25 Jul White Powder and Spaceships

Posted at 03:03h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on July 25, 2026

“White Powder and Spaceships”

Written by James Kelly
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).

🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 38 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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I opened the messenger app. I hadn’t done much. It was my day off as I had submitted my assignment on the Duke of Wellington’s strategy at the Battle of Waterloo the day before. I was bored and in a bad mood. John had called me but missed. He had also left a message on my desktop. I read it:

“Hey man, hope you’re still cool about Alice. I told you she wasn’t too nice. You were wasting your time going after her. Plenty more fish in the sea. Hey man, you wanna meet at the bleachers at midnight? We’re all gonna be there. Nothing like a blunt and some cigarettes to chill the love bug! C’mon man it’ll do you some stinkin good. Sitting in your room reading Byron and eating Cheetos won’t. Besides, lame
J.C
Catch ya later bud”

Alice was the girl I wanted to date. I gave up pursuing her when she rejected me by ghosting me on Tinder. He was right – I didn’t want to spend the night sitting behind my PC with a box of tissues – though he slipped up some details; I had Fanta and nachos and I was playing Skyrim, not reading Byron and eating Cheetos. I looked at my reflection at the top of the bright blurry screen and burped. The time was 11:17 P.M. My wet eyes were aching. I could see my shiny cheeks. Damn! Despite the time I was restless and knew I needed to get out. Sitting in my room wasn’t good. I wouldn’t have time off tomorrow; I was supposed to be delivering pizzas from six PM until ten and I was planning to sleep after. I could hear a voice deep down nagging me to go.

The trashy plastic fan spun air onto me, and it annoyed me. I turned it off.

I then sent him a message back.

“Hey man, I’ll be there!
J.P”

I never knew why we always put our initials at the end of our email exchanges. We weren’t super cool spies. We were just your average state college kids. But that was what we did. We never did it with Shaun or Ivana or Jasmine. It was our unique signature. Those final two letters were actually what made me realise he was an awesome friend and decide to go.

I’d smoked about one blunt before. Well, maybe three or four. But it wasn’t really my thing. Ivana tried to slip some weed in my tea once; I forgave her. Meh. We did stupid shit like that. I plastered pictures of the ex-boyfriend she hated on her locker once when we were in high school. We both sort of liked pranks. But sometimes it probably got close to crossing the line. It was ironic, I thought, that despite being a history student she never learnt from her past or fixed her mistakes. She pranked a teacher once with a whoopee cushion and got suspended. He failed her that semester. But she was back to pranks the next year.

I turned off my computer. I decided I’d take my dad’s pickup. He had a Chevrolet Silverado. He said I could drive it whenever I wanted because I didn’t have a car and he walked to work and because I was a good driver. I wasn’t the sort of guy who liked speed. I’d drive with the windows rolled down listening to Pink Floyd or the Smiths or something and look up at the stars like I was special. I imagined I’d also have a cigarette or maybe even a Cuban cigar even though I didn’t really like smoking. I just liked the cool boy look.

My room was more trashy than the cheap Walmart fan I had. I had a broken mirror I’d never replaced on the back of my door and clothes lay scattered about the room. I looked about some more. It was a mess and I mean an absolute mess! I had an LED light on the ceiling and a bookshelf with an empty fish tank I’d had since mine died nine years ago. And I couldn’t even be bothered to sell it I guess. Whatever. Then there were some dusty baseball cards I’d got from my dad that were banded up with a rubber band. I didn’t read a lot of books, aside from the stuff I needed to for my coursework. There was no need to make up space.

For a split second I thought I saw someone outside my door. I looked out into the landing. No one was there. Mom’s bedroom door was closed. All I saw was the green tatty carpet and the tall landing light. I’d check if my brother was around. Mom was asleep and dad was away. ‘Ted’ I called. There was no reply. He must have been asleep. That was good. It meant one less person I’d have to explain leaving so late to.

I also had a vintage Bush radio I got from my grandad and wired up internally with my Bluetooth. I picked it up and got my iPhone as well. I looked dismally at the paper waste bin stuffed with chewing gum and chocolate bar wrappers and scrunched up paper. It was indeed a dark and dirty room.

I picked my blue and white varsity jacket with a stitched white letter A on it. I almost fancied wearing a leather biker jacket and combing my hair back like James Dean did but it was the 2020s and I wasn’t that cool. I was wearing grey sweatpants and white Adidas trainers. I grabbed my phone and radio.

I went down the creaky staircase, my footsteps moving slowly from one carpeted stair to the next. I saw my older brother sleeping on the couch in the living room. He had a bottle of Russian vodka on the small remote table and was lying with his head in his arms. Lazy drunkard prick!

I grabbed dad’s keys from the interior porch and left the house. I went to the barn, got in the truck and then turned the ignition on. I reversed out and hit the road, going eastwards to the university. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw my small house and then the dark asphalt-tiled roofs of my neighbourhood disappear behind me.

I did exactly what I dreamed of; and on my radio, which sat on the passenger seat, started listening to There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by the Smiths. I stared up at the sky and saw the passing bright blur that was the Northern Star – Polaris. It was the only one I knew to be truthful. I thought it was something like four hundred light-years away. Kinda crazy when you thought about it. I was also nervous. I’d had weed but Ivana was now a full on DMT smoker. Not something I knew much about other than it was a highly potent psychedelic. I was also convinced Shaun and Jasmine got her into it. They were close. I wondered if they’d pressure me to have it.

I rolled down the window and turned the volume up and sang until my heart was content. A red pickup with a redneck went past and the guy glared at me. Fucking asshole I thought. He had broken the mood. Cruising past the cypress trees with the wind in my hair was beautiful though, even if I didn’t have my cigar. I accelerated when I hit the highway. Stretches of empty road and wetland were beside me. The purple neon lights and diners whizzed past. I drove past a flagpole on a bridge with the Louisiana flag hoisted upon it. I knew it well.

I checked my phone and saw the time was 11:55. Jesus that time went fast! It was a long drive I supposed, but you didn’t feel it out there. For the final five minutes I played Kiss From A Rose by Seal. I thought about the Grey Tower and what it symbolised. I read online it was meant to represent the author of the song in a melancholy state before he met the love of his life. I gritted my teeth and forced Alice Abel out of my head.

I pulled off the highway and down the college driveway. My car pass let me through the automatic barrier at the access point. I drove on. In the indoors car park, I saw two vehicles – John’s Tesla and Shaun’s Nissan Leaf. Otherwise, it was empty. No one parked there after eleven when the last game was typically over. I parked next to their cars which were near the road which led up to the next floor, at the edge of the lot. I had plenty of dimes and quarters in my pocket which was good because there was a soda machine and I wanted a Coke. It was one of those old machines that only took coins. It was due for the scrap but some kids on the student leadership society campaigned for it to be kept. I’d seen staff swearing as they removed the money from the cash box.

