Delirium Reality

Eh, this is a story I wrote for a prompt contest awhile back. I threw it together while riding a sugar/cheeto high around three A.M. so I apologize...if it isn't perfect.

I’ve been stoned off my a*s for what seems like forever now, but I feel myself coming down ever so slowly. All those spinning colors and crazy a*s illusions are fading away and I’m crashing back into reality...HARD. 

God I hate coming back. 

I hate falling away from that glorious fantasy world when all I have to come back to is this pathetic crap reality where it’s nothing like the other world. Where all those magnificent illusions would be, there is nothing but harsh truth. Really, it makes someone think about why you’re even here when you’re only there to suffer, it seems like. 

I get out from under the bridge where my dealer, Glenn, had left me with my purchased ‘samples’ as he called them and I begin my way across the bustling scene of the city to get to the park across town. 

I’m not even sure how long I’ve walked or even how far, but for me it seems like but a few delirious moments have passed, each moment filled with the most interesting images and spectacles. Well I guess they weren’t the most interesting things, thanks to the lack of that magical drug Glenn had given me in my system.

Ugh, I wish I had more of that weed now. It was probably the strongest stuff I had ever had. Or maybe was it acid? I can’t remember that, let alone even remember where the hell I was going.

I pause a moment and survey my surroundings. It hits me like a ton of bricks that I was coming to the park to lay down until the morning. Yeah, that sounded about right. I probably was thinking crashing here would be better than returning to my crap apartment complex and going through all the trouble of trying to find the right door and the right key to the door.

That sounds logical enough to be one of my thoughts.

“Oh…I’m here already…” I laugh a little, realizing I’m already at the top of the hill in the park, where I normally lay my head down for a few Zs when I’m this high.

I lean back to fall onto the still wet grass. It feels like I’m falling in slow motion and I can see my reality bending before my eyes. The stars start to spin and everything else just falls away from me. I swear it’s like watching a kaleidoscope cracking wide open, spilling those psychedelic colors and shapes into the world. 

I hit the ground and only the dancing stars remain overhead. I’m giddy with laughter and I reach up to touch them, but my fingers always miss. I lift my hand to try to grab the brightest star in the sky once more, but then I stop myself.

The sad thing about being high and being me is that a part of me knows that no matter how drugged up I am common sense still presides within my mind. No matter how much pot I smoke, heroin I shoot up, or acid I take I never get to feel the full bliss that everyone else does because I think too damn logical for my own good.

Too damn logical…

I lower my hand to my side and look up at the stars. They begin to fall back into their normal positions and change back to their previous glowing white.

Isn’t that what Pops said before he croaked?

“Your thoughts are just too damn logical for me to understand, Mike.” 

Yeah, now I remember. He said that to me like it was a good thing, maybe even a great thing. Unfortunately now that I think about it it’s just a bad thing. 

I was always his pride and joy, his genius son. He told me that someday I was going to go to higher places, but instead I was getting high any drug I could get my greedy hands on. Oh the f*****g irony in that, right?

I guess that’s what I get for betraying Pops’ trust like that. God I hate myself sometimes.

I sigh and I roll onto my side, laying my bent arm under my head for cushioning. My dazed eyes lock on the blades of grass that are normally swaying and changing colors when I lay here. They’re not dancing or changing colors, they’re just sitting there all dull and green, just how they should be.

The drugs are wearing off fast.

I know the feeling about to overwhelm me all too well. The urge to go and search for my next hit will come all too soon and the next thing you know I’ll be right back here, anticipating that feeling yet again soon enough after that.

Really I loathe this way of living and it makes me wonder where I went wrong. What did I do to end up laying here in the park with my little baggy of drugs as my only friends and company?

It was when I stole that money from Pops, wasn’t it? That’s when I really hit rock bottom I think. I was so hooked on drugs that I resorted to stealing money from the very man who had raised me alone from infancy. You can’t possibly get any lower than that, can you?

Of course not.

Once you betray a man like that you know you’ve fallen all the way to the bottom and you’ll never be allowed to look eye to eye with that man ever again.

But if that’s how it is, why did Pops look at me like that the day I left? And if that’s really the case, why did he say what he said to me?

The memory of the day I left came flying at me, hitting me hard. 

His creased face wore a sullen smile I had never seen him wear before and his cracked lips had a small smile turning up in the corners of his mouth. He just stood there in the doorway of that shack trailer I had called home my entire life. He reached out and offered his hand to me, a stray tear rolling down his withered cheek. I just looked at him and then his hand. I was high that day too, but the memory was clean of any delusions.

He opened his mouth and let out a light chuckle, hiding the searing pain I’m sure he was feeling.

“Mike, you’ll always have a place here.”

Suddenly I wish I could go back to that place I called home. I want to go back to the way things were before I met Glenn. If I could just go back one more time…

I curl myself up into a tight ball in the wet grass, bunching my bony legs to my body best as I can for warmth, and close my eyes. I feel drowsiness wash over me and my body begins to float. Everything goes black and I begin to dream of going back to see Pops just one more time.

 

Author's Note

Tell me what you think, and yes...I do know there are issues in this story, I just don't care to go through this blasted thing and edit them.