Confession to a Friend
By Dennis Liggio
1
I need your help. I've gone over this in my head a thousand times, but I don't know how better to tell you this. You're a good friend, so I think you're the only person I can tell this to. You need to promise not to freak out. You need to promise not to tell anyone. I need to tell you this, I need to tell someone this before I go crazy. Maybe crazier.
I don't know if you remember, but I went on a vacation recently. One of those find-yourself trips across America by motorcycle. I'm not sure I like the me I found out there. The whole trip did not work out the way I planned. It fell apart... and things happened. Well, let me be straight with you.
I think I killed somebody out there.
Yeah.
It happened, okay? It just happened. I didn't intend to, it just happened.
But listen, I don't think anybody found the body. It happened out in the desert. It was somewhere in New Mexico, and that's all I'm going to say about the location right now. Just hear me out first? I need someone to just listen to me, and maybe we can figure this out.
It was supposed to be a simple trip. One of those manly trips to free out spirits, to get away from the nine to five grind of society. It was supposed to be true freedom, just ourselves and the open road, communing with the spirit of America like Easy Rider or something. Yes, I know that film was made over forty years ago. Yeah, I know someone else died in that too.
Something was very appealing about the Southwest. Dusty roads, an absence of anything at all, and that big huge sky above us. I liked the idea that we'd be going town to town across the borderlands like cowboys or something. It was also a better area to find territory to find peyote, which was something I really wanted to try. At the very least, Ted swore he knew where to get some awesome mushrooms.
Ted was the guy I travelled with, and kind of my guide for this whole adventure. He had rode this path the year before. I'll admit he talked me into. He had been hounding me for weeks about how I needed to "find my true spirit among the mystic places of the American Southwest". I'm pretty sure he hadn't intended for it to work out this way.
Ted was... well, he wasn't a friend. Not if I'm being entirely truthful. It's not like we were enemies or anything, we were just more acquaintances. We knew each other through work, though we didn't work directly with each other.
We weren't friends because, well... Ted pissed people off. Myself included. He was always such a know it all about things. And he had this incredible arrogance about his "free spirited" nature, his pro-drug lifestyle, and how he "plumbed the depths of consciousness". It's like he didn't go to work at the same shitty office as me to get a paycheck so he could make rent, as if the fact he took mushrooms and shamanic journeys on the weekends made him better than me.
I'll admit that maybe I was a little jealous. Maybe I wished I could be more relaxed at work, to take it less seriously, and to get into all the same Terrence McKenna drug shit that he did. But I hadn't and always held myself back. That was still no excuse for him to be so goddamn pretentious about it.
Now that I think about it, I wonder why he wanted me to go. We weren't friends and I hadn't been as into stuff as everything. Yet he kept nagging me to go and it seemed a victory when I agreed. What did it matter if I went? Why did he want me to come along?
Whatever our reasons for the trip and companionship, when the appointed day came, we left. Without second guessing myself, I suited up, gunned the motor and rode out of town with him, looking for my destiny and finding something very different.
We rode from Austin to El Paso and then into New Mexico. Ultimately we were to push on through Arizona and finally to San Diego. It was a long ride, but there was something about being on that bike, the road stretched out endlessly in front of me, that was almost meditative. My job, my cramped life, my friends, and all my worries were left behind me so my obligations and tensions were slowly peeled away from me the farther we got from home. I felt like I was becoming more myself. Maybe my problem is I don't like the me I found.
We followed Ted's route from last year exactly. We stopped each night at the same location he had stayed, even if we could have made better time and gone faster. I was not in a hurry and was okay with letting someone else make the decisions. The specific stop offs gave the trip an air of pilgrimage, each of his previous stops like a way station.
We camped every night. Warming our bodies by the fire, Ted said that the stars and the sky were better friends to our spirits. He suggested that man made buildings sap our spirits and ensnare us.
I have to admit it was all so beautiful. Whether seen from great speed on a motorcycle or stared at lazily over a can of beans around the fire, New Mexico was beautiful. It felt good to have time to myself; I had not realized how much my job dominated my life, even after the work day was over. I told myself that I was beginning to feel free, like I what I thought Ted must feel. At least, this is felt like what he always bragged about.
Almost every evening also involved a shared joint that we smoked while we stared at the sky. It helped me appreciate the sounds and beauty of nature. My placid enjoyment was only marred by Ted saying that this was nothing compared to taking shrooms and tripping out in the open desert. He said that feeling was shamanic and would truly connect our souls to the spirit of the Southwest. He went on to say it was "real mystic", looking straight at me when he said that. Moments later he started babbling on about how we would become shamanic warriors, and I zoned out. Some of his ideas were real out there, and I've never been big on long involved conversations when I'm stoned.
The days were fun and nothing would have made me guess things were going to sour. During the day we raced down the roads, slowing only when Ted got paranoid of police traps. I followed his lead. While I was beginning to relax, Ted seemed to be getting more amped up. No matter where we went, Ted had to be the fastest and first, while I just enjoyed the journey the scenery. It was a liberated feeling that was too brief.
We stopped at this little town in the middle of nothing. Granted, a whole lot of New Mexico is like that, but I didn't even get the name of this town. It was one road, a few buildings, and a few rickety stands of people selling souvenirs. I'm not even sure who they expected to sell those to.
"I have to pick up something," said Ted. "Wait here, I don't want to spook my friend."
The shop seemed to sell Native American trinkets and souvenirs, things like dream catchers, animal skulls, and objects with snake fangs or engraved horns. It looked like there were peace pipes, feathered clothing, and small resin statues too. Maybe it had more, but that's all I could see in the window.
It was obvious to me that this visit was about drugs, but Ted wouldn't say anything about it. When he was paranoid, he didn't even want to mention drugs, he just talked around the subject. He came out a few minutes later with a nervous smile and a quick look over his should.
"Got it," he said. We rode off.
I found out later that what he had picked up were the "good" mushrooms that I had heard so much about. Of course now I know that whatever he got was just pure fucking concentrated evil. I wish I had never taken those fucking things. I wished I had turned back towards Austin or kept on riding to Arizona and left Ted and his "medicine" far behind.
Yes, he called them medicine. He said natural psychedelics like mushrooms and peyote were healing medicine that repair the link between a man and his spirit, as well as the link between that spirit and the earth. According to him, synthetic drugs like acid might be similar, but they harmed the mind and the spirit. It had to be natural medicine like mushrooms to cure your ailments. He said the Native Americans had been doing this shit for centuries.
We just "had to" do the shrooms at the same place that he had done them last year. He said the experience had been unforgettable and had changed his life forever. We had to do it the same way. He was adamant about this place and refused to discuss elsewhere. It was in the middle of nowhere out in the desert, a bigger middle of nowhere than we had camped in before, so I asked about it. It's not like I had a better idea of where to take the mushrooms, but it was strange that he was so forceful about this point. His responses if I questioned him were defensive.
"Stop being such a fucking pussy, man," he said. "You've been living in a cubicle for too long that you're like an insect in their hive. To meet the spirit of the land, you need to take some fucking risks. I'm fucking going to the place and that's where I'm going to have my experience. If you don't want to come, fine, but I'm taking the fucking shrooms with me."
I'm sure I could have turned around and gone home, but at the time, there didn't seem a reason to split up. We began the trip together, we might as well finish it together. I did want to try the mushrooms and I had never tripped in the middle of nowhere, so there was some appeal. So despite the hissy fit he threw, I finally agreed. He smiled and asked me to follow him.
At a gnarled tree at the edge of the road he signaled. This spot didn't look any different from any other except for the tree. I looked at the tree. It was dead and leafless but had not fallen apart. I saw that someone had left some things hanging from the branches. Strings with snake fangs and a small animal skull. Weird, for sure, but I had not realized that this was the signpost of madness. Instead I simply shrugged and followed him as we turned off the road and went into the rough parched ground of the desert.
This is where things started getting fucked up. I should have kept on riding. I should have taken one look at the tree and told him to fuck off. Things would have been better that way. Sure, I wouldn't have been able to call myself an adventurer, but I would have had to call myself a murderer instead. Shit, am I a murderer? I don't even know at this point.
2
The camping spot was right at the ground transition of dusty dirt and sheets of rock. Farther away were greater collections of rocks erupting from the ground like sharp hills or small mountains. A gnarled tree had once grown here, twisting up to the sky, but it had fallen, now curving and sprawled across the ground. This was his second landmark for finding the spot.
It was growing dark when we found it, so we quickly found some kindling for the fire, though we were both exhausted. Ted got the fire going and we cooked ourselves some food from our cans. Ted said we needed to eat a little bit before the mushrooms so we don’t throw up, but not too much. If we overdid it and we wouldn’t get the full effect. He also said we wouldn’t want to eat while on them. Then he went off on this story about this one time he was tripping hardcore, and he made the mistake of trying to eat some canned soup, which he found horrifying. He even laughed at his own stories, despite the fact I wasn't paying attention. My patience with him had been thinning over this trip.
