bad trip

Looking back now, after a long lukewarm shower, a nice hot bowl of malt-o-meal and several hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep it seems as if the whole episode was not really that bad at all. The intensity of the whole business was simply buried under the clutter of the plastic table cloths, wrinkled clothes and stacks of half read books called reality. The screaming void of meaningless terror that had once seemed inescapable only hours ago had been shoved and pushed with a mammoth effort, not at all entirely my own, back into the confines that lie at the end of a tattered maze that stands as my memory. Feeling now confident that the fiendish devils that had before promised to steal me away into their own demented utopian dungeon are by now a neat and tidy distance away and unable to return, I am able to close my eyes and dare to explore the intangible events that unfolded to involve me last night. The subtle exhaustion and the barely discernible sensation of being spent prove themselves to be a humble solace and reassure me that my mind is incapable of having itself spun into the jeering seething mess it was in last night, given the unprovoked and current state it is in.

It was cold, but still unseasonably warm last night. Having consumed a full quart of cold brewed herbs over the space of half an hour, which was by this point something I was familiar enough with doing, I was greeted by the usual entourage of distant bodies, sights and faces. Lucidities restraints kept the more rambunctious and interactive entities a safe distance back as always. They all meandered about, barely mingling with my own thoughts, wrecking their unseen havoc on the fragile ground with their bent and curved features. Until last night I had come to find enough brazen arrogance to view what I thought to be my well disciplined and rehearsed excursions into those darker regions of what I thought to be my mind as nothing more than a visit to the zoo, where I could safely and comfortably view the wildest savage beasts as they loathsomely passed the uncountable days in their colorfully decorated cages. Never once had I considered that the bars and glass separating me from such oppressive monsters, empowered by their defeat and damnation into unmitigated recklessness and abandon, were only as material as my unwillingness to be intimate with what lie behind such barriers, and that by coming ever closer to the glass and poking my head through the bars I had undermined the very things erected to protect me. In short, by secretly seeking direct interactions with the animals I will refer to below, I had dutifully received the same.

Upon finishing my tea, I felt the usual mild blanket of nausea wrap itself around my digestive tract, my throat became dry and rasp and my eyes felt like two tepid puddles, just as I was sinking down a few layers below the humdrum days icy sheet I was prodded by an idea not at all my own. It came with a jolted and unspoken whisper, it did not seem entirely daring to me, although it was not something I would normally be inspired to do. Giving it brief consideration I did not find the idea to be particularly dangerous, and figured the worst that could come of it is I would be prompted to vomit sooner than what I was accustomed to. So I immediately set about complying with the request. I retrieved a can of snuff from my desk drawer and mixed it with some of the herbs I use to make my tea, then hailing back to the skills I perfected in college I rolled it all into a nice taut cigarette. I stepped out into the evenings soft chill and smiled warmly at the tree gently waving its crisp branches at me, the sky was filled with a beautiful and appreciative assortment of clouds that drifted pleasantly by at a pace that all but completely defied the notion that they were motionless. I lit my cigarette and took several generous inhalations, which almost immediately made me choke and wretch. The smoke tasted like devastation and it wrecked of dismay. Slightly concerned I put the cigarette out on the wall, as I did this things began to drastically depart from what I was accustomed to. My head was filled with a disquieting buzzing sound which seemed to be coming from my skin. The sky turned pitch black and was illuminated only by a few faint creases of terminally ill light. It started to rain, I knew it was raining, it was an unmistakable downpour, and yet nothing was wet. Now very much unnerved I turned for my front door, but it was frozen shut and would not open. Coherent sounds soon emerged from the falling black rain drops and organized themselves into voices and screeches, as if being rudely awoken and disturbed from their repose. In one last ditch effort to reign myself in I quietly told myself that I was definitely in for a bad experience, that this was not my first bad experience and above all, like all things, it would surely end. This did very little to console me however. Shapes were congregating in the courtyard, they were featureless and nondescript, they vehemently argued any objection I might have raised to their existence by pelting me with small rocks, almonds and dead mice. Now in a full panic, and fearing I really screwed myself up good, I turned again to the door, knowing that going inside would do little to help things, if not even make things worse. But it was so cold by then, it felt as if the air were just a degree above absolute zero, and it was greedily sucking every last flickering speck of warmth from my feeble body.

