Magic Mushrooms and Other Hallucinations

MAGIC MUSHROOMS AND OTHER HALLUCINATIONS Chapter 1

It was the mushrooms for sure. Five hundred 'magic mushrooms' picked, dried and stuffed into emptied diet pill capsules, between the two of us, we had four capsules - two each. Laela smiled and said, "Come on you big chicken, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Sally?" Laela folded her arms across her enormous chest and tapped her platform-sneakered foot, waiting. At sixteen years old, Laela Doucet had the biggest boobs in town - the biggest boobs of anyone I've ever seen anyway. I think maybe Doug Mackey, who works at the Esso station on Water Street, has bigger boobs but he's about six hundred pounds. And he's a man so it doesn't count. Laela wears her intimidating look well.

"Okay, on three. We do it together." I always give in.We open our mouths and toss the red capsules back. Following the mushroom-filled capsules with carbonated cola might not have been the best idea. We spent the next twenty minutes burping up Coke flavoured mushroom dust."Couldn't you bring water?" I said. "Come on. Let's go down to the store." We start walking toward Murray's Convenience three blocks west."What was I going to put water in? A thermos?" Laela threw her arms in the air and flailed them about her head. "That would look gnarly - me, you, and my Barbie thermos going to Shaggin' Steve Stettler's house to buy shrooms. Maybe we should have put some Cheetos in your Scooby Doo lunch box in case we get the munchies later." Her tone was quite mocking and though parts of my body had begun to tingle and twitch I was not immune to her sarcasm. Sarcasm and I are best friends.

What seems like hours later Laela says to me, "Hey, Sally? You ever get that stuff between your toes that feels little fluffy cotton balls. I think I got giant cotton balls between my toes but they feel kind'a like marshmallows, all sticky and sort'a gross. Gawd, it feels sooooooo disgusting. Sticky white fluff is filling my shoes and squishing my feet. I think we should take our shoes off. Marshmallow is probably really hard to get out of sneakers. And these are my favourite Sparks. Although I like the pink just as much, okay fine, I like the pink best but this blue are my second favourite. Hey, Sally? Did you see Moe Barnes yesterday at school? Who dresses that chick anyway? And man, what a butt on her. They don't call her 'barrel arse' for nuttin'." She sounded as if she had a mouth full of marbles.

Laela went from talking about Moe's butt, to those new harem pants everyone was wearing, to her Uncle Toby who can drink beer through a straw with his nose. In about five minutes she uttered no less than three thousand words, two hundred cuss words and a dozen or so opinions on the fashion sense of half the girls in town. Do you think gibberish can cause a brain to explode? Mine was on the verge. Maybe if I change the subject.

"Guess what?" I say."Whut?" She groans."Aunt Gracie is coming to visit. She is taking some course at the University for the rest of the summer." Tongue has gone all rubbery. My words came out a little warbled."Amazing Grace? Is coming? I thought your mom said 'never again' after that last visit?""True, very true. But you know Mom. 'Forgive and forget' until Grace screws up. Grace is 15 years my mother's junior and only six years older than I. When she visits she likes to corrupt me, if she can get away with it. It's her way of sticking it to my Mother."Mom made her promise to behave and not spend any time with me or my friends. But you know Grace she is like a horny fifteen year old when she gets on the beer.""Cool.""Yeah." I say. I liked Aunt Gracie but in her own bizarre way she scared me just a little."Laela, what time is it?" It wasn't quite dark yet but in summer it didn't get dark till ten. It felt really late and I had a curfew of eleven. Couldn't afford to be late AND stoned when I got home. My voice was going all weird too, it sounded hollow, loud like I was talking through a microphone. We stopped under a streetlight so Laela could look at her Timex. "My watch says it is eight ten. That can't be. It's only been half an hour since we took the shrooms. Feels like hours. Half an hour - that's it? Cripes this is going to be a long night. And, ah, why aren't we at Murray's yet? It's only a ten-minute hike and we've been draggin' our asses down this road forever." We sat down on the curb to ponder. Smoke time.