Somewhere, someplace in the murky backwaters of terrible drunken imagination.
“They’re coming for me man! I saw those fiends stalking in my back yard last night. They came with nut crackers and they’ll take those fucking things right to me balls man!”
“Are you even listening to me man?!”
I wasn’t. My attention was elsewhere, that is to say, nowhere, which is also to say everywhere. The chemicals were creeping into my mind and staining every fibre in my brain with incandescent fizz. I could feel my insides turning into vapour and escaping out of the pores in my ticklish skin. The lights all around me were overwhelming. I was sat at the glass bar in a huge underground labyrinth called The 7th Circle. An orgy of red, fuchsia, orange and yellow lights projected from high-powered lamps swivelling around on the ceiling were darting all around the place like greased up photons shooting through the vacuum. The cavernous walls in the place were made of some glossy substance which gave them the impression of wet stone inside a deep cave. This strange texture made the light phosphoresce the moment it sent those rays deflecting back on a random course in this dense maze of hues. Those supercharged colourful rays came piercing through the circular glass bar right in the heart of the place and exploded outwards with the force and visual effect of a prism tipped nuclear warhead. These fantastic rays shot through their native colour and came out the exit wound as the sort of otherworldly tints which would make the painters palate piss out its colour. Crazy rays needling out of the glass obelisk upon which I was sat went hurtling towards the drinks stacked on a mirrored shelf behind the bartender. Refracted through those clear, earthy brown, caramel, red, green and blue fluids in the bottles, the lights were dancing a serene flow, drunk off the rainbow until fading into the lurid atmosphere around it.
Somehow, I could see the trajectory of each photon from ceiling lamp to wall to wall to wall to wall to wall to wall to bar to bottle to mirror and finally flying straight into my eye like a bloodthirsty wasp.
The ghoul right next to me slammed the table with his the flat of his palm and gulped down the rest of his vodka and soda as if it was screaming to meet his liver.
“Do you have no consideration for my balls?”
Crude images were entering into my mind, unauthorised. Why is this man I’ve never met before raving and ejaculating about his balls? His bad noise was starting to draw small scintillas of my attention. These little wisps of consciousness which were still some distance away from the incoming nimbus of ecstasy had become aware of the noise which was surrounding my ears and plugged themselves into the task of thinking. These misbehaving strands of thought began painting speculative images of this man’s disgusting balls upon the canvas of my mind. Gigantic hairy orbs that match the physical description of their owner. His head like an overly inflated balloon sat tentatively upon his shoulders which were just about broad enough to hold his faded grey suit upright. The face which looked out to me was as faded and nondescript as the suit.
He was definitely in better shape when he got here. More composure in the utterances which came out of his mouth and emanated from his body. His slicked back hair was cleaner, his face livelier and his suit brighter. By this time, the LSD which I spiked his vodka soda with had most certainly began to do its dirty work. I had been carrying a vial of it with me all day – mixing a spurt of it in each bloody mary I drank, a number which I’ve lost track of – so when this sprightly middle-aged man walked into the bar and sat right next to me, ordered a vodka soda and headed straight for the toilet, twisted and evil thoughts welled up in the sewer of my mind. The bartender in his sharp black suit and red tie and a face like a pitted olive walked around the inner circumference of the bar, vigorously shaking a cocktail tin in each hand and pouring them into glasses of French crystal. The moment he went round the curve and onto the other side, I pulled out the vial of acid and poured a strong helping into my absent companion’s drink. I was mixing the magic into his drink with a straw when the bartender came round the other side and saw me fiddling around with his drink. His eyes locked onto me and he came marching over.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he interrogated.
“I thought I saw a shard of glass in there, I was trying to get it out with the straw. Didn’t want the poor guy to bleed out all over the place here.”
His expression turned from icy to warmth embarrassment, “did you see any others in there?” he asked.
“No, just the one. Good thing it was just one big singular one rather than a spray of shards or you’d have a perforated man on your hands.”
“Thank you, mister! Can I get you another drink?”
“Another bloody mary please, I’ll be done with mine by the time you finish throwing that one together.”
I had barely touched my current drink on account of having ordered it just five minutes ago, but I threw it down the hatch with one ferociously thirsty sip.
The man returned from the toilet and sat down right next to me.
“Ahhhh thank you barman!”
Taking a long sip of it from his straw, he exclaimed how refreshing it was. Refreshing indeed you bastard.
