LACK OF MAN (part 1)
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He leaned back into the couch, letting his arm bend on angle to hoist the small vapor device upright to heat the remaining Goo stuck to bottom below the quartz wrapped in thin metal strands, heating at the touch of a button. The milky smoke slid down his throat like liquid, though it wasn’t smoke at all; nor liquid. It never took long to feel the thick vapor creep its way through his abdominal sphincters, adding an extra gulp of air to ensure safe arrival. Every time he added the gulp, much like the purposed coughing while smoking marijuana, which was more than rare. He’d hold in the vapor before any amount could escape in a clouded belch.
His eyes took on a double vision as he tried to focus on the small vase-shaped piece attached to the battery. The battery was only three-and-a-half inches. The glass enclosure adding another two-and-a-half inches. After letting go the button, extinguishing the surprisingly bright blue light, he sat there completely still, gulping down some oxygen. The bubble went down like a lump, aching the entrance to his stomach that had been and would continue to be coated with residue. It slipped through with some tensing of his abs and chest muscles, mostly the pectoral.
The ache passed and he relaxed his stomach. The last of the movement for a moment. Even his breath could be called non-existent. He could hear the ticking of the old clock he found and had repaired. At first he could count the seconds and think the numbers up to forty-six before his mind began to wander. But for roughly another fifteen to twenty seconds he could count along beside the wandering thoughts of blue light not being as well liked as the even brighter white light from his previous battery that he used as a flashlight when the opportunity called for it; or the taste on his tongue, how dry it was, examining the feeling of it being peeled from the roof of his mouth, or whether or not mouth ceiling was more appropriate, but it didn’t sit right on his dry tongue. Also crossing his mind was how much Goo he had, if there was enough for later, or how much beer was in the mini-fridge which led to the sanity of the take-out chicken from the week before. The last being if his girlfriend Vanessa and the likelihood of her calling first after the argument that took place just the night before.
But that was it. His eyes were rolling to the back of his head, accompanied by a near-deranged smirk spreading like ink in water across his unshaven face. That was a problem however. This whole addiction that left you useless for the first fifteen or seventeen minutes. Would the air raid sirens wake him from the Goo induced coma? It had never happened before, but it could. He could wake at fourteen minutes of the fifteen minutes of the air raid's duration. He’d have only a minute to spare, which would have been severely hazy to shave his face so the gas-mask could do its job properly.
This time he was awoken by his vibrating phone, rattling around for attention on the coffee table. The vibrations stopped as his eyes creased open to a couch-cushion-restricted view. The light from the screen went dim, and then out, prompting his curiosity. He pushed himself up, the drug working wonderfully while releasing a clear belch. The walls had a purplish hue that pulsed into him, crashing on his mind and body like waves on white sand. It wasn’t unpleasant. He loved it.
A smooth trail of yellow and pink followed his hand as he reached for his phone where it turned to a dark blue before it faded back into fiction. He checked the time first. It was a mystery at exactly which minute he had gone out at, but with a minor-educated guess, he’d say it was about twenty-seven to thirty minutes. The black-outs were getting longer. The next thing to check what was responsible for the phone’s notification. It was his girlfriend Vanessa. Without thinking or giving himself the time he needed to collect his own mind that had been strewn across the couch and floor, he called her back.
“Hello?” she said upon answering.
“Hi, baby,” he exclaimed to which she sighed.
“You’re high, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Fuck,” he thought.
“Well?” she sighed.
“Yes,” he sighed, but differently from her.
“I’ll just talk to you tomorrow,” she said.
“No, don’t do that,” he replied.
“I’m not going to talk to you when you’re like this,” she said.
“It’s okay, I’m fine,” he replied.
“When’s my birthday?” she asked.
“It’s uh…” he stuttered. “Uhm…”
“Bye,” she said, hanging up.
“The seventh?” he replied, talking only to himself.
Was Vanessa’s birthday on the seventh? Of June? April? No, June. But the seventh still didn’t sound right in his ears, head, and on his tongue. He knew it was under ten. Even reciting dates to himself posed no help or opportunity for remembrance. He settled on the seventh of June anyway. Still considering dates, he leaned forward, swapping out the canister for Goo to the one for nicotine oil that was waiting to be used on the table. His hands were twitching, aching from the strange energetic but relaxed state the Goo provided. It easing and evaporating his feelings and woes.
He understood why this drug, in some cases, sent people over the edge. Who knows what the chemist was trying to accomplish by mixing derivatives of Adderall and Olanzapine with a blend of molecularly distilled cannabinoids and crystalline isolates. The resulting matter wasn’t even able to be inhaled. Rumors say that several people died from collapsed lungs before the eighth person thought to gulp it down and speculate what could happen. The chemist must have thought he was dead at first when the black-out occurred. Could that guy even be called a chemist? It was far to easy to obtain such items and use them as they saw fit. Though most would believe that it was the same type of operative that the government had started in the nineteenth century with the import/export or recreational drugs including heroin and cocaine to be used against the lower class of society.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
To be continued….
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