Not entirely sure if the pacing is right for narration, but we have some good scenic descriptions, weird and wacky dialogue, and a stone effigy possibly causing deaths in remote New Zealand in this one. Enjoy :)
The wind wove strange, twisting tracks about the green canopy overhead as my two friends and I drew a winding path through ancient tree trunks. My long-time friend and partner, Lucy, clearly still had some reservations about where we were, stating, “Are you positive - deadly positive, that there’s going to be no one out here?”
My other companion, Michael, responds with, “come on Lucy, why would we be deadly positive about anything?”
My two friends, although dear to me, were both a modicum addled by all the greenery they had smoked in their short lives. They saw through an unvanquishable haze, which made them do or say things that made sense when being charitable, but were not quite there. ‘Half-baked’ springs to mind, and I’m sure that expression would incite a giggle from either of them.
Lucy had slowed down substantially, with Michael penetrating further into the bush. I laid my hand gently on her shoulder, and said, “Luce, I don’t think it’s really in question whether we are alone out here. For better or for worse, the forest is deserted. That’s why its such a pain in the arse trying to cut through this scrub.”
She looks back at me, perhaps more reassured by the fact I had gone out of my way to say anything at all. I smile warmly back at her. I truly treasured our relationship, for we seemed to be a perfect duality in terms of when I was anxious, she was there saying the right things, and vice versa. There’s a quality of belief that goes into what we say to each other, and it generally works like a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I think this, my periphery is treated to the sight of Michael tumbling over a very obvious and easily avoidable vine, in a way that seemed almost intentionally cartoonish.
I burst out laughing - I know I should probably be more concerned for him, but some things in life are simply too hilarious. The look of mock disdain he gives me allows me to keep on believing I’m a good person, and he’s soon racked with chuckles as well. “You know, you’re a cartoon character”, I say.
He responds, “I would actually be in pain if that had hurt, you dick”, ever the wit. Lucy looks on, shaking her head softly, and steps over the still-prone frame of our big, goofy friend. Pulling up the rear, I help Michael rise to his feet, giving him a congratulatory pat on the back for the excellent comedy.
After that, we fall into a robust silence for a time. The scenery was undeniably beautiful, with an abundance of lush, green foliage, and as we walked a deliciously cool spring breeze graced our bare skin with gossamer fingertips. The forest was breathing. Various native birds, small and unseen in the canopy, serenaded us with multivariate song, from the baritone hoot of a kireru and to the almost questioning peep of flitting fantails. I occasionally gazed up at the intertwined boughs of kauri and remu trees, and envisioned my distant ancestors looking up in the self-same way, awe-stuck with these giants in silent slumber. Perhaps, my progenitors had stood in this exact same spot, long ago. Dappled, aerate, amber light diffused about my face as I parted a stray lock of curled hair from between my eyes, and looked straight ahead.
“Hey Luce, I know we have double-checked this, and thank god knowing us.. But we do actually have the tabs? Could we have a final geeze, before we get too deep into this forest?”
So we all gathered round at my behest, and checked in Lucie’s backpack, to ensure the tabs hadn’t wandered off somewhere. Sure enough, they hadn’t, but the consensus was we were all too forgetful at our old age to not look over these things carefully.
As much as the surrounding environment would make a compelling nature walk in of itself, we, being young and almost perpetually broke Uni students, had decided to ‘enhance’ the general experience with.. You can guess, drugs. Not an entirely original idea for people our age, I will grant you. In any case, Michael was the one to make the initial proposition, and I took to it like a flame over tinder, while we both pecked at our bowls of Indomie noodles.
“Hey Kahu bro, shall we get ourselves some tabs, go in the middle of the woods, and look at things”, was how he put it more or, probably, less. I was belligerently stoned at the time, which factored into why I was in such vehement support. Sober, or not, I’ve always loved the outdoors, and to combine that with a mind-altering substance sounded almost prophetic. We ended up sourcing the tabs from our associate, Ethan, at a party the following weekend, which were formally introduced to us as premium, dark-web gamma gremlins or something like that, fresh off the boat from Amsterdam. In the general fashion of drug dealers, there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere, but the majority of the preface is just conjured up on the spot, so we subjected them to a few rounds of testing with various colorful solutions. We appeared to have found the good stuff, as the ‘gremlins’ passed with flying colors. I convinced Lucy, without much difficulty, to come along and trip sit us.