"Your going to die", the words ran through my head quickly, like a streaker across a baseball diamond. Typically thoughts such as that made me laugh and chuckle, but this time they carried the implicit weight ushered in by the words that followed, "and your going to be stuck here for as long as god lives."

The shapes in the courtyard grew in number, and piled up upon themselves, bending and folding into one disconcerted anonymous form. Heaving themselves toward me in waves which fell closer and closer to my feet, my second floor balcony was soon covered with the slick black substance from which these things were made. The almonds, rocks and mice kept being flung at me with greater intensity as well. Trying to hold myself together I began to frantically pull at the locked door, so scared I was on the verge of crying uncontrollably, I just wanted everything to stop, but the more I yearned for them to stop, the more they persisted and the more spectacular they appeared to be. I finally summoned the strength to fling open my door and tumbled inside, a total basket case. Not wasting any time, I fumbled to get back to my feet, slammed the heavy wooden door shut and locked it. The more amusing and cliche aspects of such a remedy escaped me and were lost in my panic.

The quiet spartanly furnished one bedroom apartment I had left only minutes ago to smoke my cigarette appeared just as inert as when I left it. Everything appeared to be in its place and at peace. I sat down and began to try to collect my thoughts, but they were being scattered about to the drumming sound of unpenned electricity. There was a knock at the door, perhaps the ceiling, the floor or none of the above, I couldnt tell. The knock became a series of sharp knocks. I eased myself back into the upholstered recliner in my living room, the television, being far too stimulating in the most insidious of ways, was off and I was staring deeply into the large aquarium next to it. I focused on the gouramis and angel fish amicably floating about. But the knocking did not at all respect my wishes for it to cease. Instead it only became more determined, and transformed itself into a machine-like, dull pounding. The walls began to shake softly as if the room were gasping for air and finding nothing to breath. Muddled voices began to bark out, as they had on several prior occasions, but on this particular evening they did not at all seem as distant as they had in the past. The whole experience was immediately showing itself to be more bold and more intrusive than it had ever shown itself to be in the past, and with an indescribable aggressiveness it taunted me to go deeper into the cave I was looking into, chewing and clawing at the strings that held me at bay all the while.

A young girl in a blue dress showed herself to me in quick bursts. At one moment she was standing by my door, then by my bedroom, again at the kitchen table, plucking out her fingernails and throwing them in my sink. Panic shot through my every fiber and I sprang up from out of my chair, the girl dissolved into a vapor, the odor of which was stale and corrupted. All the unenforceable rules I had come to take for granted were not only going unheeded, but out right scorned and laughed at by a hidden crowd of strangers. As I considered this, my own mind began to conspire against me and push me deeper into the temporary madness that it was so transfixed by.

My heart raged on at its direly erratic pace, its pounding seemed to shake my bones, the current of blood it sent rushing through my body made me ache all over, reality flashed by in drowning instants and I desperately clung to it each time it came, but to no avail, for by now it was too slippery to hold onto for any measurable length of time. The white caps of paranoia and panic washed over me again and again, driving me downward and sideways. My heart was in a death spiral, I took my pulse, trying to count, I thought I was counting 120, but the clock on the wall kept blinking as if it were a large glass eye, the second hand moved and jittered with my unsteady eyes. I began to breath heavily, and sweat profusely, the notion that the girl had entered my mind through my eye sockets was unrelenting now, and so I blamed her for my woes. I soon could not deny the idea that she was definitely inside of me by this time, fumbling with the switches and controls that regulated my body, trying to kill me. My hands were shaking, and I grew so weak that I could not stand, the realization that I was going to die and forever be locked away into this most inhospitable of places no longer loomed over me, but crashed upon my body with the full force of its catastrophic weight.

