The Trip

It was a Tuesday. Or some such inconsequential day. One of those days that in the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter. I was walking downtown, travelling through all of my usual haunts. Trying to see where the night would take me on this random evening.

I had just left Tony's bar and was walking down the road. I may have been on the sidewalk, I might have been in the middle of the road for all I know. Everything is a bit of a blur. At least it is up to when I walked into Berry's. I'm not sure how it was that I decided to go to his place. He may have called me, he may not have. There is really no way for me to be sure.

Anyways there was three guys crowded around Berry's table, none of which were Berry. In fact there was no sign of Berry.

The three guys barely acknowledged my entrance. One of them nodded to me, as if they were expecting me.

Which really shouldn't have been possible, since I had no Idea that I was going to end up there until I had pretty much arrived.

So I did what any sensible person would do. I sat down at the table and pretended to belong. None of them even looked up.

After maybe ten minutes had passed one of them passed an envelope to the person next to him, which he in turn handed to me.

As he handed it to me I looked up and the same guy who had nodded to me when I walked in nodded to me again. So I opened the envelope and peeked inside.

Nestled in the paper was two pills. One a bright hot pink and the other a matte black that seemed to eat the light around it. I swear to god, the paper around the pill seemed darker than the rest of the paper.

I looked up again and the guy who had nodded just told me to pick one. It didn't really matter which I chose.

As I stared down into the bag I went over all of the drugs that I had done in my relatively short life. LSD, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, all sorts of pharmaceuticals, even shrooms once when I was younger. Shockingly enough none of them even looked remotely like these two pills.

As a struggling artist I decided on the black pill. The void of light that it seemed to exude bothered me on some level. I decided I wanted it gone. The only way to do that was to take the pill.

So I pulled it out and I saw all of the guys at the table nodding approvingly as I tossed it back. As an experienced pill popper I didn't even look for a glass of water. And none of them offered one up.

I sat there for another five or so minutes and, feeling nothing, I got up to leave. None of the people at the table tried to stop me.

It was on the stairs out that I began to feel the effects. An odd sense of vertigo overcame me. Spinning, but not really in a bad way. It felt like I could still walk a straight line even as everything spun and swirled around me.

I stumbled through the door to the building and tried to continue on my way. But as I tried to cross the alley between Berry's building and the next I heard a noise. Something that I don't really think I understood, or had heard before. Not even close. I don't really know how to even describe it.

So in the state I was in I decided that it was my duty to investigate it. I turned and began to stumble down the alley.

After about five feet I started to notice that the shadows seemed to grow longer. And darker. And deeper if that were possible. Which didn't seem to be very probable. And yet they did.

After about fifteen feet I started hearing more sounds. Its almost like a chittering or something.. Like things moving around in the suddenly deeper darkness. And yet I don't get worried. I just keep weaving my way through the alley.

But after about twenty-five feet I come to a sudden drop off. As if the alley just ends at a chasm. I can see no end to the drop in front of me.

In the back of my head I can hear a little voice telling me that something is a little bit off. Maybe a lot off. But I can't seem to figure out what.

I lean forward what must have been a little too far because suddenly I can feel myself falling. But at the same time I would swear to god and anything else that wanted to know that I was still standing at the lip of that chasm.

As I fell the sounds I had heard while walking down the alley fell away. But they were almost immediately replaced by another sound. It was almost like the wind, but I swear it was words. Of some sort.

After falling for sometime, trying to make sense of what the wind was telling me I began to see lights up in the distance. Just flashes, but somehow I knew that if I just waited a while I would be able to see the sources of these lights.

Flashes started to ignite in my periphery. Yellow, red, blue and every other color imaginable. And a few that weren't. Just quick flashes at the corner of my eye. All the while I could still see the lights that I was falling towards.

The falling feeling began to fade, it felt more like I was moving through some sort of weird tunnel at a high speed.

But the lights in front of me began to take shapes in the darkness. Indescribable shapes. Fantastical shapes. Shapes I can't even begin to describe.

The words being whispered in my ear started to change shape as well. They went from words to wails to screams in a matter of minutes. And yet I was still feeling nothing that even resembled fear or worry. Merely an exhilaration that I had never felt before. A feeling that a dim corner of my brain realized was the high, the rush, that
I had been looking at all my life.

Suddenly I was among the lights that I had been moving towards. Flashing through them at an incredible speed.

More colors, more incredible than I could even begin to describe flew by me. The screaming in my ears intensified before suddenly falling completely away.

I tried to turn my head to examine the lights as they flashed by, but it seemed my neck was stuck in the position that it was in despite my best efforts.

Just as suddenly as I had arrived amongst the lights there was one looming ahead of me. A massive shape, one that I again cannot even describe properly enough. As the light grew closer I began to feel a dim spark of fear ignite in my brain and shiver its way down my spine.

I struck the light. It was as if breaking through a sheet of glass. I could see shards of light spin away around the point that I had struck at. In the beams of light I could see still more images, pictures of my life. Of the people I had met and befriended. The people that I had made enemies of and the people who I had loved.

The light was all around me, the shards I had seen had faded away almost immediately. But the light began to dim and more shapes began to form. My first date with Abby. The first time I used the set of parents that my mother had given my for my birthday. My first drink. My first bar fight. All of the major landmarks in my life.

The screams of the wind had once again faded to indistinguishable words again. More images flashed by, me stumbling down the road from Tony's. Walking into Berry's. Holding up the pill.

The images began to fly by even faster. Things I'd never done. Things I'd never seen. And yet they all seemed as familiar as if I had been there.

The words increased in volume until they were a shriek in my ears, painful to listen to. As the final words reached a crescendo before falling away I was able to actually understand them for the first time.

"The bottom is the top for those who live below."

Which was just downright weird. And kind of stupid as I think back on it. But at the time I had no time to think on it, because I slammed into something again. As if I was exiting the back of whatever I had entered. But this time the resistance was much stronger. More solid.

Everything went black. All the sounds faded and I was adrift in a sea of blackness.

The next morning I woke up in my bed. As if nothing had happened. I immediately left and went to Berry's. But his building burning. The blaze was immense, nobody was able to even get close.

As I scanned the crowd I spotted on of the guys that had been at Berry's the one that had nodded to me. He walked towards the alley next to the building despite the heat and passed to look back at me. Nobody else seemed to see him. Our eyes locked and he slowly smiled as he nodded again.

I sprinted to an area of the street where I could see the alley as he walked down it. About thirty feet in he turned around nodded one last time, spread his arms and let himself fall backwards. As he fell the shadows of the alley deepened and the ground behind him fell away.

He dropped out of sight down the chasm. As soon as he disappeared the alley immediately returned to normal.

That was two weeks ago. Now I have begun to see and hear things more and more frequently. Things that I saw or glimpsed that night. Its becoming more and more frequent.
I don't even know what to think.