dopesick, Slatter set the cooked squirrel on the crumbling porch of the house and walked back toward The Cough Syrup Temple.

****

Petra Shorb opened her Gmail the morning the first contest winners arrived at the Catteras Retreat.

There was an email from Nicole Schlattman.

Petra hoped it was an apology, though the apology would be too late for Nicole to attend the session.

The email resembled a poetry submission though they were having no active contests at the moment.

The title of the piece was The Revised Rules for Hanging at The Cough Syrup Temple.

Petra read the first few lines, bit her lip, and scrolled to the next email.

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