Halloween Night Melts Away

It was Halloween night of my first year living in College Residence. By the time I made my way home from work the trick-or-treaters were already out; Ghouls and Goblins of all shapes and sizes. As I entered the front door of Residence I couldn't help picking up my pace a little. My buddy "Red" was here by now, sitting in my room ready to go get the stash we had ordered. We had decided about a week ago that tripping out as we walked around campus on Halloween night would be truly eye opening.

I felt the excitement as I met Red in my room. It'd been over a year since my first "real" time and red had yet to experience it. The stack of cash he held out in front of him made us both smile and rush off to get some food. After surveying the Res. Store we decided on Pizza and waited to meet our guy. We'd never met him before, but he showed up with C and K, two girls we'd met here at Res. He was a little white man, with a huge frizzy red afro. We both laughed under our breath as he was fitting of his occupation. We quickly grabbed our stash and headed back to J's room to relax.

We sat and watched him and his girlfriend play old school Donkey Kong as we piled on the Shrooms. Five g's for me and three for red.... But by the time I'd finished my slice, Red had inhaled an extra two. "Just so we're even" he said followed by his all too well known laugh. At some point C and K showed up and took a small share of our stash. We agreed to meet up later when things made a little less sense...

Soon our foursome was getting bored and we headed back to the store for a drink. I can't help laughing when I remember Red's complaints... "It's never going to work man, just like last time... I need more"... We split off from the others and headed back to my room.

My room was a mess so we decided sit in my small white walled kitchen. We'd been their only a few minuets when things started to slip. The floor was made of a vinyl tile that was covered in a motley pattern. As I watched the patterns began to melt and flow towards my feet, but I couldn't move them. The edges of the tiles started to dance separately from the pattern. All at once they shifted in to 3D. The tiles seemed to drop away beneath me taking my feet with them. The patterns danced on as each individual stain shot up at me to their own horizontal plane. Suddenly Red jumped out of his chair. He too was fixated on the floor. "aaaaaAaAaAAAAA" he said. "I'm sinking in to the floor". I started to laugh hysterically and jumped up to meet him. I tried to tell him I saw the same thing, but I could barely get it out.

Next thing I knew I was pulling back. I had to get my video camera... I had to have it. This was too good and it was only beginning. I came stumbling out of my room to find Red searching through his back pack. "The hair... I can feel the hair on my masks... you have to feel this" he kept stammering. I was far to involved with my camera at this point. I played a tape... "no I can't tape over this one". I searched through the box, found a new tape and replace it with the old one. But when I turned it one the same image played. I tripped for a bit to the scene of snowboarding, too confused to go on. Then I searched through the box again. I replace the tape again... and the same thing happened. Red, who had began to catch on, started laughing at me, and pointing his finger at the camera. "ok, ok, watch me" I said. I took out the tape, added it to the pile of tapes I'd already removed, found a new tape and replaced it. I swear I did, but the same video resumed. That was it. Now we couldn't stop laughing. I dropped the camera to the floor and left it there. We had tears in our eyes when our four friends came walking through my door. And that's when we started to trip balls.

Too much all at once. There were people everywhere in that little room and I wandered around anxiously, trying to decide what to do. I went in to my room and threw on "Silence" by Sonata Arctica. The album starts with a creepy little poem and builds in to a heavy, Scandinavian power metal riff. The whole room broke in to laughter at Red and my reaction. My eyes went wide and I flew screaming in to the other room yelling "too intense too intense". Well, it was. The music was insane.

Once shut off, we congregated in my washroom for one of our ritualistic hot boxes. Someone managed to get the camera working, because I've still got a copy of this little scene. Red and I didn't smoke very much. I spent the whole time tripping to the way the smoke played with my vision. As it floated across my view it seemed to take the background with it. Peoples faces began to slide and melt before me. The pattern on the floor turned in to spider webs and as I reached out to touch them, they climbed on to my hands. I watched them disappear beneath the skin. My veins danced beneath the skin and I could feel them pulsing as if they needed to get out. I took a hit from the pipe, but I was more interested in the colors of the pipe it self then what was in it. At some point long after the room was too humid and smoke filled to bear we cleared out. We headed to the front lobby to begin our adventure.

I don't know whose idea it was.... That part of the night is completely blank. It's as if I woke up in a dream land. It was a cool, late summer night. The area was completely vacant at least to us. Red, C, K and I headed across the immense parking lot between Res. and the college. It didn't take long before I realized I had no idea where we were headed. When I asked the girls they only laughed. That walk had to have been the creepiest part of the night.

The street lamps lit up the area directly surrounding us... but when I looked in to the distance all I saw was darkness. A wasteland of yellow lines everywhere I turned. At this point Red was losing it. He'd walk to the edge of a parking space and cower at the bright yellow canyon in his was. After mustering what looked like all of his courage, he'd take a run for it and jump over the line. He'd them continue on his walk only to find another in his path. After what seemed like a millennia we reached the edge of the woods. Red took one look at the little path leading away in to the dark... and turned back. I grabbed him and explained that we couldn't go back now. We couldn't give up on our mission, and with a little smirk he said "OK dude, lets go."

