S2E12: Tcinti

Meagan comes face to face with the tobacco spirits and struggles to learn their language.

CAST
Kyla Valenti: Meagan
Dominick Vilgiate: Jacob
Christopher Fox: Tobacco
Timothy Vilgiate: Eggplant, Pepper, The Great High Waters
Jareth Spirio: Colonel Imes

PRODUCTION
Written and edited by Timothy Vilgiate
Mandola, bowed glockenspiel, (some) bowed cymbals, bowed sheet metal by Timothy Vilgiate
First half recorded at UCCS Radio by Timothy Vilgiate, and by Christopher Fox from Kansas City. Second half recorded by Kyla Valenti in Michigan.
Ending Song: Titles and Cue Cards by A Bad Night For a Hero/C.j. Hackett
Season 2 artwork by Jesse Robertson

SOUND EFFECTS (From Freesound)
Car Window Down  by digifishmusic
Metal Farm Gate in Wales by earwicker23
Creature Breath by Jacobalcook
Tobacco cough by FreqMan
01543 flying dragon by Robinhood 76
METAL Screech by metrostock99
Muffled Distant Explosion by Nenad Simic
Collision Reverb by Qubodup
Bowed_hihat4 and Bowed_hihat1 by carthach
Sweep-Cymbal by hannagreen
Ambiance Idling Car by 1san
car door slam by theshaggyfreak

Trembling, we left the house, heading towards the woods. The language was difficult to grasp, it  eludes me, but deep within the packets of outwardly innocuous gum looms something great and powerful. My hands began to vibrate as I held onto the package. What little of the plant remained in that box locks into something greater, something universal. This was it. This is it. Is. Is. Is.  Somewhere in here is the key to defeating the white flowers, and saving the world. As vast as it seemed, it is difficult to understand—all of my attempts to learn the language held within result in evasion—I hear the faintest sounds of screeching and moaning, like whales. The more I press into it, the more noise it seems to make. I am making it upset.
    “Meagan, are you okay?”
I look at him. “Yeah—I'm--”, I start to say before my jaw clamps shut. A sensation glides up my back, a feeling like a ceramic mug rubbing against skin through thick winter clothing—it's a dull warmth, a slightly sickening electricity creeping up my spine—all at once, all pasts and presents and futures that my mind can fathom tie themselves into a single transcendental moment, unfixed in time. My thoughts, my impressions, my feelings, my ideas, my attachments all come into full view, peeling themselves apart like hundreds of overlapping transparent frames to reveal themselves as separate, interdependent components. I grow increasingly aware of every sensation in my body of which I might have been otherwise unconscious; the beating of my heart or the churning of my stomach no longer feel like distant actions from my conscious mind, but instead become felt as intimately connected with every aspect of my thinking and feeling brain.
    I glance at my brother, and my heart starts to palpitate with fear. He is trying to speak to me, but I can't hear what he's saying. I study him closely and see a faint white screen intervening between us, a gossamer curtain encircling and caging me. I trace it upwards until I see the curtain stretching on for what seems like miles into the sky—it glows with a gentle light, trembling in the wind like a jellyfish drifting in a current. All at once, the world outside disappears, and my feet lift off the ground. I rise, and I rise, and I rise, until eventually—I remembered I wasn't rising at all, but falling, careening down what looked like a blank white elevator shaft with five transluscent sides. At the base, a great white flower spins in hypnotic circles, waiting for me. Tcinti.

    Shooting through the white flower, I feel my body crumble into a tiny sphere, emerging from the dirt in the shape of a tiny sprout. I grow sinnewy legs and arms, my face warps around in the shape of a flower bud until it comes unfurled, and I grow, and grow, and bloom, until I, as a plant, uproot my feet and peel off my damp green skin to reveal a person trapped within, covered in goop. Towering hundreds of feet above my head, I see him, Tcinti, a massive humanoid plant. Two collosal leaves flow behind him like wings as he stands regally between immense hills, hills pockmarked with ancient, burned out settlements with faint candles in their asymmetric windows. Smoke that smells like honey and burning hickory drifts from the cities and between Tcinti's terrible wooden teeth. The air around us feels humid and smokey—the sensation I had felt passing over me now covers my whole body—I feel like I could have been laying face upwards in a pool, looking at some kind of strange, apocalyptic hallucination. Tcinti flaps its wings, and their awesome wind flings me to the ground--the trees around us shiver. I kneel, almost knowing without words that I need to kneel—but I cannot take my eyes away from Tcinti. I cannot stop looking. He lands in front of me, shaking the ground. [heavy footsteps] Tcinti's eyes, shaped like long white flowers, extend from his skull as search lights. They dance around the valley in which we found ourselves. When they pass over me they grant me a brief, momentary glimpse into another world, a world just like this one—his eyes, though apparently solid objects, grow or shrink exactly like the beams of flashlights. Trying to understand them, how they work, how he works, how any of this works, makes the English part of my brain crumble until it succumbs to stupefied and overstimulated awe. As he approaches I begin to study his hands, if that is indeed what they are—long bushels with hundreds of squirming flowers, each one pouring out dense smoke. Kneeling down to get a closer look at me, his mouth opens and from within it comes the sounds of gnarled, crumbling steel.
    A seething and primal anger comes from Tcinti as he rises back up into the sky. I struggle to learn his language; my efforts to do so seem to confuse him. There is none of the easy chaos I experience with English, only a strange and foreign order, tonalities that span dimensions in  sounds, smells and colors as much as syllables. He reaches down and his thousands of fingers wrap themselves around me, pulling me upwards to inspect me more carefully. My lungs fill with tobacco smoke and I start coughing. I do not stop coughing. I can not stop coughing. His searchlight eyes weave their way around my head, and my legs, and my arms. “You are not one of the tricksters. But you are not a pure mushroom. Identify yourself, spirit, or be devoured.”
        “My name is Meagan, I was--”
    “Meagan...? And who taught you to speak the language of the tricksters? Or that of us, the Almighty?”
        “I—I was blessed by the pure mushrooms when they sacrificed themselves to banish the Beyond from the fourth world! They gave me--”
    “The gift of language. Ha. Of course. But the Pure Mushrooms gave the gift of language to the bald monkeys a long, long time ago. How did you learn to speak these other languages? They are not for the bald monkeys to know.”
        “The mushrooms! The mushrooms did it to me! They—the Beyond came into the fourth world again—a couple days ago actually. And now I--”
    “Ha. Well. Your story amuses me. It seems that if the Pure Mushrooms were to have chosen you they would have warned you about the Tricksters, warned you not to speak or speak of their wicked language. Especially not in the presence of the almighty. Now tell me the truth, or suffer the consequences of your dark allegiances.”
        “The—the tricksters—the white flowers—they've attacked my friend. And I've tried to use the gift of language to get him out, but I can't. I talked to my ancestor and she told me to ask you for help.”
    “I see. The tricksters have attacked your friend. And why did his healers not bring him to me? Are the healers of your “people” so unpracticed as to not know to do such a thing immediately?”
        “Well—the thing is—I'm sorry. I'm having trouble trying to explain it.”
    “Don't worry. You're doing fine for a beginner. Your accent is good too. Just keep working on your tones. But it is difficult fathom the stupidity that now meets my ears. Continue with your attempted, feeble explanation.”
        “See, whatever attacked my friend, it was another person. A witch, I guess, you could say. He communed with the tricksters just as a hole opened in the Beyond, loosening him from time and binding him to their power forever. He attacked my friend, since my friend has the powers of the...the...Old One? And he's used my friends brain to kill--”
            “Silence young [sounds of screeching metal and thunder]. The bald monkey does not lie.”

