Rivers of the Mind Episode 10: Toloatzin

Episode 10: Toloatzin

Reckless magic, thought the mushrooms. Only the most reckless and depraved magician would have allowed the Beyond to enter the fourth world in the midst of their ritual. Dark and malignant accusations fluttered through the mushrooms; over the years they had accrued enemie s who might at times try to challenge them, but none of them were so reckless as to threaten the existence of the universe in this way. Even though the Arrogant Mint—a shrub with raggedy leaves—often committed heresies against the order of the universe, it was otherwise committed to the defense of the earth. The Nodding Flowers—a white flower that looked like a five pointed star--had no creed nor moral attachment which might sway them one way or another and so such a violent act was far out of the norm for their kind. It must have been the Red Destroyers—pictured by the mushrooms with a ferocious and primal hatred—a race of strange red and white mushrooms who had been the enemies of the psilocybes since a time they did not remember—they were a race of mushrooms who surely would not hesitate to bring down certain disaster to the entire earth in order to attack the Lords of the Field. The mushrooms surged with anger—visible to Gerry and Cassandra in the form of thin heat waves rising up through the air. Outside, the sky turned a deep grey, and the sun hid behind the sea of clouds.

I pulled my hand away from Meagans and inched closer to where the Beyond was coming down from the sky. Dripping in a form that looked like hot, bluish grey wax, the substance shimmered like a claymation, making the air around it glow with a bright ultraviolet light, only barely perceptible. It touched Mick's chest—he convulsed, unable to see the vibrant mass of cosmic energy descending on him. The cows cleared the area as the Beyond poured over their attacker—surely the Lords of the Field had not intended this to happen. Mick's body began to glow, being disfigured, melting into the earth and slowly turning colors until it was buried by the energy. The mushrooms unleashed bolt upon bolt of blinding purple energy, shocking against the mass. Small chunks were knocked off it, but not enough to stem the tide. Old one, they begged me, Help us. I tried to search through their ancestral memories in order to understand what I could do—what had the Old One done? Looking back through time, I could see the old one, a shimmering blue flower which grew in tangled vines, sending messages to the molds growing in the grass, and the fish swimming in the sea. I could see an ancient battle they had fought against the Beyond above a stone city—in that time, the Arrogant Mint and the Lonely Cactus teamed up with the Pure Mushrooms and the Old One to fend off a burst not unlike this one. The Old One shot up a brilliant, opal colored fire, one which projected from it's roots to the edges of its leaves and into the sky.

Drawing from their ancient memory, I tried to focus inward and find the power within myself—somewhere deep down, I knew that it was possible, but my own doubt seemed insurmountable. I rooted myself down towards the earth—with every breath I became more and more conscious of my nearness to it, of my smallness—I could see myself from high above, a tiny speck on a rock swirling around the sun—my own powerlessness bore down on me. I could feel the earth breathing underneath, sweltering as the Beyond poured into the ground and transmuted the composition of the rock. The earth shook, in seismic waves that emanated from beneath me, murmuring in tectonic poems underneath my feet. The energy of the mushrooms surrounded, as they lashed out with everything that their powers could allow, pressing up against my skin. The Beyond drove like a sword into the earth—the top soil became poisoned, as the grass turned grey. Heat welled up from underneath—the Mushrooms knew what had to be done, if only for the sake of the earth. Heeding their call, I emerged from what had become my cocoon on the ground and rose my fists to the sky, bursting with a brilliant opal fire.

The flames soared from my body and sent Meagan collapsing to the ground. My own skin and bones reeled from the painful heat—my hands were unable to be lowered, my arms frozen in a locked position, as the fire swirled around me. My own body appeared to stretch apart—this must be a hallucination, I told myself—it had to be. I ascended skyward and felt the world around me swirl like water sucked into a drain, making all the world spiral down into the deep below. Everything disappeared into a radiant cosmic void, which rose up to surround Meagan and I. The flames from my skin grew wider and wider, with no control or direction, creating a scalding, wrathful heat that tore at my own flesh and bones. Time slipped away from us, as did any words I recollection of who or what I was; the world, whatever it was, froze into one immense, glacial second. A sound, a violent and otherworldly roaring grew steadily louder and louder behind me, as the spirit of the mushrooms, a towering golden and turquoise colossus with a million drooping eyes and mouths that looked like a wall pockmarked with holes that looked like rotting flesh. The mushrooms rose and rose in a tsunami, flooding over me in a violent white. For a moment, I reached a place of zero gravity, where I found myself in a distant and crumbling dimension, which looked like the inside of a collapsing cave, slowly breaking apart into a rumbling and furious chaos. I started to fall into this strange dimension, sinking deeper and deeper into a velvetine abyss, dropping miles and miles with no light, no sense of time or where I was. I began to lose awareness of it—all was simply black—I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done. And soon enough, forgot that I had ever remembered.

