2002: a sally odyssey.
by rewired
(in 08/02)
"Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics."
--Leighann Lord.
On August 11, 2002, I got off work and met up with Nick, Peter and their fellow geeks in Andy’s basement. I knew I’d feel uncomfortable in the presence of all of them, as they were into their online video-games and would be entirely engaged in conversation that required a certain gamer context to be a part of - a context which I had never belonged to, and did not desire to be a part of. I’d ditched Andy on two previous occasions, though, and he’d layered on enough guilt to make me feel obligated to arrive.
In addition to the guilt, he lured me with Sally - that is, Salvia Divinorum.
Last time we had been together, him, Nick and I had ordered it over the net, and it had arrived. He told me he had a home-made water bong waiting for me. So with no respect for set or setting, I meandered over to his basement after work to hang in a dark, smoky basement with a herd of gamers for some all-too-unusual social interaction and communion with a rare, Mexican herb known as Sally.
Upon my arrival, Andy packed the bong - a peculiar, home-made one constructed out of a pop bottle, duct tape, and some other useful stuff you can find lying around the house. After being handed the bong, an unidentified intoxicated gamer nearby commented on how he’d find some music appropriate for the occasion. Looking through his CD case, he offered a few suggestions, but I was fairly ambivalent until we came across one which we all immediately agreed upon: the theme song for the movie 2001: a space odyssey.
With such perfect ties to the song I almost burst out laughing, I lit the bong and took the first hit, the amusing bubbling sound filling my ears. I took the first hit a little after twelve and the preceding ones (roughly two more) shortly thereafter, and I gave up entirely a half an hour after I began. Every hit reminded me that even though I smoke roughly two packs of Marlboro Reds a day I can't seem to hold smoke for any length of time -- the burden, I suppose, of not being a pothead. Still, one would of thought I’d gotten something out of it, but aside from a dizzy feeling and a massive head rush, after three or four hits I had gotten no apparent affects. Nick, who was sitting right beside me, also took a few hits and explained essentially the same effects.
I was a bit irritated by the lack of effect Sally had on me, but it had come in the form of dried leaves this time around, rather than the five and ten-times extract I’d had before. It had taken up to three hits of the 5x with Sandra before I got beyond the merely relaxing experiences (analogous to what others experience while on Mary) and into the eye candy. Still, I was very disappointed. After eating a bit of food and bearing through some lengthy conversations between everyone else in the room on the topic of video games, which I knew absolutely shit about, I stood up and politely announced I was going home. It was then about two o’clock in the morning.
Peter had stopped by and needed a ride back to his apartment, and it wasn’t a far drive so I took him there. I parked in the lot by his apartment and we spoke a bit on matters of the Occult. I had seen that he’d been reading some interesting material as of late, and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to talk with someone interested in the subject matter. I tried desperately to explain the out-of-body experiences I’d been having the last seven years.
To make certain I wasn’t misunderstood, I tried to clarify that I’d never roamed about in the physical reality as I had originally intended but seemed to fall into an apparently endless series of `alternate realities’ that manifested into actualities on a parallel plane of existence that operated in accordance with it’s own set of distinguishable laws’ that gave it qualities making it distinct from both dreams (including lucid dreams) and ordinary reality.
Talking with him made me feel very uncomfortable. It became quite clear that he had never directly experienced that kind of thing, and he seemed trapped in a frame of reference largely influenced by theosophy, which I felt was misleading. I wasn’t sure if we were on the same page in regards to this kind of thing - or the same book, or even the same section of the library for that matter. None the less, we had a fairly good conversation and after about half an hour, I left.
I drove without difficulty, feeling entirely sober, and fifteen minutes later I was home. I was going to write a bit, so I made some coffee, went to the bathroom and then went outside for a smoke. I was thinking again on my disappointment on the whole Salvia thing as I gazed at the sky full of stars as I do every night. As I turned to look toward the sky above the yard in front of the house at about 3:45 AM, things in my life got extremely weird again.