    A raging wind tears through the sky; it parts the clouds of lingering smoke and makes the towering figure who now holds me in his palm flinch. Immediately, the one who had greeted me kneels before an even larger creature, the same in appearance, but tall enough that I could not see nor fathom the top of him. “Master.”
    “I have heard of the warlock about whom she speaks. He is wicked, wishing to topple all nations and worlds across this universe and to make them his slaves. Permit her to enter the fortress and to speak on behalf of her people, this nation of Meagan as she calls it.”
        “Please forgive me.”
    “No forgiveness is needed. It is wise to be always on your guard for the work of the enemy. They have tried many similar devices, some even stranger that what you have just seen. Go now and sing to the great high waters.”
        “Yes, master.”
He sets me down, and I am left alone before the giant, whose search light eyes peer down like tiny stars from the distance and grow ever closer.

    My feet lift off of the ground, up into his eyes—I rise, and I rise, and I rise, until the white of his eyes was all I could see, and I forgot I was rising at all, or rather, I started to feel the center of gravity shift until it seemed like I'd started falling, plummeting into the ground and being reborn again as a flower. “What is your name?”
    “Meagan—its. My people are...”
        “You have taken the name of your people. Interesting. The Bald Monkeys never cease to amaze me with their eccentricities. My name is [sounds of roaring, screams, and explosions].”
All around me stretch thick tile walls, made of impeccably smooth black stone with tiny glistening crystals concealed within. The smell of smoke now permeates the air—rising up into the vaulted ceiling of an infinite castle. Slightly shorter, but still larger than most houses, the Tobacco creature faces me to welcome me into the Fortress of the Almighty Ones—the beating heart of an interdimensional kingdom--  To speak the language of tobacco was to enter into this home, to be part of a universal conversation, to be connected with the present moment in all of its multiplicities, to forget the past and the future and become sharpened like a sword against spiritual darkness, to pour with radioactive smoke, to drown out the passing of time like an avalanche, rendering it still, sacred, and tightly held in Tcinti's icy grip.
    My stomach shakes as I stumble through the world, my feet take step upon step almost against my will. Tcinti gestures here and there, pointing out monuments and buildings that line our strange path—he refers to a spiral spike driven into the earth miles high, lined with branches and dizzy flowers to tell me about the time the Beyond drowned an entire continent; he points to the jagged textures of a frozen, asymmetrical splash of water and says that they hold the epic poem of a time before the tricksters and the almighty became enemies; he stops at an empty field marked by a single dusty stone and he tells me without speaking of the many who have died there. “This warlock who attacks your friend, he has chosen an unwise ally. The Tricksters are a fallen nation—long having abandoned protection of the earth in pursuit of control over the universe. Much of the second dimension and the first six realms of the third dimension have already fallen to them, except for those domains protected by our fortress. Your friend, if he has been blessed by the Old One, would make a useful tool for them to take the fourth world, and to extend their reach into the fifth. This warlock probably imagines that he is the one in control. He is not. But now that you have their language, they will be able to see into your mind. You must let us remove it from you before we can go further.”
    “No!”, my lips shout against my will, giving voice to something conceealed inside me “Don't!”
        “You have revealed yourself, trickster.” Rapidly, the ground beneath my feet rises in tiny whirlwinds and clings to me—I see suddenly that this is not earth at all, but that I am walking on a surface made of gases and smoke. A screaming erupts from a remote corner of my mind as the Tobacco spirit extends his hand towards me. Row upon row of long white flowers open wide—the smoke overtakes me—I become the smoke—I drift into atoms.
    I am walking down a pathway. I do not remember being reassembled. I only remember turning into gas, and then—my memory skips immediately to this place. He continues his sentence as though there is no lapse in the conversation and it only occurs to me as strange when I think about it in English—the Tobacco language knows that this conversations had always been happening, if only on another level of reality. We walk across the surface of a road made of gases, in a city made of swirls of smoke and bizarre organic forms “...is forbidden beyond the gate. To learn the language of the Almighty, one cannot know the language of the Tricksters.”, I sniff—the air smells strongly of uncured tobacco, fresh peppers, and eggplants—Creatures with strange forms peer from behind clouds and dendrite forests and study me—they have not seen a human in this dimension for quite some time. My hands tremble, as do my stomach, and my head—my heart flutters and my skin grows clammy. Vines ooze from my pores, and smoke comes from my mouth, in what rapidly becomes a spectacle to the awestruck, foreign plants. A new language enters my brain. “Perhaps one day there will be peace, and the tricksters will swear off their evil war. But until then, there can be no peace.”
    My legs stretch, and my body balloons until the once gigantic city seems to be of normal size and proportions—the illogical and surreal cityscape with its gaseous clouds and spindley dendrites, now make perfect sense to me. Ah yes--I say—that colossal, broken ladder rotating around itself, supported by clouds of deep blue smoke, is where you go to buy...I guess the English word is food? The spheres that are colored like adobe and hover over the city in neat rows, they vaporize the souls of the dying and convert them into music. The twisting dragons and expanding glass palaces are places for [sounds of metal gears, screeching, static]. It all makes perfect sense. “We will give you our language, so long as you swear to uphold our laws.” The language grows upwards in tiers, and I am at once conscious of my body in the outer fortress, as well as the entrance hall, and even in the real world. My brother leads my shivering body to Cameron's porch, where he'd grown increasingly worried that he needed to do something.  I sit on the porch while Cameron improvises on his piano, and mumble in incoherent growls, chattering at the sky. I look afraid to him, I am sure, but I do not know why. I could move myself from within here and comfort him, but I do not wish to.  “Our laws are as follows. To care for and protect every level of the Earth. To sing to the sacred waters of the upper sky to keep them free from dark spirits. To kill only those who are impudent or tricksters. To not reveal the location of our fortress. Do you accept?”
   
