liquid acid

3: bleeding acid

I took my acid alone that night. But before I did, I'd been laying on my bed for hours after I'd arrived back at the dorm. I could feel the godforsaken parasite sitting in my mouth with its legs curled around my tongue, breathing steadily as though it was asleep. I couldn't quite discern its shape inside of me, but I could feel what must be its tail running down the back of my throat, unendingly. It liked to do this at the worst of times. The worst would be when I'm in the middle of talking to someone, or singing, and it crawls up my throat and I choke on it. And while it's sitting on my tongue, it would keep me from talking. Anything I tried to say would come out as a muffled, garbled mess, like a child trying to talk with their mouth full. But I seemed to worry more about if someone had managed to see the creature sitting there. No one ever did, but it was always one of the things I thought about the most.

Slowly, I parted my lips and allowed my jaw to hang open slightly. The weight of the thing shifted as I moved, readjusting itself like a dog getting more comfortable in a bed. I lifted my hand up to my chin, resting my fingers just below my lips. If I moved too fast, it would notice me too soon and I wouldn't be able to grab it. My fingers began to shake as I moved my hand ever closer to the opening of my mouth, pulling back my lips and lightly touching the enamel of my teeth. I sighed slightly, then went for it.

My fingers barely made it past my teeth before the damned thing began squirming down my throat. I gagged and coughed out loud, struggling to take an easy breath for what felt like an eternity before it finally managed to find its place in my chest. I'd rolled over onto my side, thinking I was going to throw up. When I didn't, I took a few cautious deep breaths and allowed myself to relax on my stomach, though not without frustration. Every single time I tried this, this was how it ended.

I set a tab of LSD on my tongue and sat on the floor against the wall while head splitting deathcore played in the background. Taking it with Alaya was preferable, but I'd been taking it alone for so long that I thought to myself that I ought to just suck it up. There was no way that I could have the same luxury two nights in a row.

It was the same formula every time I took it. The walls seemed to melt with the colors and shadows blending together as though it were running paint. The music became rough spikes jutting out of my skin, puncturing the bubbles that floated through the dry air. They ran across my skin with the rhythm of waves, rising and falling, and especially becoming more disrupted whenever I moved my hand. I glanced up at the CD player sitting on the tabletop above me, and focused on the drums. I rested my hands on the floor and lightly tapped the polished wood along with the time signature. The longer I did this, the more the floor seemed to bend under my hands, becoming softer and dented as though I'd been turning it to literal mush with the pattering.

Ryan was a good drummer. He seemed to manage well with tempo changes inspired by the more popular death metal bands he grew up listening to. The things he managed to do with the drum set that he'd compiled together over the years always impressed me. The band I was listening to in particular I'd always used as a reference for coming up with riffs to accompany my lyrics. It was more modern deathcore and was a better example for what Ryan's style had evolved into since high school.

I could hear the notes now. They repeated in my mind over and over along with the drums. I imagined myself playing them along the fretboard of Cillian's guitar alongside Ryan's drumming, and found myself more than satisfied with the riff. The lyrics came soon after, and I grabbed my notebook and immediately wrote them down, the pen feeling as though it was bending between my fingertips, a loose, wobbly stick. Each word spilled out of the pen as though it knew what I was thinking, scrawling the words across each page.

I stopped when I ran out of words. I leaned back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, as the melting colors all blended together and dripped over me like a sweet and savory candy liquid. There was no better place to be than in this magical dream. I could taste a sweet high filling my body, my heart pounding faster and faster until it felt like it was trying to get out of my ribcage. My hands trembled with the overwhelming elation coursing through me, an unbelievable feeling that could be unmatched, but the one I sought every time I took the flavorless tabs. Here, I felt more alive than I ever could've without it.