Dreams and Shadows

chapter TWELVE

THE SAD AND RATHER LONELY END OF ABRAHAM COLLINS

Abraham Collins was not cool, and he knew it, and no measure of tattoos, concert tickets, or hipster duds could change that fact. He’d tried. Instead, he came across as a dried-up imposter, one pocket protector and a scientific calculator away from cliché. To make matters worse, he wasn’t sharp enough to be accepted amongst the intellectual elite of the company nerds either. He was the sort of fellow you would expect to find at home on any given night of the week, surrounded by costly looking, designer-at-a-discount furnishings, slumped on the couch watching television, wondering why he couldn’t find himself a girl. Any girl.

So when his coworker and only close friend, Dallas Wise, invited him to fly wingman on a weekend camping trip with two secretly tattooed twenty-somethings from the secretarial pool, he jumped at the chance. It wasn’t until they rolled up in their beat-up, ugly-as-sin military green Volkswagen Thing that Abraham realized what this really meant.

Dallas had laid claim to Stacy in advance, leaving Abraham with Carly, a slender, lithe vixen, all tan and teeth in a bikini top and jeans skirt. Way out of his league. He knew it, and when she looked up from her purse and they made eye contact for the first time, she knew it as well.

By the time they were settled by the campfire, everyone had a good, clean buzz going and the air hummed, backlit by the pinks and purples of the setting Texas sun. Dallas and Stacy cuddled by the fire’s edge, each with a beer in hand and a comfortable smile dangling on the tips of their numb expressions. Abe nervously shifted atop a chalky rock, trying to think of some clever way to get close to Carly as she grew ever more oblivious.

Dallas reached into his pocket, pulling from it a small, loose Baggie filled with dried mushrooms. Each had a long stalk with an oblong cap, speckled brown and white at one end with a deep blue bruising at the base, fading as it trailed up the shaft. They evoked thoughts of Lewis Carroll caterpillars and smoldering hookahs, and the excited eyes of everyone around the fire glistening with anticipation. The girls eyed each other—Stacy proud of her date, Carly impressed that he had actually come through.

“Just a couple caps for me,” said Carly. “I’m a lightweight.”

“Me too,” nodded Stacy. “Any more than five or six caps and I’ll be over the moon all night.”

Dallas plucked a few mushrooms out of the bag and fed them to Stacy one by one, their eyes locked in a flirty stare as she eagerly gobbled each cap. After the fifth cap, Dallas grabbed a small handful for himself then tossed the Baggie to Carly. He popped the entire handful into his mouth, chewed a little, swallowing hard, hastily trying to muscle past the taste. Carly picked up the bag, plucking a few choice caps for herself, and politely passed the bag to Abe.

Abe stared longingly at Carly, who gave him only a cursory glance as she handed it over. He’d lost her. There wasn’t much time left to grab her attention before they rode the wave and crested into the night. The last thing he wanted was to be humping the leg of a girl more interested in staring at the stars than slipping into a tent with him. He needed her attention. And fast.

“Five caps,” he blurted out without thinking. “That’s it?” Everyone looked up at him. He smiled bravely, leaning his head back, pouring the remainder of the bag’s contents straight down his throat, shaking every last cap, stalk, and broken bit into his waiting maw. He chomped furiously, the dried mushrooms turning into a thick, disgusting wad of paste in his mouth. It was like chewing raw dough. He couldn’t swallow; he tried. His gag reflex fought back, but he forced it down in one painful lump, his stomach shuddering at its arrival.

Dallas snorted out a chuckle. Carly buried her face in her hands. Abraham smiled through the queasiness, trying to disguise his amateur-hour mistake as something more masculine than it was.

Dallas recognized the strained look in Abe’s eyes. “Hey, Abe,” he said.

“Yeah?” Abe mustered, still trying to hold down the mushroom loaf swelling in the pit of his gut.

“Why don’t you go grab some firewood before your dose kicks in? That way we won’t have to go out later.”

