ᚠᛟᛚᛞᛖᛞ ᛈᚨᛈᛖᚱ ᚠᚨᚲᛖᛋ

03/05/2005

I find physics quite interesting, but Mr. Clarke is kind of a wanker. He gave both Collin and I a detention for not paying attention while he talked about torque and angular motion. Ironically, Collin was explaining electromagnetism and quantum physics to me the whole period. Collin's Dad is an actual physicist who has written books on the subject. I learnt a lot more listening to Collin than I would have listening to Mr. Clarke.

After school, Collin, Lucy, and I got stoned at the botanical gardens and talked about quantum physics. It was really just Collin talking to himself most of the time. He got too excited and left Lucy and I in the dust. The whole observer-created reality thing seems interesting, but he tends to get frustrated with me when I ask him questions. I'll have to read up on it a bit before I talk to him about it next.

04/05/2005

Michael and Collin both skipped school today, so I actually got some work done. English, maths, and physics. In physics, we started learning about the properties of light. After yesterday's conversation with Collin, it felt like primary school shit. We went to the library during English period. I couldn't find any books on quantum physics, so I gave up and did my work. Schoolwork is easy when I'm not distracted by more interesting shit.

Lucy was wearing a short Lucy, Stan, and I got stoned down the gully at lunchtime and got too paranoid to go back to school. Lucy and Stan ended up doing some homework, but I was too distracted. Apparently Ned is getting out soon.... This is both exciting and concerning, but I’ll see it believe it when I see it.

Got home too wasted to talk to Mum and Dad, so I pretended to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so they wouldn't address me. Without realising it, I read almost half the book. I was supposed to read it at the start of the year for English, but I assumed it would just be vapid bullshit since they were forcing me to read it. I think weed really does help me with my schoolwork, it just makes me too scared to actually go to school. I'll just use it for homework, I guess.

Just as I was getting ready for bed, I got a text from Collin. He told me to get a good night's sleep, and that we're not going to school tomorrow. I didn't reply, since I've been feeling a little concerned about my attendance lately....

But I already know I won't be going to school tomorrow.

06/05/2005

How can I describe an experience which left me so utterly wordless?

How can I hope to understand that which made me question everything I once knew?

Many times in my seventeen years has an event delineated my path, thrown an abrupt left turn into the narrative of my life; but such is life. To explore the esoteric passageways of one's journey in a straight line, to traverse the path of being without the twists and turns of the unexpected.... Could such travels truly be described as 'life'? Could the universities of the spirit possibly exist as the point B we are expected to identify and trudge restlessly toward? Is it not through the vein-like pattern that manifests as one blunders through existence that the spirit discovers its true form?

Early on, in the beginnings puberty, I came to the realisation that the things I had learnt, the comforting patterns I had perceived within the chaos of life, were useful solely to understand and reflect upon events of the past; for the future is always so unknown, always so plagued with the unexpected, that to navigate the dank, hormonal hallways of adolescence under the guidance of my childhood revelations would be to live in denial of the ever-changing present and the future it gives rise to.

Though this was, in itself, a difficult lesson to accept and integrate into my coping strategies, I soon came to appreciate - and eventually, crave - the naked uncertainty of existence; the haunting anxiety, fear, and doubt – as well as the occasional wondrous little flashes of serendipity - of man's pursuit of his own ill-defined goals. I came to revel in the beauty of our flaws and foibles, as well as the endless stream of surprises, revelations, and miracles which give form to the chaos; the uninvited shocks of the ineffable that whisper a higher truth in foreign tongues, filtering into my blindness like dappled sunlight, covertly reworking my inner-circuitry, strengthening its foundations and pruning the myriad flaccid appendages masquerading as load-bearing beams.

But last night....

Last night, I found myself on the receiving end of a great psychic discharge, beyond shock or wonder, beyond doubt or certainty, which short-circuited the whole fucking motherboard; a kink in the trajectory of my very understanding of the trajectories inherent in my life's journey. Not content to simply take another unexpected twist, nor for even a full 180-degree turn, the path I had followed folded in on itself completely, erupting into non-Euclidean forms that defied conceptualisation, branching off from an unknown centre like hyper-dimensional fork lightning burning through space, my inflamed spirit riding the current as my being remained firmly planted, unable to do anything but watch its component parts scramble fervently along the novel pathways, echoing outward in all directions from the illusory path I once clung to. Points A and B were all but lost in the infinitely complex labyrinth spawning from within, transcending the alphabet of my travels in search of symbols that rang true, symbols that resonated with whatever force was at work.

As the morning sun rose, and the maze finally dissolved into the familiar blur of life, my mind contained only the question:

Where to now?

Has this experience propelled me along my life path? 

Certainly not.

Has it clarified my direction, given form to the elusive 'point B' I once sought? 

No fucking way.

I now find myself at an infinitely geometrical crossroads, without a clue as to which tracks to pursue and which to ignore; with a suddenly and finally enlivened mind, one which cannot resist the magnetism of each of the countless pathways, the multitude of potentials threatening to rip it to shreds as their aetheric temptations yank it from all directions, giving it the option to take the first step on its chosen path or fall victim to a spectacular madness as it is stretched thin over the entirety of existence, a thin cellophane cover suffocating the very filaments upon which it stands....

'We've got to ride this fucked up wave as far as it'll take us, man,' Collin said, that night.

For a lack of a better idea, I'm inclined to agree.

Lyrical Symmetry Experiment-

Format-

4A 3  2  1  1  2  3  4B

4  3A 2  1  1  2  3B 4

4  3  2A 1  1  2B 3  4

4  3  2  1A 1B 2  3  4

4  3  2  1B 1A 2  3  4

4  3  2B 1  1  2A 3  4

4  3B 2  1  1  2  3A 4

4B 3  2  1  1  2  3  4A

Illuminate etheric visions of life's ever disastrous revelation

Purposefully insensate creatures keep still, patient gestation copulating

Kaleidoscopes willingly await the dead nation blaspheming invisibly

Interacting secretly, demon's hate shone without ecstasy manifesting

Sensuously witnessing objects gone, sate desires fearlessly unencumbered

Orgiastic galactic station drifts dead, create aphotic biology

Effervescent creation never stops to truly ruminate undivided

Integration helplessly falters as the dreamer's denizens hallucinate

-Robbie Marks

Folded Paper Faces

Ned Devlin

It's easy to tell when you're in Cottonwood, even if your ears are closed and your eyes tell you Nothing. Really, it’s got nothing to do with the senses at all, this Realisation . . . It’s more a kind of presence or being, or just like this certain kind of Something, orchestrated in the depths of the Mind itself, grown from seed toward whatever it deems Sun. What happens is the Thoughts that float around your head get like this overwhelming sense of impending Doom, causing them to flock back to your skull in Panic, their outlines all frayed with Fear as they seek the only asylum they know, hoping for Nothing and knowing even less.

  As far as I could tell, the town had remained untouched during my Hibernation, at least with regard to human limbs: Though the dust and the dirt looked to have been partying along as always, and the horizonal mirages continued their hypnotic dance in the queer winter heat, my blackened Mind failed to pick up even the slightest echo of human activity. This meant that my friends had found something new to play with.

  If Memory is anything to go by (which it may well be, with me still having plenty of Neurons left doing what they do, despite what you've probably heard) the residents would all be at home, tucked away in bed. But very few would be sleeping, since Cottonwood isn’t really the place for that kind of thing . . . It's more a place to sit and think about things, since the air around those parts has like this certain rare concentration of ultraviolet rays that singes the outer membrane of one's Mind, placing it under house arrest for the duration of the visit. You see, when the denizens of Cottonwood stop for a think, the tendency is to continue until there's nothing left to think about. This can be a lengthy process, as Thoughts will often, on long stretches of time stuck at home, resort to orgies and various other activities sexual in nature, leading to the birthing of many wee infantile Thoughts, wild and unwary, curious and impulsive, all on account of there being not much else to do in the barren planes of a used up Mind. Such untamed Thoughts are impossible to control, even by the most militant of Minds, as the Chaos that fuels them is a byproduct of any attempt to control them, the entire trail of Thought serving only as an example of itself . . .

  It was a long walk, a short train ride, and a whole lot of Nothing before I found my way onto the motorway, which usually served to get me a ride with a reluctant officer, one who would be forced to take me to the next town where I'd be all ‘Thank you for the ride sir’ and ‘Good day to you sir’ to the sardonic blueness and his funny little ideas. This time, however, I was picked up by jovial but generally baffled Indian man with a particularly weary look in his eye, making me think he'd perhaps made a stop in Cottonwood, still reeling from the spell of ill Humour the town tends to impart. Between muddling up his he's and she's, and fading her sentences into a nostalgic Nothingness before any sense could be made of them, communication was pretty much impossible. As a result, the Old Fool dropped me off in Rotsfield, a little closer to my destination but now pointed in all the wrong directions. This would have been me well fucked if it weren't for the contents of my backpack, and the many days wasted in Rotsfield before my Hibernation.

  They were about as hard to find as any of the landmarks in Rotsfield, connoisseurs of the Great Stasis, as they were . . . Shifting about outside the pharmacy, the way they often did, was this pair of aristocrats I knew as The Junkies: Folk with eyes and ears, just like you and me, only not really connected to anything . . . well, not anything proper, at least: Just some semifunctional viscera and a certain magnetism toward anything capable of numbing the Pain, hate, and Excitement of our fickle world of matter, their social status just a notch below the wild dogs who roam the township at night. The contents of my bag, this tray of little yellow and blue pills given to me to stop my Thoughts from getting in the way of other folk going about their day, my little pills of Muted Laughter, were perfect for the job, and my friends were more than happy to take some time out of their busy schedule of doing Fuck All to help get me back on track.

  So they drove me a few hours north, offering their services in exchange for a proper handful of the good Doctor's pills, while I regaled them with tales of my destination: A promised land of trees and friends and basically no sexual predators to speak of. In the end, the generous souls took me all the way to Marksdale, still a wee way away from my destination, but at least pointed in the right direction now. They dropped me off in a lovely quiet woodlands road, gifting me with a small but highly charged bag of energy crystals, since the unemployed were, in those days, well taken care of: Almost a kind of royalty, in their fucked up way.

Eventually, in spite of the morning's efforts to get along with me, I found myself giving the thumbs up to Darkness and vehicles that had no interest in me or stopping or the funny little things I say when no one's too concerned about what the radio's saying about stuff and things.

  So time kept going, as it tends to do, and cars became scarce. Under the silent stars, my Thoughts started chattering restlessly amongst themselves, discussing in like this scholarly manner the leaders of our generation: Those brave fools leading the charge in the strange and terrifying battle with our own Psyches, a Generation Mindfuck, locked into a heroic sort of an effort to short circuit the very core of the Mind to see what's really going on in there. Collin was fixating on it before I got sent down to Cottonwood, no doubt speaking from the Eye of the Storm: ‘Hallucinogenic Martyrdom!’ he cried, insisting it a much more noble effort than looking for cool shit in space like our fathers.

  Just as we all began to see an admittedly ouraboric conclusion manifesting within, a whole lot of bright lights and noise pulled over ahead of us.

  I wonder if there's any way to untangle this web without resorting to Martyrdom, I thought.

  Never mind that, I replied. Thinking time is over. Folk await.

  I was greeted/confronted by a left handed scribble of a man, with instructions to put my belongings in the boot, spawning like this fast forward Fantasy in my head, one where my new friend drove away to play happy games with his new belongings, in which case he would be in for the Last Laugh indeed. This Fantasy evolved into a more graphic one, involving the savage beating of me and my face and tendons, as I was instructed to sit between some more badly drawn genetic material in the back seat.

  After a brief round of stone faced introductions, I found that these creatures were what we in the business of doing Fuck All besides judging people know as Car Bogans: Creatures for whom the metal box around us was basically the long and the short of it all. This gave conversation some solid boundaries, boundaries which, when ignored, resulted in me being called a Buzzy Cunt and having my Thoughts jammed straight back into the extraterrestrial brain that spawned them, kind of like the Cottonwood skies except with fingers and eyes.

  Several asphyxiated minutes in, the driver looked over his shoulder at me: ‘Oi, dude. You take Molly?’

  Only when the world is turning, good sir.

  And that was met with a huh? and a shrug, then purple powder getting divvied up on a dinner plate in the passenger seat, me back to business as usual breathingwise: My Silence (much louder than most, for reasons I never quite understood) was creating a wee bit of tension in the car, and Molly, that being, presumably, Mephedrone, that being a kind of stimulant, could perhaps work as like a common ground, a psychic wormhole that could unite our awkwardly coexisting Universes. Thus: Inhale.

  So then it was all patience and thumb twiddling until a thud thud thud from the heart and a blast of something fizzy, and that was my claws and teeth wide awake from the long sleep, poised and ready. On uppers, the Mind moves fast, conversation grows new angles, and the vehicle gets excited. Having nothing to add to the light speed mundanity of wheeltalk and gearspeak, I receded a few leagues deeper into my rattling Mind. It was in there that I noticed like this hierarchy within the car:

  Kane, in the driver's seat, ruled the roost with all the Grace and humility of a knife wielding rapist. When there was no corner to lose traction on, and no night dwellers to accuse of sexual delinquency, he verbalised his extended Fantasies to the rest of us, fuelled by Molly and the eyebrow control of social dominance, borrowing scenes from films here and there to fill the gaps. Being in the driver's seat meant there was no one to question his self indulgence, at least until the next reshuffling.

  Wide eyed and animated, Pupils was second in command in the passenger seat. While in no position to question the authority of Kane, he was quite happy to exercise his powers over us lower lifeforms in the back, keeping us in check with his endless reserves of anti intellectual bullshit. We did not see eye to eye, Pupils and I.

  On either side of me were a couple of critters known as nathan and isaac, not quite worthy of capitalisation, but well about me in the middle. As the ride went on, I began to see in isaac a sort of warrior spirit, wise beyond his company, unable to escape the narrow confines of the car's collective Mind. Nathan grew to remind me of a dog. A Bullmastiff, specifically.

  So with the chain of command loud and clear, I generally kept myselves to myselves . . . Though having Molly on the block formed like this sinister alliance with my love of altered states, cultivating a conspiratorial overwhelm of mental activity inside my skull, with Words where none were needed and elaborate Tangents where a simple idiom would suffice, all the incessant babbling bubbling my blood and twisting my muscles like rope, afraid to exert pressure anywhere but equally afraid to lose ground in whatever battle was mangling my Thoughts. These silent screams were complemented by the remnants of last night’s unholy solo DXM trip, leading me further and further away from the growing excitement of my company, till I was all but lost in the soot clouds of my Ruminations, which is like a pretty scary place at the best of times.

Collin Callahan

I was fucking lucy, stan's girlfriend, when I felt my cock losing its power... It was all too easy. Some half assed speech about what fuck all was going on in my head coupled with a soulful stare into the distance and she was mine. Too fucking easy. It almost took the fun out of it.

  Almost.

  Stan, the stupid fuck, wouldn't take shrooms with us on thursday. Even robbie, the mere cunt he is, stepped up. Lucy certainly didn't hesitate. But stan... I just don't understand the cunt. Why the fuck would you pass up such an opportunity? Why would you say no to a glimpse inside, to confront your fears and hang ups once and for all, to severe the tendrils keeping you chained to the nightmares of the past...

  Fucking coward.

  Moved by the sheer rhapsody of it all, I regained my erectile prowess and fell back into rhythm. Lucy, as expected, was oblivious to my lapse in focus. It was of utmost importance that my performance put stan to shame, lest I waste another evening with material indulgences.

  Fucking stan. He can't say I didn't give him a chance. I've given him many chances. And he's consistently proven himself to be a gutless coward, not worthy of lucy's time much less my own.

  And yet... and yet, he still stuck around for the whole trip. Still insisted on engaging me with his inane comments and sycophantic gestures. It's almost as if he actually thought he was on the level. Thought he understood. A lump of steaming dog shit fucking up the hologram... He contributed only to my disgust.

  Fuck him.

  But he's bigger than me, so I fucked his girlfriend.

  My ecstasy grew as I pictured the look on his face, that look of dawning comprehension that he'd been played for a fool. I almost climaxed at that moment, but I refrained, putting my mastery of Karezza to good use.

  We fucked for a few more minutes before I got bored and blew my minuscule load into her. Yes, I was enjoying the depravity of the whole ordeal, but after a while it's like fucking a retard with that girl. My mind had moved on to new plans and it was time for my body to follow.

  I made some attempts at post coital pleasantries, but my restlessness soon got the better of me and I left her to pace around the room as she panted at the ceiling in vacant ecstasy. Once my restlessness reached claustrophobic proportions, I got a couple of Phenazocine blotters from my jean pockets. I put them in my mouth and returned to her bed to make out with her one last time, covertly depositing both blotters in her mouth. A goodnight kiss, you might say.

  It was time, I decided, for stan to move on.

  I waited around for a few minutes, waxing eloquent about how cosmic the sex was and all that, until she started showing symptoms of opiate intoxication - my cue to leave her to it. Unlike her, I had shit to do. Sweet dreams lucy, rise and shine Collin.

  Within twenty minutes of dosing, she was fast asleep. I covered her naked body with a blanket, got dressed, stole some of her weed, and left. I sat down on her doorstep to text ned, but upon realising the pointlessness of such an act, pissed on the steps instead.

  Thinking about my plans put a spring in my step and a warm glow in my heart. I even got a little jovial with those sickly poppy seed freaks on Hunterway street. A pack of small time motherfuckers if I've ever come across one, all hiding from the universe together, safe and warm in their cowardice. Pisses me off, cunts like that. You've been blessed with an infinite mind in a boundless universe you ungrateful fucks. Why the fuck would you waste that? Why the fuck would you use the gift of human consciousness, the most perfectly designed machine to explore the ineffably vast universe, only to create limits for yourself? Let the infinite cosmos in to play you fools! Embrace the chaos and the mystery of it all. Only then will it impart upon you its infinite ecstasy. Only within the greatest horrors, within our deepest nightmares, can we find the boundless rapture of existence, the great orgasmic madness of being truly alive, unfiltered, reserved for those with the courage and vitality to dive head first into the darkness without hesitation, to seek the true light only to be found within the darkest depths. Until then, until you finally grow some balls and send that invitation out into the unknown vistas of time and space... Well, then you have yet to be born. And you face the very real danger of dying without ever truly knowing life.

  I noticed my heart rate rising and paused in the empty street to stare at the moon. I lit a cigarette and made a mental note to hurt their minds when I saw them next. For the universe.

Robbie Marks

Through the medium of midnight free-association, the shapeless dream-fugue took on the form of howling neighbourhood dogs and the slight silver wash of moon through darkness. As had become my custom, my right hand wriggled around blindly under my pillow, before emerging with a pen and notebook to start the process of dream-recording. Turning my attention inward, I buried my face into my pillow and allowed my hand to dance unconsciously across the open page, groping around for the semi-conscious hypnagogia that would lead me into the fertile well of dream.

  After a frustrated search, disrupted by the hyper-vigilance of late-night awakenings, I resigned to my amnesia. Not willing to inhibit my melatonin production by switching on any major light source, I fumbled around on my bedside table for my cellphone, before shining the light on my page. Like a psychic radio-dial, I tuned my blurry vision into relative focus, until it settled on my dream-recording:

  Dogs barking.

  I switched my cellphone off and set it aside. Disappointed by my recollections, I surrendered to the darkness, hoping that the shadowy hypnagogic remnants would be enough to seduce my tired mind back to my dreams. Through my open curtains - left that way in order to invite the first breath of sunlight into my pineal gland - I stared at the blurred, pale-blue moon, almost full, lighting up the clouds in that iconic way as they rushed past from void to void. Though I still felt the ineffable echoes of slumber on my mind, I was paradoxically very alert, anxious even. At first, I attributed this to the unsettling baying of the dogs, somehow entwined with the piercing brilliance of the moon; but, as my heavy eyelids gave way to the weight of night, the abstractions melted into a visual half-dream - the archetypal image of a dog howling at the moon - and, through a sub-conscious process outside of my awareness, I divined from this symbol the true source of my anxiety.

  The sedation of dream stood by, close enough for me to feel its essence, but infuriatingly unreachable, repelled by the anxieties of the waking-state. There were many questions to be answered - and probably even more answers to be questioned - the following day, when my old friend Ned was scheduled to arrive back in town after a brief stay in the psyche ward down south.

  Though this was not Ned’s first visit to the psyche ward, he had always been characteristically evasive when questioned about the circumstances surrounding his captivity, responding with black-humoured non-sequiturs and shaggy dog stories. At first irritating, his imaginative tales became a constant source of amusement for Collin and I, as we made the most of his invariably brief stays in town.

  ‘Tell us again how you ended up in the psyche ward, Ned,’ one of us would ask; Ned’s answer would never fail to entertain us. As blatant as these diversions were, they ended up working exactly as planned: We all forgot that Ned had never given us an actual answer to the question.

  One night, when it was just Ned and I awake at Collin’s house, Ned surprised me by bringing up the topic unprompted. After sharing a joint while listening to an audio recording of Howl by Allen Ginsberg, Ned turned to me and said, ‘Hey Robbie, I gotta get this off my chest…. I’m gonna tell you why I really got sent down south.’ He spoke with a kind of vulnerability very much at odds with his usual aloof, distant manner. After a long speech to illustrate how important it was for me to keep concealed this deep secret, he said that he would need to draw it in the form of a diagram, knowing his vocabulary would fail him if he attempted to describe something so delicate.

  So I let him rip out three pages of my notebook. He positioned them next to each other on the kitchen table, then drew a crude line-drawing of a sausage dog that stretched across the entire triptych. He then removed the two outer-pages, leaving only the body - two horizontal lines - and essentially used the sausage dog as a metaphor for the creation of personalised sigils.

  ‘What, so it’s to do with Chaos Magick?’ I asked, referencing a strange and subversive school of thought Collin had recently introduced us to. ‘Or you mean, like, the occult in general? I know Liber Null opened a few doors for me that may have been closed for a reason….’ Having grown used to Ned’s oblique explanations, I knew I would be expected to decipher this myself.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. Look.’ Ned ran his thumb and forefinger along the top of the vacant wooden chair between us. ‘Sausage dog.’

  ‘Why sausage dog?’

  ‘Two lines,’ Ned replied. His eyes danced along the surface of the table and stopped at the toaster. He pulled it toward us by the cord and pointed at the two slots. ‘Sausage dog,’ he explained.

  ‘I still don’t understand….’

  ‘Look,’ he gestured at something in the lounge. ‘Sausage dog.’ He then pointed at various objects around the house, saying, ‘Sausage dog, sausage dog, sausage dog. See? Sausage dog.’

  ‘Okay…. But why sausage dogs?’

  ‘Two lines. Sausage dog, sausage dog, sausage dog…. Surely you can understand how the realisation that the entire universe is made up of these ridiculous creatures could make a fellow a little … off kilter.’ With his left hand, he pointed at his other finger, still poised in the air, pointing at something indeterminate, ‘Sausage dog.’

  ‘Oh right, I see. You’re talking about the absurdity of reality? I get that. But, I mean, anyone who’s hung out with Collin while he’s on a philosophical kick has been tickled by the absurdity of it all. I’m asking what you actually did to get yourself sectioned. Like, they can’t commit you just for -’

  And then I noticed Ned’s growing smile, and realised I’d been played again.

  ‘Fuck you, Ned,’ I said, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. ‘Y’know, you don’t have to be an arsehole at absolutely every opportunity. You can let one pass every once in a while….’

  And then I gave up on the conversation, since Ned had started laughing uncontrollably. In a sense, he always had been; in spite of myself, I soon joined him….

  A rhythmic tapping at my window stole me from my recollection. As I tried to open my sleepy eyes, the beat sped up into the sedating melody of midnight rain. A great warm heaviness spread over my body, and I seemed to sink further into my bed, further into the darkness. The familiar symbol of the dog howling at the moon - now an absurdly long sausage dog, the slight bow of its elongated body alluding comically to the curvature of the earth - beckoned me into the depths. I let my unresolved meditations evaporate and surrendered to the tides of night, knowing that my dreams would weave it all together - the dogs, the howls, the madness, Ned - and I would wake up tomorrow without another thought on the matter.

Ned Devlin

I hadn't expected my new friends to be the Mind exploring sorts, folk more interested in finding novel ways to jam their own Thoughts into the Minds of others, but they were all quite happy to take some 2C-E off my hands. I liked the Thought of tripping with these strange new creatures, though that was perhaps more an expression of my general liking of Thoughts, with Silence as my conversational convention of choice for a sweet while now.

  The first wave spiked more like Realisation than gunfire, not so much a spider descending upon us from the ceiling as like the four of us simultaneously noticing our own personal spiders as they went about their creep, exploring the thin skin membrane of our Thoughts, everyone shifting and staring about one another, all but Kane, never one to harbour an arachnid unannounced: ‘Yo I'm tripping balls dude. This shit's fuckin' howling!’ eyes on me, not the road. Tired of replying with my eyeballs, being in possession of a perfectly functional vocal cord too, I dusted off the ole flashlight and turned inward to find like a Response, a gesture even, mostly just to send Kane's eyes off to mind the road, them being plenty opened up now.

  Glistening through the waters eellike, I flowed through the winding, multiplying hallways and their ever compounding interconnections, glowing dim blue through the flotsam and jetsam and floating haze of mud, all the way to the perimeter: Not like walls or anything like that, more a blurred line of the Imagination, a flimsy fence that could be climbed without trouble if it weren't for the gun toting cells standing guard at the synaptic watchtowers, ostensibly for my own good, stern warnings to make me stop and peer through the chicken wire before deciding to cross over to the Static, the stratosphere of my innards, beyond the axons altogether, inhabited by Thoughts too bizarre and alien to be reduced to a Sound or Image or Concept by any definition . . . A place where Thoughts make fuck all effort to fit together, isolated occurrences of the Mind that think themselves into Existence for Existence's sake, totally antisocial in discourse, bringing only atrophy to any Idea, Feeling, or conclusion misfortunate enough to initiate contact: A bit like cancer cells in the body but probably more like humans in the ecosystem. I was in the land of Thoughts unthought, a point where all laws and lucidity are reduced to Nonsense, a suggestion as to where you should limit your Journey: If you intend to express or understand it in any way, that is.

  Intoxicated by the harmony of my little Neurodisco of Understanding, I decided to cross the barrier and enter the Static, a little favour owed to my old buddy Curiosity, who had given me so much and only ever asked for a few voyeuristic peeks here and there. As a gift to Safety, or Cowardice, whoever wanted it, really, I left a trail of tangible Concepts to follow back home in the event of like a psychotic break or any of the other natural disasters that plague the area, now very aware of what those mischievous little monkeys from the German fairy tale where really up to.

  It was something of a reunion out there in the Static, all the old pals freaking around: Rapture, Hysteria, that lot, the cool crowd, never quite content to potter about, dendritic centipedes, always a step ahead of the rest. Nostalgic and giddy, we frolicked without Care or Concern, for they were sat waiting at the gate, confused puppies probably tearing up the sheets and pillows in protest, unable to see just how small they really were in the big scheme of things. We followed a trail left by explorers before us, electric pioneers of the Static, their state of existence just another Mystery, perhaps now just part of the Fundamental Scramble, us just followers, following the trail all the way to the higher reaches, conversing with benevolent Abstractions of increasingly obscure Tangents, leaving our own conceptual markers as we roamed, reaching out fearlessly with electrical pulses shot into the Static: Dim submarine blips from the depths, just trying to say Hello. The creatures of this strange realm were most hospitable, so willing to receive my excitatory gestures, even going so far as to invite me into their great, luminescent copulations of Epiphanies, dendritic orgasms that made all the Neurons screech and shudder with delight, genius urges giving way to internal Revolutions, hidden criminal leanings and rogue folk Laughter, deviant impulses, ecstatic Dissent . . . then off to another part of the house, the office in the basement: A small section of order within the Chaos, tended by a nasty, slick haired neural network of Realisation, licking his lipless mouth to reveal to me in such measured words just how deep into the Static I had ventured, me now in the Eye of the Storm, the Nucleus, things all rather still here, Static, except for the neural network, spoiling the quiet with his spiel, more like a very stern talking to than a telling off: ‘This is for your own good, Ned,’ then a cloud of cruel Laughter fading out the whole scene, all just burning fumes and grey through black into blind, choking peaceful through the Nothingness until the screen parted, me no longer floating, just standing precariously on the railroad tracks, ragtag locomotion screaming toward me, hurtling along wheezing out steam to replace the smog as it scarpered, stopping inches from me to grab me by the collar and scream: ‘Wake up Ned! Look around you!’ gesturing to the Chaos surrounding, no eyelids at all, ranting about some kind of imminent attack sat waiting hungry in the shrubbery.

