#trying to experience the Wonders but i cant escape the Horrors. what the fuck ever ugh

[girlcockholmes]

when you literally live in a world that wasnt made for you 😆🔫

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Ultimate Trip

He stank of booze and weeks of built-up body odor. The stench had baked itself into his many layers of tattered clothing. Not like he could tell. Nor did he care.

Clive had been a vagrant for the better part of the past decade. His relatives had died away due to natural causes, the lives of his wife and son were taken in a bus accident, and when he got laid off from his well-paid job and failed to find new employment after repeated tries, he lost all will to live.

That’s when he started doing drugs. Not the harmless kind, either—the hard stuff. The kind that made him lose most of his teeth. But also the only shit that pulled him out of this world, thrusting him onto different planes of existence, bubbles of fleeting, existential bliss that let him experience short-lived escapes from the tragedy and horrors of the real world.

Once he had flushed his money down the drain, he didn’t bother collecting unemployment money. Or applying for any programs. He had spent so much time on the streets, in the worse parts of the city, that he didn’t see the point.

The Man was out to get him, anyway. Why be a slave to the system?

He huddled in a corner. Concrete walls—huge arcs supporting the bridge—shielded him from harsh wintry winds. Wallowing in his own filth, ignorant of how badly he reeked.

And torn inside.

He wanted that fix. Needed it. But the last few trips had been something else.

Larry, another guy from his part of the slums, walked into Clive’s lousy little alcove. Clive shivered in the cold, rubbed his cocaine-damaged nose as it ran, and didn’t even bother looking up at his “old friend.” Larry remained standing and wordlessly leaned against the wall next to Clive.

Plastic and paper crinkled when Larry pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his jacket’s pocket. He produced a crumpled up cigarette from its nearly empty insides and held it out in front of Clive.

Clive still didn’t bother looking up and snatched the smoke out of Larry’s hand.

Again, Clive rubbed away the snot leaking from his nostril and asked in an unfriendly tone, “You here to sell?”

“Course,” Larry said, placing another cigarette in between his own lips and using a cheap plastic lighter to ignite Clive’s for him, then his own.

They both took long drags and blew out some smoke. Weird how the flame made you think of warmth, but the smoking only made you feel colder. Clive had thought that many times, a musing that seemed profound in moments of sobriety, but always slipped his mind in the ensuing drug-fueled trips.

“The usual?”

Larry took another drag and then answered while blowing out smoke, rendering his voice raspier and weaker, “Sorta. Different supplier, bit cheaper—”

“None o’ that shit, Linus.” Clive always called Larry by his real name when he started getting impatient. “I want a good solid ride to paradise again.”

“Why? You win the Powerball, or something? Look at Mister moneybags here, gettin’ all picky. What’s wrong with the cheap stuff?”

Clive sighed and then inhaled more smoke before responding. He could feel the biting breeze of cold wintry winds cease, as if the air itself was waiting.

Waiting for him to say it.

“Takes me closer to the other side.”

Larry’s level of annoyance rapidly shot up, audible in his tone when he asked, “The hell does that mean?”

Clive shrugged. He did not want to elaborate. Other dealers had cut him off when he got too graphic about what he had experienced on his recent trips. He also wondered if The Man would get to him, if The Man had something to do with it. Clive had heard such, and he knew there had to be a grain of truth to it: that the government was lacing drugs with experimental substances to run tests on inter-dimensional travel. Or mind control. Or something.

Clive thought it might be bullshit, but he believed it anyway. And the horrors he had been witnessing felt real enough to him. That’s all that mattered.

Larry’s question pierced the cold air around them.

“You buying, or do I need to come back another day?”

Clive let that inquiry hang in the air, much like the clouds of cigarette smoke only slowly dispersing around them in the absence of wind. He wiped away more snot—the fabric of the back of his fingerless cloth glove soaked it up.

“Yeah, whatever. Fuck.”

Larry blew out more smoke.

“Whatever? Fuck, man, I’m doin’ you a favor here. You know how often you get the best prices? I know you can’t afford it, but I’m always lookin’ out for you.”

Clive said nothing to that. He knew the cant. All dealers talked like that, in some variation. He used to work in marketing, he knew how many people fell for that crap. Clive didn’t need to fall for it, all he needed was his fix.

He crammed around in his pockets and produced the dollar bills and change he had gathered from begging that day and held it out to Larry. It was a small meal and a beer—or this. He could go another day without food, but he couldn’t go another day without a high to send him flying. Fleeing this awful world, soaring over greener pastures.