Abe smiled. “Yeah. That sounds good. Ladies, if you’ll excuse me.” He stood up, casually disappearing into the brush, eager to put distance between himself and the camp to vomit properly out of earshot. His mouth was already watering, a purge wasn’t far off. Damnit, damnit, damnit. Carly can’t hear this. Churning, his roiling stomach began to bloat; at any moment he would lose it. Farther and farther he shuffled into the woods, finally letting loose with a furious heave.

Wiping his mouth clean of slop with his sleeve, he looked around for stray branches for the fire. He didn’t want to spend too much time away. After all, within the hour everyone would be feeling good, and he wanted very much to be sitting next to Carly when they did. So he loaded his arms with as much wood as possible, turned around, and returned to camp.

Only, he couldn’t remember from which direction he had staggered. Oh, damnit. He knew he wasn’t that far, but the trees all looked the same. What the hell am I doing in the woods?

He wandered, night slowly creeping in over the forest. Trees menaced the horizon, shadows crept hungrily behind him. This was a bad idea, a truly, spectacularly bad idea, and as the few minutes’ journey stretched into what seemed like an hour, Abraham Collins was sure this was how he was going to spend his weekend: wandering aimlessly through the woods while his best friend scored. And that’s when he saw the campfire.

Abe staggered back into camp, dropping the armload of wood into a pile, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. His head was pounding, his stomach steadily expanding with gas. While the fire was still roaring in the center of camp, no one was sitting around it. “Guys? Dallas?” he called out. There was a rustling to his left, coming from one of the tents, then a giggle and a SSSHHHH. The tent unzipped and Dallas partially emerged from the small separation it created, giving the weird impression that there was nothing left of him but a disembodied, floating head.

“Hey,” Dallas whispered. “Did you get the wood?”

“Yeah,” said Abe.

“Good. Good.” Dallas fumbled for words, watching them rattle around behind his eyes before realizing he would never catch any of them. Instead, he gave Abe a telling look.

“Where’s Carly?”

“Dude . . . ,” Dallas began.

“Where is she?” Abraham asked once again, this time with a slightly more powerful intonation.

“Dude,” Dallas repeated, “you blew it.” Abraham’s jaw went slack. “You had your shot, Bro-ham. Come on,” he whispered, quieter still, “I’ve got both of them in here. And you saw them. I can’t pass this up.”

“I don’t . . . I don’t believe you.”

“No, seriously. They’re both—”

“No, no. I believe that. I just. I can’t believe . . .”

“Look, dude. What can I say?”

“Nothing. Just, just don’t say anything. I’ll just sit out here all night. Alone.”

“Yeah, about that.” Dallas gave him a concerned but pleading look. “Can you do me a solid and not hang out by the tent? I mean, it would be kind of creepy, you know?”

Abe tried to speak up, his mind sifting through the hundred or so things he would like to say were he to man up. Then he sighed and did what he always did: he slunk away, envied his best friend for what he knew was going on, and dreamed of a day when it might be him in that tent. As he walked away, he stepped on a large twig. The SNAP echoed, bouncing around the camp. He looked around, startled, realizing what was going on.

Great, he thought to himself. Now the stuff kicks in. He listened for a moment to the fire, the crackling pops and snaps like an orchestra of Black Cats set off in a soda can. Abraham was sweating, cold, and had a headache beginning to crescendo. Now the auditory hallucinations were settling in, meaning he was just moments from finding out how badly the mushrooms were going to hit him. Looking up, he saw the moon, big and bright in the sky, and decided that if he was going to trip his balls off, he might as well find a good spot for staring at the stars while he did.