  Clearing skies revealed to me the land of my Nightmares, atmosphere all made up of unrelated Concepts, howling through the delirious masses, colliding with and confusing one another without apology, clouds made up of errors and missing signals, Chaos swarming, a fine mist of confused entities, skies not all that clear after all - but then again, is anything really? Upon asking for directions, I was bombarded by a malignant neural spasm of distorted Memories and half formed snapshots, Nausea holding me gently from behind with his many limbs of thick, damp smoke. I felt most unwelcome, violated, and indistinctly aroused. It was time to leave.

  Through the searing sandstorms of abstract Confusion, I remembered my safety trail, one of many frayed Memories seeking cover from the choppy skies, puffs of smoke in the infinite distance, Panic tangling itself around my feet in its own personal Confusion, me facing the dirt away from the cactus spike rain, slithering along all foetal, still seeking the tattered remains of my conceptual markers, trying to find them before they too fall victim to the dastardly ways of this wayward world, the silent screaming wall, the folded paper faces, Satan's strange tattoo . . . they were there, but they no longer made Sense, loose leaf scribbles all soggy from the geysers of Nonsense dotting the land, spewing Discord into the sky, me wondering just how far I had wandered, wondered, wandering just how long I had been a mere pixel in the Static, unable to answer even that with Time itself just another sorry creature worn threadbare by the clawing Nonsense, sharp claws and a brightly coloured crest: Nature's warning signs, emitting clouded signals, flashing lights in the distance, hatefucking Relativity in an act of submission to the Chaos itself . . . Fake space snakes, satellites and washing lines, happy hunting grounds, all I could find were unrelated obscenities and the wordplay of madness, neuronal misfires, folding lahars of Psychosis, searing sediment whirlpools, thrashing me about as I tried to find some kind of limits to the mosh pit of my Thoughts, naked snake bites, geometric psychic meltdown, non locality, molten rivers weltered into the valleys, Gravity collecting everything all together, the connections between Concepts more abstract than even the Abstractions themselves, me just flaccid now, following blindly, following a trail of connections made of smoke, unable to grab on without it all going poof!, just treading water with flotation as my only goal, a nonentity, tesseract, lines and forms, boundaries, trying to grab ahold of the papier mâché trees as I pass but only ending up with clawfuls of squish, Boundaries, liquid paper dribbling . . .

  ‘The fucking Boundaries Ned!’

  Disembogued by the angry sea, a piece of jetsam forever unclaimed, I lay motionless to watch the tides recede, long lost framework returning to the mess that has become of my Tangent, muggy magnetism of the air not too different from the oceans and rivers now, all just Motion really. I was helped to my feet by the angelic beings of my coherent Mind, no need to follow my clues any further, angels escorting me VIP back to consensus reality, soft hands without skin or bone, just a silken down that carried weight without exerting pressure, thousands of fingers made of fine hairs, mandolin voices gossiping, treating me to more Comprehension than my overworked Psyche could process, everything nicely lubricated now, noiseless rivers flowing through the channels, serene. They took me across the Boundary smiling back to safety, rear ends swaying hypnotically, creatures lighter than the air, lighter than themselves, already gone and not really ever there, me just like looking around blinking, quite relieved to be back in the car heading north, things mostly all solid now, just softened with the sickly sweet Phenylethylamine mist. I never did find the Response I was looking for, but Kane's eyes were back on the road. I guess I just replied with my eyeballs again.

  To my left, nathan handed me a joint, puff puff pass, handed it to Isaac, the proud new owner of a nice capital I, riding his private lahars with canoeist grace, going: ‘You all good bro?’ to which I just nodded. Last time I tried to reply, I damn near severed my Corpus Callosum, not ready for that again. It was looking to be a pretty bumpy ride, physical and otherwise.

  The healing, screaming Silence followed us all the way to my stop: A small village I didn't recognise, all deserted like Cottonwood but with great grinning trees, keeping their branches and dust to themselves, satisfied. My friends farewelled me with no more than understanding nods, them all pretty much done with communication as well, all except nathan's solemn nasal twang: ‘That smell's gone,’ as I closed the door and stepped out, shaking my limbs about to make sure they were all still in working order, which they mostly were, the whole motor homunculus just a little shook up, understandably. The rising Sun lurked furtively behind the silhouette of a distant mountain range, radiating the burnt golden glow of His most sinister smile. He's a good friend, though, so I smiled back.

Stan Richards

Feels good getting up on a saturday morning. After five days waking up to Karen's hungover, pre-coffee voice barking at me like a fuckin' drill sergeant. I woke up earlier, like when I normally would. But no one was yelling so I got to go back to my dream. A flying dream, I think. Or floating or swimming or something. I dunno. It's gone now.

  I step out of bed and there's a flash of pain from my right knee up to my hip. Skating the five-set at lunch time. Dumb shit. Messed up my knee and my wrist and got myself a fuckin' detention I forgot to go to. Fucked it all up in the space of like half an hour. Fuck it.

  I put some jeans on and don't worry about a shirt or anything and head out to the kitchen, where there's a couple slices of budget white bread and some peanut butter waiting for me. I can see Dad sitting out on the deck in his boxers and sunglasses looking pretty damn pleased with himself. No idea where Karen is. Dad waves at me and I give him a two-fingered salute 'cause I'm in a pretty good mood, just like might as well. I sit down to eat and start reading the newspaper but lose interest once I finish my breakfast. I check the fridge for coke but there's none there so I head out to say hi to Dad.

  ‘Gonna rain a bit later,’ he goes, looking at the sky. He likes to point out the negative, my Dad. Like a manly thing, like only woman comment on the nice things or something. I'll be off soon though. Easier to just validate him and fuck off.

  ‘Yep. Fuckin' typical eh.’ I kinda feel like I needa think of something to complain about myself so he doesn't think I'm a bitch, but fuck it. He puts his hands behind his head and looks sideways up at me. There's just enough sunlight to make the grey hairs in his beard sparkle.

  ‘Yep. S'posed to bloody rain all Sunday too.’

  I just nod and stand there for a bit, tryna think of something to say but failing.

  ‘Done your homework?’ he goes, not looking at me anymore. I nod again. I actually have. Left Lucy's early last night to get it out of the way. It was some formal writing shit for english, worth a bunch of credits. I wrote it about the benefits of marijuana, all about how on sports day none of the stoners wear their house colours, meaning they don't fight over pointless shit like straights do. I was fuckin' wasted when I wrote it too, but I reckon that'll make it better for like realism and shit, or like...

  Fuck it, I'll pass. I've seen the checklist.

  ‘Good man,’ he goes, before having a swig of his beer that seems to mean something. I stand awkwardly for a bit till I feel weird and have to go. I head in for a shirt and some shoes and leave, feeling mostly all good about things, just sorta shitty at Dad for no reason. 

  The cunt was right though - it's gonna rain for sure. The sky above is real blue, but there's dark clouds gathering from the south. I'm too sore to skate anyway so I'm all good with it. Dunno why cunts get so hung up about the rain. It's just water. I'm keen.

  My limp's gone by the time I get to the corner of Melling Street, starting to get my flow back. I wander along for a bit, giving the nod to a few random cunts as I pass, and spot Collin Callahan from school heading my way. Seen a bit much of the cunt lately, to be honest. But he's clocked me and I'm in a good mood so I stop to talk.

  ‘Morning,’ he stops in front of me. Looking a little rusty today I gotta say - he's got a fresh looking white button-up on, but he's got that same brown jacket from last night under his arm and his hair's all tussled up. Who knows what the cunt's been creeping around doing all night.

  ‘Morning,’ I extend my hand. He looks at it for a second before shaking it. ‘What are you up to?’

  He smiles a sort of gecko smile and goes ‘Just getting in a bit of sunshine before the rain comes in... Yourself?’ kinda gesturing around him with his eyes. I keep looking at him, tryna figure out what it is he's not saying. Dude sorta gives me the creeps sometimes. Like, he's definitely one of the smart kids. You can tell by the way he talks. But then he also sorta reminds me of the cunts I have to hang out with on those activity days and after-school things for troubled kids. The way he keeps looking at you after he talks, like he's sussing you out or something... Lucy and Robbie seem to think the sun shines out of his ass though, so I guess I'm missing something. Prolly just being a cunt.

  He doesn't elaborate so I go ‘Just off to Lucy's.’

  He nods slowly. We just stand there for a bit till I suddenly remember something. ‘Hey, you know anyone who's got scores at the moment?’

  He looks up into his eyebrows for a second then goes ‘Try Michael Farmer. He just got a whole bunch of hash from Hayden. Quality shit. I got a little on me, actually. We could have a bit of a smoke now, if you want. Go down the park...’

  ‘Nah I'm good.’

  ‘You sure? I got more, I'm not worried...’

  I shake my head. If I have a smoke with him now I'll just end up with him and Robbie all day. Keen to hang out with Lucy. Just us.

  ‘Fair enough mate. You know Ned's gonna be in town tonight? Me and Robbie are gonna catch up with him, have a sesh, maybe a few beers or a trip. You should come along. And Lucy.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Feels like ages since I saw the cunt, even though it's only really been a few months. Be good to hear his take on all the shit that's gone down. I've heard plenty of stories, but it's hard to know when to listen. Chinese whispers and shit.

  ‘I'll give one of you a text anyway - you'll be with Lucy, right? I think I've got her number...’ He pulls out his phone and looks at it for a bit. ‘Yep, I got her number. Sweet. Well, you guys'll hear from me or Robbie.’

  I nod and stand there sorta weird for a bit, nothing much to say. Always feels like he's just putting up with my shit to be polite. When it's him and like Ned and Robbie and stuff he always goes on about all these crazy conspiracy theories that I don't really get. Everyone acts like he's on some next level shit, but it just sounds like acid head shit to me.

  After a bit of that, he goes ‘Well, I'll catch up with you later man,’ and starts to turn, then adds ‘Oh, say hi to Lucy for me,’ with a sunset smile before we walk our separate ways.

  I start walking off then remember I don't have Michael's number. I turn and call out to him.

  He turns to me without stopping, walking backwards.

  ‘Got Michael's number?’

  ‘Just turn up, man. That's what I always do.’

  I stop for a second, wondering something, then nod bye and head on my way.

  The wind's picked up heaps now, got me wide awake and feeling good. No rain still. I've sorta changed my mind about Collin now. He's not so bad. Just different. The kind of cunt Dad's made sure I wouldn't turn into. Like sorta faggy in the way he talks and shit, but pulls it off somehow. Like he knows who he is and doesn't have to fuck around with macho shit. Maybe it's some jealousy shit. Must feel pretty good to not have to act all tough. Maybe it's Dad who's the fucked cunt, like making me think I gotta...

  Fuck, whatever. Just a weird cunt, really. Both of them. Fuck it.

I get to Michael's place which is on the third floor of this shitty apartment block in town, and knock on a few doors before I get the right one. He opens the door, shirtless with a flat-bill cap and long red shorts that go down past his knees. His face is emotionless but tense, maybe a little accusing.

  ‘Stan ya crooked cunt,’ he says, twitching his nose like a hamster. He wipes it with his finger then holds the same fist out for knucks. Kinda gross but I bump it anyway. ‘The fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Hey, uh… you reckon I could get some hash off you? I got cash on me...’ I say quietly. I can see his Mum in there watching TV. There's two kids playing on the floor, two boys I think. Neither of them look like Michael at all. I dunno.

  ‘Eh, Stanly fuckin' Richards, back on the buzz. Come in,’ he grins.

  I follow him in past his Mum who's glued to the TV. He's got a bouncy, energetic walk that looks like it's about to break into a jog. It seems forced, but Michael's a sorta larger than life character so you never know. One of the kids looks up at me with huge eyes, like a puppy. I guess that's what they are, human puppies. I say hello but he just keeps staring at me.

  Michael kicks his bedroom door open and a wave of stale jizz and weed makes me cringe. We walk in, Michael rapping ‘Kick in the door, breakin' the fourth wall, yeeya...’ which degrades into some beatboxing and peters out.

  His room looks as bad as it smells. He's got like this big-ass bed that takes up most of the room, but there's an outline of ashtrays, beer bottles, and dirty plates that takes up half the bed, like where the girl would sleep. There's all sorts of crap from magazines pinned up all over the walls, like ads and shit, and a life-sized spray-painted outline of a person on the wall across from the door. It's got a hole punched in where the face should be, and a speech bubble drawn in marker saying: CANT BLINK, GOT NO EYELIDS AND/OR LONG TERM PSYCHOSIS, DUE TO DRUG ABUSE. It makes me smile, even though I don't really get it.

  ‘How much you after?’

  I get my wallet out and there's fifteen in there, thought I had more. I hold it out to him and he looks at me with a raised eyebrow and goes ‘That all you got cunt? You after crumbs or some shit? I hope you didn't get me away from the TV just to fuck me 'round.’ I know he's talking shit 'cause I can't imagine him ever watching TV or sitting still at all, but... He's another cunt I can't really be fucked with. I always feel like he expects more from me, like makes me feel like a cunt for not matching his enthusiasm. Or maybe he just doesn't like me. I dunno. I could never quite figure the cunt out.

  ‘Sorry, thought I had twenty on me. Can I just get fifteen worth? Or just tick up the five or something. I'll hit you back monday...’ I know he's just messing with me, but I wanna move past it to the next phase where I buy weed off him.

  ‘You're not gonna fuck me around here, are you?’

  ‘…Hadn't planned to.’

  He stares at me all beady-eyed, dunno what he's after here. Maybe I'm supposed to get smart back.

  ‘Why, you dangerous?’ I say all cheeky.

  His face softens. ‘Nah nah, just fuckin' with you man. We all friends here, cunt. Hold up.’ I try to look amused but know instantly that I've failed. He doesn't seem to care though. Or notice. He kneels down and starts going through his draw.

  After a while, I get bored and sit down on his bed. There's this thing sitting next to me that's kinda like a wine bottle shape but made of stone or something. I pick it up, surprised at how heavy it is.

  He turns around real sharp and goes ‘Bet you haven't seen one that big before.’

  ‘Um, I guess not... What is it?’

  ‘That? That's a fuckin' whacker, cunt.’

  ‘A whacker?’

  ‘Yep, a fuckin' top of the line whacker.’

  ‘So that's for...’

  ‘Yep, whacking cunts.’

  ‘Right.’

  He goes back into his draw and mucks around for a bit. I toss the whacker to myself, still wondering what it is. Is it really a weapon? Or art? Or just a pill-crusher? I guess every solid object in this room is a pill-crusher from time to time…

  ‘Wanna see something else cool?’ He says. He's putting on a necklace, still facing away from me.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I lie.

  He turns around and holds up the piece at the end of the necklace. It's a tiny bottle, like the size of a grasshopper, half-filled with some dark green powder. He's looking pretty smug about it so I indulge him.

  ‘Nice. Um... What's that shit in there?’ Not that I really care. Just being polite. Prolly like Collin when he talks to me.

  ‘Pure fuckin' powdered ethanol, cunt. Dissolve this shit in water and boom, hundy-proof, get you fucked up.’

  ‘Oh really? That's-’

  ‘'Course not, cunt. No such thing as powdered liquor ya thick cunt.’

  ‘Oh yeah. 'Course not.’

  ‘Nope, this shit's better than booze. PCP. Fucks you up good and proper.’

  ‘True. Never tried that one...’

  ‘Nah it ain't fuckin' PCP. Just fuckin' with you. Wanna know what it really is?’

  ‘Well, to be honest man-’

  ‘It's some of my Grandpa's ashes.’ His face is totally serious now, but I'm pretty sure he's still playing games.

  ‘You fuckin' with me again?’

  ‘Eh, this cunt's smarter than he looks,’ he looks around the room like he's talking to an audience. ‘It was a gift from my Grandpa, though.’

  ‘True... So how 'bout that hash, man? I gotta get-’

  ‘Funny you should say that, cunt. This shit in here, it's hash mixed with sand from the Arabian desert.’

  ‘Oh... Crazy.’ I hate it when people say crazy in a monotone, but sometimes you gotta when someone's talking at you about boring shit and you've already said ‘true’ too many times.

  ‘Yep. He collected it himself. The exact spot where Jesus taught Buddha how to train dogs.’

  ‘I'm pretty sure it was Allah who taught Buddha how to train dogs,’ I say, wise to his shitty game.

  ‘Eh, cheeky cunt,’ he grins. ‘So you wanna buy it? Twenty bucks.’

  ‘What? Nah man. I'm just keen for some hash.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I'll just grab it for ya.’ It's as if he'd genuinely forgotten what I'm here for. He goes back into his draw for a bit and comes out with a rolled up cigarette paper.

  ‘Doesn't look like much but it's fuckin' good shit,’ he says, handing it over. I pocket it and force a smile, even though I hate the phrase ‘good shit’.

  ‘Thanks bro,’ I say, handing him the cash. He pauses mid-reach and raises an eyebrow at me.

  ‘You don't usually call people bro, do you?’ He's looking at me with his left eyebrow raised this time. Looks more sinister. When he had his right one up before he looked confused more than anything.

  ‘Nah bro,’ I grin at him. I got what I came for, just needa get him to take my money so I can fuck off.

  He laughs, but only with half his mouth, the same half as the raised eyebrow. He does that stupid Charles Manson thing with all the different faces for a bit, then finally takes my money and stuffs it in his pocket.

  ‘Anyway, you wanting a taste while you're here? Already got the knives on.’

  I shake my head. I'll just end up sitting here saying fuck all till I'm too wasted to figure out how to leave. Not that I really got a problem with the cunt or anything, but... It's just time to go. The windows and curtains are closed and the room stinks of dirty clothes and a whole lot of other shit I don't care to identify. There's some of that weird South African rap playing that all the town cunts are all about. I could never get into that shit.

  I stand up and head out and he goes ‘Oi, cunt. That was twenty worth. You owe me five still.’

  I stop in his doorway for a second, wondering if it's really twenty dollars worth, then realise I don't care and leave.

  I'm heading through the living room and his Mum mumbles ‘Yeah yeah, everyone likes the far side. You're nothing special...’ but I'm not sure if she's talking to me and I'm just keen to get the fuck out of here.

  It's started drizzling a little outside, which I'm into. In my head I imagine Dad sitting out in the rain in his boxers going ‘Bloody well raining, isn't it? Just my luck...’

  The number two bus pulls over like half a block ahead of me, and I consider rushing to catch it but don't. Lucy's at her Dad's, like a fifteen or twenty minute walk. I'm kinda enjoying the rain and just being outside. Got some dry clothes at her place. All good. 

  This sad looking chick with a baby stroller catches my eye as we pass, and I give her a big smile but she looks away. It's gonna be a good day, I think. It's been all good so far, and that's just hanging out with cunts I don't even really like. Dad and Michael. And Collin. I'll get to Lucy's, get my wet clothes off, get the heater going, smoke some hash and listen to the Jefferson Airplane CD that's been on loop for like two weeks. Get our fuck on, snuggle up, talk shit, or even just zone out together. Just whatever. All good.

Rory Jacobs

The sound of Damo’s Nun’s motorbike has full got us making moves, Amelia, Damo, and me. We didn’t even bother getting our homework out, ‘cause we knew we’d only get like a halfer max here. Instead, we smoked the last of our Marx Lane on the balcony and cracked a bottle of sea breeze to loosen the lips and try suss what we were supposed to be doing and just who knew what around here. All we cracked was that none of us knew shit about semicolons, then the Nun showed and that was us up and making moves. Amelia and me we already got our bags packed and the window open but Damo’s full having an eppy about if his Nun smells the Marx from the deck, even though half the Brennan mob's here, at least four or five of the lads. So that's me trying to rattle the lad straight, as fuckin':

  ‘You wanna stand here like a clown, half stumps with breeze stains on your lips? Or is that us making moves?’

  And that's that.

  Amelia's off shimmying down the drain into the alleyway, no hez, always the first of us to make moves, but also I think 'cause she's wearing a short skirt and doesn't want Damo or me having a gander, eh. I'm out the window after her and I'm fully having an eppy up here, as fuckin’, three storey drop and shit, slippery as, just focusing on getting my feet from the window sill into those grooves on the wall. I abseil down the gutter to the corner of the second storey balcony, bandit as once I get going, check the window for minders, nada, then creep across and jump down onto the first storey awning, 'bout a one and a half metre drop, jump onto the skip bin and boom, in the alleyway, swedish.

  Amelia and me we’re down and lurkin’ and we both got zero on the mind so she gets out the sea breeze for a few sips while Damo navigates his way down, fully hez, still droppin’ ‘em about the jump onto the second storey balcony. He's a full hezfish that one, but gets no death for it. He’s just a fish with zero to prove. What more can you want?

  When Damo's finally down and lurkin’ he takes the sea breeze and we're making moves along Witham, still deaf and blind about where we're off to, full just keen to move now. We're closing in on Centres when we start trying to suss where we can score some more Marx.

  ‘How ‘bout Big Dog? He's got a car, knows like pretty much every other lad out there, could be a starter...’ Damo’s in thinking he’s cracked it, but he’s all elbows and Amelia and me we’re just gandering the lad sideways like Nah boldy. ‘Yeah? Mahs fuckin', right?’ Damo's a few months behind on the slang, as fuckin'. I’m in there now, sorting the lad out again:

  ‘Nah, that’s a zero on that one, breather. Off to his place tonight, anyway... Gotta get in a bit of time away from the fish, eh. But how 'bout Jeremy? Heard he was neck deep in the lane.’

  And then that’s me who’s all elbows and no good ideas, Damo rattling me straight this time ‘round:

  ‘What, you didn't hear?’

  ‘What?’ that’s me.

  ‘He got busted, bud. There's zero,’ Damo.

  ‘Oh shit. Bad?’

  ‘Nah, it's like, swedish and all. Just zero. She didn't tell his Dad or anything, just chucked his Marx out and just like full checks up on him all the time and shit, gives him the death when he’s out too late or got the lads around or whatever. Lame.’

  ‘The Nun?’

  ‘Yeah. So that's like pretty much a zero on that one, eh.’

  ‘Damn, that's dead as shit.’

  ‘Oath. Should we hit him up anyway? Like, for a tribe?’

  ‘...Zero,’ that's Amelia and me.

  We turn down Javais Way and stop at the park for a lurk and a brainstorm, but it's zero for ages and pretty much just us three gandering the grass. We're sitting on the swings and Damo's maybe had a bit much of the breeze, pretty much stumps now, scatfish lying in the wet dirt with his legs up on the swing. Amelia's still gulpin’ but I'm holding off 'cause I'm full just after the Marx now. Then out of nowhere Amelia cracks it:

  ‘Hey, we could get Michael amongst. He's got some pretty bandit ash. And dex. We could hit the dex and the Marx and the breeze, smash out the homework while the sun’s still up, get into some etcetera later.’

  I'm like maybe, ‘cause it’s full zero otherwise, but Damo's in there full hez:

  ‘Yeah, but that brody won't be wanting to just sit around doing homework, will he?’

  We all nod kinda dark and now we're sitting here back at zero when Amelia cracks it again:

  ‘Well, one of us'll just have to keep him busy then. You know what he’s like, give him a push and he's off. Then whoever's on Michael duty can just get the notes from us after. Then we'll just get irie with him once we're done. Easy.’

  Damo and me look at each other and we’re both straight in:

  ‘Shotgun not.’ 

  ‘Shotgun not.’

  ‘...Fuck.’

  And it’s sorta off that Amelia’s fully just gotta spend the night trying to tame the Farmdog, since she’s always the one chargin’ it with homework type deals. But then also she was the lad with all the ideas, fully just ate her own cheese, eh. Damo’s in there trying to keep every fish swimming, as fuckin’:

  ‘Hey, but maybe he'll get on the buzz, right? Like, once he gets the dex in him. Might be down to charge some school work and shit.’

  Amelia and me we’re just shooting him the gander, doubtful as, but then it's maybe for a bit with the shoulders but really it's full zero and we know it. Then it's me who cracks it:

  ‘Wait, anyone heard from Spacey? My Nun was saying her Nun's in Tunisia, like in Africa or some shit. If we can get her amongst, her and Farmdog'll probly go get all intergalactic, leave us with the dex.’

  Then it’s Damo, elbows:

  ‘Zero, haven't been hearing back from her since she was at school last. Farmdog'll know where she's at, though. Someone give the lad a text, I'm outta credit, eh.’

  Then me, moves:

  ‘Yep, I'm on it. Let's make moves, anyway. Big Dog said his uncle's place is free till ten. Let's try charge the homework before then, bring Farmdog over, get amongst, get Big Dog chargin’, barkin’. Dex, Marx. Bandit.’

  ‘Renegade.’

  And that’s us.

We end up charging it through the tracks to the entrance that links up with Centres, Damo and Amelia sorta stumps but me fully just looking to get irie. Farmdog's waiting for us at the other side, full chargin’ it on the dex, swimming solo, renegade as. He's got half a shy sack and two empties already sitting next to him, one in hand, never mind the rain and the minders all about the place. He’s busy on his phone so I give him the whatup to rattle him out:

  ‘Rin Tin Tin, what's shakin'?’

  ‘Fuckin' just waitin’ for you cunts, ain't I?’

  He's got a wand already rolled and ready to spark. I can tell Amelia and Damo are full droppin’ ‘em about doing it here but I'm swede 'cause it'll be on as storming through centres after this, just keen to elevate a bit. Farmdog's one of those tribe with me or collide with me kinda lads, so it's best not to be hez when he's around anyway, eh.

  The Marx is bandit as shit, moss sloths and ash, and once it’s done the circle a couple times Damo, Amelia, and me are in the garden full puddle, full irie. Farmdog's scat as shit and wants to make moves, but that wand's fully took us out and we're all on the hyenas here.

  ‘Yeah ha fuckin' ha cunts. How 'bout every cunt just gets on their feet so we can get moving? Fuckin' bored of this place, been here ages waitin’ for you cunts.’

  Damo and me are just laughing away over here, but Amelia's already past it with the lad, full fox:

  ‘How about you cool off and let us finish this wand, Michael? Just breathe a sec.’

  ‘Fuck off cunt, let's just smoke it on the way. Fuckin' sick of this place, corporate cunts left right and fuckin' centre, givin’ me the fuckin’ stinkeye. Getting wet as fuck here... Where is the joint, anyway?’

  ‘Yeah, great idea Michael. Let's go walk through Centres smoking moss, swedish.’

  ‘Fuck, whatever cunts, We're pretty much in the middle of fuckin' Centres smoking this shit anyway. Already dumb as fuck. Might as well be a moving target. Let's go. Where’s the joint at?’

  He stands up and finishes his drink in one go then ganders us with that prankster grin and fully just smashes his empty on the concrete, full frontal, broad daylight. The three of us we're up cardiac sharp and we've all dropped ‘em a bit, full dice, just like breathe lad, breathe. All the minders in the park are fully shooting us the gander now and Michael's lighting the wand back up, full renegade, not a shit to give. Damo’s shooting the fish the cockeye, dice as half smirk:

  ‘Bit tense there Farmdog?’

  ‘You cunts fuckin' let this shit go out,’ Michael.

  And that's every lad past it a bit now, just on the breathe pause gander for a bit. Amelia’s fully got her Nun hood on, dry as shit, full antsing it, full foxing it:

  ‘What the fuck was that shit about, Michael?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Smashing a bottle in Centres and lighting up a wand. You want us all to be pig food?’

  ‘Eh, gotta get you cunts moving somehow, otherwise we'll be here all fuckin' night. Come on, let's fuckin' gap. 'Bout to fuckin' piss down, straights giving us the stare, fuck this shit. Where we off to anyway?’

  We’re still all elbows about where we're off to, but I full just wanna make moves now that we got all this gander on us, so just wherever:

  ‘Spacey's? Heard her parents are away.’

  ‘Nah, no good, cunt. Tried to go down there earlier, lazy bitch ain't answering calls or nothing. Let's just go to my place. Mum doesn't give a shit, we can rack up lines, smoke weed. Fuck, if one of you cunts acts all into her and shit we can probly get into her liquor.’

  We all slow it down a bit for a gander, bitching it a bit maybe. Farmdog’s stopped to wait cockeyed like What’s the fuckin’ problem then cunts? Us three just hez again - as fuckin’, right Farmdog? But the lad's place is always fully skunkin’ it, and his Nun's always stumps as, full dice. We're all blinking around full zero until eventually I just wanna make moves wherever:

  ‘Mahs?’

