OPHELIA OBLONGATA | ALL PATHS ARE PAVED WITH PEYOTE

“What am I listening to?”  Richard asked with his ear pressed on the rock.

“Do you hear thumping?  It gets louder as we approach a certain angle of the sun.  Bobby heard it.  It drove him mad,” The Fly Eater said.

“All I can hear is my own heartbeat. Where is Bobby?  Was there a girl with him?  What do you mean, ‘mad’”, Richard sat up.  He didn’t have the patience for tall tales at the moment.

“He’s running from the wind.  The girl left several hours ago.”

“There is no wind.  Did she say where she was going?

“Lake Arrowhead.  Your bother cast a spell on himself with my adder.  I warned him not to play with my medicine bag.  I can’t fix it until he returns my adder.”

It dawned on Richard that if he had stayed in bed at that morning, he probably would have arrived in Lake Arrowhead at the same time as Annalisa.  Luckily, Carl would be there to answer the phone and let her in.

“Get this wind off of me!”  Bobby’s muffled scream from downstream echoed through the rock formations.

“Is he alright?”

“The white noise wind follows him wherever he goes.  He was complaining that the thumping was tormenting him.  He cannot hear the thumping now but it seems he hates his wind even more.  Some people find it comforting.  I can turn it off when he returns my sacred snake.  He dropped it in the pool and it slipped downstream.”  The Fly Eater explained.

“You’re telling me that my brother has his own private wind circling him?”

“See those trees swaying down there?  That’s Bobby.  Your brother could hear the thumping even better than I can.  I could train him to be a Shaman if he wasn’t so full of mischief.  What a waste.  The world needs his gifts.  You young people sing about the Age of Aquarius as if were a big deal.  There are other things happening. There is something up there changing the way light falls.  The angle of the sun is trying to release demons that have been locked in the earth for eons.”

“Demons?” Richard was hearing that word a lot lately.

“They weren’t always demons.  They were the stolen children of a sky king from a planet with a double sun and hidden in the earth for so long that they went mad”, The Fly Eater explained.

Richard sighed. 

“No one notices the angle of the sun has changed, that it burns the skin worse at sunset than at high noon. The ship of the sky king is up there. You can’t see it but you can feel it burning you skin.” The Fly Eater tossed a bottle of suntan oil to Richard.

“What’s this?”

  “It wards off demons while promoting an even tan. I made it myself.”  The Fly Eater offered Richard a clear brown bottle of suntan oil.

“This is the most famous suntan oil on earth!  You didn’t make this!” Richard protested the obvious lie and tossed the bottle back.

“You can’t get this off the shelf,” The medicine man produced a vial from his bag and poured the contents into the suntan oil and shook it. “Now it’s double strength.”

“What did you put in it?”

“Concentrate of mescal and other natural ingredients.  It’s a secret recipe that is ingested through the skin and makes you one with nature.”

“No thank you.  Tell my brother I’ve gone to Arrowhead to be with my woman,” Richard began the long hike up hill.  Bobby and The Fly Eater were out of their gourds on peyote.  As he turned to wave goodbye, it slowly dawned on him that the rainbows shimmering on the pool he had just gotten out of were caused by a layer of suntan oil.  He slapped his shoulder.  It was oily.  He’d never taken peyote.  He didn’t know what to expect.  Before he let out the big sigh, the medicine man made him gasp again.

“Your woman knows about Squirrel-Man.  He’s following her.  I told her to stay away from the tree of lost souls on the rim of the world, but she’s on autonomic pilot, all medulla oblongata, you can’t argue with that,” the medicine man shouted over the wind which had come up out of nowhere. 

“Squirrel-Man? What the fuck? I don’t have time for this,” Richard kept climbing.

 “Richard!”  Bobby cried out to his brother, waving one arm and holding the Fly Eater’s adder snake in the other.

“I’ll catch you later!  Tell mom I’ll drop in next time.  I have a show!  Bye!” Richard climbed the mountain to the top of the waterfalls as fast as he could.  Every now and then he’d shout out, “Shit!” 

No matter what choices he made, all paths were paved with peyote.

~ To Be Continued ~