The 4th plateau

Experience or Dream? The world may never know.

As we close our eyes and wait, I come to wonder of the many times this ritual has been performed, not only by my colleagues and I, but by the many other lost like me.  We sit in silence as our minds climb the gentle trail of the 

first plateau.  We open our eyes to behold the same visions we've beheld so many times before.  Beautiful colors and creatures, all bounding and frolicking in joviality around us.  As everything in sight begins to spin with increasing velocity, we close our eyes again and wait.  We sit in anticipation as our minds tread the rising path of the second plateau.  We open our eyes and lo!  Spouts of musical visions and fantastic animations fill the mundane, dirty room we sit in.  The world we know has, as it always has, begun its counterclockwise revolutions as our bodies continue along our forward motions.  Comforted, we close our eyes and wait.  We sit in apprehension as our minds traverse the steep track to the third plateau.  We open our eyes to the familiar kaleidoscope of space and time and color and joy the world has become, and it confirms that all is well on our little plateau.  Here, my friends' minds rest.  Despite the strain our souls have faced, our mettle has proven us worthy of the sights before us.  We come close together, comforting and congratulating each other on the successful sojourn to a wonderland out of reach in normalcy that so many before us have taken.  But my mind is restless, and I lustily scan the cliffs before me.  I trudge on, alone.  I scale the cliffs, afraid, yet eager to meet that final destination none of us have dared to encounter.  I reach the ledge, peek over, and duck my head back down as quickly as I can after seeing what I saw in my mind's eye.

What I saw...

unimaginable horrors

dancing around bonfires

built from burning corpses

as their demented shades

cast spells and sorcery

in the dead of night

on a cold, dead planet,

lost in the cold depths of 

dead space and dead time 

and dead continuity.

And I opened my eyes. And was afraid.

 

Reviews

[Akira Kodama]

Reading this I thought of dextromethorphan intoxication, since the different stages of it are referred to as "plateaus", and the experiences stated go along with a hallucinogenic experience. This was interesting. Good work.

[John]

Interesting take, I hadn't heard of intoxication referred to as "plateaus" before, maybe I'll do some research.