After eating, we waited about a half an hour during which he babbled about how awesome everything was going to be. Then he pulled out the mushrooms. They were in a plastic zip lock bag, with a little bit of a dark liquid sloshing around. He explained that was there to keep them fresh and that you trip so much harder than the dried mushrooms. He took some himself, the handed the bag over to me.
They tasted like ass. They tasted more like dirt than anything else. I want to say they tasted funny, but I had never done mushrooms before, so I had no idea what they should taste like. A minute later and I regretted eating anything at all. My stomach churned. I thought of my childhood science project, the volcano made with baking powder and vinegar. My stomach growled, and I swear it sounded more like something boiling than an actual growl. Ted heard it and laughed at me, calling me a ‘lightweight’.
Over the next few minutes, my stomach felt really bad, and the churning never stopped. I kept swallowing more saliva and making grimacing facial expressions, as if that would somehow help my stomach make up its mind. I worried if I would throw up. Ted noticed my continued discomfort and dropped his amused expression. “Keep ‘em down, pussy, that’s some expensive shit, and I won’t have you yakking them up on the ground.” I wanted to puke all over him when he said that, but I wasn't interested in vomiting either. I finally mastered them and while my stomach was still unsettled, I didn't have an urgent fear of puking my guts out.
A few minutes later, my stomach felt more like it was willing to play ball. It still felt a little funny down in the pit of it, but the rest of it was not doing jumping jacks anymore, so I counted this as a major plus. Ted had pulled out a bottle of cheap wine he picked up in town. He was taking large gulps of the wine every so often, while expounding on the manliness of sleeping under the stars, as well as hunting your own food in nature. The empty can of Cap’n Marsh’s Tasty Tuna next to him had no comment.
As I said, I had never done mushrooms before, so I was not sure quite what to expect. I’ve done acid before, so I was ready for those unsafe-in-my-own-skin feelings, tinged colors, and that general feeling of the world turning almost sugary in its pleasantness. It turns out that mushrooms are not as similar to acid as I had heard. Then again, I'm still not entirely sure these were mushrooms. They may have been... fuck. I'm getting ahead of myself. Whatever I was feeling was unfamiliar and unpleasant. Not the best start.
My thoughts were interrupted by the wine bottle being thrust in my face. My stomach was still unsettled, but for some reason the wine was still appealing. I took a drink, a big gulp, since I knew faltering or pushing it away would just produce more criticism from Ted. It was white wine, or maybe piss with some beer poured into it. Tasted like crap, went down like crap, sat in my stomach like crap. “Ugh, don’t give me this fucking shit,” I said as I tossed the bottle at him.
He laughed, then started into some story about something. His words just faded into background noise. The crappy wine made my stomach churn a little. I burped, which was a mistake as it smelled horrible and tasted even worse. My solar plexus felt tight and tingly, which I hadn't really ever felt before. I was clearly feeling strange, but I wasn’t sure if that was from the actual effects of the mushrooms or from getting sick. I was beginning to feel dizzy, so I rubbed my eyes for a moment, but that didn’t help.
Ted was still talking. I spent most of my time staring at the fire. It drew my attention away from my sick and strange feelings. My arms began to feel light and floaty. When I turned to look up at the full moon, I realized I was gritting my teeth for some reason. I did like the moon's glow on the clear sky out here away from it all. Despite my weird feelings, I did appreciate how great it was to not be slave to a clock back at home and my job.
“Hey,” Ted said, trying to grab my attention. He was looking right at me. Generally if he had something important to say, he would look right at me. When he talked about random crap, he tended to look around or away, as if he knew in the back of his mind that no one fucking cared. I rarely cared, so I had a nice cue for when I could zone out. “Last year, I stayed here too,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice slower than intended, “you told me.”
“It was on this very spot that I ate some mushrooms.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“What I didn’t tell you is this spot is special. I didn’t know that when I was here the first time. Doesn’t it feel special?”
I turned my head and looked around. My head was light, so turning it was somewhat disorienting I felt myself shiver a bit, but I wasn’t cold. My solar plexus tingled. But I didn't see anything different around us. There didn't seem a damn thing special about this spot.
“There’s something here," he said, probably not even listening to me. "Something old. I’m sure you can feel it. Here in the ground. I felt it last time. I more than felt it.”
He paused and took a gulp of wine, letting me sit there a moment or two wondering. Only some of it was wondering about his story, the rest of it was wondering if I should care.
“It came to me while I was on the mushrooms," he continued. "Straight out of the ground, because it is the ground. It's all around here in the Southwest, its energy twists around things. Some say it is the Southwest.” If that doesn't make sense to you, then we're on the same page.
He paused again, breaking eye contact, and smiled to himself as he held the bottle. After a moment he resumed his bleak expression. I remember looking at the expression and wondering why he looked so odd. He looked… nervous.
“It was the Snake God," said Ted. "It waits under the earth. For the right people, I guess. It wanted me, it wanted to talk to me. It's like... this unfathomable darkness. Like being so deep in a cavern that sunlight has never shown. It's a dark force and it's indifferent. It doesn't care whether humanity lives or dies. It just waits."
I admit, his words were having an effect on me. While I had grown tired of Ted's crap, there was something eerie about this. Something about the drugs and the situation had me picking up on his nervousness. There was a prickling of hairs on the back of my neck.
“You see, it came and told me…” He trailed off, looking into space again. His hand drifted over to the wine bottle and held it. He smiled and gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry, man, I’m just fucking with you.” He then took a drink from the bottle.
I was fucking pissed, but that’s just the kind of ass he was. I knew a guy like that in college, the kind that likes to fuck with people when they're stoned. It's something I hate in general, but when in the middle of nowhere, doing shrooms for the first time, and with someone I was beginning to distrust, it was particularly uncool to start fucking with me.
"Asshole," I said, still shivering but not from the cold.
He laughed more and started talking random shit again, like how Native Americans sold iceboxes to Eskimos made out of hemp or something equally as pointless. I was annoyed with him and feeling strange, so the last thing I wanted to do was listen to him. I couldn't stop shivering. I still had my leather jacket on, but it didn't help.
As I looked up at the sky, I realized that somehow I felt bigger. The stars seemed closer, the moon just out of grasp. I looked around and saw that it seemed like our whole campsite had grown to titanic size, but everything was in perfect proportion so that it looked exactly the same.
I wanted to stand up and measure my new height against the height of those huge rocks near us, but thought better of it and stayed sitting. Besides, with the lightness of my body, it took a different kind of effort to move. I didn’t feel like I moved my arms with muscles, I moved them with something else - I'd say willpower, but I was feeling a little too frazzled to say I really had willpower.
He turned to me again. “Are you feeling it?”
I looked up from my numb hand, which was flopping on the ground, surely at some enormous size. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Yeah, me too.” He paused. “When I trip, sometimes I don’t feel like myself. Like I’m me, but something else too, y’know? Something’s inside me. You ever feel like that?”
“Not particularly,” I replied. My limbs might be falling dead to the floor, but they were still my limbs.
“It's like, I can feel something inside," he said. "Twisting around deep inside me. Whatever it is, it rises to the top when I trip. It's some weird force or consciousness that just bubbles up into me and takes over. Like possession or something.”
Ted had that nervous look again. “Is it hitting you hard? It's hitting me totally fucking hard. I can almost see the words I’m saying.”
“Not that hard,” I responded, but I could see how reality was getting a bit more malleable.
“Yeah, so like this possession kind of grabs me. Fills me up inside. Makes me say stuff. And it feels like… Its dark and old, but it feels like…” He trailed off again.
“What does it feel like?” I said. I was curious, but also knew he would inevitably wait to be promoted.
“Like I am the earth, like I move through tunnels. I feel hungry... and I'm waiting, but still very hungry. I’ve been very hungry for a long, long time. Something needs to sate it. I'm the gaping maw of the earth. I’ve had my giant mouth open for a long period of time and nothing has satisfied my hunger.”
“What the hell are you talking about?" I said. "You’re not making any sense.”
“A snake.”
“What?”
“A snake," he said. "I’m a snake. I’m an extension of the snake that will eat the world. The earth will open up and I’ll swallow humanity whole. I was there before humans, and I’ll be here after they're gone. I am the land, and I’ve been waiting. Don’t you see?”
I tried looking at him hard in the light of the fire. Was this really Ted? Or was he really possessed like he said? Was he just fucking with me? Was it all just the drugs and I was completely out of my mind.
As I squinted at him, I thought I could kind of see scales on him. Was that right? The longer I stared at him, the more that seemed right. His skin seemed darker. Was that a diamond pattern?
Was what he was saying true? He was a snake? How could he be a snake? We'd hung out a few times before this trip and he never before mentioned being a snake. It seemed like the sort of thing he'd bring up.
“I'm not sure what I'm seeing..." I said.
“I am older than humanity," he said, "A remnant from ages long past. And I’ve slept for so long. I've waited longer than any human lifespan. I know it will be time. My fangs will poison the world. When my hunger grows great enough, my waiting will end, my sleep will die, and it will be time."
