Everyone knows Jaxon Slater. He's the life-of-the-party guy. He's the fun guy we want to invite to our outdoor barbeques but not marry our daughters. He is our nephew, the next-door neighbor who drinks too much, a friend of a friend that overdosed on heroin. He's the class clown in high school that was always in trouble from drinking and driving. Jaxon Slater has 'pushed the envelope' and tried to scam his way through most of his life. He's charismatic and good-looking. Many things come easy to Jaxon. Sobriety isn't one of them. He's tried staying clean numerous times but always falls into a relapse, using one more time. His long time sponsor had warned him plenty. His last use of heroin landed him dead--in Purgatory.
Jaxon believes he is having a terrible nightmare until he finds an old friend and recalls how he died. Reality sets in and Jaxon begins to learn the rules of the strange land. He runs into a mean bunch of guys and an unlikely guide. To have a chance at saving himself, he must complete a quest: find a certain young woman and steer her away from the highway of destruction that killed him.
Old temptations linger, and dark forces shadow his path.
Can Jaxon survive the abyss of his deepest fears to find redemption?
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An Excerpt from: Dark Side of Purgatory
Copyright © 2011 L.J. Hadaway
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
Chapter One
A sharp, piercing pain to his head and strong inhale woke him. Jaxon Slater’s eyes flew open and shut tight, as if hoping it would dull the headache, which turned to a heavy pounding. He envisioned tiny men with ball-peen hammers beating railroad spikes into his brain. The thought would have made him grin if he’d not been in so much agony. He placed his hand to his forehead and pushed the palm hard against the spot between his eyes. The simple act seemed to relieve some of the intensity. He squeezed his eyes in a small gesture to will the pain away.
“God, why did I have to get loaded last night?” Why? How many times have I sworn I would never do this again?
The throbbing doesn’t seem quite so bad now, Jaxon thought with a small sense of relief. He recalled some words of advice given to him once: if he pinched the area between his thumb and first finger, it could make a headache go away. The trouble was that he didn’t know if it would work and did not want to remove his hand from his head for even a second to try.
Jaxon opened his eyes to blurred, dark spots. He blinked several times in an attempt to focus. Despite the pain, Jaxon tried to remember…. Where am I? His thoughts were sluggish and slow to respond. “What did I do last night?” A few memories floated just beyond his reach. A young woman’s face flashed in his mind. “Candy…. She drove us here….”
He recalled the front of the old house. Candy’s laughter sounded in his head, fresh in his memory. She had shot up the heroin first. It didn’t take him long to join in. Even the memory gave him a slight rush, thinking about the needle, sticking it in his arm. He opened his eyes again and found the ceiling of an abandoned house. Some of the tiles had rotted away, perhaps from water leaking through the roof. Decayed, the tiles littered the old linoleum floor. Water spots discolored other areas of the ceiling, giving off a weird tie-dye effect.
Wallpaper peeled off in layers, as if the room was in a slow process of discarding its covering, like a snake shedding its old skin. Jaxon struggled to sit up but fell back onto the stained, bare mattress.
“You dumb fuck!” He slammed his fist on the floor. The realization of his relapse brought self-loathing. Guilt and shame knotted an angry, hot coal in his gut. He remembered what his old sponsor, John B., warned him to watch out for.
“You need to watch the threes.”
“Threes?”
“Three days, thirty days, three years.”
Thirty days clean and sober.
Just two nights ago, he’d hooked up with a cute little number. Only he’d overslept and was late to work. His boss fired him on the spot. Dammit. His boss knew he was one of the hardest working guys on the crew.
“I can’t have you showing up late all the time, Jaxon,” his boss spouted, shaking his head and appearing to feel bad about letting him go.
Jaxon thought about his boss’s comment. All the time, hell. Just the third time I was late. Another three.
After being fired, he decided to go to a bar. He’d planned to have a soda and play a couple games of pool. The woman, Candy, came into the pub. She’d plopped right down on the barstool beside him. “Gimme a beer,” she ordered loudly to the bartender.
Pretty little thing. Blonde, petite, and a laugh so sexy you just knew she’d give good head. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he must have known he was headed for relapse, otherwise he wouldn’t have driven to the bar after being fired. He knew better. Later on, she’d kissed him; the tang of brew teased up fond memories of wild women and good beer.
Candy glanced toward the back of the room. “I bet you a drink I can kick your ass in pool.”
“You’re on.”
She won the damn game and sauntered back to the bar.
“Hey, he’s buying me a drink, and I’m having 151 rum.”
Jaxon, his ego bruised from losing to a woman, decided not to be outdone. “I’ll have the same.”
Candy took her shot glass, lifted it, and drank it in one swallow. Jaxon grinned, picked up a lighter next to a pack of cigarettes, lit the alcohol in his glass, and threw the flaming liquid to the back of his throat.
She laughed and kissed him again.
His younger sister, Merilee, always told him he was too handsome for his own good. She’d be wondering what happened to him by now. I better get to a phone and call her. Jaxon lay on the mattress, and broken shards of the night before clicked through his head. He recalled drinking a few more shots. The rest seemed beyond him, hiding behind a secret door in his mind. A few flashes: Candy’s sexy smile, the needle, the rush. One more blackout. Candy must have wanted something stronger, or he did, to end up here.
A cunning and baffling disease, he’d heard John B. say a hundred times. Everyone called him John B. because there were other men in the A.A. home group with the first name of John and because last names were not used in the meetings. John B. told him, “You don’t even know you’re in a relapse. It’s why you call me before you get into trouble.”
John had been dead for years now. Still, his voice often rang loud and clear in Jaxon’s mind. He pulled himself up to a sitting position. There was...something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Jaxon stood up and tucked in his T-shirt. He glanced down at his worn Levi’s 501 button fly. His belt was unfastened and hung from the loops. He pulled it tight, notching it at his thirty-two-inch waist. His leather cowboy boots lay next to the old, stained mattress. Jaxon shook involuntary at the thought of sleeping there all night. “Nasty!” His voice was full of disgust. “How did I go downhill so damn fast?”
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