An Excerpt From: "The Dark Bizarre"

 

Ahhh, Peyote. We meet again.

Peyote is a psychoactive alkaloid that comes from a small cactus that grows wildly in the Chihuahuan Desert. The cactus can be found in areas of Texas and Mexico and is common among scrub where there is limestone settlement. 

You usually find small “buttons” on cactus’ that grow close to the ground. This is the peyote. 

It can be chewed, or it can be boiled into a tea.

Indian tribes have used peyote for generations; not only for spiritual purposes, but for anesthetic purposes as well. Peyote is sometimes given to a woman experiencing childbirth.

For me, peyote was twelve hours of teeth grinding, eye popping, muscle clenching weirdness.

I popped the horrible tasting root (is it a root? Must check sometime…) into my mouth and started chewing. At the same time, I went and retrieved a joint out of the car, lit it, and started to inhale the sweet smoke. I was going to need this joint, and probably one more, because about a half an hour after I swallow this peyote I was chewing, I was going to throw up, and that was the ticket to get you on the all-night rollercoaster.

Once I had orally evacuated the contents of my stomach, BANG!

VVVVRRRRROOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!

I’ve done more than my share of hallucinogenics…but I’ve never seen anything that wasn’t there…Very few people have ever been able to effectively convey a psychedelic experience is like…Everything is glowing…I can look up and see endless stars…delightful…enchanted…I can see for light-years…I feel every bit of star-dust that makes up my body…and I can see my surroundings are made of the same particles…What is keeping the particles that make up my body from flowing into the gorgeous, moonlit scene?…I can hear the sound of the universe…a perfect 432hz. A…The Universal Om…There is a guitar here…it’s a pretty crappy acoustic guitar, but it will do…Now I can play against that note…that endless vibration…

Holy SHIT this stuff creeps up on you…my nephew is sitting beside me, listening to the music and smoking a joint…he is kind enough to hold the joint for me so I can hit it and keep playing…must keep playing…must keep the hands wrapped around this guitar and keep the fingers moving…the rollercoaster has left the station…there is no stopping now…playing this guitar is like holding onto a life-line now…I can hear a soft echo as the sound of the guitar bounces off the hills that surround the yard…hills that are awash in soft moonlight…moonlight that illuminates the flora and fauna…making the hills look like they are draped in a lush, leafy blanket that sways in the breeze…

Mike and Moe are walking back and forth between the car and the table on the porch that has a small pile of dynamite sticks and blasting caps. As I understand the mission, they will not just be blowing up the car, but they are going to see how high up in the air they can lift the car with the explosion.

Well, fine. I have my own problems.

If I stop playing now, everything will end…the particles will lose cohesiveness and dissipate…Everything will disappear and the only thing left will be me…because my reality is just a function of the Great Projector in my brain and nothing is real…Or, maybe, I am not real…yes…I’m just a figment of my own imagination…seems like I would have had a better imagination than to have myself be a cripple…No!...Stop This Nonsense!...Getting Existential on peyote will tie my brain up in knots and that way lies the Dark Bizarre…a world of harrowing emotional upheaval and old memories twisted into terrifying images of peculiar feelings of guilt and failure…No…just keep playing…

My fingers are working by themselves…sweet music…constant…I’ve been playing non-stop for hours now…my lower body feels virtually nonexistent…the heaviness of my useless legs are gone…the pain in my back and my neck still is…but it feels like it is very far away…I can almost imagine the pain completely gone…Mike and Moe are working under the car…I can see trails of light coming off everything that is moving…

Everything is enhanced…the sound of the guitar…the glow of the moonlight…the feel of my fingers on the strings…the power of the universal vibration that keeps me playing…playing…I can see the first hints of blue in the black of the night…sunrise will be soon…watching that on peyote will probably blow the top of my head…

Moe’s wife suddenly appeared with a tray of Mimosas. 

Fantastic! 

Executive Thinking!

If we are going to transition into a group of socially acceptable adults having breakfast with my mother and sister, we need alcohol to ease the teeth grinding buzz of the peyote and the orange juice to help clear up the effect of the hallucinogenic I had taken. We need to get our shit together.

We need to get right with the Lord.

Then Mike handed his son and I some ear plugs.

“You’re gonna want to put these in,” said Mike, a weird smirk on his face and the irises in his eyes open so that they looked black.