Okay, he definitely had scales at this point. I'm not sure how I missed that fact beforehand. His eyes were all funny, more like an animal - I guess a snake's. When he spoke, I think I could see the fangs he was talking about. They got bigger the more I looked at them.
“I’m really not cool with this. Could we talk about something else?" I said. I really wanted to change the subject.
“My hunger is growing. See my fangs?” He opened his mouth wide, so now I could definitely see the fangs. His head didn't look human anymore. It was clearly a snake head, but somehow also Ted. “I need to devour. To eat, to destroy. I’ve slept so long…”
Before he simply looked at me, but now he was staring at me with those snake eyes and it was making me really uncomfortable. He was looking me up and down, and it felt like I could feel his stare on me. I shivered again. I really didn't want to be there. I wished he’d stop staring.
“Hey, man," I said. "I don’t feel so good. I’m really not cool with things now.”
He didn’t act like he heard me.
Then things got even weirder.
I still don't believe it happened, but it did. I got the mark on my arm right here. I sat frozen as he leaned towards me. It was such a quick movement, yet I could see every part of it. He leaned forward and bit my left forearm.
It hurt. I screamed. He didn't tear my flesh away and the mushrooms had made me feel light and numb, but it still hurt and I was in shock.
After only a moment of shock and paralysis, I responded. "Ahhh, stop it, you fucker!" I shouted while punching him in the head repeatedly. After a second he pulled his head away. I hadn't done any real damage to him.
Ted smiled and then laughed. “I’m just fucking with you, man. You should totally see your face. That was fucking hilarious.”
His head was still a snake. I didn’t trust him.
I rubbed my arm as he kept laughing. There was a bruise and a little blood, but nothing serious, as far as I could tell. Meanwhile, he had started on some stupid story, as if he hadn't just bit my arm with his snake head. I was tense and began to realize how lethargic I was. It was probably the mushrooms. I also noticed how things sounded weird; not even my own voice sounded normal. The fire's ever-present crackling was distorted to sound almost like a snake rattle.
I looked him over, trying to figure out if I could take him in a fight. He already bit me once, so I was going to be prepared for round two. I decided I was bigger than him, but he spent more time camping, so he might be in better shape. Then again, he was drinking more, which would slow him down. I think the snake head made the most difference in my calculations. Those fangs were fucking big, and if he bit my neck or vein, I’d probably go down.
I then remembered I had a knife in my boot. I had never actually used it. I just remember when I bought these boots for this trip, that the knife in them looked really cool in the store. I had a fantasy of fighting against a sheriff with it after doing his daughter, or at least threatening hippies with it when they tried to mess with my stuff. Right now I tried to remember more about it. Was it on with Velcro, or was there a strap? How to be discreet and find out?
He was still talking about random shit. Right now he was telling about a girl he met and fucked while camping, and then she let him live at her place for a few months after that, with her paying all the bills. I think he talked to cover up his own nervousness, or due to some fantasy world he lived in. Both could be true, since I was realizing that he was a fucking delusional psycho who had me in the middle of nowhere.
I tried testing my drug addled reflexes, flexing my hand. As I looked at it, the movements were sluggish, but worse was that I couldn't quite feel the movement like I usually did. I felt like I felt the nerves of my hand but I didn't feel the flesh. There was a buzzing tingling sensation in the movement.
I think he might have seen me flexing. His babbling ceased abruptly. “These are some hardcore shrooms, aren’t they? They aren’t normally like this at all. These are special, do you know why?”
I tiredly repeated what he had told me incessantly before the trip. “You told me you knew this guy who grew them special in a building behind his home. Special facility or something. You said that makes them grow in crazy ways. And that these are the best because they really get you off.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s the shit I told you, man.” He really emphasized the word “told”, even sticking out his finger at me when he said it. After this, his amusement disappeared. “No, there’s something more. Remember that guy at the shop, the one I got the shrooms from? He also serves the Snake God.”
This sank in and seemed weird, yet impossible. I hadn't actually met the guy in the shop, so who knows what he was like. But surely this Snake God thing wasn’t real and was just a big game, apart from the part where Ted had an actual snake head. But I was already more than paranoid and I felt a dull ache from the bite on my arm. Ted had gotten the shrooms without me because I wasn't allowed to come in. What had they talked about? Was that man coming here?
I whipped my head around, looking for some unknown assailant and did nothing but make myself dizzy and even more lightheaded.
“Do you want to know what he did to them?” said Ted, his voice buzzing across my consciousness like a swarm of angry bees.
I just nodded. I couldn’t form words.
“These mushrooms have been soaked in snake venom. They’re poisonous! Ha! Haven’t you noticed that you’re not exactly feeling right?”
My mind flashed back to the snake fangs I had seen outside the shop where Ted got the mushrooms. Could he have had the venom too? It was possible. But wait, there was something very obvious.
“You had the mushrooms too, so you would be poisoned too,” I said. He had to be full of shit. He just had to be.
He smiled, a great, toothy snake smile. “Normally, that would be true. But when the Snake God chooses you, he gets inside of you. And once he's inside, you're full of his power. The fangs and venom of his children are meaningless against that. I won't be dying from poison."
He paused, letting this sink in. “So how are you feeling?" he said. "Is the venom getting to you? Do you feel it like ice in your veins?”
I was definitely not feeling good. I was still shivering, but I didn’t feel cold. There wasn't any ice in my veins. That tingling feeling had been spreading up my arms and had now reached my shoulders. It wasn't ice, but could that be the poison? I reached up and rubbed my face. My own skin felt like a rubber mask. I learned I was sweating badly. My body was light, my head swirled, and dizziness had never left me.
“So how does it feel to die?" he said. "At least you die out here, away from all the chains of society. It’s a full moon. It’s a good night for rebirth. You’re going to die out here in the wasteland. You’ll be prepared for the next.”
I couldn’t take anymore. I was seriously freaked out. I needed to get away from there, to find some help, to do just something. I really wasn’t sure what I would do, but I knew I had to get the hell away from him. I needed to be somewhere else.
It took a great deal of concerted effort, but I began to pull myself up. My body felt almost intangible, like I was controlling an image of myself, not something solid. Dizziness seared across me as inertia caused it to preferred my body to have stayed sitting. I finally reached a standing posture and was amazed by body could hold me up. I teetered for a second, but I had most of my balance. Ted was shocked I could move so well; it was written all over his snake face. Finally he spoke: “What are you doing?”
I didn’t acknowledge him. I turned and began to walk or run or stumble as best as I could. It was more like falling forward, my legs constantly struggling to keep me standing. I ran into the darkness, leaving the fire behind me. I could vaguely tell I was running towards the rocks. I was running on hard ground and the surface was uneven.
I heard him call after me, panic and tension in his voice: “No! Don’t go that way!”
I didn’t listen and kept stumbling. I wanted to be away from him, but that didn’t really work out how I wanted. My stumble turned into a trip, and then into a fall. I hit the ground for just a moment, because then I felt myself falling again. I thought the ground had just swallowed me up.
I was in darkness, the moon just vaguely visible above me. There were pebbles falling down around me. I had fallen somewhere. I was dizzy and my back was propped up against something hard.
I could vaguely here footsteps. Then I heard Ted’s voice. It seemed to come from above me, maybe five or ten feet. “Shit! Are you okay? Can you hear me? Answer me, tell me if you’re okay!”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to fucking answer him. It would be just what he wanted. It would make it easier for him to kill me. I sat down there in the darkness, just waiting, trying to not breathe loudly, even though my lungs wanted to gasp for air.
I heard him curse again. “Maybe you can hear me, but can’t answer. Stay put, I’m going to get my flashlight and maybe see if we have some rope. Fuck!”
After a few seconds, I heard his footsteps move away and disappear. I knew I needed to figure out where I was. My body ached, but I managed to reach into my jacket and pull out my lighter. Good old expensive Zippo lighter. I had kept it around even when I stopped smoking years back.
Once I lit it, I could see there was rock in front of me and rock behind me. I seemed to be in some crevice or trench, a small crack in the earth. From what I could tell, it was about ten feet deep, and maybe two or three feet wide.
The rocks under my hands felt a bit weird, more smooth than rough. My eyes had trouble focusing, and what I could focus on tended to waver in the darkness. The rocks around me were strange. Were they really rocks? They looked almost like faces. I tried hard to focus on them. It was dark and covered in dirt, but was that... Was that… a skull? A human skull? I blinked, and tried to focus my eyes again.
It was a skull. It had to be a skull. It made sense. I looked around, trying to better look at things in the meager light. The smooth rocks, I realized were bone chips. I could see what looked like another skull a few feet to my left.
Now it all started to make sense. This was Ted’s special spot. He really did intend to kill me. He would kill me and toss my body down here. That’s why he brought me here, so he could easily dispose of the corpse. He gave me the venom first and then when I was weak, he’d strike.