I looked up and saw the UFO (and yes, by that I do mean “unidentified flying object”) from an angle, moving towards the space above my house. It remained in my clear, direct field of vision for about ten seconds. What I know for certain is that it was no plane, no helicopter, and no comet. It was no gigantic, high-altitude lightning bug, either, nor was it a swarm of them.
It initially moved faster than a plane usually does, and not nearly as fast as any comets I've seen, and being a consistent sky-watcher I’ve seen both fairly frequently. It was a triangular object that had white, circular lights all over it’s underside that appeared to be arranged in rows. Opposed to the sound a plane or helicopter would have made from that position above me, it made absolutely no noise whatsoever. As I watched, it gradually slowed down, dimmed its lights, then brightened them to a degree brighter than before, and then "switched off" completely. I could still see a dark object move there for a few moments, but then it faded in the dark of the sky above my house and I lost sight of it.
Shortly thereafter I heard noises in the woods behind the house, like twigs cracking and leaves moving. I had the paranoid notion that the thing might be ducking into the tops of the trees. I finished my cigarette, lit another, and kept my senses acute. I looked all around the sky, but saw nothing that couldn't be easily identified as a plane or star. I eventually figured the show was over and went inside. I didn’t sleep well that night, but after eight years I was getting sort of used to this type of thing.
At first, I took it to be just what it seemed to be: undeniably real. I noticed that much like the red light I’d seen the previous September, it seemed to be aware that I noticed it and then took corrective action very quickly. So was this a slip up, I wondered, or did they purposely reveal themselves to me? Then it hit me - or, rather, I remembered that I had hit it: the Salvia.
To be entirely honest, I doubted the idea as soon as it popped into my mind. To begin with, I had done extensive research in Salvia before trying it. My original intentions for using the drug was to initiate out-of-body experiences that otherwise only came to me spontaneously while sober, and to explore a few key ideas.
Though I certainly found the drug interesting, which is why I was so excited when Andy told me he’d received the batch we ordered, Sally had never given me vivid hallucinations, and never any open-eye visuals. I’d smoked Sally perhaps four to five times prior to the occasion at Andy’s, and on each occasion I’d smoked a higher dosage of a more potent form of the substance. For instance, during my first experience I believe I had smoked Salvia 5x, which means that the active ingredient in Salvia Divinorum was sprinkled on the Salvia leaves, making it five times as potent. On the next two occasions I’d smoked ten-times extract.
Even with the Salvia 10x, it had always taken a few hits before I’d gotten anything. On one or two occasions I would get vague visuals when closing my eyes, sort of like transparent “eye candy”, but that was it. The effects of the drug to the extent of which I’ve had it were primarily cognitive. The altered state came on and faded relatively quickly, too; the pique was over in perhaps five minutes and one felt entirely sober in no longer than an hour. That’s why I pursued Salvia when I was looking at psychedelic drugs as a way down the `rabbit hole’: she was fast-acting, and any bad experience would be a relatively short one.
The truth was that I’d wanted to pursue Salvia Divinorum because I’d wondered if it might provide an entrance to the other dimensional “space” I’d been to in my out-of-body experiences I’d had since 1995, and to see if the reports of seeing entities under the influence of Salvia and other potent psychedelics - like DMT, Mushrooms, and Ketamine - held any validity. Furthermore, I wanted to settle once and for all whether these “aliens” were a physical reality, something archetypal, or something inter-dimensional. I still didn’t have answers, but by that time, that sort of thing wasn’t all that surprising anymore.
The Salvia I’d smoked in Andy’s basement had no extract: they were just dried leaves. Though any drug effects me more than most people, Nick received the same effects I had: a massive head rush that lasted for maybe five minutes and then the feeling of being rather tired. That’s not to mention the fact that I’d smoked the Salvia hours beforehand and felt entirely sober. Also, never in all my research on Sally had I ever heard of a delayed reaction, and certainly not of such vividness as would be required to explain what I saw that night over my house. So was smoking the Salvia and seeing the UFO coincidence? It was just one more question that gnawed on me, and it was a question that would gain elaboration ten days later, on August 21.
