In the slight darkness, the pebbles appeared for a moment to look like coffee beans.

This is how Petra knows that she’s about to enter withdrawal again.

She forges her way through the darkened alleyway, fighting the delusions that shape the rocks in the ground into the very thing she craves.

Petra knows the way; she’s been consuming coffee beans for years. Usually, however, she’s on a high, so her senses are heightened. Seeking out the entrance to her underground dealer is significantly harder when she’s coming off the beans, and the door blends in nearly perfect with the wall it resides in.

Eventually, after clawing at the walls, she finds the brick that, when pressed, pops out and becomes a door handle. She tugs it down desperately, and the door opens, allowing Petra to enter.

The smell hits her first, a strong coffee scent with a flowery hint. The garden-like addition is what signals the drug status of the coffee beans. It gives the high that Petra craves.

She fumbles her way down the stone-enclosed staircase, which opens into a cramped room that resembles a tavern. A dust wafts around the deep stained wood of the bar, lights beaming through the haze from behind the arrangements of bottles. The barstools are only a few feet away from the wall at the back of the room, so Petra has to slide past the broad backs of the men who sit in them.

She makes her way towards the unassuming wooden door on the left side of the room. If you didn’t know where to look, you wouldn’t know it was even there, as it sits cozily between the left wall and the edge of the bar counter, the sides of the door closely hugging them both.

Petra opens the door to reveal a large man sitting in an equally large chair in the right corner of the room. He is surrounded by black shelves, holding what she can only assume are hundreds of jars of the coffee beans she seeks.

The man speaks roughly behind his long dark beard, “How many?”

Petra replies, breathless, “3.”

She would ask for more to hold her over, because she knows she’s going to have to return in a month’s time for another fix. However, she can only afford what her girlfriend will allow. Petra’s girlfriend, Dana, refuses to let her stock up more than a month’s work, in hopes that eventually Petra will reach a point where she can’t make the trip any longer, and Petra will be forced to fully enter withdrawal.

Petra thinks she’s getting closer to that point with every day that passes, but still she returns, desperate to stay afloat for just a moment longer.

The man hands over three jars worth of beans, and Petra slides over the money.

Petra stumbles out of the underground tavern hastily, needing to get to her apartment before she can begin crunching on the beans.

The one condition Dana made her agree to is that she would never crunch her beans out in the streets. Dana refuses to let Petra be found in the streets when she crashes, in fear of Petra being taken custody by the police.

When Petra finally enters her apartment, she slides two of the jars off onto her kitchen counter, and rushing to the couch with the final jar.

She takes the lid off, and greedily gathers a handful of beans, shoving them into her mouth and biting down, creating the satisfying crunch that Petra has learned to need.

But something is different, she realizes, when nothing seems to change. No high. And when Petra smells the jar, there’s no flowery aftertaste.

These are just regular beans.

Petra digs through the jar, desperate for an answer as to why, and she pulls out a note, written on a bright yellow card.

It reads, “I can’t let you ruin yourself. I told him to give you faulty beans. Forgive me. — Dana”