I got one then left for the baseball stadium. Checking my phone as I jogged through the campus, I saw it was two minutes past midnight. The sky was cloudier than usual and a cold breeze whistled around me. An owl hooted. I went past the men’s toilet block. I thought I saw a shadow down an alley, but if there was anyone it was probably just someone going for a late-night walk or a drunk frat boy who was lost. There were plenty of fraternities here. Still, it sent a shudder down my spine.

I went through the double entrance doors of the stadium and to the bleachers through the vomitory. That’s a weird word derived from Latin I hated.

‘Jaeden Pritzer, what are the chances’ yelled Shaun.

‘That’s my name, yeah’ I called back.

‘Shut up’ snorted Ivana. ‘Too loud’

‘No, it’s not. No one can hear us here’ Shaun yelled back at her. A light went out in an adjacent student residence block that overlooked the turfed outfield fencing.

John was sitting next to my friends. His feet were up on the seat in the row in front of him. He had a White Claw to my Coke. That was to be expected. He caught my eye and gave me a half smile.

Told you so, J.P. Shaun is drunk. It’ll be fun.

Did I really just hear him talk in my head?

‘Long time no see’ said another voice. I jumped slightly. Through the dark, Jasmine cartwheeled around one of the chairs near me. She was Shaun’s girlfriend. Her face had white powder on it. Not much, but enough for me to catch it and she wiped it away with her hoodie sleeve.

‘You better wash that when we get back’ yelled Shaun. He was wearing his favourite Milwaukee Brewers shirt. She ignored him and rolled her eyes.

‘Not too long’ I said. ‘Maybe ten months or so, but that’s not long by my standards.’

She stared at me. ‘Well it is by mine.’ Then she winked. I could smell cigarettes on her breath and I thought she looked a little weary. But I could have been wrong about that. I couldn’t always read people that well. Even those I knew.

That’s why you don’t do drugs kids a deep male infomercial voice said inside my head. We just stared at each other for a minute, not sure what to say. We were never really friends anyway, but she liked to socialise with whoever was around Shaun. ‘Nice trainers’ she said. ‘You too’ I said to her.

‘Come over here’ Ivana called to us and gestured. She sat on her spread coat and was wearing a black sweat top and skirt with tights that had cotton spider webs embroidered on them. She had her nails painted black and wore black lipstick. Five foot four. Poorly laced converse trainers. Typical goth girl. We went over.

‘Hi Jaeden’ said Ivana.

Shaun grunted and gave a slight not to me. John smiled but didn’t say anything.

‘How are you all doing’?

‘Good now that we’ve sourced the DMT and got it here’ said Jasmine. I could see the moonlight shining on her brown hair. It also highlighted the patches of white powder on her shoulder and chest. I laughed internally.

‘How’s your course going’ asked Ivana? We were both history undergraduates, but she was at a different college out of state. The only one not at Louisiana West State University where we were right now. She’d obviously got a lift with John or Jasmine and Shaun.

‘Fine. I submitted my end of term assignment yesterday. I’m not going to talk about it unless you want a lecture on how Wellington held the ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean and why that was important. Boring stuff.’

‘I’d like that’ said Ivana.

‘I wouldn’t’ said Shaun.

We all laughed, but Ivana a little less. I was quite cold, but that was fine. I enjoyed seeing them.

‘I just turned in my English assignment. It was on Chaucer. I’m done’ said Jasmine. She was in her final year – one above me. Now she would be free. I wouldn’t rue the day I left college either.

‘She actually did it’ said Shaun, ‘whilst being high on fucking weed during the exam.’

We laughed but this time it was Jasmine who didn’t get the joke. She punched Shaun’s arm.

‘Oww’! he scowled at her. Good thing your punches don’t hurt and that I’m too much of a gentleman to do that to a lady.’

‘You know’ I said, ‘I thought I saw one of your frat brothers when I came over here.’

He looked at me. ‘No frat parties tonight buddy. If there were I might even have invited you.’

‘I don’t like frat parties’ I replied.

‘Me neither’ said John. ‘They’re not Macho. They’re kinda gay.’ He looked at me slightly sideways.

‘Nothing gay about frat bros’ laughed Jasmine. ‘I met Shaun after he and his broa came to a bar. Take notes single guys.’

It’s was all tongue-in cheek; we got on quite well, but John and I pushed back when Shaun was being too much of an ass. But he was good to have around because he was a bodybuilder who scared off anyone he came across. We were all huddled around the front row of the bleachers, quite close to the entrance.

Jasmine pulled put out her Samsung and started tapping away. She started smoking. I also noticed she had nicotine patches on her wrist. The screen light lit up the weed on her even more. John and I made eye contact and smirked. Ivana caught the glance and furrowed her eyes at me. I wanted to tell her we were joking. We weren’t too mean.

John pulled a torch out of his pocket and lit up his face. ‘So, are we here to tell some ghost stories?’

‘No, we’re here to smoke some weed and maybe DMT’ said Ivana.

‘And be together’ said Jasmine. Shaun groaned. ‘That’s kinda cringey. Carry on being the quiet guys, Shaun and Jaeden. I’ll do the talking.’

‘Ok’ said John. ‘You probably don’t know any scary stories since they’re too lame for frat bros. They’re just for middle schoolers right’? He defiantly handed Shaun the torch. We made eye contact again. An owl hooted and Ivana jumped a little. I caught Jasmine’s lighter reflecting Ivana’s dark brown eyes back at me.

‘You were scared Ivana’ said Jasmine.

‘Nope.’

‘Were too.’

‘Was not’!

‘Were too’ said Shaun, Jasmine, John and I in unison.

John and I met eyes again. His smirk said it all. These were my friends and the only ones I’d ever had. Shaun interrupted, ‘I’m going to tell you the story of the New Orleans Axeman.’

‘Not that one again’ said Jasmine.

‘You’re the only one I’ve told it to. The others should hear it as well.’

Shaun shone the torch in his face, making a ghostly silhouette. The owl hooted again. I saw Ivana wrap her arms around herself. Jasmine leant into Shaun as he began to talk slowly.

‘It was spring 1919. A major New Orleans newspaper received a letter…’

‘New Orleans isn’t far from here.’

‘Shut the fuck up Ivana. In 1919, a New Orleans newspaper receives a letter. The city has been haunted by a series of grisly home invasion murders the previous summer. At least four people were killed.’

