A demon-like wraith crawled up my leg in the middle of the night and I struggled to breathe. I tried to fight the creature away yet it taunted me. Silent screams rung out from my body as the beastly thing threatened to devour me whole. I twist and I turn. I futilely and desperately try to escape my fate, and then like a pardon from god, the nightmare was over. The sweet reprieve of wakefulness blessed me with the familiarity of my own bedroom and the sounds of Los Angeles outside. I couldn’t believe my luck.
So I climb out of bed and rush to the window. From my second floor apartment I could see an adolescent man tagging a phallic image on a loaded dumpster with a can of spray paint. I open the window and cried out.
“You, boy!” I shouted. “What day may it be?”
The man looked up. “It’s Thursday you fuckin moron,” he said.
Christ, I thought. That meant I had to be at work in a few hours. I dig through the hamper to find a wrinkled pair of pants and a grease-stained shirt. I throw them on and forgo brushing my teeth and rush out the door. But as I was walking out, I noticed a small business card at the foot of the door. I lean down to pick it up and flip the card over. Susan Brusheti, Fixer it read. This wasn’t good; a known trafficker of human organs knew where I lived.
I stuffed the card into my pocket, went down the stairs, and made a beeline to the nearest convenience store. I walked in and grabbed a six pack of Miller High Life and sat it on the counter. The white Rastafarian clerk looked up from his Car and Driver magazine and glared. “Sir, it’s four thirty in the morning,” he told me, “we can’t sell alcohol until seven.”
“Since when” I ask.
“It’s been California law for at least 50 years.”
“Shit,” I said under my breath. “Well I gotta be at work this morning. Can you sell me anything that will fuck me up?”
Annoyed, the clerk drops his magazine and looks at the locked plastic displays on the counter. “We got some kratom here I guess,” he said.
“Is it any good?”
“Shit if I know. I don’t touch that crap.”
I shell out the $150 for seven tablets of kratom and buy a 24 oz Monster Energy drink on top of that. I walk outside and crack open the kratom and swallow a couple of tablets. Feeling parched, I then start drinking the Monster. After walking a few blocks towards Sunset, I felt better than I had in a long time. “Maybe life isn’t a waking nightmare after all,” I say to myself.
Trying my luck, I throw out my thumb to hitch a ride. Almost instantly, a bloated boomer pulls up curbside in a red 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse. “Hey buddy, you need a ride?” he asks in a gruff voice. Skid Row’s “Slave to the Grind” was blasting on the radio.
“Fuck yeah dude!” I say then jump into the passengers seat.
The boomer tear-asses down the street and pops open a fifth of Jack. “Care for a swig?” he asks. I take a swig. Then he asks me where I was headed. “To the toilet factory off Sunset,” I say.
“You’re going to work?” he asks.
“Yes sir.”
“Fuck that shit,” he says then lays on the gas.
It was seconds, or maybe minutes, or maybe hours before we were in the hills. By that time the lights appeared as bright streaks racing through the sky like distorted stars. I felt like a child journeying through the birth canal. The world and time itself seemed distilled into a single wormhole, the other side of which awaited a new universe. Perhaps it was the sun rising in the east, or maybe my pupils were overly dilated, but the earth was changing. As we rammed through the streets of the Hollywood Hills, I looked down onto the city and for the first time I entered the places only dreamed by monks and ancient philosophers: the supreme sublime beauty. My mind was awakened and my body felt the blissful lassitude of a long journey. But like all good things, this too must end. We trekked down the hills and back towards Sunset. The city was now awake and bustling with vehicles going to and fro. Everything that I had once cursed now seemed to be in its proper place; the world was whole.
The Eclipse pulled into the toilet factory parking lot. The lethargic and groggy-eyed workers shuffled into the building under the morning sun yet I was reinvigorated. When the car came to a complete stop, I looked to the boomer. “Thanks for taking me into the hills,” I tell him. “It was a journey of a thousand miles and I’m thankful for every step.”
The boomer looked at me side-eyed. “The fuck you talking about kid?” he asked. “You were in my car for five minutes.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
The Internet Ruined Everything 