From there, it was simply time and place. What we came up with, truly the world’s brightest minds on the task to boot, was to stay at Michael’s grandparents shack that only posed as a house back when it was first constructed out in the whop-whops. They rarely ever occupied the dwelling due to its extraordinarily rural nature, out on the West Coast. On a densely forested hill, and only having a muddy, almost washed out dirt track as access, one had to park a few kilometers away at the base of the hill, under a rusted, corrugated iron carport. This place hadn’t seen investment or upkeep in possibly three decades, but was still generally nicer than the hovel Michael and I called “the flat” back in town, so we were convinced we were moving up in the world.
From there, we thought it pertinent to base our trip in a section of forest about 20 km away, via the main road, as the valley it was centered in somehow funneled all reception meant for essentially the whole region into its series of gently-graduating gorges and sloped sides. We did not feel like getting lost in the woods, and we needed whatever benefit Google Maps, GPS or otherwise might bestow on us. If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? Does an outrageously high youth plummeting over a ravine make a noise when disemboweling himself on a tree at the bottom? We cared not to speculate. We also grabbed a proper paper map, water, a first-aid kit, lunch, snacks and extra food should we get delayed, as well as some general survival equipment borrowed on the off-chance we found a use.
In the present, we progressed deeper into the tranquil forest, talking about our lives and Michael and I’s relatively simplistic objectives for the trip. Generally, we wanted it to be about connecting with nature, and being mindful of the beauty in the present. Due steamed in thin wreaths as a patch of debris-littered forest floor came into contact with direct sunlight, allowed through via a gap in the mostly unbroken canopy. Michael’s grandfather had shown him much of the terrain of this area when his life of outdoorsmanship and rugged manual labor hadn’t weighed on him so heavily. Michael was leading the way to a well-proportioned clearing. Despite drinking and smoking his weight since high school, he remained an exceptional navigator, which definitely typifies the tenacity of the human brain. If he had been there before, he would get there again, making the whole process seem effortless.
After ascending a small rise, I began to squint as the omnipresent shade of the forest was broken by the appearance of the clearing in question. Spanning about 30 yards across and elliptical in shape, it was carpeted with a knee-high web of wild grasses, and was intersected diagonally by the remains of a fallen giant. We moved and sat on this log, looking around in silent contentment.
“Day for it”, I say, looking towards the other two.
I plucked a small, blueish flower that had battled its way up through the thick, unperforated grass. Moving aside a lock of Lucy’s hair, glimmering a glowing auburn in the sun, I tucked the flower behind her ear. She beamed up at me.
“So boys”, she began. “Are we happy with this base of operations?”
“Yes, but enough with the military speak, if the 5 Eyes caught wind of this..”, Michael responded.
Lucy chuckled. “Take off the tin foil hat Michael, I told you to leave it back at the house!”
“Well, you two really do argue like an old married couple”, I say. “And as the third wheel, I say bring out the tabs, I need something to take the edge off.”
“Sure thing, my prince”, Lucy responds in a fake, British accent not exactly fit for the royal family. Then, she leans over and gives me a loving peck on the cheek.
We opened our tramping bags, drank some water, and shed a layer of clothing, since it was approaching noon and the sun was determined to make this a stunning day. Lucy bought out the tabs, turning them over in her hand, probably trying to piece together what the fragmented design actually was.
“I love how acid dealers insist on putting some weird, hallucinogenic image over their tabs, but you have to buy an entire sheet to have any clue what the fuck it is”, I observe.
Michael responds with, “no come on, that’s clearly the foot of the gamma gremlin himself”, pointing towards a particular swirl.
“Yeah man, I never thought about it like that, man”, I say with my best, all-American drug seeker’s accent.
Meanwhile, Lucy was dolling out our respective dosages. I was committed to doing about a 180 UG dose, whereas Michael was prepared to do more, roughly about 250 UG, since his baseline tolerance was higher. This left us with some odds and ends we could use to either redose, or ignore until one of us remembered we had it later in the summer. After carefully extraditing a tab from the baggy with a pair of tweezers, Michael held it up in the air as though he thought it would sparkle, before saying, “down the hatch, or rather into the hatch for further processing”. I followed suit, until both of us had our unprescribed medicine pasted to our tongues. The acid was flavorless which was a good sign, but the paper was arid despite our saliva.
