A Masked Stranger

Who are you, friend across the veil?

I wonder if both of us are on the path

That allows us to continuously prevail.

Or are you just an agent of God's wrath,

Who will do little else but make me fail?

Chapter Eight: Where it All Began

Perhaps now is a good time to discuss how Vince and I first met. It all started seven years ago when I was a twenty-four year old who was still in denial over their gender. I was dating Amy at the time, and I worked as a part-time dishwasher for Wegman's. I was still living with my father, and Amy moved up here to her mother's from Owego to be close to me. It was a simple life, as neither of us could afford to delve into extravagance, but we were happy together.

That said, on this one particular night, we were going to drop acid together. It was Amy's first time, but I had a handful of trips under my belt by this point. We sat on her mother's back porch, twiddling our thumbs and toes while we waited for Amy's brother, Jake, to return from his friend's with the two hits we asked him to get. Antsy, Amy started asking me questions about the drug.

"What does it feel like?" she asked, inquisitively.

I responded, "Well, there's about a half an hour to an hour come up, and then you start feeling the body load, like your boundaries are dissolving. Only then do you begin noticing your mind manifesting in a different way than you're used to."

"What do you mean by 'boundaries dissolving?'"

"It's like…" I paused for a second, not sure how to respond. "It's like your sense of self starts to expand and you feel more connected to the things around you."

That seemed to satisfy her curiosity. There was a moment of silence as we watched the sun scorch the azure sky as it set behind the trees. Finally, she had another question.

"Do you see dragons?"

That made me chuckle. "No, no dragons. On my first trip, I lost visual contact with the world as fractal patterns spiraled out of control, but every trip since then has only had tracers and morphing patterns."

"What's a tracer?"

"It's like after images of things that are moving."

"Oh, I see."

We kept talking until the sky was dark with only a sliver of light piercing it on the horizon. This was when we heard a voice call from the front door.

"I got two tickets to Narnia here for whoever wants them."

We hurriedly rushed inside, to meet Jake coming up the stairs. He handed Amy a small tin foil wrapper that looked like a quarter stick of gum. She thanked him, and I followed suit. Jake and I hadn't really seen eye to eye in the past, as he would steal my weed and I would steal his in retaliation, but with a single head nod and some gold-laced words, I conveyed my gratitude for him coming through for us in this instance.

What followed next could only be described as a stampede down the hall to Amy's room. We locked the door behind us, protected by the four robin's egg blue walls and the magick of the celtic gods Amy worshiped at her altar. Eager to begin our ceremonious departure from this plane of existence, we whimsically gazed at the sacrament we had just been handed. 

Amy unwrapped the tinfoil nervously. Inside sat two small, unassuming pieces of paper which contained whole galaxies of experience. We looked at each other, confirming if we were both ready. Quickly satisfied as neither of us could stop smiling, we delicately put the blotter on the other's tongue, as ecstatic as could be. And after, as we waited to be blasted off into space, we submitted ourselves to the whims of the universe and the gods.

At first, we waited patiently, but just as a watched pot does not boil, we were growing more anxious with each passing second. Seeing Amy play with the sage she was burning nervously, I suggested that we jot our thoughts and feelings down in a trip report. Amy nodded in agreement.

I opened my laptop, and I had the immediate realization that we had no music. I brought up Pandora and played my Shpongle station with no objection from a beaming Amy. A cascade of electric jungle beats filled the space. Perfect, I thought to myself as I created a new word document. 

Turning to Amy, I asked "What do you feel?"

She giggled and exclaimed, "Excited!"

And so I began typing. Minutes passed, and soon our exchanges helped fill the page with several paragraphs of notes. Content we had started logging our first cosmic journey together, we kissed, before coming to fully embrace each other as the spirits began their dance around us.

We progressed into parallel play; Amy fiddling about with colored pencils in her notebook and me juggling besides her. It took a minute, but soon enough I felt a warm feeling spread across my chest and my LED juggling balls started to ripple into streams of geometric delight. I stopped to wave my hand in front of my face. Sure enough, the tracers had started.

I interrupted Amy to ask if she could see them, too. She looked at my moving hand idly before wiggling her own fingers in front of her face. She giggled, before bursting with a euphoric epiphany.

"I want to finger paint!"

And so she did by plopping herself down on the floor with all her paints and began masterfully smearing the colors in a multidimensional haze of pigments blended together in a way only she knew how. I loved watching her work like that; she was so free! Even with the tendrils of the mental aspects of the lysergia creeping in on her, she made short work of the painting, which when she was done, looked like a spooky voodoo mask peering out from behind a mirror and into your soul.

Satisfied, she then went to the bathroom to clean herself up. I went to my laptop and tried typing out something resembling an organized train of thought on our trip report. It just wasn't happening. My thoughts were too short and rapid to form anything resembling a coherent thought. That was ok though. I could still capture the essence of the experience in a peculiar poetry that was composed of the thoughts I could catch and put down on paper.

Eventually, Amy came back to the room, clean and refreshed, and she lingered for a moment, too busy dancing with herself in the open space of the room. But then she saw me meddling with my computer trying to jot my thoughts down in a manic frenzy. This made her laugh before trailing off and saying, "Be careful, someone might be watching you through your webcam."

It was an innocent statement, one made in jest, but it triggered something in my psychedelically perturbed mind. Of course, of fucking course there would be someone watching me! This was me we were talking about! Who could be more important? It was so obvious that the government was keeping tabs on persons of interest. I couldn't believe that I hadn't really actualized that thought before that moment.

Suddenly aware that I was being judged in some capacity, I almost panicked, but reason won out. They couldn't be there for nefarious purposes, for I had done worse than drop acid in front of my webcam before, and nothing had happened. That made me realize that whatever power that had the ability to tap into my webcam feed had to be benevolent. And who could that be? The CIA of course! In that instance, I suddenly relinquished all reserves about how the world worked and fully trusted the hands of God by another name to guide me. So, I typed a message into my URL bar:

"I know you're there. I think I've solved the communication problem. Give me a chance."

I hit enter. Immediately, and I do mean immediately, a pop up appeared asking if I wanted to update an extension on my browser. I was stunned, shocked beyond belief. It was them. I knew it was them. They realized and planned that now was the best time to dazzle me with such a spectacular parlor trick. In that moment, everything was possible. It was time to face my destiny. So, I clicked yes, and like never before I was upgraded to a new level of myself.