He had done it before - that was obvious from the remains. Or maybe it wasn't even just him! There was the man from the shop! And there must be others who worshipped the Snake God. They needed to feed the god. And since the god was the earth itself… As my mind raced, it all fell into place. This was no normal crack in the earth. This was the Snake God’s maw, its open mouth so its followers could throw sacrifices in it.
I knew I had to get out of there as soon as possible. But there was still the problem of Ted. I knew he waited only to kill me. He had the advantage. I was not only poisoned and tripping, but also hurt from my fall down here. I could try to stumble back to my bike and escape, but he had one too, so he could chase me down. We were in the middle of nowhere, so there was no help I could go for. It was a grim realization, but I knew that I would have to take him out.
I reached down and felt for the knife in my boot. It turned out that it was held on with Velcro. That single knife and the element of surprise were the only things I had going for me. I felt like shit, I was scared, I was poisoned, I was out of my mind, and I ached. But I knew if I were going to live, I would have to focus. I stood up. My left leg hurt a lot more than I thought. I started looking at the wall of the crevice as best I could to see how I could get out.
I heard footsteps returning. I closed my lighter and put it away. I tensed, ready for anything he might throw at me. I didn’t have a lot of room to dodge. This was obviously not a good position for me.
I saw a light shine down the crevice from his flashlight. It hurt my eyes at first, but I adjusted. “You’re awake! Thank god! Shit man, you had me fucking freaking out! I saw this hole last time I was here, and didn’t know what the fuck I’d do if you were knocked out.” He paused, waiting for a response, but when I didn’t respond, he went on talking. “I couldn’t find any rope. Maybe if I keep this shining down there, you can find a good place to climb or something. Can you walk?”
I didn’t answer. It might seem like he was concerned, but it was a trick. He was just disarming me, lulling me into a docile state. And then he'd start up with his strange words again soon. Or he might decide it was time and just try to kill me. Either way, I was not going to give him that chance.
I started looking for a place to climb and found a place that was reasonable enough with my hurt leg. My hands still felt enormous and tingly, but somehow I pulled myself together enough to start climbing.
As I climbed, he started talking again. His hands were shaky as he held the flashlight. “Look, man. I’m sorry about that snake bullshit. I was just fucking with you. I wanted to get you all freaked out, then bring up the concept of death. It’s all shamanic and shit. They would go through a symbolic death and be reborn as someone new. It's like part of shamanic warrior training. I thought that since it was your first time on shrooms, and we were out here in the desert, that you could have a true rebirth experience. Y'know, the kind of thing I wish I had my first time. A fucking let go of your life experience, something to crack your shell and let your spirit free. I guess I kind of screwed that one up.”
I didn’t buy it. This nice guy routine was just out of character for him. He was fucking patronizing me, and I was just not believing it. I struggled harder against the rock wall I climbed. He still was talking: “Dude, I am totally feeling them. I’m sorry I can’t hold this flashlight still, but they make me shake. It's a super fantastic trip this time, even better than last time, so no wonder if was overwhelming. Damn. That guy always knows where to find the best shrooms.”
I had finally reached the top. He offered his hand to me, but I refused it, pulling myself up by my own shaking muscles. Once out of the crevice, I crouched and caught my breath. All my muscles ached, and there was a searing pain in my leg.
“Look, I’m sorry man,” he started to say, but trailed off when I turned my head away from him. He stood there awkwardly for a while, the shaking flashlight trained on me, but I ignored him, staring out into the dark desert and making my plans.
“I’m going to go back to the fire then,” he said in a resigned, almost rebuffed voice. Another trick. He turned and began to walk back, the flashlight in front of him.
Adrenaline and hate rushed through my vein, as I turned toward him. This was my chance, probably my only chance. I collected the fragments of my will back together. As silent as I could, I took the knife out of the Velcro sheath. Though the sound was louder than I hoped, it didn’t seem like he heard me.
It was now or never. I ran, just pushing towards him on my will alone, barely aware of my body or anything else. He kept shakily walking back to the fire, unaware of my assault. At the last second I think he may have heard me, but it was too late. I lunged forward and drove my knife into his back.
He screamed and stumbled. My own momentum and lack of coordination rammed me into him, tackling him to the ground. He began to twist and ask what was going on, but I ignored him. I knew what I had to do.
Using one hand, I held his damned snake head down on the ground by the back of his neck, so he couldn’t bite me. I pulled the knife out of his back, then put it at the side of his neck. I think I heard the vague sound of his panicked “What are you doing?” before I yanked it across his arteries.
Pulling back, I crouched, the bloody knife ready for resistance that would never come. I stared at his form and the blood that gushed out of him, waiting for him to die.
When he was finally dead, I crashed as the adrenaline finally subsided. The hand that held the knife in a death grip suddenly unclenched. The bloody blade tumbled to the ground.
I found myself crying. Not just tears, but sobbing too. I didn't know what was going on, nothing made sense, and I kept crying. I had just killed someone, and there was no way I could wrap my head around it. He was trying to kill me and I had killed him in self defense. But it still made no sense to me. It was all too much.
For the next few minutes I paced back and forth across the ground, doing my best to stay out of his blood spatters, so my boots remained unstained. I didn't know what to do. I talked to myself as I paced. I needed a plan. Any plan. There was a dead body. I had to do something with that. The police might come. Would the police come? Would anyone find the body?
Some semblance of calm finally hit me. I couldn’t tell the police. They wouldn’t understand - how could they understand? Nobody could understand. That meant I had to get rid of the body. Nobody would care unless they found the body. This was the middle of nowhere, nobody would come searching here, I just had to make sure they didn't find it by accident. As long as the body was hidden...
I know what you’re thinking. This was madness. Drug-addled madness. But you don't understand. Ted wanted to kill me. I think he wanted to kill me... But I was not going to go prison for him either way. So I needed to hide the body. I needed to hide what I had done.
I threw the body into crevice.
There, I said it.
I threw that body as deep down into that goddamn crevice as I could.
I'm not happy about that. But I don't think I regret it either.
After that, I cleaned myself up using clothes from his pack. I pushed his motorcycle down into the crevice with him, along with all his other possessions.
Then I got on my bike and rode as far away from there as I could. It may have been hours, it may have been minutes, I don't know. I rode until I couldn't ride anymore. Then I pulled off the road, took out my sleeping bag, and slept.
My dreams were full of blood and poison, the signposts on a journey through the dark bowels of the earth.
I rode aimlessly for the next few days, just trying to process the experience. What had really happened? We had both been on drugs, so I began to second guess everything that happened. I saw that the bite on my arm had been made with human teeth, not fangs. But that was a single detail, it didn't invalidate all my other fears. But what had been real and what had been delusion?
Every time I wonder if it was all confusion and insanity, I stop and wonder why he had brought me there. Why that spot? What about that crevice? Were there other bones there? If it was just an innocent trip, why did we end up at a killing place?
I finally returned home to Austin. I've tried to resume my life as best I could, but the weight is too much. Some days are okay, but on others, the gravity of it all and the lies I've had to tell threaten to break me. I didn't think I could hold this secret in any longer. The dreams are just...
When I was asked what happened to Ted at my job, I told them that he decided to stay in San Diego. I explained that he clearly said, "Fuck that job!" and that he found a girl in San Diego. I've been asked about him a few times by other people we both knew in common. Despite the lie, they always believe my explanation, because that's exactly how Ted was; it's easy to believe he'd just take off and leave his job behind. But even though they believe me, I'm nervous and shaking every time I answer. I'm worried that one of these times someone's going to notice.
I can’t sleep at night. My dreams are full of snakes, blood, and that damn crack in the earth. Sometimes I wake up, only vaguely aware that I was just being told something by a giant snake, its words lost in the light of the morning. The only thing that remains is a feeling of dread and a dark hunger... one that can't be sated no matter how much I eat.
There's a great darkness that exists in the American Southwest, but I worry that the darkness isn't actually real, that it exists only for me. There's either some dark presence older than man whose hunger never ceases or the guilty stain of truth that I killed an innocent. I still don't know exactly what happened out there. That night seems just like a lost dream that has marred my consciousness and the only time it feels real and vivid is when I fall asleep...
That's why I need your help. I'm going insane not knowing. The dreams are driving me mad. They're pulling me apart and I need to know. I need someone to verify things. I need someone to tell me the truth.
I want you to come with me, out into the Southwest. We'll go to that same spot in New Mexico, turning at the snake fang tree and riding on to the dead tree campsite. We'll go to that crevice, that gaping maw in the earth, and I want you to look inside it. I need you to see the bodies. I need you to see if there are the bodies of dozens of dead men killed by a cult, or if there is only one body, a poor fool and its motorcycle.
I need to know the truth. The whispering in my dreams is growing so loud! I hear it in the daytime now when I lose focus and find myself daydreaming. It tells me I need to go out there, to find the truth... and that I need to bring a friend.
You've always been a good friend. You've now listened to my whole story and you know how insane it all sounds, but you know I'm not someone to make things up. Please, I need to know the truth.
