Last summer, I was helping a close friend named Luke set up a music festival in his backyard. It was generally a raucous affair, with hundreds of people showing up and bands going throughout the whole night. He would buy many kegs of beer and put them in the back corner. Unlimited alcohol always drew crowds. But I was never much of a drinker; I usually went for the psychedelics.
In preparation for the party, I had made a jar of green dragon- taking a small jar of pure grain alcohol and putting a handful of hashish into it. After letting it sit for a few days, the entire concoction turned dark green. It was hard to see through it with so much cannabis being dissolved in it.
The night of the party, I arrived early. An old hippy friend of Luke’s I had met on multiple occasions before had parked his huge old van in the yard. I went up to him, smiling and saying hello.
“You know where to get any acid, bud?” I asked. Of course I already knew he did. He smiled back, pulling out sheets of blotter from his van, still wrapped tightly in tinfoil.
“Be careful,” he said as he handed some to me and I gave him the money. “That shit is strong. White fluff from the Rainbow Family.”
“Haha, yeah, OK,” I said, shoving seven hits into my mouth as I walked away. There are some people who, when getting psychedelics, like to try out small doses and see how strong they are before moving to more heroic doses. I was never one of those people. I was more of the Hunter S. Thompson mindset- eating a handful of blotter and asking crazily, “How long do I have?!”
Then I took the green dragon and started mixing a drink with the ingredients I had brought. I loved pina coladas and blue Hawaiis and other tropical drinks. I decided on a blue Hawaii, except with green dragon replacing the usual rum.
I mixed the blue curacao, pineapple juice and sour mix together, putting some ice in it. Then I took a few shots of the green dragon and poured it on top, stirring it all together. I sipped it. It definitely tasted like pure weed still, but the combination of flavors made it much better.
By then, the acid had started to kick in too. And the old hippy was right- it was strong. Soon I was wandering in circles, walking around the party with my spiked blue Hawaii. I was tripping so hard by this point that it was nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with anyone. It was hard to even remember what I was trying to do or where I was going.
A massive sense of déjà vu overtook me. The hills in my friend’s backyard were going up and down, like they were dancing in time with the music. Everything seemed to have happened already before. It was like I was trapped, reliving moments that had occurred exactly the same in the past, at a time I couldn’t remember. Everything seemed so familiar.
This wasn’t my first acid trip, so I knew I could calm myself down with sheer willpower. I focused on my breathing, letting thoughts come and go, watching them slipping away into the void. I felt a presence watching me in the moving hills, a presence that seemed to be one with the dancing of the hills- like a Hindu god who destroys the universe in his dance. The trees moved towards me and back away, and white light shimmered around the people at the party. Huge auras surrounded all living beings there, and trails of translucent light followed anything that moved in my vision. I moved my hand in front of my eyes, and saw a trail of pure energy stretching behind it for a couple feet.
I walked towards the forest on the edge of his party, where a couple of guys I had met at other parties had massive earth gongs set up. The gongs looked about three to four feet high, suspended by black cords to a rectangular metal casing. They saw me with my huge pupils and wide grin and started laughing, asking me if I wanted to try out the gongs, and if I wanted to buy any chocolate magic mushroom hearts.
“What do you mean, try them out?” I asked, referring to the gongs. “And no thanks on the mushrooms, I already got some family blotter.” They pointed to the reclining chair between the gongs.
“You sit back in that chair, blindfolded,” one said, “and we give you some crystals to hold-” he pointed at two huge crystals that looked like quartz and amethyst- “and then we start the gongs.” I didn’t even have to think about it.
“OK!” I said cheerfully. I had never gotten “gonged” before, especially tripping as hard as I was. I had a feeling it would be a memorable experience.
They sat me down in the chair, and I put the blindfold around my eyes. The plunge into darkness changed the visuals into morphing colors and shapes. Every sound around me gave me a visual cue in my blindfolded state. I could see sounds- sharp, quick sounds giving spiky bright shapes, while deep, lower ones gave more rounded and darker ones. One of the guys put a crystal in each of my hands, and then the gongs started.