Two hours and four drinks later. I had spiced every single drink he bought. Turns out this man had an incredibly weak bladder, like a water filled condom with a needle. I became even more shrewd with my drink poisoning, spiking and mixing at the same time the very moment I became obfuscated to the bartender as he walked to the other side of the bar.
This man had turned into an animal as the LSD had his mind in a ruthless death struggle. His shoulders had dropped, his face was completely discoloured and washed out by rivulets of sweat streaming down his face like a waterfall, the skin was barely hanging onto his bones and his suit less so upon his shoulders. His eyes had dilated so incredibly that I thought the black would leak out into the whites. I kind of wish there was a shard of glass in his drink now because he was starting to get on my nerves. Let the fool bleed out all over the bar, he’s more than six feet under anyway so a burial wouldn’t be necessary, and at any rate, he’d make a marvellous addition to the décor. His voice which was somewhere in the limbo of baritone and raspy had at this juncture turned into wild howling and it was seriously knocking my peaceful vibrations off their track, like a hamster trapped inside a heated bucket.
Just like the trigger-happy cops roaming around American streets, I shot first and asked questions later. I never for a moment stopped to think that this middle-class suburban burgher has had anything other than booze before. I thought slipping him some LSD would be quite the entertainment for the evening, but the forethought should’ve been what else apart from chaos should I expect upon giving this poor fool some acid, something that he probably has never heard of before outside of hushed whispers of warning and terror.
In the spiralling throes of paranoid thought, he’d probably convinced himself that one of the skeletons in his closet had come for his balls. Or perhaps someone real had come for him. Maybe he’s cashed his cheque a bit too soon and now the goons are here for him and his happy family. In which case he’s doomed, because he doesn’t seem like the sort who can fight off three to four armed thugs. They’ll turn him into a pile of bony rocks before he even lays a finger on their dark leather jackets. And I don’t even want to put down in print what would become of his wife and kids.
I gave him a pat on the back and looked him straight in the eyes and said,
“Your ugly balls will be fine, so long as you and your family get out of the country.”
A feeling of relief spread all over his face as the idea began to germinate in his empty mind. He slammed down a £50 note on the bar and ran straight towards the stairs leading out to the exit. It was fortunate that the bartender was on the other side of the bar which meant he didn’t see me pocketing the poor fool’s money.
………………………………………………………………………………....................................
Still in The 7th Circle and my mind was in the pit of delirium and paranoia. All pleasure had passed and my abuse had finally caught up with me. This is exactly what I was waiting for. There’s a sordid sophistication in pushing the mind to it’s absolutely perplexing limits and see what weird places it will take you to, more often than not those places are haunted with the stuff of nightmares. Nowhere to go now.
All those serene lights had turned sordid, vulgar and menacing. They shone off every surface with malignant intent as if perniciously eroding everything down to their fundamental particles, unbound and terrifyingly free. Those cave-like stony walls made it look as if I’d been here for centuries, trapped inside some subterranean limbo with a limited amount of tomato juice and extremely terrible company. Dali’s vaginal motif where everywhere, each crevice had turned into an orifice. All the patterns were taking on licentious appearances, wet holes and gaping pits appearing each place my eyes landed, and out of those holes looking back at me where evil eyes. I was in hell. Giant horns had grown out of the bartender’s forehead and his voice was like the screeching of alley cats at high moon.
“Anything else for you?”
What on earth does he mean by that? I’m quite certain he’s caught onto what I’ve been doing to burgher bastard. Maybe he’s planning of poisoning my next drink.
“Uuuugh, I’ve had enough for now. I think I’m good.”
“You’ve been shooting them back like no tomorrow, come on, have another one.”
“You bastard! You’re not getting another drink out of me.” I blurted in abject terror, convinced that some sort of clandestine plot was multiplying against me here.
The horns came grunting out of the bartender’s forehead, his skin had turned scaley and red and his cocktail tins almost looked like a pitchfork. He slithered back to his job and began shaking cocktails with the tail dancing out of his ass.
That was when I got to properly hear the music. This whole time I was taken spellbound by the lights, but now the music which was booming off the walls had crawled down my ears like lustful centipedes.