Will you help me?
By Dennis Liggio
1
I need your help. I've gone over this in my head a thousand times, but I don't know how better to tell you this. You're a good friend, so I think you're the only person I can tell this to. You need to promise not to freak out. You need to promise not to tell anyone. I need to tell you this, I need to tell someone this before I go crazy. Maybe crazier.
I don't know if you remember, but I went on a vacation recently. One of those find-yourself trips across America by motorcycle. I'm not sure I like the me I found out there. The whole trip did not work out the way I planned. It fell apart... and things happened. Well, let me be straight with you.
I think I killed somebody out there.
Yeah.
It happened, okay? It just happened. I didn't intend to, it just happened.
But listen, I don't think anybody found the body. It happened out in the desert. It was somewhere in New Mexico, and that's all I'm going to say about the location right now. Just hear me out first? I need someone to just listen to me, and maybe we can figure this out.
It was supposed to be a simple trip. One of those manly trips to free out spirits, to get away from the nine to five grind of society. It was supposed to be true freedom, just ourselves and the open road, communing with the spirit of America like Easy Rider or something. Yes, I know that film was made over forty years ago. Yeah, I know someone else died in that too.
Something was very appealing about the Southwest. Dusty roads, an absence of anything at all, and that big huge sky above us. I liked the idea that we'd be going town to town across the borderlands like cowboys or something. It was also a better area to find territory to find peyote, which was something I really wanted to try. At the very least, Ted swore he knew where to get some awesome mushrooms.
Ted was the guy I travelled with, and kind of my guide for this whole adventure. He had rode this path the year before. I'll admit he talked me into. He had been hounding me for weeks about how I needed to "find my true spirit among the mystic places of the American Southwest". I'm pretty sure he hadn't intended for it to work out this way.
Ted was... well, he wasn't a friend. Not if I'm being entirely truthful. It's not like we were enemies or anything, we were just more acquaintances. We knew each other through work, though we didn't work directly with each other.
We weren't friends because, well... Ted pissed people off. Myself included. He was always such a know it all about things. And he had this incredible arrogance about his "free spirited" nature, his pro-drug lifestyle, and how he "plumbed the depths of consciousness". It's like he didn't go to work at the same shitty office as me to get a paycheck so he could make rent, as if the fact he took mushrooms and shamanic journeys on the weekends made him better than me.
I'll admit that maybe I was a little jealous. Maybe I wished I could be more relaxed at work, to take it less seriously, and to get into all the same Terrence McKenna drug shit that he did. But I hadn't and always held myself back. That was still no excuse for him to be so goddamn pretentious about it.
Now that I think about it, I wonder why he wanted me to go. We weren't friends and I hadn't been as into stuff as everything. Yet he kept nagging me to go and it seemed a victory when I agreed. What did it matter if I went? Why did he want me to come along?
Whatever our reasons for the trip and companionship, when the appointed day came, we left. Without second guessing myself, I suited up, gunned the motor and rode out of town with him, looking for my destiny and finding something very different.
We rode from Austin to El Paso and then into New Mexico. Ultimately we were to push on through Arizona and finally to San Diego. It was a long ride, but there was something about being on that bike, the road stretched out endlessly in front of me, that was almost meditative. My job, my cramped life, my friends, and all my worries were left behind me so my obligations and tensions were slowly peeled away from me the farther we got from home. I felt like I was becoming more myself. Maybe my problem is I don't like the me I found.
We followed Ted's route from last year exactly. We stopped each night at the same location he had stayed, even if we could have made better time and gone faster. I was not in a hurry and was okay with letting someone else make the decisions. The specific stop offs gave the trip an air of pilgrimage, each of his previous stops like a way station.
We camped every night. Warming our bodies by the fire, Ted said that the stars and the sky were better friends to our spirits. He suggested that man made buildings sap our spirits and ensnare us.
I have to admit it was all so beautiful. Whether seen from great speed on a motorcycle or stared at lazily over a can of beans around the fire, New Mexico was beautiful. It felt good to have time to myself; I had not realized how much my job dominated my life, even after the work day was over. I told myself that I was beginning to feel free, like I what I thought Ted must feel. At least, this is felt like what he always bragged about.
Almost every evening also involved a shared joint that we smoked while we stared at the sky. It helped me appreciate the sounds and beauty of nature. My placid enjoyment was only marred by Ted saying that this was nothing compared to taking shrooms and tripping out in the open desert. He said that feeling was shamanic and would truly connect our souls to the spirit of the Southwest. He went on to say it was "real mystic", looking straight at me when he said that. Moments later he started babbling on about how we would become shamanic warriors, and I zoned out. Some of his ideas were real out there, and I've never been big on long involved conversations when I'm stoned.
The days were fun and nothing would have made me guess things were going to sour. During the day we raced down the roads, slowing only when Ted got paranoid of police traps. I followed his lead. While I was beginning to relax, Ted seemed to be getting more amped up. No matter where we went, Ted had to be the fastest and first, while I just enjoyed the journey the scenery. It was a liberated feeling that was too brief.
We stopped at this little town in the middle of nothing. Granted, a whole lot of New Mexico is like that, but I didn't even get the name of this town. It was one road, a few buildings, and a few rickety stands of people selling souvenirs. I'm not even sure who they expected to sell those to.
"I have to pick up something," said Ted. "Wait here, I don't want to spook my friend."
The shop seemed to sell Native American trinkets and souvenirs, things like dream catchers, animal skulls, and objects with snake fangs or engraved horns. It looked like there were peace pipes, feathered clothing, and small resin statues too. Maybe it had more, but that's all I could see in the window.
It was obvious to me that this visit was about drugs, but Ted wouldn't say anything about it. When he was paranoid, he didn't even want to mention drugs, he just talked around the subject. He came out a few minutes later with a nervous smile and a quick look over his should.
"Got it," he said. We rode off.
I found out later that what he had picked up were the "good" mushrooms that I had heard so much about. Of course now I know that whatever he got was just pure fucking concentrated evil. I wish I had never taken those fucking things. I wished I had turned back towards Austin or kept on riding to Arizona and left Ted and his "medicine" far behind.
Yes, he called them medicine. He said natural psychedelics like mushrooms and peyote were healing medicine that repair the link between a man and his spirit, as well as the link between that spirit and the earth. According to him, synthetic drugs like acid might be similar, but they harmed the mind and the spirit. It had to be natural medicine like mushrooms to cure your ailments. He said the Native Americans had been doing this shit for centuries.
We just "had to" do the shrooms at the same place that he had done them last year. He said the experience had been unforgettable and had changed his life forever. We had to do it the same way. He was adamant about this place and refused to discuss elsewhere. It was in the middle of nowhere out in the desert, a bigger middle of nowhere than we had camped in before, so I asked about it. It's not like I had a better idea of where to take the mushrooms, but it was strange that he was so forceful about this point. His responses if I questioned him were defensive.
"Stop being such a fucking pussy, man," he said. "You've been living in a cubicle for too long that you're like an insect in their hive. To meet the spirit of the land, you need to take some fucking risks. I'm fucking going to the place and that's where I'm going to have my experience. If you don't want to come, fine, but I'm taking the fucking shrooms with me."
I'm sure I could have turned around and gone home, but at the time, there didn't seem a reason to split up. We began the trip together, we might as well finish it together. I did want to try the mushrooms and I had never tripped in the middle of nowhere, so there was some appeal. So despite the hissy fit he threw, I finally agreed. He smiled and asked me to follow him.
At a gnarled tree at the edge of the road he signaled. This spot didn't look any different from any other except for the tree. I looked at the tree. It was dead and leafless but had not fallen apart. I saw that someone had left some things hanging from the branches. Strings with snake fangs and a small animal skull. Weird, for sure, but I had not realized that this was the signpost of madness. Instead I simply shrugged and followed him as we turned off the road and went into the rough parched ground of the desert.
This is where things started getting fucked up. I should have kept on riding. I should have taken one look at the tree and told him to fuck off. Things would have been better that way. Sure, I wouldn't have been able to call myself an adventurer, but I would have had to call myself a murderer instead. Shit, am I a murderer? I don't even know at this point.
2
The camping spot was right at the ground transition of dusty dirt and sheets of rock. Farther away were greater collections of rocks erupting from the ground like sharp hills or small mountains. A gnarled tree had once grown here, twisting up to the sky, but it had fallen, now curving and sprawled across the ground. This was his second landmark for finding the spot.
It was growing dark when we found it, so we quickly found some kindling for the fire, though we were both exhausted. Ted got the fire going and we cooked ourselves some food from our cans. Ted said we needed to eat a little bit before the mushrooms so we don’t throw up, but not too much. If we overdid it and we wouldn’t get the full effect. He also said we wouldn’t want to eat while on them. Then he went off on this story about this one time he was tripping hardcore, and he made the mistake of trying to eat some canned soup, which he found horrifying. He even laughed at his own stories, despite the fact I wasn't paying attention. My patience with him had been thinning over this trip.