“You know what time it is”, Michael said, looking knowingly in Luce and I’s direction.
“Yeah, time to buy a watch, word up”, I say, parroting one of Prodigy’s less admirable lines for vague comedic effect.
“..No, but in all seriousness, I really do.”
“Let me guess tweedle dee and tweedle darling, are you after the chess set”, Luce says with a slight self-congratulatory smile at her own wit.
“That’s correct”, Michael says simply, rubbing his palms together.
When Michael and I first tripped together, we were midway through a game of chess, one of our few intellectual pursuits. We quickly realized, as the tabs began to stimulate our systems, that this thinking man’s game somehow had become balls to the wall hilarious. We felt like animals crammed into clothes, mimicking the motions of the board game. I was floored by the horse in particular, pronouncing “rook”, rolling the r, over and over again between bursts of gigglish laughter.
So, out came the magnetic chess board courtesy of Lucy’s bag, and she stood up as though to referee. As most people are prone to, the preemptive stage of the trip brings forth a degree of anxiety, but occupying myself with an activity proves a great distraction and largely alleviates this. Half an hour elapsed while we played, before we felt the effects. I began to feel like I was on acid, which is equivalent to trying to describe a color to a blind person; it’s already fundamental and can’t be broken down further. To make an attempt, it’s a weird tingling, energizing sensation, wherein you can feel the blood circulating through your legs, in an unexpected, rather than unpleasant, way. Acid is a substance of merging polar opposites - I simultaneously feel exuberant but by the same token fatigued in a relaxing sense, where stretching out my limbs in fullness feels excellent. I began to perspire, despite the temperature still lingering in the mid-teens. I watched Michael stare with growing intensity at a particular quadrant of the chess board, somewhat starting to list towards it.
“It’s your move, bro”, I said with a wide smile at how my tongue felt while speaking.
“Move?”, Michael asked, looking up to catch my gaze.
“Yes, why not, treat yourself”, I responded, struggling to reel in a burst of spontaneous giggling as I felt my shirt collar begin to grip my neck.
“What… Move?”, Michael again quizzes, clearly quite lost as to what we were doing.
Lucy, recognizing that we were clearly intoxicated, stepped in. “Boys, how does a walk sound right now?” She used a tone as if she was talking to two preschoolers about the advantages of wearing sun hats outside during playtime, which would ordinarily have been condescending, but it was presently very appropriate and got us both to share her false enthusiasm. We both nod our heads, and I say, “yes, that sounds titillating”,
Michael smiles inwardly and mutters, “tit”, which causes me to crack up.
We both stand and start to look around, eyes wide. Colors had become extremely vivid, as though everything in our view was charged with faint electricity. Different shades of green competed for our attention, complemented by a converse pallet of slowly swirling oranges and translucent neon reds. To describe the visuals, I like the analogy of acid being like Star Wars, whereas shrooms give an experience more comparable to being in The Lord of the Rings. Acid trips, personally, are defined by neon pulses of blue, magenta and red, flowing up and about shapes and forms, with distorted, kaleidoscopic geometry with electric outlines, and fractal patterns with unfathomable depths. Unfortunately, however, acid, like most psychoactive substances, trades in the ability to remember scenes accurately for altered perception.
“Alright friends’ ‘, Michael begins. “See that vague path on the other side of the clearing, Lucy? Go down it. It loops back around, should take… 3 to 4 hours’’, he finishes with relative difficulty estimating the times.
“Does that factor in the fact you two will obviously be running a little bit slower?”, Lucy retorts, sort of knowing this will serve as a brainteaser to us.
“Uh… Yes, yes - I think it does”, Michael acknowledges.
I internally winced. All of these particulars sounds exhausting to elaborate upon - and I certainly wouldn’t have been half as lucid had the questioning been directed at me. Lucy lent forward to look at our eyes, and grinned toothily, clearly spying enlarged, super-massive pupils.