He said this as the torch illumined his face, casting lustrous whiteness across his nose and eyes; contrasting the shadow across the large outline of his head. I felt somewhat creeped out. Horror didn’t go well with drugs and what I’d glimpsed earlier didn’t vibe with me even thought those things were clearly in my imagination. I noticed Jasmine looking intensely at John and I. Her eyes darted between us as if she was pondering who would show any sign of discomfort first. It was actually cold enough to be uncomfortable, I had only then noticed, and the roofless stadium felt like a vast barren domain under the shimmering cosmos.

‘The victims had their throats slit, were chopped up with a hatchet or were bludgeoned to death by the killer who usually left them in a pool of their own blood. The letter claimed that it was sent from the killer and that he was a demon from hell.’
‘It could have been a girl’ said Jasmine.
‘It was obviously a guy’ he snorted. His eyes had a menacing quality to them.
‘Survivors reported seeing a dark looming figure. Anyway, it was important that the letter was published because the killer said he would spare any household playing Jazz. People began playing Jazz in their homes and those who couldn’t spent evenings in Jazz halls. No murders occurred for several days. Then one night, a guy wakes up. There is a man standing over his bed. He was terrified but before he could do anything the man kept striking him again and again with the axe. Blood was splattering everywhere.’
Shaun made strange groaning sounds and lolled his head as if the mimic someone sick or dying. ‘Then the attacker was gone. The guy survived and went to get help. When the police came they found nothing except the bloody axe which was the killer’s calling card. The man was so injured from strikes to the head that he suffered amnesia.’
‘What happened next’ asked John? The owl hooted again. Jasmine made a creepy face and looked at me. John was listening with a slightly bemused look on his face. I could hear and feel the chilling wind fluttering the vacant pitch.
‘There were several more murders. Then they stopped. A guy was killed near the scene of the last killing after he tried a break in. Some think he was the killer. But others believe he really was a demon from hell. They say he could shape-shift to get into a house through cracks and holes and that to this day he wonders the earth, looking to chop up the unfortunate victims he encounters.’
Suddenly, there was a deep demonic scream. I jumped and Jasmine shrieked and grabbed Shaun. What was left of my soda spilled onto the ground. We all turned and saw a dark figure standing higher up, next to the chain link fence at the back of the ascending rows of seating. Its face was covered and completely black. Was it the dark figure I had seen from earlier? I knew it could have been. But I saw nothing, right? I looked desperately at John as my heart sank into my stomach.
Jasmine grabbed the torch and pointed it up towards the dark figure that ominously walked down towards us. One step after another. My heart was on the precipe of exploding. It slowly reached its hands up to its face and then pulled down the hood. Long locks of dark hair tumbled out. It was Ivana. She laughed hysterically as she continued walking. She had put on a dark raincoat. She was holding her smart phone in her hand.
‘Sound effects employed. Gotcha!’
Jasmine yelled profanities at her. Shaun laughed and, with his arm around her, gently mocked her. Truthfully I was just glad it wasn’t….well….something else. Don’t be absurd I then thought. Ivana apologised and said she couldn’t resist the opportunity. She had seen an opportunity for some old school fun and crept away whilst we were listening to the story. I got it. I put my hand on the back of my neck to gage my fright meter and found the hairs were raised.
‘We knew it was you’ said John. His voice had a dry quality to it that gave a hint of being bored and unimpressed.
‘Jasmine didn’t’ she chuckled.
Ivana came up to me and threw her arms around me. ‘Sorry’ she whispered. ‘Are you okay’? I told her I was fine. She held me tightly for a minute longer than stepped back and smiled at me. We held each other’s gaze for a moment.
‘Ivana the class clown’ said John. ‘What are we to do with you’?
He leant forwards and rested his arms on the seat in front of him. ‘You wanted us to smoke some right’?
‘Well, probably Jasmine and I and if you guys want to you can as well. This is proper stuff. And you won’t get it free anywhere else.’ She pulled a bag full of what looked like white powder out of her raincoat pocket.
Great. Not!
‘You wouldn’t like it Jaeden’, said John. ‘And it’s that’s a good thing. I was talking about weed not DMT. But you had to go and bring the crazy stuff.’ He scowled accusingly at Ivana. I thought she blushed slightly and lowered her gaze.
‘Do you snort it like weed’ I asked?
‘You wouldn’t snort it’ Ivana laughed. ‘My god Jaeden, you’re so innocent. It’d burn your nostrils.’
‘Oh ok.’
‘I’ve snorted it’ said Jasmine.
‘Yeah but you’re weird and gross’ said John, unironically. ‘Normal people don’t do that. Then again they don’t do DMT.’ Jasmine looked irate but held her tongue. I imagined that even in the relative dark I saw her cheeks flush. I don’t think she knew what to say. John was right.
After a moment of silence that was a little longer than it usually was with Jasmine on a bad day: ‘There’s nothing fun about drinking White Claw and telling dumb stories on a cold baseball pitch.’
‘Don’t be a grunt.’ Shaun put his arm around her and tugged her ear. She had a sulky expression and had her face turned away from John. He was trying not to laugh and when we exchanged glances again I snorted loudly. She looked accusingly in my direction.
‘Whatever virgin.’
‘How do you know I’m a virgin’?
‘It’s obvious. I’m glad you just said so.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Of course he’s not a virgin, he’s twenty’! Shaun seemed to think that was the strangest idea in the word.
‘Fine I’m a twenty-year old virgin’ I said. Jasmine smirked triumphantly.
‘That’s a shame Jaeden’ she teased. John sipped his can then crossed his arms. He looked like he didn’t know what to say. Shaun was staring at me. Ivana looked surprised and uncomfortable. It felt awful. Yet I didn’t care about the fact. I just didn’t like the way they were looking at me. I could have asked them if any of them were in my predicament, but I knew they weren’t. Even John had a girlfriend he broke up with a couple of months earlier. It was just me. I hated judgement. At this point I was also the only one standing on the pitch in from of them. I sat down on the concrete with my legs crossed.
‘We ought to fix that Jaeden’ said Shaun. ‘Handsome guy like you shouldn’t have to put up with that. Pick one!’ He put his arms around Ivana and Jasmine. He gave me his trademark all-American smile. ‘Hint: the one on my left isn’t for sale.’ Jasmine sat to his left, grinning at me.
‘Dumb game’ said John. ‘Ivana has a boyfriend anyway.’ Shaun ignored him.
‘I saw how you guys cuddled. Why don’t you cuddle up to Ivana? You must be cold Jaeden. She looks like Alice. Just imagine her hair is blonde instead of black.’ Ivana looked at me awkwardly.
‘Sadly it’s true I have a boyfriend’ she said.
‘Alice fucking Abel’ said Shaun, distracted by his thoughts.
‘Can you stop fucking swearing’ said John.
‘I never knew you liked Alice’ said Ivana. ‘She’s nice.’ She said it in a tone I struggled to interpret.