    The violence of the language that I learn feels in its own way more exacting than anything I have ever experienced. It seems dangerous to invite into my own mind—but I remember John. Without me, he and the rest of the world, will die. “Yes.”, I nod. “Very well. Meagan of the Monkey Nation of Meagan, I declare you servant and slave of the Almighty, soldier of the nighshade, bearer of our language against the Trickster and their Warlock.”

    The tobacco spirit reaches into a fountain filled with a thick sap, and presses it against my head. My body dissolves once again, and any connection I held to conscious reality becomes dreamlike, felt on hundreds of layers. An ecstatic and protective rage fills the deepest corners of my soul, as smoke pours skyward. The city seems to sing, to cheer, although it outwardly has lost interest in what we are doing. Within myself, there now appear other worlds, which cascade inward like a nesting doll until they reach a level so small it can be barely imagined. These people, I understand they are under siege. They do not so much believe their laws as they cling to them, as they look to them for some kind of weak sense of stability amidst this war to keep the city and the cities inside of the city afloat inspite of the constant threat. I feel ashamed to have spoken the language of tricksters, to have brought it shamelessly into their world. Humbled, I hang my head, and my physical body far away on some distant shell of reality begins to cry, loudly yet indifferent to its own crying—it drops the tiny packet of nicotine gum to the ground. Without speaking, the tobacco spirit turns for us to leave. The miraculously strange city, with its immense stone sky and thundering aggression, fades past us building by building, the road seeming to grow wider as I shrunk down, falling back through my shells until I slide from the porch onto the ground.
    “...Meagan?”
        “It works. Worked? It worked? Working? Ing? Fuck man.”
    “Do you need me to take you back? It's almost five am. I have to work in an hour.”
Turning myself over, I nodded. “Are you okay?”, he asked as he helped me to my feet. The world here, in the English language, felt like a dream. The tobacco language still expanded in my brain, filling it with a pulsing hot intensity. “Yes. I am.”, standing up, I vomitted up the contents of my stomach and collapsed again to the ground. My legs felt like jello. So did my hands. My brother helped me up again. “Come on. You're gonna be fine.” Despite outward appearances, I was ready for battle. I had been inserted into a war, one which had lasted for eons, spanning across dimensions. This war would not be fought with guns, or bombs, and it wouldn't take place on a battlefield, but it would be fought with and in my own mind. An invisible smoke poured from my nostrils. I was ready.

----

[in the car]
Jacob: So I guess you can like...see drugs or something? Or talk to them?
Meagan: Languages. I see their languages.
J: Huh. [pause] What's it like?
M: What's what like?
J: You know, seeing languages.
M: Depends on the language.
J: What did Tobacco look like?
M: [long pause] Big.
J: Yeah?
M: Bigger than a building. With hundreds white flowers for hands that could turn into cannons. He lived in...a city I guess. (Narrates: I didn't know how to explain it. These things were awfully hard to explain)
J: And uhm...what about...
M: Are you gonna ask me about meth?
J: Erm. Yeah. Meth.
M: Well, I don't know. If I close my eyes and I try to hear its language, I end up in this big field of grass. And there's something in the grass, but I can't see it. It's like a bunch of bugs, you can tell its bugs, even if you can't see it—the grass brushes against you and you feel--
J: Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
M: What?
J: Police.
M: (narrates) I opened my eyes and looked behind us. Six cars with bright flashing lights tailed us down the highway. Jacob pulled over, trembling. Armed soldiers emerged, surrounding the car—the road had been blocked off up ahead. A man toting an automatic rifle knocked on the window. “Hello?”
    “Out of the car. Now. Both of you.”


