You Are Going To Die, But It's Okay

My sister is attending Evergreen State College, and my friends and I are on our final stretch of high school. About fucking time, we think. We decide to take an adventure down to visit her, but mostly the incentive is to do drugs in a safe place. I am joined by Sam Z, Benji Wolfe, and our friend Kelsey Jackson. I have never been to Evergreen before, but I’ve heard many associations between, Olympia, hippies, and drugs.. Maple, my older sister, welcomes us with drunken hospitality. “Baby Brother!” she squeals, even though she’s just a year older. She invites us to a party she’s going to, and feed’s us booze and mushroom chocolates. We are slightly over-zealous with our consumption. Chocolate is sweet, tasty, and tricky. The trip begins intensely and is chocked full of mind-fuck visuals. As textures flow and multiply off of posters and wallpaper and slide onto the floor in geometric patterns. As the floor becomes a rippling body of water, Sam Z chases his own hand around the apartment. He is giggling wildly as he follows his outstretched arm ahead of himself. The pursuit is intense.

                  It ‘s when my sister is beginning to leave for the party that none of us kids can fathom going to, that the shit really begins to hit the fan. It was hard to not notice that whenever someone spoke to me, their words were slammed into the air around their face like typewriters punch letters.  It was the same newspaper type of text, splattering and disappearing around the head of the speaker. This was actually very cool. If I could trigger this effect any time I wanted, I would do it very often. I walked outside onto the patio and I probably would’ve smoked a cigarette except that I wouldn’t start doing that for a couple more years. I was startled by a car engine starting with a grumble and the headlights flipping up. As the headlights turned on, the lights splashed like water flung from a bucket bailing water out of a sinking life-raft. I was mesmerized. This was good.

                  However, shortly after I got back inside what was a vastly entertaining visual spectacle became an introspective and panicked nightmare. Sirens started rising and screaming in a nuclear fallout warning type fashion inside my head. My friends became monsters, I was in an unfamiliar place, I was not in control of my mind and shortly thereafter, my body.

                  Clearly, articulately, and profoundly, a voice spoke to me in my head. It was a near deafening thunder of a bluesy sounding baritone black dude rising over the sirens. It’s message was clear.

                  “You are going to die. (Pause) But it’s okay.”

                  This was unpleasant and startling news. It was said with an air of authority, so I knew it was true. I accepted it and retreated to Maple’s room. I crawled into the bed. My friends were concerned but also fucked up. You know that horrible feeling that you get in your foot sometimes? Some people call it a Charlie Horse. It feels terrible, absolutely terrible. It happened to me once during standing-up style sex and I fell over. This was way, way, fucking worse. This was in my spine. I couldn’t speak, with brief exceptions of semi-clarity, and I was convulsing. My body was wrecked with pain, inhalations were frantic and gasped. Kelsey became concerned. She was asking me if I was okay. I wasn’t okay. Her face was pixilated and splayed out across my field of vision, distorted and zoomed like a drunk filmmaker was controlling my eyes. I could not answer. I was racked in a mental bondage of a hellish nightmare for hours. Despite my conviction otherwise, I eventually fell asleep and returned to what I consider normalcy in the morning. My body ached for almost a week.