Title: The Divine Rehabilitation of Jason Mewes
Author: Kleenexwoman
Archive: Anywhere you want, just E-mail me first.
E-mail: kleenexwoman42@yahoo.com
Summary: Our favorite blonde stoner discovers that reality is more
surreal than any drug trip.
Rating: R for some swear words, some sex, and drug references
Disclaimer: None of Kevin Smith's characters belong to me. Neither
does Kevin himself, or any of his friends, family, or co-workers.
None of this really happened in real life and I am not saying it
did. Also, this was partially based on the Philip K. Dick book "A
Scanner Darkly" and probably has some other PKD references, and I'm
aware of that and I'm not making any money off of any of this.
Author's notes: This story is dedicated to Jason Mewes, whom I'm
sure is doing the best he can. It's also dedicated to anyone who
ever had to go into rehab. I've never been there myself and hope to
never go, but I send my love and positive energy to all those who
have the strength to go through with it.

==============

He was older now. Fresh out of rehab, the track marks not yet faded
on his arms. His golden hair shorn but growing out, no longer the
belligerent, hyperactive street kid that five movies and an animated
series had grown out of.
Jason Mewes could have rested on his laurels (what laurels? all your
money you pissed it away on heroin and it's not like you're really
an actor anyway, you're just someone's weird friend), but that was
something his counselor had warned him about, getting lazy and bored
and that would just lead back to junk in a vicious cycle. Kevin had
been only too pleased when he announced his rehabilitation and had
offered him a partnership in View Askew Productions as a reward, but
Jason was sick of the celebrity-pity that tended to come his way in
that kind of position, sick of kids even dumber than him coming up
to him on the street and talking to him in that weird Jersey slang
he had perfected so many years ago.
So he had agreed to run the comic shop for Kevin, the cozy
storefront in Red Bank that bore the name of the company the semi-
genius had created. Retail was pretty simple; Kevin had arranged
most of the shipping and stuff, so all Jason had to do was take
inventory and have conversations with the kids who came in.
Hardly anybody recognized him as Jay anymore, and he was thankful
for that. The occasional rabid fan, the type that traveled from
Nebraska or California or Germany or wherever would usually see it...
never when they came into the store, usually after he had rung up
the comics and they would turn to go and then do a double take..."Hey,
I know you! You're Jay! Hey, where's Silent Bob?" or something like
that, and he would always nod and sort of smile and sign something
for them, then go in the back and really, really want to light up a
joint or shoot up (but of course he couldn't because that would lead
to wanting more and then he'd be back in that cold grey building in
Canada where the highlight of his day was getting a fucking Rice
Krispie Treat at lunch), not to take the edge off or to calm himself
down but just so that he could remember what it was like to be that
dumb stoned kid again, the one whose biggest worry wasn't his veins
collapsing and his body burning out like an unnamed character in a
William Burroughs novel, but about whether he had enough money for
an extra pack of Twinkies or Oreos at the Quick Stop.
Yeah. That would have been simpler. Just slip into the movies, where
fourteen-year-old girls got sex books published and pretty-boy
angels bickered and God came down and kissed you and made everything
all right again. Where two fictional stoners lived together and one
never talked and the other one never got sick or scared or almost
OD'd and went to the hospital, where the only backstories you had
were the ones you needed for the plot. Where abusive parents and the
pervasive, paralyzing fear of the hopelessness of real life did not
an addict make, only the appeal to dumb 13-year-old boys and a good
excuse to write dialogue so real it bordered on the brilliantly
mundane. Jason would have liked that, even if it was only in black
and white like that first one had been. He didn't even think about
the colors any more.