Newest episode, automatically posted to this blog.

S2E11: Escape from Horizon One

Meagan attempts to escape from the base in order to find tobacco, but real tobacco, to stop the white flowers, as she believes her ancestor instructed her to do in a vision. She soon finds herself in unexpected danger.

CAST
Kyla Valenti: Meagan
Donna Yu: Maureen
Dylan Tilton: Bobby
C.j. Hackett: Gas Station Clerk
Dominick Vilgiate: Jacob
Timmy Vilgiate: The Moon, Cameron

PRODUCTION
Script, sound design, recording, directing, score by Timmy Vilgiate
Series art by Jesse Robertson
Sound alike music by Collin Estes

MUSIC
"Norepinephrine" by Timmy Vilgiate
"Section 107 of the Copyright Act: Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use as performed by David Bowie", by Collin Estes
"Take the Kill" by A Bad Night For A Hero/The Yeti

SOUND EFFECTS (only ones from freesound are listed)
Stairwell with Echo Front by ibirdfilm
Flames 1 by Shastrocks
Bowed 01 by soundjoao
metal gate by OldSchool_
city night hum 04 160927_0989 by klankbeeld
City Night Ambience w: Airplane_1-2 by SteveMannella
Small rocks in a creek by Hitrison
Ambiance_Night_Crickets_1Car_Pass by mshahen
Irritating flourescent light hum by pfranzen
Utility room front by blaukreuz
Frog croaking by Benboncan
City at Night_Ambience by Broken_Head_Productions
Road ambiance - Passing cars by Breviceps
Heavy Breathing by Shinplaster
ohm_singing_cool2_cut2 by thanvannispen
sh_shop_door_bell_openclose by shall555
Cicada, Close, A by InspectorJ
car door opening5 by supersnd
car door slam by theshaggyfreak
Ambiance Idling Car by 1san
p22 by stixthule
Sweep-cymbal by hannagreen
Drone_BowedCybmal [sic] by ceich93
Cymbal_Swell_106 by FiatLuxx

SCRIPT

The darkness of the dormitory hallway hummed with a sharp and forboding timbre, seething with the various languages of the nocturnal drugs—languages of sleeping pills, painkillers, and sedatives prescribed to the various inhabitants of the base—languages that filled every inch of the hallway with varying shades and colors of silence and slow burning fire. No one was sleeping easy that night. Almost intutively, I slipped into the mushroom language—my pupils dilated, and it became easier to see down the hallway. Light from a tiny beeping fire alarm illuminated the whole corridor in intermittent bursts of red. Vaguely, I remembered the way to the exit—though each groan of metal or sound from beneath a door made me fear that the white flowers were moving in to attack me, the drumming of my heart, heard in my ear drums, acted like a war drum, filling me with courage. Confidently, I pressed on.

            As I wound my further through the building, I started to hear whispering voices, just barely perceptible through the air vents. Closer to the administrative section, they became more intelligible, at least intelligible enough for me to recognize them: Maureen and Bobby, discussing the days events in fearful and awestruck tones. I turned to move up the stairs, which I remembered going down to get to my room earlier that night. Hearing my footsteps, Maureen sharply cut off Bobby. “Shh. Someone's coming up the stairs.”

            “Fuck, what do we say?”

                        “I don't know...we'll...just say we couldn't sleep.”

Turning the corner, I could see their shadows cast against the wall by the faintest light of idling electronics in the administrative section. “Maureen? Bobby?”

            “It's that one chick.”, she whispered, “What's her name?”

                        “It's Meagan.”, I called up, in a quiet voice.

They came to the top of the stairs. “Couldn't sleep either, huh?”, asked Maureen, suspiciously. Bobby gulped, still visibly drunk, and unsure of his balance. “No—I couldn't.” When I emerged to the top of the stairs, the two both looked me up and down. Maureen's face twitched—suprisingly, her eyes had changed—their shape was now rounder, her nose more acute. She looked knowingly at Bobby. “What? Something wrong?” I didn't know what to say. “What do I look like to you? What...what color hair do I have?”

Nervously, I gulped, fearing that I'd stumbled into some kind of trivial argument that would hinder me from finding tobacco. “Brown.”, I sighed. Bobby shook his head. Maureen continued. “And what color are my eyes?”

            “Blue?”

“I wonder what that means.”, she scratched her head.

            This wasn't a trivial argument, I started to realize. Maureen had been changed by the accident too, and now she was trying to figure it out—no psychic presence had been there to guide her through this change—no explanation or forewarning had been given. She was horrified, yet masked her fear underneath a confidence, not at all misplaced, in her ability to figure it out. She liked puzzles, I could tell—the mystery of all of this enthralled her just as much as it scared her. “That's what you look like to yourself, isn't it?”, she smirked, “I've got it.”

            “Well, hell no. I don't look like a...”, mumbled Bobby.

                        “What does she look like to you?”, I wondered aloud

Bobby gritted his teeth. “I don't want to talk about it.”, he grumbled. Maureen squinted at me, studying my widely dilated pupils. “You don't think I'm crazy.”

            “Of course not. I--”

                        “You've noticed it to. You've...changed, somehow, after the accident, right?”