“Yeah, three and a half, and that’s my final offer!”, I blurted out enthusiastically, after the conversation had clearly already wrapped up.
Michael smacked the log with a stray stick, yelling “sold!”.
So it was that we left the clearing then, and ventured tentatively into the refreshing, cool confines of the forested track. Before this, we decided to transfer all of our essential belongings into Lucie’s backpack, which amounted to our water bottles and packed lunch. We knew we needed to leave our bags behind, or else we would have to contend with sodden sweat patches across our backs, considering our inability to decide on an internal temperature. Lucy had done us the courtesy of tying a Bluetooth speaker to the outside of her backpack, with which she played gentle lofi, trip hop and acoustic cuts quietly, and otherwise painted an unobtrusive soundscape for us.
“Damn, who got the lights”, Michael said in mock confusion, exaggeratedly peering into the shadowy woods with his hand to his brow.
“Could do with a couple LED striplights”, Lucy confirmed.
“LSD striplights”, I offer, after having communion with the scholars on the best way to broker a response.
We went into a lulled silence then, looking around and feeling blessed by the setting. The air felt damp against my bare arms, and the lichen encrusting the trunks of the trees seemed to flow upwards in rivers of mottled, liquid green. The tops of the now-monolithic black beach seemed almost fuzzy with distance, and as though they were vibrating rapidly in space. The ground was littered with umber and orange swirls, and every moss-embossed rock had outlines reminiscent of the properties of deep sea, bioluminescent fish. We cautiously crossed a stream, Lucy ensuring we didn’t accidentally scramble ourselves on the slick rocks. The water was opalescent, seeming to have the skin of a bubble in the sun. I stopped briefly to splash a jet of water onto my face to an invigorating effect.
As we descended deeper into the woods, Michael and I discussed what we were seeing, and despite my ostensibly lower dosage, it was cromulent that I was “nearer to enlightenment” as he jokingly put it. We both concluded, despite the difference in effect, that we were both completely satisfied with our doses. Walking while influenced as we were really brought out my inner romantic, and I imagined the forest being populated by benevolent clans of nymphs, gnomes and fae.
After what might have been an hour, or three, Lucy’s speaker gave out a final sputter and died, plunging us into a vacuum of sound. Earlier, an assemblage of birdsong fused and enhanced the music, but it was such that this was now mostly absent. We were coming around a bend in the trail, when a jutting rock formation emerged like the clenched fist of a colossus. I said, “guys, shall we pull over and rest a while?”, which was emphatically given the affirmative by my two compatriots. Somehow, Michael leaped up the rock face with a feline’s agility, totally juxtaposing his brawny physic. Lucy asked me for a boost up, which I gave to her, after sharing a kiss. Then, using a kanuka stalk for leverage, I assailed the rock, and joined my two friends on a flattish theater on top. The good 4 or 5 meters of elevation gave us all a view of the forest floor, declining away from us in a northward direction.
I looked out and immediately noticed a shift in the quality of the brush. The canopy was thin and stunted, allowing the summer sun to beam through with intensity. I realized then how thirsty I was, and prodded Lucy’s arm in silent appeal for the water bottles, which when produced, we drank with avarice. Still largely speaking, Michael and I saw the panoramic view of the forest as a kaleidoscope of pulsating hues and patterns in perpetual motion, and we were enthralled. The darkness of the forest floor, more sparse with vegetation due to the rocky soil, was in sharp contrast with the radiant, cloudless blue of the firmament above. The air felt thinner up here, and freer.
Suddenly, Lucy exclaimed, “Guys, look at this!”.
She was kneeling with her back to us, stooped over something. I was immediately disquieted by her tone, which communicated a twinge of perplexed anxiety. Rising to our feet, Michael and I rushed to see whatever it was for ourselves. On the ground before our feet was what looked like an effigy of sorts, carved out of a grayish, dull stone. The statuette was carved in the likeness of a woman with an ample bosom and portulent frame, about the size of my hand. It had been shattered in half at the hip, with the lower portion absent. The face of the figure was blank and featureless, and the head without hair.
Voicing what we were all grappling with, Michael exclaimed, “what the fuck is that!?”
After a pause, Lucy responded. “I don’t know, but feel it, it’s bloody cold.”