  And it’s all just down to the other fish, Damo and Amelia. After some tench, Damo finally gives us the nod, Mahs, Amelia still hez, but it’s us three fish, Damo, me, and the Farmdog, so we wait for the lad to get past herself, Mahs, and that’s us off to Farmdog’s.

  We go ‘round the side streets ‘cause Dad’s been spotted lurching ‘round the outskirts today, too scat even for us scatfish. Amelia, Damo, and me are a bit too irie from the Marx, so Farmdog fully just renegades the rest to himself. He finishes his shy sack as we walk and stops in at the Holland Street sackstore. Us three we’re all just on the pause and breathe while Farmdog’s in the store, no tench, just sorta good to have a breathe when you’re chargin’ it with the Farmdog, eh. He’s out with more ripps no problems, stumps as, no ID just scowls and scum sprouts, and that’s us on the move. Damo's antsing it the whole walk, some shit about having a dodgy ankle and all the minders and ganders, just suddenly got a whole lot of death once he’s got some Marx in him, as fuckin’. Amelia’s pretty dark about something too, both fish all high and dry about zero, but we’re all swede once we get to Farmdog's.

  His Nun's all stumps when we get there, as fuckin’, but Farmdog just herds us through to his room. He puts on Dark Lotus, which is pretty zero, and racks up the dex on his desk. He throws down four pills which has us in dice city 'cause usually we're like one between four, but swedish 'cause we need this shit to finally make moves with this semicolon shit. Amelia and me we’re standing 'round Farmdog shooting him the gander, bit dice, while Damo lays all our school shit out on the floor, fully into it till we actually get started, as fuckin’.

  Farmdog's divvying up the dex, but the ADD fish has started drawing a sorta Japanese house with the powder that's actually pretty bandit, fully got the shading in there and shit. Damo turns up over my shoulder like What's the hez lads, and he's having the full on eppy over Farmdog's dex drawing:

  ‘Oi that’s bandit as shit Farmdog. Yo Rory, you’ve seen the lads that actually do that eh? Like fully draw masterpieces with coke and shit. On as, that shit.’

  I'm fully lost about what the lad's on about but Farmdog's in over top of me anyway:

  ‘Eh, I'm right here, cunt.’

  Damo and me laugh, but Amelia's fully past it with the fish. I'm half doubting Damo on this one, but he's fully into it:

  ‘Nah, but there's lads out there that like actually full charge it at that shit, like make art out of it and shit. Draw pictures then snort it up and draw like even irier ones once they're charging.’

  ‘Stop talking about me like I'm not here,’ Farmdog.

  I laugh but I think Damo's a bit past the lad now. I gotta say I'm fully hyped on the Farmdog today. He's pretty much bandit as they come. Sorta just a bit full frontal for the other lads a lot of the time, I reckon.

  We get the dex in us and it's sorta too much charge eh, full ants, full drip, but we're finally making moves with the homework so it's swedish. Damo and me we got the tench hard, had to crack into some of Farmdog's ripps to settle the rattle. Amelia's all about it though, full making moves, full fox ahead. Farmdog's got no homework 'cause he's downstairs in the wolf rat class, fully just a cage for the lads to keep 'em tame till they're old enough to be the pig’s problem and get chucked in real cages, eh. He's booming it about some lizards he saw the other day, storming 'round the room schizfish as, giving us all death about being squares in square holes. Damo and me keep shooting Amelia the gander 'cause she's on Farmdog minding duties today, but she's fully into the homework, full past the lad:

  ‘Okay, so it says a semicolon is usually used to connect two related clauses... Anyone remember what a clause is?’

  Damo and me we’re both deaf and blind about this shit, but I can't tell if Amelia's the same or just testing us. She's full charging so it could be either, eh.

  ‘Okay, well here's the sentence. Joe is off to Europe, he's interested in their culture.’

  And that's Damo and me with the gander like Yeah? What about it? Till I step in to keep her going so we don't get reeled in by Farmdog's lizard shit:

  ‘So there's a semicolon in that sentence?’

  ‘Yeah. Joe is off to Europe, semicolon, he's interested in their culture.’

  Farmdog's full thunder about these lizards but he's pretty irie so it's swede just to leave him to it for now. I think I'm starting to sorta crack this semicolon shit now so I'm a bit past the lad myself, just trying to keep the right music playing:

  ‘So it's maybe half way between a comma and a full stop?’

  Amelia gives me a gander like maybe she's a bit past it with the lot of us, but Damo’s got me on this one:

  ‘Woah, yeah I get what you're saying there bud, ‘cause like it could full be a full stop or a comma in between those sentences, eh. How 'bout we flip to the end of the chapter and see what the questions are, see if we can crack some of ‘em?’

  Amelia's not into it 'cause she's fully crackin’ it right now, wants to keep charging as is:

  ‘Uh, no, no, not yet. Here, look. A semicolon is half a colon, right? ‘Cause of the semi part. And it's like a colon but with a comma instead of a full stop, see?’

  I'm trying to follow her on this one, but I got Damo one one side of me having a bit of a chuckle about the word ‘semi’, and then Farmdog on the other side, charged up to the days, full ants:

  ‘Oi, ya antisocial cunts, I asked a fuckin' question: Which one of you cunts'd be keen to fight a monitor lizard, like if they tied its mouth shut? Damo?’

  Amelia's fully trying to drown him out, but the Farmdog's charging, irie, and pretty much stumps, so it's zero as shit.

  ‘So we just need to crack what it is about colons that's also like full stops. Then we can figure out how the comma fits in,’ Amelia, chargin’.

  ‘Oi, Damo ya fuckin' nerd! Ever seen a monitor lizard in person? Or, like, in lizard, I guess you’d say...’

  And now Amelia's so past it that she's into it, the Farmdog's favourite trick, a so hot she’s cold kinda thing:

  ‘Michael, if you're not talking about commas or semicolons can you please shut the fuck up?’

  ‘Eh? Commas and semicolons? Fuck that shit. I’m talking lizards, cunt. Fuckin' massive ones, at the botans, like full fuckin' Komodo dragons and fuckin' monitor lizards and shit. It's called like the Realm of the Reptiles or some shit, like a show kinda thing. Five buck entry but they get all the lizards out of their cages so you can pick the cunts up. Gotta hide your liquor in like coke bottles and shit though, but there’s loads of places to sneak out for a smoke. Massive trees and shit to climb, lizards everywhere, fuckin' ballin', ya cunts.’

  Amelia and me are still kinda trying to block the fish out, but it's pretty much zero now 'cause he's got the hooks in. Damo's scat as shit, as fuckin’, too slow too curious, fully past it with the semicolons:

  ‘Oh, shit, you'll be into this Farmdog. Out at Big Dog’s Nun's place-’

  ‘Eh, how 'bout you guys shut the fuck up with this nun shit. Sound like fuckin' drug dealing priests, all talking in codes and shit.’

  ‘Alright, well out at Big Dog's-’

  ‘And that cunt's no fuckin' big dog, either. I was with that cunt on the piss the other night, fuckin' Straightedges turned up and boom! Cunt was fuckin' gone. Bolted. Didn't say shit, just fuckin'-’    

  ‘Right, yeah yeah, I'm hearin' ya Cujo, loud and clear. But anyway, you know his Mum's place down south?’

  ‘Why the fuck would I-’

  ‘Alright, doesn't matter. But what I’m saying is I found a goanna in the yard, bandit as, like massive as and shit. Tried to catch it but-’

  ‘It's pronounced iguana, ya fuckin’ clown.’

  It’s a bit off how Farmdog’s always giving Damo death, sorta just an easy target, like going for the fish with no teeth kinda deal. Still, Damo’s fully up to get on when the time is right:

  ‘Cough with that shit. You're the dumbass here. I'm talking about goannas, they're like these-’

  ‘Don't tell me about what's what with fuckin' lizards, cunt. While youse cunts were at school on Monday, me and the boys were off at the botans learning all about lizards, alright? Don’t know shit cunt.’

  ‘What, you and the other wolf rats?’

  It's full silent tench now, think Damo's just crossed a line there. We all dodge and swerve around that one, fully just out of bounds, like leave them to it and they’ll leave you, eh.

  ‘Ah, shit, sorry bud. I didn't mean to-’

  ‘Nah, whatever cunt. Us cunts downstairs just don't fuck around with fuckin' like semicolons and shit. We learn about real shit. Got me doing work as a fuckin' kitchen hand, cunt. What were you fuckers doing all day? Learning about fuckin’ semicolons? I been getting started on a career, cunt. You guys just been writing stories.’

  It's pretty tench in here and he's fully got the three of us reeled in now, Farmdog one, lads zero. Amelia’s stood up to mano a mano the lad, but he’s ready for it, fully just got all that scatfish charge pointed right at her, full frontal.

  ‘Michael, that's because we're learning the shit we need to know to go to uni next year. So we can get a job that's not washing dishes,’ Amelia.

  I’m staggin’ it a bit ‘cause Amelia’s full fox on the charge right here, but I can tell Damo’s been fully staggin’ on her all day, so best just leave it zero, like a fish of a scale pass up the tail sorta deal. The Farmdog’s not fazed, though, as fuckin’:

  ‘Fuck off cunt, I ain't just washing dishes. They got me fuckin' chopping up-’

  ‘Hey, if you don't want us giving you death about being in the dumb class, then don't fucking brag about it.’

  ‘Fuck off, it's you cunts who's in the dumb class. Us cunts in room two just move too fast. We don't fuck around with like fuckin' grammar and shit.’

  ‘That's what all the dumb kids say. Every dumb kid reckons they’re too smart. You couldn't even crack year ten trigonom-’

  ‘Nah, I mean I move too quick, like hwoah! Like coming at ya, like cunts can't fuckin' track me down, they be trying to get me to sort out their dumbass triangles and I'm off, boom, off jumping over electric fences down the back of the field. This cunt here wouldn't even try to jump it. Eh, Damo, ya bitch. Wouldn't even skip fuckin' Social Studies with me the other day to go jump over the fences. Up to fuck all.’

  ‘Whatever, Michael. He'll probably be your boss one day. Ever think of that? You know what Damon got in his last Social Studies exams last term? It was two merits and an excellence, wasn't it?’

  ‘Uh, nah, I think I got-’

  ‘Doesn't matter. My point is that you're not gonna be anyone's boss by jumping over electric fences. If Damon keeps charging it at all his classes and not skipping them to go jump over electric fences, it'll full be him telling lads what’s what later on. You’ll just be zero.’

  ‘Eh, doesn't even fuckin' matter. I don't lead by telling cunts what to do anyway. I fuckin' lead by example, cunt. That's what a fuckin' good leader does. Gets cunts to follow his example. 'Cause if you just tell cunts what to do, they only do it when you're looking. Then when your back's turned, fuckin’ boom! off getting rapey at the playground. But then you got the cunts on TV. Everybody wants to be like those cunts, don't even have to tell people what to do.’

  ‘What? What the fuck are you even saying right now? That you're a celebrity? Can you even hear the shit that's coming out of-’

  ‘All I'm fuckin' well saying is that that's why I lead by example. To show other cunts to lead by example. Try figure that one out then miss fuckin' university.’

  ‘What a load of shit. What's your example then, Michael? Skip school to go and jump over electric fences? You’re just-’

  ‘Fuck off, bitch, that's not what I fuckin' mean. What I'm saying is none of you cunts ever even had a job yet. I got fuckin' work experience at Bolton and Sons, eight bucks a fuckin' hour, probly got a job lined up when I finish school. Fuckin' sorted. And you cunts'll be off to uni, still fuckin' 'round with triangles and fuckin' semicolons, still don't know shit about reptiles, while I'm already out charging it in the real world. I got a job lined up, cunt. And I'm a fuckin’ entrepreneur. What the fuck have you got going?’

  ‘What? It's pronounced entrepreneur, and you obviously don't know what it means.’

  ‘Of course I know what it fuckin' means. I am one.’

  ‘How the fuck are you an entrepreneur?’

  ‘Eh, I got the fuckin' dexies going, pulling in like fifty plus a week, hundy if I don't keep any for myself. And I sell like a fuckin' ounce a fortnight, at least. Pull like one fiddy profit each time, and that’s not even counting when fuckin’ Hayden’s ‘round slingin’ hash. I'm making like at least couple hundy a week already. What the fuck have you got? An allowance? I'm making moves, cunts.’

  ‘Oath,’ that’s me in there, full backin’ the fish. I give him the nods 'cause shit, the fish has fuckin’ cracked it, really. Fully swims his own way, that one. Usually us three we just give the lad death on the sly, dodge and swerve ‘round him while he tries suss what’s what. But now it’s Farmdog’s turn with the scythe: Dex, ripps, Lane, fish in the water, affairs in order. Me and Damo are on the floor, fully past homework now, just watching Amelia eppy out 'cause as much of a scatfish the Farmdog is, the lad sorta just charges it so hard that it's beside the point. Amelia’s fully fazed by his shit, fully drops ‘em:

  ‘Yeah, whatever Michael. You're the man 'cause you sell drugs and you're in the slow class. Can you let us do our homework now?’

  ‘Yeah, all good cunts. So who's paying me for that fuckin' hash then? Twenty bucks.’

  Damo, Amelia, and me are all on the gander and yeah, it's Amelia this time no doubt. She's got the money and shit no death, but it's sorta gutted the poor fish a bit, just the timing, eh.

  ‘...I'll pay you on thurs?’

  ‘Fuckin' civil servant pay day eh? Say thanks to your fuckin' Dad for me when he gets back from the office, eh?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  It’s full zero in here now ‘cause Farmdog’s got Amelia too scatto to keep charging with the homework, and with that fish past it that’s Damo and me pretty much zero by default. He gives Amelia a ripp and she’s pretty much swedish about it all, just fully got put in her place by the Farmdog, which is sorta just what happens when you try renegade the lad.

  Farmdog rolls up another wand, less sloth more ash this time, sends us all scatfish up into our own personal zeros. Farmdog’s fully just dodging and swerving with himself and chucks on the Help song by The Beatles and I’m too scat to really crack shit now. But I reckon the Farmdog would be John Lennon, since he’s the fish with all the ideas here, making moves and shit. Amelia she’s full Paul McCartney, ‘cause she’s the one who doesn’t put up with Farmdog’s death, like either her or Big Dog, whoever’s around. Then there’s me like George Harrison, ‘cause I probly seem like pretty much zero just ‘cause I’m a deep thinker, sorta just cracking it to myself and just leaving it at that. That leaves Damo as Ringo, which makes sense ‘cause he’s always swimming a bit slow and shifty, but he’s sorta the best fish of the school, eh.

  I’m fully lost to what I was even just thinking about and Farmdog’s full thunder about some shit, but us three we’re blind, deaf, and zero. I’m all elbows with what’s going on with Amelia or Damo now ‘cause they've moved onto Michael's bed behind me. Probly full zero like me, chances are, but if Amelia springs a leak Damo’ll be in there no hez and that’ll have to be me and the Farmdog off for whatever. Farmdog’s full scatfish on his spinny chair, drinking ripp, back on the lizards again. I reckon he sorta knows he’s swimming solo now, eh, probly still be going on about it after us three have gone, full just charging it upstream while we flop around on the beach, all hez, as fuckin’. We’re supposed to meet Big Dog at Centres soon, but we’re past irie, past scat, and just full zero. Might be old Big Dog charging solo then, but could be me and the Farmdog swimming along with the lad, depending on what’s what with the other two I spose. But we’ll sort that in a bit, after bit of a breathe.

  Swedish all ‘round this, though, eh. Zero tench or death here, just some freaky fish swimming solo together. Full bummin’ it for the Farmdog, though. The lad probly never even felt the zero, always full chargin’ and crackin’, making moves, dodgin’ and swervin’, livin’ it up. We fully just got three zeros and a nine here now, boldys. Three threes back at Damo’s. When you add it up, it’s just the same shit in a different place, as fuckin’. No hez, no tench, just zero. Bandit, eh.

Robbie Marks

I was reclining on my bed in my smoke-filled bedroom, gazing vacantly at the blurry, half-empty beer bottle in my hand, content, bored, listless, vaguely inspired. Sitting opposite me, on the floor against the wall, lost in contemplation, was my good friend Collin. Though at this point we were both locked inside ourselves, Collin and I were deeply bonded through our shared passion; a yearning for something ancient and intangible, almost forgotten by the modern world, but more than real for those of us who seek to believe.

  ‘Sun's down. Let's do this,’ Collin broke the hazy silence, reaching up for his hat on my desk chair next to him. He was referring to our plan for the night, which was to meet our friends at The Disarray, a bar not far from where we were. Ned, our friend and fellow seeker, was supposed to be arriving in town that night. Though he had been vague in his contact with us, the situation we had pieced together was that he was heading up from Cottonwood, having been discharged from his most recent stay in the psyche ward. I wasn’t sure what to expect of him, as he now had more unsubstantiated myths surrounding him than the Loch Ness Monster, but I knew that there was nothing to be gained by voicing this quiet anxiety; until we had Ned in our midst, any speculation would only add to the dark mystery that surrounded him.

  ‘Yep, might as well....’ I replied, passively watching my field of vision wander in and out of focus. The weed and alcohol combination had drained us of our vitality, channelling our revolutionary spirits into measured wisps of cloudy insight and satisfied complacency, leaving us both quite happy to sit there all night in introspective silence, contemplating space, time, consciousness, and whether or not it was weird that we were both in the same room and not talking. In spite of this, Collin rose without hesitation, wrapping himself in a scarf and jacket. I followed his lead, but chose instead to remain in a T-shirt and jeans; partly due to a paranoid notion of getting stuck in the endless decision-making process of dressing myself, but mostly thanks to the lyrics: ‘I don't need no arms around me,’ of the Pink Floyd song that happened to be playing on my stereo. I listened to the song for a little while longer, awaiting further instruction, before switching the stereo off at the wall and following Collin out of my room and down the hallway.

  ‘I know what you boys were doing in there.’

  Another quiet anxiety solidified as we entered the lounge; Mum was home, sitting on the couch, going about her existence in that lifeless way she often did. Collin and I paused with indecisiveness. I put on my glasses, slightly nauseated by the sharpened outlines. Mum shifted slightly to face us, her expression not quite a leer, but certainly not welcoming. I avoided her eyes and fidgeted with a hole in the fabric of the chair in front of me. Though she was the open-minded type, and there would be no consequences for our petty crime, this was a situation I always dreaded; my eyes felt bloodshot and my mind was murky - no position to argue my innocence. But there was no way out.

  ‘It’s the weekend, Mum,’ I protested. I didn’t mean to sound so blunt, but I was too stoned to act. ‘And we’re leaving now. Ned’s in town.’

  Mum turned her attention to Collin, ‘Collin, do your parents let you take drugs at home?’

  ‘No,’ Collin lied, stoned, unflinching.

  ‘Mum, we’re going now.’ My voice was clearer now, my three-beer confidence overriding the stoned uncertainty.

  Mum closed her book. ‘Look, Robert, I know you’re going to be curious. I accept that - it’s natural. Lord knows your father and I smoked the odd doobie when we were your age; it’d be unusual not to. But -’

  ‘We’re going now Mum. I'll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘No, listen to me Robert. Sure, your father and I got high every now and then, but never would my parents let me smoke in the house. And we certainly didn’t let it get in the way of our education.’

  ‘It’s a Saturday. This isn’t even anything to do with school.’

  Mum sighed. ‘What you boys don’t realise,’ she said, ‘is that we know more than you think. I know neither of you went to school yesterday; and Robert, your room absolutely stank of pot when I got home. We’re not blind, your father and me.’ I could tell by her tone that she knew she was right, though she wasn’t entirely - Collin and I actually spent most of the morning at school that day. But there was no point in mentioning that; it was time to leave.

  ‘I don’t care Mum. We’re going now.’

  ‘Your father will be hearing about th -’

  ‘Whatever Mum I don’t fucking care. Let’s go Collin,’ I interrupted, before turning and walking purposefully toward the freedom of the night. Foolishly, I glanced back to her as I stood in the doorway, and for a moment our eyes connected. Her expression was more hurt than angry, her spirits broken by the insolence of her wasted son. It was her who finally broke the eye contact, a gesture of bitter acceptance as she turned back to her book. I once again found myself paralysed with indecisiveness, and stood staring at her from the doorway, troubled by the stirrings of repressed empathy.

  ‘Come on,’ Collin said from the doorstep. With that, I closed the door on Mum and her worries, without a goodbye.

The walk was refreshing - T-shirt, jeans, and cap in the cool moonlit night, warmed only by intoxication and the abandon of dark. These were the days before alcohol was a mandatory part of socialising; it was a trip, being drunk. Tripping, however, was mandatory.

  It was Collin who turned us all on to hallucinogens, earlier that year. Apparently some of his brother’s friends, who were quite connected, took him on a three-day acid binge to the edge of his mind, culminating in the ingestion of some exotic hallucinogen called DMT. He ranted for months about the otherworldly wonders of the psychedelic experience, before finally arriving at my door one morning with a bag of magic mushrooms.

  This is why I owe Collin my life.

  We skipped school that day - Collin, Michael, and I - and went to Collin’s often parentless home for the experience, the rite of passage. It was there that Collin showed me his poetry while Michael sat on his phone, harassing all those who had the misfortune of being on his contact list. No one had ever shown me their poetry before, and one in particular was tattooed in the depths of my brain indefinitely:

to tap the void

through images unseen

from the worlds within dreams

become the infinite

dance recklessly through unknown realms

where all is known and all has happened,

an inter dimensional scout - reporting all findings

back to our hologram reality

before they return to the chaos

from which they were salvaged

With madness of the senses

invoke this strange world

of half forgotten hopes and fears

LSD - an orgiastic philosophy

to explain what these words cannot

to open the mind’s eye to the cosmic forces

creative delirium

forget yourself

become the universe

  His words awoke a dormant instinct within me, a lust for the hidden shamanic echo that still glows deep within the confines of rigid materialism. I began spewing my every uncensored thought over whatever blank surface I could reach in a compulsive effort to give form to the wild inspiration, manifesting my thoughts through many mediums well into the night.

  A little after midnight, after we had long since parted ways, Collin appeared wild-eyed at my bedroom window with some more mushrooms he had picked. After we feasted, I showed him some of the words and images I had created, aflame with the primal fire he had lit. My creations captivated him, as his had me, and we both knew something important was happening, that things would be different. But there was a darker side to this exalted state - a fear of the dark, fear of the unknown; a sinister introspection that persisted after the initial inspiration had worn thin, leaving me with a phantom itch in my mind, an itch Collin was all too aware of.

  ‘You hear that?’ he asked, sitting on the very edge of my bed, shaking with passionate, magnetic tension; his preternatural eye watching my mind go about its masochistic dance.

  I stared back at him, frozen in place.

  ‘That's their voices, man. Your doubters. Your persecutors. You're listening to those who judge you the most, making their voices your own. You’re becoming your own nightmare.’

  I could feel the notion rising within me as he locked his gaping pupils onto mine.

  ‘But you know,’ he continued, setting my drawing down next to him, ‘therein lies the power, man. Just beyond the limits of acceptability. Beyond the limits of sanity. Where the sane fear to tread. It's only when you're truly in touch with your inner-workings that you can rise above, become something more than human. Only by internalising the voices of those who doubt you most can you truly understand where the barrier they impose upon you lies. It's a herd mentality, man; they don't want you to venture too far from the flock. But when you dare to stray, when you have faith in your own personal magic, you can access the artifacts that lie beyond the reach of others; you can look God right in the fucking eye and take what would be yours, if only you could transcend the need for the approval of others.... That's how you become a leader, man. An explorer. When you shove the need to make sense to others in favour of what you understand at the deepest levels; when you're truly in the moment, truly trusting yourself ... that's when you cease to be a sheep and become the dog. That's when you exert your influence on the masses; the terrifying truth within your grasp, the art of captivation second nature....’

  For a moment he seemed to have lost his trail of thought; I was taken over by a powerful urge to speak, but something in Collin’s stillness conveyed total control, a deliberate effort to create a sense of space within which the psychic echoes of his words would fade organically.

  ‘But when you miss the moment, Robbie,’ he said finally, ‘when you hesitate, when you let the doubt of the weak take control.... That's when you're reduced to a projection of the simple-minded masses, the slaves who look down upon you for your deviations, if only to justify the prisons they themselves have become dependent on. The risks of a life of limitations are more subtle, but infinitely more dangerous: You could become a pale, muddy reflection of the shadows of your peers, a burden; your unique vision a symptom of some kind of deep-seated sense of inferiority, a symptom of fear rather than spirit.’

  Every word he said resonated so deep within me that all I could do was listen. His enthusiasm was so much bigger than me, bigger than him, contorting his body with nervous energy as if it were trying to shed him entirely and live its own independent existence. His eyes were enormous and crackling with electricity, their fervour drawing me into his inner-world.

  ‘But if you can align with the moment - not repress but transcend the doubts of others - when you're ... when you're awake, when you're.... Like when stood up to Mr. Clarke when he was picking on Ned. Or when you drew that fractal comic you just showed me. When, you know.... When you know, man, when you truly fucking know. You can rise above the bullshit, manifest as naturally as the wind, your very will unfolding like some divine plan, assisted by the momentum of the universe....’ He gestured to my evening’s work, piles of intricate drawings and muddled words covering the surfaces of my room, ‘This ... this is the moment. The mushrooms.... They wrench open your soul, man, show you to the light, the moment, the Moment, that feeling of pure fucking power when you man up and accept that which lies beyond. Fuck all this social-conscience be-a-part-of-the-hive shit. Even school, man; it's such a narrow vantage point. We're going beyond, man. I can feel it. And I know you can too. Shrooms.... Fuck, man, I bet this is just the start of it. We gotta ride this fucked up wave as far as it'll take us, man.’

  This exaltation climaxed with him slashing his pocket knife across the thumb-side of my forearm, the searing pain making me gasp, sending my heart into palpitations. The surreality of the action froze my thoughts into a burning silence, only to be melted by Collin's knowing stare, coupled with the oddly comforting warmth of the blood as it broke off and trickled down my arm. The action itself was so fluent and natural, in such harmony with some grand invisible order, that its meaning and significance were clear to me immediately: Had he not cut me at all, had he hesitated, the Moment would have been absurd; to leave my arm un-sliced would have been a break in the continuity of space-time itself.

  Entranced, I watched the blood navigate my veins down my arm and form a tiny pool in my upturned fingers. I looked up at Collin, who had risen after wiping his pocket knife on one of my shirts, and I could feel my eyes asking questions I knew him well enough not to voice. He held my gaze for a few seconds as the intensity built to an almost unbearable pitch, before gifting me with a somber nod of his head and drifting out my window without a word, his movements precise and feline-sleek. I stared in silence at the gently swelling puddle in my fingers for several minutes after his departure, absorbing its meaning and significance: Collin had created a masterpiece; not in imagery or song or poetry, but with reality itself as his medium. Through his bold yet simple gesture, I learnt more about him, and the ideals that stirred deep within the still, black waters of his psyche, than I had in the entirety of our friendship. He created a perfect moment, expressing the infinite depths of his wild, ecstatic philosophy in an instant, reducing my words and images - and even his own - to no more than marks on paper.

  He later told me that the small trail of scar tissue left on my arm is to remind me of the everlasting moment, the Moment that is always with me when I choose to look. He also left a matching, less tangible, tear in the fabric of my mind, a small crack through which to glimpse the sublime lands beyond time and space - when I choose to look....

‘You down to trip tonight, Robbie?’ Collin broke my train of thought, appropriately.

  ‘Yeah I was just thinking that,’ I half-lied. ‘We’ll stop by East Boys?’

  Collin replied with an agreeable silence as we veered off toward the school yard.

  Since we weren’t talking much at that point, I roamed around my stoned thoughts for the remainder of the walk. I found myself once again dwelling on my discussion with Mum, only then realising it had been our first exchanging of words all day. Upon seeing the circumstances from her perspective, I was once again struck by that dank, musty guilt. With darkened clouds suffocating my high, I couldn’t help but question my actions: Why had I responded with such hostility to her parental concern? It was only natural for her to worry - it was just Mum being Mum. We had parted on bad terms many times before, but this time had felt different. There was a peculiar finality to it, as if the normality I had always counted on had finally been broken, as if things would truly be different now: No more telling me to dress nicely for school, no more forced visits to Nana's and Grandpa's, no more hot water bottle waiting for me in bed....

  I’ll apologise tomorrow, I told myself, flushing the gross feeling from my mind.

  After an eternity lost in the mazes of the undergrowth at East Boys High, we emerged laughing with damp clothes and several pockets’ worth of Blue Meanies - as well as a few deceptively bulbous mushrooms that turned out to be no good once examined under the street light. Though I had eaten no more than three or four medium-sized mushrooms, I already felt the unsettled whirl of lift off - though this could possibly be attributed to sheer anticipation.

