Anders was at school in Virginia, so when Xadrin arrived in Alaska it was only his dad and cousin staying there in the cabin. He'd sat quietly in the car as his dad talked at him during the three hour ride from Anchorage to Kenai. When they finally got to the cabin Xadrin had a migraine.
"Hey Dad, if you want, I stopped at a dispensary during my layover in Denver. You wanna try?" He held out a half-smoked joint. His dad (Brother Richards) blushed and looked shocked, mumbling something and laughing, and his cousin (Steve) said, "Alrighty, I like this guy!"
Xadrin and Steve had only met once before, when Xadrin was twelve and Steve was twenty-four. "You want some?" Xadrin said to Steve.
"Heck yeah, let me go grab what I've got, I just hit up a new dispensary today."
"Fuck yeah!"
...
"Weed is a spiritual magnifier," Xadrin said, two joints in between him and Steve. "Dad, you don't believe in the Church anymore, do you?"
"Well," Richards said. "There are still things that I love about Mormonism. I grew up in it, it's in my DNA. My ancestors were persecuted for it, died and sacrificed for it. You don't want to toss the baby out with the bathwater, right? It's just that these leaders are ruining everything, they are the new Pharisees polluting the purity of the Lord's church. That's one reason I like to stay, so that I can make a difference there, y'know? Help people, say things as the spirit urges me in Sunday School, you never know whose hearts you may touch--"
(And other things. Brother Richards was, at sixty, a legal predator of new adults who had never been in relationships before. Xadrin didn't know this until soon before the end; for it is often the end of life which brings clarity to things thought to be unknowable; like the sun rising on an infant born in the night. Anyways, Xadrin said--)
"--Okay, Dad, but you're gay right?"
"Yes, yes," he chuckled.
"The Church doesn't approve of that."
"But by being who I am and still going to church, I am showing them that it is they who are wrong, not me."
"Right. That's fair. Anyways. If the point of going to church is to feel spiritually guided and inspired, then weed is the proof that Mormonism doesn't have the monopoly in inspiration. The THC molecule somehow alters the mirror of our mind so that we see everything in some slightly different way, and doing this enough shows you that...it isolates your core self--"
"Ah, very cool," and the conversation was over. Richards hit the joint once (incorrectly), before coughing and crying, shaking his head and saying, in between coughs, "No, no, I do not like that, never again, bad."
YOU ARE READING
Pale Fragments
Science FictionAn alien Robot came to me before she left to die. She sang to me the stories of how her ancient world and species ended, how she was created to travel through Time, how (in the far future) she met an essential boy named Anders, how she named herself...