Nicotine, nicotine, no its the damned nicotine, I had mixed my copenhagen snuff with the herbs, and probably had nicotine poisoning, thats why my heart was going so fast, thats why there were so many disconnected and high pitched voices shouting frantically in my head. Again my attempt to conjure up a rational thought proved utterly fruitless. The hopelessness that crept itself upon me was fierce as I swirled into the maelstrom that the girl dressed in blue set loose inside of me. There was simply nothing to hold onto, my eyes were turned inside out and I helplessly watched my heart beat so fast it appeared to vibrate. Blood was running freely out of my ears, my mouth, my fingers and toes, I was melting and seeping into the burnt fibers of the carpet below me. A sea of charred figures danced and writhed and roiled, too preoccupied with themselves to notice me as a dripped down into the fire bitten bronze cup that they were bowing and kneeling to.

From time to time I tried to convince myself that I was awake and that the world of gouramis, sunday papers, televisions and Albert King albums was not forever lost, but just a blink away, yet this only made things worse.

I simply could not relax as my mind perpetually lost its balance and fell face flat on the floor in swirling delusions.

Artificial assertions and malicious suggestions were continuously inserted into my thought stream, they ranged from the banal to the terrifying and filled me with a swelling uneasiness. I flinched and shrunk away from the confluence of imagery that whisked past my face at heart blazing velocities. I was soon convinced that my heart had stopped beating, my lungs collapsed, my leg was rotting, my ears were stuffed with plaster, my skull was being crushed, my ribs were broken, my intestines were leaking, and on and on. I was being dismantled, explored, and tortured by pitiless deviants. I was possessed by demons telling me I needed to remedy with the kitchen knife the fact that I had too many fingers and toes. I was asked to consider the benefits of shoving my fist into the belly of the pregnant woman next door, and informed of the fact that if I was to drink liquid plumber I would be left in peace. My every concerted effort to introduce the calm of sanity into the late night equation made up of only undefinable variables was made more and more arduous by the fragmented horde dancing around my apartment. I tried to lay down on the floor and go to sleep, but the howling kiln dried wind blowing through the apartment made that impossible. Certain figures could be seen and felt to playfully jump into and out of my body, all of which terrified me and only seemed to annoy the CNN anchorwoman who was busily chastising me and blowing wasp filled soap bubbles at my face making it sting. A crouching gargoyle that was sitting in my narrow kitchen, under the dead tree, pantomiming my every concern and taking full advantage of my baseless fears, was exasperating the whole ordeal.

After several unconnected moments of my babbling and uncoordinated rambling into the puddle of spittle residing in my spittoon I gave in to the suggestion that my mind was permanently altered, and that not even death in all its splendor and glory would save me. I was convinced that I had died already some time ago and this was the beginning of my stay in hell. The very thought was agonizing, I began to sob and this seemed to only solicit more attention from the irate crowd that had assembled around me.

I needed to call my brother, or maybe the ambulance, possibly the coroner, and so I approached the phone that hung on the wall in my kitchen. The phone angrily hissed with static, I gasped at the realization I had not picked it up yet. Voices came out from the phone, metallic and green like the copper wires ferrying them from hell and plugging them straight into my ears, they were barking orders and making undecipherable demands, slurring their sideways speech purposefully, and mockingly poking at my every exposed concern. Everything I turned my attention to was occupied by this terrible force now plaguing me. After what had seemed like decades of staring into a giant sand dune made of gnats, I finally began to feel overwhelmed by the need to be sick. After about another hour or so of this absolutely unpleasant experience I began to vomit, embracing the wincing relief it brought and cherishing how it made the gloomy depths I was staring into seem so shallow and light. I went into the kitchen and drank as much water as I could hold, proceeding then to happily trudge back into the bathroom and wretched to my hearts content. Not long after I began to find it possible to ignore the confusing thunderstorm of chaos that I found myself under and within. Exhausted and completely unconcerned about anything, I fell onto the immaculate marble floor of near comatose sleep.