Drug Trip

We get to the party; it is loud, crowded and totally awesome. I walk to the fridge and I grab a beer and a blotter of acid. “Hey, Butch! I challenge you to a drinking game. How about shots?” I yell over to Butch
“You are so on little buddy!”
“I can whoop your skinny hide any day!”

We play shots for most of the party that I am conscious for. I also take blotters of acid and inhale ether in between playing shots. It is my first time with drugs so I am plastered. I swoon and fall over a sofa that I thought was across the room. I hear someone yell to me but I can’t figure out who it is, although it sounds as if they mean me some harm. I stumble to the bathroom and puke in the vomit-ridden toilet bowl. After I am done retching up something fowl, I lay down on the floor in front of the toilet. My back ends up leaning against the door and someone pushes on it. They can’t budge me and give up. I continue lying there, incoherent to the world. I see the toilet looming over me. Looking all disgusted at me, as if it wants to spit my puke right back out at me. I need to puke again but I can’t move my legs, they are not being very agreeable, I tell them to move put they just look at me. The kneecaps all haughty with disobedience beneath the jeans too scared to come out as I challenge them to a fight. I black out.

I wake up in a crimson room. I feel a little trapped. There are no windows or furniture, least of all the toilet I expected to see above me. I stand up, completely devoid of the headache I was to loom over me as if the bats that have been following me everywhere have finally stolen the thing they wanted. I walk cautiously over to the door and yank it upon, jumping back in one fluid motion, afraid that something will be out there. I didn’t know what to expect but I certainly was not expecting the sight that greeted me beyond the red door. The view that greets me from the outside that creepy scarlet room filled with microscopic animals is so bright that I have to throw up my hand to cover my eyes. After my eyes get a little more used to the brilliant whiteness I lower my hand still squinting a little bit. I look around and I see that I am standing on a large bouncy cloud. I have the urge to bounce up and down but I keep that in check as there is on telling how the inhabitants of this crazy land will be like. I look over the side of the cloud and see only patches of green and gray, the gray ones stretching much farther and unlike the green ones, they are not square. I feel that this is important for some reason I can’t place. I look up again and see that there a pair of red gates I am not quite sure how I missed those before, they are massive and easily the most prominent thing on the bouncy landscape. The gates seem as though there is something swirling on them, it looks so cool that I want to touch it. In front of the gates, there is a massive pedestal with someone standing behind it the person standing behind it looks like he has some lizard blood in him as his eyes are blinking sideways. The pedestal looks as though it would be very expensive something that my mom would want in her next three lives. There is a book sitting on the pedestal that it flipping of its own accord, I wonder if you can get a a paper cut from a book when you don’t touch the pages. The book is massively thick and would be much too much for a man to carry, even the reptile man.

I get the feeling that I should go stand in line with the other people, that also look as though they have reptile blood in them. So I walk over there, apprehensively, and stop behind a young blonde woman. “What are we all doing here?” I ask, in a whisper wonder what I am doing here.
She turns a round with a look of surprise easily interpreted from the purple slit eyes that blink wrong; “We are here because we are dead. I died in a car accident, how did you die?” She asked, oddly happy about dying.
“Uh, I didn’t die…” If I died, would I be standing on this bouncy blanket-like floor?
“Well if you didn’t want to tell me, you could have just said so.” She turns back around with a look of contempt on her face.

I wonder if she is on something since I no longer am, obviously, starting to giggle a little.

I wonder if I did die, maybe I choked on my own vomit, not the most tasteful way to die, or someone pushed on the bathroom door too hard and snapped my spine which would be very bloody. Maybe people are mourning me and my parents are planning a funeral for me. Oh, I hope my funeral has people with the purple slit eyes at it. I wonder if I hurt people, if I was mean to people the way I saw others being mean to people, wait, do I care? The young woman with the neat eyes has me totally freaked out and in total belief that I am truly dead. I look ahead at all of the other people standing in line. Not a single one of them is shifting around or talking to anyone else. “Hey, what is your name?” I ask of the young woman in front of me, actually wanting to know.
“Hm? Oh My name is Arroh.” What a boring name!
“That is a pretty name. Mine is Polan.” Also a boring name, wait! That’s my name!
“That is a nice name too.” Liar.
“Thank you. You wanted to know how I died?” She nods her purple eyes going odd “ I think I choked on my own vomit at a party. Not the most delightful way to die eh?”
“No not really. But I don’t mind.” She smiles a most delightfully evil smile that will probably challenge my life at some point, but hey, that’s cool.

