room.
A foot long thread of drool hung from Mike's mouth and was pooling in his lap. The laughter from Pete, Brian and Dean as she left was good-natured, but it was way too late for Mike. His trip had soured. He made some excuse about going to the bathroom and never looked back. Mike was in a panic and he didn't know where to turn. He thought about going back to his room but was fearful that Pete would find him there. Mike hit the elevator button, praying to a God he didn't believe in to please make sure nobody else was in there. Having to share that tiny confined space with another human could send him over the precarious edge he was already barely holding onto.
For not being real, God really came through, the twenty-one story ride was externally completely uneventful. That all changed of course when you entered into the hyper-active over-imaginative super speed neuron firing brain of Michael Talbot. Sounds began to echo. Every time Mike moved his head, tracers formed in his vision. His sneakers sounded like tap shoes on the hard slate tiled lobby floor of his dorm.
'Outside, outside,' he whispered to himself. Two co-eds walked past him giggling. Mike knew they knew he was messed up. It was easy to tell when someone was tripping. Their pupils were generally the size of small saucers. The laughs bounced around the edges of his mind. As he stepped outside the bracing breeze helped to reel his awareness in, but only temporarily. The tree-lined street he was on usually gave him comfort, reminding him of his boyhood home, but now the trees loomed ominously, their branches seeking to snatch and tear at the unsuspecting. The hallucinatory doubling of all imagery only added to the illusion.
Mike was damn near in a panic by the time he got to the massive student parking lot off of the south fields. Even in this state, Mike knew that he had had entirely too much to drink (and eat for that matter) to drive but the comfort of getting to his car could be just what he needed to turn this bad ride around. His 1976 Plymouth Fury looked like heaven, all in white resplendent with a red roof and red trim. He almost kissed the seat as he got in. Mike, however, was fearful to put the key in the ignition in case some extremely bad timing brought the campus police out to this deserted location. Mike would get a DUI for merely sitting there with the ignition on. If he went to jail in this state he'd never get his mind back.
'So much for putting music on,' Mike said with a shiver.
For a minute all was well within, but like a mouse that burrows a hole through the sidewall of a house, stray thoughts began to first leak out and then chip through the wall Mike had erected. Structural damage ensued. Mike's meager defenses crashed in around him, and just as fast as he got in he got out. Mike took long breaths, believing that he had not been able to get enough air inside the car.
Mike found himself in a huge parking lot surrounded by cars, any one of which could be hiding a 7-foot clown with white face paint and a machete. The gravel he walked on was so loud he could barely think. He didn't realize, that was a good thing. Mike's heart was racing as he kept his head down, fearful to look at the trees. They were moving but it had more to do with the wind than Mike's bad perception. That mattered little at this point.
Back onto the slate tile of the lobby, thank God for muscle memory. He pulled his student ID out of his pocket and showed it to the security guard who took a cursory glance. Security was composed of students who would much rather be having a good time than any type of officiating, but money is money.
Mike got to the elevators where three other students waited. 'Can't do it,' he muttered, and immediately went into the stairwell. He soon realized the error of his ways as the echoes his psychosis was producing in that enclosed cement area now had their own echoes. Twenty-one flights up he went. The smell of sweaty fear pervaded his entire being. He poked his head out the door hoping nobody would be in the hallway. He rushed to his door and fumbled with the keys, happy to be back in his room without getting caught.
'Okay, its midnight now, when will Paul be back, he can get me down.' The reality was that Paul wouldn't be coming home tonight, he was already in bed with his girlfriend and wouldn't be leaving those confines until sometime around lunch the next day.
Mike waited three minutes, almost an eternity when your brain was racing forty-two times its normal pace. 'Okay, so how mad would Jamie's parents get if I called right now?' Mike had met Jamie's parents a few times already. They were alright, maybe a little stuck up but for the most part decent. The reality was they couldn't stand Mike. They were of the Blue Blood variety, old New England money, and could not see what their daughter saw in this working class man, a common laborer at that. Mike would have called Jamie's home but he didn't think he could handle the 20-second conversation with her parents it would take to get her on the phone.
Mike huddled up in the corner of his bed, arms wrapped around his legs, one dim light on. 'I don't know how long I can do this,' he told himself as he rocked back and forth.
THE PAST
Put quite simply because Mike's mother had told him so, he was a mistake. Mike had three older brothers and an older sister. His brother Ron, who was fifteen years his senior, was almost a generation past Mike. Not too many teenage boys want anything at all to do with a gurgling smelly infant, and with a sister as a buffer, Ron never found himself in the position of babysitter. The years went past, and Mike's early remembrances of his brother were few. He was basically some guy that stopped by to do his laundry while he attended college. Now there was no physical distance in the relationship, just the distance caused by the difference in age. They loved each other as brothers do, but there also was no closeness, no bond, beyond the normal family ties. That gap only seemed to widen as Mike came into his formative teenage years, and Ron was already married and fast tracking in the corporate world. They were brothers and nothing more. That would all change in Mike's sophomore year.
BACK TO THE PRESENT
Mike was quickly running out of options and sanity. He picked up his phone, hopeful that no one was on the other line, more specifically the girl that lived in the dorm below him. Mike and Paul were not part of the trio of responsible students on that floor that had paid their phone bill. Mike knew just enough to be dangerous; he had unscrewed the phone jack and spliced into another set of phone wires until he had found a pair that worked. It wasn't the optimum scenario and they had nearly gotten busted a couple of times, but they always informed whoever they were calling that they might need to hang up abruptly and to not talk to the 'crazy chick' that got on the other line. Mike's parents were a little dubious but they let it go. Ma Bell would catch on eventually but tonight they still had service.
'Hello.' A groggy, just woken up voice responded.
'Uh…uh…hi, Nancy, is Ron there?'
'He's sleeping Mike, it's late.'
'So he's there?' Mike asked desperately. The lifeline had been thrown overboard, now he had to hope someone grabbed it or he might be adrift for a long time. Mike heard some fumbling with the phone being handed over and then someone, probably Nancy, getting out of bed.
'Mike?' Ron started it as a question. The last time Mike had called Ron, scratch that, Mike never called Ron. They just weren't on each other's life radar except around the holidays and Christmas was still two months away.
Mike was going to start with some chitchat but he didn't think he could pull it off, not this incapacitated. 'Ron, I'm in some trouble.'
Mike could hear Ron sit up, his cobwebs of sleep quickly dusted away. 'I'm listening,' Ron said.
For the next forty-five minutes Mike proceeded to tell him everything that had happened that night, from the mushrooms to the hot girl, to the drool, to the evil trees and the walk up the stairwell, finishing up with his now hiding out in his room. Ron patiently listened to his baby brother rattle off a tale of a bad trip, offering words of encouragement along the way. 'Just stay in your room, Mike. It will be over in a few hours.'
'Will I be the same? Will I be sane?'
Ron laughed. Mike instantly felt at ease. 'You'll be fine and even a little wiser for the wear.'
'Ron, thank you,' Mike was nearly in tears. 'I didn't think I was going to make it there for a while.'
'You weren't planning on doing anything stupid, were you?' Ron asked with concern.
'No, nothing like that, I just, I've just never felt this way. I am completely fucked up.'
'Good night, Mike.'
'Good night Ron, thank you.'