            “Yeah, I mean, the mushrooms--”

                        “Something is going on here. Something is going on.”

“I think that I have a buddy who saw that guy in that hospital room around town”, mumbled Bobby, sitting down and working on unbuttoning his shirt—he felt very hot, very drunk, and very tired, “It's really weird. I think this...I don't think this is...this...Maureen? What did I say earlier? ….Aw fuck....man...It's happening again.”, he looked up at her to finish his sentence. “This isn't a space lab.”, she said, “This lab still does whatever it did in the sixties. I just know it. Only they've figured out how to...how to get results. Like that netflix show. Strange Places or whatever.”

            “Well, actually—“

“Bobby. Show her what you can do?”

            Bobby took of his shirt and stood up, irritated and stumbling. Suddenly, his body erupted into weak blue flames, burning the sweat from his skin. Once the flames subsided, he was no longer drunk—but he seemed terrified as his drunkenness already started to creep back up on him. The alcohol would build up in his body, until it poured out of his sweat glands and demanded to be burnt away. A cycle he was already too familiar with.

            “What about you?”

                        “I--”, I glanced at a nearby clock. 3:45. I needed to hurry, “It's kind of complicated—I really wish I could stay and talk about this guys, but I've got to go.”

            “Where are you going?”

                        “I need to go find tobacco. It's really important.”

Maureen rolled her eyes, reaching into her back pocket to hold out a cigarette box. I heard it make a slight whining sound, almost whistling. The cigarettes pulsed with a life of their own—when I closed my eyes, I could see spindly pink flowers with five petals that danced along a massive column. A calm, yet high pitched humming rose through the air. I felt my arms buzz with a weak electricity, my spine becoming anchored firmly, but weakly to the present. It was not real tobacco. “Not that kind”, I said, pushing away the box, “I need real tobacco. It's urgent. I don't have much time.”

            “Tell us why.”, begged Maureen, gripping my arm before I could turn away “You can trust us.”

                        “Maybe later, okay? This is really complicated, but if I don't find some tobacco, some flowers are going to kill you all with their minds. I swear I'll tell you more later.”, I whispered, pulling my hand away and running into the administrative center, the main area of which was locked, although a corridor leading to the tram entrance was still open.

            The tram entrance was guarded by two guards, who sat drowsily in rolling chairs with automatic weapons at their sides. I switched into the English language so that, in case I had to interact with them, I could do so without seeming like a loon. Maureen and Bobby followed me, a few yards behind, thinking that I didn't know they were following me. It was annoying. I knew that they thought their conversation was really important, and it must have seemed very important to them at the time. But as curious as I was about why Maureen's face looked different to everyone and why Bobby had to light himself on fire every couple of hours, I was also really frustrated and didn't want to waste any more time. The guards spotted me approaching the gate and rose from their seats, ordering me to stop. Almost without thinking, I pulled them into the language of silence—I grew weak at the knees, and started to feel myself fall down—but I didn't care. The silence was all I needed—embracing me like a long lost friend, the silence pulled me in—I watched as drowsiness overcame the two guards and made them pass out...Strangely I was still awake. I stood up—or fuck no—I was already standing, yeah...right. Well...whatever. I mean, what do you care what I do, you fucking asshole? I just...fuck...I need to get out of this...fucking language...I tripped over my feet while I went to grab the officers ID badge. Shit. I totally forgot what I was doing.

            “Hey go fuck yourself”, I shouted, flipping off Bobby, Maureen, and like...everything basically. Man, this language is awesome!, I heard one part of myself say. No it's not you dumbass, you need to get your shit together. I replied. Nah, fuck that. Retorted the other part of me. But I guess I've got some important shit to do...I...I think? I struggled to make myself swipe the card, and unlock the gate—I pushed as hard as I could against the silence as my head started to grow heavy and my eyelids droopy—The silence loomed below my feet like a monster made of infinite void, a monster trying to wrestle me down into its murky depths-yet I simultaneously saw it like a welcoming pair of arms ready to wrap themselves around me and....Oh shit. I'm in the tunnel. Fuck. How did I get here? I finally withdrew from the silence, having walked through most of the tunnel in a half-sleeping haze.

            Emerging into the open air, I headed towards the gate, security pass in hand, before I saw two transluscent frames making their way through the forest. Just barely, I could see the outline of John, talking to one of the ghosts I had seen in Dr. Whitebalm's laboratory. For just a moment, I watched them—they were too far away to hear—but I decided again that I did not have time to waste investigating whatever it was they were doing. I swiped the card at the gate to make my exit, and headed down to the road.

            It felt magical to return to the open air, to walk under the night sky—so magical that, it was easy to forget my mission, or to at least let it slip to the back of my mind. In the mushroom language, I felt that I found a miraculous harmony with the earth—exhausted as I was, the night air seemed to replenish me. This world was my home and I felt at ease—free—within it. The light of the moon, just a phase past full, shone in a sea of stars and incandescent clouds. Noise from passing cars scattered over the dense wooded hills in shattered jewels—the dirt under my feet swelled like the breathing chest of a sleeping giant. The trees hummed soft homages to the sky—frogs in the ponds by the stream eyed insects with hungry stomachs, shooting out their tongues to swat them from the air and yank them into their mouths—tiny fish babbled through the creek, hunting for algae on river rocks, alone in a miniscule world of water which seemed to them to be the entire universe.

