I’ve never been much of a weed smoker.
I wish I could say it was for some noble reason, like those stories you hear about a friend of a friend who took a vow never to touch cigarettes after their great grandpappy died from lung cancer. That’s not really the case, though. I could get slightly paranoid sometimes, but never enough to make me regret getting high. I never judged other people for it and never viewed myself as above anyone that did it. For most of life, I just kind of… didn’t smoke weed.
Tonight, though, I did. And I never will again.
In stark contrast, my former roommate, Jon, was the biggest stoner you’ll ever meet. The guy would go to classes high, call his parents high, eat in the dining hall high – “it enhances the taste,” he had told me countless times – and generally live life in a state of mostly-functional bliss.
Now, when I say “former roommate,” I don’t mean it in the sense of me getting so irritated by his behavior that I filed a request to change dorms, though I can understand how one might think that would happen. Against all odds, Jon and I got along quite well. We set ground rules together and Jon always respected them, either stepping outside to smoke or opening a window and throwing a towel under the hallway door. We would often stay up late talking about random things until one of us (usually Jon) fell asleep. I loved to hear the silly statements he would blurt out every so often, thinking he had just made a profound discovery about the universe. My personal favorite: “Are trains just flat rollercoasters?” No, I only say “former” because I had to live in my fraternity house this year and Jon found an apartment nearby. I would’ve loved to live with him again, but I settled for coming around to visit him at least once a month.
Tonight was my first night visiting his place. The last block leading up to his apartment was entirely free of cars and streetlights; the path before me was illuminated only by the gentle light of the full moon. I strolled down the sidewalk, excitement building with every step. This was a special night for several reasons. One was because I hadn’t seen Jon in months, with the recent summer break sending him home to California and putting about 2,000 miles between us. But the bigger reason for my giddiness was that tonight was an Exception Night.
Exception Nights were what I called the nights that I allowed myself to sacrifice a bit of my good health to smoke with Jon. Despite only doing it every once in a blue moon, I did enjoy smoking, especially when it was with someone I trusted and knew I’d have a good time with. I knew there was approximately a 0% chance Jon would be sober tonight and my first time seeing him this school year had to be special, so yes, tonight would be an Exception Night.
The sidewalk came to an abrupt stop and Jon’s apartment was before me. It was a small building with peeling beige walls and a line of thin, dirty windows with most of the view inside obscured. A large patch of uneven weeds brushed up against the side of the building, like the world’s worst fence. It looked as if the complex had existed as long as the university itself. I frowned. This was the place Jon had been so eager to show me?
-—————————
“You got a nice place,” I told Jon a few minutes later, after he had led me up the back staircase, through the hallway and into his apartment. The place looked just as bad on the inside – worn-down walls with holes of various sizes spread randomly along them, a black leather couch with half the leather stripped off, and cardboard boxes seemingly being used as makeshift trash cans.
Jon laughed a laugh that was all too familiar to me. It was his signature weed tic. Just as I suspected, he was not sober tonight. “You don’t have to lie to me, dude. I know it’s a shit hole.”
I laughed in response. “Ok, fine. I’m sorry, but it looks like a crack house.”
“It’s not a crack house, it’s a crack home,” Jon corrected. He high-laughed again and led me into his bedroom. The room, while admittedly bigger than my own, looked just as old as the rest of the apartment, with chipped walls and hundred-year-old furniture. The only difference here was that his bedroom was windowless.
“No window, huh? That seems depressing.”
“It’s fine,” Jon said, beginning to rummage through a drawer beside his bed. “Sunlight’s overrated. I crash on the couch a lot, anyways. Don’t really spend much time in here.”
Right then the smell hit me, and I instantly knew what Jon was searching for in the drawer. Before I could say anything, he pulled out a Ziploc bag full of green and smiled at me. He hit me with the question I had heard so many times before: “Wanna smoke?”
I hesitated for a moment, pretending I hadn’t already made up my mind on the matter several hours prior. “Ehhh, I don’t know…”
“Trust me, dude,” Jon said, “Straight from Orange County. Finest weed you can find. This shit will send you to another universe.”
Thinking back on it, that should have been my clear sign to run for the hills. But I had no way of knowing that Jon wasn’t at all exaggerating. Instead, I smiled. “Alright. What the hell?”
-—————————
20 minutes later, after Jon had taught me how to roll a joint – “it’s like learning to ride a bike,” he had remarked – he and I stood at the bottom floor of the back staircase. We had wanted to smoke outside the building, but it was too windy for Jon’s lighter to stay lit. The next best option had been in the space behind the staircase, where any passerby would (hopefully) not see us. The area was cramped with very little light, but it’d do. It already smelled loud, which meant this was definitely not the first time Jon had visited this specific spot.