We put the ear plugs in, and Moe grabbed a shotgun, aimed it at the undercarriage of the car, and pulled the trigger…

“BOOM”…”BBBBOOOOOOOMMMMM”

A bright flash…the explosion felt like it had come from inside my very soul…the blast wave knocked all of us back and broke out all the windows of the house facing the back yard…The car itself didn’t really…lift off the ground…some parts of it were thrown one or two hundred feet in the air…I think…but most of the car was thrown OUTWARDS…The driver’s side door flew over me just after I was blown back out of the chair…If I wasn’t laying on my back, the door would have killed me…

“Come on,” said Mike, brushing himself off and reaching down to help me up. “We have to go.”

“Damn!” I exclaimed as I reached up to grab Mike’s hand, struggling to get up. “I think that straightened me RIGHT out!”

Mike grabbed one of my arms and my nephew grabbed the other and lifted me to my feet. “Come on, man!” said my nephew, trying to hurry me to the truck. “We have about fifteen minutes until the Sheriff’s Department gets here to storm the place. We gotta get outta here!”

Pippi, who had been sleeping in the truck, suddenly appeared in front of us, wide-eyed and panicked.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” she yelled.

“IN THE TRUCK!” ordered Mike, trying to rustle all of us into the slightly beaten and road-worn vehicle. “We have to get outta here NOW!”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

We were driving at a relatively safe speed away from Moe’s house, trying to keep our composure. My nephew was trying and failing to restrain the impulse to laugh, making snorting noises in the back seat with Pippi.

Apparently, in our present location, we had a 50-50 chance of coming across the Sheriffs, and Mike and I were preparing for the worst. Sure enough, a sheriff coming the other way flashed his lights and pulled us over.

The Deputy got out of his cruiser and walked up to the driver’s side door of the truck. He pulled a flashlight from his utility belt and flashed it into Mike’s eyes.

“Do you mind telling me what you are doing out here at this time of night?” said the Deputy gruffly.

“Yes sir,” answered Mike respectfully, “we all work at the bearings plant in town and we live in the same area not far from here, so we rideshare.”

“Uh-huh, “snorted the Deputy, now shining the flashlight in my eyes.

HOLY SHIT! I COULD SEE INSIDE MY OWN HEAD!

“That right, Mister?” he asked.

Ok…keep it together…don’t start shaking and babbling…ignore the fact that his face is melting…

“YES SIR, OFFICER! We were POUNDING out those bearings! Business CERTAINLY GOOD for bearings! And now, at the end of a LONG day, we are HEADING HOME! YES! Get a NICE HOT DINNER and watch ESPN, because I am a GOOD AMERICAN like YOURSELF! In fact…”

“We are on our way home” said Mike, thankfully cutting me off.

That’s it. Doomed. Twenty years in prison, hung upside down so they can beat the souls of my feet with baseball bats, with Bubba tearing me a whole new door every night until I finally hang myself with some tooth paste and pieces of soap…

“Hmmmm…” huffed the Deputy, who was now flashing the light into Mike’s eyes again. I was blind at this point: the light of the flashlight suddenly gone has created a psychedelic, kaleidoscope-like reaction in my head…swirling, multi-colored lights…I can see nothing in front of me but the lights…and I feel like I am leaving my body…rising up…up…into a plane…of existence…there are beings dressed in flowing, colored robes…the music is fabulous…weird stringed instruments and hand-made drums…the sound of Angels singing?...

“HEY!” barked the Deputy, pulling me down into reality. “How about you? Did you hear an explosion out here?”

OK…now DON’ T BE AN IDIOT! You can DO this…GET A GRIP, MAN!

“WELL SIR, I HEARD WHAT I THOUGHT WAS A GUNSHOT! YES! A GUNSHOT! OR MAYBE A CAR BACKFIRING! IT COULD HAVE BEEN THAT! WE WERE HEADING HOME LIKE GOOD AMERICANS…”

“We heard something that sounded like a gunshot,” said Mike, thankfully cutting me off again.

The Deputy turned off his flashlight and put it back into his utility belt.

“Well, we’re investigating a report of an explosion out here somewhere” he said, taking his hat off and wiping the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. “I was just wondering if you might have heard anything. Thanks for your help.”

We pulled away from the Deputy’s cruiser slowly, but not so slowly as to be obvious. Mike was muttering sarcastically under his breath: “It could have been a gunshot…or it could have been a car backfiring…I’m an American just like you…"

He looked at me and chuckled.

"…Dipshit…”