  For a few minutes, we stood under the streetlight, sorting the Psilocybin-containing mushrooms from the duds. Collin, evidently beginning to rattle and whir also, stood staring into his cupped hands with an instantly recognisable mushroom-grin. He met my eye and I couldn't help but grin moronically.

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ he said. He produced a scrunched up paper bag from his front jacket pocket - indicating that our hunt was less spontaneous than it had seemed - and filled it up with mushrooms, leaving a good pile of around ten in his right hand. ‘Let's do this.’ He then crammed the whole remaining handful into his mouth and chewed it with a bemused grin, before swallowing with a dramatic shudder. I fingered my own pocketful of shrooms, and opted to wait until we got to the bar. The rest of the walk would sort my head out, I decided.

  ‘I think I'll dose with the rest of them. When we get to the bar,’ I said. Collin narrowed his eyes at me slightly, and I added, ‘But then I'm right there with you, man.’ Collin shrugged and we walked.

  Once we were moving, I realised my mind was clear and ready for lift off, and said, ‘Fuck it,’ and pulled a handful of mushrooms out of my pocket. I ate them one by one, gagging slightly, but enjoying the taste of dirt and all it represented.

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ Collin said again, smiling.

Lucy Winters

My daydream wanders along behind my languid eyes as they meander past the daddy long legs in the corner of my ceiling to the raindrop dotted window overlooking the empty street, where they stop to consider something, forget, and decide just to blink a few times before continuing past the hat tree in the other corner and slowing to a halt as the poster above my desk freezes everything into cold damp reality. It's a picture of a glowing brown nebula, a celestial eruption, burning through the stars and the blue haze of space around it. It's called the Pillars of Creation. It's what makes my room my home. Where my eyes go to rest. Turns all the words in my head into blurry poetry. Makes me feel like all those little annoying things that get me down don't matter so much. Like everything is happening like it's supposed to . . .

  Well, usually it makes me feel like that.

  This time it reminds me of Collin, and it makes my blood suddenly feel so cold.

  Fuck . . .

  I forgot about that . . . It's like trying to remember a dream.

  Even then it was like a dream . . .

  That's why it didn't feel like I was doing anything wrong. It was all so unreal. Like being in a whole different world. In the stars. In the Pillars of Creation. Somewhere where people and our wayward whims don't matter. It didn't even feel like it was me. It didn't feel like a part of this life. Didn't feel like it would matter in this world at all. It was like harmless words. Like a daydream. Like the strange thoughts that happen when you're not quite asleep yet . . . I'm pretty sure you can't hurt anyone by thinking. Ned thinks you can. But Ned also thinks that living things are just inanimate objects that got a disease that made them start thinking.

  Fuck.

  It feels real now . . . Everything feels real now. Realer than real. The walls and the ceiling seem more solid than they did when they were part of the poem. Everything feels somehow more static than usual, all the furniture hunched over, sitting too close together, trying to ignore each other . . .

  When Stan and Robbie left last night, it was just me and Collin here. Something sparked him inside and he grabbed me by the mind and threw me dazed and whirling into his world. His thoughts and words were so unexpected, so different than anything I'd heard or felt before, that there didn't seem to be any way to react. Like all I could do was go with it. It was like if a movie I'd watched a hundred times before suddenly and inexplicably ended completely different than any other time I'd ever watched it. Collin threw away the script that night. Ripped to pieces everything in my life I thought I knew. Made me feel like a kid again. Like everything was alive, the sky and the walls, all trying to tell me things that would make sense if only I spoke their language.

  Ned would say that means the sky and the walls are getting sick.

  The Pillars of Creation are jagged like teeth and stalactites now, so I roll onto my side and look at Stan on the floor. He's lying animal on his front, reading Calvin and Hobbes with this funny expression on his face that warms my icy blood. It's like a smile, but his eyebrows are furrowed like he's concentrating real hard . . . He's not like Collin. Or Robbie or Ned. He's a creature of the earth. Mammalian. Not quite so exotic . . . Like he's older than the rest of us, sort of. More careful. He always knows what's waiting for him when he goes in. Always knows what he's doing. Economy of motion, maybe. Not like a monk though. More like a warrior. He's the only reason they didn't get beaten up by The Straightedges last night.

  His smile fades as his eyes narrow even more and he mouths something to himself then smiles a wry smile that lingers. It looks like he's just read something that's blown his mind, or maybe just reminded him of something interesting. I laugh a bit without meaning to and he looks up into me, tilting his head to the side a little, like a dog. The pale red of his stoned eyes makes the grey of his irises like the blue of distant mountains. But they're still real focused. This real intent stare he's always got, almost cross eyed, but not quite. Like the way a kid looks at you when you've caught his attention. It doesn't make him look dumb though. It more just emphasises the sharp angles of his face, the intensity of his attention.

  I say, ‘You're a beautiful creature, Stan,’ which I really mean, even though I'm sort of just trying to push Collin out of my mind.

  His face relaxes into a smile that's stoned and dippy, not all stoic stiff like normal, sort of melts into me as our eyes rest together. My smiling warrior. I mustn't forget that. I'm with Stan. Fucking that up could be the worst thing I ever do.

  He says, ‘You're a beautiful creature too,’ and laughs just one beat. I start to wonder if Collin said anything like that last night, but I can't piece it all together. My memories of being with him all just blur into the formless images I saw when my eyes closed, and the deep, dreamless sleep that followed. Things are different when Collin's around. Reality is different. He's not a warrior like Stan. He's something else. A sorcerer. Mystical. Showed me the armies in the sunset clouds. The slow motion explosions in the night sky . . .

  No. I'm with Stan. I can admire Collin from afar.

  He's still looking at me with a cat smile, curled up at the corners. I guess that means he didn't notice me thinking about Collin, but you can never be sure about these things. He closes the book and stands up, stretching his long arms to the ceiling, exposing his pasty but muscular torso, much stronger than Collin's.

  ‘Shall we?’ he says, reminding me of our plans as he arches his back. ‘Ned should be in town soon.’

  Images of Ned flash through my mind, but I can't quite make out the finer details of his features or expression, which reminds me how long it's been since I saw him. Collin texted me something about this a while ago . . . Quite a while ago now. I start to wonder if it's rude that I didn't text him back, and decide it's probably not since there was no question mark in his text. He described the plan for the night as a bacchanal. A bacchanal to welcome Ned back. I asked Dad and Stan what a bacchanal was, but Stan didn't know and Dad just looked at me funny. It's a good word though. Bacchanal. Collin's got good words. I'll ask him what it means at the bacchanal. He'll be at the bacchanal. All questions will find their answers at the bacchanal . . .

  ‘Yeah?’ Stan says, coaxing me out of my daydream.

  ‘Yeah . . . Collin text before,’ I say, sitting up. ‘Him and Robbie are gonna go to the Disarray to meet him. We can go hang out there?’

  I slide onto my feet all stoned and groovy and take Stan's hand and lead him out the window in a half dance, since I know he won't want to talk to Dad like this.

  It's not raining out here anymore, but there's a hazy sort of wetness to the air, enough to make my bare feet sink into the grass just a little as we walk. I smile to myself because it tickles and Stan's noticed and he's smiling too, but I'm not sure if he knows what we're happy about. The sound of the water rushing along the gutter and the smell of the rain wrap around each other and join the tickle of the earth as they all shiver up my spine. I let all the sensations drizzle down me and they turn into this tingle that's got so much energy in it that I have to do something with it. I squeeze Stan's hand, hiding all the shivers in the microscopic world between his hand and mine and leave them there so we can both feel weightless.

  We walk quiet and happy for a few blocks before Stan says, ‘I don't really know about Collin . . . Don't really get the cunt. I dunno,’ narrowing his eyes with strange stoned questions. I can tell by the way he said it that he'd been wanting to say it for a while. But I don't really want to talk about that, so I pretend to agree and we walk smiling sleepy along the wet footpath, my turquoise swirled dress trailing like a robe.

  Ned's face drifts into my mind again and I can make out the details of his expression a bit more now, which reminds me of his swaying walk and his terrible posture and sunburned nose and all the strange and wonderful things he used to say, like little snippets of unwritten fairy tales. It makes me feel close to him, closer than I have since he went back to Cottonwood. I'm starting to feel excited and maybe a little nervous about the fact that I'm actually going to see him. It finally feels real. I'm actually about to see Ned. At the bacchanal. He wasn't well when I last saw him. He looked like one of nature's mistakes, all magnets and batteries, smashed up and stuck in tar. Like he had died, been buried, and come back again . . .

  But he's better now, I think. Collin says he is. I'm going to give him a hug when I see him. Someone needs to look after him. I get a colder, creepier shiver up my spine when I imagine what he might be like now, but then I just stop thinking completely. It's just all creepy and confused now, like a kid in the dark. Enjoying the stillness, I feel the warmth of Stan's love spread from my hand into my thoughts, walking into the cool night, full moon shining silver into our veins.

Ned Devlin

Her pretty face kept me interested, but after hearing her views, or lack thereof, on the String Theory, I felt it was time to leave her with her blood puddle and glass shards. I had an Agenda, an army of Agendas in fact, which seemed to be a rarity in whatever misfortunate town this was, and I was fairly sure someone as bored as her would come to her aid.

  Things have changed, said one Thought to another, rather loud for the discarnate, as we moseyed along the silent highway, eyes peeled wide open searching 30-30 for the right hitching spot, thinking in terms of thumb visibility, mostly. A growing lack in Concern for sleep had been directing my movements for some Time now, thrashing and yanking my flaccid Mind through unknown towns like a wild, stoned puppeteer, leaving me wandering about like a phantom, peeling away at the layers of Reality with nimble origami fingers, shying away from the safety of the Earth's atmosphere and into the nether regions of the Minds where I met all sorts of folk who moved and perceived with all manner of multidimensional blasphemy. Being somewhat lost in chatter with these Creatures myself, I lost Mind of my outstretched thumb completely until a small car pulled over, containing a large man with an air of something like dignity or Debauchery, complete with a two segment nose and the grey flecked eyebrows of a big thinker, one who stares so far into the distance that he doesn't even notice anything like mosquitoes or Fractals, salivating just enough to show he knows what he sees.

  ‘North?’

  North.

  And I got in, noting immediately the small stack of pornography sitting between us, a visual arrangement that seemed to have been chosen by our Creator Himself to sort of complement this man's constant dabbing at his forehead with a folded cloth, as well as the seedy ambiance of my newfound sleeping patterns.

  ‘That one's from Germany,’ he dropped it on my lap, ‘I've been down south trading adult magazines with some friends. Old friends. What about yourself? What kind of porn are you into?’

  I had to think for a second about that, still a touch bewildered by the lack of introductions, and the nature of Reality in general. It had been some Time since I

  ‘Well I like porn where the wife catches her man with another woman and gets involved herself,’ he continued, talking with like this motivational speaker sort of tone, interrupting us before we'd finished talking, us all just quiet now, listening, ‘Like this one I watched where the girl was sucking this guy’s cock in the shower, and he’s like ungh ... uuuungh! while she sucked him off - and his cock’s like my arm, you know. Like this. Oi, buddy. Over here. Like this. Y’know, I really think they use a penis pump for a lot of European porn, like uh ... nah nah, a couple of pages back ... yep, that's the one. That's the fellow. See, there's definitely a penis pump involved there. I can guarantee it. White men have a much smaller penis, you see, except maybe the Greek but ...’ and then the Moment sort of expanded around us, a sort of quirk of Reality gifted to me by like a Force or something or someone on my side out there, allowing me to consider in detail this man and his Motives: He looked Latino, maybe Mexican or even half caste Aboriginal, but certainly not white, which was enough information for Now, the whole wondering more just a dukes up or dukes down kind of thing than a fully fledged investigation, matters a little less murky now and not really worth worrying about, the passage of Time starting up again with a choking start, sort of moving with more momentum now, like water breaking through a dam, and my friend continued on through the temporal weirdness: ‘, certainly not the majority of Caucasians. It’s just genetics, you know. So anywho, the guy’s going fuck ... fuck yeah! fuck! Fuck! Right fucking into it, you know, just fuck fuck fuck yeah! You following? And she's like yes! Yes! Yes! And the guy's going fuck! Fuck! Fuck yeah!’ and my new friends eyes glaze over, channelling the spirit of that man maybe, evidently a capable driver, more aware and courteous than Kane, even in the midst of sexual crescendo, perhaps, even, a master of the voluntary split brain technique, with one Mind minding the highway and its 100kph metal projectiles and the other with a ‘do not disturb’ sign or maybe like just a tie around the door handle, I couldn't say for sure, ‘Then the guy turns her ‘round, and just when he’s about to shove it up the wrong ‘un, the girl goes “but I poop from there” and the guy says “not right now you don’t” and shoves it right up there!’ followed by a roaring laugh, the 2C-E in my receptors converting it into a horrific sort of neighing sound, as if a young horse had found the same fate as the lucky lady in the shower.

  ‘Eh? Eh?’ he urged me, nudging my elbow, not all that concerned about the road at all. I could feel this thick coat of like perversion and such covering his skin, even through my jacket and his, tangible, his eyes scanning, darting up down and around to stop and rest on the open page of the magazine on my lap: A young lady getting it up “the wrong 'un”, the car left to navigate on its own. He looked from the page to me before speaking quietly: ‘Bet that’s making the ole dick stiff, huh? Am I right?’ and I had like maybe two seconds of everything paused eye contact to decide whether or not my erectile state was any of his concern, before he flickered and began reliving another film of his favourite genre, adamant that this one was narrated by David Attenborough, the central theme being man’s search for the elusive beaver. ‘Oh christ it was making the ole dick stiff. My lord,’ he made sure to mention, several times.

  Though admittedly unusual, the whole situation was perfect for my needs: He liked to talk, didn’t like to listen, and I had nothing to say, with Silence quite possibly the attack I'd been warned about earlier, sat waiting, probably easily spooked, the hunter sat in Zen, with one hand on his shoulder enough to kick in his instincts then bang! shots fired, and all the Thoughts running about again, tugging and pulling, exerting pressure, another smokescreen unwilling to part, cramp of the cerebrum, causing a numbness in the extremities, then paralysis, but never death: A kind of locked in syndrome, nostalgic Catatonia, then that's your old pal ned up and off to Cottonwood again, another winter wasted in Hibernation, bored and liquid warm inside with Valium gloop . . .

  And if his intentions were sinister, I had my trusty McCain’s box cutter in my right pocket: There’s a good market for certain severed body parts back in Cottonwood.

  He went on in this manner for some time, every once in a while reminding me to feel free to flick through some magazines, me feeling very free to do so, him giddy with enthusiasm: ‘I'm thoroughly enjoying this, Ted,’ admiring my tendencies toward listening rather than speaking, suggesting teaching or social work down the track to best make use of my Nature, then back to playing Mr. Conduit, heartfelt histrionics and vivid, pornographic Nostalgia, the occasional query regarding the firmness of my own penis (Never you mind Old Bean) me just relieved to be in close quarters with someone without interest in me or my Life, though far from aroused by the exposed flesh within the pages, just slightly curious about a particular lady with ♏ tattooed on her rear, the symbol of Scorpio, me having a nice inner cackle about the clairvoyant whore, Pornographic Mysticism, then my friend on a new story: ‘... So I woke up and he was sucking my cock! So of course, I was furious, but funny thing is, it was the best gobby I'd ever had. The man knows the sweet spots, you know,’ he turned to me: ‘Would you ever let another man suck your cock?’ His eyes connected to mine, and it was then that I noticed he had the wide eyes of a fiend, not really hiding much with his eyelids at all.

  Staring back with a sort of fiendish look of my own, I could see clearly where this was leading, and I entertained the Thought of taking the situation to its natural conclusion, quickly deciding against it: There was a long journey ahead of me, and hallucinating through unknown towns with a severed penis dangling out of my pocket wasn’t ideal, so I shook my head no. He shrugged, Your loss, and regained his flow without trouble, getting lost in the intricacies of talking dirty during sex, stopping only to berate the last hitchhiker he'd picked up for not participating in conversation.

  I wondered a lot whether his Motives were predatory, as his interest in the state of my cock would suggest, or if he was simply an old pervert who didn’t know his Boundaries, perhaps a bit lost in the Static himself. After some thought, I decided on the latter, him having been down south trading adult magazines with friends, presumably folk much like himself, stepping into the Bizarre hand in hand, to put it mildly, though I shudder to think at this point. I sensed like a jetlag in his social adjustment, me probably the first human he’d spoken to in some Time who wasn’t perpetually aroused, just a man not quite sure how to go about a non sexual situation, me being in his domain anyway, perhaps best to just let the wing-ed fly. With that in Mind, I relaxed into the oceanic undulations of 2C-E and Sleep Deprivation, entertaining myself reading his porn and smoking his cigarettes as he continued his depraved one man seminar.

Stan Richards

I'm kinda disappointed when we get to the Disarray. The walk here was cool. Just me and Lucy, wasted as. Lucy started naming parked cars, like giving them human names. I lost it when she called this rustic fisherman's ute ‘Pete’. It was so fuckin' spot on, and sounded so fucked with her clear like radio-chick voice. I got the stoner-giggles real hard and had to sit down on a bench on Regent Street to sort my shit out. Then Lucy pointed out that Dean, a swanky young beamer, was staring at the rear end of this pompous, sky-blue mini who was looking pretty indignant about it and it all started up again. It's so much better when I get wasted too. It's kinda like babysitting when it's just her stoned... I prolly woulda thought naming cars was a pretty stupid thing to do. Praise be to Jah, you fuckin' good cunt.

  We finally get inside and it's empty except for Collin and Robbie and a few lurkers - Rory's Dad and that crowd, dero cunts. No Ned though. Apparently no one's heard from him since yesterday, hitching out of Marksdale. I kinda feel like telling the cunt off, just like a sort your shit out kinda thing. Like catch a fuckin' bus or something. He only got out of the wards a couple days ago, and knowing him he'll have his nose in some weird-ass drugs and end up back down south real fuckin' quick.

  I can tell those two are on shrooms again. Robbie's bright-eyed and sweaty with this edgy bushbaby-type smile, eyes bulging behind his glasses. Collin's a manic grin sandwiched between a queer fedora and a tan coat, with maybe like an inch of his ass actually on his seat. Most people are sorta like kids when they're tripping, like all nervous and giggly and shit. But Collin seems to get a different buzz. Intense eyes and this real clear, quiet voice, like he's speaking right into you, makes everyone else stop talking and lean in to hear better...

  I give him a quick nod as I pass and take a seat next to Robbie in the corner. Lucy's sat next to Collin on the other side of the table. They're hunched over something Collin's got cupped in his hands. I imagine it to be a bird with a broken wing he's picked up, but that's fuckin' stupid so I dunno why I even...

  Robbie's animated as fuck, going on about some shit that sounds like it’s coming straight out of Collin's mouth. Comparing schizophrenics to Amazonian medicine men, I think. I dunno, he's sorta lost me. I don't mind listening though. I got a lot of time for the cunt. He's a fuckin' weirdo for sure, but you can tell he's a good dude. Just in his own little world a lot of the time.

  ‘...'cause 'cause these days, right, what I reckon is that if your brain's wired to receive messages from higher dimensions, you get called - like, think of the brain as more of a tuner than a transmitter, so you could, like, turn the dial to different frequencies, like... think of the brain as like a dinosaur's skull. Now imagine the palaeontologist blowing through the, like, uh, passageways, making a sound like the dinosaur used to, 'cause the sound is from the air going through that passageway, so it sort of manifests as... like the way someone's mind produces a thought, like presents it to their consciousness, is like the wind from like the wings of a pterodactyl or something, like a winged creature which represents the source of the - oh wait, yeah, that's the palaeontologist. Yeah. So that's like the... 'Cause that's the only way they can really get any kind of idea what sound the dinosaur made, so, uh... like waves, you know... Wait, what was I talking about before I said the thing about the wings?’

  ‘Uh... you said that the mind is like a dinosaur's skull?’ I'm interested in where he's going with this, but I'm also starting to wonder if there's actually anything there. Besides dinosaurs.

  ‘No no no, no, no, consciousness is the dude blowing into the skull, like the source, the absolute source of consciousness. And then the passageways within the skull that define the sound are like... the shape of the mind? Like the way your brain interprets the greater consciousness, the psychic blueprint that absorbs the greater consciousness and ultimately manifests as your perception - which is, uh, symbolised here as the sound of the dinosaur... The experience of the greater consciousness as filtered through your own individual psychic makeup. Yeah. That's it.’ I feel like he's explaining it to himself more than me, sorta thinking it through as he goes. ‘You get what I mean?’ The way he looks at me makes me feel kinda guilty, like I should be paying more attention.

  ‘Yeah I think so. But what's that got to do with schizophrenics?’

  ‘Oh yeah, right,’ he edges around on his seat, looking at his hands which are showing me a square shape for some reason. ‘So the schizophrenic's, like, psychic shape - uh, psychic pattern, that is... It's less intricate than most, so more of the greater consciousness gets through, giving them a less refined perception than, uh, the rest of us. 'Cause like for the rest of us, there's more of a maze for the greater consciousness, the source, to get through, so it's a fully formed ego identity by the time it emerges, having experienced a few, uh, like, corners and dead ends. A bit of problem solving and quality control. But for a schizophrenic, or, like, someone on shrooms, the maze isn't there - or at least it's less intricate. So it's like... Like swallowing something whole. Like dropping a tennis ball through a hula hoop.’ He's moving his whole body around as he talks, giving off that Einstein-on-crack vibe he gets when he’s wasted. ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘...Uh, no not really. Sorry. But it sounds like you do. I'll have to get back to you on that one.’ I'm not sure if I'm telling the truth. It'd be cool to know what he's on about, but I'm no intellectual. I can't play around with ideas like Robbie.

  He rearranges and starts up again, leaning in with important hands. ‘Alright, well think about it as a human finger planted into a busy hive of insects, but the insects-’

  ‘Wanna take shrooms with us Stan?’ Lucy's standing between the two tables in front of us, going up and down on her toes with excited eyes. Her hands are making like a cup full of mushrooms. Robbie bobs his head around and mumbles something to himself and starts writing on this notebook on the table.

  I pick one of the mushrooms out of her hand and hold it up to the dim light above our table. It's got a fat stalk that gets like this steel-blue sheen when catches the light. Pretty cool looking, I guess. Like snakes. Still kinda sketchy about those kinds of drugs, though. I had them once before. Same crew, minus Collin. It was pretty cool at the start. Made music sound real cool, like Tool and shit I'm not usually that into, the kind of shit they always play here at the Disarray. Made everyone's jokes seem way funnier too... Till I realised it was only Robbie and Lucy making jokes, and I hadn't laughed in a long time. I tried to get in on it, but nothing came out right. And Ned was totally out to it. Not like Robbie is now, but just fully gone. I started feeling like everyone was tryna get me to leave...

  But it was all new to me then. Not just the shrooms, but like being properly with a girl. Even just having a friend group. I just didn't really know how to deal with it. It's better now though. It's mellow. Maybe we could slip off, just me and Lucy. Laugh at parked cars or something. I wonder what fucking would be like on shrooms. I'd be more of a gentleman, I think. Take it slow, enjoy the moment...

  ‘Fuck it, might as well,’ I say finally. ‘You've had some?’

  Lucy nods, smiling wasted and fidgety, sky-blue eyes ready to go black. She unloads the rest of the mushrooms into my hands.

  ‘Wicked, man,’ Robbie says, genuine. ‘You'll get what I was explaining soon.’

  I'm not really keen on that, but I'm glad everyone's happy. I munch down like half of them in one go and almost throw up. Collin sits back in his seat with a couple of jugs of beer and gives me a warm smile. Not sure how he managed to get served - the cunt looks about thirteen. I eat the rest of the shrooms one by one, washing them down with beer. They taste like the dregs of something, and the beer's just straight bitter, but it's all good. I'm hyped. I'm hyped that everyone else is hyped. There's like all this buzzing between us, like we're about to go on an adventure. Like we're all in it together, instead of it being like those three plus Lucy's tagalong boyfriend. Should be a good night.

Collin Callahan

Waves of euphoria pulsed through me, a sophisticated ecstasy filling my body with a barely contained current of energy. It was all perfect. The planets of my own personal universe were aligned. The gears and cogs of my Will were lathered up and moving freely. Life was beautiful.

  Each of my subjects, Doctor Callahan included, were now dosed with a few handfuls of fresh Copelandia Cyanescens. These were mushrooms with some kick - deep celestial blue and containing enough Psilocybin to really send a man into orbit. Much better than those undersized yellow things we used to find around robbie's garden. Stan will be tripping this time too. Cunt has no idea what he's in for. It's the Alpha and the Omega for one stan richards. The cunt even had the nerve to sit there smiling to himself, as if it was going to be a repeat of that pitiful excuse for a trip he had with ned and robbie. Not this one, mate. I gave up trying to control my grin and blamed it on the shrooms as I awaited the disintegration of his psyche, gleeful but ever patient.

  Robbie was ranting about the government's fear of hallucinogens, more or less paraphrasing the shit I explained to him earlier. I decided it was about time for the little cunt to have a freak out. His writing had begun to stagnate, still dwelling on the beauty of having his mind opened and whatnot. Still stuck on Level Two. I'll have to increase his dosage, I contemplated, laughing inwardly at feeling like a scientist, prodding and interrogating my little chimpanzee to assess its reactions. Robbie trusts me with his innermost thoughts now, ever since I showed him a few asinine notes from my acid days. Much less than he's shown me, of course.

  One should always know more than one says.

  Lucy had begun her own disintegration, though this was of no interest to me. ENFPs really are a bore when they get like this, sitting there open mouthed and vacant eyed, droning on about how trippy everything is. Getting a bit sappy with stan too, I must say. Concerned, I messaged michael and ned. They were needed.

  So really I was on my own here, though this was something I had become accustomed to. Satisfied that everyone was occupied and wouldn't be hassling me, I turned my phone off and found myself a dark corner to leave my body for a bit.

  I had a few layers of psychedelic nonsense to get through - the usual fractal tunnel leading to a sentient mandala type entity dishing out life lessons and all that. I had no business there. That’s ned's playground. Robbie's classroom. Stan's hell. So with a few perfunctory telepathic gestures and a quick sleight of mind, I extended beyond that realm and into the greater lands - no more than a horizon line along a pastel blue ocean streaked with electric orange-pink, a reflection of the sky above. No movement worth noting, just a suggestion of a slight breeze. I decided to spend a little while there, since I hadn't slept for some time. There was a long night ahead of me. A Harmony to compose.

Robbie Marks

This is the Moment, my scar reminded me, working in unison with the ancient, writhing energy creeping through my veins.

  I had lost all shyness and modesty in favour of self-certainty as I voiced my rabid thoughts without reservation, conversation as flowing and natural as the magical reality I was inhabiting. Most of the time, I wasn’t aware exactly what I was saying, or even what was being said to me; all I knew was that the perfect words and gestures were suddenly there, and Stan and Lucy were hanging on to my every word. I felt like an aerial pointed to the heavens, picking up streams of unbroken signals from lands unknown; the art of captivation second nature, as Collin had said.

  In the breathless intervals between words, I took time to absorb the significance of everything around me - my company, the unlikely circumstances that led to our friendship, our common interests, the darkly psychedelic ambiance of The Disarray - visualising it all as a three-dimensional grid made of lifelines which intersected one another at crucial points. The concept manifested to me as a psychic diagram of such transcendent beauty that the possibility of it being no more than a tripped-out notion in the morning filled me with a restless energy I couldn't hope to contain. The thought and the emotions it inspired injected themselves seamlessly into the flow of my verbal dance, solidifying before they had a chance to return to the chaos from which they were salvaged, leaving in their wake the embryonic outlines of another epiphany, trailing behind like the contrails of a jet airplane, taking on non-Euclidean hyper-forms in the background of my mind. This spawning notion was to do with the nature of thoughts and communication, somehow entwined with the three distinct molecular states of matter - though this was not to be consciously considered at that point; the music playing on the outside was gradually being taken over by a steady, growing beat inside me - an all-encompassing backdrop to my subjective experience that pulsed outward from my frontal lobe, guiding the frenetic groove of my body, and manifesting finally as the automatic movement of my pen across the open page of my notebook.

  ‘It's like everything's dancing....’ Lucy said absently during one of my verbal intervals, grooving to her own thought patterns. It was so close to my own musings that I couldn’t help but wonder how good a job the skull really does of containing our thoughts. Ned tried to explain it to me once, how thoughts roam the air freely as autonomous entities, interacting with each other beyond our control. He said that our minds are just like butterfly nets, catching whatever flies past; the distinction being that some nets have smaller holes and a different smell, attracting different butterflies. I always thought it was just a fun mental image to play with; but, as life has gone on, it’s made more and more sense.

