Bad Trip

Somewhere in Nevada, two men stand by the side of the highway. Their choppers are close by, resting on kickstands with full tanks from the last stop. Both of them panheads, the pride and joy of their owners. The bikes reflect the temperaments of the pair. Tommy, the taller of the two with long blond hair and a beard, was a loner who hated being the center of attention. And with the solo seat and solid, indigo paint job, so did his bike. Paul, with his short slicked-back hair and goatee, was the show boat, as was his raked out pan with glittering green metal flake.

“Hey man, just admit you’re fucking lost. First step to solving a problem is admitting you got one,” said Tommy.

“Just give me a second to think, will ya? Christ.” Paul walked farther down the side of the road, mumbling the directions his uncle gave him. “He said to keep going until you see an old, rusted out pickup.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Rare sight for these parts.”

“No, no, he said this one would have a ‘X’ painted on it. Then we take the first dirt road we see after it.” Paul snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it.” He walked back to his bike and commenced to jamming his foot down on the kicker pedal. Once it started, Paul shouted to his friend. “We just gotta keep going, man. We’re good.”

“You should’ve written that shit down, man.” Tommy said as he started his own bike. “And for the record, if we end up stranded in this fucking desert. First thing I’m gonna do is kill and eat you.”

“That’s a little harsh, dude.”

The two sped off and continued down the road, and, sure enough, came across a rusty pickup truck with a spray painted ‘X.’ They eased their bikes down the first dirt road, and after a close call where Paul just about dumped his ride on a deceptively deep patch of sand, the two pulled up to a modest, adobe house.

“See? Told you I wasn’t lost,” Paul said. “Lot nicer than I thought it’d be. Knowing Uncle Walt, I figured it’d be a dump.”

“We haven’t seen the inside yet.”

Paul’s eyebrows furrowed. “True.”

They walked onto the front porch and Paul unlocked the door as if he were disarming a bomb.

“Alright, brace yourself,” he said, and Tommy tensed his shoulders.

And what they found inside was surprisingly tidy for a guy who smelled so rank he could turn a vulture off its lunch.

“Well, shit.” They said in unison.

It wasn’t heavily decorated by any means, a couch here, a bookshelf there. Some black velvet paintings of tigers and mushrooms adorned the walls, which was to be expected of an aging flower child like Uncle Walt. The crowning achievement of the living room was the record player, and it’s surrounding speakers. The whole setup was framed by Uncle Walt’s impressive record collection, which had Tommy and Paul immediately crouched beside it, forgetting about the bags tied to their sissy bars in favor of a quick sift through the old hippie’s archives. Contained within the collection were all the usual suspects, Hendrix, Joplin, the Dead. Most of it didn’t surprise them, but there were some curve balls that were beyond the scope of the two men’s knowledge.

“Who the hell’s Warren Zevon?” Paul asked, holding up the cover to Tommy.

“Hell, if I know.” Tommy said, as he shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds like an alien trying to disguise himself as a regular dude.”

Paul chuckled and gingerly set the record aside. “Might be good though.”

“Eh, maybe.” Tommy stood from where he was crouched and wiped the dust on his jeans. “Hey I’m gonna go get my shit off the bike.”

Paul nodded and stood up to follow Tommy out the door. After untying their bags, they dropped their gear off in their rooms. Paul took the master bedroom and Tommy took the guest room. Once he was settled, Tommy wandered to the kitchen and found Paul leaning on the counter inspecting a note.

“Anything else your uncle wants us to do while we’re watching his place?” He asked.

Paul shrugged his shoulders and gestured at the note. “Just says we gotta keep the plants watered and make sure the place doesn’t burn down.” He turned the note over and his brows furrowed before shooting up, a slow grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“And he says there’s a surprise for us in the cookie jar.” He pushed himself off the counter and pulled the lid off a misshapen ceramic jar. “Something extra for our troubles.” Paul reached in and Tommy watched him pull out a plastic baggie containing shriveled up little mushrooms. Tommy’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Well, alright, Uncle Walt!” Tommy exclaimed.

Paul turned the bag over in his hands, his expression mirrored his friend as he shook his head. “Doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” Tommy said. “Let’s crack into that bad boy.”

Tommy put on a record, leaving Paul in the kitchen. Though neither of them would admit it, the two didn’t have a whole lot of experience with psychedelics. Tommy had never done them, and while Paul assured him that he was an expert, he had only done them once with Uncle Walt. Only problem being Paul had no idea how much his uncle gave him. So, he guessed. Paul strolled into the living room with two beers and the baggie. After handing a couple stems and caps to Tommy. They clinked their beer bottles, muttered a “cheers,” and chowed down. Both men covertly stifled a gag at the taste by chasing it with a chug of beer.

