Bad Trip

“You want to try one?”

Rain pitter pattered on the tent’s nylon roof as Richie eyed the offering in Lily’s outstretched hand. It looked much like a Teriyaki mushroom crossed with the thin white mushrooms he had seen in an Asian hotpot – seen, but not tasted. Or touched. Richie hated mushrooms without prejudice. Their sickly white complexion and their slimy skin revolted him. The idea that people consumed and enjoyed mushrooms on a regular basis baffled Richie. The thought of a mushroom’s slick skin sliding along his tongue made him want to vomit.

But this wasn’t some Teriyaki mushroom that Lily picked up at the local supermarket for dinner. This was a Liberty Cap, the Philosopher Stone, California sunshine. This was Lily’s friend Alice, and she was magic. She granted the third eye, an eye that could see visions of the future and open windows into alternate dimensions. She had the power to push him outside of the flow of time. She could show him heaven, or she could show him hell. Alice was from Wonderland, and she brought with her the power of psilocybin.

“Where did you get that?” Richie asked.

Richie guessed that Lily had picked the shrooms up somewhere around Damascus, where they had spent a night recovering from 45-some days of thru hiking the Appalachian Trail. For the initiated, Damascus is a well-known rest stop for weary hikers in Virginia, just across the Tennessee border. The locals were welcoming, and happy to earn an easy buck renting out a patch of grass on their lawns for a traveler to pitch a tent. If you were lucky, they might even let you use their shower. Cannabis wasn’t yet legal in Virginia, but with so many sweat-stained, unshowered drifters passing through town the locals didn’t seem much bothered by the occasional smell of skunk. If you knew where to look or had a passable sense of smell – both qualities possessed by Lily – then Mary Jane was easy enough to spot. Even without a smart phone, either of them could have picked it up. But shrooms? Lily was clearly more comfortable with the drug trade than Richie had realized.

That was three days ago, and since then they had put Damascus to their backs and continued their march north. Those days had been filled with merciless May showers soaking them to their skin and turning their boots into rain barrels. At the same time, a restless wind chilled their already weary muscles to a deep, pulsing ache. The whole hike had been a lesson in how few shits Mother Nature gave for her children. Each night Richie and Lily crawled into their cramped tent with barely enough energy to strip out of their drenched gear. Most nights, they passed out within five minutes, but tonight Lily had a restless look in her eye.

Somewhere outside the tent, a squirrel chuckled. The pine trees whispered among themselves as a breeze jostled them, and a rapid burst of bloated rain drops smacked against the tent. The canvas swished and snapped as the tent clung against the wind to the stakes nailing it to the ground. Branches rustled, and abruptly the squirrel’s mad chatter halted.

Lily shrugged. “Some guy. He sold me some weed too, if you’d prefer.”

“Joints?”

“Joints.”

Richie shook his head. He had sworn off smoke of any kind since lung cancer stole his father.

“So… you want to try one?” Lily asked again.

“I don’t know, man. I’ve never tried it before, and I don’t want a bad trip. This is a bad place for a bad trip.”

That was true, but the fact that it was a mushroom – a bulbous, cave-dwelling fungus – was probably the more significant hang up. Not probably, definitely. Richie would try anything once, and for a few months what he had been trying had upped the ante on his usual risk tolerance. For instance, hitching up with some checked-out chick that he had only known for a few weeks to go on a six-month beast of a hike. Oh, and had he mentioned that he had no backpacking experience? Richie had blindly trusted Lily’s packing list when he hastily bought the equipment that he needed and crammed his clothing into a second-hand Osprey pack. He figured that he was in decent enough shape and that he wouldn’t starve. Besides, the trail was filled with enough people that if he needed anything he could probably ask. All that to say, the risk of a bad trip wasn’t what kept Richie from taking the plunge.

“Come on, it won’t be fun if I take it by myself, and we need some fun. The last few days sucked.” Lily nudged his shoulder playfully with the hand that held the shrooms. “Come onnnn!”

Richie shied away from her hand. “I hate mushrooms. They’re gross.”

Lily raised her eyebrows and looked at them. “Seriously? You won’t try shrooms because… you don’t like mushrooms? That’s stupid.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Look, I’ll chop one up so that you can’t even tell what it is,” she said, already fishing through one of her pouches for her knife. “And it’ll be fun. You have to try it.”

Richie didn’t respond, only continued to regard the shroom with suspicion. The thing was, he wanted to try it. He had wanted to try a psychedelic for a few years now, ever since discovering that cannabis wasn’t nearly as intense as the PSA videos he had grown up watching had warned him it would be. He watched as Lily fished out her knife and then an aluminum plate. She produced a plastic bag from one of her pockets, quarter filled with shriveled shrooms. She chose two at random, and in short order chopped them.

She held out the plate to Richie. “Look, now I’ve already cut one up for you. It’s going to waste if you don’t have it.” He hesitated and while he did, she scooped up one of the piles and popped it into her mouth.