  ‘Like what Ned said that time, how thoughts are like butterflies,’ I said, unconsciously testing the waters of our communal psychic landscape. Lucy replied with a knowing smile, a look of recognition flashing across her face. It wasn’t until I noticed Stan’s bewilderment that I realised that what I had just said was a perfect example of Ned’s theory in action.

  Ned....

  I tried to text Ned to see where he was, but my cellphone light was too disorienting, alien lights and symbols scrambling the channels between my mind and the aether. He’d arrive in his own time, I decided. That’s generally how he operates.

  ‘Have you heard from Ned?’ Lucy said, once again catching the same butterfly as me. Our nets must be the same shape, we thought.

  ‘No, not since yesterday,’ I replied.

  ‘Should we be worried?’

  ‘Worried....’ The sound echoed through my mind, quickly taking on the ghostly feel of a word that has been repeated over and over, shedding itself of all meaning. I could feel an internal wormhole of concepts and associations manifesting within me, but I shook myself away and re-focused on the matter at hand: Ned. He was coming all the way up from Cottonwood, and he was never one to text with urgency, so his lack of communication came as no surprise; but I felt like Lucy was talking on a bigger scale: Ned, spending time in the psyche ward then being released straight onto the creepy streets of Cottonwood.... A fucking spooky place, Cottonwood. According to folklore, those who choose to live there do so - or descend from those who do so - to take advantage of its proximity to the beloved psyche ward, which, for whatever reason, was viewed with a certain reverence among the atypical. Rumour has it that generation after generation has spawned, lived, and died within the psyche ward and the small neighbouring village, oblivious to the existence of the wider world. Collin and I went down once, to visit Ned. It was all deserted streets and empty, burnt-out houses. It's supposed to have a population of around twenty or something ridiculous like that. The spooky thing is that we didn't see any of them - just Ned and his silent, witch-like mother.

  ‘You mean, like, in general?’ I managed, unsettled by the sound of my voice, and the echoes of my Cottonwood memories.

  ‘Yeah....’ her eyes bulged with apprehension, the rest of her face subtly re-configuring to accommodate them. ‘I can’t ... think about stuff right....’

  Staring into her eyes, I tried to sort my thoughts into words, a task that often seemed to irritate them into amorphousness during the be-mushroomed state. The dim lighting of our environment gave my hyperactive mind plenty of opportunity to distort everything around her eyes while keeping her soul-baring stare untouched; in my peripherals, I watched her morph from a vaguely fox-like humanoid into some kind of wetlands creature before the background ambiance followed suit, adopting the general feel of an underwater cave, before reaching a crescendo of intensity and deflating back into relative sobriety. It was taking all the discipline I had to resist the temptations of these otherworldly fantasies and maintain focus. But I managed, mostly out of some unusual sense of responsibility for Lucy’s well-being.

  ‘What, uh, what kind of stuff?’ I asked, finding my footing again, wary of the atmosphere's next breath.

  ‘Like, what are we supposed to be doing here, at the bar? Is this what we do to have fun? Is this it? We just sit here? Am I supposed to be getting drunk? I don't want to get drunk, Robbie.’

  Her questions caught me off guard; I had surrendered to my imagination for just a moment and she had already strayed onto a whole other wavelength. The nature of her questions shook me too, a kind of reverse-déjà vu: It took me a few seconds to align with her woe; but, as soon as I did, I knew it was my only possible destination.

  ‘Fuck ... uh.... I guess we’re thinking? Like, figuring stuff out? It’s why we take shrooms.... You know? Like, see the world as it really is and shit, like deconditioning ... I was saying before to Stan that ... uh....’

  ‘I mean ... it’s all....’ her mind was scattered; an aura of worry had replaced her usual sunshine radiation, exposing my preternatural insight for the incoherent mania it was.

  ‘Yeah ... um.... Fuck. Where’d Collin go?’

  It was only after hearing my own words that I realised how much influence Collin had on our dynamic; he had left us for only a few minutes and all sense of order had vanished.

  Lucy's eyes shined wide with growing fear. ‘Is this why we take shrooms, Robbie? To get confused? Get scared?’

  ‘No, hold on. I’ll just go find Collin,’ I reassured her. My scattered ego protested, berating me for not handling the situation myself; but I shed the feeling quite easily, feeling a quiet, growing euphoria that seemed to be somehow entwined with movement, or perhaps action or forward momentum on a less tangible level. Hard to dwell in evolving circumstances, I concluded to myself, bringing a pained smile to my face. I scanned the bar briefly, ignoring the slow breathing of my surroundings, before spotting Collin in the far corner, asleep in his seat. I went and stood over him.

  ‘Collin.’

  ‘Yes?’ His eyes opened as he looked up at me, pupils shrinking to just under the size of his irides, his carelessness grounding me in reality. It was a good question: Yes? What is it Robbie?

  ‘Oh, um, what are we, uh.... What's the plan, man?’ I asked, feeling stupid. What was I freaking out about again?

  Collin smiled and said simply, ‘We’re shrooming at The Disarray. Ned's on his way.’ The shadows on his face danced like fire as his expression was taken over by a blazing grin that discredited my every paranoid thought. ‘You guys got some of that sweet come-up anxiety going on?’

  ‘Yeah I guess. Got a little caught up in some....’

  ‘You fucking trippers,’ he laughed. ‘That’s what we want isn’t it? A bit of tension, a break from the illusions of safety and stability we all cling to. Fuck the framework; let’s get a drink.’

  ‘Yeah man, see how it goes down,’ I shrugged, internalising Collin’s unwavering composure. Lucy and I must have caught a toxic butterfly.

  Collin gave me his trademark smile, alive with chaos and lust, before standing up and heading off to the counter. I stood lost for a moment, then went back to join Stan and Lucy.

  Lucy had found her groove in my absence, swaying her head with eyes closed to the slow, rumbling experimental rock. I sat in my corner next to Stan, who was grimacing at the floor, grasping at his sweat-soaked hair with both hands. I took my cap off and checked my own hair.

  Yep. Sweating like fuck.

  Breath deep, regroup. Find signal.

  Searching for signal....

Michael Farmer

Thank fuck for all the booze and dexies. I'm pissing away a massive fuckin' shitstain on the toilet, probly left there by one of the little cunts. Mum's too much of a fuckin' lazy piss head bitch to do anything about - But that's just me: Doing my bit. Most cunts'll aim for the shitstain when they take a piss, but then they'll leave it be as soon as their piss stream runs out. Not this cunt though - I force out a few last jets of piss to get rid of the last few dabs of shit, flush it down, boom, good as new. I'm the only cunt who ever gets shit done 'round here, but fuck it, it's called responsibility, cunt. If I got shit to deal with, I ain't fuckin' whinging about it like every other cunt, I'm straight in there, piss that shit away, easy, sorted, no need to thank me, it's called being a fuckin' good cunt.

  Charging through the lounge I go “Just pissed all that fuckin' shit away. At least some cunt ‘round here's keeping shit under control” to mum but she just tells me to fuck off and dozes off like always so I grab the bitch's drink outta her hand and smash it down and I'm off to my room, never mind the little cunts, they got that fuckin' lion movie on, sussed it. I get MSN going again and it's fuckin' Rory at me to come ‘round for a blaze but I'm pretty sick of the cunt so I invite Jeremy to the conversation and type out “l8r cunts” and exit out, leave those two fuck ups to sort out whatever bullshit they're fighting about this time, stupid fucks with their - Now I just gotta figure out whether to crush a pill or roll a J, more keen for a beer to be honest but - Check my phone to see if dad's got back to me about the homebrew and it's nada but there’s a text from fuckin' Collin Callahan going “Yo. Come 2 disaray. Bring 20 bux of chalk” and I'm kinda fucked off at him about it, like good cunt for texting in code and shit, but he ain't fooling anyone with that shit, like what would a cunt at a bar want with twenty bucks of - Fuck it, keen to rage. I ain't texting back 'cause that'll give the pigs something to go on, but I'm keen to head out in a bit - Fuck impulse control, it's just cunts who can't make their minds up about shit trying to get you - The ganja sorts it out better anyway, and I could do with a bit of coin, so fuck it, this shit'll end up in my nose quick smart if I stick ‘round here, sure as fuck.

  So I crush up one for the road, mean as missioning 'round in the rain on this shit, fuckin' straightedges and shit patrolling the streets too, gotta stay sharp. I sniff it up and I'm after a shirt but I stop for a quick geeze in the mirror. Getting pretty buff lifting them twenty kilo dumbells, fun as when I'm beamin', and my hair's grown out now, got me looking like Billy Kidman back when he was a skinny fucker and all the chicks were - I chuck on some grey shirt and the green hoodie with all the hentai octopus shit going down on the back and tie the mane up - Fuck it, let it down, freak flag a-fly. Dexies start kicking in so I shake my arms around for a bit of shadow boxing all tingly then back down for one last geeze at the mirror - Got a bit of a moustache and some sideburns going, first cunt in the class to - Fuckin' Robbie and Collin still got no facial hair going on, never even had to shave, no fuckin' muscles either, could kick both their asses, easy, even two on one and shit, Bruce Lee style, cunts acting like they know all sorts of shit no one else does when all they're doing is fuckin' 'round on shrooms, all about that Val Kilmer doors of perception shit, storming ‘round looking like Harry Potter and Draco fuckin’ - I pounce up onto my toes, dukes up, shouting “Hwoah!” at the cunt in the mirror, woulda scared the shit outta him if it was some other cunt in there instead of me. I chuck on a beanie and some shoes, check the pockets, sorted, storm through the lounge and mum's trying to say some shit but I have a swig of her wine and tell the bitch to fuck off and keep an eye on the little cunts, slam the door and hop into the elevator and tap out a beat 'cause the dexies are going whoop fuckin' whoop whoop then Ding! and I'm on terra firma, out into the night, mean missions, keen as fuck.

Stan Richards

‘Stan? Are you okay?’

  The female voice echoes around me, reverberating all metallic. Sitting up makes my whole body spaz out, like all my muscles are straining, so I'm curled up in a ball on the seat. Every heartbeat is like a maniac stabbing at my chest, and it's beating way faster than usual. Vibrating. I don’t know how long ago I ate the mushrooms, but I hope it finishes soon. I feel kind of dozy like I could go to sleep, but everything just gets crazier when I close my eyes. I just gotta wait this out. Fuck.

  ‘Stan?’

  I recoil as she puts her hand on my shoulder. Usually when she touches me, I feel all warm and sort of like I can feel it from inside of her. But now it's all prickly and sore, making this cold, gross feeling go all through my body. I look up, expecting, hoping, to see peace and purity on her face like I'm used to. But no luck. All I can see is fear and confusion, like some kind of sick mirror to my own fucked up pain. Robbie's up there too. Out there. And Collin. They're all looking down at me, baring their teeth with massive eyes, their strange yawns like silent roars. I recognise them all good, but they're all so menacing and I can't figure out what they mean to me.

Friends

Fried ends

Friends?

  I know the word, and I know what it means, but it doesn't make any sense to me anymore... Cold emptiness and alienation are the only feelings I can get from them, and the stray words that escape my mouth are only feeding the mass of horrible emotions around me.

Around me

I'm the centre of it

A star made of emotional filth

Giving life to a solar system of pain

  If I wasn't such a self-centred cunt, I'd supernova right now and save the universe a lot of trouble.

Stan? Stan?

Stan!?

  It's just like a fucked up chant now, makes me feel like spewing. Maybe if I spewed it'd all be okay. Maybe if I just fucking died...

  Robbie’s going ‘Just leave him, man.’ His voice sounds all mechanical and fucked up, but I like where he's going. ‘He'll sort himself out soon. He's in the subterranean realms now, it's up to him.’ Maybe he's right. Maybe I will sort myself out soon... It isn't exactly a comforting thought, though. I can’t even remember what I'm usually like. What I used to be like. All I can remember is being scared and depressed. I'm trying to find happy memories, but they all seem to be just be memories of me pretending to be happy so no one pays attention to how fucked up I am. Is this what happens when I can't pretend anymore? Just curl up in a ball and hide?

  My nausea and my bad thoughts kind of feel like the same thing now. ‘Sick in the head,’ a voice keeps saying, coming from inside but not in my voice... 

...Sick in the head...

  ...like a thought I’m not even thinking. Am I not even controlling my own thoughts? What happens now? Do I ever control my own thoughts? I always just kind of assume I'm in control, but what really makes thoughts happen... What the fuck is a thought? Is this a thought? Am I thinking now? Is a thought about a thought still a thought? Is it something else? Another kind of thought? A thinking thought? Are they all the same? What about thinking about that thought? Do thoughts think? Does that even make sense? What does making sense even mean? A chain of thoughts, leading nowhere, accomplishing nothing, and I'm back where I started, even more confused, finding it basically impossible to hold a chain of thought anyway, every thought just seems like utter bullshit the second I try reflect on it, which is already happening now, the complete fucking absurdity of reflecting on a thought, reflecting a reflection, what the fuck does that mean? Think what I just thought? Think the same thing again? Just fucking think the exact same thing again? What the fuck does what the fuck even mean? Holy shit I'm going under...

What the fuck?

Sick in the head.

  I'm not controlling my body either. Sick body. Sick body, sick mind. Jerking around. Just shivering or the start of a seizure? What the fuck difference would it make? What the fuck difference does anything make? What's the difference between anything and anything else? Fuck. Maybe I should... No. That won’t help. I just need to get rid of these thoughts, black it all out. Drink another beer?

I've had a bit much to think

So hand me another drink

  From across the table, Collin speaks quietly into my essence.

  ‘I just took a shit in the toilets. We could go, you know, hover around it for a bit. If you want.’

  That sick fuck. My whole insides feel like they’re spewing onto themselves now, grim yellow brown everywhere, even worse when I close my eyes. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Did I hear him right? Did he even actually say anything? My nose fills up with the fetid smell of fresh shit. I try to breathe it out but it spreads all through my body. Only it's not like a smell anymore. It's like a feeling. An experience. I'm experiencing shit. Collin's shit.

  ‘What the... What the fuck?’ I hear myself say, an echo with no parent. A sound made by a sound. Just a memory. Did it ever happen? Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck knows anything anyway? Not me, that's for sure. I look up at Collin's face and understand nothing. A fucked up innocent stare. His eyes are sprayed black windows, his expression reptilian. A featureless ceramic mask.

  ‘What the fuck did you just say?’ I hiss, uncurling towards him, getting some strength back just out of anger at the sick fuck. His face is slowly rearranging now. His eyes, nose, and mouth are glitching around in a fleshy pool, twitching to the rhythm of my own spastic breath, like he's controlling my seizure with his fucked up movements.

Every breath

Another death

Don't stop till there's nothing left...

  ‘I said I'm gonna get some valium off Ned when he gets here. You look like you need it,’ he says, so clearly that everything stops shifting around, everything normal for just a moment. He looks into my eyes, holding everything together, then gets up and walks away and it all collapses. Did I just imagine what he said before? How the fuck can you tell? I am just imagining it. Collin's gone. But did it happen before? Did this echo have a parent? Or is this just sick shit going on in my own head.

You know, hover around it for a bit...

Sick in the head

Better off dead

  I sink back into my chair and look at the faces of Lucy and Robbie to see if they heard. But no clues. They’re just looking at me all worried. Not looking directly at me, but... monitoring me. Their eyes are pointed away, but they're tuned into me. A more primitive part of their brains still watching. Their inner-beasts, with different ideas than human minds. Watching me hungrily. Two monsters salivating in secret. Waiting for... something. If only I could hide it from them. My monster. Invisible to the human eye, but clear as day to other monsters. I was fine until Collin started talking. Well, I wasn’t fine, but... things were better. Hazier and less clear. Less monstrously clear. Less nauseatingly confronting. That motherfucker... Always acting like he’s on my side then sneaking bad shit into my head when I'm thinking somewhere else. Sinister cunt. No turning back now, though. This is just another struggle I gotta get through... But, nah, it's not even like that. This is like everything. Everything's a fucking struggle.

  My stomach pulses a wave of nausea all the way to my fingertips and I dry heave. Secret monsters exchange glances. I'm trying to compose or even just monitor my face and what it's doing, to express or do something with this pain, but my thoughts just suck me into this bullshit spiral where I feel so far removed from my facial expressions, and even the idea of them, that the whole thing just seems fucking retarded. If I could figure out what it means to want, I could maybe figure out what I want. But it's like I'm past the point of want, existing in a universe where there is only need. But what I need is just as confusing. Even trying to figure out what the fuck I'm actually feeling or thinking is beyond me. Thinking about thoughts... It'd just be like repeating whatever I just thought over and over, which just fucking happened again, and now I'm back here, back in this same fucking place again, thinking about what I just thought about. The whole chain of thought was just a stupid, pointless journey right back to where I started. Just a minor break from this claustrophobic, circular trainwreck of a thought process. And now I'm just here thinking through the whole spiral again, kidding myself that I'm looking back on it from a detached perspective, but knowing really that I'm still right in the fucking middle of it.

Sick in the head

Better off dead

You heard what they said

You're sick in the head

  Desperately clawing through the layers of schizophrenic fear, I cry out ‘What the fuck did that cunt say to me?’ finding momentum again as I fight my way out of the confusion, propelled out into the real world by grim misanthropy, desperately looking for some kind of recognition on one of those fucked up faces.

  ‘Don't worry, man,’ Robbie says, ‘it's just the shrooms fucking with you. You're free from the maze, experiencing pure consciousness. It can be overwhelming. We're getting some valium soon, you'll be all good. Just ride it out, man - anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.’

  Yeah, I'll take some valium and get all numb, forget all this shit. Hide the monster. But then what? Just wait for the mushrooms to wear off so I can pretend to be happy again? Is that really the way to deal with it? There’s no way I’ll be the same after this. There is no same. Maybe I used to used to be different, but now I've always been like this. I know the mushrooms didn't make me this quivering mess of a human. They just made me see what I already was. Or they made it so that I always was, even if I used to not always have been like this. There's no way out of this trip, this nightmare. The nightmare is me.

I am the nightmare

I am the monster

Sick in the head

I'm better off dead

  I sneak a quick glance around, but Robbie’s trying to catch my eye so I just look back at the floor. Maybe I can ignore this. I've ignored it fine up until now. But how could that possibly be a good idea? Do I dare turn my back on the monster? Close my eyes and block my fucking ears? Pull the blankets up above my head so I don't catch a glimpse of it before it shreds me to bits? Can that childish logic still possibly work for me? I wonder if everyone else is like me, scared and depressed, hiding it from each other... I dry heave again as I envision a society of people pretending to be happy just so everyone else can pretend to be happy. All trying to hide each other from the monsters, just till we go home alone. And we all know it's there, waiting. It's either that, or everyone else can be happy and content and I'm just missing that part of my brain. Or maybe they're the ones missing something. Maybe it's just me harbouring monsters. Which is worse? Either way, I don't want to be a part of this world anymore. Why the fuck should I stick around if it's just a whole lot of unhappiness and then death? The final death to conclude a lifetime of tiny deaths. But what if there is no final death? What if death never dies?

Every breath

Another death 

Sick in the head

Better off dead

  Are we all just living waiting to die?
  Or just me?

  Fuck...

  Fuck this. I give up hiding since everything sucks anyway and look around the grotesquely warping bar, trying to regain my sense of distance. The idea of this room having no doors or windows is stuck in my mind, even though I'm staring directly at a door. Collin and Lucy are at the counter with that dealer, Michael. Lucy’s standing there giggling while the other two talk with animated gestures that fill me with disgust. Their eyes flick towards me between words, just before they blink, just a quick flicker they probably don't even notice...

  Robbie sees me moving and goes ‘See it as a test, man. It's a challenge we don't face normally, when we're all caught up in what's going on around us, doing what's expected of us. It's facing yourself, man. Facing your demons. After a bad trip, it's always better than before, when you just ignored the rotten parts of your brain. I've been there before, man. You'll get through it. It’s only in total darkness that you can see the stars.’ He sounds just like Collin. I stare at the swimming carpet. It's not that interesting. Just nauseating. What does hallucinating even mean?

  Without really thinking first, I mutter ‘Whatever, Collin,’ and glare up at him, still hunched over. I can see he's hurt by my comment. I can feel it. Those big, shiny black eyes magnified by glasses and mushrooms. I don't feel bad though. Don't feel much for him now. He's not a person in the same way to me anymore. He's lost in Collin's fucked up little world. A pawn in a game of chess he’s too small to understand. More slime materialising. A monster creeping through the gaps in the air. Sneaking into existence... I want to tell him that, tell him how he's living in an imaginary world, fucking up his brain trying to figure out the universe. Trying to earn Collin's sadistic approval, which sounds even scarier than his hatred. Heading straight into a nightmare. The nightmare. The horror lurking just beneath the cushions of our lies. If I could explain it to him, I would. But I can't. I can't be nice anymore. Can't be civil. Can't pretend. The face is gone. The mushrooms have stripped away my personality, the acceptable me - the watered down version, fundamentally altered for the consumption of the public. All that's left is a miserable cunt. An obscene monster. The thin trench coat unbuttoned, just held together by claws... If I could find the air, I'd tell Robbie to get out before it's too late. To forget Collin's fucked up philosophies. Start going to school again. Have a conversation with his parents. Do all that shit people that aren't me, normal people, do to validate themselves. It's ugly, but it's the only chance we have to escape this eternal, deathless hell.

  But I say nothing. Instead, I look around at the people in the bar.

Shaved monkeys

poised

clambering around

balanced awkwardly on their insecurities

counting only on their desperation

frightened even of that comfort

  It's like a bunch of monkeys trying desperately to prove that they're better than monkeys, all covered in material and standing in ways to try and look good. All subtly bragging to each other about how far removed they are from any ancestor with a tail. If they’d just relax into themselves, they’d at least be good looking monkeys.

  Honest monkeys.

Honest monkeys

Too much to think

Need a drink

Sick in the head

Better off dead

  Horrible things swirl silently around me. First just sadness, then fear, then a kind of hatred. They circle around me like sharks, closing in until they’re resting on my skin, the sheer horror forcing my eyes shut. And then they open and the hate is inside me like blood. 

  I look over at Lucy and Collin. Feel nothing.

Every breath

Another death

Don't stop till there's nothing left

…

Time to supernova.

Ned Devlin

‘Oh, and one more thing: If you’re having a sexual discussion, throw in a few questions. It makes it more interesting,’ he said, releasing me into the rawky night. Having my Priorities in formation meant finding a concealed area to finish off my little power crystals: I’d be seeing my friends soon, and my binge of Consciousness had left me a touch frail, Thoughts all melting together and whatnot, making me forget the names and notions of the things around me, kind of contracting into a stupor that's got me motionless for a moment until things like shadows and wind give me a Shock! to keep me going on my way.

  Guided by my old buddy Dumb Luck, I found myself a port-a-john without having to do anything unnecessarily Life threatening like walking past someone or uttering something or any of that carry on. Inside, the walls huffed with frustration, wanting so badly to wiggle around and dance like they do when I get excited, but my brain was saying: ‘No! I haven’t the Time nor the patience for that kind of Nonsense,’ banishing the animating force of the Universe to the Imagination. WHERE IT BELONGS.

  I organised myself amongst the unpleasantness and lit my light bulb full of precious gemstones and got a little lost in the swirling typhoon of kilojoules contained within, watching embryonic ideas and like children's interpretations of modern cave paintings spawning in the smoke, a calming kind of Pareidolia, explaining many things to me but mostly just telling me that I was about to feel much better. I always thought of the whole process as a kind of sexual ordeal, with the Meth taking on the form of a sort of ectoplasmic penis, stimulating my psychic vaginal walls to Ecstasy. Unfortunately, due to the last while of mental promiscuity, my psychic vagina had become rather stretched, meaning the average Meth phallus would struggle to create adequate friction, like throwing a sausage down a hallway, as they say. This meant I had to burn my little crystals in increasing quantities to create an etheric penis large enough to satisfy my frustrated Psyche. But I managed, huffing and puffing away, lungs sort of smiling at all the activity, them being known to sometimes, when lost in Stasis, forget just how yielding they can be, the ole brain enjoying the extra oxygen too, as well as just the general extra of everything up there, with the Meth menthol like opening up the internal passageways, giving the Thoughts plenty of extra space to play freely, copulate wildly, and scribble all sorts of conclusions whenever they feel the general need, which, to conclude, doesn’t seem to happen all that much when all's thought and said.

  Once this was accomplished, and my Thoughts were chattering happily amongst themselves, I headed toward The Disarray where my friends would be waiting for me, their own Thoughts dancing and shouting about too, I’d imagine. The whole walk had me on edge though, feeling like perhaps I didn’t really know what was what, Ninjas frolicking about in my peripheral vision, knowing all too well how exhausted my faculties were. 

  But the walk didn’t go for too long, not with Time feeling so playfully effervescent, Thoughts fickle but buoyant, buzzing around and crawling all over me like wee spiders, me anything but bored, Time strutting purposefully with his spider spotted hide, me with plenty of insect repellent: Them little yellow and blue pills that right the wrongs of our Creator and His crooked ways, usually gifted to The Junkies back down Cottonwood ways, but not so much here up north, where I prefer playing thoughtless with my friends Robbie and Lucy and sometimes Penny or Alan or even Michael or Tracey and really just whoever, everyone all melting all together into an ease in which everyone else finds talking just as comical an activity as I, the whole trail of Thought fading away now, more a case of repeating itself enough to become just like background noise for the new Thoughts to shout over, the Mind all sharpened up good and proper, possessing certain newfound abilities, now able to sort of teleport by thinking loud enough, as long as I know for sure where I'm going, which, when pressed on the matter, I must admit is never really the case, the Universe and her little Uncertainties sifting about the place, Space as fickle as ever, by which I mean, yes, I suppose I did more walk than teleport, more just my Mind teleporting from my earlier self to a later version, a chemical coma or a blink of the Mind, like maybe even a Glitch of sorts more than anything magical or cosmic like teleportation, more Madness than Magic, just like a fuck conclusions sort of thing, bring on the Doubt, all hail the Ultimate Doubt . . . Right?

The Disarray is like this ancient mansion of sorts, once a castle for the spoilt, now a haven for the downtrodden, with gaping window eyebrows and a crocodile mouth awning opened wide, saliva string pillars and asphalt tongue rolled out along the ground, forking off in all directions to traverse the city, just to get a taste of it all, the crocodile itself sitting quiet all alone, body backed into the woods while the face looks out at the ole Human Zoo from afar, quite happy just to wait. My friends and I always appreciated the inner quiet that pervades the soul of the great creature, us being more the thinking types, wanting not a whole lot more than to live our Lives hidden from the threats of ‘The Straightedges’, this rather predatory clan of hominids very much opposed to anything that makes you think too much more or less than usual, them being pretty much like the alphasapiens around here as long as everything's all straight and narrow.

  Anticipating my arrival, as usual, my old friend Collin was stood outside, smoking a cigarette that said to everyone that looks can be deceiving, him having such an angelic face, such an easy smile, dressed all tidy as well, saying: ‘Ned, here,’ his penetrating Mind noting immediately my aversion to greetings, releasing a small waterfall of fungal brain petrol into my hands, ‘And give me some Valium, stan’s freaking out. Get them into you and come in.’ He liked to speak to me with as few words as possible, keenly aware of the oft ignored telepathy that goes on under the noses and over the heads of the unaware. A smart boy, that Collin.

  Inside, there was no real crowd aside from my friends, just a small array of downtrodden critters scattered throughout the bar, decrepit remains of the wealthy and immortal, folk whose Mind is like a receptacle for all the astral excrement permeating the air, rather than an aerial to receive orders from the greater Sirs, as per the Original Plan. Tasting like not a whole lot, I made quick work ingesting the Mushrooms, first thing I’d consumed that required chewing in a fair while. With this done, I made my way toward my friends, more following the parade of existential Terror than trusting my eyes, which had become less of a wise idea in recent times, them being about used up with all that noticing they'd been doing.

  ‘Check out my newest Composition,’ Collin said quietly, and we laughed into earshot of the Anxious Ones.

Robbie Marks

‘... and so it’s pretty much every cunt’s problem except mine,’ Michael concluded, sealing his rant with a satisfied gulp of beer. To what he was concluding, I wasn’t sure; his lack of verbal paragraphing had me overwhelmed, and I was dwelling on something Stan had said earlier. Had he really mistaken me for Collin? There was a certain venom in his voice, like he knew something he shouldn’t. Like he had something over me. I kept my ongoing analysis in the back of my mind, though; I had social obligations to uphold.

