It was Sunday, July twentieth of 2003. I had just quit my job at Pizza Shack, and was planning on soon joining my father with his business of distributing condoms to convenient stores around Denver. I would work with him for possibly ten hours a day, three days a week, and would make about seventy-five dollars more than working six days at Pizza Shack. It was going to be sweet.
Besides all the thoughts of future profit before a sure-to-be glorious Senior Year in High School, I was locked in this moment. I sat smoking a cigarette on the bench outside of Pizza Shack, watching the singular cloud, meandering on its lonesome about the cerulean skyline of buildings and trees. I think about this day, which began around ten in the morning, when I prepared myself for quitting. It was now one in the afternoon and the time was slipping before my very eyes as I enjoyed the feeling of chemicals distorting my brain sensations, causing a light headed feeling. I relax, being used to it by now, knowing that I must end this disturbing affliction. This sick urge to inject the poison of a cigarette into my body once again. But I smoke it ‘til it’s gone and put it in the ashtray in front of the store.
As I turned the key to unlock the door of my 1992 Toyota Camry XLE, my cell phone rings. I inspect the green lighted screen to find that my friend Rick Cunning is calling. After the small talk and catching up, we decided to meet at my friend John Hong’s house. He had some cocaine and convinced me to try it.

As I arrived at John Hong’s house, the smell of fine herbs filled my nostrils from the patio door that he leaves open on nice days. Since Rick’s car was already here, I was ready to party. I knocked on the door and gave John and Rick daps when I entered. I took my usual spot on the armchair.
        After hitting the bong that they had loaded with a mouthwateringly fresh green bowl of Blueberry Nugs, I was incredibly stoned. I hadn’t smoked all day, since I did not want to stink of bud before I quit my job.
        After zoning out for a moment to Brotha Lynch and a muted TV screen displaying a recorded movie from the IFC, I noticed John and Rick dumping two bags of yayo on a mirror. After a moment with a razor and a quick rolling up of a dollar bill, John took a large line to the head. Following him, Rick snorted two lines, each of which was the equivalent size of the line John took. The remaining line was a line that made me wonder what I was thinking. It was bigger than the line John took, but not as much as the amount Rick took in the two. Then the voice in my head told me that it didn’t matter, and I snorted it right up my nose.
        The following hour was filled with chaotic, rushing thoughts, a constant urge to change my seating position, and an uncontrollable urge to sniff into my numbed orifice every few seconds. I don’t remember everything that happened, but I do remember that it wasn’t as good as I thought, and it wasn’t bad. After smoking cigarettes and bullshitting for a couple hours, I decided to take off from John’s house. By this time John had drank about five twenty-four ounce tall cans of malt liquor, so I don’t think he will remember that I stopped by.

        On the highway, when I was heading towards home, I received a call from my best friend Mary Hildebrandt. She told me that she got some purple cap tree-trunk-stemmed mushrooms. Reveling in the thought of a mystical journey inspired by the digestion of psychoactive fungaloids, I inquired as to how much she had. Knowing the answer before she ever spoke it, she informed me that she bought enough to get both of us completely twisted. I couldn’t have been happier.
        We decided to drive up to Red Rocks and climb around the foothills and rocks while we tripped. So we met up at my house and took the Camry up there. We were twenty miles outside of Idaho Springs, when the drugs began to take hold. I drove up the road, whose lines seemed to travel at even speeds with me, for they seemed to begin floating. I began to feel that wondrous feeling, like you can’t quite get over the joy you are feeling, but get frequently distracted by how fascinating and different everything is. The trees on the side of the road began entwining their needles, which seem to grow bigger and smaller in a successive rhythm. It is almost as if the trees were dancing. The glowing lights of other vehicles broke their solid shade to project a sparkling spectrum of color. I drove well for the level of my high from the shrooms. We each ate a quarter’s worth of shrooms that had been cooked into a chocolate bar.
        As we arrived at Red Rocks, I felt as if the ground were a waterbed when I stepped out of the vehicle. The Earth moved in small but symmetrical waves for about two minutes, as Mary and I struggled to comprehend the incredible beauty of this area. We passed by the sign that said the hiking trail that leads to the rocks was closed and headed up the hill. With so much visual stimulation and out of body feeling, we took our time making our way up to the biggest rock in sight. I was on top of the world in my mind already, but had the thought to make that a physical reality as well. So we climbed the rocks, surprisingly carefully, and made it to the summit of the rock. Beside the slightly steep face that led directly east down the rock, we were surrounded by the edge of the cliff fifteen feet away on three sides. It was a marvelous view that could be enjoyed at any moment, but was particularly profound, seeing as how Mary and myself were completely twisted on drugs.
        Shortly after setting into a couple butt grooves on the summit, I pulled out a blunt of the Blueberry that I bought from John. It was eerily calm for our altitude, and the stickiness of this bud made it so my hands and it were like velcro. I rolled the dime blunt into a chocolate Philly. After getting ridiculously stoned off of the blunt, I began to cycle back into zany mode from the shrooms. I peered toward the edge of the cliff facing west toward the sunset, and about shit my pants from ecstasy.
        The sunset had a sliver of its crown peering over the mountains. The one-hundred-eighty-degree array of radiating light glowed an array of strange purples, greens, pinks, and yellows of which I don’t believe I ever had seen before in my life. I was tripping balls like I never could have imagined possible. For once I felt like I did not need anything else to be happy. All I needed was this one memory, this one moment, where all in the world was resolved, and the wonderful news was broadcast through magnificent displays of intrinsic epiphanies and visual marvels. This moment that I shared with my best friend, and will always remember, no matter how old I become.

