Kian was worried; Freddy had been acting strangely for the past few months. Out of nowhere, he’d started going out more, heading to parties almost every other day and joining a local football team. Kian wanted to be proud. Finally, his boy was going out and engaging with others. Even if it was selfish for him to admit it, he’d been hoping Freddy would eventually start going out more. The amount of time the boy spent cooped up in his bedroom wasn’t healthy. However, something felt wrong, even though he wanted to overlook this sudden change and hope it was brought on by his Son trying to change for the better, and People don’t just suddenly break life long habits.
And so, Kian found himself alone sat in his desk chair after Freddy had dashed out the door to meet with some friends today. With his head in his hands, the middle-aged man weighed the options before him. If his gut instinct was right and drugs were involved, then his concern was warranted, and he’d ensure Freddy could get the help he needed. Or…
Or he was wrong. He and Freddy had never seen eye to eye, and he knew it. With a shuddering breath, Kian forced memories of Freddy’s early years out of his mind. Whether deep down Freddy blamed him for what had happened, he didn’t know, but despite his best efforts, Kian couldn’t connect with his only Son.
Perhaps, the man mused, it was because of their different youths? He’d spent his youth taking buses or trains all over Nottinghamshire to catch concerts. Unfortunately, after spending a decade or so in the music scene in the 80s…. Well, drugs were familiar to him. However, it had been towards the tail end of that time when Kian had met the love of his life, which in turn led to having a son to worry about in the first place.
Freddy however? He spent most of his life shut away in his room playing worlds of Warcrafting or something like that. It hadn’t been so bad initially; his mother had a way to encourage Freddy to blossom. Once she was….Kian forced down another breath. That was not a time he’d like to think about on the best of days. Regardless, for such a sudden change, certainly, he wasn’t paranoid to suspect outside involvement? Maybe Kian was jumping to conclusions favoured by his own biases, and it’d turn out that Freddy had just gotten a girlfriend.
Freddy had gone out, saying he was going to be gone for a few hours. Kian knew this was the chance he needed to make sure drugs weren’t involved. It would be worth it for peace of mind, and Freddy would never know if all went to plan. The stairs creaked beneath the middle-aged man’s feet as he climbed them, painfully aware that this was a massive violation of his Son’s privacy. Still, he was Kian’s Son, and hell itself wouldn’t stop him from making sure.
Kian wasn’t going to remain inactive and let drug use ruin his Son’s life. He’d not been there when She’d needed him before, and he refused to fail his boy like that. As Kian climbed the stairs he realised, it must have been a few years since he last went into Freddy’s room. After he turned sixteen, it had become his responsibility to clean and take care of. In exchange, Freddy had a pretty generous allowance. At least Kian thought it was. He didn’t know any other parents to compare with. Pushing open the door revealed several bizarre posters adorning the walls. The man furrowed his brow as only one thought was on his mind. “Why are they all horses?”
With his brow furrowed in confusion, he started to look around the room. More horse-related things caught his eye. The walls were adorned with posters of the same eight horses, two of which looked like normal-ish horses if you ignored their bright colour schemes. One had a horn, so that must be a unicorn. The rest all seemed to have wings, although three had horns as well as wings? Kian was utterly confused, but pulling his attention away from the repeating cast of his Son’s wall decorations, he focused on his Son’s desk.
Kian remembered going to Ikea with his boy to buy the damn thing, the utter pain that it had been assembling it for his Son at the start of his GCSEs. Now? Kian barely recognised the contents on the desk, a new laptop, as well as a few notepads. Although what caught the man’s eye was a framed piece of artwork sitting on his Son’s desk. Picking the frame up to inspect it revealed yet more horses. However, these were different from the ones on the wall. The artistry was, admittedly, rather impressive. They managed to look realistic whilst retaining a cartoon-like appearance.
God, these horses were weird. Yet again, the repeating motif of bright, flashy colours. The image had five of them in total. Two had wings, Kian’s brain thankfully supplied the proper term for them, pegasuses he thought or was it Pegasi? In the back was a green one with a horn, so there was a unicorn again. In the front were two somewhat normal looking horses, no horns or wings to be seen, and the one at the head seemed to have more reasonable colours.
It took a surprising effort to divert his attention away from the artwork, but once he had, Kian began to rummage through the desk. His Son’s first phone with the screen smashed to hell. A fond memory came to the front of Kian’s mind as he looked at the battered iPhone, the excitement his Son had shown when he was given it. It was the first time since His mother left them that Freddy had shown any real emotion. More rummaging reveal bundles of cables that Kian couldn’t even begin to identify, HDUSBMIs or something of the kind. He was old fashioned, but he liked his records and the analogue sound system he had downstairs, none of this digital stuff.
Just as he was about to close the draw, Kian’s hand brushed against something inexpertly hidden. The top of his hand had brushed against what felt like a plastic bag. The bag was just taped to the underside of the inside of the draw. His heart sank as he remembered using nearly the same trick when he first started using back in ’82. One soft tug and a small resealable opaque bag plopped onto his hand. Kian’s heart practically hit the floor as he gently pulled it out of the draw and shook the contents out onto the palm of his hand.
A small white and red pill was all that had fallen out, the black text on it simple red “1 Pon.” He could make out another two letters that had smudged or the ink faded like the pill had been in someone’s pocket for a considerable length of time. Unable to stop himself, he muttered. “What the hell is this supposed to be?”
He was expecting something recognisable; with a dark chuckle, he realised he must be getting old if the drugs are this different. From a cursory investigation, it had some clear gel inside from what he could tell. His best guess was that it was some sort of hallucinogen. It didn’t quite seem like a performance-enhancing drug, nor did it have the distinct odour of dope. Kian groaned as he felt his knees give out, and he collapsed to the floor of his Son’s room. At the same time, a little nagging voice in the back of his mind. “Surely it couldn’t hurt.” It whispered, after all, nearly twenty years, cold turkey deserved a reward of some kind, didn’t it? If a twenty-year-old was doing it, it wouldn’t be that strong, and Freddy had said he’d be out for a few hours, so…