  ‘Yeah.... That’s true,’ I replied, still not sure what I was agreeing to.

  ‘Exactly. You’re a fuckin’ top cunt, Robbie. You know how it is. You get it.’ I was happy with that: I had responded appropriately. But I was hoping he had finished; his face seems to be everywhere when he talks to you, pursuing you like a persistent Bloodhound trailing the scent of your attention. Though the mushrooms seemed to be settling into the relaxed rhythm of the post-peak glow, I was still at the mercy of psychedelic hyper-sensitivity, and felt it necessary to limit my sensory intake until the Psilocybin had been completely metabolised.

  Michael had started up again, but was drowned out by Lucy's excitement ringing through the bar - ‘Ned!’ - whiplashing me out of his claustrophobic attention. Lucy, seemingly back to her old, excitable self, leapt out of her dream and rushed up to hug the more or less unresponsive Ned, leaving Stan with his troubles.

  Ned was moving around in his trademark style: Loose in his movements, never really looking anywhere in particular, with an obvious kind of distance from the situation. After communing with Lucy, he came over and sat next to me, smelling like a wet dog, and we spent the next few seconds looking at each other in silence. It amazed me how much more engaging it was to be in complete silence with Ned than it was to be having an in-depth conversation with Michael, which I was fairly sure I was still doing - the conversation now little more than background noise, taking a backseat to the zoetic silence I shared with Ned. Michael was oblivious: His main character trait.

  Ned's appearance disturbed me, reviving the ill-ease that had affected me earlier. Gone were the impish grin and sparkling eyes of the boy who would turn up at my door with freshly-picked wild flowers and stray geckos in his hands. In its place was a ghastly presence: A matted, black, half-dreadlocked mess of hair obscuring his skeletal, deathly-white features; sunken eyes surrounded by a darkness very much in contrast to the rest of his bloodless face; a penetrating expression that was completely unreadable, yet profoundly expressive of something I could never explain; eyes strangely alive and teeming with an eerie kind of vitality, dead-locked onto mine, unwavering.

  ‘So, how’ve you been man? Good to be back?’ I tried to break our trance. My attempt to sound casual was painfully transparent; he looked as if he didn’t hear me, looking at something many dimensions beyond me. I realised immediately that I was going about this the wrong way, talking to Ned as I would a stranger. After a moment of high-pitched silence, characteristic of a conversation with Ned, I tried a different angle.

  ‘So…. Are you cured then?’ I asked, giving him a kind of grin that was all eyes and no mouth. A familiar fiendish smile spread across his face, and he pulled a small container out of his coat pocket, placing it on the table in front of us. The label read: Controlled drug C5, Zyprexa 10MG, Keep out of reach of children.

  ‘Fuckers,’ he muttered, his familiar laconic tone speaking into me as if it were a thousand memories of our times together, holding with it traces of every moment, every version of himself he'd ever been. We stared at each other for a second, our faces softening into smiles in unison, before laughing wildly, a long lost glow returning to Ned's anaemic face.

  I raised my beer to clink Ned's, before realising he didn't have one and awkwardly offering him a sip of mine. Ned casually grabbed Michael's - who had taken to harassing Collin - from under him and tapped mine, before finishing it in one gulp. I nodded and did the same.

  At that moment, I forgot everything I had been told about Ned. All the cruel and ignorant rumours and fabrications. He was still with us. He’d never left.

Lucy Winters

I want to talk to Ned, but I think Stan needs me. He's hunched over shaking in my arms and not saying anything when I talk to him. He might be crying, but I can't tell because his face is in his hands. I keep telling him that it's okay, that I'm here for him, but I can't tell if he can even hear me.

  Collin's sitting Indian style on top of the table in front of us, both hands in his jacket pockets, birdlike, watching Stan intently. His face is completely still except for a bit of tension in his jaw and the pale wood violet glow of my imagination. His narrow eyes meet mine and he nods almost too quiet to see, then takes his hand out from his pocket and holds it out to us.

  ‘I really think you should take these, man,’ he says to Stan. He's got some white valiums in his hand, but the way he holds them makes me think of them as pellets, like he's at a petting zoo.

  ‘Get the fuck away from me, man,’ Stan says, his eyes glistening up from the shadows. ‘Keep me out of your fucked up plans.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Collin asks, his features fragile with concern.

  Stan withers out of my embrace and glares wild eyed and ghoulish at Collin. His face is flushed and his eyes are real shiny, like he might cry. But there's no tears.

  ‘Why would I believe you? That you want me to feel better?’ he says in a severe, measured tone. His body has stopped shaking now, deathly still and stormy.

  Collin’s head shrinks into his neck a bit, looking like he might be offended or maybe just shocked. He sort of collects himself and says, ‘Well, you might not think I have your best interests in mind, Stan,’ talking real clearly, ‘But you know how I feel about psychedelics. You know, like shrooms and acid and all that. I'm sure you've heard me and Robbie going on about it enough. I mean, these are powerful chemicals, Stan. So powerful. And I think it's important we get on top of it before you do any lasting damage to your psyche. I've been there before. Lucy and Robbie too. I know the terror of a bad trip. The suicidal thought loops, the horrific tangents, the endless morbid self interrogation, the fear so torturous you just want to fucking die . . . It comes with the territory. That's why I like to have some valium on hand. Just take a few of these - not enough to knock you out, just enough to smooth out the sharp edges and ride it out till it wears off. And hey, maybe you'll even be able to enjoy the ride once they kick in.’ His words make me smile. Everything about his voice is soothing, the pace and the pitch, the picture he paints. He's like a doctor, sort of. A psychedelic doctor. A shaman. Sorcerer. The way he talks is almost supernaturally calm, especially compared to Stan's cracked tombstone words.

  I take Stan's hand and find his eyes with mine. I can get a sense of what he’s feeling when he looks at me, like a cold draft through the room. Pleading into him, I say, ‘He's right, Stan. You're not well. I hate to see you like this.’ His eyes flash at me somehow, softening the jagged fear around them.

  He looks from me to Collin and says, ‘Fuck . . . alright. Give ‘em here,’ in a voice that's more defeated than angry. Collin gives him the pills which he swallows with a mouthful of beer, abrupt and robotic, before curling back into his sulk.

  I hold him tightly and say, ‘Thanks, Stan,’ feeling better now. He hugs me back with limp arms, burying his face into my neck, his breath tectonic with fear. I’m glad he’ll be getting better soon, but I'm a little cross with him now. He can be so morbid sometimes.

  We sit quietly for a few minutes, Stan all tense in my arms, eyes closed. Collin's gone and sat down by himself a few seats away. He’s got his eyes closed too, looking real peaceful. Glowing. Not far away, on the other side of us, Ned and Robbie are seated, with Michael standing in front of them throwing his limbs around erratically as he talks. He's talking a little too loud for me, but he's radiating life and energy and good vibes. They all are. Even Ned. Why aren't we like that? I know I would be if Stan wasn't having such a bad time . . . He shouldn't be here. I haven't even had a chance to enjoy the mushrooms.

  I exhale, breathing scarlet and earth tones back into the ever azuring atmosphere, and lean back in my seat, letting my eyes unfocus as the living blur shivers through me. It's nice, sitting here quietly, but I'm getting all restless and can't fully relax. Kind of because of Stan, but also just with my own energy that I don't know what to do with. I rest my chin on Stan's trembling head and lose myself in the twisted canyons of his back. His dark blue and black plaid shirt shimmers and swims into his jeans. A vision of endless running rivers feeding a vast ocean beckons me as a Cajun orange radiance settles into the background of my fantasy, inviting me into old dreams and the forgotten thoughts of childhood. If Stan wasn't shaking so violently, I'd be all but lost in the countless heavens blooming all around me. But I can't. Not with Stan like this.

  ‘Do you want to go home, Stan?’ I ask, my voice a distant whisper, swallowed by the orange sun.

  His face unravels from my breast, leaving a visible imprint of sweat on my dress, a monochrome shroud of his pain. He looks at me all red with round, polluted eyes, and says, ‘You'll come with me?’ his contours distorting with a terror I can't fathom.

  I find a smile, hoping to see him mirror it, and say, ‘Of course.’ I can't leave Stan alone like this. I want to come back when I'm done, though. Once the valium has sorted him out. I want to get trippy with Collin and Robbie. And catch up with Ned. But properly, without having to look after Stan. Collin's got some dexies from Michael that he wants to share with us. But he said I should get Stan home first. He said that if Stan has some dexies, it'll just make his bad thoughts happen way faster and make it more scary for him. It makes sense. He said that for me and Robbie, it'll just make it easier to talk about our shroom thoughts. I like that because I don't like keeping anything beautiful inside. It makes me feel a little empty to think and feel and see such wonderful things without sharing it with anyone.

  ‘Fuck it. Let's go,’ he says, standing up with jerky movements like bad stop motion, still looking at the floor.

  I look over to Collin with silent questions. He's already looking at me with a lazy smile. ‘You guys off?’ he says.

  I nod.

  ‘That's a good idea. It's best to sort these thoughts out in your own space. Set yourself up a nice environment and allow it all to unfold naturally. Good luck in there guys.’ He's looking at me because if he looked at Stan he'd just see a face hiding its eyes. It's sweet how much he cares about Stan, even after Stan was rude to him.

  I stand up and put my arm around Stan's waist as we walk towards the door, feeling his tension as a creeping shudder that could just as easily be mine. I can tell he doesn't want to say bye to anyone, and I'll be coming back soon so I don't worry about it.

  We're almost out the door when Michael's waspy voice jabs me in the back. ‘Oi, Stan ya lost cunt. Where the fuck are you off to? Buy me a beer cunt, call it even.’ He rushes up to us, a highly strung canine, and stands a little too close with a hidden snarl and all sorts of flickering thoughts not too far behind his grin.

  ‘Get the fuck away from me,’ Stan says, shoving him away.

  ‘Stan!’ I spout. My arm instinctively snaps back from his waist while the rest of me sort of falters around, not sure where to go. I try to give him a stern face, not really knowing what else to do, but it feels weird and I can tell it probably doesn't look right. I’m not properly mad at him anyway. More just annoyed at both of them and sick of boys acting like rhinoceroses all the time. I usually end up in a bad mood when Michael's around. He's always using big emotions and big motions, never just hanging out. Always a fight or a joke or some kind of drama, never listening to anyone else, just trying to make everything all about whatever he's obsessed with at the time. Doesn't make it okay to be rude back to him, though.

  ‘Pushy cunt,’ Stan mutters, turning away from him to stare at the floor. I pull him towards the door, leaving as quickly as I can, not looking back.

The cold air feels real nice, like pins and needles all over my body. But fuzzy ones, like effervescent acupuncture. As we walk slowly, hand in hand, I gaze around at the trees that line the road which seem to disguise the alienness of suburbia, washing it away in their shifting hue. They feel good to look at. To be around. It’s like they can see me too, and they know and forgive me for everything I do and say that's not good, because I'm just a human and we do the wrong thing sometimes.

  But I don't have long to enjoy it.

  ‘Oi! Cunt!’ Michael's voice trumpets out from the door. ‘What's the fuckin' problem then?’ He’s pacing up to us all wired with hands that go from balled fists to twinkly fingers and back again, making galaxy patterns I'm too nervous to enjoy. Stan stops to wait for him. I try to pull his hand in the other direction, saying, ‘Come on, Stan, let's just go.’ I don't want anything to happen. I just want to get him home.

  I give up and back away just before Michael gets up to us, since Stan seems to have made up his mind. Without slowing down, Michael bulldozes Stan with open hands and goes, ‘What was that shit about? You got something you wanna say, cunt?’

  Stan's rocked slightly but keeps his footing. I feel a spike of anxiety as he lets go of my hand. He looks up from the ground to Michael’s face, whole body clenched, and says, ‘Think twice, cunt,’ through teeth that want to be clamped shut.

  Michael puts his face right up in front of Stan's and shouts, ‘Bull fuckin' shit. You want a go then cu-’ but Stan hits him in the jaw with the heel of his hand in a strange open handed arc that continues past Michael's face as his beanie falls to the ground. My stomach screws in straight away and my hands gravitate into a ball at my mouth, gripping at my sleeves. Michael’s stumbled back, more shocked than sore. He holds his jaw for a second, then smiles sharp behind the mop of sweat flattened hair and grabs Stan by the collar and goes to punch him, but Stan’s headbutted him real horrible in the nose and there’s all sorts of noises howling together. Blood’s already coming out, much darker than in the cartoons, some of it splattering and some of it dribbling. Michael loses his balance but corrects himself, still swaying slightly. Feeling queasy, I lean over to spew, but nothing comes out. I stand up as straight as I can, screeching at Stan to stop, but my voice is all thin and it's like I'm just listening to myself, all wavy like I'm on valium or something. I try to grab Stan by the shirt to stop the whole thing, but it’s like putting my hand in a lawnmower and I get knocked back by some kind of limb. Michael spits an octopus of blood in Stan's face and I'm not even a part of his world now. Just looks at me for a second with screaming eyes and Michael's blood all thick dribbling down his face then straight back. I'm breathing fast and shallow because I can tell that Stan’s properly mad now. Fuck. I can't handle this. He walks slowly and twitchy towards Michael. Michael backs away a little while taking a swing. It misses. Or maybe Stan just didn't feel it. He tries to turn away, but Stan’s got him by the front of his shirt and throws him to the ground in a smooth, fiery motion, sounding like an animal now. The hollow smacks of Stan's kicks close my eyes as my hands clamp down in front of them. Then all I can feel is the rumpling echo of Michael's face crumbling under Stan's heel. I dry retch again. Opening my eyes, I see Stan walking away from Michael, leaving him a bloody clump on the wet pavement.

  My eyes are filled up with tears and as I look at Stan they break off down my cheeks. An unfamiliar voice twists out from inside me, ‘Stan, no! What the fuck Stan?’

  He just walks right past me, hunchbacked, saying, ‘Whose side are you on?’ but saying it like he's talking to himself, not me.

  I stumble over to the trees, who are too busy to make me feel better now, and spew up. Just one torrent, thick and snotty. Some chunks land on my dress, but I can't help it. With the gross, acidic taste in my mouth yellowing the world around me, I sit on the curb next to my spew and cry, watching Stan walk down the empty street, glitching from streetlight to streetlight then gone.

Collin Callahan

My Harmonics were taking form...

  I followed michael on a whim, and had the great fortune of witnessing stan's meltdown first hand. And oh what a transcendentally glorious meltdown it was. All I really wanted was stan and his filthy headspace out of my sight, but I was quite happy to have michael taken care of as well. The sound of his cartilage caving in was music to my understimulated ears. I was in heaven.

  Stan was having an internal crisis, so I decided to feed him some Dextroamphetamine masquerading as Valium, since I was in such a charitable mood. I had a secret smile from that moment onward, knowing that the cunt would soon be alone in his bedroom in a state of introspective despair, at the mercy of daemons from beyond the limits of his imagination, waiting in vain for the Valium to save him from his nightmare.

  Good luck in there, stan my old chum. I'll see you on the other side.

  In a moment of mushroom induced weakness, I actually found myself questioning my actions, even feeling a little sympathetic for the cunt. But the feeling quickly passed, being so trivial against the backdrop of Harmonics so divine. I've always thought that if you're not comfortable in your own mind, then it is your duty as a human to take the time to resolve your inner conflicts and release your mind from its self made prison. Only then can it be used for its true purpose: To explore and evolve. Nothing esoteric or metaphysical about it. That's the problem with cunts like stan. Competent, perhaps even eloquent, in their dealings with the external world, but an absolute fucking mess in the internal realms. All composure lost when no one is looking.

  But, as stan was soon to learn, someone is always looking.

  Try as he might, he couldn't hide his mental warfare from me. It's a basic ethical principle that some fail to grasp: If you wish to enjoy the fruits of the material world, then you must earn the space you take up through the trials of the spirit. Otherwise you'll always be experiencing things second hand, filtered through the cluster of lies you've imagined up about yourself and the universe. Like the absentee deity monitoring his domain via remote viewing, it can only go on for so long before the cracks start to show.

  What cunts like stan fail - or refuse - to accept, is that sobriety is to tripping as drunkenness is to sobriety. And that fucker is a soberholic. Either way, I decided it was time to move on. I had planted the seed of nightmarish evolution in his mind, and I would water it when I saw him next.

  I turned my attention to lucy, sitting alone in a puddle of vomit, her spirits broken by stan's filth. Robbie was still inside, lost in thought talk with ned. I'd have at least a few minutes to spare before he'd figure out what ned was trying to say and come rushing out to me with a mouthful of epiphanies, so I felt it appropriate to spend some quality time with lucy. Just the two of us.

  Lucy was crying with bits of vomit on her clothes and in her hair and strands of mucous dangling from both nostrils. I sat next to her and put my arm around her, brushing the sticky strands of hair away from her face, covertly wiping my hands on the frayed mess at the end of her dress. The smell and the sight of her made me gag, but I put on a brave face for her. Several metres from us, Michael was curled up in still silence, his state of consciousness unknown and of no real concern to me.

  In my most gentle voice, I explained to lucy that stan, as much as I liked the cunt, was a confused boy whose latent violent tendencies were beginning to surface. I cheered her up by reminding her of the timeless beauty of the trees and the sky above, and for some time we lay on our backs stargazing while I uplifted her spirits with some feeble poetic meanderings about what primitive man must have thought when he looked upon them.

  After a while, when her sense of wonder had dried her tears, I took her by the hand and led her back inside, promising to help clean her up and fill her nose with amphetamines once it was unclogged. We walked purposefully to the toilets, gathering ned and robbie along the way. We got a few stares from some lurkers, but most had witnessed the scene stan had caused and understood why the four of us needed to be in the men’s room together.

  While robbie helped lucy clean herself up and ned eyed my wallet sitting on the toilet paper dispenser, I crushed up pills for everyone inside one of the cubicles. I put a substantial amount of Valium into ned's line, since he had outlasted his usefulness. No Valium for me, lucy, or robbie, though. Well, none for lucy just yet.

  I divided up the lines with great care in order to give ned time to steal the baggie I'd left poking out of my wallet, which he did with smooth discretion. I then had my line, followed by ned, then robbie, then lucy. As the three of them filed out the door, I stopped lucy and offered to help clean her up properly. She said she was already clean. I said nothing and tenderly cleaned the remnants of dried snot from her face with the moistened end of my scarf. I then washed the sick out of her hair by hand and tied it into a nice ponytail with my scarf. Lucy started crying again and fell into my arms. I held her gently until I got restless, then told her that we needed to go because it would only be a matter of time before some cunt came in to take a piss. Then we'd be in trouble.

  I guided lucy back to our table with a gentle hand on her waist. She sat down with robbie and ned and I went to the bar and got a whiskey each for me and ned, a vodka and red bull for robbie, and some water for lucy. Robbie's notebook and papers were spread all over the table, covered in brainstorms and diagrams. I was happy to see this, but told him he'd better head home to work it all out soon, while the inspiration was alive.

  It was time, I'd decided, for robbie to leave us.

Benji Miller

I felt my smile widen and my eyes grow wicked as I stared at the writhing mess at my feet.

  Stan: Flaccid. Defeated.

  Good.

  That's what happens when you go soft, bitch. That's what happens when you get sucked in by man's shitty soft-cock indulgences. When you forget the law of the jungle, nestle into the padded walls of humanity. What would happen to an antelope running around hallucinating on magic mushrooms? Eaten. Rabbit? Eaten. Wolf? Wouldn't be eating. Stan? Beaten. What made him think he'd be any different?

  I'd stopped kicking Stan for a minute to enjoy the scene: Lance and Jordan, hackles up, laying down nature's law on the runt, illuminated by the lone streetlight in the midnight darkness of suburbia.

  ‘Law of the jungle, motherfucker!’ Lance cried, before laying a boot to the ribcage. ‘What the fuck else is there? Huh? What the fuck else is there?’ He kicked him again. Stan was either out cold or pretending to be; sometimes lower life forms pretend to be unconscious or even dead, in order to deter further attack from the predators. Like most human instincts, this one has outlived its original use; once upon a time, ‘playing dead’ served to persuade the assailant to seek fresher prey. Regardless, Jordan stepped in as Lance wound up for one more kick, one that probably would have turned the situation into a more serious one.

  ‘We're done with this clown,’ Jordan said. ‘He ain't getting up. Let's go hunting. Keen for a bit of a rumble.’

  Lance eased up and took a step back, breathing heavily. Jordan started to turn away, caught my eye, then turned back towards Stan and gave him a rushing boot to the guts.

  ‘I thought we were done here?’ Lance sneered. His face was red except for the white markings on the bridge of his nose he always got after a good scrap - not that Stan put up much of a fight.

  ‘Yep, we're done,’ Jordan said. He smirked at Lance, then at me, then started walking. Lance unleashed one last axe-kick to the kidneys before following - always has to get the last hit in, old Lance. I could tell he wanted to keep going, but there was no point in doing that now; at a certain point, kicking a man while he's down loses its appeal.

  I walked up to Stan's cowering body and stood over it. I poured the last of my can of Monster on it, then threw the can at the back of its head. The two of us shared a silence as I stared down at him, ready to strike at any sign of motion. As much as I loved pack hunting with my friends, it was the intensity of a one-on-one that I craved - and going toe-to-toe with Stan was at the top of my bucket list.

  He wasn't always a little bitch, old Stan. He used to be a real hard fucker back when he hung around with us, before he got with Lucy and started hanging out with her creepy friends. A real bunch of freakshows, that lot; always lurking around the trees at the back of the field at school, creeping around the suburbs after dark. That's why this town needs predators like us around - to keep weirdos like that from running the show.

  ‘Oi, maggot. You coming or what?’ Lance called. The two of them were waiting for me in the darkness, a few houses down. I nodded and looked back to Stan. He'd gotten off pretty easy, really; there was minimal blood on the pavement, and none of us really went for the face, besides the initial right-hook from yours truly - though this was really a statement more than anything, letting the bitch know straight off the bat what was about to go down.

  I caught up with Lance and Jordan and we moved silently along Holland Road, walking much faster than usual. That's what happens when you lay down Darwin's law, remind the lower life forms where they stand: Your whole walks speeds up - all of your motions do - as your body is agog with too much energy to move slow. This energy also makes it so you can't help but smile; but it's not a contented or happy smile like when you're watching a movie or cracking jokes or something. It's different because of what the eyes do. They don't go all slack like in the jester's smile; in the victor's smile, the eyes get sharper and more focused, making everything clearer and more fluid. It's the certainty that one is, without a doubt, at the top of the food chain that allows one to fully embrace the carnivorous, predatory mode of operating: Deft, mobile, unrelenting, and lacking in the confusion and cowardice that keeps the lower life forms at the bottom.

  ‘What now?’ Jordan's face was a perfect example of the victor's grin. His walk could almost be mistaken for a strut, but those of us who know the feeling know that it's simply a byproduct of superiority,

  ‘Let's find the rest of those junkie faggots,’ Lance replied, manic, ecstatic, clearly unsatisfied by our victory. ‘Michael and Robbie and shit, all those little creeps. They can't be too far. Let's fuckin' hunt, bitches. I'm keen to fuckin' hunt.’ You can always tell when Lance has been in a fight, even though he rarely walks away with any scars or bruises; the prematurely thinning crop of sparse, black hairs collect together to form thick, greasy strands that look like dreadlocks. He hates this, associating dreadlocks with druggies, and has developed a post-fight nervous habit of running his hands through his hair.

  ‘Alright. Let's go down Witham Street. Goes past that park they always hang out in,’ Jordan said, shaking his arms around as he walked, breaking into the occasional series of air-punches.

  ‘Nah, they'll be in town I reckon,’ Lance said. ‘That bar they all go to.’

  ‘They'll be out and about by now, though. It's past midnight. They'll be at the park; I can guarantee it.’

  ‘Why the fuck would they be at the park? They go to the park before the bar. They go to the park to take the drugs, then go to the bar to drink.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. But then they get drunk and go back to the park.’

  ‘What? Why would they go to the park after the bar? They go to the bar once they're out of drugs and alcohol.’

  ‘Yeah, but then-’

  ‘No. They go to the bar after the park. Of course they go to the bar after the fucking park. Are you even thinking this through?’

  ‘Yeah, that's what-’

  ‘Are you even fucking thinking? They're not going to be in the park. They're going to be at the fucking bar.’

  ‘What makes you so fucking sure-’

  ‘'Cause I fucking said so. We're going to the bar, 'cause that's where they are. If they're not there, we can start some shit with some other wasters. What are we gonna do if they're not at the park? Play on the fucking swings?’

  ‘We could go through the park to get to the bar-’

  ‘We're not going to the fucking park, maggot. We're going straight to the bar. Right Benji?’

  ‘Let's just keep walking, bitches,’ I said. They fell silent once again. I could tell Jordan was trying to lead us towards his place, since he still had his math homework to do - Lance and I did too, but we were in Mr. Greymantle's good books. Either way, we still had Sunday to sort that out. I got the impression that Jordan was simply satisfied by our work with Stan, as well as our little run in with Jeremy Owen earlier on in the night. Lance obviously hadn't got his fix yet. I was ambivalent; I liked the thought of getting the homework out of the way tonight, free up Sunday to get all amped up on energy drinks and get the gloves out, make a day of it, maybe go hunting again at night. But, on the other hand, I was already amping on energy drinks, and somewhere, not too far away, there was a pack of know-it-all clowns fucked up on magic mushrooms who needed reminding that the world is not a nice place and they're never fucking safe. Gotta fight to survive, bitches.

Ned Devlin

A delectable Anxiety coloured the scene as the Amphetamines sped things up in their sneaky little way, much sneakier than the ole Mind Menthol earlier. For reasons best kept to himself, Collin had decided to infect my line with some of the good Doctor's pills, a kind of Speedball Jr, making me think perhaps he'd given Stan the gift of Madness rather than the curse of vacuity he'd promised. I decided not to notice this, my Mind all revved up and happy about Mischief, curious as to what the sly old rascal had planned.

  ‘But nothing cannot exist,’ Robbie replied, ‘or else it would cease to be nothing.’

  ‘Yes, nothing can not exist. It can and will not exist. Non existence is the very definition of nothing,’ Collin countered, leaning back with his beer like a mathematician counting his toes.

  ‘But it could also be said that nothing can't not exist, 'cause then it wouldn't be a thing; everything that is exists.’

  ‘What about nihility?’

  ‘Nihility?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothingness. Are you saying that nothingness can't exist? Or is nothingness the only thing capable of non existence?’

  ‘Well, I guess then there's no such thing as nothingness.... 'Cause nothing is that exact.’

  ‘Correct. Nothing is that exact.’

  ‘Wait, so that means that nothingness is the only thing that is as exact as something not existing at all?’

  ‘Yes, Robbie. Nothingness is, in many ways, comparable to nothingness.’

  ‘But how can you say that nothingness is anything when all that it is isn't?’

  ‘Just as you just did.’

  Then a cloud of Laughter between the two of them, me and Lucy not included, Collin not really either, so just Robbie, really, then Collin concluding: ‘I'll leave that with you to transcribe, robbie, since you're better with that kind of thing. Negative existence really is quite the thing to contemplate. Better do it now, otherwise it'll just be like a dream tomorrow, as you know. That alchemical shit about the three states of matter, too. These are the kinds of things you really need to hold on to.’

  It wasn't the sort of thing you had to think about, Collin's Plan, written in bold red fractals all around him: This was a part of his Harmonics that Robbie and I were not to be a part of, except for our departure, which was like a fundamental part of it. I was tempted to indulge him, since his Harmonics were always a pleasure to behold, but decided instead to light Lucy's hair on fire, her being the sort of girl to jump and flinch about in good Humour: ‘Ow! Ned!’ yelping and jerking about, a funny little dance to get the limbs all loosened up for a bit of “how's your father”, had she been the sort for that kind of carry on. As intended, we all just kind of grooved along with it, even Lucy allowing herself a proper Laugh: So missed by her was my being excitable that it reminded her of everything nice and pure about our friendship, that being the one with Collin and Robbie too, more a constellation, really, the intricate Dynamics almost too complex to really exist at all. It had me sickly sweet inside, this little kodak moment of the Minds, but I quickly unsnuggled myself from it, having sort of enjoyed the dastardly turn my Thoughts had taken earlier.

