it's late.

we've all driven very far and are settling down into make-shift beds. mark and i on a mattress on the floor. denise on the couch. phil in the adjoining kitchen in his sleeping bag.

lights out. it's quiet.

then there's some sounds. it's phil. digging around in his bag. then a hard object being jostled around in some sort of container. the click of a lighter and a brief flash of light. surely he's not smoking a cigarette now.

*stre-etch* *snap* a piece of rubber?

*flick* *flick* a fingernail against something. against a syringe?

then it's quiet. but my mind is reeling. i feel unexplainable anxiety wash over me. is he shooting up? that makes me quite nervous. why? i can't say for sure.

maybe he's a diabetic. maybe not.

what you don't know can't hurt you, but it makes me uneasy. always has. i suspect it always will. having never injected drugs in my life i guess it's just a fear of the unknown.

i felt the same whenever someone talked about smoking weed or even if there was a bowl on someone's coffee table, before i ever tried it.

do i want to rid my self of this anxiety? absolutely, as long as it doesn't involve injecting drugs into my veins.

the silence is broken by another series of sounds. the uncertainty continues...