Toxic- A Sand And Ray Love Story

High

Ray tried to be good for Sand. He wanted to be clean. Clean from drugs and alcohol. Sand even tried to help him. He quit drinking and even his side hustle. Of course, Sand had tried to help him before... but Ray disappointed him. Ray really wanted to change, but it was hard. It was painful.

First off, there’s the sweating. Ray felt cold, and yet far too hot at the same time. It washed over him in waves and / or sort of swirls over him like tie-dye. He wanted to cuddle up in a blanket, but then he felt like he was going to suffocate.

He couldn't sleep. He would stay awake all night, desperately wanting to sleep but being unable to. Sometimes, he seemed to doze just a little, in order to have almost hallucinogenic dreams, so vivid he woke up and wondered where the giraffe went.

And he was never hungry. Food seemed like it just wasn't worth it anymore. It didn’t taste good, and it didn’t feel good; only a seriously growling stomach was enough to force him to eat. Despite not being hungry, he kept looking in the fridge, hoping there would be something to satisfy the way he felt.

Hallucinations weren't uncommon for him anymore; his windows and doors undulated and widened and narrowed right in front of him. His ceiling fan kept jerking around like in those movies where they’re trying to show that the POV character was crazy. Everyone also seemed to be out to get him, from waking him up when he was finally half-asleep to making him eat. (Everyone was Sand. None of his friends cared enough to check on him when he was like this)

He was also confused and lost; he could spend an hour wandering from room to room looking for something. He had to admit partway through that he didn’t know what he was looking for to begin with. He was just hoping that some magical solution would pop up. That, or he needed to use the bathroom. He was never sure which.

So Ray was trying to be good for Sand, but it was difficult, and Ray, being a rich spoiled kid who always got what he wanted going through this withdrawals was not fun for him.

Everything hurt, he tried to be strong but he didn't have any willpower. So he thought to himself that if he could just get a quick fix, then everything would be fine. It's not like he was relapsing if he had one tinie-tiny fix. Maybe a glass of whisky or a bottle. Or maybe if he had some ecstacy or weed (cannibas is not like a drug, right? It's legal in some countries). He just needed something to get the edge off.

So when Sand had a gig that he couldn't afford to miss, Ray assured him that he would be fine. With Sand gone, he would get something small to get the edge off, and before Sand comes back, he would've sobered up. Sand didn’t need to know, and Ray wouldn't be lying to Sand per se. He would just be omitting some parts of the truth.

It was a win-win situation, and nothing could go wrong. Plus, he would be doing everything in the comfort of his own home. NOTHING WILL GO WRONG.

So, with Sand out of the way, Ray called his usual dealer and got some cannibas, the natural stuff. It was just weed, Ray reasoned with himself as he rolled a joint. It was just to take the edge off. He isn't relapsing per se, weed is a natural substance.

After rolling a joint and smoking, he put on some music to relax. IT WILL BE OKAY, NOTHING WILL GO WRONG.

The music pelted his deltoids and took his brain out for a lazy adult swim. Spiders set up a colony under his skin. When he placed a palm on his thigh, the push of it kept gliding all the way out to the idea horizon. Soon, the beautiful brainstorms came, the ones that link up in front of his eyes and made the whole mess of human history so lovely and self-evident. The universe was big, and he was allowed to fly around through the nearby galaxies for a while, zapping things for fun if he didn’t abuse his powers or hurt anyone. He did so love this ride.

 Then the tunes start up, the inner ones. He shut off the disc player and tried to figure out how to cross the ocean of the room. When he stood, his head kept rising, straight up, into a whole new layer of being. His laugh propelled him, helped his balance, and he sailed off across the floorboards, the nipples on his chest glowing like precious pearls. After a while, he got to where he was going and held still for a minute, trying to recall why he needed to get there. Hard to hear anything over the magic melodies of his own devising.

It was only meant to be just a joint, all natural. Ray doesn't know what he was thinking if he was thinking at all, to be honest. The next thing he knew, he was in his home safe, retrieving more money to give to the dealer.

This is the last time Ray told himself. Sand wasn't going to come back home that night, something about another gig across town. Ray assured him that he was fine, Sand didn’t need to worry about him. Ray told himself that he would be sober in the morning.

Ray wasn't technically lying to Sand. He was fine.

Ray took the pill at eleven. An hour and a half later, he was sitting in his study, looking intently at a small glass vase. The vase contained only three flowers…He was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. He was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

Ray was looking at his furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern was only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as he looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist’s-eye view gave place to what he could only describe as the sacramental vision of reality.

He was back where he had been when he was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light and was infinite in its significance. The legs, for example, of that chair–how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! He spent several minutes–or was it several centuries?–not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them…

He saw the books but was not at all concerned with their positions in space. What he noticed, what impressed itself upon his mind was the fact that all of them glowed with living light and that in some, the glory was more manifest than in others. In this context position the three dimensions were beside the point. Not, of course, that the category of space had been abolished. When he got up and walked about, he could do so quite normally, without misjudging the whereabouts of objects. Space was still there; but it had lost its predominance. The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning.

Ray was trying to be good for Sand, he will be good for Sand for now he was lost in his own mind. Where everything made sense and he was safe, not even the vast space of his mansion felt lonely.

Sand would be back, Ray will be sober and try again. For Sand. For now he just needed a safe haven, a safe space and unfortunately substances were needed to take him there. Even if it was just for a few hours.

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE! NOTHING WILL GO WRONG!