Before me, there appeared, in the distance, a white flower, shaped exactly like a star—I drifted closer and closer to it and it grew, staring at me like an immense silk eye. The petals twisted counterclockwise and carressed me—the flower's body grew narrower and narrower, and being drawn inwards, I began to shrink. As I reached the base of the flower, it's stem, I forgot that I was in the flower at all—again, a vast realm of seemingly infinite space surrounded me, a horrendous blackness. I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done. And soon enough, forgot that I had ever remembered. Before me, there appeared, in the distance, a white flower, shaped exactly like a star, it's body twisting over me in a counterclockwise vortex—the body, shaped like the horn of a trumpet, grew narrower and narrower, and, endlessly moving to the inside, I began to shrink. Had this been the first time it had happened? The last time it ever would? How long had I--

I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done. And soon enough, forgot that I ever remembered a world beyond the edge of this pale green field, a field surrounded on all sides by the forest. The sky above appeared to be the underside of two hands, clasped in meditation—through the fingers of the hand peered tiny specks of light. The silence there was so absolute it seemed thick, tangible, something that I could feel on my body and in my ears. My heart in my chest pounded with a heavy and belabored rhythm—my limbs felt stiff and tired, and my mouth was dry. In the center of the field, I could see a small bush, with raggedy leaves, decorated with five-pointed white flowers. Feeling the looming darkness of the forest pressing me forward, I moved towards the bush, enchanted by the beautiful flowers, which seemed to emit a light. My legs crackled and ached as I made my way across the field, my bones felt out of place, like foreign bodies. My skin felt dry, weathered. My beard and my hair grey long, and frizzled. My clothes tore and frayed at their edges. I was an old man, in the middle of a field, staring at a bush full of flowers. Lovely flowers. Flowers with five petals each, shaped like trumpets. I leaned in to smell them, and quickly recoiled in revulsion at their putrid odor—almost like rotting flesh. Feel myself gagging, I backed away from the bush, falling down to my knees. A man appeared above me, wearing some kind of mask and whispering in a language I could not understand. I could not see his eyes—he seemed to be a shadow. Almost nothing but a shadow. He kicked me over with his foot, and stomped against my back, sending me crashing through the ground, and into an immense void. I fell and fell, until eventually...I...I forgot...

I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done. And soon enough, there was in front of me a brilliant white flower, with five petals, curling around me. I stared in awe at it's surface. It rippled, like a blanket made of silk. Familiar. Like a mother's embrace. I looked around me. As I made my way towards the flowers stem, I became smaller and smaller, as the walls of the flower grew narrower. My eyes jolted forward into the abyss. A sense of dread overtook me and my brain pulsed with terror. I looked up from the table. Shit. Janet had been talking, and I hadn't heard a thing she said. Now she was giving me that look she always does when she's waiting for me to say something. I took a bite out of my hamburger. She looked annoyed. “Uhm”, I said, “I don't know.” Always an acceptable answer for Janet.

“You know, sometimes I feel like everything I say just flies right the fuck over your stupid little head.”, she rolled her eyes, brushing her hair to the side, and leaned down to sip a bit of soup off of her spoon. “I'm sorry, I was thinking about--” What was I thinking about? I could hardly remember. The test next week, in all likelihood. I got like this. I was terrified of messing up. Terrified of failing out of school, and failing out of my job, failing at life, failing at everything. “That chemistry class.” Janet slurped up a bit more soup, and then wiped off her mouth. “I feel like you never talked to me like a real person.”, Janet said, staring at me very seriously, “I feel like you thought I was boring. Like you never really cared that much at all.”

“I--”

“Well are we going to talk about this or what?”, she asked, “You call me out of nowhere and say you want to apologize. So what? I mean where the hell have you been? What the hell did you want to say?” I shook my head, blinking as I tried to remember. Of course. I'd made it back to California. I wanted to talk to her.

“Janet, I was 20 years old. I made a lot of mistakes, and I—I'd never really been with anyone. I felt like it was hard to be myself with you. You always seemed to get on my case about the things I liked or what I was doing...and...”

“Well it looks like I was right, John. It looks like you ended up exactly the way that I thought you'd be. Maybe you should have listened to me, laid off the drugs, found a way to get through school without whatever the hell it is you were doing on the weekends.”