With a quick flick the tiny flame lit up, illuminating Jon’s goofy smile, the joint clasped loosely between his lips. He lit it up, took a few puffs, and passed it my way.
I took a few puffs and almost immediately I was high. The world around me seemed to slow a bit with every inhale. “Where’d you say you got this stuff?” I asked, watching as tiny embers dropped from the paper.
“New plug back home,” Jon began, “Vinny introduced me to him. Sells for cheap. He hasn’t…” His words faded into my mental periphery as I took a final long drag. The corners of my vision began to blur.
I reached the joint out towards Jon in slow motion. My arm skipped across space, my eyes straining to follow my own movement. I let out an involuntary chuckle, giddy at my own intoxication. This sent Jon into a fit of high-laughter. He spoke rapidly, my brain processing the words a few seconds behind. “…told you so, you…”
You’re too high.
It came out of nowhere, as it always did. That voice at the back of my head that sold me paranoia like it was working on commission. It appeared every time I got high, determined to spoil my Exception Nights. Luckily, I was almost always able to keep it at bay. Almost.
You’ve never been this high before this quickly.
Technically right, but I had been higher in general. It was no big deal. I tried to tune back into Jon’s ramblings, but I struggled to keep up, my brain’s processing speed slowing by the second.
You overdid it. Took too many hits, too fast. You’re going to green out.
It might be right. I normally smoked slowly, methodically. Taking one hit at a time, gauging how I felt between each one. I had been eager, impatient. But I wasn’t going to green out. I wouldn’t listen to it. I wouldn’t let the paranoia get the best of me.
Yes, you will.
The world began to spin. My legs felt wobbly.
You’re going to green out.
No, no. No. I was fine. Jon was right here with me. My surroundings blurred and the world shook, and I lost sight of Jon. But he was there. Wasn’t he?
You’re done, Will.
No. The floor converged with the ceiling. Everything flattened, then stretched. No! I was floating. I was falling.
You’re going to die.
Everything went black.
-—————————
“Will?”
I opened my eyes. Jon stood over me hesitantly, peering down at me with wide eyes. The world was still.
“What… happened?”
“Are you ok?” Jon asked. “I think you fainted.”
I took a moment to collect myself. I sat up and ran a hand through my hair, feeling for any bumps that might indicate a concussion, but finding none. I checked my arms and legs for scratches or bruises. None. No part of me hurt. There was a ringing in my ears and I felt a lingering haziness but I was thinking clearly, indicating that the fall must’ve sobered me up quite a bit. I looked up at Jon, the dim bulb behind him glowing much brighter than before. Looking at it made my head hurt and seemed to amplify the ringing sound. That was fine. I could deal with a bit of temporary tinnitus and increased light sensitivity. It could have ended much worse for me. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Good,” Jon said, though his tone conveyed more bitterness than relief. I didn’t really blame him. Nothing could’ve killed his buzz more than seeing his friend pass out. I felt a pang of guilt for letting my eagerness ruin the moment.
“Sorry,” I said, standing up slowly. “I should’ve known my limits.”
Jon moved past me to the foot of the staircase without making eye contact. “It’s cool,” he said unconvincingly. “Want to get some fresh air?”
“Sure,” I said, following him up the steps to the back door leading to the parking lot. Jon pulled the door open, gesturing me through. I took a step into the doorway but paused as I caught a glimpse of the sky outside. The once-delicate full moon now irradiated abrasively, nearly blinding me with its light. Looking at it was like staring directly at the sun, and though I had squinted my eyes reflexively almost immediately, the damage was done. The ringing increased tenfold and my head began to throb intensely.
I stepped back into the darkness of the stairwell. “I can’t… too bright,” I said, placing my hands on my head as if that would stop the throbbing.
“You sure?” Jon asked, pulling the door farther open. As he did, the harsh, overwhelming light seemed to push into the room forcefully.
“Yes… please… close it!” I managed, lost in a haze of pain. “I need… to sit down.”
“Ok, let’s go up to my place then,” Jon said. Even through the haze I could detect the coldness in his voice.
He put his arm on my back and assisted me in climbing the steps. We climbed in silence as I waited for the throbbing and ringing to subside, but another flight later, both sensations were just as intense. It occurred to me how selfish I was being for needing Jon to take care of me like this when it was my fault for overdoing it. As we reached the door to the hallway, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
I spun around to face Jon. He looked at me perplexedly. “What?”
“What did you just say?” I demanded.
“I said it’s cool?”
I didn’t detect an ounce of insincerity in his tone. Jon continued to look at me with innocent confusion. But I knew what I had heard, and how I had heard it. Just for a moment, his relaxed, welcoming voice had morphed into that of the malicious one that resided in the back of my head.