        After waiting out our trips to where we were in the proper state of mind to drive again, we walked in the brightly moonlit valley down toward our car and drove back to Aurora. We stopped by my Pizza Shack along the way and I made my specialty double cooked French honey glazed hot wings for free. Those were orgasmic. By this time our trips were but that wonderful memory that can’t quite be described. We looked at our cell phones, hilariously, at the exact same time, and said the time in unison before realizing what had just happened. It was around seven thirty at night. Mary told me she had to go attempt to do some housework while her body grows tired from fighting off the poisonous shrooms.
        I dropped her off at her car in front of my house, and headed over to the party house that always seemed to have something going on. I had nothing to do, so I figured I might as well keep going.

        After taking two shots of 151, snorting a big line of yayo, taking three hits of acid, and dropping four Vicadin, all within five minutes of walking in the door of Brandon Lang’s house, I knew I was in for a ride. My highs mingled together in a mindless spiraling of sensation, ranging from blissful feelings, to paranoid thoughts of the people that I did not trust who were there.
        At one point I thought maybe I had done too many drugs too quickly. I get indulgent when it comes to free drugs on the table in front of my face. The acid did its best to make me forget how to speak, as I stumbled through conversations with uninterested, annoyed people, and concerned females. With none of the people did I finish more than two pseudo-sentences with. I stammered my statements in gibberish as the world collapsed and reshaped around me. Even closing my eyelids did not make me forget the fact that I was not going to come down until I woke up tomorrow wherever I pass out, whenever I regain consciousness. The faces looking at me from the abysmal swirling liquid eyelid delusion that crept up from the shadows corrupted my train of thought and made the remaining nine hours complete hell.

                       * * *

        As I wake up, I realize that I’m not in my house. I never made it home last night after… Whatever it was that I have just done. I look around and struggle to see in the dimly lit surroundings, with blurred eyes from a night of excess and fresh awakening. They have opened fully, but take a few moments to realize the entirety of my whole situation. The cold, clammy surface that I lie on is concrete, and is hurting my back. As I sit up, crack my neck, and look around, I realize that I am lying in the dark, in the parking lot of Six Flags in the heart of Denver.
        It must be about five in the morning. I turn on my cell phone, which was in my hand, but off, and check the time. Confirming my estimate, I stand up and begin walking toward a bench located in the parking lot, near a tree. I open my wallet to see if I have money for a cab and a cigarette falls out of it. I pick it up, light it, and take a deep hit.
        As I sit on the bench, enjoying my cigarette, and thinking about the parts of yesterday that I remember, I am good. I am really, really tired, disheveled, and surprised that I somehow made it to Six Flags and passed out without remembering a single detail of how or why it happened, but good.
        I called a cab and told him to take me to my home, Aurora. I must say that I am glad to live the way I do, did, and always will. I will always live for the moment in front of me, and I do not care about the future consequences of my actions as long as it makes me happy now. I can say that today, I am happy.


(This short story is loosely based off of recent events in my life, however it is a work of fiction.)


-Danny Wharton

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