‘Me neither’ said Jasmine. ‘I guess it’s a start.’ I’d mentioned it to John and Shaun a week or so earlier. I was glad Shaun had the decency not to tell Jasmine. Until now. I gritted my teeth and tried not to blush. ‘It’s fine, every group needs a nerd.’
‘Am I a nerd’? The thought was bloodcurdling.
‘Yeah’ said Shaun.
‘We both are’ said John. But we both knew he wasn’t. He had become an intellectual and a mature man. He’d moved on from Skyrim and Minecraft years ago.
‘I’m probably not smart enough to be a nerd.’
‘Sure you are’ said Ivana, smiling.
‘Actually Jaeden’s right. He’s not dumb but he’s not a nerd. John is the nerd. He’s the only one doing a real degree.’ John was studying math. Given his anti-intellectual philosophy, I wasn’t really wasn’t sure whether Shaun was slighting me or trying to compliment me with that. The owl hooted again. I shuddered. Sometimes…late at night….I felt strange. Like an unseen presence was with me.
‘Sure, he’s so smart. Actually no he’s not’ said Ivana. He’s probably going to become an accountant, blow the money when he’s in his forties and get divorced.’
‘I’m smarter than you Ivana. And if I get married I’ll pick a girl who won’t divorce me.’ She crinkled her nose like he had said something disgusting.
Jasmine had produced a glass pipe and started putting crystals into it. My stomach sank a bit again. She was talking to Shaun. I couldn’t hear them but I had an idea of what they were saying. John and Ivana continued to jab at each other loudly. I allowed myself to zone out for a moment.
When I came around, I heard Shaun and Jasmine laughing and I could see her lying on his lap. John and Ivana were still talking.
‘Maths isn’t everything’ said Ivana.
‘It’s not’ I agreed with her loudly.
‘It’s the language of the universe. And getting a degree in it will get you a job that pays much better’ disputed John.
‘That’s doesn’t mean I want to study it’ she said. ‘Besides, I can code anyway. It’s not like I have no practical skills.’
‘What script’?
‘Python.’
‘Oh sure you can. That’s why you never told me. You wouldn’t even know what an f-string or a variable is.’
‘Sure I do’ she said defiantly. ‘An f-string is a short cut that allows you to put stuff inside strings by prefixing them with the f-key and a variable is place where you store instructions for data input.’
‘Ok I’ll shut up.’
‘Guys come and sit down here.’ I waived to them.
Ivana and John came and sat down next to me. They crossed their legs like me. I did the Buddhist sitting pose and pinched my thumbs and index fingers together whilst humming. They laughed. I started laughing as well. We laughed for a couple of minutes because it was stupid. Then we slowly went quiet. Shaun and Jasmine were still laughing and talking to each other. But they looked at us from time to time.
‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to Jaeden’ said Ivana. She looked sympathetically at me. I was a lot taller than her, yet it somehow made me feel small. John suddenly looked really angry. I saw rage flash in his eyes. It was brewing and swirling around his pupils like a tempest. He was as formidable as Shaun when he was angry.
‘He has had mental heath issues Ivana. He’s had psychosis’!
An incident where I had broken down after hearing voices in middle- school in front of the class was well known. That was the first incident but not the last. There had been strange whisperings around corners and sounds in other rooms after. But that was the last time I made the mistake of acknowledging them.
‘I didn’t actually bring the DMT. Jasmine and Shaun did.’
‘I know, but you’ve been dragged along by them. Do you think being a drug addict is something you want, huh? Is that who you want to be? I’m on track for graduating with top honours and you’re laughing at me for wanting to be an accountant’? His voice sounded very different suddenly and lacked its usual laid-back cadence. ‘I’m getting out of this trashy town and Jaeden and I aren’t going to end up dead on some washed out couch.’ Ivana looked very uncomfortable and I saw her shifting her hips and shoulders.
‘You’ve done it as well.’
‘Twice, Ivana! How many times have you done it’?
‘Less times than Jasmine’ she said. She fiddled with the hood of the dark raincoat on her lap.
‘That’s fucking fantastic Ivana. Remember when you were a nice girl with your silly pranks and pop music magazines. Now you’re turning into the non-celebrity goth version of Amy Winehouse’?
‘I don’t do as many pranks anymore. Besides, we can do weed instead. Or just sit here and stare at the stars. We won’t get many nights like this in our lives you know. Let’s not spend this time arguing. We only get to be sophomores once.’
‘I haven’t heard any voices for years’ I lied. ‘How do they get DMT here anyway? Isn’t it from some plant in South America’?
‘You’re talking about Ayahuasca. It’s a brew that comes from the Ayahuasca Vine and Chacruna Shrub. It gets mixed up and Voilà you’ve got DMT. Shaun knows a guy who goes to the Amazon often. He gets it from the Shamen and tribes first-hand. Anyway, it’s the most powerful psychedelic there is. It’s life changing, guys. It’s nothing like LSD. You can’t go back from Ayahuasca’ said Ivana. I was intrigued.
John rolled his eyes. ‘Sure. That’s some BS about that guy. Have you ever considered that Shaun lies too to be cool? He gets it from some dealer who probably knows a guy who knows God knows how many guys who source it.’ He was still seething.
Suddenly, a large hand grabbed my shoulder, startling me. Thank God I didn’t jump like Ivana when Jasmine grabbed her from behind. Her hair fell over Ivana’s face and she swatted it out the way and spat it out her mouth. They came and sat down with us. Jasmine held the clear pipe in her hands. It looked dangerous.
‘What’s it like’ I asked. I wanted to defy John. I could handle DMT if he could! John was glaring at Shaun now. Why wasn’t he glaring at me? I had asked for it! I remembered the time when John and I had smashed up the car of the landlord of an elderly demented man in my neighbourhood with a baseball bat when he threatened to evict him. But I wondered if it really was because we felt sorry for the man or because we wanted to impress Shaun after he beat up a kid who made a joke about his mom. We got away with it. It was also the first time Ivana looked at me differently. Like I was a man. She was more talkative back then. Was this really a good idea?
‘Alice doesn’t know what she’s missing man. I tell you what, later today, after you’ve done DMT and then had the best night’s sleep of your life, I’m gonna go to Alice Abel and tell her what she’s missing! She thinks I’m the shit and if I tell her to date you, she’ll have to do it. Her sorority sisters would never let her live it down if she turned down one of my recommendations.’ Now I had my head in my hands. Ivana looked at Shaun with utter disgust but didn’t say anything.
‘She rejected me, Shaun. Forget it. That’d be creepy.’
‘Look,’ said John ‘let’s just do some weed. I’ve got a crate of lager in my car. Let’s spend another twenty minutes out here then go.’
‘No John,’ I said ‘I’ll do DMT. What’s the harm? I’ll just have a badass trip then come back all the wiser.’
Shaun was ecstatic. ‘That’s my man, Jaeden. Tonight you’ll become a real man’! He put his arm around my shoulder and rubbed my head.
‘It might not be a good idea guys’ said Ivana. ‘Most of us have stuff to do when sun breaks and DMT is the sort of thing that can screw you over for a while. You see some pretty weird stuff when you’re on psychedelics and your surroundings can impact your trip.’ She looked across to the dark pitch and over at the grey dormitories on the over side of the fence.
