“Are you looking for some stuff?” asked the man in the dark, Matrix-style trench-coat, speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone and giving me that meaningful look. To let me know the kind of stuff he was talking about. Not the ordinary kind…

 

I swallowed nervously. “Uh. Yeah, sure. I’m looking for some stuff. Yeah…”

 

The stealthy dude motioned me over with a movement of his index finger. A stealthy, conspiratorial type of a movement. “How much stuff you looking for man?” he breathed, his eyes briefly scanning up and down the street. He looked at me expectantly, one eyebrow slightly raised, one hand in his pocket.

 

“What have you got?” I croaked back, my heart suddenly pounding, my senses heightened to near paranoiac levels of intensity.

 

The man in the long, dark coat met my eyes, his face an expressionless mask. Then, in a terse voice, responding to my enquiry, “I’ve got a fresh batch of 5MEO. Straight out of the lab. Still smelling of acetone. Uncut…”

 

That sounded good to me. I hadn’t a clue what 5MEO was but it sounded like the business. My heart continued to beat loudly in the background. “Give me twenty pounds worth,” I told him, trying to sound as if I did this kind of thing every day.

 

The dude stared at me for a second, a blank expression passing momentarily over his already expressionless features. I wondered if I had somehow shown myself up to be an idiot. Then he reached down into his underpants and pulled out a small cube wrapped neatly in solver foil. As I reached out with my grubby twenty he pressed the little package into my palm.

 

“Go easy on it, man,” he told me, “that stuff’s pure. High Potency. Enough there to blow your mind ten times over…”

 

Then he was gone. Disappeared into the shadows. An hour later, back in my flat, I realized that I had just purchased an Oxo cube.