It didn’t take long to find a large, almost comfortable limestone boulder resting cautiously on the edge of a steep cliff overlooking a lush, serene valley. Moonlight dripped over it like pooling blood. Colors were sharper than before, flickering—almost shimmering—ghost trees waking from their daylight slumber, stepping out of their stumps to walk and sway amongst the living. Abraham stared at the ghost trees wondering if they hungered, if they had any desire to scare anyone, or if, as ghosts, they simply wanted to feel the slightest touch of sunlight again. As Abraham stared at the ghost trees’ sultry moon dance, he felt time slowing to a crawl, the whirling spin of the world reduced to a slow-motion stutter as he fell out of the time stream entirely, able to look in at the captured moment, waiting, paused for him, beyond the thin veil of reality.

Yes. The mushrooms had finally kicked in.

If he wasn’t going to get laid tonight, he might as well have the trip of a lifetime. So once again he raised his eyes and took in the splendor of the moon. Larger and larger it loomed, until it could come no closer and it too began to shimmer, shake, and finally lose the tension that held it together. Slowly the moon melted before his eyes, first with small, single droplets forming on its craggy surface before streaking, then in waves as entire patches buckled and ran down the front of the sky, vanishing. Shocked at the sudden loss of the moon, the stars took photos, winking in and out as they captured pictures of the strange turn of events.

With the moon gone, the stars had a full-blown freak-out, each spiraling through the night on a panicked carousel, screaming, wailing for help before several thousand of them collided, exploding in the center, together forming a brand-new moon so the earth would no longer be so alone. Everyone needed a partner. Everything needed a friend. Nothing in the universe wanted to be found sitting alone on a rock in the middle of nowhere wondering why they weren’t allowed in the tent. Everyone should be allowed in the tent. After all, that’s all the world was: one big tent for us all to f*ck in. But not Abe. Abe wasn’t allowed in that tent either. No, Abe was destined to spend the rest of his life outside that tent, outside of time, outside of himself, looking back in at a moment when he would be left alone forever.

Dallas, Carly, and Stacy hadn’t taken this many mushrooms. They wouldn’t be able to step out of time like this. So they would stay at the camp, trapped inside the thin walls of reality, unable to see what Abe saw. And that made him even more alone. Alone.

Alone.

Psst. Over here.

“What,” mumbled Abe. Or at least he thought he mumbled what. Did he? Had he really said anything? He tried again. “What?” That time it worked. The word came out. Or did it? “What,” he repeated again. Or maybe he hadn’t repeated it at all.

Come here.

Okay. That wasn’t really a voice. That was all in his head. He wasn’t really hearing anything.

“Come here, silly.”

Abraham looked up, saw a shadow in the tree line behind him. The voice sounded familiar. Feminine. Sexy. Carly.

“Carly?” he asked in a shouted whisper. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, sweetie. It is.”

“How did you get out of time?”

“What?”

“Time. How did you escape it? You didn’t take as many shrooms as I did.”

She giggled. “Time isn’t all that hard to get away from. Like you.”

Abraham tried to spin around on his rock. It wasn’t working. His head merely flopped back and forth on his neck. “What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t know hard to get if it walked up and hit you with a brick.”

“Hard to . . . hard to get?”

“Yeah.”

“You were playing hard to get?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re good.”

“You’ve got to be,” she said with a wry smile.

“Why’d you wait so long?”

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t a creep.”

“Oh. Am I a creep?”

“No, but your friend is. Do you know what he wanted me to do?”

He thought for a moment about the dozens of stories Dallas had told him, about all the things he’d gotten women to do. “Probably.” It wasn’t hard to imagine how he’d chased Carly off. “I can guess, I mean.”

“Well, do you have any ideas about what you could get me to do?”

Abe giggled a little. “I could think of something, I suppose.”

“Well then, what are you still doing on that rock?”

“I can’t really move.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I mean, I’ve become one with it or something.”

“No, you haven’t. I’m not coming over there. You’ll have to come over here. So summon the strength of the earth or the ancients or whatever you have to do, but get your ass off that rock and over here. I want to show you something.”