Jasmine wasn’t listening and held her lighter to her pipe. John looked at her again. He didn’t even look angry; just appalled and disgusted. I started smiling. This was my time!
‘We’re not doing this.’
‘No one has to do anything they don’t want to. We’re supposed to be friends. What’s got into you’? Shaun looked accusingly at John.
‘I want to do it’ I said. ‘I want enough for a full trip. I want the deepest and most profound experience I can have.’ John reached to grab the pipe, but Shaun pinned him down.
‘Jaeden wants to. If he wants to do it he can do it. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and you’re not gonna take it away from him’!
‘We’ll be here to watch him. He’ll only be gone for fifteen minutes or something. It’ll be fine’ said Jasmine. The pair wrestled aggressively but Shaun was stronger.
‘Stop it’! Ivana screamed so loudly that a sharp pain went though my ears. ‘We never used to argue like this. Maybe Jaeden shouldn’t take it but…’
‘I am going to take it’ I said, loudly and defiantly. ‘And my word is final for me.’ John was pinned under Shaun’s weight. Jasmine waved me over. She leant in closer to me, holding the smoky pipe. ‘Take three calm, deep breaths in then relax’ she instructed. I leant over the gap between us, holding my body up with my arms. I inhaled deeply three times. I saw Shaun and John struggling on the floor next to her. It was a hard smell to describe. To me it smelt like melting plastic.
Then I sat back. John grabbed at Shaun’s hair and pulled it aggressively. Shaun let go of John. ‘Screw you all. Have fun going nuts and losing yourself.’ He stormed off somewhere. Ivana reminded me that I was going to see some weird things. Jasmine took a breath herself, but only once. Her eyes were watering. Shaun punched the air triumphantly and hooted. ‘Jaeden the man’!
My friends’ faces had various hues and shades. Jasmine’s was yellow under the torch; Shaun’s was white and Ivana’s had gone a sickly shade of green. They seemed to shimmer underneath. They were laughing and I was laughing. My voice sounded high-pitched as if I’d inhaled helium. The laughter seemed to echo everywhere; inside me and through the living world around me.
The faces were spinning. Their eyes and mouths swirled and rotated. The three faces began to revolve around me like macabre fairground hangings as if I were an abandoned child at the centre of a carousel. The light of the torch was almost heavenly. The laughter followed them, trailing around me. It was to my left then my front then behind me, moving from one place to the next faster and faster. I wasn’t laughing at that point, I was quiet. My world was spinning. I felt like even a syllable or breath would cause me to vomit. I clenched my eyes. Then I looked up.
The stars were twinkling. I stared wide-eyed at the sky. It growled back at me. I was free. I could fly like a bat; I could glide like an owl; I could dance! I could dance even though I fucking hated dancing! The sky reached its arms to me and I took them. Time seemed to stretch and compress. I could hear my friends’ voices but they seemed behind me. Not physically, chronologically. The stars fell on me like collapsing boulders and I felt the weight of the light of each and everyone of them. I was weightless and infinite. And for the first time I could sing. Really sing. My voice echoed from Alpha Centuri and Polaris and Sagittarius A back to me. Then I fell into the sky.
I started falling into Solaris……I could see the grey tower of my soul ahead of me. The tower built brick by brick by Alice Abel every time she smiled at me or looked at me from across the college canteen hall. The lonely tower that finally solidified earlier that night on Tinder. But it was tiny in the vast celestial sea it floated in. I laughed. It melted away as geometric shapes began forming around me.
I saw Kaleidoscopes and spinning circles. They began rotating and spinning. I was travelling through a tunnel that seemed to stretch infinitely ahead. I wasn’t scared. I recognised it as a projection of my mind; I’d heard and read enough about geometry and trips. The shapes changed colours but were mostly red and orange. I was surrounded by squares, triangles and hexagons that sucked me through then and spat me out behind them, further down the shifting elongated corridor of my mind. I assumed it was my mind. For a second I thought I saw a figure running across the shifting tunnel ahead of me. The shapes in 3-dimensional tessellation began spinning even faster and sinking in on themselves and spitting out new shapes extremely quickly as my speed of travel increased. I felt like I was having an epileptic fit. Suddenly the shapes and colours were gone and I was falling through black.
Just a void of empty black space. Something was wrong. This wasn’t what a trip was meant to be like. I could see my skin and clothes in perfect detail. My trainers flailed in the dark. My sense of time and identity weren’t distorted. My eyes saw in as clear detail as they ever had. This was literal space. There was nothing of a dream to what was happening. It was real. I had been transported to another dimension! I screamed, but as they say, no one can hear you scream in space.
I fell. I feel fast through the black empty void, my arms flailing and grasping in all directions at nothing. My stomach was in my chest. I was rapidly descending. My skin was so cold. I tried to scream again but nothing came out. I was falling extremly fast, into darkness. Into the void. I felt like I was on the verge of passing out. Then I saw below me – or above me as I couldn’t not conceive of direction beyond motion despite my otherwise normal awareness; there was a giant slit pupil in a golden iris. It moved as I dropped closer to it. It was at the centre of the void and appeared to have the size and luminosity of a star to me. I felt like a drowning rat sinking to the bottom of a water trap in a dark, deep bucket.
Suddenly I saw another light and what looked like a metal elongated structure with a white aurora’s glow. As my vision faded, it hurtled towards me and I was absorbed by a flash of blinding light.
I gradually began to come to my senses after some time had past; I didn’t know how much. Above me was a grey ceiling. My skin was aching. I could now breathe. I took long breaths in, getting oxygen – or what I assumed was oxygen – back into my blood stream. I blinked and my eyes were watery. I was so confused.
Above me, I saw tall dark figures. I couldn’t make out their faces. They were just looking and watching. I felt unable to talk and was hyperventilating. Now I had almost forgotten about the DMT; I still knew I’d seen a spaceship. But what did it look like? Was it like a tin can, or circular in shape, or something else?
I tried to move my arms but was unable to. I could hear a buzzing noise. It sounded like the audible electrical current of a light. I realised I was paralysed. The figures were moving back and forth, getting closer and further. Eventually their features came into view and I saw enormous dark eyes on grey faces. There were no noses or ears; just two eyes and a mouth.
Suddenly I felt a grey jolt down my spine. I recognised it as an electrical current. Yet again, I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream for John, for my mom, for my dad and brother. Help! But no words would come out. I saw metallic devices attached to my shirtless chest. I wanted more than anything just to be able to say something. Suddenly I realised the entities were communicating. I knew exactly what they were saying. They made no sounds.