On that particular evening, I came home from work tired as all hell. After sitting at the edge of my bed and staring off into space for about ten minutes, I decided to just lay back on my bed and try and relax myself through use of some self-hypnotic procedures I’ve been practicing for roughly a decade.
After my body was reasonably relaxed and my awareness remained acute, I asked the dark of my mind to reveal to me anything that I hadn’t remembered from my past - anything that I might find use out of knowing at this point of my life. I then just `let go’ and saw what rose up out of my mind spontaneously.
What I received was immediately fascinating to me: I found myself catapulted back to when my family lived at our previous house and I still roomed with Eve, the oldest of my two younger sisters. The room was vivid, but encased in this sort of `tint’, as if I were seeing this in dim lighting through a pair of dark sunglasses. Otherwise, everything was the way I remembered it: I saw my tiny record player behind the bedroom door, which I used to play my old 45s on, and the mirror I used to dance in front of. I seemed to re-experience the feelings associated with that room, and what it was like to be a kid of that age again - and the age must’ve been about four or five, because after that I know I moved into my own room down the hall.
Shortly thereafter, the relaxing feeling of the meditation won me over and I drifted off into sleep. I half-awoke some time later to find myself in a very dark, foggy memory that I was drifting in and out of. It was darker than the `tint’ of the last memory and much more confusing. It also had a rather forbidden feeling about it, as if there was a part of me resisting this recollection; afraid because I “shouldn’t be seeing this” memory.
I was a child again, perhaps four or five, and I was in a large, dark room. In a corner of this room there was a small structure made out of stained wood that was reminiscent of the bunk bed I used to have when I was that age (after I had moved into my own room), only it had a slide attached to it.
I noticed that there was this little kid with me, perhaps my age or younger, but he seemed very different and almost frightening. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, but it was poorly-acted playtime. He was mimicking my actions, but his behavior had no substance behind it and reeked of artificiality. It was as if he was trying to play my role but not pulling it off well at all.
Of course, it’s quite possible that he was only appearing so artificial in mimicking my actions because my actions themselves were void of the enjoyment usually associated with them. I was engaged in this behavior solely out of fear for what might happen if I disobeyed the goon I knew to be standing in the distance supervising our play. I knew I should not look directly at him. I knew what they looked like though, and this was confirmed in a few quick and cautious glimpses his way.
I recognized this figure as one of the doctor-like beings that I’d seen in my initial flashbacks in 1995: tall, slender and wrinkly with bulging eyes, dark-tan skin and long fingers. He seemed very stern and no-nonsense, and specifically very displeased with me. I got the feeling he was angry because I wasn’t enjoying my time with this kid at all. I had the distinct feeling that I was supposed to not only be playing with him, but enjoying it, and that brought further horror to the situation: I hated playing with him and was unable to convince myself otherwise.
At some point, I fell away from the confusing memory and sank back into a deep sleep. I’m not entirely certain how much time had passed, but I woke up for a third time. Though I was entirely awake, I was in a very confused state of consciousness. I felt as if I had been drugged: I was drowsy and though I could move, it seemed to take all the will I could muster in order to do so. My vision was very blurred, foggy and distorted and it was hard to focus on anything visually, or even keep my eyes open. It was a struggle just to “hang on” to awareness.
I had woke up in response this extremely painful feeling in my ear, in the area just above the ear-hole. My vision was blurry, as if I was seeing through a steam-filled window. Through my confused, blurry vision, I could catch glimpse of someone short standing right beside my bed, and it seemed obvious that it was this figure that was pushing this sharp thing harder and deeper into my ear.
Instantly, I was overwhelmed with this deep fear that the creature might be pushing this needle or rod straight into my brain, and I put all my effort into stopping that from happening. I managed to reach out my hand and grab the instrument that was being jabbed into my ear. It was very long and hard and I tried desperately to pull it out, but it proved to be difficult just to get a grip on the object. I can’t be sure if the creature’s grip on the object was too sturdy and strong or I was simply too weak, but no matter how hard I tried getting this thing out of my ear it proved to be impossible.