“And now,” she said between chews, “I’m going on a trip one way or another. You’re not going to let me go by myself, are you?”

“I hate you,” Richie said with no real feeling as Lily wagged the aluminum plate under his nose. His repulsion was not lessened by the new form the shrooms took. Instead of an elongated Teriyaki mutant, the thing on the plate resembled grayish-brown dog food that had spent a couple of days in a water dish. For another moment, Richie continued to hesitate. Then with a feeling as though he were about to plunge headfirst into icy water, Richie reached out and in one quick motion grabbed the shrooms and stuffed them in his mouth.

He chewed once, and nearly wretched. It was like chewing on a moist sponge. Plugging his nose, he forced himself to swallow. Hot saliva filled his mouth as the mushroom crawled down his throat. His stomach cramped and roiled, and Richie squeezed his eyes shut as he fought back the urge to vomit. For several seconds Richie sat frozen as he wrestled his stomach to a manageable equilibrium. The saliva cleared from his mouth, and the nausea faded. He opened his eyes to see Lily grinning at him. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The light, already dim through the gray clouds above, faded as the gloaming began. The rain had slowed their progress that day, and they had decided to pitch camp off trail instead of at an official site. That was a shame. Official campsites meant other campers, and other campers meant light and noise. From experience, Richie knew that tonight would have neither. The darkness would be nearly complete aside from the singular light bulb dangling from the ceiling of their tent and whatever charity the moon offered. Sound would be limited to the chirping of insects, the tapping of rain, and the occasional rustling of branches as critters passed by unseen in the darkness beyond their canvas shelter.

Time passed. Richie lay beside Lily on a thin inflatable mattress that they shared, the only thing separating them from the cold, hard earth. He wished he could sleep on a real mattrass, something that he hadn’t done since the start of their trek in Georgia. Even then it had been raining. He wished he could have a hot shower and dry clothes. He wished that he could feel dry again. Richie had discovered that once the damp gets into your pack, it never goes away.

After a month of pissing rain and poor sleep, Richie brought up the possibility of calling it quits in Damascus. If the rest of the trip was as bad as this first month, then the rest would be impossible.

“Hell no,” she said. “I’m in it to win it.”

“You’re not at all tempted? This is only going to get worse, and you can blame me if anyone ever asks.”

“How do you eat an elephant?” she asked, damp leaves squishing rhythmically beneath her boots.

“What?”

“You pick up a fork and you dig in.”

“I don’t think that applies here,” Richie said.

“I’m gnawing on my elephant, man,” Lily replied cheerfully, “And I’m loving it. But hey, if you want to go home, don’t let me stop you.”

Richie sighed. “I’ll keep going as long as you do.”

Now, weeks later, Richie shook his head. How do you eat an elephant? That probably wasn’t what he should be thinking about after chowing down on a hallucinogenic mushroom. As he thought this, the drizzle outside seemed to subside. The hissing of the leaves and pine needles hushed as fewer rain drops slithered among them. Somewhere in the distance, thunder growled low and long.

“I gotta take a wiz,” Lily announced. Her voice echoed in Richie’s ears an octave lower. A rainbow outlined her frame as she sat up and reached for her boots.

“Whoa,” Richie said. “I think I might be feeling it.”

Lily grinned at him, and Richie’s stomach turned. Her teeth had become brown and black and jutted in weird angles. Fuck, Richie thought. Are those mushrooms? Those are fucking mushrooms, man. A carnival assortment of them sprouted from Lily’s black gums, each of them coated in a film of oozing slime. I ate one of those, he thought.

“I think I am too,” she said. Her nose melted and stretched, transforming into a writhing tube that twisted back on itself like an elephant’s trunk. “I’ll be right back.”

A dank musk smelling of old tree rot filled the tent as Lily hauled on her boots. Not tree rot, mushroom rot. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was certain of it. It was the smell of rotten mushrooms. Through his fear, Richie felt his gorge once again rise. Horrified, he watched as Lily’s hair took on a life of its own. Black strands squirmed and writhed, blindly reaching out for him as he skuttled on his butt into a corner. She unzipped the tent flap, and a growling echo of the zipper’s hiss doubled back on itself. Her hair clawed lethargically at Richie as Lily dragged it along with her. She didn’t bother to close the flap behind her.

“U’tlun’ta is coming, Richie, and she loves mushrooms.”

Richie began to hyperventilate as he watched her silhouette, vague because of the light within the tent and still somehow outlined with rainbows, slip out of view from the tent’s mesh window. His own breathing echoed horribly in his ears. A squirrel chuckled outside, and the once commonplace sound became something demonic in his ears. Richie scrambled to close the tent flap before retreating back into his corner.

Everything felt so real, looked so real, smelled so real. The smell more than anything terrified Richie. It lingered after Lily’s departure, choking Richie and making him sick. He wretched as he fought to keep his stomach contents from making a forceable exit.