The slimy dealer took his money and handed him a small transparent baggie containing three yellow pills with smiley faces.

“Later, man,” Larry said as he quickly left, scurrying off to visit his next “friends.”

Clive’s hands trembled as he stared at the contents of the bag. The worst stuff he could have gotten. Larry and the other local dealers had been pushing these smiley pills lately. The first time Clive had tripped on them was when the trouble started.

Normally, his trips took him to places. Better places. Pleasant. But he was no stranger to bad trips, in fact, he had racked up quite a few of them over the years.

Nothing like what these things could do.

The smileys stared at him through the plastic wall of the baggie that contained them, through their hollow, dead eyes. Their stupid grin resembled something that kids were supposed to like, but all they did was creep Clive out. Or mock him.

Addiction really had sunken its fangs deep into Clive’s body. And into his soul. He needed a fix—any fix. But none of them filled him with such profound dread as this new designer drug did. He couldn’t complain, really, because this was all he could afford.

Every time, this shit took him closer to a dark place.

In his mind, he called it the obsidian mirror. A surface of smooth, black stone, reflecting his own image in tiny windows between irregular patterns of jagged, knife-like edges. In some, he saw his own miserable existence. In others, he saw his better self, better times. And for some moments, he saw glimpses of his past life. Of the good times. And times that never were, but could have been. All that could have been, all that could have been good. Of times when he had looked into the mirror, thought he was something like a god, on top of the world, high on life. Before everything had gone to shit.

But on these trips, he felt something else. A presence. Like someone standing right behind you, breathing down your neck, looking over your shoulder. But it was in front of him, staring back through that obsidian mirror.

He hoped it would be different this time. Third time’s a charm, right?

Prayed—he prayed to God, something he had never done throughout his entire life—that this time would not be like the first two times he had tried out this smiley-faced drug, fabricated by sadistic drug cooks hailing from the darkest depths of hell.

His shaky fingers scrambled to open the baggie and take out one of the pills. He popped it into his mouth, sending it straight past his chapped lips. Bitter, hard, dry. He swallowed the drug, forcing it, almost choking on it, with nothing to wash it down his throat. But this, too, was not a first for him—it went down.

It would take some minutes to kick in, but he knew it acted fast.

Clive tried to think of pleasant things, of those better times. Of another world where life was still good. Or even better than it ever used to be. Maybe he could steer the trip in the right direction.

But his mind returned to what he had seen the last two times. Something mirroring his movements. Something hidden almost entirely—but lurking on the edges of his perception. Preying on him, sneaking around him. As he wandered towards that obsidian mirror, trying to see the movies of good lives play back in those many reflections, something else mirrored his movements. Drawing closer. Moving towards the obsidian mirror.

From the other side.

Behind him, in front of him. Everywhere.

Reaching out with something. Not a hand. At least not a human one.

In one of the reflections, he saw his wife, Elaine. So real that he could touch her, that he burned with desire to feel the softness of her skin. Instead, Clive touched the smooth surface of the obsidian, saw it mirroring his movements, but the movie continued to play in it.

A warm embrace in a warm place, a place of solace.

His memories of his last trip lingered, flowed into the drugs kicking in now. Or it had kicked in already, and his imagination and the trip had fully merged halfway. Clive tried desperately to hold onto that bliss, those fragments of a good trip before they turned dark.

Before the thing drew closer.

This was no simple trip, Clive thought. Colors invaded the edges of his sight and before he knew it, he heard music in the distance. He could not tell if it was real or not, but it was there. These drugs. The obsidian mirror.

Right there, in front of him. Many steps away, but enticing him. With those thousands of tiny pictures of a better life, displaying moving pictures like myriads of TV screens. None of them bad, all of them pleasant this time. Clive smiled, but also felt tension building up. Anxiety.

This was no mere trip. This was a veil between worlds.

A thin one.

He craved the warmth of the memories of his loved ones. It drew him closer to the black mirror.

And so did his dark reflection, approaching the veil from the other side.

Clive lost focus, could see himself playing video games with his son in one place, but also an ominous figure standing there, watching them from the shadows the TV screen cast upon the wall. He could see himself in the office with some colleagues, lighting up cigars and toasting with some booze to a successful deal, but also hands reaching out, hundreds of hands, microscopic hands hidden in the flames of the cigar. He could see his wife’s beautiful face, almost feel the soft texture of her lips when they kissed, but also hollow eye sockets staring at them through the window.