“I think you’re still high,” Jon said. “Let’s get inside and I’ll get you some water.”
“Ok,” I agreed.
We exited the stairwell. To my right extended a long hallway of rooms leading to Jon’s. It had earlier been busy with students coming and going or chatting with their neighbors. It was now completely empty, save for Jon and me. To my left was another peeling wall with a large window mounted in the center. I instinctively turned away from it and began down the hall, but even a brief glimpse of the blindingly white expanse beyond the window was enough to send a shockwave of pain through my head. “Agh!” I cried, throwing my hands on my forehead as if that would do anything.
“Dude, are you ok?” Jon asked. I felt him put a hand on my back, but I remained faced towards the hallway. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t. He was next to the window. It would hurt too much.
Instead, I began walking down the hall on unsteady feet, attempting to focus on putting one step in front of the other rather than the pounding pain in my head. The moon behind me cast a scattered, bright reflection on both walls of the hallway. I forced my eyes straight ahead, knowing that looking at the reflections too closely would increase the pain.
As I continued down the hall it began to feel as if the world was resisting my movement, like I was trying to run underwater. With every step I took, an invisible force pushed against me harder. Meanwhile, the white haze crept into the sides of my vision like it was trying to race me down the hall.
“Turn around.”
It came from Jon’s direction, but it wasn’t him saying it. I knew that.
“Turn around, now.”
No. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Between the near-deafening ringing in my ears, the pounding headache, and the invisible force trying to hold me back, something in me knew that if I turned toward the light, I would be consumed by it.
I began to jog, then run down the hallway. The faster I moved, the more it seemed to stretch in front of me, extending into infinity. The invisible current pushed against me even harder.
“Turn around!” the voice demanded, but I didn’t. I began to sprint. The light was creeping into my vision from all sides. Very soon, I would be surrounded by it.
“No!” I tried to scream. I couldn’t hear myself over the ringing.
I ran until my legs went numb. The throbbing pain extended throughout my entire body. I felt like death, but I had almost made it down the hallway. I wasn’t sure if Jon was still behind me. Had he been consumed by the light? Had he been trying to let it consume me, too?
Finally, I reached Jon’s door. I prayed he had kept his old habit of forgetting to lock it. Sure enough, it swung right open, and I launched into his apartment.
It was no safer inside. Light filtered in through both the kitchen and living room windows, rapidly enveloping the room in a white haze. Immediately I was overcome with pain. I winced and fell to the floor.
“Look at it.”
No. No. I needed to think. I needed a plan of escape. But there was nowhere to go. No way to outrun the light that had entirely absorbed the outside world.
“Look into the light.”
That was it! I knew where I needed to go. Somewhere the light couldn’t reach me.
I attempted to push myself off the floor, but a crushing force fought against me. I battled the current with all my might, but it wasn’t enough. I was trapped, and the haze was rapidly closing in.
Suddenly, two arms wrapped around mine and hoisted me up onto my feet. Through the haze I could just make out Jon, with an unmistakable look of terror on his face. He yelled something – “Come on,” maybe – but the deafening ringing drowned him out. Wasting no time, he ran ahead of me deeper into the foggy expanse. I understood he was headed for the same place I was.
I sprinted across the room. I could just barely make out my destination through the haze. As the last of my surroundings were devoured, I dove into Jon’s room. I hit the ground hard, and a burst of pain shot through my leg. I shook it off and crawled further into the room. A sprained ankle was the least of my concerns at the moment.
I reached back and slammed the door closed behind me. Jon then pushed a towel into the space under the door, attempting to block any light from coming through. It was no use. Slowly but surely, the white fog seeped in through the cracks between the door and the frame. Unable to stand on my ankle without immense pain returning, I crawled towards Jon’s bedframe and sat up against it.
“I guess having no windows came in handy,” Jon cracked, but the lingering panic in his voice broke the illusion of witty stoicism. To an extent, he was right. With the overhead light off, the only source of light was from the gaps in the doorframe, so it was filtering in much more slowly. Really, though, what did that mean? We were only biding our time, prolonging the inevitable. Jon knew that as well as I did.
“What the hell is happening?” I said, bursting into tears. I cried in long, heavy sobs that made my entire body convulse.
Jon crossed the room to sit in front of me. He put his soft, comforting hands on my shoulders. “I don’t know, man, but we’re gonna get through it together, ok?”
“How?” I cried, sobbing even harder.
We both glanced around the room. The white fog was gradually enveloping the room, closing in on us from all sides. It obscured first the walls, then the closet, then the desk. There was nowhere left to go. Nothing left to do but sit and wait. Soon, we would become just another blur in that uniform whiteness.