            But when my feet touched the pavement, something inside of me seethed. An all-consuming anxiety, a frustrated rage at the separation I now endured. The city, small as it was to the English parts of my brain, seemed an immense and menacing abomination of flickering, off-colored artificial suns and steel monsters in the psilocybe language. I clutched my stomach, and uncomfortably returned to English, but even in that language, the city felt miserable, since my brain remained covered in beshroomed sensations. An unsettled paranoia crept up the muscles in my spine and my neck. The headlights of passing cars seemed like eyes that studied me with disgust, fear and rage. I felt off balance—no longer confident—no long brave, but suddenly exhausted, cognizant of how terrified and hopeless I felt through my whole body—my teeth chattered, not so much out of cold, but out of fear. I retreated from the sidewalk and onto the grass, breathing deeply to try and calm myself down by looking at the moon. “Hello moon.”, I whispered. “Hello Meagan.” The moon was reassuring. But what could I say to the moon? Did it even want to talk to me? I imagined it turning its nose up at me and saying, “I am much better than you Meagan, after all I am the moon. And you were so rude to Maureen. Why would I want to speak with you?” And I guess that really had bothered me, you know, being so mean. I felt like I should have taken the time to support her through her struggles with, you know, looking weird and not really knowing what was happening. “I'm sorry moon.” The moon, being a large piece of rock, did not actually reply, but instead, in my imagination, let out a palpable sigh and told me, “It's a-okay, Meagan. I'm not mad at you at all.” I sat down on a bench and looked around at the city. Vaguely, I could make out a smoke shop. But they wouldn't be open now. Not at four in the morning. Perhaps a gas station was my best bet.

            I scanned the horizon for gas stations—a single seven eleven sat about half a mile down the road. I took off for it, walking as quickly as I could. I flung open the door and immediately headed to the front counter to look at the tobacco. The florescent lights cast uneven and strange colors over the room, making it seem like some sort of awful carnival attraction. “Can I help you ma'am?--Ma'am--Excuse me...? Can you hear me? If you don't respond to me I'm going to need to call the police”

            “Can I see those cigarettes?”

                        “I'm gonna need to see your ID--”

I hadn't grabbed my wallet. Of course I hadn't grabbed my wallet. Oh well. Maybe I could figure a way around it—maybe I could just tell him the truth. “I just want to talk to them. I need to hear their languages.”

            “What?”

                        “I need to talk to them. The Spirit ones, probably.”

            “Ma'am, I'm going to need you to show me your ID, or you're going to have leave.”

Just then, the door sprang open. “Meagan? What the hell are you doing here?”

            “Is this your sister, Jake?”

                        “Jacob? Is that really you?”, I asked, half suspicious that this was another trick of the White Flowers.

                        “Yeah she is.”

            “She autistic or something?”

                        "Well don't worry about it...Anyway. I just came in to buy a few of these. It's been a long day, man. Geez. Did you see that shit with the fucking terrorists? Shit. Totally like a giant fucking sinkhole ten feet from my house.”, Jacob pulled three five hour energies out of a rack and set them on the counter, along with a wrinkled twenty dollar bill. The man, seeming to feel bad for Jacob, sighed and took the money. Jacob led me out to his car. “What are you doing here? I thought they said that you were a witness in the investigation with the sinkhole or whatever. You are Meagan, right? You didn't get body snatched or something? Shit. What a fucking day.” The two of us got in, and he quickly downed a five hour energy. In his mind, I saw a flurry of languages—one of them still embryonic, and warm, so inaudible as to seem practically insignificant; another that now enterred his body matched the language of the coffee tree; and then overpowering them all, an immense, insectoid presence I knew at once to be methamphetamine. I shut my eyes to see what it looked like, and all at once I found myself in a field of crystalline grass, higher than my eyes could see, that brushed against my skin like silk, giving a gentle electricity. An intelligence loomed in each blade, and in the ground beneath. A language of motion, alertness, activity, visceral and soul searing awakeness. But the mind did not come from the grass—rather the grass came from the mind—the trillions of tiny insects looming in this vast open plane, urged me forward—they like their prey to run. My eyes shot open and back into English. “Meagan? Can you hear me? Do you need to go to a doctor or something?”

            “I need to find tobacco.”

                        “Well, they probably had some in that gas station, do you not have your ID? I didn't even think you smoked. I mean. Tobacco. I heard its super addictive. I mean, who am I to talk, but seriously, like, that stuff will give you cancer. Meth, I think, like just hurts your teeth, but I brush my teeth like nine times a day since I started, and my teeth are fine, but, what, did you just start or something?”

            “Not that tobacco. Real tobacco.”

                        “What do you mean, like...Indian Tobacco?”

            “Yes—yes. Do you know where I can find some?”

                        “Like...a farm? Probably a farm. I mean there's lots of farms around here, and maybe they have tobacco or something, but I don't think there's any Indians around here. We could look but...Wait, why do you need to find tobacco? What's going on?”

            “I—So remember how I told you about that weird homeless guy who came into work?”

                        “Yeah, I remember that, what does he have to do with it?”

            “Well, he's a psychic.”

My brother's eyes grew wide. Just then it hit him--I looked like I was tripping—tripping really, really hard, and my neck and my shoulders were covered in faint blue bruises. “He's a psychic?”, he asked, seeming to try and take me seriously. “Yeah, he's a psychic. He visited me in a dream, and he told me to come to this farm, you know, the one with the mushrooms. Well, I got there, and there was a big hole in the universe, and it was too much for the mushrooms to handle alone, so they sacrificed themselves and passed their powers on to me. Now I'm trying to save John, the homeless guy, from these evil white flowers.”

            “Hmm. And you...what? You need tobacco for this?”

                        “Yeah.”