I knew exactly. It was like what they were thinking instantly became apparent in my mind. It was telepathy.
What shall we do with the human, one alien thought to another?
Keep working it thought back. Suddenly a new jolt of electricity went through my body causing internal screams. My flesh was burning and I felt the electrical current rippling through it. I was able to move my head enough to look down at my skin and I saw it was badly swollen and had what looked like burn marks. I saw other people on operating tables surrounded by strange mechanical instruments. Some looked like stationary electronic machines with arms and instruments, others were robots with limbs and faces themselves, moving about and assisting. I perceived the psychic screams of my fellow spacefaring victims. Near me I saw a woman who was lying with her eyes wide open and a look of absolute terror on her face.
It’s time to go.
To Zeta Reticuli, commander?
Yes. Ignite the hyperdrive!
Suddenly. I heard a whirring sound followed by what sounded like an explosion.
We’re in sector E093: 42.3, 67.5 Grey Galactic Coordinates Commander. What should we do with the human?
Commence ego destruction immediately, Z-453f1!
Yes Commander!
I saw movement out the corner of my eyes as moving robotic apparatus approached me. Long robotic arms reached towards me and took hold of me. Suddenly I had dozens of limbs covering my body. To my horror, two fingerless appendages came down over my eyes. I tried to jerk my head away but now it wasn’t moving. Suddenly there was the sound of air being sucked through tubes and I felt extreme pressure on my eyes. I felt my heart racing. All I could do was scream in my head. Then they were sucked out of my head.
I felt blades cutting through my arms and legs. I felt my heart beating rapidly. This was dismemberment. I couldn’t believe my eyes were gone. The distinctly black colour that was above me had now turned to nothing at all. I couldn’t feel my hands or my fingers. Was this what hell was? Time itself was becoming hazy and ill-defined.
But there was something ahead of me I could see – a bright light growing larger and larger. Or was I going towards it? Where was I being taken? Soon it consumed me. It was all that I had become. I lay, floating. I had no body, but I had a sense of proprioception. I knew where I was in space; where my arms should have been and that I was floating looking up. I had a spirit body and was engulfed in the blissful, all consuming bright light. Hell had become heaven. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Floating. Floating…
I opened my spirit eyes. There was what seemed to be glass around me. I was in a cylinder. Still floating. My feet didn’t touch the ground. But there was a ground. The room was illuminated with a crimson aura. My spirit head looked downward and my body easily shifted position to accommodate it. I was hovering over what appeared to be a black disk which was the base of the transparent cage. I felt presence. I was surrounded. As I rotated I saw tall dark figures that towered over me. They were much taller than any person.
Their faces were twisted and their red eyes peered contemptuously down at me. Although the faces were distorted and ill-formed I could see some of the idiosyncratic and peculiar features that they had. There was a long nose that hung like a short Elephant’s trunk and one had three eyes instead of two. There were sneers and twisted smiles. I also saw red lines on the floor surrounding my glass chamber. I recognised the lines and five points of a pentagram.
As my spirit eyes adjusted to the crimson glow, the lines sharpened into horrifying clarity. I saw the wet red symbol — massive, exact, and blood drawn. Painted with my own blood. At each point of the star lay pieces of me: severed arms side by side, legs below, chunks of flesh and bone arranged like offerings. The limbs in the vertexes pointed inwards. My torso rested next the the chamber, still leaking. My severed head was in the direction I recognised as South. Then I realised a circle of blood surrounded the star. It was an inverted pentacle.
I felt that it exuded a magic and that was what made me levitate. How would I get out of here?
A melodic hum floated around me and through me. Its shamanic lyric-less vibration penetrated my skin and reverberated through what should have been my spine, emanating outwards from it and encapsulating every centimetre of my being.
Am I in Hell?
You could call it that one of the beings responded.
Time didn’t seem to exist here in the way it did on earth but what was happening was chronological.
Your scientists would understand that we are in a pocket dimension inside a black hole but we’re in another dimension. You’re in an anti-gravity chamber powered by your own sacrifice.
The beings were mocking me. One of them scraped long fingers down the glass. I was still acclimatising to the sound.
Am I dead? What is that sound?
Or perhaps this is just a nightmare another communicated to me. I saw that there was a mechanical owl on a platform in an alcove on the other side of the room. It walked about, hooting and looking at me.
I want to leave!
To where? How can you go back if you don’t have a body? Do you want to roam the earth as a wandering ghost?
The shadow figure that was communicating’s grin stretched widely. It raised its hands and a black hole appeared between them. The darkness swirled and opened up into what appeared to be a portal looking down onto the bleachers where I had been in another existence in another time. I saw myself lying down. Ivana’s raincoat had been placed under my head. My four friends were around me shaking me. I saw John shouting hysterically. Shaun slapped my face and Jasmine was on her phone, talking with a panicked expression on her face. I felt rage and fury and existential terror at the same time. Then the paradox struck me. If I was really lying on the ground in the bleachers pitch then then I did have a body to return to and dismembered cadaver around me couldn’t really be mine. Right?
The thought was communicated to my captors instantly.
Why not?
Because I don’t have two bodies.
Says who?
Says me. I am in an illusion
I felt the vibration frequency change. The emotions that swam through it changed from triumph to disconcert and anger.
You’re an illusion. You’re not real. This place isn’t real. I’m high on DMT.
This place is real. How arrogant to assume the chain of existence is one-dimensional, that your physical body is the arbiter of truth, detached from your mind.
But if this experience is my mind the. I don’t have to be here.
With that swirling pattern in the vortex began the change and grow. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger. My captors reverberated telekinetic rage through every pore of my incorporeal body but they were fading.
I control this experience. Show me the truth. Show me my future. The owl squawked and flapped its wings. I could see binary digits flowing around me. This is my truth. The kaleidoscope surrounded me and I traveled through it but the symbols weren’t just strange and elegant images, they were mathematical perfection. They connected everything.