My hand seemed to be gaining more weight and I lost the ability to use it. It fell beside me on the bed. I tried again to move it, but succeeded only in flopping it around. It eventually fell into a final resting place right beside my pillow, in between me and the little bastard sticking this thing in my ear.
It was then that this blatantly idiotic notion came into my head: what had just occurred was a dream, and it was truly my finger that was in my ear. At the same time I knew it was stupid and next to impossible, another part of me was entirely convinced of it. I could feel quite clearly that my hand was lying right next to me on the bed, and I knew damned well that I hardly had any fingernails to account for the sharp feeling. I was also in a very altered state of consciousness to the extent that my sight was blurry and I was hardly able to move - how could my finger be pushing so hard into my ear, with pressure that was building as I seemed to get weaker?
As this stupid thought persisted, and the pressure built more, I was falling from my confused consciousness and into a dream. In the dream, I was in this weird restaurant sitting at a round table that was the closest one to the wall. There were three of us there. I was on the side of the table facing the wall, Sandra was to the right of me, and the very strange man we were talking to was in the seat closest to the wall and directly across from me.
Though I never looked directly at her, I do remember bending down towards Sandra and whispering to her my suspicions regarding the man talking to us from across the table - and she seemed much smaller than she should have been. Though I had no memory of the ear-thing within the context of the dream, and had no idea that I was in a dream, I had the distinct feeling that something was amiss about the whole situation. It seemed as if everything was concocted, but try as I might I wasn’t able to place what was irking me so much. The most intense aspects of my ill feelings came from the strange man across from me at the table.
Everything about this man suggested to me that he was not what he seemed. He was very inhuman-looking; very round, plastic and sickly. He held this huge grin on his face, and looked sort of like a more humanized form of Mister Potato Head - and in that aspect alone he was frightening, but that wasn’t even the half of it. His entire persona, from his emotional reactions to his animated expressions, were far too exaggerated.
Though he tried to make his questions seem as though they were asked casually, it seemed obvious that everything he said was pre-planned. It was almost as if he was reading this from some memorized script. I got this very certain feeling that he had ulterior motives; that he was hiding something from me and trying to manipulate me. He tried with all his might to smile and act very curious, giving off the illusion of someone friendly who you could spill to - but I smelled a rat. He would never look at me dead in the eye, for one thing, and that immediately got me suspicious.
Another thing I noticed was that he kept throwing out “subtle” references here and there in regards to psychedelics and altered states - presumably so I would be led to believe he was educated on the topic. He was not at all convincing here, either, as it was very evident that he was using language he wasn’t familiar with to speak on a topic he knew next to nothing about. Though he tried to hide it - and very poorly I might add - he was driving our conversation unerringly towards the topic of Salvia Divinorum.
Specifically, he wanted to know everything I knew about it, and what my interest in the drug was. I tried to resist answering, to dodge his questions, but the pain in my ear was driving me and my awareness. My will was loosing focus. All I know for certain is that I started telling him things and occasionally turning to Sandra to talk to her -- I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly it was that I told him.
Suddenly, the dream ended, and I woke up abruptly, feeling as if I'd finally been released from a great struggle. The painful feeling in my ear was gone, and I felt drained. My hand was right beside me on the bed, right where it had fallen when I’d failed to pull the rod out from my ear. I sat there and looked around my room, seeing nobody. I wondered what I had told him, and why he wanted so desperately to know.
After that night everything seemed to go even further downhill. I felt absolutely powerless, and had a very intense feeling of being trapped and surrounded at all sides by things, or something, which I could not possibly defeat. I attempted sleep much more than usual, as I was consistently exhausted, but it always proved to be restless sleep. I kept opening my eyes, thinking maybe someone was in the room with me, but when I looked up quickly I never saw anyone there. I fell asleep in fear and anger and I awoke the same way. I left my computer on a few times but it always locked up and the screen wouldn't come back on out of sleep mode. Even then I knew it may not have any relation to what was going on, but I couldn’t help but see it as confirmation that something strange was going on that, at least in part, was taking place outside my head.
by rewired
(in 08/02)
"Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics."
