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ooze spurting under his pressed fingers and staining his nail tips.
    A dresser drawer held a stash of half-full bottles, a vodka, cheaper and rawer than the Buckfast he’d given Lucy, and a few off-colored tequilas. Kismet seriously doubted agave had any part in the making of the tequila, its taste more like the thinner he used when oil painting than anything else.
    His back ached from being hunched over, and his arms throbbed from the rattle of the machine. The stress on his shoulders tugged along the ache in his muscles, tight and knotted from staying in one place too long. If he made more money, he would get one of the chairs the others used. Of course he’d have to work more to make more money. Kismet wasn’t sure if he could stand the assholes working at Steel Sin long enough to earn enough for the chair.
    He snagged the vodka from the drawer, then unscrewed the top. Kicking off his shoes first, Kismet slouched down on the lumpy queen-sized bed dominating the room. His paintings took up most of the spare space near the bathroom door, stacked like tossed-away card soldiers. The canvas he currently argued with sat waiting on the easel, pencil marks loosely creating a framework for the nightmares that crawled out of his imagination and onto the stretched white fabric.
    The first gulp kicked him back, nearly making him choke. He needed to hold off the needle until he’d gotten some sleep and food so he could spend the night painting. If he was lucky, he could get one of the large pieces finished. The blankness bothered him. There were things that needed filling in.
    The nightmares waiting in the darkness had other ideas for his evening.
    A stygian mass curled up over the edge of his bed, weaving through the broken filament stitching of the bed’s comforter. Kismet swallowed, pulling his feet up, hoping to keep his toes out of the creeping shadow’s reach. Talons clawed free of the shadow, a sibilant menace gleaming in its crimson eyes.
    Blinking, the young man shook off the dread in his belly, willing the figment away with a whispered prayer.
    “Shit.” He nearly fumbled the bottle over the edge of the mattress, a large splash of the potent liquor soaking into the battered industrial carpet. Licking at his fingers, Kismet suckled the coarse fluid, choking at its sting. “Come on, Kiz. Keep it together. This shit’s not real. It’s never real. Just crap that your brain makes up.”
    Kismet gulped at the bottle, and the acidic liquid hit the back of his throat. The oozing dark crawling toward him shimmered, pieces of the flotilla roiling beneath the slick, oily surface of its skin. The thing pulsed, growing thicker until it formed a wide, flat body. It approached cautiously, sinking into the bedspread as it hooked its claws into the fabric, a trail of loose soot marking its progress.
    When he was young, the shadows were a welcome diversion at first, a break from the hunger in his belly. When the faces took on familiar forms, hands reaching inside of him and pleading for surcease, he turned to the mind-numbing comfort of his vices, keeping the shadows at bay. Now they took the shape of monsters, fangs and red eyes glowing out from pitch molasses, snapping jaws or reaching talons raking at his vulnerability.
    The vodka would serve as a stopgap, a foul-tasting placebo compared to the bite of steel into his veins. Heroin gave him some space from the shadows, but used too much, it would blunt the river of images he needed to paint in order to clear his mind. Used too little, the shadows would feed on him while he lay helpless beneath their raging maws, little bits of his soul consumed in pinprick appetizers. He just wasn’t ready for the drug yet. If he took it now, the early-morning hours would be haunted by demons he couldn’t get away from.
    But the shadows rarely attacked him until all of his defenses were worn thin. He wasn’t so far along that he needed drugs. Kismet knew he’d had hours before they would have