What I experienced during those few minutes is nearly impossible to describe- as if any mystical experience could be described in words. But I felt the presence of something eternal. It was as if a face of pure white light, a face bigger than the stars and outside of all time and space, appeared in my mind. Such a presence was terrifying. His gaze felt almost reptilian, alien. It felt cold, as cold as the endless space between galaxies.
And I know that this eternal mind, this God, spoke to me. I heard His voice.
It wasn’t in English, or, in fact, in any human language. It was a voice that sounded like rushing water, like a massive waterfall going over an eternal precipice. There was no stopping. The words were understood on an instinctual level, and they merged one into the next, never breathing or taking a break. I began to move my arms and head around to make sure I was still alive and in the real world.
What He said to me was simple, even though it hadn’t been said in actual words: “You’re going to die one day. Your lips and fingernails will turn blue and your heart will stop and you will die. And I see you. I see you.
“I see everything you have ever done, and everything you ever will do, and when you die, you’ll hear my voice again. For I am the eternal, the source of all life, and you are nothing. You are a grain of sand in an eternal desert. Your body will be a shell, left to rot, and in the end, my son, it will return to only you and me. You and me. You and me, forever and ever…”
And then it stopped. Someone took the crystals out of my hands, and I took off the blindfold.
“Holy shit,” I said. “What just happened?” The two looked at me, smiling. “Did something just happen? Seriously, did it?” They shrugged.
“Lots of people have weird experiences with the gongs,” the taller of the two said. “If you ever are interested in the future, we sell time slots for gonging, sensory deprivation tanks…” They went on. I pretended to be interested, smiling the whole time, but on the inside, I was horrified and scared. The presence had been far too much for my mind to comprehend. They clearly had not felt anything strange.
I stood up and got out of there, thanking them for their time and for bringing the gongs. They told me to call them. But it was hard to talk; the echoes of that voice still rang out in my head. Everything was still moving and morphing too fast. I needed to get away.
I chugged the rest of my cannabis drink, which turned out to be a bad idea. It moved the visuals up another notch, and soon all I could see was colors and patterns everywhere.
I went up to the kegs, thinking maybe I could drink a few beers and calm down. I started drinking, chugging one beer after another, but they simply had no effect. I couldn’t get drunk, or even buzzed. The acid simply overpowered the alcohol at every turn. Eventually, I gave up, went towards the fire, sat down, and stared.
Endless hours seemed to pass as I watched that fire. People came and went all around me as I thought of that voice, that horrible, grating, alien voice, and as soon as I thought of it, the face made of light came back into my mind.
“That man in front of you will die tonight,” it said. “In a car accident. Two others will die with him. One of his friends will be crippled for life and wish he was dead. He will be brain damaged and infantile.” I looked, and a man in a black T-shirt stood in front of the fire, totally wasted, moving from side to side. Unlike the other people and even dogs at the party, I did not see an aura of shimmering white light around him.
His aura was cold and black. It seemed to have tiny skulls in it that flitted back and forth rapidly, surrounding him in a cloud like gnats. Just looking at that aura sent chills down my spine.
He left soon after. I kept staring into the fire. Half an hour later, LifeStar helicopters passed directly overhead, going to the scene of the car accident- the place where, I knew, the man with the black aura had died.
I started to sober up after a while. The endless hours had, in fact, probably been only a few hours. People had come and gone the entire time in a blur. The sun started to come up, and my vision slowly began to turn to normal. The kaleidoscopic patterns and morphing, dancing glow of the firelight started to subside. But that voice stayed with me. That voice has spoken to me intermittently ever since, telling me who will die and how. Eventually I came down enough to hold full conversations and think normally again. At the time, I tried to pass the entire thing off as a hallucination.
A few of us were still around the fire, stoking it and adding wood, sitting and talking as daylight warmed us and the shadows of night dissipated. An old friend of mine, Rob the Sound Guy, who was in charge of the sound systems at these parties, was sitting in a lawn chair next to me. He had a tendency to eat way too many psychedelics during the parties and, if the sound system went down, would be furiously trying to untangle wires as if he were fighting a den of snakes while tripping balls and getting confused and frustrated the whole time. He usually got the music back up- eventually.