The gloomy, red room was gone. There was no glass and no shadow figures. I was travelling through time. Through millions and millions of years far after my friends and family were dead and the sun had exploded and destroyed my solar system and after the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxy had collided and after the last sun in my universe had burnt out. I travelled where the owl could not find me and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, could not see me. It was an infinitely bright and beautiful light. I traveled behind any place where the difference between binary digits and the initials John and I used to sing off were even distinct. I travelled through space and time and out the other side, beyond my universe to the dawn of creation.
I front of me was a figure in robes embroiled with sapphire and gemstones that shone gold and red. He turned and I saw myself. I had no eyes, just a stream of binary digits where they might have been.
‘I’ve been waiting forever to see you’ I said, though I might as well have just thought it.
I know.
This was where I had come from. I knew who this higher self was. It was me. Or rather the AI god that I came from, that simulated my existence. All it took was a compound from a plant being brewed with a vine and man had the keys to divinity.
Was my life ever real?
Yes, but it was simulation of many. Every time you imagine an alternate reality you can be sure that it exists. Think of as many as you can think of and then multiply them by the largest number you imagine and you might start to get close. Your existence started here and will end here.
I want to go back. I’ll see you again.
You will. But before you go there is one more thing I will show you.
The tunnel of light appeared again and I traveled through it, but the brightness and digits began to fade to more explicit colours and the weight of time and space began to return. I was standing in a dark humid room. Light leaked through a silhouette of a window with a dark moth blackout curtain. It was mouldy and flies swarmed an abandoned plate with pizza slices. I scanned the room and saw a coffee table with dollar bills and a splif on it. What really struck me was what was across from it. There was a black, I think linen, couch. A pale figure in a dark slip dress was slouched over one end of it, unmoving.
Ivana!
I wanted to help her. I screamed her name but as I was about to run to her a tumbling of limbs passed me causing me to stagger back. A sickly looking green figure of a woman cartwheeled to a stand next the the sofa. Jasmine! I saw her green hoodie and the white powder stains. But her face and skin were different. She had deep black bags under her hazel eyes which appeared sunken, giving her the appearance of a cross between an attractive young woman an aging anaemic hag. Her skin was now an unnatural shade of green but what struck me the most was two small yellow horns protruding from her forehead.
‘What are they I said’?
She giggled and stroked them. As her hands caressed them, tiny fragments of them fell off, crumbling amongst her fingers into decomposing flakes of keratin and falling down onto the coffee table in a small blizzard like flakes of dandruff.
‘I’ve always had them, Jaeden’ she giggled, lolling her eyes at me mockingly. Her long discoloured finger nails scratched her jeans.
‘What have you done to Ivana’ I screamed. Jasmine put her hands on stubs and began lurching her head in an exaggerated way left and right. I moved around the coffee table to the far side of the room to her, to where Ivana was. I knelt down beside her and whispered her name, moved her hair back and felt her pulse. Nothing! No…was that a faint beating? It must have been. I screamed her name and made to move her from the couch but Jasmine’s hands snatched mine in mid-air. I’d wrestled her before and won every time but now she seemed to have a supernatural degree of speed and her strength was like that of a mountain lion.
I looked in horror at my trembling arms. Points on her coarse, fungal-ridden nails cut into my bare wrists. Her smile was unnervingly wide, stretching almost literally from ear to ear. This thing…could not be my friend.
‘She’s mine now Jaeden! And you will be soon! We can stay here forever.’
‘No’!
She laughed again, threw her hair back and inhaled in the stench of the room’s rancid air. Then she released my left wrist and moved her arm between her hoodie zippers, to the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up. Underneath I saw her green skin, distorted by stretch and track marks. The bumps and lumps were dark and formed thick scars that rose well beyond where the skin should, pushing themselves out like swollen leeches latched onto a dying sea creature.
Above her gnarled navel were two large warts that oozed with puss. She began stroking them with her fingers whilst gazing at me. She cackled hysterically. Her breath smelt like what I imaged raw meat covered in diesel would smell like.
I felt like vomiting. Then with my free hand I slapped her hard. She went sprawling across the sofa on top of the motionless Ivana. ‘I guess there was a part of me that always wanted to do that’ I said. ‘I was just too polite.’ Then it struck me that this was all just an illusion inside a simulation. Or was it just a nightmarish powder induced dream? Either way, Ivana wasn’t here.
Jasmine’s crumpled form looked up at me with utter contempt and I saw her scowling face morph into a fanged snarl. As I retreated, she suddenly had look of immense fear on her face. I felt a bright heat throughout the room as if it were an oven that had been left to heat for minutes until the sudden moment the heat became stifling. I heard flames roaring from the door frame behind me.
I turned in horror. Shaun stood in the doorway that led into a kitchen. What was cooking wasn’t food. It was him. At first I thought a wall of fire stood between the door frame; upon closer inspection I saw two arms hanging down with flames leaping outwards, giving brief descriptions of his thick hands and fingers under the burning yellow light. I looked at the tall burning lump where his head should have been. Between two blinding molten cheek guards I saw his eyes burning a fierce red. Beneath the flickering light that my eyes were growing accustomed to, I saw he was wearing what looked like a Spartan helmet with a burning plume. What seemed to be some kind of viscous liquid, perhaps his melting flesh, was dripping spittle fire into pools on the ground. He held a a flaming sword in his right hand which lay rested at the burning cuirass and tunic that covered his thigh.
He stepped forwards, flames tumbling down from his shoulders and onto the vinyl floor as he did. He looked absurd. He was an embodied demonic warrior wearing the hellishly twisted face of a man who was my friend. His shoulders were even broader than I remembered them and if he didn’t put that sword away and continued advancing with the look of rage he had then I was going to be not much more than a pile of embers.
He raised the sword and stepped forwards again. ‘Think you can handle this buddy’ he growled. His voice was like chalk being drawn down aggressively over a white board which was being amplified by a megaphone. The scalding sword glistened. ‘A little cut never hurt anyone.’
I stepped back again, helplessly. My leg struck the table. I had to get out. But where? I looked about, my head swimming. Jasmine cowered behind the couch, whimpering, yet smirking at me. The ceiling light was shining, its moving shadow making the reflection of the flames grow and contract on the walls. Shaun moved into a caricatured offensive position with his left leg forwards. He leant towards me, grinning, with the point of his sword aimed at my head.