--Leighann Lord.
On August 11, 2002, I got off work and met up with Nick, Peter and their fellow geeks in Andy’s basement. I knew I’d feel uncomfortable in the presence of all of them, as they were into their online video-games and would be entirely engaged in conversation that required a certain gamer context to be a part of - a context which I had never belonged to, and did not desire to be a part of. I’d ditched Andy on two previous occasions, though, and he’d layered on enough guilt to make me feel obligated to arrive.
In addition to the guilt, he lured me with Sally - that is, Salvia Divinorum.
Last time we had been together, him, Nick and I had ordered it over the net, and it had arrived. He told me he had a home-made water bong waiting for me. So with no respect for set or setting, I meandered over to his basement after work to hang in a dark, smoky basement with a herd of gamers for some all-too-unusual social interaction and communion with a rare, Mexican herb known as Sally.
Upon my arrival, Andy packed the bong - a peculiar, home-made one constructed out of a pop bottle, duct tape, and some other useful stuff you can find lying around the house. After being handed the bong, an unidentified intoxicated gamer nearby commented on how he’d find some music appropriate for the occasion. Looking through his CD case, he offered a few suggestions, but I was fairly ambivalent until we came across one which we all immediately agreed upon: the theme song for the movie 2001: a space odyssey.
With such perfect ties to the song I almost burst out laughing, I lit the bong and took the first hit, the amusing bubbling sound filling my ears. I took the first hit a little after twelve and the preceding ones (roughly two more) shortly thereafter, and I gave up entirely a half an hour after I began. Every hit reminded me that even though I smoke roughly two packs of Marlboro Reds a day I can't seem to hold smoke for any length of time -- the burden, I suppose, of not being a pothead. Still, one would of thought I’d gotten something out of it, but aside from a dizzy feeling and a massive head rush, after three or four hits I had gotten no apparent affects. Nick, who was sitting right beside me, also took a few hits and explained essentially the same effects.
I was a bit irritated by the lack of effect Sally had on me, but it had come in the form of dried leaves this time around, rather than the five and ten-times extract I’d had before. It had taken up to three hits of the 5x with Sandra before I got beyond the merely relaxing experiences (analogous to what others experience while on Mary) and into the eye candy. Still, I was very disappointed. After eating a bit of food and bearing through some lengthy conversations between everyone else in the room on the topic of video games, which I knew absolutely shit about, I stood up and politely announced I was going home. It was then about two o’clock in the morning.
Peter had stopped by and needed a ride back to his apartment, and it wasn’t a far drive so I took him there. I parked in the lot by his apartment and we spoke a bit on matters of the Occult. I had seen that he’d been reading some interesting material as of late, and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to talk with someone interested in the subject matter. I tried desperately to explain the out-of-body experiences I’d been having the last seven years.
To make certain I wasn’t misunderstood, I tried to clarify that I’d never roamed about in the physical reality as I had originally intended but seemed to fall into an apparently endless series of `alternate realities’ that manifested into actualities on a parallel plane of existence that operated in accordance with it’s own set of distinguishable laws’ that gave it qualities making it distinct from both dreams (including lucid dreams) and ordinary reality.
Talking with him made me feel very uncomfortable. It became quite clear that he had never directly experienced that kind of thing, and he seemed trapped in a frame of reference largely influenced by theosophy, which I felt was misleading. I wasn’t sure if we were on the same page in regards to this kind of thing - or the same book, or even the same section of the library for that matter. None the less, we had a fairly good conversation and after about half an hour, I left.
I drove without difficulty, feeling entirely sober, and fifteen minutes later I was home. I was going to write a bit, so I made some coffee, went to the bathroom and then went outside for a smoke. I was thinking again on my disappointment on the whole Salvia thing as I gazed at the sky full of stars as I do every night. As I turned to look toward the sky above the yard in front of the house at about 3:45 AM, things in my life got extremely weird again.