“This isn’t real,” Richie muttered to himself. “Get it together man.”

“U’tlun’ta is coming, Richie. I stuffed you with mushrooms so that you’ll be delicious.”

Richie jumped away from Lily’s voice, which whispered in his ear from just beyond the canvas wall. The deep echo in Richie’s ears persisted, parodying each noise he heard with multiple, deep layers. Sitting in the center of the tent, he tried to look in every direction at once.

“Not cool, Lily! Seriously, what the hell kind of prank is this?”

No response. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the world outside of the tent. Richie’s eyes jumped from shadow to shadow, seeing alien shapes everywhere. Figures danced crazily on one wall, hands clawed against another, and bizarre faces leered down at him from the third.

Richie froze as he turned finally to the entrance of the tent. A figure was outlined through the mesh window, its features shrouded. It was large and humanoid, both taller and thicker than either Lily or him. It didn’t move, even as the shadows of the forest swayed around it. With new horror, Richie realized that with the light on within the tent, whatever was outside would be able to see inside with perfect clarity, even as he was blinded.

For an agonizing age, Richie stared at the figure.

“Open the tent, Richie.”

Richie jumped, heart leaping into his throat at Lily’s warbling voice. It came from the entrance, where the shape squatted. Could that be Lily? Why wouldn’t she open the door herself?

“Stop being weird, Lily. Just open it yourself.” His heart pounded against his ribs.

“Come on. Open it.”

“No.”

Another age of silence passed in which neither Richie nor the shape moved. Then, lightning flashed, and for the briefest of moments the forest beyond the tent’s mesh window was illuminated. Richie sucked in a terrified gasp. No more than an inch from the window, an ancient face with dark pits for eyes regarded him. The face was curtained by thick strands of black hair sprouting from a balding scalp. Shriveled breasts and wrinkled folds of flesh hung from a torso that shone pale and wet in the rain like a dead fish.

Too terrified to scream, Richie hitched in breath and moaned.

“Let me in.”

Lily’s growl didn’t come from the shadow at the door – it came from behind him. He whirled in that direction, nearly breaking his neck with the force of his turning head, and saw nothing but the back wall of the tent. He whirled back to the door, certain that whatever was outside had waited for this exact moment to rush inside.

The silhouette was gone. Thunder grumbled as Richie strained to see anything, but there was nothing to see. He considered turning off the light within the tent, but the prospect of total darkness within frightened him even more than the thought of something watching him from without. And something was still out there. He was sure of it. Nearly hidden under the rumble of thunder and the rush of blood in his eardrums, Richie heard the rhythmic rustle of footfalls on the forest undergrowth. They were circling the tent. The smell of rotten mushrooms was more pungent than ever and cloyed at his nostrils, choking him.

Something in Richie broke, and he buried his head in his arms and wept. Whatever this nightmare was, he just wanted it to be over. He silently prayed, telling God that he would never do drugs again if it would only end.

“God can’t help you, Richie.”

“Stop it!” Richie screamed. Tears ran down his cheeks and his breath came in great hitching sobs. “Just leave me alone!”

A hideous, blood curdling shriek answered him from the far distance. It was a desperate, animalistic sound. Richie slammed his hands against his ears, rocking back and forth as he tried futilely to block it out. It went on for seconds, then for minutes as Richie continued to bury his head in his arms. He cried uncontrollably, losing himself in a primal hysteria that pushed him beyond any human reason.

Hour passed as Richie steeped in his terror. At some point during that time, he became conscious that the smell of rot had disappeared, and in that moment regained some sense of himself. Eventually, the desperate shrieks cut off, but Richie refused to leave the fetal ball he had curled into. He remained in that position for the remainder of the night, intermittently breaking down into fresh tears.

It was not until the late morning that Richie came back to himself. He raised his head from his arms, squinting as the mid-morning sun streamed into the tent. His tear-stained face felt swollen and grimy, and he felt emotionally wrung out.

Birds chirped, insects whirred, squirrels chuckled. The forest outside the mesh window was bright and green. It was all bizarrely welcoming and helped to anchor Richie back to reality. It had all been a horrible hallucination. Richie chuckled manically as he thought this. None of it had been real.

Except that Lily had never returned to the tent.

The fear crept back. If Lily had not returned, it may have been because she too had suffered a nightmarish vision. She could have become lost in the forest, or worse. His taunt muscles groaned as he crawled to the tent flap and rolled outside.

All around the tent, the earth was churned and the vegetation crushed. The tent itself sat in a perfect, untouched bed of leaves and pine needles. A group of high schoolers throwing a rave couldn’t have done this much damage in a single night. Someone, or something, had visited Richie last night. It hadn’t been his imagination.

And Lily had been out there.

The screams of the night before rang in his ears as the fresh morning air was suddenly laced with the smell of rot.

Where was Lily?