'Quaaaak': Duck on Heroin

After a typical night spent passing out for a few hours, waking up, taking more heroin, passing out, waking up, stumbling to the toilet, trying to piss, trying harder to piss, nodding out, hitting my head on the way down, waking up again, failing to piss again, consoling myself with more smack then passing out again, I decided to take a morning walk. I wound a trail among leafy North London streets through the brisk breeze towards a nearby park and small lake. The world was separated from me by a fuzzy smacky barrier and I looked on with pleasurable disinterest. I kicked a stone out over the water and a few morning joggers passed me in bright skintight attire, their ass-cheeks wobbling with each hit of the pavement. I ambled on walking around the lake while wrapping my trenchcoat around my adidas joggers when I heard a small noise whick broke through into my mystified mind,

‘Quack’

It said.

‘Quaaaack quack’

Despite the communication being in the form of quacking I understood the meaning. A duck was in some kind of distress! I opened my mind and engaged in my surrounding for the first time in a while, scanning the area for… aha. I medium sized duck flapped in distress on the grass a small distance from the lake

‘Quak quak quaaak’

It made a spluttering sound and looked around mournfully. It half flapped its wings and collapsed again.

‘The poor thing’

A feeling of immense pity for the animal overtook me as I moved towards it. The duck became fearful but it couldn’t move. I stroked its back and examined its shivering feathered body. It had a broken leg and an injured wing. The animal regarded the dirty junky holding it with the same wild fear it would a nice mum and child. I soothed the suffering animal with gentle murmurs. It seemed to relax.

‘It must be in so much pain’

I thought

So I took it home and gave it a small shot of heroin. The duck, Henry, spent its final days sharing my blissed-out cocoon. I put it into a small bucket of water and it seemed quite content occasionally emitting a peaceful

‘Quaaaaaaaak’

Its leg and wing were in pretty bad shape but I couldn’t do anything about this. I couldn’t get it to eat either, I tried breadcrumbs and milk but it wouldn’t take. 2 days later it shat all over my floor and keeled over. That’s gratitude for you. I buried Henry in the park where I found him. I thought about chucking him in a bin but an affinity for my smackhead duck companion stopped me. I felt Henry deserved better then that plus I wanted to avoid any embarrassing scenes with binmen and/or the council. I didn’t feel any sadness after he had gone. I was happy his last days were comfortable.