            “Alright...you know what...I know a guy. Let me make a call.”

He stepped out of the car, and opened his phone, looking through his contacts. I tried to listen in on what he was saying by switching into the Mushroom language, where my senses felt enhanced, even though they felt sorely offended by this steel monstrosity in which I found myself. “Hey—yeah. Sorry. I know its late. Today's been a crazy fucking day. Did you see what happened on the news? It was like ten seconds from my house. I was just getting off of work and I stopped at the---Yeah. I am. But listen. I just ran into my sister—yeah. Yeah. Her—Yeah, she did—Yeah I know. I don't know whats going on, but she's tripping really bad. She just told me all this weird shit about some psychic homeless guy and I think she needs a place to calm down—Oh you're tripping too?--Oh Fuck, dude. Sorry. Well is it okay if we come by?--Yeah. Thanks man, you're a life saver—I'll head there now. Hey did you see what happened on the news? Yeah it was like ten seconds from my house. Right there, exactly. I got to go and check it out and I was about to...Okay. Cool.”

            Jacob opened the door and pulled the car into reverse. “My friend Cameron says he's got some Indian tobacco”, he lied, with disturbingly little effort, “Why don't we go down there?”

            “This is serious, Jacob.”

“I believe you, don't worry, Meg.”

            “No you don't.”

“You heard what I said, didn't you.”

            “I've got mushroom powers, Jacob. Of course I can hear what you said.”

“How long ago did you take the mushrooms, Meagan?”

            “Shut up, Jacob. This is real.”

“How long ago did you take the mushrooms?”

            “I didn't just...you know what? Stop the car.”

“No.”

            “Why not?”

“You're gonna jump out, I'm gonna have to run after you, and its gonna freak you out because you're tripping balls. That's why.”

            “I'm not gonna jump out. I promise. I want to show you.”

Rolling his eyes, Jacob pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, almost leaning out into a ditch. He locked the car so that I could not leave. I reached towards his mind, and effortlessly pulled him into the mushroom language—suddenly, the colors in the air became more vivid, shifting just slightly into unreality—his vision became seemingly crystal clear, but the world stretched out of proportion—his head detached from his body and his hands felt miles away from his arms—the methamphetamine shooting through his system sent his brain into overdrive—his thoughts ran on neverending loops—he looked on with horror as time seemed to slip away—feeling guilty to have hurt him, I switched him into the language of alcohol—at once, all of his fear melted into a depressed, burning haze—his heart rate slowed down...his head started spinning, and his vision went blurry. Then back to English.

            “What the fuck was—what the--did they—did they--do something to you?”

            “No—the mushrooms chose me. They chose me, Jacob! Do you believe me now?”

            “I—I--I don't know. No not really. Not really...no. I've been up for three days, Meagan.”

            “Not really?”

He recoiled in fear, “Don't do that again. Don't. Don't.”

            “I'm not gonna. I'm...sorry. I know it scared you.”

                        “Man I've got to quit this shit.”, he leaned back in his seat, his heart racing faster than I'd ever seen a heart beat. “That was terrifying.”

                        “I'm sorry. Again.”

            “It's not, it's not your fault. I haven't slept for three days. So what...you—the mushrooms gave you like...the ability to make people trip or...something?”

                        “I can hear the languages of everything. I can hear meth and alcohol and acid and the sleepy drugs at the hospital.”

            “And like...make people feel them with your mind?”

                        “Yeah.”

            “And you're looking for tobacco?”

                        “Yeah. But listen, you can't tell anyone you saw me. I'm not supposed to be out here, and I need to hurry back.”

            “Okay. Huh...Tobacco. Man, I don't know shit about tobacco. If you were looking for meth, I could find you meth, but like...tobacco...Well you know, Cameron might actually be able to help. I knew Cameron in high school, and he knows a lot about drugs. I think he took some kind of drug in the Amazon, it started with an I or something, he did it on a volunteer trip, I don't know, he's mormon or something. Or he was mormon before the drugs. He probably has tobacco if its anywhere.”

                        “That's who you were talking to?”

Jacob pulled back onto the road, not bothering to signal, and floored the accelerator until he reached easily thirty miles per hour over the speed limit.

            “Yeah. He knows a lot of people. He could probably help you find some Indian Tobacco or something. Where...where did they take you?”

                        “You know the old water treatment facility everyone thinks has UFOs?”

            “Yeah? Oh shit, there? No way. So you talked to aliens?”

                        “Not really. It's actually just a place where they make satellites and shoot them through wormholes. There's no aliens.”

            “Oh...okay. Well that's kinda lame.”

                        “Kinda.”

____

Jacob's friend Cameron lived outside the city, in a rural subdivision guarded by a gate with a somewhat bored looking attendant. Rolling his eyes as Jacob pulled through, the attendent opened the gate, allowing my brother to take off down the dirt road. The house was small, surrounded by thick branches of mesquite and tall trees. A faint smell of marijuana lifted through the air. As we neared the door, I could hear the sounds of David Bowie playing from an old record player—a blacklight was visible through the door. Cameron sat on the ground, wearing three-D glasses and coloring with crayons. “Whoa! Dude!”, he fell over laughing from behind the door. “I was just thinking about birds...and now you're here! Come in my friends! Teach me!”, he stood up and opened the door, his pants falling slightly below the waistline, before he recognized us, “Whoa! Wait, nevermind. I totally thought you were bird gods. What's up, my man?”

            “Not much. Hey, this is my sister, Meagan. Meagan, Cameron.”