She handed it to me, and as she said, the surface was absolutely frigid, out of keeping with the warm, sunbaked plateau we stood on. I passed it on to Michael, watching his face scrunch in confusion.
“Jesus Christ”, he said.
“No, more like the Virgin Mary?”, I responded, attempting to lighten the mood. Humor has always been a reflexive response in tense situations, and my friends, having known me for a very long time, knew what I was feeling at that moment.
“I, ah… Don’t like it”, Lucy said decidedly. “Who do you think put it here? It looks ancient, like seriously, the left side’s been eroded”.
“Yes, it kind of looks like a relic”, I responded, still struggling to search for the words due to the acid’s continued intensity. “I don’t know whether my iwi ever carved shit like this… Possibly. Beats me why it’s lying here…”
The implication, and sense we were all beginning to glean, was that it had been placed. To follow that morbid line of reasoning would be then to ask, by who?
“Weird -”Michael started. “Should we take it with us?”
“Fuck no! Honestly, the thing’s a menace, and it’s giving me a really bad vibe. Probably shouldn’t be touching it at all!”, I exploded in retort. “You’ve felt how cold it is. If a collector or museum… agent wants it, they can come get it themselves”, I say in a pleading, yet more placated, tone.
“Yeah, I think you’re right bro. It’s not doing wonders for me, really. We are already at the mercy of these tabs, and I’m not keen to be at the mercy of some haunted, mythic doll!”, Michael says, clearly having seen the wisdom of my point. Lucy places the figurine back in the divot where she found it cautiously, not wanting to break it.
As the effigy made contact with the ground, we all heard a booming SNAP from behind us, which seemed to reverberate like thunder in the still silence. We all wheeled around, our faces pallid and hearts racing. Standing stock still, I peered into the depths of the forest. Before, the trees still seemed effervescent with life, if a bit more scraggly then those nearer to the creek. Now, they took on a spectral, dark quality, and seemed to rush to fill in any gaps that might reveal the whereabouts of hidden watchers. Tinges of oily black bled across my vision as I stared.
“Luce, is there something out there?”, I whispered, breathing hard.
“I don’t know.. I can’t really see anything”, Luce whispered back, squinting.
“We need to get off this rock”, Michael said, with agitation shaking in his voice.
It was unanimous, and we began to climb down, moving very slowly as to be as silent as possible. Much less a palatial display of natural beauty, the forest felt increasingly predatory. As we made it to the ground, gooseflesh peppered my arms and neck, and I shivered. We all felt it. That sensation of being observed and studied by something malicious, something with intent, out there in the throws of the forest. Especially for Michael and I, the sensation was crushing, and it was all we could do to not curl up into the fetal position on the forest floor, or run away from the direction we had heard the noise in a fog of blind hysteria. Lucy grabbed my hand, hanging half distended at my side, and caused me to jump and let out a subdued yip.
We didn’t have to speak our intentions. As quietly as possible, we swiftly ran, heads swirling about, hoping to detect any signs of movement. Had we not encountered that effigy… Well, to start with, Lucy would be assuaging our fears, rationalizing the situation, and we would all quickly rebound out of this paranoid state. However, it did not feel coincidental that the booming crack of timbre rending had occurred at exactly the same time she had placed the figurine to the ground. She was also afraid.
As we charted our course back towards where we had come from, my visuals continued to spiral into increasingly horrible scenes. As I looked all around me, I saw lurid eyes in the landscape, staring unblinkingly out of patches of unfathomable shadow. The distant gaps in the trees became unplumbed and indistinct gulfs, hiding and concealing. The trees themselves became outlined in vivid scarlet, seeming to shake with the ebb and flow of blood beneath their bark. Everywhere I looked, my addled mind conjured religious imagery, black sigils appearing in the air in the distance, and the light became wan and dim as though being cast through smoke.
The path we backtracked along seemed to shrink within my view, encompassed by shadow on both sides. My nervous, agitated state was mirrored by my two friends, especially Michael, who had the same frantic look in his eyes that I’m sure could have been found in mine. We ran, dry, desiccated leaves and stray twigs crunching hard under foot. Pushing hard, beads of sweat began to trickle in small streams down my face, occasionally obscuring my vision and leaving a stinging sensation in their wake. However, panting and wheezing, Lucy doubled over after 15 minutes and called to us breathlessly to stop. We coalesced around her, all of us breathing hard.