“Jesus fucking Christ, I was tripping hard last night,” he said to me, pulling out a Marlboro from a pack and handing the pack to me. I took out a cigarette, lit it and then handed the pack back over. I looked up as what he had said registered in my brain, laughing hysterically, my grin widening.
“Me too, buddy. I think I literally spoke to God,” I said. “Or, I guess, He spoke to me. I mean, I think He actually talked to me.” Rob looked up at me with huge, dilated pupils, grinning back, a trickle of sweat pouring down his forehead.
“Don’t we all contact God in the end?” he asked rhetorically, staring up at the clear blue sky and the bright sun as it appeared over the trees. “Don’t we all? Hey, by the way, did you see all those LifeStar helicopters? Apparently three people died just down the road from here…”
***
The next week, I was at work. An old friend of mine, Jeremiah, worked next to me. We were at the restaurant, preparing meals for people- the same crappy job I had worked through most of college. Then I felt that voice come into my mind as I looked over.
“He will try to kill his girlfriend tonight when he finds her cheating,” it said in its strange deep language, the sounds melding one into the next. I felt the color drain from my face as I thought about it. What if I could stop what the voice said? What if it told me so I could save people? It was an idea I honestly hadn’t considered. I turned to Jeremiah, smiling.
“Hey, you wanna hang out after work tonight?” I asked. “Smoke some weed or something? Maybe play some videogames?”
“Sure, buddy,” he said. “You can come over for a while.” We ended up getting out earlier than usual due to the place being empty. And so I ended up walking him out after work and following him to his place in my car. We pulled up to his apartment and saw all the lights were on.
Jeremiah pulled his key out of his pocket, sliding it hesitantly in the lock. He opened the door slowly, as if he knew deep down that something was wrong.
There, in the living room, was his girlfriend, naked with another man. Jeremiah froze in place, his mouth dropping open in surprise. Then he roared in anger, pulling out a box cutter from his pocket and flicking it open. I tried to grab his hand, but he had gone totally feral and insane. He sliced me across the arm and punched me in the stomach, then turned and ran towards his girlfriend with the box cutter. Time seemed to pass in slow motion as he flicked it across her throat, putting all of his considerable body weight into the cut, and a waterfall of blood came pouring out onto her body and the white couch below.
He turned to the naked man, who was getting up and putting his hands up, trying to sputter some excuse or apology. Jeremiah slit the box cutter across his belly. The man shrieked, using his hands to try to hold his guts in. I could see the man’s intestines from the gaping hole as Jeremiah raised the boxcutter and slit the naked man’s throat as well. There was blood everywhere, and more was pouring out of the two naked bodies as they quickly bled to death. They began to seize and spasm on the couch, inhaling large quantities of their own blood and coughing it back out. It frothed and dripped across their lips as they took their last breaths.
I turned around and ran, my arm bleeding and dripping on the ground behind me the entire time. Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was those white walls and that white couch, covered in so much blood. I heard police and ambulance sirens fly by soon after, going to the murder scene. I ended up having to drive myself to the hospital to get my arm stitched up.
But it wasn’t the last time I tried to change the horrible fates the voice warned me about. Every time I try, something happens to counteract me. I even tried bringing a pistol one time to save a random man from the city who the voice told me would die in an armed robbery, but my gun misfired. The robber killed him and got away, and I ended up being just a witness to another horrific death. I was lucky not to be shot myself. It is like it is fate, written and set in stone, and I cannot change it..
But this afternoon, something new finally happened. The voice talked about me. I was sitting on the porch, reading, trying to take my mind off of the gruesome deaths I had witnessed, and then it came. Like grating metal, it broke into my mind. Its tone seemed especially insectile, reptilian and mocking this time. It rushed through my consciousness, deep and low, continuous, the white light of the eternal face that appeared blinding my third eye, the echoes of the voice drifting off eternally into the deep recesses of my mind.
“You will die tonight. You will run into a serial killer who will torture and kill you. Your death will be truly horrible. He will leave you bleeding and in agony, and you will die alone.”
Hopefully, I can change the prophecy of the voice just this one time. Because the sun is setting, and I still don’t have a plan.