After eating, we waited about a half an hour during which he babbled about how awesome everything was going to be. Then he pulled out the mushrooms. They were in a plastic zip lock bag, with a little bit of a dark liquid sloshing around. He explained that was there to keep them fresh and that you trip so much harder than the dried mushrooms. He took some himself, the handed the bag over to me.
They tasted like ass. They tasted more like dirt than anything else. I want to say they tasted funny, but I had never done mushrooms before, so I had no idea what they should taste like. A minute later and I regretted eating anything at all. My stomach churned. I thought of my childhood science project, the volcano made with baking powder and vinegar. My stomach growled, and I swear it sounded more like something boiling than an actual growl. Ted heard it and laughed at me, calling me a ‘lightweight’.
Over the next few minutes, my stomach felt really bad, and the churning never stopped. I kept swallowing more saliva and making grimacing facial expressions, as if that would somehow help my stomach make up its mind. I worried if I would throw up. Ted noticed my continued discomfort and dropped his amused expression. “Keep ‘em down, pussy, that’s some expensive shit, and I won’t have you yakking them up on the ground.” I wanted to puke all over him when he said that, but I wasn't interested in vomiting either. I finally mastered them and while my stomach was still unsettled, I didn't have an urgent fear of puking my guts out.
A few minutes later, my stomach felt more like it was willing to play ball. It still felt a little funny down in the pit of it, but the rest of it was not doing jumping jacks anymore, so I counted this as a major plus. Ted had pulled out a bottle of cheap wine he picked up in town. He was taking large gulps of the wine every so often, while expounding on the manliness of sleeping under the stars, as well as hunting your own food in nature. The empty can of Cap’n Marsh’s Tasty Tuna next to him had no comment.
As I said, I had never done mushrooms before, so I was not sure quite what to expect. I’ve done acid before, so I was ready for those unsafe-in-my-own-skin feelings, tinged colors, and that general feeling of the world turning almost sugary in its pleasantness. It turns out that mushrooms are not as similar to acid as I had heard. Then again, I'm still not entirely sure these were mushrooms. They may have been... fuck. I'm getting ahead of myself. Whatever I was feeling was unfamiliar and unpleasant. Not the best start.
My thoughts were interrupted by the wine bottle being thrust in my face. My stomach was still unsettled, but for some reason the wine was still appealing. I took a drink, a big gulp, since I knew faltering or pushing it away would just produce more criticism from Ted. It was white wine, or maybe piss with some beer poured into it. Tasted like crap, went down like crap, sat in my stomach like crap. “Ugh, don’t give me this fucking shit,” I said as I tossed the bottle at him.
He laughed, then started into some story about something. His words just faded into background noise. The crappy wine made my stomach churn a little. I burped, which was a mistake as it smelled horrible and tasted even worse. My solar plexus felt tight and tingly, which I hadn't really ever felt before. I was clearly feeling strange, but I wasn’t sure if that was from the actual effects of the mushrooms or from getting sick. I was beginning to feel dizzy, so I rubbed my eyes for a moment, but that didn’t help.
Ted was still talking. I spent most of my time staring at the fire. It drew my attention away from my sick and strange feelings. My arms began to feel light and floaty. When I turned to look up at the full moon, I realized I was gritting my teeth for some reason. I did like the moon's glow on the clear sky out here away from it all. Despite my weird feelings, I did appreciate how great it was to not be slave to a clock back at home and my job.
“Hey,” Ted said, trying to grab my attention. He was looking right at me. Generally if he had something important to say, he would look right at me. When he talked about random crap, he tended to look around or away, as if he knew in the back of his mind that no one fucking cared. I rarely cared, so I had a nice cue for when I could zone out. “Last year, I stayed here too,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice slower than intended, “you told me.”
“It was on this very spot that I ate some mushrooms.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“What I didn’t tell you is this spot is special. I didn’t know that when I was here the first time. Doesn’t it feel special?”
I turned my head and looked around. My head was light, so turning it was somewhat disorienting I felt myself shiver a bit, but I wasn’t cold. My solar plexus tingled. But I didn't see anything different around us. There didn't seem a damn thing special about this spot.
“There’s something here," he said, probably not even listening to me. "Something old. I’m sure you can feel it. Here in the ground. I felt it last time. I more than felt it.”
He paused and took a gulp of wine, letting me sit there a moment or two wondering. Only some of it was wondering about his story, the rest of it was wondering if I should care.
“It came to me while I was on the mushrooms," he continued. "Straight out of the ground, because it is the ground. It's all around here in the Southwest, its energy twists around things. Some say it is the Southwest.” If that doesn't make sense to you, then we're on the same page.
He paused again, breaking eye contact, and smiled to himself as he held the bottle. After a moment he resumed his bleak expression. I remember looking at the expression and wondering why he looked so odd. He looked… nervous.
“It was the Snake God," said Ted. "It waits under the earth. For the right people, I guess. It wanted me, it wanted to talk to me. It's like... this unfathomable darkness. Like being so deep in a cavern that sunlight has never shown. It's a dark force and it's indifferent. It doesn't care whether humanity lives or dies. It just waits."
I admit, his words were having an effect on me. While I had grown tired of Ted's crap, there was something eerie about this. Something about the drugs and the situation had me picking up on his nervousness. There was a prickling of hairs on the back of my neck.
“You see, it came and told me…” He trailed off, looking into space again. His hand drifted over to the wine bottle and held it. He smiled and gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry, man, I’m just fucking with you.” He then took a drink from the bottle.
I was fucking pissed, but that’s just the kind of ass he was. I knew a guy like that in college, the kind that likes to fuck with people when they're stoned. It's something I hate in general, but when in the middle of nowhere, doing shrooms for the first time, and with someone I was beginning to distrust, it was particularly uncool to start fucking with me.
"Asshole," I said, still shivering but not from the cold.
He laughed more and started talking random shit again, like how Native Americans sold iceboxes to Eskimos made out of hemp or something equally as pointless. I was annoyed with him and feeling strange, so the last thing I wanted to do was listen to him. I couldn't stop shivering. I still had my leather jacket on, but it didn't help.
As I looked up at the sky, I realized that somehow I felt bigger. The stars seemed closer, the moon just out of grasp. I looked around and saw that it seemed like our whole campsite had grown to titanic size, but everything was in perfect proportion so that it looked exactly the same.
I wanted to stand up and measure my new height against the height of those huge rocks near us, but thought better of it and stayed sitting. Besides, with the lightness of my body, it took a different kind of effort to move. I didn’t feel like I moved my arms with muscles, I moved them with something else - I'd say willpower, but I was feeling a little too frazzled to say I really had willpower.
He turned to me again. “Are you feeling it?”
I looked up from my numb hand, which was flopping on the ground, surely at some enormous size. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Yeah, me too.” He paused. “When I trip, sometimes I don’t feel like myself. Like I’m me, but something else too, y’know? Something’s inside me. You ever feel like that?”
“Not particularly,” I replied. My limbs might be falling dead to the floor, but they were still my limbs.
“It's like, I can feel something inside," he said. "Twisting around deep inside me. Whatever it is, it rises to the top when I trip. It's some weird force or consciousness that just bubbles up into me and takes over. Like possession or something.”
Ted had that nervous look again. “Is it hitting you hard? It's hitting me totally fucking hard. I can almost see the words I’m saying.”
“Not that hard,” I responded, but I could see how reality was getting a bit more malleable.
“Yeah, so like this possession kind of grabs me. Fills me up inside. Makes me say stuff. And it feels like… Its dark and old, but it feels like…” He trailed off again.
“What does it feel like?” I said. I was curious, but also knew he would inevitably wait to be promoted.
“Like I am the earth, like I move through tunnels. I feel hungry... and I'm waiting, but still very hungry. I’ve been very hungry for a long, long time. Something needs to sate it. I'm the gaping maw of the earth. I’ve had my giant mouth open for a long period of time and nothing has satisfied my hunger.”
“What the hell are you talking about?" I said. "You’re not making any sense.”
“A snake.”
“What?”
“A snake," he said. "I’m a snake. I’m an extension of the snake that will eat the world. The earth will open up and I’ll swallow humanity whole. I was there before humans, and I’ll be here after they're gone. I am the land, and I’ve been waiting. Don’t you see?”
I tried looking at him hard in the light of the fire. Was this really Ted? Or was he really possessed like he said? Was he just fucking with me? Was it all just the drugs and I was completely out of my mind.
As I squinted at him, I thought I could kind of see scales on him. Was that right? The longer I stared at him, the more that seemed right. His skin seemed darker. Was that a diamond pattern?
Was what he was saying true? He was a snake? How could he be a snake? We'd hung out a few times before this trip and he never before mentioned being a snake. It seemed like the sort of thing he'd bring up.
“I'm not sure what I'm seeing..." I said.
“I am older than humanity," he said, "A remnant from ages long past. And I’ve slept for so long. I've waited longer than any human lifespan. I know it will be time. My fangs will poison the world. When my hunger grows great enough, my waiting will end, my sleep will die, and it will be time."