Somewhere along that path I lost everyone. I was alone in the woods following the bent blades of grass beneath me. The trees reached out around me trying to take me away with them, but soon opened up in to a field. The path continued on towards a little village in the distance. A colorful village with ropes and ladders and giant tubes. As I came close the grass gave way to sand and my feet began to sink. I ran for the closest building I could see. A little red house with a picnic table inside. I sat down and huddled in the corner. C came to join me and told me she was going to get a picture. I vaguely understood, but my attention was drawn towards the walls. An invisible marker drew as I stared... "FLASH"... the camera went off, but I didn't care. It was mesmerizing to watch the colors swirling around each other. Then in a moments notice I was up, and following Red across the playground.

We climbed, and swung and ran our way around, until we'd had our share of adventure. I felt like I was five years old again. Eventually we headed back home. Red had a much harder time making it through the woods this time. The trees got him and pulled him in. The girls ran after him, but I was too scared. I ran out in to the open parking lot to be joined by a shell shocked Red only moments later. I remember laughing pretty hard at one thing he said. K was walking close to him, telling him some kind of story. After about five or ten minuets he cut her off and said "I'm sorry but I can NOT handle talking to you right now" and walked away in the other direction. We all laughed at that one and decided to find a place to sit down for a bit. At some point C picke a little white flower and gave it to Red. He just stared at it, trying to figure out what just happened. "Whaaaaaaat?....whaaaaat?" he stammered. It's safe to say he needed to collect his thoughts. Of course... that's when we noticed the trick-or-treaters.

We were sitting on a picnic table on a little patch of grass in the middle of the parking lot. To this day I don't know why it is there. There's one massive tree beside it that must be hundreds of years old. When I notice the branches hanging down around me they came alive. They reached down to the ground and caged me in. The cage got thicker and thicker with branches until my perceptive changed. "it's upside down! The tree! Why is it upside down?!" I asked. "It's roots are closing in on us! Oh my god it's floating in the sky! Don't you see?!" I think Red understood, but he was preoccupied with the people. There was a group of about six of them fully costumed, walking down a distant street and it's no wonder they scared the hell out of him. "guy's! guy's there's people!" he yelled. "What are they doing here. It's got to be four in the morning! Their not supposed to be here!"....but you guessed it... it wasn't. I have no idea what time it actually was, but our perceptive of time had been completely warped.

About an hour later we found ourselves in the Residence courtyard. Far too many people knew me there, for they stopped me immediately. They "knew". That's all I can say. A group of girls surrounded me, laughing as they tried to trip me out further. One of then twirled a straw in front of me, but I was focused on her plastic, yellow firefighter costume. It was so bright I couldn't look away. Meanwhile Red was sitting to the side, beside two Resident Advisors freaking out. He told me later that people kept staring at him and saying he "looked fucked up". ... ha-ha, I guess so.

To cool off the night we all headed to the little theatre down the hall from my room. This was particularly trippy as it was a little room with a big screen and authentic theatre seats... it just... didn't make sense. The little man with the afro and a group of our friends joined us. All I could think about, the whole time I was there, was that afro. It made him look like a character straight out of a cartoon. The shroom man, a lepricon sent to fuck with my mind. I started wondering if he was really there. Every time I looked at him, he slowly turned his head towards me and smiled. My mind drew clown paint on to his skin and the next thing I knew I was sitting beside "IT" from the horror movie. Man it freaked me out. I refused to look back, but the movie wasn't any better.

Soon after the intro to "Shaun of the dead" (if you don't know what I mean, watch it). At the beginning the movie zooms in on random objects and makes a loud "whooshing" noise. It was bad enough feeling like I was watching through someone elses eyes. The movie gave a piece of toast WAY too much importance.

"toast? Oh my god it's toast! It's got...Jamm on it! JAM! What the hell is going on...Is this real? What's he going to do with that toast?...am I...him? or am I me?...who is me? I'm not me, I'm different now...hey, I don't have toast...is this reality, is that reality or am I reality? I'm in a movie theatre but...not. Oh no, the clowns looooking at me again. Is HE on mushrooms? I shouldn't have sat in the front row...shit that means there's people behind me...oh man who's behind me? Who's behind me!?!"

My mind was racing. Every time I've tripped on shrooms, I've ended up in this warped sense of reality. NOTHING makes sense, yet I can't stop questioning it. The worst part is, imagine things enough they start coming to life.

Red had, had enough. He stood up, grabbed his stuff and said "I'm walking home". The problem with that is he lives about a four hour walk from there. I decided I needed a break and walked outside. "I'll let you sleep in my room for a while" I said. "That'll calm you down" He agreed, mumbling something about the pictures on the wall and how they where moving. We headed off to my room.

Two hours later, when the movie had ended my trip had all but subsided. Soon the sun would be coming up and someone agreed to take Red home. When I walked in to my room I got the biggest shock of that night. Red was lying on the bed staring wide eyed at the ceiling...shaking. "you got to help me" he said " please just tell me...do you hear that!". You see I remembered all of these events but had forgotten one thing that night. I didn't turn my sound system off... I turned it down reeeeealy low. Red had spent two hours trying to figure out if the creepy music and voices where in his head!