An hour went by and the two weren’t feeling anything. Tommy sat on the crouch with his arms crossed while Paul flicked through some records in a crate.

“Hey, you sure we took enough?” Tommy asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“You just gotta be patient, man.” Paul said as he inspected an album cover. “This stuff takes time. You know that.” He paused, looking at his friend out of the corner of his eye. “Right?”

Tommy snorted. “Yeah.” He leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms again. Paul shot him a skeptical look, and Tommy got up from the couch with a grunt.

“Gotta go take a leak,” he said.

“Thanks for sharing,” Paul said.

Tommy flipped him the bird and made his way to the bathroom in the hall. As he stood there, taking a leak, he was suddenly bathed in a bright, white light. And then, darkness.

When Tommy came to, he was on his back, staring into a blinding light. He spread his fingers and felt the cold metal surface of the table he was on, but when he tried to lift his arms, he discovered they were restrained by an invisible force. When he craned his neck to look down, he found the same had happened to his legs, he also noticed he was completely stripped of his clothes. He felt his stomach drop as if he were on a rollercoaster and he broke out in a cold sweat.

“This ain’t real.” He said to himself. “I’m just having a bad trip is all.” He took in a few deep breaths and tried to calm his rapidly accelerating heart rate. He knew psychedelics took people on some wild rides, but he didn’t think it would feel so real. Tommy shut his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, all he did was let out a short bark of a scream.

Standing over him were two figures, they were tall and skinny. He couldn’t make out anything that resembled arms, shoulders, or a neck. Just long, solid columns. They were jars, he realized. Giant jars filled with brackish liquid that couldn’t quite obscure the bulbous, grub-shaped beings within. 

Tommy opened his mouth to either scream again, or try to talk to these things, but he couldn’t make a sound. All that came out of him were strangled cries. One of the figures glided closer and he felt a pinch on the side of his head. A needle entered through his right temple, and it felt as though fingers were poking and prodding at his brain. His left eye closed, his right arm tried to raise itself, and his teeth began grinding together seemingly of their own free will. The needle withdrew. The figures apparently satisfied with the workings of his nerves and muscles.

The figures departed, and Tommy tried and failed to free himself. After what felt like an eternity, one of the figures returned. It stared at him for a moment before it turned its gaze to the ceiling, where an apparatus was descending. It didn’t look mechanical, it was segmented and transparent. It resembled a scorpion’s tail, complete with stinger. As it approached his abdomen, Tommy found his voice and screamed. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he begged this figure to stop, but it stared at him, unblinking, as the stinger pierced his stomach. He let out a pained cry and his face contorted in abstract terror as a mass began to slither down through the apparatus. The mass was the same shape as the one in the jar. As it made its way down toward a now hysterical Tommy, it stopped just before the point at which the stinger pierced his skin. The figure glared at the mass, and without further hesitation, the small grub squeezed its way into the stinger, and into Tommy.

He woke up in complete darkness, the cold metal slab replaced with the spongy mattress of the guest bedroom. Tommy frantically patted his body to find his clothes, thankfully, still on, albeit drenched in sweat. As he slowly sat up, he was hit with an overwhelming wave of nausea. He ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. As he coughed, he could hear the wail of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar from the living room. Paul had the music turned up so loud it was no small wonder he couldn’t hear what his friend was going through. 

“Bad trip. That’s all it was.” Tommy said, looking in the mirror. He looked horrible, his face was pale and his eyes were bloodshot. To look at him, you’d think he’d been awake for days. He jabbed a finger at his reflection. “And we’re never touching this shit ever again. You hear me?” He leaned back from the mirror and stood there for a while, studying himself, before returning to the living room.

Tommy walked in to find Paul enthusiastically playing air guitar. When Paul’s eyes landed on his friend, his brows furrowed.

“You good, dude?” Paul asked. “You look like shit.”

“I’m good.” Tommy made his way over to the couch on legs that felt like jelly. “Just a bad reaction or something.”

“Man, that blows, ‘cause I feel fuckin’ great.” Paul was grinning wildly as he plopped down on the couch next to Tommy. “I was just in the kitchen, and I look over at the fridge and the magnets were all wiggling around.” He sat up and wiggled his arms around. “Like this.”

“Damn, that’s crazy,” Tommy said. His eyes were closed and his arms were crossed over his chest.

