Chapter Five Not Mushroom in Here #3
‘My insides have coagulated!’ Leo says, the horror on his face now taking on proportions so epic in nature that it’s a wonder his eyeballs haven’t rolled out of his head.
Leo then grabs his stomach and starts to massage it.
‘They’ve become incoherent! Can you see their incoherence?
Why must they disentangle in this manner? ?’
I can’t help but let a loud bray of laughter escape from my mouth. It probably goes on for a day or two.
Jack realises what’s happening and buries his head in his hands. ‘You’re both gone now, aren’t you?’
‘Oh! Oh!’ Leo exclaims. ‘They’ve reintegrated!’ The look of relief on his face is palpable. ‘They’ve reasserted their coherence, and have become infallible!’ He rubs his stomach again, this time in apparent glee. ‘My tummy-ness is restored! I can feel the sedentary connections obliviating!’
So, magic mushrooms apparently turn Leo into a walking, talking dictionary of gibberish, while they slow me down to one-tenth speed, like a sloth with arthritis.
Jack appears to be completely untouched by their influence. Thus far anyway.
‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ he says, his hands still firmly clasped around his head.
This makes me giggle.
For about thirty minutes.
As I do this, Leo starts a stock check of the rest of his body parts. His biology degree is working overtime. ‘Ah! My cranial sacks remain osciliant!’ He seems delighted by this turn of events. As am I. I giggle for a further seven hours. ‘And my limbic stanchions can be pulpated quite freely!’
I have no idea what a limbic stanchion is, but it brings me no end of joy that Leo’s can be pulpated quite freely. I’m so happy when my friends are happy. It’s all that matters to me in the world.
Jack sits back up again, and takes another shot of rum. ‘This is going to be an extremely long evening,’ he intones.
Leo points a shaking, excited finger at him. ‘Yes! Long! My longs are fine too! Especially the exterior ones!’ Leo then stands up and unbuttons his jeans. ‘Would you like to see my main exterior long?’
‘Sit down!’ Jack barks and pushes Leo back into his seat, before he has a chance to whip his exterior long out for us both to get a good look at.
‘Ow!’ Leo protests as his arse slams back onto the incredibly thin cushioning. ‘Be careful, Jack! You’ll hemorate my googlins!’
Oh no!
The last thing I want is for Leo to have his googlins hemorated! I peer at Jack with disgust. ‘Why would you do that, Jack?’ I ask him. ‘Why would you want to hemorate Leo’s googlins?’
‘I’ll hemorate your bloody googlins in a minute, you imbecile,’ he growls.
‘Pfft,’ I snort, ‘don’t be so angry all the time, Jack.’
Hmmm. That’s an interesting sensation, isn’t it? The way the air flows between my lips when I purse them like that. I think I’ll continue to do it for the next three weeks at increasing speed and pressure.
All Jack can now do is sit back in disbelief as one of his best friends makes stupid noises, while the other continues to check his body for non-existent organs.
‘Yes, indeed, Charlie,’ Jack says. ‘This really is turning out to be a great therapy session. Can’t wait to analyse our traumas in dispassionate conversation, and implement the valuable findings in my day-to-day life.’
I’d like to respond to this, but I’m far too busy flapping my lips together and making a terrifically satisfying brrrrr noise.
I don’t know why he has to complain so much. This is a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend your time. Right up there with the heady, hectic nights we’ve had in Gormley in the past. I tell Jack as much.
He looks at me in extremely certain terms. ‘This is nothing like those times, Charlie. Isn’t that right, Gormley?’ Jack then cocks his head, as if listening to something. ‘Yes, I agree completely. He is an idiot,’ he then says.
‘Who are you talking to, Jack?’ I ask him.
The look I get in response is withering. ‘Who the hell do you think I’m talking to? It’s Gormley.’
I blink in surprise. ‘You’re talking to Gormley?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Well, of course I am, you cretin. He’s the only one here I can have a decent conversation with, given how high you two are.’
I giggle again, understanding coming to me in an instant.
Thirteen months later I reply. ‘I think you’re high too, Jack,’ I tell him.
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ he says, and again listens to something that quite clearly isn’t there.
‘Yeah, you’re right, Gorms. This was a bad idea.
These two obviously can’t handle the ’shrooms.’ He pauses again for a moment, before laughing and slapping his knee.
‘Yes! You’re so right, Gormley! You always know the right thing to say!
’ Jack then stands up and starts to tickle the roof.
‘Who’s a good boy, then?’ he says, in the kind of voice it’s impossible not to use when stroking a dog.
This is clearly too much for me, and I spend the next eleven decades laughing out loud.