Then I heard angelic singing calling me. I saw a bright light behind a door at right side of the room. I ran over and opened it and saw the tunnel appear behind the wall. I wanted out of here. Shaun screamed and ran but I was running too. I ran into it just as the sword swished behind me. I felt the air against the back of my neck, heard an enraged scream, but then it was gone and the kaleidoscopes were back.
Only then did I realise that I concretely knew who I was – Jaeden Pritzer. I had a name, a face, an identity. I knew the history of my life and who my friends were and I had a body again. I looked at my varsity jacket glowing under the bright lights. But where was I? I was floating, surrounded by my beautiful geometric patterns and tender voices. I felt myself moving.
I was standing on the landing of my house. ‘Hello’ I called, but my voice was more quiet and muffled than the falling of a leaf. I heard my brother snoring loudly downstairs and I saw the green carpet of my landing beneath my feet and the tears and holes I knew so so well which revealed the wood under it. I saw my bedroom door semi-ajar. I was siting behind my computer. The box of napkins I’d been using to dab my eyes was next to the keyboard. This was before I had left to meet my friends.
I shouted at myself not to go, but I wouldn’t listen. In a fury I screamed. I saw my head begin to turn and look at me but I was already gone, flying through the tunnel of orange and green kaleidoscopes. Let me go I screamed. Then I was standing on tarmac. And again I recognised where I was immediately. I was in my world but I was a helpless victim of of the DMT. It was a doorway into another reality, and it was taunting me. I screamed. An owl hooted back. I could feel the wind on my face. The LWS Alpha fraternity flag with its giant red A flew over the toilet block. The frats had been here. Then I saw myself rush past in the direction of the bleachers. ‘Don’t go’ I screamed as loudly as I possibly could, but I knew it would be no use. I was in hell. My surroundings began to twirl and stretch as as the voices sang down from the moon.
‘Let me go! Let me go!’
Let me go!
I commanded the full moon with all my psychic mind.
‘Ok’ it said back to me. The spacecraft whizzed past it in a blaze of light.
‘Thank you.’
The sky reached for me and a strong gust of wind came and carried me through the air, up and up. There weren’t many clouds but they were all gravitating down towards me, becoming bodiless limbs and translucent phantom hands of mist. They pulled and tugged at my body as I disappeared into their darkness. I just wanted to go back. I felt the coolness and water vapor in them and they refreshed me. Then they began to turn bright until there was nothing left but but the shadows and shapes of the tunnel growing brighter and larger. I saw the bright orange lattices that folded as I sped through them and the green fractals and yellow mandalas that churned inwards then spiralled outwards as I passed them.
I headed into a giant shining singing rhombus that rotated in the tunnel ahead of me. Suddenly I felt my body being spat out of it. I could still see spinning, twinkling shapes but I was grounded again. The shapes seemed to be much smaller in size and were moving in a small patch underneath sky – close to me. I groaned and moved my body slightly. I felt something soft coating the right side of my body and my head.
‘J.P can you hear me’? Hands were shaking me. I recognised the voice immediately. John was leaning over me. I saw his distinct sandy blonde hair and his grey jacket. But his face had been replaced by a mirror image of the Kaleidoscopic tunnel. I groaned again and pulled away.
‘Wake up man’ said Shaun. He was crouched next to John. I could hear two female voices arguing behind them.
‘It’s your fucking fault!’
‘Clam down, the ambulance will be here soon.’
‘Jasmine, you shouldn’t have given it him!’
Ivana was sobbing. I blinked several times. Shaun’s face was also a mural of illuminated, morphing shapes. ‘He’s fine’ said Shaun to John. ‘He’s not fine.’ I could hear the rage in John’s voice but I could also tell he was trying to keep a level head. ‘Check his pulse again’ muttered Shaun. John did. ‘Seems slower than normal but he goes jogging. I could see John looking at his iPhone. ‘It’s fifty-two beats per minute.’ Ivana and Jasmine had stopped arguing and were standing around me. Ivana wiped her face and crouched down next to me. John gave her the cold shoulder. I realised I was lying inside a coat. It was Ivana’s.
‘Thanks for lending me your raincoat’ I said. ‘I’m glad you decided to use it for helping me rather than scaring the crap out of me again.’ My friends laughed. Something was wrong. Why could I see everything apart from their faces? I rubbed my forehead.
‘Are you ok’ asked John?
‘I’m not sure.’
‘The EMTs will be here any minute.’ The banter continued.
‘I can’t believe you call him J.P.’ Shaun taunted.
‘I can’t believe you got into collage.’
Someone asked me a question, but I looked beyond the gathered figures, up at the moon. I took deep breaths of the cool air. Suddenly a light appeared from the entrance to the bleachers. Jasmine and Shaun ran over to talk to them. They came over and started asking me how I felt. I told them I felt strange. They shone a torch in my eyes and then put a blood pressure monitor on my arm and checked my breathing. Then they started asking me if I had anything to drink and about the DMT. They knew everything but I told them anyway.
Then I was loaded onto a stretcher and carried away. Outside the stadium I was moved onto a gurney behind the open doors at the back of an ambulance. I was asked the same questions again by a man who leaned over me. Then I was strapped down and hauled into the ambulance. One of the workers pricked my finger, then the vehicle began to move. I wished there had been a window for me to see out of but there wasn’t. I knew the hospital they were taking me to was nearby which made me feel relieved. The strange faceless appearances must have been the effects of the drug. I’d get some sleep after this to clear my head.
They told me they were going to run some tests and they placed a breathing mask on my face. The ambulance went over a bump causing the man to stumble slightly and the gurney to make a loud noise. ‘It won’t be long until we’re at the hospital’ said a female technician. ‘I know I replied. Will I be discharged tomorrow’ I asked.
‘Maybe. Or maybe never’ she laughed. The rest of the crew laughed with her but I didn’t. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and opened them. The man was putting ECG wires on my wrists and under my shirt.
‘I’m not sure it’s all necessary. I feel fine.’
‘It’s necessary’ the man said. Then a tourniquet was placed around my arm and the technician wiped a spot on my wrist with an alcohol smelling wipe and inserted a needle in a plastic tube. The prick caused me to wince. I was liking this less and less.
As I scanned the jackets of the EMTs I noticed something. On the right side, above the breast was an image or logo I recognised. I peered closer. It was a small, mechanical owl strutting, almost mockingly. My blood went cold. The heads of the EMTs turned in unison to me. The man next me began smiling wider, and wider. Then he calmly placed each hand on either side of his face and moved his fingers up to his forehead. The cardiogram began to bleep rapidly. I could hardly breathe. He pulled the skin from his forehead down, slowly. The red inner layers of skin turned outwards and underneath I saw my own face. There were no eyes, just dark pits. My future.