I looked up and saw the UFO (and yes, by that I do mean “unidentified flying object”) from an angle, moving towards the space above my house. It remained in my clear, direct field of vision for about ten seconds. What I know for certain is that it was no plane, no helicopter, and no comet. It was no gigantic, high-altitude lightning bug, either, nor was it a swarm of them.
It initially moved faster than a plane usually does, and not nearly as fast as any comets I've seen, and being a consistent sky-watcher I’ve seen both fairly frequently. It was a triangular object that had white, circular lights all over it’s underside that appeared to be arranged in rows. Opposed to the sound a plane or helicopter would have made from that position above me, it made absolutely no noise whatsoever. As I watched, it gradually slowed down, dimmed its lights, then brightened them to a degree brighter than before, and then "switched off" completely. I could still see a dark object move there for a few moments, but then it faded in the dark of the sky above my house and I lost sight of it.
Shortly thereafter I heard noises in the woods behind the house, like twigs cracking and leaves moving. I had the paranoid notion that the thing might be ducking into the tops of the trees. I finished my cigarette, lit another, and kept my senses acute. I looked all around the sky, but saw nothing that couldn't be easily identified as a plane or star. I eventually figured the show was over and went inside. I didn’t sleep well that night, but after eight years I was getting sort of used to this type of thing.
At first, I took it to be just what it seemed to be: undeniably real. I noticed that much like the red light I’d seen the previous September, it seemed to be aware that I noticed it and then took corrective action very quickly. So was this a slip up, I wondered, or did they purposely reveal themselves to me? Then it hit me - or, rather, I remembered that I had hit it: the Salvia.
To be entirely honest, I doubted the idea as soon as it popped into my mind. To begin with, I had done extensive research in Salvia before trying it. My original intentions for using the drug was to initiate out-of-body experiences that otherwise only came to me spontaneously while sober, and to explore a few key ideas.
Though I certainly found the drug interesting, which is why I was so excited when Andy told me he’d received the batch we ordered, Sally had never given me vivid hallucinations, and never any open-eye visuals. I’d smoked Sally perhaps four to five times prior to the occasion at Andy’s, and on each occasion I’d smoked a higher dosage of a more potent form of the substance. For instance, during my first experience I believe I had smoked Salvia 5x, which means that the active ingredient in Salvia Divinorum was sprinkled on the Salvia leaves, making it five times as potent. On the next two occasions I’d smoked ten-times extract.
Even with the Salvia 10x, it had always taken a few hits before I’d gotten anything. On one or two occasions I would get vague visuals when closing my eyes, sort of like transparent “eye candy”, but that was it. The effects of the drug to the extent of which I’ve had it were primarily cognitive. The altered state came on and faded relatively quickly, too; the pique was over in perhaps five minutes and one felt entirely sober in no longer than an hour. That’s why I pursued Salvia when I was looking at psychedelic drugs as a way down the `rabbit hole’: she was fast-acting, and any bad experience would be a relatively short one.
The truth was that I’d wanted to pursue Salvia Divinorum because I’d wondered if it might provide an entrance to the other dimensional “space” I’d been to in my out-of-body experiences I’d had since 1995, and to see if the reports of seeing entities under the influence of Salvia and other potent psychedelics - like DMT, Mushrooms, and Ketamine - held any validity. Furthermore, I wanted to settle once and for all whether these “aliens” were a physical reality, something archetypal, or something inter-dimensional. I still didn’t have answers, but by that time, that sort of thing wasn’t all that surprising anymore.
The Salvia I’d smoked in Andy’s basement had no extract: they were just dried leaves. Though any drug effects me more than most people, Nick received the same effects I had: a massive head rush that lasted for maybe five minutes and then the feeling of being rather tired. That’s not to mention the fact that I’d smoked the Salvia hours beforehand and felt entirely sober. Also, never in all my research on Sally had I ever heard of a delayed reaction, and certainly not of such vividness as would be required to explain what I saw that night over my house. So was smoking the Salvia and seeing the UFO coincidence? It was just one more question that gnawed on me, and it was a question that would gain elaboration ten days later, on August 21.
