One Way Out by Hubble Stark

3 AM. The trailer is dark. Where are her pills? I know she’s still prescribed the Oxy. She’s moved her stash from the bathroom. Go back to the kitchen. Maybe they’re in the fridge. I know she’s kept pills there before, right beside the butter.

Grandma’s had cancer for ten years. I grew up with her. Started ripping her off a year ago. She caught and beat me bloody with a bat. Said she wouldn’t watch it happen again, like she’d watched her daughter become someone else. Kicked me out. Mom? She walked down the wrong alley looking for the wrong guy to fuck for a top-up of skag. They found her newly dead, slumped against a Dumpster with her throat slashed and one eye dangling free of its socket like a baby knocked from a stroller. But really she’d been dead for years.

A plastic cup I knock over bounces on dirty lino. I cower like a stricken cat, feel my eyes bulging. Strain my ears. The old trailer whines if a mouse drops a turd in the closet, but I hear nothing. Heavy sleeper, Grandma. Check the pantry. Next to the beans. No. Where is that fucking bottle Jesus fucking Oxy Christ.

I know why Mom walked down her last alley, know the willingness to do whatever I’m told to possess my sweet Oxy. Every day I circle our podunk nothing town delivering for the man, cursing the rich kids who buy the pills with money instead of their lives. The circle is starting the dive into a spiral. 

Goddammit. It’s nowhere. No beautiful glossy white bottle. The old whore is off the pills. They know she’s good as dead. Or she swallowed them all herself. Greedy bitch.

Some days I hand out fifteen pills on foot for payment. Last night, after I’d crisscrossed the town twice, my dealer held the bag with my one pill high, low, high again. I followed like a dog. He said, “On your knees.” I fell. He told me to beg. I sniveled. Didn’t see him walk away. He’d already dropped the pill—I wept with joy after scraping it up off the dirty street—I would shave down and quarter to make last. But I can’t. I can’t make the pill last anymore. 

I woke up thinking, I’m his. Entirely. What he makes me do will only get worse. 
Then I remembered the woman who gave me a roof. Grandma was still sick. 

But the pills are nowhere. My hands don’t listen to me. I’m weak, like a dying dog. When did I eat last? I feel my heartbeat, feel the tears reminding me my life isn’t mine anymore. 

“Reggie,” she says from the darkness. Her soft voice is the rumble of old paper. 
The light kicks on. Grandma in her muumuu, the gun pointed right at me. She’s old as dust. Her skin’s translucent. She’s so close to death but I know I look worse.  

Something left I can control. One way out. Deliverance. I see it clearly. It’s so fucking Oxy Jesus obvious. 

She’ll do it. I’ll make her. I grab a glinting knife off the counter and start toward her. 

Her finger’s already squeezing the trigger. 

​© 2025 Hubble Stark

About the author:
Originally from Mississippi, Hubble Stark holds an MFA from the University of Montana and writes crime and literary fiction from his home in the Northern Rockies. Shoot him a line at [email protected].