“I wanted to apologize to you. I feel like we were from such different places in life and we just wanted different things. But I'm—I'm happy. Where I am. And I know you would never be happy with who I wanted to--” A man in an eagle mask and a decorated, ornate costume walked by us, and began standing over our table. I looked up at him, terrified, as he seemed to stare indifferently into the distance. He looked familiar—I'd--I'd seen him in that field—that--my memories began flashing back to me—rapidly. The breadth of my powers. The only minds present, the only real minds present, were myself and the man—Janet was not real, neither were the other patrons, neither was the angry mob surrounding the restaurant—only myself and---and--The man in the eagle mask. “What, John?”, asked Meagan.

Terrified, I flipped over the table, spilling a bowl of cold water onto Meagan ceremonial gown, and ran towards the exit. The restaurant began bending to my will, the contours of the roof and the walls shifted inwards. I could remember, suddenly, the flower. The flower—Toloatzin. That was it's name. A thick black smoke poured down from the walls and flooded the floor as the customers in their booths turned to skeletons, all standing up as one and turning their heads towards me. A gleam came in the blackness of their eyes. Macahongva raised his hand, and there appeared clutched in it, again, that same white flower. Solemnly, he turned to me and threw it. I fell backwards into the smoke.

Soon enough I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done and—no. This had happened before. This had all happened before. I struggled against the stupor in my limbs—I tried to turn myself away from the flower's immense, looming petals, but it was no use. They began to suck me down, even as I pried against the walls and flailed against the gravity beneath me, I still felt my body shrinking. My mind, regaining it's powers, tried to exert a force against the edges of the flower—I knew who I was. I knew I was inside my own mind—how deep, I did not know. I could feel my physical body on the outside of this other plane, but it felt so distant, so far away from me. But soon enough I forgot that I was falling. I forgot who I was. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done, and I took the keys out of the ignition in my pickup truck, parking in a wide gravel parking lot. Work.

I hate it here—the smell of the oil fields—the damage they do to the land—the way that they talk about things. I hate all of it. I hate knowing what it's—that's why I left. That's why I left it here. I've—I've not been here for months. Years? Months at least. A long time. I saw the aspects of my own consciousness pulling back into my head, and, fighting against the delirium, I staggered forward. The entire world was spinning, filled with a golden haze. The workers had taken on the appearance of a decadent renaissance painting—covered in dust and dirt, they straddled segments of pipe line luxuriously as nude women fed them grapes, they sipped wine on the rooftops, the foreman, who was otherwise a morbidly obese Cuban American, had been given a pair of cloven hooves, and sat in the background strumming a lute. I couldn't hear their thoughts—they were hollow people. I was having the same nightmare again—just a few nights ago, I could remember dreaming about my ex-girlfriend Janet in a restaurant, and we were attacked by a strange man.. In the dream, I'd felt completely hopeless, overwhelmed, surrounded. I looked around, warily, for the stranger, whoever he was, for any sight of a damn white flower, any mind that gave off the slightest hint of authenticity. He was both incredibly close and miles away—I knew he was there. I could sense him—an enemy mind hidden in every nook and cranny of this manufactured North Dakota landscape. Creeping towards the decadent scene of oil field workers at leisure, I passed up on intermittent offers of fine wine, tropical fruits, and nude women, to make my way into the office.

I sat down at my desk, and twiddled my thumbs, forgetting what I had to do that day. In front of me, there was a steaming cup of coffee. I was, as far as the supervisor and the others were concerned, a great geologist. Great to have aboard. Just as I started to flip open my computer, the phone rang. Bored, I stared at it for a few rings until I finally decided to pick up. “Hello, this is John Silvers.”

“Hey, John. It's Tony.”

“Tony? It's been so long. How are you doing?”

“I've been great, how about you man? I miss you.”

I sipped my coffee. It tasted watery. “I've been fine. I'm up in North Dakota right now--”, I looked around to see if anyone was listening, “--living the dream.”

“Listen. The reason I called you up is no one knows where you are. Everyone thinks you're dead. Your parents are worried.” I froze, not remembering. I hadn't left my job yet, I hadn't run away. Not yet. But I thought about it. Before I could respond, the line went dead.

A man in a coyote mask stepped out from the break room, swinging wide the door and standing in complete silence. I dropped the phone, and froze as he crept towards me. The memories flooded back to me. I knew where I was. “How's it going, John?” He expected me to think he was my coworker. “Alright, just got a real weird phone call”, I replied. The stranger came closer to me, clutching a cup of coffee and pretending to drink from it. Every so often, he flickered between his true form and the form of my coworker. I looked up at him, warily. “A telemarketer or something?”

“An old friend. He said I....I...”

“Well what?”

“What do you want?”