That got Abe’s attention. He sat up, the energy of the universe flowing through him, the stars and wind against his back, and he levitated from the rock as if willed to do so by a powerful force. There was an electric pulse on the night air and he could feel it now. It originated deep inside the pit of his gut, tethered to the shadowy, naked form of Carly, hidden just behind the bushes. He was drawn to her. It was meant to be. There he floated above the ground, his legs no longer responding to what his brain was telling them, his torso drifting, barely supported by them. Wait, was he drifting or was he walking? He couldn’t tell anymore.

His floating stopped a few feet from her, his center of gravity shifting as he wobbled atop a pair of rubbery legs. The pulse was stronger standing next to her, the dull hum of the world originating from where she was standing, as if Carly herself was the center of the universe. Was she, he wondered, the center of the universe? He didn’t know. There was a lot he didn’t know; he was beginning to realize that. The universe was a vast expanse, far greater than he could ever conceive, and he had seen but a fraction of an inch of it. Tears started to form in the corners of his eyes as he finally understood what the universe was trying to tell him.

“Those were really good mushrooms, weren’t they?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Abe snapped back. For an instant, he wished his mouth could match the poetry in his mind. That his mouth worked at all astonished him.

“Will you dance with me?”

He smiled and giggled oafishly. “Yeah.”

“Dance with me,” she cooed. She shimmered, as if she were made of gemstones, and as she swayed, the moonlight glimmered off her curves. Her eyes locked with his, her sway becoming a writhe. Then the writhe became a swagger and she took slow, sensual steps toward him. A twirl, a wave, a beckon. She was dancing now, fully invested in the throes of a lurid seduction. “Dance with me.”

He wasn’t going to blow it this time. Abe began to dance. There was no rhythm to his movement, no fluidity, no poetry. The moves he made were absurd; a prancing duck amid elegant swans fared better at attracting a mate. Carly smiled; the dance was enough. Every molecule in his body exploded, awash in tingling arousal, doused in a transcendent, enlightened glow. This moment, this moment right here, was the very best twenty or so seconds of Abraham Collins’s life.

It was then that Abraham Collins realized that not only was he dancing rather poorly, but that he could not stop dancing poorly—or stop dancing at all. Something else had taken him over, thrusting his legs in the air before slamming them back down on sharp stones and prickly burr patches. And as he tried to gaze down to see the state of his feet, he realized something odd: he couldn’t look down. It was only then he noticed that Carly didn’t look like Carly at all.

The drugs weren’t wearing off, but he was beginning to see through them. This wasn’t Carly; this wasn’t anyone resembling Carly. Sure, she was lithe and beautiful, but it wasn’t her.

No, this girl was different. A waifishly thin goddess with a ballerina’s body and a virginal face pristine with innocence; she shone in the moonlight like a ghostly angel, wisps of magic misting off her as she moved. Her movements blurred, blending together—a liberal mix of her speed, the shadows, and the psilocybin coursing through his veins. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, not for a moment. Not even to look at where he was dancing. The fog of the high was lifting ever so slowly, but for some reason he was no longer in control of his own feet.

“Do you love me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he answered without thinking. He wasn’t sure why.

“Will you love me forever?”

“Yes,” he answered again without hesitation. “I will love you as long as forever and more.”

“Then I will see you at the bottom.”

It was then and only then that Abe saw that his feet were no longer touching the ground. He was floating—the earth a hundred feet below. He hadn’t flown or ascended in any way; rather he had danced past the rock he had once reclined upon and found his way over the cliff. Abraham was falling, his velocity far outracing the slow speed at which he could take it all in. In his head, it might have taken an hour to hit the ground. But to the watching fairies, the moon and the stars still swirling around it, it took but seconds for Abraham Collins to plummet to the rocks below, and even less time for his legs to fracture and splinter beneath him as he impacted with the force of a speeding truck.

It would have been best had he blacked out, had he not felt every painful snap and shattering bone. Unfortunately, even at the end of his life, Abraham Collins couldn’t catch a break.