“Luce, we can’t stop, we have to keep going”, Michael said, his tone serious and without his usual comedic flair.
“I need to breathe - and maybe we are over-exaggerating the threat here. It’s more likely a deer moving through the underbrush snapped that twig than some kind of vengeful spirit - we need to calm down and think clearly.”
Even in my drug-induced haze, I thought back to a principle I had learned long ago, named Occam’s Razor. This was where when in doubt, the most likely of any subset of things that could be true, should be assumed as being true. So, why would we blame a simple coincidental snap off in the woods on a diabolical presence, when these woods were home to various large animals which were more probably responsible?
It was hard for me to tell however - I couldn’t determine then, and to be honest, I still can’t, as to whether the strong, pervasive sense of being watched was due to natural paranoia because of the acid, or something else, but I lent towards the latter. My entire headspace since we discovered that dreadful effigy was immediately convoluted, fearful, and full of visions both terrible and somehow seemingly prophetic. I couldn’t dispute the bite of that feeling, and such it was impossible for me to totally side with Lucy, however much her rationality appealed to me. I spoke up.
“Guys, I don’t think it’s just the acid. Babe, I saw the look in your eyes after we heard that… that.. Twig snap. I think we all felt watched, observed, after the fact. I think we need to keep moving.”
Michael chimed in then. “I agree with Kahu, I just want to get out of these woods…”
Without a further word of comment, it was unilateral. We set out, forward, down the path before us at a very brisk walk, still anxious but not as panicked as at first. Consequently, the rancid visuals I had been submerged within dissipated slightly, although a sense of paranoia still lingered. The trees remained outlined with a sanguineous hue of red, and there was nothing more I wanted than to leave those woods, and that accursed figure, behind as a fragment of memory.
The remainder of our journey back to the clearing was uninhibited, and without further interruption. The woods around us remained oppressively silent, broken occasionally by the mournful hoot of a distant wood pigeon. The stillness was unnerving, and kept us constantly on edge, eyes flailing left or right for pursers. I noticed Michael was breathing rapidly, almost hyperventilating, and I could tell any sudden, unforeseen occurrence would send him bolting into the trees. But, despite our fears, the woods began to lighten, the cobalt sky visible between the stalwart trunks of the trees overhead, as we reentered the clearing.
Our relief at having made it back was fleeting. I looked on in disbelief, seeing the contents of Michael and I’s backpacks strewn in and about the tall, verdant space. Trails of flattened, pale grass webbed across the clearing, as though multiple assailants had recently interloped upon this area. I saw Michael’s backpack, side on, to one side of the clearing, with gaping, jagged tears cut into the fabric - totally eviscerated. Lucy inhaled sharply. It dawned on us all then I think. Progressively, the threat of further harm, however stringent to begin with, had diffused as we walked back without further incident. But this - this - sent a clear, concise message; “get. Out!”
Wasting no time, we all began running, allowing Michael to stride ahead, the advantage his long legs gave him evident. He must have sensed intuitively the way we had first arrived at this clearing, and he led us unthinkingly through the woods off to the left without much deviation in our path. Once again, the acid, now somewhat subdued as my peak passed, afflicted me with pernicious visions. Around me, I felt walled in, claustrophobic, the trees seeming to lean precariously towards me. Dark indigo tracers flowed past my gaze as I rapidly ran through the foliage, colliding with vines whose coarse exteriors left rashes on my bear flesh in their wake. In the forest, I swore I heard movement - the sound of footsteps pounding a diagonal course that would intersect with me, and I waited for the sudden sensation of being knocked to the ground by whatever may trail us. Worst of all, the agnosising tightness in my chest compressed me like an iron maiden, and my breaths came short, shallow and weezing.
Nonetheless, our panicked, now exhausted sprint eventually led us to the road. The line of grayish asphalt broke the monotonous green of the forest, and signaled salvation to us. Our pace, much diminished from fatigue, quickened then, and we flew up the bitchman to the bay where we had parked our vehicles. By no small grace of god, they were intact - no slashed tires, no tampering whatsoever. Michael, in a final moment of excruciating tension, fumbled with the zip of a pocket in his pants, and finally withdrew the keys. Clicking the button once, we all climbed in, with Lucy in the driver’s seat. Michael passed her the keys quickly, and wasting no time, Lucy turned the ignition and we belted down the road, speeding.