It was some sort of jazz band hooked on electric instruments, electrons running through their souls and out into their instruments. Gruesome guitar notes hung in the place like the screeching of angels having their wings clipped. Long and soulful riffs went ripping through the air like a gamma knife through tumours. Underneath the slaughter, the drums and bass made wild rhythmic love, melting into the beat and proliferating outwards, dividing into the fundamental increments of time itself, slowing the pace of the universe into a smooth groove. Then came the keyboards shooting into my bones and rattling the marrow into a shake. Melodies such as have never been felt before, they washed over me and I was drowning in them, just in time for the saxophone and horns to kicks in, wrapping around my neck and pulling me into the depth of the scream. My blood cells were melting into the stream around them and I could feel my head rolling off the top. Things were certainly growing out of control.
I turned to look at the band, streaming out their crazy sounds out of the corner of this mire and their figures were growing taller and taller, while the stage propelled backwards at a great distance which my eyes could hardly keep up with. Like a mirage, the more my eyes tried to keep up with those shapes, the further away they fell.
This whole day I had been prolonging the peak by drinking more and more acid infused bloody marys, now I had gone long enough without one and all the insanity juice consumed throughout today was finally gearing up to blast through my brain stem. The shapes which started to dance before my eyes were such that defy comprehension and description. Every single surface on everything around me had taken on a stupidly geometric air, lines and shapes criss-crossing across their faces, intersecting at weird angles and creating more preternatural shapes within them. Demented kaleidoscopes with an endless degree of rotations and levels spun webs around my eyes like a spider wrapping its prey, those malicious colours spilled through the vertices like blood out of a gash. Underneath them was the constancy of the starry void, peering through the seams of my periphery and attempting to make their foothold on my mind. The doors of my perception were being knocked off their hinges and all I could really do at that point was to relax and let this pandemonium take its hold. However, no matter I tried to relax, the more agitated I became, totally caught in convulsions of fear and anguish.
Suddenly my entire field burst asunder as a cascade of stars and nebulae spilled out of the wound in my perception, covering my entire skin and everything inside with this viscous starry matter which resembled black, glittery slime. That infection spread all over me and suffused me completely. As it went choking down my throat, staining my innards, I felt as if I was drowning in a pool of hot bubbling tar. I had become assimilated by the perversion of the universe and I was doomed to spend the rest of time in entropy until the rest of the cosmos would meet that same fate. Rather than peace and tranquillity, I felt the cosmic dread of sempiternal eras. A profound emptiness ripped through the fabric and left me in tatters.
All thought and expression and feeling had ceased by now replaced by a pain which multiplied to infinity. Crushed under the black firmament the void came calling to me, that supreme emptiness which came before the first singularity spewed the universe forth, sister to the same emptiness which will hold the universe in stillness once all heat ceases to radiate. It said, “hi”
Then came that strange feeling of expansion, of growth, feeling my boundaries exceed length and time. The stars became my atoms and the galaxies became molecules. The void roared a curdling scream as I swiftly was dragged away from it and it became the gaps between my cells. As the expansion broke through the limits of my comprehension, all went black as if a theatre curtain fell upon my eyes – velvety and complete.
My eyelids lifted and I was back at the glass bar in The 7th Circle again, looking down into my bloody mary. I glanced at my watch and barely a minute had passed while my cosmic anguish felt like the wingspan of a trillion years taking flight. My eyes were taken by little flecks of pepper sinking into my drink, their drowning trajectory looking like ash falling from the sky in a burning world after a shower of large rocks from the sky above. I could see the cosmic hues of the acid mixed into the rest of my drink, like streaks of arcipluvian colours tornadoeing around the mix. All I could do at that point was to break out in a wild cackle, laughing at the top of my lungs as if the funniest joke was told to me while someone tickled my foot with a feather. I picked up the glass and drank down what remained of it. I placed three £20 notes underneath the glass and headed towards the exit. The lady at the door, dressed in a red and black suit bid me a good evening.
“What’s the time?” I asked.
“4:25 in the morning” she said politely.
“Perfect, the roads will be completely empty now.”
Emerging out of this underground morbid hole, I stepped out into the cool air of the early morning. The sky completely devoid of stars of light, the void smiling down at me. I pointed my car keys up at the sky and pressed the unlock button. Somewhere from the distance the beeping thrilled towards me and returned the call of my button press. Yellow and orange lights from the indicators filled the air around my car in a bright coat of warmth towards which I gravitated. Stumbling in an erratic fashion, I finally made it to my car and lumbered in. Turning the key, the car coughed awake and then started sneezing with excitement as I revved the engines and snarled out of the parking lot and onto open roads. Completely twisted, ripped sideways and turned inside out I went thundering down the roads towards some unknown objective which would never see completion.
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