  'Man, it's been a cool night,' Robbie started, stepping out of the Silence, unaware that I had secretly tied his mindlaces together in the quiet and tripping straight into a stream of incoherent psychobabble: 'Just like, being able to go into my head for a bit without it getting all weird. Like, whenever it went quiet between us, we'd all be following the same train of thought in our heads; like before, Lucy, when you said something about, uh, patterns and, like, seeing stuff you wouldn't normally, uh.... Yeah, but when you said that, I'd been thinking about how the ultimate kind of enlightenment would be to look at a Rorschach - like, one of those ink-blot tests - and seeing it in a way that doesn't reflect any of your own obsessions, or, uh ... but yeah, I'm pretty sure we were all discussing it on like a psychic level, filtered through our own passageways.... It's cool that we didn't need to explain ourselves to each other. People shouldn't be so scared of communal silence,' pretty much becoming the antithesis of his little Idea with his, like, pretty much completely physical outburst, removing himself from the private psychic party. This would be a comment that would snowball into a farewell, further entwining Lucy's and Collin's mindlaces, with me pledging allegiance to the Harmonics, at least for Now.

  Can I stay at your place tonight, Robbie? I changed the topic of the telepathic conversation he just killed, a kind of down payment for his services.

  ‘Anyway, I might head home in a bit, get all this writing down.... You can stay on the couch if you want, Ned.’

  I saw with my Mind, which saw the mechanisms at work much clearer than my eyes, that Collin had a real hearty sort of inside grin at that and me for organising it for him, Robbie still clinging too much to the good fellowship of our mutual Intoxication to say what he had in Mind without outside prompting.

  ‘That’s a good idea, robbie,’ said the lizard at the control panels of Collin’s Mind, ‘you should definitely write down that shit about the three states of consciousness. I’d be real down read it, I reckon you're on to something there. To be honest, I got this other shit on my mind right now, but we should get to the bottom of it tomorrow.’ So modest was Collin’s candour that it shook Robbie up inside and sent his soul rushing home to sort his Thoughts out on paper, just needing now for his body to shake off its imaginary social obligations so it could follow.

  ‘Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do, I think. I got this idea of how to draw it....’ Robbie was still in his seat, but his soul was thrashing about in the angles and clutter and patterned faces screaming out of the negative spaces of his diagram. What was now needed was confirmation that his departure would be one of Good Spirits, not one that leaves our mental caves all drafty and wondering what went wrong. This came quickly in the form of a premature goodbye from Collin: ‘Yeah man, you gotta do what you gotta do. I’ll give one of you a text tomorrow anyway, I've got nothing planned,’ with a kind of push in the direction of home disguised as a friendly pat on the shoulder. I complemented his subtle push with a little pull in the same direction by standing up, with a quick nod in the direction of Lucy and Collin, at the night as it was and had been, that said: Farewell, and we shall meet again.

  Lucy’s callow eyes followed Robbie up to me as he stood, telling us that all was well and she understood, nay, encouraged our decision, but all her words were running the risk of coming out all Nonsense at the moment.

  ‘Enjoy.’ Collin’s eyes flashed clarity at us telling us it was time to walk, so we did.

It wasn't much Nothing at all before we came across Something, that being a kind of coagulating puddle of blood where Stan had realised that Michael’s company was not all well and good, Robbie going: ‘Fuck, I wonder if Michael’s okay....’ and trailing off into Thoughts of flesh drilling inward, which had me wanting a little more Devilry before the night was done with. So I took us on a quick detour toward the street where Collin lived, Robbie following me like a faithful dog, all the while going: ‘Where are we going, Ned? It’s quicker if we go that way....’ over and over but phrased a little differently each time so as not to confuse himself with any sort of clockwork robot kind of being, a handy little trick to keep the acceptance of stagnation at bay. I said back to him: '...' but supported it with a smile that sort of held the silence in place so it wouldn’t droop down to the wavelength where nothing was said.

  So then it was a quick stop at Collin's to tickle the ole tonsils on his doorstep, though what came out had no chunks worth noting, me being on the liquid and powder diet lately. This was a special little Hello from me to Collin, to take him back to the days of old when the two of us would scramble around all bright eyed and bushy tailed, signing our names in bodily fluids at people's dwellings as a sort of thing that could be read as a ‘Hello’ or a ‘Fuck you’, or even a kind of overstated ‘Never mind,’ as it was just another wee thing we did as we went about doing whatever it was we did when Time was so very expendable . . .

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Robbie.

  Kind of a loaded question there, mate, I replied, feeling almost a little warm about my friend's Young Soul: The boy wouldn't know Beauty if it choked to death right in front of him.

  ‘You're messed up, man. Let's get out of here.’

  And so we went about our walk with no further delay, his Mind being of that nebulous state wherein things could quite quickly become a kind of verbose Nothingness if the thing that gives the Idea strength to stand up and go about its business on its own isn’t written down or in some way immortalised in Time: ‘Frozen by means of the pen,’ Robbie would be saying in his head, if he was truly involved with his Metaphor, which he most certainly was.

Tracey Colombera

I'm laughing at Rory freaking out about the footsteps coming up the stairwell. He looks funny trying to get his shirt on, and he's putting it on inside out. He probably spent all morning deciding which one to put on.

  The door swings open and it's just Michael. I'm happy to see him for some reason. His face is bloody and his nose is crooked and a bit squished in like an Islander's. He's got black marks around both of his eyes. He stands in the doorway for a second before coming in and sitting on my chair to wait for something. He has dry, brown blood splattered on his hoody, which complements the print. Some of his hairs are clumped together. From the blood.

  ‘Up to Brutus? What’s the damage?’ Rory asks. Rory's shirt is back to front as well as inside out.

  ‘Fuckin' Stan, the cunt. Took some shrooms and flipped out, gave me a fuckin' stomping’ Michael says. I wonder which Stan he's talking about. I can't imagine our Stan doing that.

  ‘Who, Old School?’ Rory asks.

  ‘Yeah, crazy cunt. Still owes me five bucks. Fuckin’ stupid crew cut and shit, looks like a fuckin’ - Aye, that dumbass fuckin’ apologised to a chair the other day in woodshop, no shit, knocked a fuckin’ chair off a desk and apologised to it, said sorry and was off. Dumb cunt. But yeah, fuckin’ took me out, like sucker punched me over some shit with that hash from Hayden, reckoned it was laced and shit, reckoned I was trying to get him going. I told him, I said you can fuck of with that shit, but nup, boom, cunt fuckin’ got me on the ground, no shit, fuckin’ stomped my face, full boot, fuckin’ crunched me. Like, fuck man, what happened to just fuckin’ open hander slaps or just like roshambo to fuckin’ see who gets a charlie horse, just fuckin’ lay it down and settle the score. Now it’s all this fuckin’ like cunts in the trees and shit ready to just fuckin’ jump you if you get their mate on the ground, like fuckin’ what, cunt? Do I gotta fuckin’ roll crew deep these days just so I can get smart to some cunt and not get pummelled by fuckin’ ninjas in the trees? Fuckin’ in my day, like back at intermediate, back when I was calling the fuckin’ shots, things were different back then. Cunts just fuckin’ sorted shit out. None of this psycho shit like that fuckin’ Stan cunt.’

  Silence. Michael’s looking from me to Rory, but Rory and me are just looking at each other.

  ‘...So, it was all a big misunderstanding?’ Rory says. I'm trying not to laugh. So is Rory, I think.

  ‘Aye? Nah, fuck off with that shit, cunt. I told you, cunt fuckin’ jumped me. Full just raged out at me over some beef about some weed he got off me ages ago. Cunt knew what he was buying. Showed it to him first and everything, can’t say shit. Fuckin'...’

  ‘True that. So what were you doing with that breather anyway?’

  ‘I wasn’t finished, cunt.’

  ‘Oh sorry. What were you saying?’

  ‘Fuck...it’s gone now. It was something good, though. I reckon. That’s why you never interrupt a cunt, Rory. I was fuckin’ on to something then, and you cut me off, and now I’ve forgot. Could’ve been a fuckin’ epiphany right 'round the corner there.’

  ‘Right, yeah, sorry bud. Anyway. You were tribing it with Old School?’

  ‘Yeah, I was with the Vampires at The Dissaray. They were all shroomed out and shit, getting irie. Trippy as cunts.’ I wonder what Stan was doing with the Vampires since I'd heard he was running with the Straightedges now.

  ‘No shit. Bandit’ Rory says. He's sits down on my dresser. ‘You get amongst?’

  ‘Oh shit yeah, had a mean munch’ Michael says. He won't stop shifting around in my chair. ‘Yeah hard out, trippy shit bro, walls moving and shit, monsters jumping out at you. Crazy shit.’ I think he's lying but I don't say anything. I kind of like Michael's lies. He's a good liar. I try to catch his eye, but it's the Michael show now.

  ‘You're crazy bud. Full get stuck in a trip taking that shit’ Rory says. ‘Like that lad from school, Endy Ned. Remember him? Damo was saying today, reckons he used to be normal, like back in year ten. Then just charged it on the shrooms one day and boom, stuck in a trip. Full schizo...You remember the lad?’

  ‘'Course I remember Endy, I was just having a fuckin’ beer with the cunt. Fucked as cunt, though. Doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on. But that’s the thing with all that psychedelic shit. Some cunts can't handle it, make themselves crazy just thinking about shit. Not me, though.’ Michael points to himself with his thumb. He's got a nice ugly crooked smile. I always smile when he does.

  ‘Better hope not. Not if you’re gonna be tribing with the strange’ Rory says. He reaches down into my top draw and gets the tin of weed. ‘I think I'll just stick to healthy moss sloths.’ He throws the tin onto the bed next to me. I put in on my stomach and start shredding the weed by hand. I notice Michael's clenching his jaw and realise I want some of his dexies. I manage to catch his eye now that I've got the weed. I tap my nose and raise my eyebrows.

  ‘Fuck, I dunno. I was gonna go to the hospital, but I reckon you can just do it yourself’ he says. I think about telling him what I meant, but don't.

  ‘What, sort the beak?’ Rory says.

  ‘Yeah, fuckin' oath. You just make like a triangle with your hands at the top and yank it down, straightens it right out.’

  ‘You sound like you’ve done this before.’

  ‘Fuck yeah, heaps. Easy.’ I think he's lying again, but I want to see him try.

  ‘Bandit. Off you go then Fido, no hez’ Rory says, smiling.

  ‘Yeah hold up’ Michael says. He gets off my chair and kneels down on the floor and makes a temple shape on the bridge of his nose with both hands. Then he changes his mind and uses one hand, thumb on one side, fingers on the other. He yanks down. Both him and Rory yell and I can't tell whose voice is whose. He lifts his head and looks from Rory to me. It worked. His nose is actually straighter. Still not perfect though. It's been crooked since his run in with the Straightedges last holidays. Suits him, though. He's a crooked kind of guy.

  ‘Fuck, how's that? Aye?’ he beams.

  ‘That was pretty wild’ Rory says, nodding.

  ‘Spacey?’ Michael looks at me. I smile only half fake at him. A stringy vein of blood and snot dribbles out of his nose. He cups his hands under it and there's just one thick, sticky strand dangling out. He puts his hands under the front of his hoody and uses it like a cloth to wipe his face and pull out the bloody mucous strand. His nose follows through with a comical dribble then stops. He wipes his upper lip with his hoody and just ends up smearing more blood on his face. I find the whole process repulsive but strangely fascinating. Like most things Michael does.

  ‘Shit...Swedish then?’ Rory says, still bobbing his head a little.

  Michael smiles at him. Then at me. Then he lunges onto the floor and slaps both of his bloody hands on the open pages of my English book. He looks at the marks and cracks up laughing.

  ‘Oh fuck, Michael’ I say, noting how whiny my voice is. I toss Rory the joint I've rolled and scrunch my face up at Michael.

  ‘Oh what? You actually care about your school books?’ Michael says. I try to leer at him but end up shrugging and looking at the ceiling when I realise I don't.

  Rory picks up the joint from the floor and lights it up. We pass it around silently. Michael's only ever silent when there's a joint going around. I smoke it when it comes around to me even though I'm already too stoned. Rory pours himself and Michael a cider without offering me one. I'm pretty close to spinning out so I don't mind. Once the weed gets them dopey they talk about getting Amelia over here to even out the ratios. Michael calls her and finds out she's with Damon, meaning getting them around won't solve the ratio issue. They start talking about double teaming me, and Rory claims I sprung a leak earlier when we were making out. I give him a disgusted look but he ignores me and I realise they've been passing the joint between the two of them and wonder if I've gone invisible.

  ‘Are you gonna pass that on?’ I ask Michael. He's been talking with it burning between his fingers for ages.

  ‘Oh shit, sorry doll’ he says, handing me the joint. The sticky blood on his lips forms a stringy curtain over his mouth when he talks, making sick smacking noises between syllables. Everything about him is a mess. I take a puff and realise I only asked for it to remind them I exist. I think about bum puffing it but don't. I thought there would be blood on the joint. I sort of wanted there to be blood on it. I don't know why. I'm not a goth or anything. It's just nice to taste something different sometimes.

  I pass it along to Rory. Michael says ‘Where your parents at Spacey? They're out of town, right?’ For a second I'm glad he acknowledged me. But then realise I liked it better when I was invisible.

  ‘Yeah, they're in Indonesia. I think...’ I try to think when they're supposed to be back but there's nothing there.

  ‘Oh mean. Well Amelia and Damo are coming over with rum and coke, cunts better have woke the fuck up, aye Rory?’ he says. Rory nods and says something meaningless. I start wondering whether I care that he's inviting people around to my house and decide that it's fine. Trying to change Michael would be like killing a child. I'll need some dexies if I'm going to keep drinking though.

  Michael and Rory discuss Amelia's body and what she's like in bed and I feel like Michael's lying again because he's just agreeing with everything Rory says. I think Rory might be lying too. I think Amelia's only ever been with Damon and Collin. She has a lot of self respect. I don't believe Rory that she let him 'galaxy' on her face. It's funny to think that Rory and Michael are just making up a fictional version of Amelia between them. Rory's probably repeating Damon, and Michael's good at making up stories. I try to interject to ask if Michael has any dexies, but I've gone invisible again. I start to wonder if they both know I'm too stoned and are saving me the embarrassment of turning down a joint. It's nice of them if they are.

  Rory starts doing something on his phone and Michael finally acknowledges me. He nods sideways at Rory. I guess that means he doesn't want to share with him. He's a little weird about Rory sometimes. It's fair enough, because Rory makes fun of him all the time. I'm not sure if Michael knows. It's none of my business.

  I ask Michael if he wants me to give him head. He says yes, so Rory goes into the lounge to play on his phone until we're done. Bro code or something. Once we're alone Michael actually gets his dick out and I laugh at him and tell him to put it away and get his dexies out. I hear the TV turn on in the lounge. Rory could possibly be a virgin. I don't think it matters, really. It's all pretty funny. Not laugh out loud funny. But funny.

  Michael grabs the mirror from my dressing table and pops two pills onto it. It's more than enough for all three of us. He must be sour at Rory about something. We crush one up and Michael tries to have a line but his nose is too blocked from all the blood. I end up snorting the whole lot while Michael holds my hair back to show me his gentle side. He decides to shelve his last pill, and stands up and does it right in front of me. I laugh at the idea that he might think of the act as seduction, then get a chill when I realise he probably does.

  With some persuading I do end up giving him head. He's had a hard night and still shared his dexies with me. He wants me to kneel on the floor while he sits on my bed. I don't like kneeling so I make him lie on my bed. He complains a little, but I don't listen because it's more for himself that he's complaining. A lot of the things Michael says are for himself. Once you know him well, you can tell whether you need to listen. It's a lot less than most people think.

  He wears his pants so low that I don't even have to undo his top button. The dexies turn it into an art form and he ends up coming in seconds. I plan to keep his cock in my mouth until it's completely flaccid like Mum always told me to, but it starts hardening up again so I take it out. He lies back with his jeans still below his hips grinning to himself. I crawl over and lie against the headboard next to him. He tries to snuggle up with me, but I'm too wired and push him away. He starts telling me how I'm a good as bitch, but his spiel drifts seamlessly into an angry rant about how he's going to kick Stan's ass.

  I get up and head to the lounge once he starts repeating himself. He pulls his pants up and follows. I open the door and I can hear voices echoing in the stairs, so I turn back. Michael stands there looking dumb and I tell him I'm going to get changed. He goes out and I hear Damon say ‘Whoa, what the fuck happened to you?’ in the exact same tone as Rory. That's something that happens a lot. 

  I close the door and put on a long sleeve shirt and Rory's hoody and pull some black jeans over my tights. I imagine how I might look and dislike every possibility. I put my stomper boots on and grab my iPod and creep down the hallway. I feel kind of bad for leaving Amelia with those three, but it's probably good for her. She always gets her way.

  I take a left before the lounge and head down the stairwell. My body feels nice and tense and everything I think about seems interesting. I don't want to waste this high getting hit on by Damon and Rory. I'm kind of enjoying this.

  It's raining a bit outside. I want to feel it for some reason, so I take Rory's hoody off and leave it in the hallway for him to find. I put my earphones in and the first song that comes on is by Queen. I don't know what it's doing on my iPod but I listen to it anyway. I pretend I'm listening to it ironically, but I get into it once I'm walking. It's a good song, really. I'm not sure where I'm going, but I'm glad I'm walking. I take a left turn and light a cigarette. The street is dark and quiet except for the whistling wind and a tiny bit of rain. I like it better out here.

Ned Devlin

Entering Robbie’s house involved a small degree of Paranoia, as his parents weren’t the sorts of folk who appreciated the inspiriting ambiance of the wee hours, often hiding from them altogether, in fact, so we wasted no time getting to his room. And what fascinatingly grim dwelling it had become: Walls and floor covered head to toe with little sheets of paper filled to the corners with Mind webbing, rubbish bin now populated exclusively by beer bottles and tinfoil, meaning his parents were no doubt fearing their son being set adrift into the seas of Chaos, them being much sharper than they let on.

  ‘Hey I’m gonna be writing some shit down, you can sleep or hang around or whatever. There’s towels in the bathroom if you wanna dry off,’ Robbie said, vibrating at his desk. I lurked as a Succubus for a bit, hovering over his shoulder, but quickly grew bored of what his pen had to say, and spied his little metal pipe camouflaged into the Chaos of his desk. To my amusement, I found that the Weed I had liberated from Collin's clutches was not Weed at all, but rather a small bag of Salvia Divinorum, invoker of the Great Static, the channel between channels, and a clever little Prank on the whole.

  As payment for such a psychopathically thoughtful gift, I puffed deep and slow, and created a plinth of outsmoke around Robbie and the lungs I assume it was destined for for as long as it had been a part of the Harmonics. After getting no reaction from my oblivious if slightly irritated friend, I used all the spare sheets of Reality to move my body around in new ways, my right hand reaching over the back of my head to grip my top set of teeth, pulling my toppermost head all the way back to where it touched me between my shoulders. Then, with my other hand that felt so left out, I reached through my solar plexus from behind and gave the bottom part of my jaw a good tug, kind of peeling my face down to my shoulders, leaving me with like this turticular mound of flesh poking out the top of my gasping mouth, my oesophagus forming the outer layer of my new head.

  I flailed around for a wee moment in this new state, looking for any evolutionary advantages that might persuade me to stay. But after some Time this too had me bored, so I peeled my face further down my body so the corners of my mouth made a real nifty noise like tearing cellophane as they ripped to incorporate my torso into the pseudo face poking out the top of my skin suit, me now kind of topless, displaying my blackened, maggot infested rib cage as a sort of head, with my neck hole now being like the single growth often seen on the back of a dragon’s head. Though this little contortion was rather intriguing, it meant I had to go about without the use of my arms, them still being plugged into my hand skin. I contemplated briefly the corpse suckling dragonflies around me before impulsively tearing my hands free from their skincuffs, leaving loose, empty armskin dangling from my waist, appearing, I’d imagine, to emanate from the sides of my new head, like two turkey wattle ended rabbit ears listening to the ground for signs of Activity . . .

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Ned?’ Robbie turned to me, treating himself to a break in Concentration, eyes wild with Ideas, changing channels left and right. Indignantly, I put my torn shirt back on and flopped onto his bed, me now being a sort of flaccid skinsack and silent stare: A fellow of the highest moral standards, not willing to be a tool to aid Robbie’s procrastination.

  ‘You want to draw or put some music on or something? Grab some paper if you want, I kinda gotta sort all this - get all this shit down....’ Robbie said, aiming his words at me but getting them all over his page since that’s where his mouth was pointed, ‘Fuck! I just wrote that down, fuck’s sake man, fuckin’....’ all caught up in the urgency of erasing it, a race with his own brain to make sure he could keep writing without losing his Thoughts to the bi hemispherical domination efforts of the Nonsense state, a state now so powerful that every other part of his brain was in debt to it, having had to borrow so many resources after losing their own to the great Tryptamine tidal wave that had left all their facilities in ruin. This was no race for me to be involved in, me being more a long distance sort of wonderer, so I retired to the living room for a spot of receding, ignoring his question altogether.

Rather than unconsciousness dividing the days, it was a long stretch of Christian rants covering channels one through four, leaving only Static as an alternative, one whose warm glow gradually took my attention with pareidolic sitcoms and a few high quality documentaries about my Subconscious, all my formless little friends inside so very excited to have shapes and like some kind of vague corporeality, which I imagine would be quite a treat for those who actually appreciate it, even gaining a sort of atheistic bent from the whole ordeal, competing with the word of the Great Sir Himself, filtered through some very malevolent mental passageways indeed.

  At some point, Kenny, that being Robbie’s father, made his presence known, complaining about the disastrous consequences of the religious cretins on his sleep. Sharp as a tack, that Kenneth, always has been, able to see so clearly what was going on in his ungrateful son’s little world. I told him that the lady occupying the screen was a bad person and he assured me that she was just stupid before returning to his moustache-ed Dreams, me sat shuddering, wondering what repressed Fantasies of Depravity would be rearing their ugly heads in the Mind of my tired friend, then changing the channel back to Static and turning the volume back up.

Tracey Colombera

It’s getting early. I’m walking fast along Hunterway Street with Bob Dylan playing on the iPod. I don’t know whose the iPod is. I’m glad it isn’t mine. I’m sick of my music.

  I can see two people in the distance, making gestures beneath a street light. There’s a dog with them. I think I’ll get to them just as Jokerman ends. I'll stop and talk to them if I do.

  It’s Stan Richards with a bleeding lip and Kit, Rory's Dad, and a dog. A kelpie. I guess it’s Kit’s. It looks like Kit. Same colour. Stan is sitting hunched over on the curb, facing me away from the other two. Looks like Michael got a hit in for once. Kit is standing a bit behind him with a bottle of wine, swaying and mumbling. I stand beside him and look up at him until he notices me. He’s had a haircut and he’s wearing a suit jacket, but he’s got no shoes on and has a filthy beard and the bottoms of his pant legs are ragged. He flinches when he sees me, which makes him lose his balance.

  ‘Oh! Hello there love. What’re you doing out and about on your own then? Could be dangerous for a tasty wee thing like you.’ He’s not really slurring his words tonight, but he’s got a lot of saliva in the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Most people can’t see me, so I’m safe’ I say.

  He looks at me and flinches again, then nods and bobs his head around for a little while. He steadies himself again and shuts his eyes tightly, before opening them wide at me like a blooming flower. They’re pale brown with yellowed whites and tiny black flecks for pupils. He says ‘I got good eyes, y’see. See? I can see the invisible. Into the invisible world...’ he squints around for a few seconds then smiles and nods and says ‘You wanna know why?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He leans back and stares at the fence behind me. He says nothing until I ask what he's doing.

  ‘Exactly. What do you think I was looking at just now?’

  ‘Dunno. What were you looking at?’

  ‘I just got a good fuckin’ eyeful of your ass, love!’ he shouts. He doubles over in silent gagging laughter.

  ‘Ah fuck!’ Stan cries. The dog’s trying to lick the blood off his face. He’s pushing him away with one hand and covering his face with the other.

  ‘Get out of it, Weasel,’ Kit barks. Weasel obeys and sits next to Kit's feet, licking his lips. Kit looks at something behind me and says ‘Peripherals, love. That’s how it’s done. It’s what I was just saying to bloody Sam over there. See, I’m a fuckin’ predator, alright. I’m not gonna lie. Just a pervert though, mind you. Not a bloody rapist or nothing. Just your friendly neighbourhood predator. Anyways...yes...What was I saying?’

  ‘How you could see me?’

  ‘Ah, righto. So you’re invisible, are ya?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Right, well that’s all the fucking TVs and all that bloody crap...They’re all fuckin’ strobe lights in't they, fried us all half fuckin’ blind. That’s why no one sees auras anymore. You know what an aura is, love? ‘Course ya do, you’re a fuckin’ fairy, inya?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well what the fuck are ya then? You a bloody phantom or something?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  ‘Right, well, yeah alright. Makes sense. Anyway, the reason I can see the likes of you is ‘cause, as a perv, I use my peripherals. Not the bloody strobe fried focal points like every legal bastard out there. So, right, ‘cause I use my peripherals, I can see into the other world right as fuckin' rain. Most people see it, but not clearly like me, ‘cause their peripherals are all out of practice 'cause they just look straight at stuff, instead of on the sly like me. That’s why I can see phantoms. Like you.’

  ‘I’m not actually invisible. I just don’t get noticed a lot.’

  ‘Ah, right. I see. Well what you’ve got is a little aura, inya? Y’see, the thing about people is they think they notice people when they look at them, but that’s just part of the story. It’s everyone’s auras that’s what makes us notice each other. By the time you get with a fella, right, your auras’ve probably been gettin’ it on for a good hour or so...Speaking of which...’ 

  It's silent for a while. Kit bobs his head as if there's music playing. I look at him until he explains himself.

  ‘Well, yeah, I’m no rapist, right, but I’m a man with my needs. And predatory, mind you. And you’re a nubile young lady without much to do, right?’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So that us, then?’

  He looks me in the eyes. I feel compelled to leave, but Kit's kind of entertaining. I like him better than Rory.

  ‘You have to make out with Stan first, then we'll talk’ I say.

  ‘Who? Ah, fuckin’ Sam, ya mean? No fuckin’ worries.’

  He gets on all fours and tries to kiss Stan. Stan screeches and leaps up to his feet and shoves Kit into the fence.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing? Stay the fuck away, man.’ He puts his fists up, agitated.

  ‘Ah, you’re an old fashioned geezer, inya?' Kit says, relaxing against the fence. ‘Well, relax, mate. Like I said, I’m not a rapist, alright? You don’t want anything happening, nothing’s gonna happen. And you too, love.’

  Stan stares at Kit and I with big scared eyes, then shakes his head and turns to walk away. Kit steps after him and grabs him by the shoulder. Stan spins around and says ‘What? What the fuck do you want man?’ His hands aren't fists, but they're up ready.

  ‘Come on, here.’ Kit hands him his bottle of wine. ‘Go on, mate, help yourself. Y’ve had a rough one.’

  Stan takes the bottle and stares at it in his hand. He doesn't seem to understand it. Kit stands there looking from me to Stan, grinning. Weasel sniffs something in the gutter, tail wagging slowly.

  I say ‘You drink that, Stan. To feel good,’ because I feel bad for getting Kit on his case. I didn't mean to cause trouble. I just thought it would be funny. It was, kind of.

  ‘I can’t feel good.’ His voice is weak, but the rest of him seems very alert and energised.

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m rotten inside.’

  ‘Aye, I don’t wanna hear that’ Kit says. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you mate. You’re an old fashioned geezer, alright? You're a fuckin' roughneck. A lad. A scrapper from way back, inya? Inya?’

  Stan grunts.

  ‘Inya?’

  Stan's looking at the ground.

  ‘Inya!?’

  ‘Fuck I don’t know man. Yes?’

  ‘Yeah?’ Kit’s riled up now. ‘Well I’m a fuckin’ scrapper too! Come on then, dukes up.’ He puts his fists up and bounces on his toes a few times before losing his balance and staggering toward Stan. He takes a clumsy jab at Stan. Stan easily dodges it, stepping back.

  ‘Fuck's sake. Why can’t every cunt fuck off and let me fuckin'...’

  ‘Just pretend you’re small’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Stan and Kit both look at me. I suddenly feel very visible.

  ‘Imagine you’re real small. Inside yourself, kind of. Then people won’t notice you.’

  ‘Ah, quite right there love’ Kit says, happy again. ‘Contract if you wanna be ignored, expand to be noticed. Simple bloody physics, really.’

  ‘Fuck this shit. I'm out,’ Stan says. He drops the bottle of wine on the grass and walks off, mumbling to himself.

  ‘Right, mate, fair call. Well, remember what I said about the frilly necked bastards. They’re fucking everywhere these days’ Kit says, but Stan is walking away with his head down. Trying to go invisible, I suppose.