Paul stopped wiggling and stood up. “Sucks you’re having a bad trip, man.” He went over to the stereo and turned the music down a notch. “Better stick to beer the rest of the week, huh?”

“Sounds good,” Tommy said.

The next day, Tommy woke up feeling like he got hit by a truck. He shuffled into the kitchen to find a bright-eyed Paul, making breakfast. He poured himself a cup of coffee and made his way over to the small table in the middle of the kitchen.

“Fuckin’ A, I feel like death warmed over,” Tommy said with his head in his hands.

“You coming down with something?” Paul asked as he fixed both their plates. He set the plates piled high with scrambled eggs and bacon on the table and took a seat.

“Probably just a cold,” Tommy said. At the sight of his breakfast, he quickly began wolfing it down.

“Goddamn dude, it ain’t going anywhere.”

Tommy shrugged and continued shoveling down the scrambled eggs. He always had a big appetite, but right now he felt like it’d been days since his last meal. He cleaned his plate and after dropping everything in the sink, he fixed himself a bowl of cereal. Paul laughed and shook his head.

“Gotta feed a cold, I guess.”

Tommy nodded. “Hey, you think your uncle’s got any cold medicine around?”

“Don’t know. I’d have to check,” Paul tossed the last bit of bacon into his mouth and got up from the table, wiping his mouth with his t-shirt.

Paul returned to the kitchen just as Tommy was slurping the last of the milk from his bowl.

“Fuckin’ expired five years ago,” Paul said, shaking the small box in his hand. “I’ll take a ride back to that last gas station we passed. Hopefully they’ll have something.” He tossed the expired cold medicine in the trash and grabbed his jacket.

“Thanks, man,” Tommy said.

“No problem,” Paul said as he pulled on his boots. “Not like you planned on getting sick.”

Tommy watched from the window as Paul kick started his bike and slowly made his way down the dirt road. He turned from the window and sat on the couch. His stomach still growled but he couldn’t make the effort to eat anything else. Frankly, he was dead tired despite having just woken up. With a grunt, he leaned over to grab the remote and felt a searing jolt of pain shoot up his spine from his lower back. The pain was so intense it took his breath away and left his eyes watering. It reminded him of the time he pinched a nerve trying to lift a sportster’s motor out of the frame. That pain lasted for days after, but this twinge ended almost as soon as it started. He gingerly tried to grab the remote again and had no problem at all.

He didn’t move from the couch when Paul came rumbling up to the house. He sat there shivering as Paul came in and dug the cold medicine out from his jacket.

“They only had the night stuff, but you probably need to be sleeping anyway,” Paul said as he tossed the bottle to Tommy, who only let it fall into his lap. Tommy turned his glassy-eyed stare to the bottle and then to Paul, as if he just now noticed his friend.

“Thanks, man,” he said. He slowly unwrapped the top of the bottle and retrieved the small plastic cup, but removing the lid was proving a challenge. He felt pins and needles in his hands and, try as he might, his hands would not cooperate.

“Damn, dude. That child proof cap’s kicking your ass, huh?” Paul laughed and gently took the bottle from his friend and twisted the cap off with ease. He handed the bottle back and watched as Tommy slowly poured out the dark liquid into the cup. He frowned when Tommy grimaced and gagged when he drank it down. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Tommy shook his head sharply before Paul could get half way through the question. “Nah man, you know how much I hate hospitals.” He leaned forward and set the medicine on the coffee table. He then stood up, slowly, like a man twice his age. “I just need some rest.”

“Alright, man,” Paul said, watching his friend shuffle off down the hallway.

Tommy would spend the next day in bed, drifting between sleep and writhing in a cold sweat. At times his whole body would go numb and the thought would occur to him that he was dying, but the feeling would fade and he would enter again into a fitful sleep. He didn’t mention any of this to Paul, who kept bringing him food and medicine that he would gulp down greedily. He especially didn’t think to mention all of this when the next day came and he was completely back to normal. No shivering, sweating, or numbness and when he studied his face in the mirror, he saw that he had lost his sickly pallor. He even woke up before Paul, an extremely rare occurrence, and when his friend strode into the kitchen to see Tommy making breakfast his expression was that of genuine surprise.

“Well, would you look at that,” Paul said in an exaggerated Midwest accent. “Looks like ol’ Tommy’s feeling right as rain.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and dumped two spoons of sugar into it. “Now you’ll have to go to school young man. No more playing hooky.”

Tommy laughed as he scooped a fried egg onto a piece of toast. “I’ll give that impression a four out of ten, definitely needs some work. That was a little too Wisconsin. Mom was from Minnesota. Big difference.”