On that particular evening, I came home from work tired as all hell. After sitting at the edge of my bed and staring off into space for about ten minutes, I decided to just lay back on my bed and try and relax myself through use of some self-hypnotic procedures I’ve been practicing for roughly a decade.
After my body was reasonably relaxed and my awareness remained acute, I asked the dark of my mind to reveal to me anything that I hadn’t remembered from my past - anything that I might find use out of knowing at this point of my life. I then just `let go’ and saw what rose up out of my mind spontaneously.
What I received was immediately fascinating to me: I found myself catapulted back to when my family lived at our previous house and I still roomed with Eve, the oldest of my two younger sisters. The room was vivid, but encased in this sort of `tint’, as if I were seeing this in dim lighting through a pair of dark sunglasses. Otherwise, everything was the way I remembered it: I saw my tiny record player behind the bedroom door, which I used to play my old 45s on, and the mirror I used to dance in front of. I seemed to re-experience the feelings associated with that room, and what it was like to be a kid of that age again - and the age must’ve been about four or five, because after that I know I moved into my own room down the hall.
Shortly thereafter, the relaxing feeling of the meditation won me over and I drifted off into sleep. I half-awoke some time later to find myself in a very dark, foggy memory that I was drifting in and out of. It was darker than the `tint’ of the last memory and much more confusing. It also had a rather forbidden feeling about it, as if there was a part of me resisting this recollection; afraid because I “shouldn’t be seeing this” memory.
I was a child again, perhaps four or five, and I was in a large, dark room. In a corner of this room there was a small structure made out of stained wood that was reminiscent of the bunk bed I used to have when I was that age (after I had moved into my own room), only it had a slide attached to it.
I noticed that there was this little kid with me, perhaps my age or younger, but he seemed very different and almost frightening. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, but it was poorly-acted playtime. He was mimicking my actions, but his behavior had no substance behind it and reeked of artificiality. It was as if he was trying to play my role but not pulling it off well at all.
Of course, it’s quite possible that he was only appearing so artificial in mimicking my actions because my actions themselves were void of the enjoyment usually associated with them. I was engaged in this behavior solely out of fear for what might happen if I disobeyed the goon I knew to be standing in the distance supervising our play. I knew I should not look directly at him. I knew what they looked like though, and this was confirmed in a few quick and cautious glimpses his way.
I recognized this figure as one of the doctor-like beings that I’d seen in my initial flashbacks in 1995: tall, slender and wrinkly with bulging eyes, dark-tan skin and long fingers. He seemed very stern and no-nonsense, and specifically very displeased with me. I got the feeling he was angry because I wasn’t enjoying my time with this kid at all. I had the distinct feeling that I was supposed to not only be playing with him, but enjoying it, and that brought further horror to the situation: I hated playing with him and was unable to convince myself otherwise.
At some point, I fell away from the confusing memory and sank back into a deep sleep. I’m not entirely certain how much time had passed, but I woke up for a third time. Though I was entirely awake, I was in a very confused state of consciousness. I felt as if I had been drugged: I was drowsy and though I could move, it seemed to take all the will I could muster in order to do so. My vision was very blurred, foggy and distorted and it was hard to focus on anything visually, or even keep my eyes open. It was a struggle just to “hang on” to awareness.
I had woke up in response this extremely painful feeling in my ear, in the area just above the ear-hole. My vision was blurry, as if I was seeing through a steam-filled window. Through my confused, blurry vision, I could catch glimpse of someone short standing right beside my bed, and it seemed obvious that it was this figure that was pushing this sharp thing harder and deeper into my ear.
Instantly, I was overwhelmed with this deep fear that the creature might be pushing this needle or rod straight into my brain, and I put all my effort into stopping that from happening. I managed to reach out my hand and grab the instrument that was being jabbed into my ear. It was very long and hard and I tried desperately to pull it out, but it proved to be difficult just to get a grip on the object. I can’t be sure if the creature’s grip on the object was too sturdy and strong or I was simply too weak, but no matter how hard I tried getting this thing out of my ear it proved to be impossible.