“We won’t look at it,” Jon said assuredly.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Jon said. “Don’t look at it, and it won’t get to you. Just look into my eyes, and I’ll look into yours.”
“I… I…” How could I not watch the fog close in? Watch the cause of my impending room reach me?
“Look at me,” he said. His voice was calm and confident.
I didn’t think it would make a difference. We’d be consumed by the light whether we looked at it or not. But it occurred to me that maybe Jon knew that. Maybe, knowing that this was the end, he just wanted to spend his last few seconds in an intimate moment with an old friend. And I couldn’t argue with that.
I fixed my gaze on Jon’s warm, reassuring brown eyes. I locked my eyes on his, refusing to move them in the slightest, even when the periphery of my vision was completely consumed in white. The ringing grew louder and the pain grew greater. Everything else was lost in the haze except for Jon and me. We sat there, eyes locked, together, in this infinite expanse of nothing.
I was taken back to the time he had consoled me like this on our last day as roommates. I had been devastated at how little we’d see each other anymore after we moved out, even if we’d be on the same campus. We had looked each other in the eyes and made a mutual promise to make time for each other in the years to come. It was that promise that had brought me here today.
Back then we had been coming to terms with a future apart from each other. Now we were facing the end, together.
“Look at me!” Jon screamed over the ringing. Maybe to keep my attention, or maybe to ensure to himself that he was still alive. He screamed it over, and over, and over. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”
Jon twitched for a moment, but kept his eyes fixed on mine. I tried to ask if he was ok, but I couldn’t hear myself over the ringing.
His eyes began to move. No, that wasn’t right. They were locked in place, but they were also shifting. Morphing. The outer layer of his eyes began to converge, draining the color out of his irises and filling them with white.
I tried to scream but couldn’t. That same invisible force was once again pushing against me. I couldn’t move my legs, lift my arms, or even open my mouth to scream.
I watched in horror as Jon was possessed by the light, the blackness draining from his pupils until they were completely white. His eyes were devoid of color, his face was devoid of expression, and his body was devoid of movement. He was a lifeless shell that I physically couldn’t look away from.
Then, his mouth opened and began to speak. But it wasn’t his voice anymore.
“Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” He shrieked in that same malicious voice that had been drawing me towards the light from the start. His cries cut straight through the ringing in my ears. It was all I could hear. This terrible voice. The embodiment of the light taunting me from the drained corpse of my best friend.
I knew that in mere seconds, I would be overtaken too. But I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of giving myself over to it. I couldn’t look at the light, or Jon, or his lifeless, ruined eyes for one more moment. I fought the invisible current with all the strength I had left and pushed my eyelids closed. I held onto the darkness, even as the overwhelming light forced its way in.
“Look at me! Look at me! Look at me~”
“Look at me!”
What?
“Please, Will, look at me, man! Oh God…”
Everything was once again still. The ringing was gone. The pain had completely subsided. Jon’s voice was his own. And I was in complete, undisturbed darkness.
“You gotta wake up, dude. Please.”
My eyes were closed. But not forced closed like they had been. Gently, like I was waking up from a peaceful nap. Slowly, hesitantly, I opened them.
I was in the stairwell. Lying on the floor, with Jon peering worriedly down at me. Just like when I had woken up before. Except things seemed different. For one, the overhead lightbulb didn’t cause any ringing or pain. And, more importantly, the look of concern on Jon’s face was unmistakably genuine. Real. He was shaking, eyes dry and squinty but full of color. He was fully himself. Still, I asked, “Are you ok?”
“Am I ok?!” Jon exclaimed. “You’re the one that passed out! I was just worried you were dead! Are you ok?”
I sat up, attempting to process his words. “I fainted?”
“I think so. You were unresponsive, but not for very long. Five seconds max.”
Five seconds? That was it? The nightmare scenario I had just experienced had gone on for at least a few minutes. Could it really have been just that – a nightmare?
I stood up and hustled for the back door, stepping over the half-smoked joint that had clearly been dropped hastily to the floor. “Easy there, cowboy,” Jon remarked, but I didn’t slow down. I opened the door and looked up at the full moon. It was back to normal, emitting a faint ring of light but nothing more. A calm breeze whistled by, and with it, a wave of relief washed over me. I ran my hand over the back of my head again. This time there was a noticeable lump. Funnily enough, I was happy about that. I really had fainted. I was back to the real world.
Jon stepped out into the night with me. “Are you sure you’re-“ he began, but was cut off as I embraced him in the tightest hug I could muster. He hugged me back.
“I’m sorry I put you through that,” I told him, fighting back tears.
Jon hugged me even tighter. “It’s alright, man. I’m just glad you’re okay. I was freaking out watching it happen. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must’ve been for you.”
Somehow, despite all odds, I laughed. “You have no idea.”