I’d like to be able to fill you in on what goes on for the next hour or so, but it’s all rather a blur.
I’m pretty sure all I do is sit there continuing to giggle like I’m – well .
. . as high as a bloody kite. Leo continues to feel himself up in a manner that becomes more and more disturbing (and therefore hilarious) as the minutes pass, while Jack goes around stroking every one of Gormley’s surfaces – apparently to the absolute delight of the mobile home.
If it could, it would kick one leg out and make happy little yipping noises.
At no stage are any of us able to talk about our traumas, or converse calmly about the things that are troubling us. If this is a mild dose, then I’d hate to see what a large one would do. I’d probably be unscrewing the top of my head off right now, if I’d taken four mushrooms, instead of three.
Things only take a turn for the dramatic when Leo reaches across the table and grabs my arm. ‘I’m okay, aren’t I?’ he asks me in a somewhat desperate tone. ‘My thuribles are fine, right, Charlie?’
I pat his hand. ‘Your thuribles are perfectly okay, Leo,’ I promise him.
‘And what about my hipolicals? They don’t feel in line with my chakramis at all!’
I really don’t know what to say, other than to reassure him that both hipolicals and chakramis are operating at peak maximum efficiency, as far as I can tell.
‘My nose hurts, though,’ he says, this time in a much more scared voice. ‘I can still feel where he hit me. The evil wizard.’ He takes on a distraught look. ‘They were all around me, Charlie. In the dark. I had nowhere to go! I was trapped!’
Even in my current state of heightened psilocybin-powered hilarity I can pick up the sudden change in Leo’s temperament. I try to control the giggling, and squeeze his hand a little tighter. ‘It’s okay, mate. Nothing is wrong. You’re okay.’
He whips his hand back. ‘No. You’re wrong, Charlie! I’m not safe! There are too many people!’ His head whips back and forth. ‘I should never have come here tonight! Why did you make me?’
‘I . . . I wanted to help . . .’ I say, rather pathetically.
He shakes his head. ‘You can’t help, Charlie. No one can. I’m trapped. My nose hurts and I’m trapped.’ He then violently rubs his face. ‘I have to get out of here!’ he tells me, and tries to get up from the table, awkwardly banging his head on Gormley’s roof as he does so.
‘Hey! Be careful, Leo!’ Jack warns him. ‘Poor old Gorms needs to be treated kindly, don’t you, Gorms?’ Jack pats Gormley’s roof again and smiles broadly at the reaction only he can hear.
‘I have to get out! Before they come . . . Before they come and surround me again,’ Leo states, and spends what feels like the next twenty-five minutes extricating himself from the confines of Gormley’s little Formica table trap.
Once he’s done this, he makes for the door.
‘No!’ Jack screams in terror, and wraps his arms in what he must think is a protective manner around Leo. ‘Don’t go out there! Stay in Gormley, where it’s safe! It’s too big out there, Leo! Far too BIG!’
Leo struggles. ‘Let me go, Jack!’ he wails.
‘No! I can’t. I don’t want you to get hurt out there! I don’t want you to get lost!’ Jack wails, and I can see tears in his eyes.
‘But I’m not safe in here!’ Leo protests. ‘I’m not safe anywhere!’
‘You are safe! You are!’ Jack insists. ‘In here! In Gormley, you are safe! I promise. That’s why I come in here. And Gormley loves me being inside him, don’t you, Gorms?’
Again, Jack listens for a response, but his face falls in an instant. ‘Gorms? Gorms?! Speak to me, Gorms!’ he almost screams.
‘Let me go, Jack!’ Leo cries, and attempts to get free of Jack’s clutches. All this succeeds in doing is making the both of them bash against Gormley’s little Formica table, sending the bottle of rum falling to the floor. It smashes as it hits the faded linoleum.
The sound of breaking glass immediately catapults me somewhere else.
I am still sat in the mobile home, but at the same time I’m sat in the driver’s seat of my old MG.
And I’m crashing.
Once again on that country road, and once again being flung around in my seat as my car connects with the one being driven by that teenage boy.
Only, when I look out of the window as the MG is hurled sideways, the teenage boy and his car are nowhere to be seen. Instead, the crash is happening with a giant black and grey mushroom. I bounce off the hideously slimy thing and come to rest once again, the same way I did in real life.
The teenage boy and his car are back again . . . sat across the road from me just like they were, but now we are joined by the mushroom, which lies a little beyond both cars, up the road to my right.
And it is pulsating.
Hideously, terrifyingly, pulsating – in a slow, awful rhythm that reminds me of a heartbeat.
My heartbeat, to be precise. Because like everything else on this strange hallucinogenic trip, my heartbeat has been slowed to a crawl. As have my movements.