The man froze, petrified. “What do you mean, John?” uncertainly, he flickered back and forth between the form of a familiar coworker and his true form, “Are you alright?”

“I know what you are.”

The stranger laughed, darkly and crept closer. Resting his hands on my desk, he arched his back and leaned in to me. The walls of the office collapsed and left us alone on what looked like a great piece of graph paper. High up above, a bloodshot eyed teenager teetered in and out of consciousness, a pencil in his hand, laughing slightly. “You don't know the half of what I am, John.”, he growled, before pushing me out of my chair, and letting me slide down into the grid. I grabbed onto the edges for dear life as the stranger stoically looked on. “This almost gets old after a few hundred tries, huh?”, he commented, lowering his head in what almost seemed to be sadness.

I fell down through the lines in the grid—screaming as I did so. There was nothing to claw at. I knew, I knew without a doubt that the white flower would appear, that it would shrink me down and--”Very good. You're starting to remember what I'm teaching you.”, the strangers voice echoed through the void. A white flower appeared on the horizon. I shut my eyes, struggling against the pain. Yet beneath the terror existed the feeling that perhaps there was a lesson to be had, something benevolent behind this psychic struggle. But soon enough, I forgot that I was falling. I forgot what had happened. Soon enough, I forgot that I had even remembered at all. I was on a boat, in the middle of a long and winding river, where an old woman paddled, her back turned to me and a stranger, who looked like an old, old man. The old man was tearing pieces of bread from a loaf, and dropping it into the water. I studied him, ambivalently, unsure of how I'd gotten there, or what was going on. The last thing I remembered, I was....I was studying for a midterm. The old man looked over his shoulder at me, revealing blood shot eyes and rows of rotten black teeth when he let out an enthusiastic smile. “I'm a fisher of men.”, he told me, winking, and then returning to the business of breaking the bread before the river. Tiny black forms sucked the bread beneath the water. “Who are you?”, I asked. No response. “How did I get here?” Again no response. Giving up, I turned to the old woman, tapping her on the shoulder, “Excuse me?”, I said. She turned, revealing that she had no face at all—only a blank mess of skin where her eyes and her nose and mouth should be. I lurched back. “You'll be like her soon enough.”, he said, “Unless you can do it this time.” My stomach sank. “What do you want me to do?”

“I'm a lonely god...I'm a lonely, terribly lonely god...and if you were me, you'd know exactly what I want you to do. But wait--”, he hushed me, picking up a net and crumbling the rest of the bread. Another tiny black form appeared from beneath the water, and, swiftly, the old man cast the net over it. Inside the net, as it emerged from the water, there was a shrieking and moaning little human, thrashing up against the net so that it cut its arms and face trying to escape. The man quickly slammed the net against the boat seat behind him, making the old woman jump in surprise. Again and again, he crushed the human against the boat, until it ceased to move, and a pool of blood had formed on the bottom of the vessel. “That's what I want John.”, he said, “Do you understand now? Do you?” Aghast, I shook my head. “Of course not.”, snapped the old man, “I'll teach you soon enough.”

“I—what do you—want to teach me?”

Without responding, the old man grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me up, flinging me overboard and into the water. I sank and sank into the deep, my lungs filling with water, everything going dark. Soon enough, I forgot that I was falling. I forgot what had happened. Everything I'd ever done. And soon enough, I forgot that I had ever remembered. The only thing—those last words—I'll teach you soon enough. I'll teach you. I'll teach you. They echoed through my mind as though I'd heard them a thousand times and somehow I knew that I had. I knew somehow I must have sank in this ocean more times than I could count. I knew that I had seen that faint white flower, which seemed so beautiful and uncanny, millions of times over. The darkness sank over me—the flower hovered in the distance, growing further and further away from me. I wondered what it was. What did I have to learn? And why did I have to learn it?

CommentarySome dialogue is indeed missing from the actual recorded episode, as is the rest of John's monologue. Instead, I chose to scrap it and do something much spookier. Toloatzin is a Nahuatl word for the plant Datura innoxia/strammonium. Datura produces scopolamine and several other tropane alkaloids with anticholinergic properties. In high doses, datura (and other anticholinergic compounds) produces hallucinations that seem indistinguishable from reality, along with memory loss, dry mouth, and pretty substantial risks of death.

Streaming Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpGaMTjdLDs&t=259s
http://riversofthemind.libsyn.com/toloatzin
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rivers-of-the-mind/id1278391177
https://play.google.com/music/m/I5obttfukzok6ggklvb5umo2mgq?t=Rivers_of_the_Mind

All episodes by Timmy Vilgiate. No drugs harmed in the making of this podcast. Nothing in this is real. Nothing at all is real. Everything is a lie.