I look at Arroh, studying her. She might very well be that last person I ever see and somehow I am glad. She has long blonde hair that is softly curly with these neon green streaks, brilliant purple slit eyes that stand out from her partially pale face. I notice that she is looking at me in the same way, how weird. I look down and look back up, I see that she is smiling and that her skin has suddenly turned blue. She reaches out for my hand, squeezes it and says “Don’t worry, I have heard hell is the most wonderful place. It is supposed to be where the people who don’t sacrifice themselves for a figment of their imagination. I heard it from an old man I talked to before; he was in the crimson room with me.” Oh, that crimson room again, I hope she wasn’t hurt by those bats.
“Hell?! Heaven is the place where you go if you believe in God!”
“I don’t think so, this old man did not seem the type to be wrong.” Neither do you but you have a tail so what can you say?
“I don’t know.”

I turn around ripping my hand from hers. She puts her hand on my shoulder squeezes then lets go. I can feel her turning around, her tail smacks in to the back of my legs. I feel weird; everything I have ever believed in has been challenged. I no longer know what to think. Even how – “NEXT!” someone booms interrupting my thoughtfulness, now I lost my train of thought.
I turn around and see that the line has disappeared. I step forward, nearer to the large wooden pedestal. “NAME!” Uh, name ummm…
“Uh, Polan Vuline.”
The massive book flips as the man behind it studies my face, I study his too. His face is very wrinkly so that the wrinkles almost hide his yellow slitted eyes. The book stops and the man turns his scrutinizing gaze towards the book. I am relieved as his gaze is heavy which is quite annoying when you are trying to breathe. “YOU HAVE NOT SACRAFICED YOUR LIFE TO A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION, YOU MAY ENTER HELL. BE WARNED IT IS LIKE NOTHING YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE.”

Nothing I will ever experience, am I not just about experience it? What is that supposed to mean? I step forward, towards the pearly red gates. They appear as though they are bending forward, how weird, maybe I am just tipping over. I realize that they are bowing. I quickly bow too, not really knowing what to do, because who really knows what to do when the gates of hell are bowing to you. The gate straightens up and opens creaking loudly and painfully. I walk through slowly not knowing what to expect. As soon as I am through, a feeling of happiness hits me in the chest making me feel so good it is almost sickening. I see a bunch of people just hanging out and talking, batting their vertical eyes almost continually. Then I see Arroh.

I walk over to her, kind of hobbling because walking on a bouncy cloud is difficult. Her back is turned towards me, her blue skin is shining in the sun. “Hi.” I put my chin on her shoulder.
“Hey you.”
“How do you like Hell?”
“It is cool I guess, kind of boring. Better than heaven, this man that I talked to before said that he had been placed there before, that it was horrible.”
“Then I am glad I am here.” Which I suppose is obvious because no one wants to be somewhere horrible when they can be somewhere wonderful.

Suddenly I don’t feel Arroh’s hair against my cheek. I feel one of those unmistakably non-squishy hospital pillows under my head. I try to sit up but I am uncomfortably trapped. I look down and see that my arms are strapped to the bed with straps of leather that are scratched and worn down in pieces. My torso is strapped likewise, drawing the breath out of me. Someone comes in; I can hear their shoes scraping on the concrete floor with an odd scraping sound. I look over and see a very fat, red-haired woman standing there with a large needle in her hand, she has normal eyes except for the fact that they are neon orange. She does that flicky thing people do to needles to make sure they work or something. She then plunges the needles into the exposed crook of my arm. I scream with out making a sound that I can hear, I wonder if she can hear it. My body bucks with out my control, and I break one of the straps holding my torso and one of the straps on my arms snaps painfully. I rip my arms up breaking free of all restraints. I stand up slowly. The nurse backs against the wall, petrified. Her neck jiggles as she whimpers but I just walk past her, unconcerned that she is making to cloud that we are standing on wiggle. I open the door and there are those red pearly gates I wanted to see so badly.

I again see Arroh and walk up to her, still hobbling. “Hey”

She gives me a look of contempt and looks forward again. I take a step forward and fall through the cloud under my feet. I am free falling towards the earth, spinning painfully end over end, I hear my back cracking in a song that sounds like ‘The Saints Come Marching In’. I hear something snap, like an arm, but I can’t do anything about it. I see a purple, polka-dotted airplane under me and unsuccessfully I will myself not to fall on it. I see that there is a plastic glass on the wing of the plane. I feel myself liquefy and I fall into the glass, feeling it bend and almost snap. I fill it up to the rim and just sit there for a moment. “He passed out again, he was thrashing horribly. I hope he is having good dreams.”

I open my eyes expecting to see the rim of a glass but instead I see my parents, looking faintly like lizards. They are looking down at me in a serial killer way. “Look he is awake! Hi precious.”
“Mmmhmergife”
“What was that bunny?” Bunny? What the hell?
“Nothing, I want to go back.” Back to the beautiful Pearly gates and the plastic glass.
“Well you can’t. You have to go to school. I am not going to ‘believe’ any lies about you being sick or anything.”
“What?!” School? I thought I was dead, jeez!
I sit up so fast I get dizzy and smack my face on my headboard. Which makes my head spin a 360.
“Get up you weird thing.”