The Ritual

The ritual is always the same.

You spend an hour or two tapping around on your phone, searching, begging, bargaining, making deals until you find what you’re looking for. 

Target acquired, you put on your shoes, maybe grab some sunglasses and walk out into the city. It doesn’t matter what city because you do this everywhere you go. You walk through streets unfamiliar or familiar, it doesn’t matter to you, you’re on a mission.

There are so many different places you end up on this mission. Coffee shops full of hipster wanna be poets with bad mustaches, back alleys in the rain, brightly lit gas stations, parks, sometimes a dive bar on a sad street. The destination doesn’t matter, it’s the mission, the reward.

You’ll meet a stranger. Sometimes they are handsome, young confident, full of the kind of cocksure swagger you only see in a noir film. They’re dressed in sharp, trendy clothes and have the latest cell phone. They’re all business and charm and your mission is conducted very professionally. The pleasantries are kept to a minimum and you get down to business and are on your way to your base of operations very quickly. It feels like going to Nieman-Marcus.

Sometimes you’ll meet a nervous college guy. He’ll be wearing a backwards baseball cap and will stutter and look around a lot. He may call you “bro,” and he will most likely have a messenger bag. He takes longer to conduct the mission and will ask if you want company after the mission is conducted. You won’t.

And then sometimes you’ll meet an old greasy hardened person. Possibly in leather and denim with a hat pulled down over their eyes. They will be smoking a cigarette. They will say fuck a lot. They will insist on being a part of your mission even after the transaction is complete. You will not want them to, but this person will scare you. They will ask you several times if you are a cop. You will wonder why you came out tonight to do this… and then you remember, it’s the mission that matters. You will wiggle out of that situation and head back to home base.

On your way back you will touch your pocket over and over to make sure that you’re still on the right mission. You will run over the events that just took place in your head over and over. You will feel like you have just done something incredible.

You might stop at the liquor store on the way home, depending on your mood. Would this pair best with a red wine or a cheap plastic bottle of gin? 

You might think about calling a friend to join you. You might not want to. You just know you have to get back to home base to finish this mission, to complete the ritual you have created for yourself no matter where you are in the world, you’re going to complete the mission and do this ritual. It is magic to you, after all.

At home base is where you unwrap the mission. You pull out your special tools. You empty the contents of the package you picked up onto the table and begin working on them, creating a whole new world for yourself for the night. You pick up your magic wand and lean over.

You will see yourself reflected in the mirror you have created a fairy world on top of, a ski resort, a night of climbing the walls or going out dancing afterwards feeling like you’re a thousand feet tall. You will see the possibility of feeling like you couldn’t ever possibly die, you will be bulletproof shortly, just as soon as you finish your magical ritual.

You will see yourself for the last time that night as you are in that mirror, scared, excited, needy, thirsty even and begin to imagine who you will become once you touch that wand to these magical powders you just had to find, touch your nose to the other end and close your eyes and inhale.

Your mission is complete.

You will watch the sunrise. Maybe you will be alone at the home base. Your mouth will be dry, you will be jittery. You will desperately check that mirror on the floor or table looking for more magic dust, anything to keep from looking at yourself staring back at you, eyes bloodshot, face flushed, possibly sweaty. 

You might be in a stranger’s house after having the long meandering conversations the magic dust provides about nothing at all where no one is actually listening to each other, you’re all just staring at the mirror in the middle of the room waiting for it to be time to dose the magic again. You will try to figure out how to leave.

The need for sleep will eventually come and you will have to decide if you’re going to do that or go on another mission. Which of the various providers would be awake at this hour? Do you have the means to pay for this mission? You will return to your phone and start tapping around doing mental gymnastics trying to justify just a little more.

You will lick that mirror. 

Eventually another mission starts, this one in day light. Sunglasses are required. No matter who you contact, the mission will be shorter this time, you are impatient and ready to get back to this false reality you can conjure from the mission. You will not shower. You will get back to where you can start the ritual again.

This time as you gaze into the mirror where you are building your Winter Wonderland you will start “rationing” the magic dust so you don’t run out as fast. This is impossible and there really isn’t a point, but as you see your own desperate eyes staring back at you, you have to believe you can, you have to believe you can make this batch last all day long.

You might attend to some household chores. You might not. You might just watch TV for hours on end, only stopping to perform your ritual to get yourself back to your false reality. You will drink alcohol. Or you won’t. You will make plans for the night that you probably won’t keep. If you keep them, you will feel larger than life and think you are the chicest person in the room. 

You aren’t.

You are talking too much. You are sucking on your own lips. You are sweating. You are too much. You have done too much and as much as you think you’re covering it, your companion’s expression will tell you otherwise.

You won’t care though.

You are 500 feet tall. You are on another plane of existence. You don’t belong to these mortals. You are flying above all of it. You are a God.

Until you aren’t.

Until you are home licking that mirror again begging for just one more little crumb of magic to be left there, avoiding your own stare.

You start another mission.