He kissed my hand and closed the door, looking paranoid as he flicked off the blacklight and turned on the regular lights. A deers head hung from the wall, next to a Pink Floyd poster. The kitchen was stacked with dirty dishes; a half eaten bowl of ramen sat complacently on the table. Cameron turned down the music. “Sorry, I know that's a little intense. Come on in, make yourselves at home. Do you smoke?” Cameron asked, taking a bong from underneath a table. “Sure”, said my brother, still shaken from the mushroom language. He took a quick hit and then passed it to me. I listened in to the language, shutting my eyes. Before me, there appeared a dazzling swirl of calming green, blue, and purple lights—these lights coalesced to form a humanoid being with fairy wings, made up of a patchwork of all of the colors, a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. At once she was both a healer and a warrior—I felt my brain come alive with a strange ferocious calm—a complacent paranoia--I opened my eyes. As much as I wanted to get to know marijuana, I needed to focus on Tobacco. I passed it to Cameron, not bothering to take a hit.

            “What are you on man?”, asked my brother, leaning back into the chair, now uncomfortably high.

                        “He's on acid.”, I said. Cameron looked up at me, smiling. “Whoa! She got it right. That's crazy” My brother smirked at me. “How about you? Jake told me you were tripping, right? Having a rough time, or...?”

                        “I'm not tripping. It's actually really hard to explain.”

Jake bit his lip, awkwardly nodding. “Yeah. It kind of is.” I did my best, though, and by the time I reached the end of my story, Cameron had gotten back onto his feet to look through his bookshelf. He retrieved a book and showed me a picture of a white flower with five petals. “Is this the one you're talking about?”

            “Yeah. What is it called? Datura?”

                        “Datura strammonium. It's an anticholinergic deliriant. It contains scopolamine.”

“I think I've heard of that.”, said Jacob. “From the Vice documentary?<---[cameron]” “[Jacob]Yeah, yeah.” “I know someone who tried this once, and he ended up in the hospital for three days. It's bad shit. That's crazy what happened to your friend, though. But it's kind of amazing, I mean like...wait so you've got like...mushroom powers?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I can totally see it. You totally give me that kind of mushroom power type of vibe.”, he stared into my eyes, “That's amazing. You should...hey. You should read this book.”, he handed me Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna, which I'd heard of on the internet somewhere but never read, “You'd really enjoy it. Anyway, so what do you need? Tobacco, you said?”

                        “Yeah, but real tobacco. That's what my ancestor said, anyway.”

            “Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Uhm...”, he flipped through the book, “So you're probably thinking of Nicotiana rustica. This. I read somewhere that some tribes used to smoke this with datura to balance it out. The Cherokee or the Navajo or something.”

                        “Do you know where I can find it?”

            “Fuck...I don't know. Uhm. I could probably go on reddit and see if anyone there knows. Or maybe like...erowid. Wikipedia. Something. I don't know. Do you want to color while I google shit? I have like one hundred and twenty eight colors and all these glitter crayons”

I exchanged an uncertain look with my brother, who shrugged, feeling slightly too intense and paranoid to be in this house. “Sure”, I said, getting down on the floor and retrieving a sheet to start coloring. I gently moved aside Cameron's drawing of a bird god, and then shifted into the mushroom language—coloring was a lot better in the mushroom language. I worked on drawing the moon, trying to use as many of the colors as I could. Everything was glowing, and squirming, and, you know, generally it was just a good time. “Hello Meagan. You're just fine.”, the moon said in my drawing. It was reassuring. I would hate for the moon to be mad at me. After a few minutes of this, Cameron spun around in his computer and read aloud, “The high concentration of nicotine in its leaves makes it useful for producing pesticides.”, he said, clicking to another tab, “And then someone on an old reddit post says they use it to make nicotine gum. So I'd say those are your best bets, because they wouldn't sell that kind of shit out here. Oh hey, you're drawing the moon? That's super cool. I love those colors.”

            “Thanks!” I liked Cameron. I genuinely liked Cameron. He seemed like such a nice person, and he'd believed everything I'd said. Granted, he was on Acid, but that didn't really seem like that big of a deal now. “You wanna go?” [asked Jacob] [cameron] “I have some here, actually. Nicotine super good for your brain. Or I think. I don't know. Man, like, what even is a brain. Fuck.”, he stepped out of the room, and I went back to coloring. About twenty minutes later, the sounds of a piano started filling the house—this continued for a while before Cameron shouted, “Fuck, sorry, I got distracted. What did you need again?”

            “Nicotine gum!”

“Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay! It's right here.”

Cameron played a few more chords on the piano before running out to meet us. He handed me a box. “Can I take this?”

            “Yeah, totally. You gotta save the universe or something right?”

                        “Thank you so much! You're so kind.”

            “No, thank you. It was so great to meet you. And to see you Jacob. You're both so beautiful. I hope that you guys find peace.”

Jacob looked up from his drawing of a skull filled with a giant, buzzing city. “Thanks. Are you ready to go, Meagan?”

            “Yeah, I'm ready. It was great to meet you. Thanks so much for helping us.”

Trembling, we left the house, heading towards the woods. The language was difficult to grasp, it  eludes me, but deep within the packets of outwardly innocuous gum looms something great and powerful. My hands began to vibrate as I held onto the package. What little of the plant remained in that box locks into something greater, something universal. This was it. This is it. Is. Is. Is.  Somewhere in here is the key to defeating the white flowers, and saving the world. As vast as it seemed, it is difficult to understand—all of my attempts to learn the language held within result in evasion—I hear the faintest sounds of screeching and moaning, like whales. The more I press into it, the more noise it seems to make. I am making it upset. 

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