divinorum

There was a sharp rapping on the door. Damien was stirred from his peaceful reverie. He rolled off the couch, then struggled to his feet. With heavy-lidded eyes, he opened the door to see who dared to disturb his nap. There was a man in a dark blue jumpsuit with a matching blue baseball hat. The logo read ‘Poste Haste’.

“Package for a mister Damien Childs.”

Damien nodded. His eyes lit up as he eagerly snatched the box from the man’s hand. He signed the paper on the clipboard, then dug into his pocket for a five dollar bill with which to tip the man.

Damien took the box to his room, proceeding to cut the tape and inspect the contents. Inside the mass of packing peanuts was another smaller package, this one wrapped in brown paper. He removed the paper and found a clear plastic bag filled with leaves.

He fetched the digital scale from his closet. He placed it on the floor and put the leaves on it. The red numbers read 30.482. He had gotten a few extra grams, which was not bad at all.

The leaves were a drug called ‘Salvia’, which Damien had ordered from some web site he found on an internet search engine. The leaves were eaten or smoked by Mexican Indians to induce spiritual journeys. Usually, the user would have someone sit with them to make sure they didn’t do anything dangerous while in their altered state.

Damien didn’t feel like calling up someone to be his own sitter, though. He wasn’t even sure these goofy leaves would have any effect on him. Just as a precaution, he pulled his dresser in front of the door, and he took the knives and swords from his wall and locked them in a chest in the closet. He then turned his black-lite on and his regular light off, and put on some music that was just bass guitar and drums. He closed the wooden blinds, but this was a superficial gesture since the daylight couldn’t penetrate the black posterboard he had covered the glass with.

He crumbled a few leaves and packed them into his water bong, then covered the carburetor with his thumb while he lit the leaves. He inhaled deeply, making the water crackle and bubble, and held the smoke in his lungs for about thirty seconds. He took three or four more hits, then set his bong aside.

“Wow,” he said to himself, “this is pretty damn worthless. I don’t feel a thing.”

Then his eyes darted around the room. Something was different, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He closed his eyes for a second and saw some colors swirling.

The colors swirled in time with the music, then condensed into triangles and squares. The squares bounced up and down to the drums and the triangles darted about with the bass line.

Damien opened his eyes, but the shapes were still there. He moved to the middle of his room and sat cross-legged there, taking a drink of the can of pop that had been sitting there for a few days.

The triangles continued to change color and size, and the squares kept bouncing. Suddenly, the triangles crystallized into pyramids and evaporated, and the squares moved to the walls and expanded so that each one became a wall of his room.

The walls seemed to melt into velvet, and the tan carpet turned into a thick red shag. The ceiling dissipated, revealing the black sky and white stars shining above. The moon was a full yellow moon, filling the room with light.

Damien looked around his room. The posters had turned into large pieces of abstract artwork, framed and mounted. In each corner of the room was a torch, and there were no windows or doors.

The most prominent feature of this new room was a large ebony desk where the bed used to be. There was a young man sitting behind the desk, with a kind of twisted smile.

He had light brown hair, and a bright red button-up shirt with dangerous lapels. The young man’s eyes were hazel, but in the moonlight and torchlight they glowed yellow, like cat’s eyes. His pale complexion was covered by his long sideburns and pointy goatee. His hair was sharp, short, crisp, and not a one was out of place.

Damien just laughed. “What are you supposed to be? The devil? If you are, you’re pretty stereotypical. Gonna try and buy my soul, eh?”

He chuckled a little. “We both know you gave that up a long time ago. But no, to answer your question, I’m not the devil…at least I’m pretty sure I’m not. I’m your creator.”

“Ha! My creator. That’s a good one. Does that make you God, then?”

“Nope. I’m just a regular person,” he replied. “But you, you’re not a regular person. Actually, you’re not even real. You’re just a character in my book.”

“Your book? Listen buddy, YOU are a figment of MY imagination. I smoked some wacky Aztec herb and here I am, stumbling around in my hallucinations.”

“I know about all that,” the man said, “I purposely made you do that. It was the easiest way to arrange a meeting between us.”

“Wow, that’s kind of trippy.” Damien said. “So you can make me do whatever you want? I’m just like your puppet or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, mister creator, control this.” Damien walked over to the wall and knocked a large painting of some triangles off the wall, then started jumping on it.

The man started writing something on a piece of paper, and Damien froze. He tried to move, but found he couldn’t. “What the hell did you do?” he asked.

The man held up the piece of paper. In big letters it said ‘Damien froze’.
Damien just stood there, thinking. He nodded from time to time then looked up at the man. “Okay. You have my attention. So, why did you bring me here?”

The young writer looked kind of somber for a minute. “Even though I can sort of control you, it is beyond my power to make you do something which isn’t in your character…let me see if I can explain this a little better.
“I can make you jog in place, since that is a simple task, but I can’t make you go out and plant a tree or help an old lady with her groceries, since these are things you would not normally do.”

Damien shrugged. “That’s good to know.”

The young man continued. “But my problem is this. I am going to have to put you in a situation later, to further the plot of this story, and I honestly don’t know how you will react.

“What I want you to ponder is this: I know you have no reservations about taking life, but do you have the power to save it?”

Damien looked kind of confused, “What exactly do you want me to do?”

The writer smiled. “That is all I can say to you. I just want you to consider my question. You will know when the time has come to act.”

Damien puzzled this for a moment. “I have a question for you, Mister writer-person.”

“Go for it.”

“How do you know that you weren’t put here on this spinning orb merely to create me? That would make me the important and relevant one and leave your life from this point on pretty much worthless and devoid of meaning.”

The strange kid chuckled. “Keep talking like that and you can bet there won’t be a sequel.”

Damien looked down, and the shag rug had turned into a glass panel overlooking his room, like a big skylight. He heard the glass start to crack and give, and saw the cracks move from the corners of the room towards his feet. With a loud, shattering noise, it gave way.

He landed hard on his hip, and when he looked up there were no glass shards. His room was back to normal, though one of his framed posters was knocked down.

He grabbed the bag of salvia and took it to the bathroom. He dumped it in the toilet and flushed.

“Damn indians are messin’ with my MIND, man!” he muttered loudly.



(c) j baugher 2004