Okay, he definitely had scales at this point. I'm not sure how I missed that fact beforehand. His eyes were all funny, more like an animal - I guess a snake's. When he spoke, I think I could see the fangs he was talking about. They got bigger the more I looked at them.
“I’m really not cool with this. Could we talk about something else?" I said. I really wanted to change the subject.
“My hunger is growing. See my fangs?” He opened his mouth wide, so now I could definitely see the fangs. His head didn't look human anymore. It was clearly a snake head, but somehow also Ted. “I need to devour. To eat, to destroy. I’ve slept so long…”
Before he simply looked at me, but now he was staring at me with those snake eyes and it was making me really uncomfortable. He was looking me up and down, and it felt like I could feel his stare on me. I shivered again. I really didn't want to be there. I wished he’d stop staring.
“Hey, man," I said. "I don’t feel so good. I’m really not cool with things now.”
He didn’t act like he heard me.
Then things got even weirder.
I still don't believe it happened, but it did. I got the mark on my arm right here. I sat frozen as he leaned towards me. It was such a quick movement, yet I could see every part of it. He leaned forward and bit my left forearm.
It hurt. I screamed. He didn't tear my flesh away and the mushrooms had made me feel light and numb, but it still hurt and I was in shock.
After only a moment of shock and paralysis, I responded. "Ahhh, stop it, you fucker!" I shouted while punching him in the head repeatedly. After a second he pulled his head away. I hadn't done any real damage to him.
Ted smiled and then laughed. “I’m just fucking with you, man. You should totally see your face. That was fucking hilarious.”
His head was still a snake. I didn’t trust him.
I rubbed my arm as he kept laughing. There was a bruise and a little blood, but nothing serious, as far as I could tell. Meanwhile, he had started on some stupid story, as if he hadn't just bit my arm with his snake head. I was tense and began to realize how lethargic I was. It was probably the mushrooms. I also noticed how things sounded weird; not even my own voice sounded normal. The fire's ever-present crackling was distorted to sound almost like a snake rattle.
I looked him over, trying to figure out if I could take him in a fight. He already bit me once, so I was going to be prepared for round two. I decided I was bigger than him, but he spent more time camping, so he might be in better shape. Then again, he was drinking more, which would slow him down. I think the snake head made the most difference in my calculations. Those fangs were fucking big, and if he bit my neck or vein, I’d probably go down.
I then remembered I had a knife in my boot. I had never actually used it. I just remember when I bought these boots for this trip, that the knife in them looked really cool in the store. I had a fantasy of fighting against a sheriff with it after doing his daughter, or at least threatening hippies with it when they tried to mess with my stuff. Right now I tried to remember more about it. Was it on with Velcro, or was there a strap? How to be discreet and find out?
He was still talking about random shit. Right now he was telling about a girl he met and fucked while camping, and then she let him live at her place for a few months after that, with her paying all the bills. I think he talked to cover up his own nervousness, or due to some fantasy world he lived in. Both could be true, since I was realizing that he was a fucking delusional psycho who had me in the middle of nowhere.
I tried testing my drug addled reflexes, flexing my hand. As I looked at it, the movements were sluggish, but worse was that I couldn't quite feel the movement like I usually did. I felt like I felt the nerves of my hand but I didn't feel the flesh. There was a buzzing tingling sensation in the movement.
I think he might have seen me flexing. His babbling ceased abruptly. “These are some hardcore shrooms, aren’t they? They aren’t normally like this at all. These are special, do you know why?”
I tiredly repeated what he had told me incessantly before the trip. “You told me you knew this guy who grew them special in a building behind his home. Special facility or something. You said that makes them grow in crazy ways. And that these are the best because they really get you off.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s the shit I told you, man.” He really emphasized the word “told”, even sticking out his finger at me when he said it. After this, his amusement disappeared. “No, there’s something more. Remember that guy at the shop, the one I got the shrooms from? He also serves the Snake God.”
This sank in and seemed weird, yet impossible. I hadn't actually met the guy in the shop, so who knows what he was like. But surely this Snake God thing wasn’t real and was just a big game, apart from the part where Ted had an actual snake head. But I was already more than paranoid and I felt a dull ache from the bite on my arm. Ted had gotten the shrooms without me because I wasn't allowed to come in. What had they talked about? Was that man coming here?
I whipped my head around, looking for some unknown assailant and did nothing but make myself dizzy and even more lightheaded.
“Do you want to know what he did to them?” said Ted, his voice buzzing across my consciousness like a swarm of angry bees.
I just nodded. I couldn’t form words.
“These mushrooms have been soaked in snake venom. They’re poisonous! Ha! Haven’t you noticed that you’re not exactly feeling right?”
My mind flashed back to the snake fangs I had seen outside the shop where Ted got the mushrooms. Could he have had the venom too? It was possible. But wait, there was something very obvious.
“You had the mushrooms too, so you would be poisoned too,” I said. He had to be full of shit. He just had to be.
He smiled, a great, toothy snake smile. “Normally, that would be true. But when the Snake God chooses you, he gets inside of you. And once he's inside, you're full of his power. The fangs and venom of his children are meaningless against that. I won't be dying from poison."
He paused, letting this sink in. “So how are you feeling?" he said. "Is the venom getting to you? Do you feel it like ice in your veins?”
I was definitely not feeling good. I was still shivering, but I didn’t feel cold. There wasn't any ice in my veins. That tingling feeling had been spreading up my arms and had now reached my shoulders. It wasn't ice, but could that be the poison? I reached up and rubbed my face. My own skin felt like a rubber mask. I learned I was sweating badly. My body was light, my head swirled, and dizziness had never left me.
“So how does it feel to die?" he said. "At least you die out here, away from all the chains of society. It’s a full moon. It’s a good night for rebirth. You’re going to die out here in the wasteland. You’ll be prepared for the next.”
I couldn’t take anymore. I was seriously freaked out. I needed to get away from there, to find some help, to do just something. I really wasn’t sure what I would do, but I knew I had to get the hell away from him. I needed to be somewhere else.
It took a great deal of concerted effort, but I began to pull myself up. My body felt almost intangible, like I was controlling an image of myself, not something solid. Dizziness seared across me as inertia caused it to preferred my body to have stayed sitting. I finally reached a standing posture and was amazed by body could hold me up. I teetered for a second, but I had most of my balance. Ted was shocked I could move so well; it was written all over his snake face. Finally he spoke: “What are you doing?”
I didn’t acknowledge him. I turned and began to walk or run or stumble as best as I could. It was more like falling forward, my legs constantly struggling to keep me standing. I ran into the darkness, leaving the fire behind me. I could vaguely tell I was running towards the rocks. I was running on hard ground and the surface was uneven.
I heard him call after me, panic and tension in his voice: “No! Don’t go that way!”
I didn’t listen and kept stumbling. I wanted to be away from him, but that didn’t really work out how I wanted. My stumble turned into a trip, and then into a fall. I hit the ground for just a moment, because then I felt myself falling again. I thought the ground had just swallowed me up.
I was in darkness, the moon just vaguely visible above me. There were pebbles falling down around me. I had fallen somewhere. I was dizzy and my back was propped up against something hard.
I could vaguely here footsteps. Then I heard Ted’s voice. It seemed to come from above me, maybe five or ten feet. “Shit! Are you okay? Can you hear me? Answer me, tell me if you’re okay!”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to fucking answer him. It would be just what he wanted. It would make it easier for him to kill me. I sat down there in the darkness, just waiting, trying to not breathe loudly, even though my lungs wanted to gasp for air.
I heard him curse again. “Maybe you can hear me, but can’t answer. Stay put, I’m going to get my flashlight and maybe see if we have some rope. Fuck!”
After a few seconds, I heard his footsteps move away and disappear. I knew I needed to figure out where I was. My body ached, but I managed to reach into my jacket and pull out my lighter. Good old expensive Zippo lighter. I had kept it around even when I stopped smoking years back.
Once I lit it, I could see there was rock in front of me and rock behind me. I seemed to be in some crevice or trench, a small crack in the earth. From what I could tell, it was about ten feet deep, and maybe two or three feet wide.
The rocks under my hands felt a bit weird, more smooth than rough. My eyes had trouble focusing, and what I could focus on tended to waver in the darkness. The rocks around me were strange. Were they really rocks? They looked almost like faces. I tried hard to focus on them. It was dark and covered in dirt, but was that... Was that… a skull? A human skull? I blinked, and tried to focus my eyes again.
It was a skull. It had to be a skull. It made sense. I looked around, trying to better look at things in the meager light. The smooth rocks, I realized were bone chips. I could see what looked like another skull a few feet to my left.
Now it all started to make sense. This was Ted’s special spot. He really did intend to kill me. He would kill me and toss my body down here. That’s why he brought me here, so he could easily dispose of the corpse. He gave me the venom first and then when I was weak, he’d strike.