It might have been that old paranoid chestnut that the makers of
educational filmstrips in the 1950s relished so much, that taking
drugs will turn you permanently insane; of course, a milder version
of that theory had been proven by the followers of Professor Timothy
Leary...psychotropic drugs, especially the kind that try to stimulate
those elusive neurons that flicker and buzz some of the time during
sleep and all of the time in the brains of those whom God(ess?) has
cursed or blessed with schizophrenia...taking those can indeed alter
your brain patterns so that, at the most inconvenient times, as your
cells align themselves and remember your mistakes one or five or
thirty years ago, flashbacks resembling hallucinations occur. It
might have been pure wishful thinking, an illusion fabricated by a
pitying and frustrated brain out of nostalgia and longing. It might
have been an unusually realistic dream of the type that psychology
students under the thrall of a certain cigar-chomping, incestuous,
dead Viennese gentleman do so love to receive and dissect. Or, as
was Jason's intuitive conclusion, it might have been a tear in the
fragile fabric of the universe itself, a subtle joke suggesting that
there was more to the creation business than it seemed.
In any case, they walked into the store. One was lanky and golden
and sneering and flipping through random books that lay on the
tables and sat in the racks, the other one stocky and dark and
reserved, hands in pockets, taking it all in.
Jason didn't recognize them at first. He was straightening up the
Slave Labor Graphics rack, the one that held comics about little
dead girls and creepy stories by Jhonen Vasquez. He had met Jhonen
once, at a convention Kevin had dragged him to. Jason had felt that
he and the blueheaded artist were clearly anathema to each other,
but had said nothing because Kevin had seemed to assume that he and
Jhonen would hit it off, and Jason didn't want to offend Kevin. He
hated it when Kevin gave him one of those looks, the ones that made
him feel like he had just swallowed a ball of red-hot needles and
made him feel so bad that he swore, every time, that he would never
do anything that would disappoint Kevin again so long as he didn't
have to see that chiding hurt all over his face.
Then the blonde one slapped a copy of some hentai comic on the
counter. "Dude, you guys sell sex comics! I'm totally coming back
here."
"Yeah," mumbled Jason. "We sell pretty much everything..." He looked
up and it was like looking into a mirror with a long memory.
He quickly ducked his head. "That's, um, three twenty-five."
"Silent Bob, pay the man," the blonde ordered. "I'm gonna check out
these tentacle sex things." He wandered to the back of the store.
The dark, heavy-set man dumped a pile of quarters on the counter.
Jason stared at them. How many was three twenty-five? Let's see...if
there were four quarters in a dollar...It was hard for him to think
sometimes.
"Thirteen," said Bob.
"Thanks," mumbled Jason. He scooped thirteen quarters into the cash
register and slid the other ones back toward Bob. "Enjoy your
purchase." He looked up to tear the receipt.
They stared at each other for a moment, eyes locked. Bob made a
strangled noise deep in his throat. Jason stopped breathing.
"Fell in love, Bob? You fag. Come on, let's get out of here." Jay
clapped Bob on the shoulder.

"Jason? How'd it go?"
Jason cradled the cell phone on his shoulder. "Kev, you don't have
to check up on me every day."
"I worry about you. You know that. You're going straight home,
right?"
"No."
"Jason..."
"Relax, I'm just going to pick up some orange juice."
"Ok. Orange juice good. Seeya."
Jason pressed the hang-up button and tossed the phone into the
backseat. "Yes, dear," he muttered, turning into the parking lot of
the Quick Stop. Kevin had offered to be his sponsor after the rehab.
Apparently, being a sponsor meant nagging at Jason like a wife.
He grabbed a carton of orange juice, then reached for a six-pack of
beer. No, can't have beer either. Nothing mind-altering, remember?
Not even caffeine. That's what the halfway house people said.
"Jason, you gonna pay for that or just make love to it with your
eyes?"
For a second, Jason thought it was Dante. Another hint, another
clue, another sign that reality was fucking up again. But no, the
real-life Dante was long gone, probably moved onto another crappy
job, and the actor that had played him was starring in a Farrelly
brothers movie. The person that had yelled his name was Rachel, the
fifteen-year-old girl who worked there after school.
She listlessly rung up the carton. "Why are you still here, anyway?
I thought you were in Los Angeles."
"Nah. New Jersey is best for rehab."
Rachel laughed. "Sure it is. Ask my brother. He's right outside."
"Your brother?"
"Yeah. Go ask Daniel how easy it is to resist temptation here. Go
buy a baggie of coke from him. Did I tell you he's figured out how
to make cocaine from sunburn cream? Ask him about it. Benzocaine in
a freezer."
Jason shook his head. "Don't really wanna know that, okay? I'm just...
not really interested in that kind of stuff right now."
"I can also make LSD from peanut shells," offered Rachel. "You just
need a packet of Sweet and Low and something to crush it with. Want
me to show you?"
"Fuck, I don't need any of that shit right now!" Jason exploded. "I
am in fucking rehab, okay? I've been in a prison for about six
months and I don't want to go back there just because some stupid
high-schooler can make LSD from fuckin' peanut shells!"
"Yeah. Whatever." Rachel sullenly rang up the orange juice and
didn't give Jason the right change.