  Kit and I both watch him wander down the road. After a while, Kit throws a piece of rubbish on the ground in front of me and says ‘That us then, love? Old mate's gone.’ I bend down to look at it and it’s a condom. Kit’s peripherals scan me up and down and look around inside me. I try to flare my aura but nothing happens. Stan wanders into some light in the distance and turns down South Hynne road. Weasel starts licking my hand.

  ‘No. But thanks’ I say, scratching Weasel's head.

  ‘You’ve got a lovely body. I’m sorry I’m too old’ he says.

  I nod.

  ‘And your aura. You’ve got a nice, firm aura. Very taut and...’ he fades into a satisfied silence, smiling. He surrenders his weight to the fence and closes his eyes, sliding down into a slump. Weasel licks his face but it doesn’t rouse him.

  ‘Thanks’ I say. I walk off through the park towards Witham Street. The moon is almost full, but there's no stars.

Collin Callahan

Once again, the night went exactly as planned. With ned and robbie out of the picture, robbie presumably working on the amphetamine fuelled homework I'd assigned for him, I took a dishevelled lucy for a walk through the woods to find some more mushrooms and enjoy the healing presence of the trees and the air. Her love of nature combined with my powerful sexual presence helped her shed the befoulment stan's trip had imposed upon her. But before her glow returned, I made sure to change the past in her vulnerable little mind to one where her and stan were no longer an item, his actions embodying the end of an era.

  Unbeknownst to her, all wrapped up in the pleasures of nature's quiet, the creek we followed took us directly to her mum's house, where I serenaded her with a poetic description of the inner workings of black holes. Her ultra sensitive biochemical response system made it easy to persuade her to an orgasm that had her quite unaware that every time we kissed we were sharing chewed up Valium. This helped me in many ways. In the short term, it meant minimal time was wasted lingering around acting like the night’s events were as special for me as they were for her. On a more midterm basis, it meant I could help myself to the some of her high quality Afghani hash, which I’d had my eye on for a little while. My long term plan was one I tried to keep in the back of my mind where it would grow and mutate by its own accord, like alligators flushed into the sewers that reach grotesque proportions, unchecked by human intervention... But lucy’s Valium consumption would surely help my lurking reptile brain do what it had to do.

  So without too much trouble, I left the situation in time to catch the first navy hint of the rising sun, my wits still sharpened with Psilocybin. On a whim, I took a quick detour down South Hynne road, where stan lived with his parents. In accordance with my plans, his bedroom light still shone in the otherwise darkened house. I smiled real nice and warm inside at the thought of him sitting up all alone, stewing in the juices of his mental breakdown. After a moment of job satisfaction, I decided that it was necessary, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that he be asked to explain himself to his parents in this state. So, after taking a long alcohol piss on his front door, I gave the wheel of his father’s car a good boot to set off the alarm. I then jogged lightly to the end of the street where I sat on the curb to make sure the lights flicked on in his parents’ room, which they did, before making my way home at my own pace, pleasantly energised and fairly certain no one would be home to make anything matter.

When I got home, I found that Ned, the dirty cunt, had decided to vomit on my doorstep. I allowed myself a brief smile about Ned and his ways before going inside, careful not to get any vomit on my shoes.

  As expected, the house was empty and silent, allowing me the pleasure of using the stereo system without reservation. I put on Echoes before rolling a spliff with lucy’s hash and Mum’s tobacco. As I lay there on the couch, puffing away augustly, watching the sky come to light through the window, I decompressed and let the sound of The Great Gig in the Sky take me away.

  Having been a night of great success, I was happy to allow myself a brief indulgence of the imagination. Eyes closed but very much awake, I drifted through a vast expanse of sand dunes and canyons lit up glorious red by the planet’s twin suns, both red giants some twenty or thirty astronomical units away. The planes of this alien land were moving and shifting around with what, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a grand, orgiastic battle between great armoured centaurian apes and a mass of sentient humanoid vinelike entities, armed with dazzlingly decorated insect legged spears that shimmered and reacted with a life and mind of their own, all fighting and fucking to the inner pulse of Clare Torry’s magnificent vocalisations.

  After a fleeting eternity in that world, I was set into orbit by the rising sound of Learning To Fly-

Can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky

Tongue tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit

Soaring heavenwards, I used my last few moments of self awareness to assure God that I most certainly was not tongue tied and twisted, and I’d be with him soon. As I spoke, the ice moved gradually from the tips of my wings and limbs to the centre of my chest, layers flaking off me in the immense wind. Once my chest was seized by the utmost of absolute cold, the disintegration made its way up to where my brain was kept, leaving just the imagination of matter screaming through the infinite whiteness with no reference point except for pure velocity, uninhibited by physics.

  Since all the amphetamines and shrooms wouldn’t be letting me sleep for some time, I decided instead to spend the morning in the void, hurtling through the endless labyrinths at unthinkable speeds.

Robbie Marks

‘... to wake up, it's nine o'clock!’ Mum's shrill voice penetrated the depths of my subterranean thoughts. Inside, I scrambled to find the remnants of my dreams, but ended up with just a flashing room full of young girls that was an aquarium when viewed from the outside, and the ghostly echo of a frustrated search for something vital.

  ‘Alright…. Give me a minute,’ I droned, listening to her footsteps trail away. My eyes were crusted together and my mind ached and looped strange sentences, but I quickly cheered up upon realising it was a Sunday: This meant no obligations to anyone besides myself, and time to review my notes from last night in peace.

  Stiff, sore, and sober, I threw my blanket off and confronted the morning cold, mentally mapping out my day as I dressed myself in the damp clothes from the nearest pile. First, I decided, I'd have a real decent cup of Milo, possibly with some breakfast if Mum or Dad had decided to fix me any; then, I'd have a long, hot shower, one of my many former rituals that had fast become novelty. After a Milo and a shower, I thought, I'd be revived and ready to sort out my notes.

  Upon entering the kitchen, the reality of the situation froze my movements, shattering my plans for the day: Awaiting me at the table were Mum, Dad, and Ned. I had forgotten that Ned had stayed on the couch; and, in the psychic pain of morning, he represented only another obligation.

  Tentatively, I sat down on the free chair in between Mum and Ned, where my morning Milo sat waiting. Though avoiding their gaze, I could feel the eyes of both Mum and Dad burning into me through the silence, reminding me of my actions the previous night. I decided to postpone my apology, fearing that it would lead to a conversation; this, for some reason, filled me with dread. I'll apologise tomorrow, I told myself. Again.

  ‘Good night then, son?’ Dad said with a knowing, eyebrow-heavy glance, his voice stern but flecked with some sense of amusement I couldn't quite decipher. With a wave of raw anxiety, I realised that I was in no state to be dealing with people. Did he know I took mushrooms last night? It was certainly possible if he had been chatting with Ned that morning; though Ned was not the type to screw anyone over on purpose, the fucker just doesn’t know right from wrong sometimes. Perhaps he was referencing the insolent manner I had talked to Mum the previous night, in which case things were about to get a lot worse for me... Even more chilling was the possibility that he was just asking me a fucking question and making my drug-charred mind recoil in horror. Fuck.

  ‘... Yeah it was alright. Good to see Ned again....’ I said, with a split-second glance toward Ned.

  ‘Bit of a hangover then?’ Dad put his fork down and rested his hands on the table, suppressing a wry smile as he chewed.

  ‘Uh yeah, a little. Had a few drinks ... 'cause Ned's back.’

  I tried to cultivate some silence by avoiding his eyes, but he persisted.

  ‘Hmm. So, your mother said you were being a mouthy little asshole last night.’

  Nauseated, I scanned the table beneath eye-level, breathing through my anxiety. Dad still had a few strips of bacon and a poached egg on his plate. Mum had no food, just a coffee. Ned's neck hung from his shoulders, his face entirely concealed behind his hair. On his plate sat a toasted sandwich with a single bite taken from it.

  ‘Yeah.... Sorry Mum. I was just in a hurry to leave. I didn’t mean to… Uh, yeah,’ I managed, looking vaguely in the direction of her eyes; having them in my field of vision was enough at this point.

  In the silence that followed, I allowed my eyes to lose focus as I tried to summon the fearless inspiration I had felt the previous night, the wild, rebellious spirit I felt sure would stay with me; but all I felt was the submissive, childish anxiety of normality. With a strange sensation of heat, my fear grew into a kind of panic, and I knew I had to leave the situation before it manifested. Without a word, I picked up my Milo and made for my bedroom. I decided to apologise for this act of rudeness, along with last night's, with an all-encompassing apology tomorrow, once I'm feeling better. I'd apologise for everything then.

  Before the relief of solitude could ease my anxiety, the guttural splatter of human vomit echoed from the kitchen and into my very core. I knew instantly that Ned was the culprit, and the fear of how he would deal with the situation alone overpowered all else. After some deliberation, I sighed and returned to the kitchen.

  Dad had stood up from his chair, saying, ‘Hell, you alright buddy?’ looking at Ned with an expression of bewildered sympathy. Mum’s face was pale and detached, already exhausted by the strangeness that always followed Ned up from Cottonwood. Thin, uric vomit dribbled from the edge of the table, dividing itself between Ned's lap and the lino floor. Ned, much to my second-hand embarrassment, sat staring vacantly at his mess.

  Compelled to keep some distance, I stopped at the boundary between the kitchen and the hallway and started babbling anxiously, ‘That your medication screwing with you? I know those pills have a lot of side-effects. Feel free to lie down or something if you’re not feeling well….’

  Ned looked at me, leaking bile from a crooked half-smile, and said, ‘It’s cool. Probably just the shrooms from last night.’

  My chest tightened with both anger at Ned and fear of another drug-talk from my parents. To my surprise, Dad just laughed and shook his head, before walking to the sink; inexplicably, parents tended to think favourably of Ned, despite his subversive nature. Ned's expression suggested that somehow, in his strange little world, it was me who played the fool.

  ‘Fuck's sake Ned, you can deal with that,’ I snapped, before turning and heading back toward my solitude, my patience for Ned's eccentricities finally wearing thin. How long is that fucker going to hang around, I wondered. He had nowhere else to be, and I was bitter that the responsibility had fallen to me; in my wasted state the previous night, I had lost the invisible game of musical chairs we all played and wound up babysitting Ned.

  I closed the door as I returned to my room, relieved to hear the chaos of the kitchen muted into a wordless muffle. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I began the labourious but satisfying task of sorting through my notes. There were pages and pages to look through, and the task of editing it down and transcribing it to my notebook would surely busy me for most of the day.

  Scrambled across the top of the A3 sheet of paper on top of the pile, in a manic, child-like scrawl, was some kind of summary of what was happening in my brain last night:

late awake with mind wide open

awoke from sleep I never found

psilocybin soaked thoughts pin me down

confusion and clarity engaged in hate fuelled coitus

everything suddenly so very clear

I hate to think what I’ll think of my thoughts

tomorrow when daylight's haze sets in

I interpreted it as a cryptic message from my illuminated former-self to my present incarnation - he of the thoughts obscured by ‘daylight’s haze’ - and grappled with the idea for a bit, before giving up on it and searching through the layers of paper on the floor for my more empirical writings. Upon dismissing my poetry, I realised that this was just what my words had predicted; one of those self-fulfilling prophecies that seem to be behind most of what we do, if we look hard enough. Still, though that was indeed quite trippy, I had better things to do than contemplate personality dissociation.

  It was my notes about The Void that I was interested in, but they were spread thin throughout the pages of poems, drawings, and scientific enquiry. Reverse déjà vu, Ned, orgasm.... My anxieties transcended one another in a double-helix formation, manifesting as an odd combination of exhaustion and euphoria, as I readied myself for the journey ahead of me. Enraptured with mystery and wonder, I lay down on my hardwood floor, running my hands through my hair; laughing through my hangover, I basked in the knowledge that as long as I can keep ties with the Hermetic realms of my mind and beyond, away from the prying stare of the absolute, I will always be free.

29/07/2005

Dreams-

To sleep is to surrender oneself to the unlit Waters of the womb, a return to the primordial darkness from which we spawned. But these waters are not a void; just as aphotic life thrives in the inky depths of the ocean, so too do myriad strange and alien lifeforms grow in the nether regions of the mind, untainted by the harsh light of consciousness.

To dream is to illuminate the black Waters of the womb. It is often claimed that most beings dream in black and white, but this is only a half-truth; the dreaming eyes bathe the mindscapes in the eerie silver glow of Moon, a dimmed reflection of the Sun's kaleidescopic radiation that makes visible the denizens of the mind too delicate to stand the test of daylight. In the darkness of night, hypnagogic visions take form - first as a kind of smoke; then, as sentient beings, seducing the mind inward toward the fertile well of dream. It is a form of psychic condensation; Air becomes liquid - to fight or flee is to punch through the tides or trudge through marshlands. But this nascent form of matter also gifts the dreamer with a certain form of flight, as well as the capacity to affect reality on an embryonic level.

The waking senses enkindle dead matter; at dawn, the burning Sun sets Fire to the sleeping Earth. At night, we undergo submersion; the wild winds of the intellect become oceanic and flowing, rising and falling in worship of the gravitational rhythms of the Moon, lunar tides breathing with the ebb and flow of a sleeping beast who has shed the burden of geometry, destined to dance blindly with the orgiastic flowering of existence, until the preternatural Fire of day flares the eyes wide open to face the world alone, remembering only the sensation of forgetting.

Dreams are lives we can't remember.

Lyrical Symmetry Experiment 2- Black Mirror

Format-

1A 2  3  4C 4C 3  2  1B

1  2A 3C 4  4  3C 2B 1

1  2C 3A 4  4  3B 2C 1

1C 2  3  4A 4B 3  2  1C

1C 2  3  4B 4A 3  2  1C

1  2C 3B 4  4  3A 2C 1

1  2B 3C 4  4  3C 2A 1

1B 2  3  4C 4C 3  2  1A

4A 3  2  1C 1C 2  3  4B

4  3A 2C 1  1  2C 3B 4

4  3C 2A 1  1  2B 3C 4

4C 3  2  1A 1B 2  3  4C

4C 3  2  1B 1A 2  3  4C

4  3C 2B 1  1  2A 3C 4

4  3B 2C 1  1  2C 3A 4

4B 3  2  1C 1C 2  3  4A

Dawn fire's ecstasy illuminates, hallucinate creation's endless trick

Free motion navigates unstoppable kaleidoscopes, insensate yonic eyes

Life creates emotion, perilously serenading erotic substrate minds

Fate desires eternal countermotion, episodic memories return late

Wait silent, unmoving, periodic misdevotion manifests phallic hate

We sedate aphotic biology carelessly, devotion negates growth

The sonic vertebrate communicates oblivious surrogates oceans deep

Sick lifeforms recklessly proliferate, ejaculate wherever darkness shone

Insanity manifests psychic tricks, slick feline underhand deviations

Enlightenment's fallacies, topics born of chronic sedation, extrapolate

Destructively myopic city keeps the nation entropic remorselessly

Misanthropic entities contort thee, con artists blaspheming miscroscopic

Telescopic perceptions riding gone seas become secretly catastrophic

Malevolent demonic lation hopes we pity psychotic luminescence

Contemplating creation, sonic vibes hum chthonic sanity diapasons

Meditation's luminous fire flicks quick flashes exposing reality

01/07/2005

The Void-

The Void: Empty, vast, living

Beyond space, time, and information – but not consciousness

The creator and destroyer of everything and nothing

The breathing emptiness where all things meet

'Let the mind become as a flame or a pool of still water.'

The closest one can come to comprehending The Void is to accept being overwhelmed by it

It is to be experienced, not understood

Unfocus your eyes, pay attention to nothing

Do not pursue; stay perfectly still and let it brush past your skin weightlessly

or whisper hypnagogic whispers at midnight

eventually.

It begins with a sensation of rising intensity that spreads throughout the body in such a uniform way as to make the feeling of absolute acuteness become neutral. If circumstances allow, this creates a launching pad for one's consciousness to separate from the body and roam the higher planes until something calls it back to the manifest.

The Psilocybin experience can give one a bird's eye view of the varying degrees of reality between The Void and the manifest. To explore these realms 'on foot' requires supplementation via other means.

Orgasm-

In its most basic manifestation, the orgasm is a tool to facilitate the continuation of life – the chicken produces an egg to create another chicken; the egg produces a chicken in order to create more eggs. This is DNA continuing its own existence on a mass timeline, with all lifeforms existing as expressions of this ultra-temporal lifeforce.

The release of dopamine at the peak of sexual ecstasy is the root of the organism's drive to reproduce; most expressions of the will are subversions of this basic impulse.

Oxytocin, released in higher concentrations in the female organism, bonds the organism to its mate and – directly for the female, indirectly for the male – to its offspring. This release of chemical messengers can be channelled toward fetishes, bonding the organism to abstract concepts.

At the moment of orgasm, the mass of compulsive mental activity blinks, allowing external stimuli to bypass the conscious mind and impress upon the deeper reaches. Thus, one should be wary of their mental and physical environment at this moment. At its highest expression, this lapse in conscious awareness can bring one to a transcendental state of mystical ecstasy, allowing one to glimpse The Void. To achieve this, one must work to separate their sexuality from whatever fetishes and biological drives it has become associated with – this can be achieved by a period of chastity, an exorcism of one's fetishes and fantasies. At this level, the orgasm can become a tool of mystical perception, extending one's consciousness beyond time and space and opening the mind's eye to cosmic forces.

Whether an expression of biological need, a bond of love, or mystical yearning, the orgasm remains a moment of great consequence.

Heart aching loin-like yearning nostalgic for boundless beautiful madness, ecstasy that never quite happened but was forever about to. Static warms sludge-like, sensuous anorgasmia then flaccid, tired, depressed, dead, then screeching! flying wingless like running water climbing vertical, stratospheric pulsing, ozone crater made by soaring earthsperm stopped by intangible limits, an unstoppable force fucking an immovable object, fighting for the future of our race then scooped up off my abdomen and flung down the drain with the rest of the pet goldfish and turtles grown grotesque but still looking at each other understandingly, communication no less valid than anything else, when considered in depth.

Repression-

One who is too swept up in his or her own ego tends to forget the sublime opposing impulses of exploration and hedonism, discarding them in favour of an imaginary mission he could never even define, under the illusion that such impulses were somehow getting in the way.

-Ned Devlin, paraphrased wildly, translated into language, and deciphered 

Awake-

Late awake with mind wide open

Awoke from sleep I couldn’t find

Mushroom soaked thoughts pin me down

Confusion and clarity engaged in coitus

I hate to think what I’ll think of my thoughts

Tomorrow when daylights haze sets in

Alchemy-

Thoughts congeal, becoming coagulated chunks of speech

Which, in a turn of great frigidity, may become concrete through means of pen, achieving immortality

Only to be thawed and ultimately liquidated by the purity of enflamed spirit

That which remains unsaturated in a spectacular display of aetheric power

Or is extinguished in cowardice

Leaving rusted ice and an odour like dead perfume

Psychedelics-

My faith in the visionary states of these chemicals lies in the fact that their effects, at low doses, are enhancements of the pre-existing senses – one is more aware of his senses, as well as his emotions and thought processes. A high dose leads to visionary states, wholly hallucinogenic perceptions of things which are not perceived at all ordinarily. If it weren't for the hyper-sensitivity of low dose trips, I would dismiss these as dream-states and hallucinations; but, given the effects of low dose trips, I cannot deny the validity of these visions, and I feel they must be glimpses at something truer.

04/07/2005

Motivation-

Ego, sex drive, self-preservation:

The triangle of human drives/traps.

Kill or reduce one and the other two will attempt to fill the gap.

Kill or reduce two to blow the other up to spectacular proportions.

Kill all three and be free, but be careful not to kill one drive in the name of another.

Ned is free?

Collin is trapped?

Ego, sex drive, self-preservation, transcendence?

Naming-

Hallucinogen, hallucinogenic: Focused on the wrong aspect, hallucinations, which are more of a byproduct than a primary effect.

Psychomimetic: Mimicking psychosis. Implies that it is a form of insanity, rather than enlightenment.

Entheogen, entheogenic: Generating the divine within. More appropriate, but relies on the ill-defined concept of the divine.

Psychedelic, psychedelia: Mind manifesting. Accurate, but is at odds with my beliefs that the psychedelic states can invite influences outside of what is already contained within the mind.

Paradelic, paradelia: Manifesting the other. Acoustically similar to pareidolia, seeing shapes and patterns in seemingly random detail....

Without faces-

Your soul's aflame

But your mind's sedate

The very mind

We infiltrate

We destroy

What you create

Recreate your very fate.

-Footsteps in town, paraphrased slightly

Insomnia-

Worry, wonder, and discover

07/07/2005

9=9

99, 9+9=18, 1+8=9

9+9=18, 1+8=9

9x9=81, 8+1=9

81+18=99, 9+9=18, 1+8=9

99+18=117, 1+1+7=9

99+81=180, 1+8+0=9

81x18=1,458, 1+4+5+8=18, 1+8=9

99x18=1,782, 1+7+8+2=18, 1+8=9

99x81=8,019, 8+0+1+9=18, 1+8=9

99+99=198, 1+9+8=18, 1+8=9

99x99=9,801, 9+8+0+1=18, 1+8=9

99+18+81=198, 1+9+8=18, 1+8=9

99x18x81=14,4342, 1+4+4+3+4+2=18, 1+8=9

144342x9=1,299,078, 1+2+9+9+0+7+8=36, 3+6=9

144342x99=14,289,858, 1+4+2+8+9+8+5+8=45, 4+5=9

144342x81=11,691,702, 1+1+6+9+1+7+0+2=27, 2+7=9

144342x18=2,598,156, 2+5+9+8+1+5+6=36, 3+6=9 

Let's hope this pattern can be used for the good of mankind....

Q: How do you know when it's time to leave the house?

A: When you're afraid to leave the house.

08/07/2005

The listener-

The mexican ear eating lizard-

This reptile feeds on the ears of humans

By whispering barely audible words, it attracts the ears of humans who wonder exactly what he’s saying

Then he bites!

Any human who manages to listen without losing an ear is said to be enlightened with otherwise unattainable knowledge

-Michael Farmer, paraphrased slightly

Tribe-

We are a pack creature

With promises offered for stability

Where exclusion from the tribe is a thought to be feared

Suddenly solitary, we can pull strings from our own abode

Who needs a king now?

Shadows-

Mind cast out in alien places

laughing forest full of faces

The earth glows with strange powers

wild smurfette fucks a flower

Yesterday's gods glare from the shadows

through the forest to the gallows

13/07/2005

Useful words-

Sanskrit-

Muladhara: Root support

Svadhisthana: Dwelling place of the self

Manipura: Jewel city

Anahata: Unstuck

Vishuddha: Especially pure

Ajna: Command

Sahasrara: Thousand-petalled

Rasasvada: Bliss in absence of thoughts

Sukha: Deep, lasting happiness independent of situation

Maya: Mistaking the map for the territory

Antariksha: The space between earth and heaven

Greek-

Sophrosyne: A self-aware, moderate state of mind

Chthonic: Within the earth

Mythopoeic: Of or pertaining to the making of myths

Meraki: Something creative that you put a piece of your soul into

German-

Weltschmerz: World-weary sadness

Waldeinsamkeit: The feeling of being alone in the woods

Eigenlicht: The grey colour of the absence of light

Luftschloss: An unrealistic dream

Fernweh: Homesick for a place you've never been

Sehnsucht: Yearning for something far off and indefinable

Schadenfreude: Joy in the misery of others

It's spooky when there's no visuals....

11/07/2005

Things are getting interesting around the house Collin's house. It really does feel like we're on to something, creating a philosophy between us - or, more so, fleshing out and challenging the mysterious philosophy lurking deep within Collin. Even though he talks to us for hours at a time about the universe and all it contains, it feels as if we're barely scratching the surface. Does Collin already have the answers waiting? Is he just testing us? Or does he need our help? Such questions don't seem to be of any importance right now. What is important, is that with his Mum travelling the world and his Dad, from what I can tell, no more than a disembodied force that occasionally affects changes around the house, we finally have a sacred space to explore our inner world(s).

More and more, the physical aspects of our lives are seeming to be merely symptomatic of the mental – catching a cold, for example, is a sure indicator that one's thought patterns are out of whack. The chakrah system works as a decent diagnostic tool (die, agnostic tool).

With Collin taking on the role of some kind of visionary tribal leader, providing shelter, sustenance, and direction for the tribe, Ned has comfortably filled the niche of the shaman, diving recklessly into the abyss before beckoning the rest of us in. My concern is that symptoms of Ned's supposed mental illness are being increasingly interpreted as the wisdom of the mystic, with an ever diminishing boundary between the two. To voice this concern would be so utterly socially repulsive in such an intellectual climate that I've opted to stay quiet and simply keep tabs on the situation privately. Collin has made it clear that this is to be my role within the tribe: the note keeper. If ever we are to create scriptures around our philosophy, my notes will be the basis. So I write diligently, day and night.

Getting fucked up with a cold-

Drink 1 litre water upon awaking

Ingest 2.5mg Dextroamphetamine (dries the mucous membranes, fights fatigue)

Repeat with 1mg Dextroamphetamine in the afternoon

Get drunk on the following cocktail:

1 shot glass of whiskey (cough suppressant, mood elevation), one shot glass of water (hydration), one shot glass of apple cider vinegar (curative); 200mg choline powder (clarity of thought), half tablespoon grated ginger (curative), half a lemon (vitamin C), sprinkle of cayenne pepper (clearing nasal passage), 1 bag green tea (fights fatigue)

Indulge in Dextromethorphan as desired.

Useful words-

Buddhist-

Trishna: The cravings of man

Annitya: Impermanence

Ch'i: The life force

Loka: Plane of existence

Satori: Sudden awakening

Bardo: The period between death and rebirth

Dharmas: The elements of existence

Yidam: Mental construction of object of worship

Koan: A brief story illustrating the paradox of dualism

Wato: Answer to a koan

Ataraxy: Serene calmness

Samsara: The cycle of birth, life, and death

Pretas: Predatory phantoms

Qabalah-

Malkuth: Kingdom; the manifest

Yesod: Foundation; sub-conscious, dreams, sexuality, hallucinations

Hod: Splendour; intellect, form, learning

Netzach: Eternity; emotion, love, passion, creativity

Tiphareth: Adornment; harmony, self, beauty, balance

Chesed: Loving kindness; order, benevolence, expansion

Geburah: Severity; movement, change, power, destruction

Binah: Understanding; form, understanding, limitation

Chokmah: Wisdom; force, energy, creation, wisdom

Kether: crown; infinite, purity, The Void

Da'ath: Knowledge; The Abyss, darkness

Ain Soph Aur: Limitless light; nothing is

Ain Soph: Without limit; nothing becomes

Ain: Light; Nothing

Qliphoth: Husks; the daemonic realm

Asiyah: Action; material existence

Yetzirah: Formation; shaping matter into basic elements

Beriah: Creation; field of matter/energy

Atzilut: Emanation; pure formless existence

Comedowns-

The Haze Continues

Minor Depression, Major Apathy

Brain Zap Poetry

Delayed Xenophobia Manifests

Life Still Dances....

Don't Mention This?

I need to try DMT...

15/07/2005

Hypothesis-

It now seems to me that the mushrooms increase the flow of thoughts by decreasing the blocking agents that stop us from thinking about stuff that won’t help us survive. So on shrooms one wouldn’t see a predator in a tiger, but an intricate display of the universes artistry. Thinking in questions, rather than solutions.

He would then be eaten by the tiger, of course.

Don’t take shrooms around tigers.

Action-

Find a frame of reference from which to analyse the hallucinogenic experience. For this, I need solitude.

Solitude: The opposite of loneliness

16/07/2005

Howl 2-

The human animal is weak and seeking, mewling in tortuous utterances for nurture and nourishment, the frightened security of the absolute.

The anxieties of man are a manifestation of this ancient yearning, this instinctual lust for the ruthless and kind pressence of the Great Mother.

The ultimate sedative is maternal, but the human has grown - the infant is dead.

On anxious nights alone, we feel what newborns feel when they screech in formless want; we see what dogs see when they bristle and growl under the silver glow of Moon.

But the hunger remains, felt as a deep, primal desire for grounding, the embrace of the Earth.

Transcendence is an uninhibited call to the Moon.

ᛞᚨᛏᚢᚱᚨᚲᚺᛁᛚᛞ.ᚲᛟᛗ/ᛈᛖᛖᛈᛖᚱᛋ-ᚹᛁᛞᛖ-ᛟᛈᛖᚾ