We all breathed in great gulps as the gravity of the sudden, exhaustive episode hit us all at once. As the adrenaline dissipated, we all fell into a subdued silence, trying to quickly recuperate and finally being able to process a coherent thought. But, there was a huge sense of relief, and we felt free and unencumbered - most of all, grateful.
We talked on the way back, but only for a brief five minute interval, the rest of the trip completed in thoughtful silence. We didn’t stop off at Michael’s grandparents house, deciding steadfastly against it, as we didn’t want to press our luck in any way, and not to mention vacate the area entirely with as much swiftness as we could muster. Lucy rose to the task, consistently speeding 50 km above the limit on straights, and taking corners with a necessary sense of risk. Our path was straight and true, an arrow shot from a bow by an expert archer, and by nightfall we were almost the way to Christchurch, and through the vaguely treacherous, unpredictable alpine passes. With our arrival within the city limits, it could not be understated the sense of respite we felt. All of a sudden, we could breathe again, now back in the cradle of civilization. We could almost forget the arduous journey, and the terrifying encounter within that ancient, primordial forest.
However, we couldn’t, not really. We didn’t speak about it much, as though that would make it more real. Michael and I were definitely changed by it - the experience of being in an situation of abject terror while on acid left lasting imprints. I couldn’t venture into wooded areas, a space I had always loved, without being racked with unshakable anxiety. I still felt watched sometimes - if I was by myself beneath a canopy of trees, rustling and shifting at the behest of a night breeze. It weighed heavily upon me, and ended up costing me my relationship.
Lucy, despite having been stone-cold sober, was also changed drastically by the experience. She introverted, and it felt to me like she always had some dreadful weight compressing her, crushing her chest. I would ask for her to share her burden with me, but she would close herself off, choosing silence over possibly encumbering me. It got to a fever pitch, where I couldn’t stand to be around her, as her state served as a constant reminder of the trauma that I had suffered that day, and that’s when I finalized the decision to end it between us. It wasn’t easy, as I truly loved her unreservedly, but I couldn’t go on living like that, surrounded by a past I could neither understand nor accept. She was always the logical, methodical one, and I think that inexplicable experience truly shook her worldview from the foundation up, and gave her a sense of the true cosmosism latent to human existence. I know it did for me, I know.
Michael and I, however, grew closer after the incident, if such a thing was possible for already unabashedly best friends. We never spoke on the matter either, but we didn’t have to. Just being in the proximity of someone else who understood, who fought the same battle every day that they themselves did, lightened and lifted the load even slightly. But, on our own, I don’t know what we would have done. The effects of the acid lingered on in our minds, a putrid, languorous tide of thick brackish water reluctant to go out to sea. That’s more than one man can take, so thank god there were the two of us.
A year after the incident, I was reading a newspaper in a Cafe, waiting for my order. I had come there that day to admire, and possibly interact, with the hipster girls coming in and out like a tidal surge, first empty-handed, and then laden with spice-infused chai or some sort of novel, fresh fruit juice. I wasn’t really paying attention to the words of course, absorbing very little. However, as I turned the fifth or sixth page, something jumped out of me, and my mouth hung agape.
Right there, inscribed into the mottled gray parchment, was the headline ‘Mysterious Incident in Remote Westcoast Forest Leaves Runner Dead”. I read the article, naturally curious, a ball of cold lead sinking to the depths of my gut as I progressed on. ‘A resident of Greymouth, a man who Police have identified as Timothy Farthing, has been found dead within the ancient brush of a forested area in the West Coast. Remote as it was, it took up to a month before anyone was able to find his cadaver, despite him having been reported missing by relatives a couple of days after his disappearance. He was discovered by a local hiker who decided to deviate from his usual trail to the South and happened upon his body. Police are not able to rule out foul play at this stage, and forensics indicate massive loss of blood due to intense trauma being the cause of death. Police do not know what to make of the pair of carved, female legs found within the trouser pocket of the victim.”