Paul waved his hand. “Whatever, dude. I’m just glad you’re good. That shit was kinda scaring me.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Tommy said, handing the plate with a fried egg sandwich to Paul and turning back to make his own. “Weird how it just came and went.”

“Really fuckin’ weird.” Paul bit into his sandwich as Tommy sat down with his own plate.  

They spent the rest of the day riding the back roads that surrounded Uncle Walt’s home. It had rained the night before, and the wind that whipped at their faces was thick with the scent of creosote, but it wasn’t long before their peanut gas tanks were running on fumes. Paul and Tommy were just about to pull over to grab the small gas cans strapped to their sissy bars when, with a stroke of luck, they happened upon a weather-beaten gas station with a grand total of two pumps. Inside, there was an old woman who looked just as weathered as the gas station. Her stark white hair was pulled back in a braid, and her faded t-shirt proclaimed that she’d seen Judas Priest in 1980. Paul paid for their gas, some beef jerky, and headed back out into the desert heat while Tommy walked around back to take a leak.

As Tommy was rounding the corner of the building, he felt a sharp jolt of pain in his abdomen that made him gasp, but it quickly dissipated and he kept walking. When he found a spot that was to his liking, he unzipped his fly and admired the desert landscape as he did his business. He glanced down for a second only to see that he was pissing blood. His stomach dropped. Then, the sharp pain returned, only this time it was lower. He’d passed a kidney stone before, but this felt a hundred times worse. He squeezed his eyes shut and cried out in agony when he felt himself pass some sort of hard mass. The searing pain in his groin had him doubled over on the ground now, still with his eyes shut, dry heaving and coughing. The coughs turned into quiet sobs as he slowly opened his eyes.

“What the fuck?” His voice came out as a low whimper. Tears gathered at the corner of his eyes.

There, wriggling in a muddy mixture of piss and blood, was an insect. It was about the size of his middle finger, with a hard, iridescent shell, and several short black legs that were twitching in the air. It landed on its back, turned itself upright, and began scuttling toward him.

Tommy scrambled away from it and shakily got to his feet. Instinct took over, and he bolted like a frightened animal.

Paul pumped gas into his bike as Tommy sprinted to his own.

“What the fuck?” was all Paul could say as he watched his friend grab a hold of the handlebars of his chopper. “Yours isn’t filled up yet, man.”

Tommy didn’t hear a word his friend said, he could hear his heart pumping in his ears, but it didn’t sound right. It sounded more like the crunch a June bug makes when stepped on. He readied the kicker lever and the second his leg slammed down onto it, his leg collapsed at the knee. It didn’t snap, but tore and fell apart like a rotten pumpkin. Tommy fell to the ground, shrieking now in between his sobs. Paul sprinted to his friend and watched as iridescent insects poured from both Tommy’s stump and his detached leg. Tommy began to convulse as Paul doubled over, vomited, and in between dry heaves the insects scurried toward him, eager for another meal. A few were already making their way onto his boot and up his leg. Paul frantically batted them away, crushing a few in the process. He bolted to the gas station to find the woman or a phone, but as he entered, he could hear the sounds of a struggle happening in the back of the store. He rounded the aisle only to find a mess of soda and chips on the floor, and in the middle of it all was the owner. She too was convulsing, a bloody froth at the corners of her mouth, and her arms desperately scrambled to reach the middle of her back.

“It’s crawling up my back. I can fucking feel it,” she choked out, and under her shirt he could see it- a single lump moving sluggishly up her spine beneath the skin.

“What the fuck?” Paul said again in a strangled cry. He turned and ran from the dying woman, knocking over a rack of magazines in the process.

Paul burst through the door and scrambled to his bike, the insects were there to meet him and his boots were now completely covered in slime and crushed carapaces. Frantically, he straddled the chopper and jammed his foot on the kicker pedal as the hoard turned to scuttle toward him. For the first time in his panhead’s life, it started on the first kick, and Paul sped from the gas station. He shifted gears as fast as he could as the wind whipped past him, tears streamed away from his eyes and into his hair as he gasped for air only to choke on the dust flying past.

Paul made it onto the highway, and felt the adrenaline drain from his body. When he felt he had gone far enough from the outlandish scene he pulled over, and since he had nothing left in his stomach, he only dry heaved. When he could finally stand up straight, he looked toward the way he came, and swung his leg back over his chopper. He eased back onto the road, and as he shifted into second gear, he felt a sharp pain moving slowly up his spine.