He had done it before - that was obvious from the remains. Or maybe it wasn't even just him! There was the man from the shop! And there must be others who worshipped the Snake God. They needed to feed the god. And since the god was the earth itself… As my mind raced, it all fell into place. This was no normal crack in the earth. This was the Snake God’s maw, its open mouth so its followers could throw sacrifices in it.
I knew I had to get out of there as soon as possible. But there was still the problem of Ted. I knew he waited only to kill me. He had the advantage. I was not only poisoned and tripping, but also hurt from my fall down here. I could try to stumble back to my bike and escape, but he had one too, so he could chase me down. We were in the middle of nowhere, so there was no help I could go for. It was a grim realization, but I knew that I would have to take him out.
I reached down and felt for the knife in my boot. It turned out that it was held on with Velcro. That single knife and the element of surprise were the only things I had going for me. I felt like shit, I was scared, I was poisoned, I was out of my mind, and I ached. But I knew if I were going to live, I would have to focus. I stood up. My left leg hurt a lot more than I thought. I started looking at the wall of the crevice as best I could to see how I could get out.
I heard footsteps returning. I closed my lighter and put it away. I tensed, ready for anything he might throw at me. I didn’t have a lot of room to dodge. This was obviously not a good position for me.
I saw a light shine down the crevice from his flashlight. It hurt my eyes at first, but I adjusted. “You’re awake! Thank god! Shit man, you had me fucking freaking out! I saw this hole last time I was here, and didn’t know what the fuck I’d do if you were knocked out.” He paused, waiting for a response, but when I didn’t respond, he went on talking. “I couldn’t find any rope. Maybe if I keep this shining down there, you can find a good place to climb or something. Can you walk?”
I didn’t answer. It might seem like he was concerned, but it was a trick. He was just disarming me, lulling me into a docile state. And then he'd start up with his strange words again soon. Or he might decide it was time and just try to kill me. Either way, I was not going to give him that chance.
I started looking for a place to climb and found a place that was reasonable enough with my hurt leg. My hands still felt enormous and tingly, but somehow I pulled myself together enough to start climbing.
As I climbed, he started talking again. His hands were shaky as he held the flashlight. “Look, man. I’m sorry about that snake bullshit. I was just fucking with you. I wanted to get you all freaked out, then bring up the concept of death. It’s all shamanic and shit. They would go through a symbolic death and be reborn as someone new. It's like part of shamanic warrior training. I thought that since it was your first time on shrooms, and we were out here in the desert, that you could have a true rebirth experience. Y'know, the kind of thing I wish I had my first time. A fucking let go of your life experience, something to crack your shell and let your spirit free. I guess I kind of screwed that one up.”
I didn’t buy it. This nice guy routine was just out of character for him. He was fucking patronizing me, and I was just not believing it. I struggled harder against the rock wall I climbed. He still was talking: “Dude, I am totally feeling them. I’m sorry I can’t hold this flashlight still, but they make me shake. It's a super fantastic trip this time, even better than last time, so no wonder if was overwhelming. Damn. That guy always knows where to find the best shrooms.”
I had finally reached the top. He offered his hand to me, but I refused it, pulling myself up by my own shaking muscles. Once out of the crevice, I crouched and caught my breath. All my muscles ached, and there was a searing pain in my leg.
“Look, I’m sorry man,” he started to say, but trailed off when I turned my head away from him. He stood there awkwardly for a while, the shaking flashlight trained on me, but I ignored him, staring out into the dark desert and making my plans.
“I’m going to go back to the fire then,” he said in a resigned, almost rebuffed voice. Another trick. He turned and began to walk back, the flashlight in front of him.
Adrenaline and hate rushed through my vein, as I turned toward him. This was my chance, probably my only chance. I collected the fragments of my will back together. As silent as I could, I took the knife out of the Velcro sheath. Though the sound was louder than I hoped, it didn’t seem like he heard me.
It was now or never. I ran, just pushing towards him on my will alone, barely aware of my body or anything else. He kept shakily walking back to the fire, unaware of my assault. At the last second I think he may have heard me, but it was too late. I lunged forward and drove my knife into his back.
He screamed and stumbled. My own momentum and lack of coordination rammed me into him, tackling him to the ground. He began to twist and ask what was going on, but I ignored him. I knew what I had to do.
Using one hand, I held his damned snake head down on the ground by the back of his neck, so he couldn’t bite me. I pulled the knife out of his back, then put it at the side of his neck. I think I heard the vague sound of his panicked “What are you doing?” before I yanked it across his arteries.
Pulling back, I crouched, the bloody knife ready for resistance that would never come. I stared at his form and the blood that gushed out of him, waiting for him to die.
When he was finally dead, I crashed as the adrenaline finally subsided. The hand that held the knife in a death grip suddenly unclenched. The bloody blade tumbled to the ground.
I found myself crying. Not just tears, but sobbing too. I didn't know what was going on, nothing made sense, and I kept crying. I had just killed someone, and there was no way I could wrap my head around it. He was trying to kill me and I had killed him in self defense. But it still made no sense to me. It was all too much.
For the next few minutes I paced back and forth across the ground, doing my best to stay out of his blood spatters, so my boots remained unstained. I didn't know what to do. I talked to myself as I paced. I needed a plan. Any plan. There was a dead body. I had to do something with that. The police might come. Would the police come? Would anyone find the body?
Some semblance of calm finally hit me. I couldn’t tell the police. They wouldn’t understand - how could they understand? Nobody could understand. That meant I had to get rid of the body. Nobody would care unless they found the body. This was the middle of nowhere, nobody would come searching here, I just had to make sure they didn't find it by accident. As long as the body was hidden...
I know what you’re thinking. This was madness. Drug-addled madness. But you don't understand. Ted wanted to kill me. I think he wanted to kill me... But I was not going to go prison for him either way. So I needed to hide the body. I needed to hide what I had done.
I threw the body into crevice.
There, I said it.
I threw that body as deep down into that goddamn crevice as I could.
I'm not happy about that. But I don't think I regret it either.
After that, I cleaned myself up using clothes from his pack. I pushed his motorcycle down into the crevice with him, along with all his other possessions.
Then I got on my bike and rode as far away from there as I could. It may have been hours, it may have been minutes, I don't know. I rode until I couldn't ride anymore. Then I pulled off the road, took out my sleeping bag, and slept.
My dreams were full of blood and poison, the signposts on a journey through the dark bowels of the earth.
I rode aimlessly for the next few days, just trying to process the experience. What had really happened? We had both been on drugs, so I began to second guess everything that happened. I saw that the bite on my arm had been made with human teeth, not fangs. But that was a single detail, it didn't invalidate all my other fears. But what had been real and what had been delusion?
Every time I wonder if it was all confusion and insanity, I stop and wonder why he had brought me there. Why that spot? What about that crevice? Were there other bones there? If it was just an innocent trip, why did we end up at a killing place?
I finally returned home to Austin. I've tried to resume my life as best I could, but the weight is too much. Some days are okay, but on others, the gravity of it all and the lies I've had to tell threaten to break me. I didn't think I could hold this secret in any longer. The dreams are just...
When I was asked what happened to Ted at my job, I told them that he decided to stay in San Diego. I explained that he clearly said, "Fuck that job!" and that he found a girl in San Diego. I've been asked about him a few times by other people we both knew in common. Despite the lie, they always believe my explanation, because that's exactly how Ted was; it's easy to believe he'd just take off and leave his job behind. But even though they believe me, I'm nervous and shaking every time I answer. I'm worried that one of these times someone's going to notice.
I can’t sleep at night. My dreams are full of snakes, blood, and that damn crack in the earth. Sometimes I wake up, only vaguely aware that I was just being told something by a giant snake, its words lost in the light of the morning. The only thing that remains is a feeling of dread and a dark hunger... one that can't be sated no matter how much I eat.
There's a great darkness that exists in the American Southwest, but I worry that the darkness isn't actually real, that it exists only for me. There's either some dark presence older than man whose hunger never ceases or the guilty stain of truth that I killed an innocent. I still don't know exactly what happened out there. That night seems just like a lost dream that has marred my consciousness and the only time it feels real and vivid is when I fall asleep...
That's why I need your help. I'm going insane not knowing. The dreams are driving me mad. They're pulling me apart and I need to know. I need someone to verify things. I need someone to tell me the truth.
I want you to come with me, out into the Southwest. We'll go to that same spot in New Mexico, turning at the snake fang tree and riding on to the dead tree campsite. We'll go to that crevice, that gaping maw in the earth, and I want you to look inside it. I need you to see the bodies. I need you to see if there are the bodies of dozens of dead men killed by a cult, or if there is only one body, a poor fool and its motorcycle.
I need to know the truth. The whispering in my dreams is growing so loud! I hear it in the daytime now when I lose focus and find myself daydreaming. It tells me I need to go out there, to find the truth... and that I need to bring a friend.
You've always been a good friend. You've now listened to my whole story and you know how insane it all sounds, but you know I'm not someone to make things up. Please, I need to know the truth.
Will you help me?
