Crossed

Chapter 1, Part 2

If a bullet pierced a cloud and then exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction, that would be what smoking weed was like for him. His mind was the cloud and the drug was the bullet. It was a catalyst, a thunderstrike that upon impact creates a darkened dusky cloud. A consuming cloud of potent, shaven mud.

There was a whistling sound that echoed as he sucked in. The smoldering embers of the substance were creating a high pitch scream. He basked in the scream like one savors a sugary biscuit. He loved that sound. The humanly desire to burn things was intoxicating to his ear drums.

The smoke was layering itself into the paint of the walls per usual. Sedimenting and collecting dust, the smoke billowed throughout the small living room of the apartment as he thrust the tip above his bottom lip and let it sit. He called this method the piping method. He could choose what ratio he breathed in the bud to the oxygen around it just by opening his mouth wider.

A basic apartment. You walk in and the living room is a square right at the front, kitchen in the back, two doors on either side. One was a bedroom and the other was the bathroom. The couch didn't face the kitchen so he wasn't looking when his focus had changed from the simmering of the soil to the loudness of the kitchen fan. His ears flicked, but not eagerly, moreso in agitation.

The first hit was like a wick, puffing out but also puffing in, clouding and numbing the mind to a kind of microwave heat and kneading folds. He felt like he thought more creatively when he was high. Or at least his notebook did, always scribbling in certain ideas or verses. Relaxation was also a benefit, time passed slower, he just wanted to live his life more fully without the risk associated with every single other way of enjoying life.

The automatic urge to itch had his fingers sticky with the pus that was hardening on his ear. He leaned back on the couch cushions, feeling light as air, without a single care. He brought his wet finger up to his eyes and looked at the color of the liquid that had oiled up under his fingernail.

What a tragedy, he thought, sarcastically.

He tapped the edge of the ashtray with the blunt that was now half the size of his index finger. This would be the first of three that he would smoke today. One in the morning, one after lunch, and one before bed. Waking and baking was the weekend ritual ever since he began living by himself. Sapping the life out of the herb was his thing. It was the hearth of his home, the vibrancy of his leisure.

Fast forward a couple of meticulously counted minutes, the spud was leaning against the side of the ashtray. He was now stretched out, laying down on the couch like it was a bed, with his head resting on the armrests like they were memory foam pillows. He didn't notice how uncomfortable it was because his trains of thought were chugging along through a forest of memory, recalling instances of emotion like he reaching for shooting stars: feeling the essence of the events glowing and flashing, but unable to grasp the significance of the recall or the exact dynamic details.

His inner clock had stopped due to the consuming complete opposite of threat that was holding him safe now by means of the marijuana. The grime of the ear's pus was coiling into the strands of his golden hair, gluing them to the scab as it built, like a pile of wet sand compressing into a rock.

There was no threat, so of course, like all humans do, he created his own.

Immediately upon standing up, a rush of lightheadedness sprawled him back to a laying position.

I need water.

He fumbled his way over to the dispenser on the fridge and filled up a glass of water. He throttled it down, glugging to the beat of his heart until he saw his reflection on the bottom of the glass. It was warped, the swirls twirled the appearance of his skin, conjuring a disfigured demon to dwell under the droplets. A ghostly joker smile with slits for eyes that curved around in a circle like a sideways crescent moon, in the shape of a frowny face. A ghastly goblin, screeching as his thumbs squeaked across the smudgy glass. A shockwave careened out of this image and into the mind of the man, illuminating his third eye with the potential of distortion in reality, a brusque splash of ice in the incoherence that was the moment before his eyes locked onto this scraggly and grinch-like projection.

After letting go of this violation of his consciousness his breathing began to weigh more and more, puffing heavily. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Inhale. Exhale.

That was the first wave of his imagination's anxiety, there were always several waves. Sometimes it would be like a beach, they would just keep coming. Rapidity increased during the rise to the high's climax. The top being where the waves were at their most rapid.

On his way he looked back at the front door to his apartment, the keyhole resting in the doorknob, the peephole resting at eye level. Before the plates were even on the table, the cloth was ripped off, yanking him out from under his feet into a fit of imagination once more, sparing nothing but his true insignificance in this world, an extension of the artificial danger he was in, a need to feel like his life had some sort of risk involved.

A crowbar wedged its way through the peephole and splintered through the wood downward, a fission, similar to an earthquake splitting the earth's crust. Then a foot came crashing through, a very large man with a knife in his hand was now entering this hole that he created in the door and approaching our main character with alarming speed.

Like taking a shot of tequila, the rush of fear washed over him, stopping him completely in his tracks he stood, paralyzed from the neck down, only twitching at the head, side to side, side to side.

The image disappeared just as quickly as it began, popping like a bubble of soap in the summer sun of the backyard. Dispersing into the backdrop like a ghost fading into the damp depressions of the walls, damp with the dryness of the dingy aroma. Skunky.

Cheating is an art, but you can't cheat art.

Iron deficiency maybe it was? Lightheadedness could be so many other ailments he thought. It was a crossbow that had slammed through his skull this time, the blood in his brain moving and ebbing to correspond with the imaginary injury. Hopefully the arrow would destroy the tumor that he was now convinced he had. The coincidences of synchronicity added up. He had a tumor. He could really feel it. Massaging it wouldn't help, would it? He thought that one side of his head was heavier. What a classically geekable strain. Always doing the most. I love weed.