My hand seemed to be gaining more weight and I lost the ability to use it. It fell beside me on the bed. I tried again to move it, but succeeded only in flopping it around. It eventually fell into a final resting place right beside my pillow, in between me and the little bastard sticking this thing in my ear.
It was then that this blatantly idiotic notion came into my head: what had just occurred was a dream, and it was truly my finger that was in my ear. At the same time I knew it was stupid and next to impossible, another part of me was entirely convinced of it. I could feel quite clearly that my hand was lying right next to me on the bed, and I knew damned well that I hardly had any fingernails to account for the sharp feeling. I was also in a very altered state of consciousness to the extent that my sight was blurry and I was hardly able to move - how could my finger be pushing so hard into my ear, with pressure that was building as I seemed to get weaker?
As this stupid thought persisted, and the pressure built more, I was falling from my confused consciousness and into a dream. In the dream, I was in this weird restaurant sitting at a round table that was the closest one to the wall. There were three of us there. I was on the side of the table facing the wall, Sandra was to the right of me, and the very strange man we were talking to was in the seat closest to the wall and directly across from me.
Though I never looked directly at her, I do remember bending down towards Sandra and whispering to her my suspicions regarding the man talking to us from across the table - and she seemed much smaller than she should have been. Though I had no memory of the ear-thing within the context of the dream, and had no idea that I was in a dream, I had the distinct feeling that something was amiss about the whole situation. It seemed as if everything was concocted, but try as I might I wasn’t able to place what was irking me so much. The most intense aspects of my ill feelings came from the strange man across from me at the table.
Everything about this man suggested to me that he was not what he seemed. He was very inhuman-looking; very round, plastic and sickly. He held this huge grin on his face, and looked sort of like a more humanized form of Mister Potato Head - and in that aspect alone he was frightening, but that wasn’t even the half of it. His entire persona, from his emotional reactions to his animated expressions, were far too exaggerated.
Though he tried to make his questions seem as though they were asked casually, it seemed obvious that everything he said was pre-planned. It was almost as if he was reading this from some memorized script. I got this very certain feeling that he had ulterior motives; that he was hiding something from me and trying to manipulate me. He tried with all his might to smile and act very curious, giving off the illusion of someone friendly who you could spill to - but I smelled a rat. He would never look at me dead in the eye, for one thing, and that immediately got me suspicious.
Another thing I noticed was that he kept throwing out “subtle” references here and there in regards to psychedelics and altered states - presumably so I would be led to believe he was educated on the topic. He was not at all convincing here, either, as it was very evident that he was using language he wasn’t familiar with to speak on a topic he knew next to nothing about. Though he tried to hide it - and very poorly I might add - he was driving our conversation unerringly towards the topic of Salvia Divinorum.
Specifically, he wanted to know everything I knew about it, and what my interest in the drug was. I tried to resist answering, to dodge his questions, but the pain in my ear was driving me and my awareness. My will was loosing focus. All I know for certain is that I started telling him things and occasionally turning to Sandra to talk to her -- I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly it was that I told him.
Suddenly, the dream ended, and I woke up abruptly, feeling as if I'd finally been released from a great struggle. The painful feeling in my ear was gone, and I felt drained. My hand was right beside me on the bed, right where it had fallen when I’d failed to pull the rod out from my ear. I sat there and looked around my room, seeing nobody. I wondered what I had told him, and why he wanted so desperately to know.
After that night everything seemed to go even further downhill. I felt absolutely powerless, and had a very intense feeling of being trapped and surrounded at all sides by things, or something, which I could not possibly defeat. I attempted sleep much more than usual, as I was consistently exhausted, but it always proved to be restless sleep. I kept opening my eyes, thinking maybe someone was in the room with me, but when I looked up quickly I never saw anyone there. I fell asleep in fear and anger and I awoke the same way. I left my computer on a few times but it always locked up and the screen wouldn't come back on out of sleep mode. Even then I knew it may not have any relation to what was going on, but I couldn’t help but see it as confirmation that something strange was going on that, at least in part, was taking place outside my head.
