As Paddy lurches off into the gaggling masses of canvas domes, a cacophony of twisted sounds fills the air. Thousands of goblins chattering, beats, rhymes, melodies. Pure audible desynchronisation. Those inconsiderate bastards, I just want peace.
I slide myself back into the tent and feel the sweet relief of stuffy third-hand air.
I feel every molecule interact with my senses. With every intake of breath I not only smell the dank and putrid foist of the atmosphere, I feel it too. I taste it. I feel part of it.
Just as some form of comfort begins to envelope my body, I start to feel more confident. I want interaction. Tank lies in the corner of the tent, trying to sleep. It seems his body is simply rejecting the novel chemical that drifts through his blood stream. Strauss is sitting silently, busying himself with sleeping bags and zips and pointless paraphernalia. He seems happy and settled.
“Imagine being in side your own teeth.” I excitedly eject, following up the suggestion with several loud clicks of my own gnashers.
“Imagine being inside your own teeth whilst trying to eat some other teeth.”
I am aware that this sounds particularly odd, even in the current circumstances. The reason this seemed like an important topic was that I had an episode of Futurama stuck in my head. It starts with a faux commercial for “Thompson’s Teeth: Strong enough to eat other teeth.”
Before Strauss can make any kind of sense from my words, there is a knock on the tent door (or what passes for a knock on a tent). “You lot in there?”
It was Tasty Jesus; I am thrilled, as I need interaction. I feel compelled to experience things. I open the flap.
“Alright lads, how’s it going?” comes the foolish question. Of course he believes we have followed his instructions. Eat only a third and wait an hour. Take it easy. He looks at us.
“You lot ok?”
“Yeah. Great.” I burst. I had taken on a particularly odd motif with my speaking, as I was later informed. Every sentence I uttered came forth as if they were spoken with the very last gasp of air in my lungs. As if I was trying to make each sound whilst using as little oxygen as possible.
“How much have you lot had?”
“How much what?” asks Strauss, as if his honour had been blemished.
“The acid. How much did you do?”
A brief pause that lasts hours.
“All of it.”
A brief pause that lasts aeons. Continents drift. New species flourish then die. Civilisations rise and fall.
“ALL OF IT?”
His high-pitched query is quickly followed by the most manic laugh I have ever heard. It is at this point I realise he is sitting astride my leg and is idly humping it.
“Really? All of it? Fuck me, that’s a dose! I better catch up.”
He pulls out the remains of his cosmic sugar cube. Over the course of the day, he has only consumed around half. He bangs the rest down his throat. He is already in the midst of other chemicals so is decent and appropriate company in the tent.
I suddenly feel exceptionally thirsty, the kind of thirst that drives a man to drinking stagnant water. My mouth is as dry as any Ghandi cliché you care to mention. As it is thoroughly dark now, we are using the wind up lantern that Tank had purchased for this trip. It is an amazing bit of kit. Wind it up a bit and you get light. Simple.
The charge we had previously given it was almost gone and the lantern gave off a low level glow, barely enough to give everything inside the tent a sinister blue hue.
“Smart, let me wind up the lamp?” pleads a gleeful Tasty Jesus.
He grabs the lamp and winds furiously.
As he does the lamp bursts into life and showers the tent in glorious luminescence. I see an electric blue wave front explode from the body of the lamp. I watch as this bright blade cuts it’s way through the darkness. When it reaches me the cool blue energy washes over me, momentarily satiating my thirst. Once the light has reached the deepest and darkest depths of our tent, our universe, I sigh.
“There is not enough light in the universe to quench my thirst.”
I proceed to push my teeth against the lantern to get as much of the light inside me as I can. It works, it makes me feel good. I can see the effect the light is having on my body.
I sit back feeling more content than I had ever felt before, I could remain like this for eternity.
Suddenly my mouth feels odd, unfamiliar, and alien. Alien like when you look down at your feet and wiggle your toes, but you don’t see them move. That feeling of frustration and confusion that has yet to gestate into fully formed panic and despair, only to realise you’re looking at the feet of the person you are sitting next to.
I know I am moving my tongue, but I can’t feel it moving. I can only feel the things it touches…and it feels like it is touching some very strange things. Have I OD’d? Have I absorbed too much light? Of course, that must be it. I am more light than human.
I open my mouth tentatively and feel every nanometre of muscle stretch in my jaw. I whip my tongue from side to side. I feel it break through what I can only describe as, strands of electric thread, stretched tightly between my upper and lower teeth. Each flick of the tongue breaks these threads with and audible spark and flashing blue burst of energy, then the thread is reattached, waiting for the next flick of the tongue.
My jaw clicks wildly and the sparks in my mouth jolt my mind.
Strauss and Tasty Jesus are in their own little conversation. But I know they’re watching me.
They watch me.
Next Time: The Futility of Money, Too Many Beers and Wanker in a Hat
