“Psychedilia.” Song Remains The Same (Part 7) – Retro Molvi

“for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

– Mr. Johnson

A month had passed since we saved Chammoo and during that time it was all just meticulous planning for our first big scam. Everyday we would go over the plan and engage in reconnaissance activities, a month of just watching and gathering information. I was designated to gather data from all our sources and use it to find weaknesses in our plan. Most of my work began at night after all the members of M-Unit had reported in.

A month of staying awake while others snored. Quietly, all alone, analyzing information in a basement had simply taken its toll on me. The wall seemed to close in, fingers pointing and laughter echoing in the room. Memories of my past took on form and haunted me from time to time. Everything would return to usual when someone would come to visit. Soon it had become hard for me to tell apart the truth from what I saw.

I would try to fight my illusions at times. I would throw punches and kicks at them and the they would respond similarly, but soon the pain of being hit would show me the reality, and make me realize that it was only me punching myself and not my illusions as I believed.

I would at times blame myself but then logic would kick in and I would just blame society for turning into a plastic watering can that fueled our minds into forgetting their true selves; forgetting their spontaneous behavior and conforming to rules and regulations set by others. To be members of society, we all simply become slaves.

I tried fighting, blaming and one fine day, escaping. This was not the first time I tried escaping like this. I had tried this before on different occasions too and it mostly worked.

My new bred nightmare was stronger and so I needed something stronger too, and so my herbal cure that helped me avoid lesser problems, called by some as Seattle Speedball, which was a dose of marijuana with coffee, soon turned into something more serious. I started taking amphetamine with morphine.

Everyday I would see my illusions come alive and then fade away as i took my new cure. My heart would go racing, sounding some what like an off-time bass drum beat to a single strum and a long sustain of a bass guitar. Lying on the sofa, intoxicated,I would see the ceiling break and the sky tear apart and for a moment I felt like I was lit on fire. The feeling lasted for a short period and soon it was followed by a sensation of being cold, along with a single heart beat in a while that almost sounded like thunder.

It had become a habit and I would start my day with a dose of the concoction, succumbing to the effects, enjoying the peacefulness it brought and then rising to begin working again, feeling rejuvenated. This time when I took the cure, I never got up but fell into a long sleep and dreamed .

My dream began with me trekking up a mountain towards a village. Commissioned by the Queen of England. Ordered to travel through China, looking for any resistance against Her Majesty’s will and assassinating the key members of such rebellion growing after the Chinese defeat in the second Anglo-Chinese War. To keep a low profile, we were a small team of just 12 men.

We had been informed that one of the rebel leaders was hiding in this village and that he was protected by a small group of men. Before sunrise, we were at the village, it was still dark and the time was prefect because everyone was asleep. We slowly entered the village and surrounded the cottage, where the rebel leader was taking refuge. From that point on it was all terror, we went in killed everyone in the cottage.

I crashed in through the front door, followed by two other soldiers, the other nine were either covering other doors or securing a safe exist for the other soldiers. We kicked open every door and shot at everything that moved – not very glorious, nevertheless, effective.

We soon encountered the rebel leader and two of his guerrilla warriors. We exchanged fire for a while with no casualties. I knew that in a few moments we were going to run out of bullets while they had an abundant supply. So I told two of my companions to cover me while I ran towards the enemy. Escaping almost near death, i jumped, somersaulting behind the enemy and stabbed the Rebel Leader. Mission Accomplished. The two guerrilla warriors were soon to go, as my fellow comrades took them out with head shots.

We then left the village and camped in the jungles for the night. Our Chinese informant in celebration of our victory, brought out the finest of opium. A few puffs after, my head was buzzing like a a hive full of bees. My eyes became heavy and sight blurred. Eventually, all I could see was pitch black. I was soon on my side in deep sleep.

I did feel the night turn into day as the cold winds that turned warm as the blazing sun rose. I woke up, only to find that i was still in my dream. I was no longer in China and it was no longer 1901. It must have been the late sixties. I could tell by the way people were dressed and from the events that followed.

The University of California, Berkeley had demolished all the buildings on a 2.8-acre parcel near campus, intending to use the land for facilities, such as parking lots and playing grounds. After a long delay, during which nothing happened on site and the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park.

A major confrontation ensued, when Governor Ronald Reagan ordered the park destroyed, which led to an occupation of the city of Berkeley by the United States National Guard. Hippies engaged in acts of civil disobedience to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley.

I soon realized that I was a key member of a group of hippie bandits and was personally responsible for many of the trees planted against the will of the Governor. With this small information also came a key issue of what was going to happen next.

It must have been the fifth tree, I planted since I regained consciousness in my dream, when we got the information that our location had been compromised and that a group of National Guards were coming to arrest us. Hurrying, we planted the sixth tree and then ran. We ran through alleys trying to get away from the National Guard.

I left one such alley and came on to a main road. In front of me was a large mob of protesters burning and breaking things and behind me were the officers, who had been following me for the past 15 minutes.

I went on the main road and got lost some where in the crowd. I felt like I was a drop in the sea; the sea that formed a tidal wave at one end which battered and brought down all those who stood against it on the other. I was being pushed around almost in a rhythmic way to which I tried to humming a song.

One such push came and I found myself crashing into another person. A large portion of my finding was that the syringe I was carrying in between my lips by the needle, had struck on my tongue and what ever it was filled with had been injected and I was feeling the effects.

My mind went blank and started to wander into darkness. Before my sight blurred, I tasted blood and took the syringe out of my mouth to see what I was injected with. I tired thinking of any other idiot I could recall, who carried a syringe in his mouth. As I looked at the syringe I saw no name but only a message “use me instead of stalking.”

1714 steps before I spotted anything in the complete black and it was only the white that hid behind it. I realized that I was starring at the hour needle of a clock that just moved to reveal the clock’s face. I was concentrating on the needle so hard that I secluded it from everything and it was just the needle in an infinitive perspective, the infinitive black in which I roam, when I really never moved.

I lay on a bed, too weak to to do anything but watch the clock float above me. I heard the beach and so wasn’t surprised to see it when I turned my head to the left. When I looked back at the clock, I saw it disintegrate as if its conformity was disrupted by a ripple. The one large clock turned into many smaller clocks each stopped at a particular time. Only one changed and showed the current time and so for some unknown reason I stared at it.

Soon it all faded away and I felt as if I was falling. The wind blew against me as I fell, disturbing the wind from it’s sleep. I could feel the ground get close and when there was almost no distance, I realized that I was back in the basement and awake. I was no longer in my dream but in the reality.

I also realized that Fruity was making a mustache on my face with a marker. Any other day I would have killed him for it but today I was glad to see him around. Fruity realizing that I had woken up, quickly hid the marker and ran away giving me his report also commenting on how he was finding everyone sleeping today. According to him he first found Mystic sleeping on the job and now me. I followed Fruity out of the Hide out and was welcomed by the rain.

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~ by retromolvi on July 24, 2009.