Clive shivered. In this other-world, or in the real world. None of that was clear, the lines began to blur.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Clive said. His reflection said. But was that really him? He wanted to think that it was, but he didn’t want to say that out loud. Didn’t believe it.

He was afraid.

The obsidian wall with its many pictures of beauty and wonder and happiness beckoned him. Finally close enough to touch it, he reached out with a hand and let his fingertips glide over its surface.

“I want to be free,” Clive said in the mirror.

Something stung with delay, like feeling the pinprick of a needle after the fact. He withdrew his hand and saw a thin rivulet of blood flowing down his fingertip, emerging from a tiny wound where he had cut himself on a razor-like edge of the obsidian.

“Look how the blood is free,” Clive said. But his voice came from everywhere, and nowhere. And muffled, as if hearing himself speak while wearing headphones, or hearing himself from the other side of the mirror.

His heart began to race. He wanted to run, but he needed to see. To see that life that could have been, with Elaine. The one where the accident never happened. The life where things turned out right. But fear gripped his heart.

It was there. The reflection. The thing that tried to pass as him, but was not him.

Although this looked like the best moments of his life and all the good that could have been, it was all unreal.

A trap.

The obsidian mirror was thinner than it looked. Clive struggled to move, paralyzed with cold and merciless fear. He twitched with feeble attempts to move and run but his body did not obey. Being frozen thus allowed him to see what was true—that the mirror was more like a window. A thin one, like a sheet of ice, though black and concealing what lied beyond—dark as the souls of the people who had made this drug, dark as the ones who convinced him to take this drug.

As his own soul, because it was he who chose to take it.

“Free. Free me.”

Clive reached out again, and smeared his blood across the smooth surface. He suffered more cuts across his fingertips, though the pain always arrived with delay, numbed by the spinning sensations of the trip, rendering it almost unreal. The black stone absorbed his lifeblood like the gloves had soaked up his snot. The wall pulsated like living flesh, bulging outward—ever so slightly.

He felt sick, needed to throw up.

Clive pushed forward, and the mirror yielded. It engulfed his hand up to the wrist like a thick viscous fluid, wrapping around it like slime or tar. Then it gently pulled back, pulling him forward, like his kid used to when he tried to drag Clive through the store.

The hollow eyes in the mirror—or just beyond it—stared back at Clive. Uncaring.

Swallowing all those memories, dreams, and could-have-beens. As they vanished, one by one, he could see the shadows beyond more clearly. Swallowing those wishes. Swallowing him. Spitting the man back out on the other side.

His skin was crawling. Like swarms of ants had built a colony underneath his skin and now rebelled, trying to break out of every pore with the fire of a million needles stinging his flesh. Then it stopped. Going from a living nightmare to such a pure numb bliss, that was how he had imagined dying. Sweet release from this shitty, mortal coil.

But Clive was not dead, he had arrived in another world. The trip had finally worked, perhaps in a way that other addicts only dreamt of—a trip that had taken him to another place. Not that it was a good place, though. Rather, it looked and felt like a dark reflection of the real world.

Plants that were not plants grew out of cracks and looked like blossoming crystalline growths, glowing with dim white lights. A purple sky with alien creatures soaring through the air like floating fish, wings wobbling and rippling like jelly. And black glass surfaces, everywhere. Like a magnificent blast had scorched the earth and turned it to glass, somewhen deep into the past or the future. Obsidian, everywhere.

Not reflecting Clive’s thoughts, not giving him surfaces to project his memories and dreams onto, but unyielding and uncaring. The trip had ended. Sobriety kicked in.

The mirror behind him was a wall. Still thin, but still solid. Impossible for him to break through in his pathetic state of body and weakened state of mind. He hammered his fists against it in futility, till the sharp edges had turned his hands bloody. It would take some time for the numbness to wane, for him to realize that this was not just his imagination—that these wounds were real. That these wounds would stay, and that the scent of his blood would attract things to him. Hungry things.

Something else had taken up residence on the other side—on his side. In the other real world. His side no more, for it dawned on him that there would be no way back from here. Whether or not the shadow had taken his body or just traded places with him, he could not tell. He only knew that this something felt a desire to explore, to see what dreams it could drink, what memories it could destroy. Something that thirsted for attention, something that craved the high of escaping one world to explore another. Much like he had sought.

Something evil.

—Submitted by Wratts