Regarding the Luckiest and Strangest Day of My Life

We dropped acid on that Christmas morning. Despite being in the desert, it was frigid. Timmy woke us up to some awful Christmas song that I refuse to remember the name of. As my crusty eyes blurred into focus, I saw the strange scene. Seven vagabonds sharing a dilapidated shack on a nudist farm, many miles from the nearest town. The owners, Fox and Domina called it a farm, so we all did too. But,we said it to humor them. Nothing grew on their property apart from the mold surrounding the five gallon bucket that served as the communal toilet. The only toilet, in fact.

As Timmy turned down the Christmas noise, he methodically unwrapped a playing card sized package of acid. He did it slowly, almost too slow I remember thinking. He was always like that though, slow and timid. The type of guy that would casually mention alternate dimensions, or time travel, or any number of government conspiracies. The second day on the farm, he’d told me that he was an alien from the planet Draconia located in the fifth dimension. He was sent by ‘Terigs’ to earth on a peaceful mission to guide us to infinite prosperity. Or something like that.

Alien or not, I trusted Timmy enough to eat four tabs of his acid. As I did I looked around the room and grinned to conceal my underlying fright. The six others followed suit, placing tabs of acid under each of their tongues, and grinning broadly, much the way I had. No one else ate four tabs though. No one, except Timmy and I. With the acid under my tongue still, I made my way past the putrid hot tub and toward the main house. The house was painted blood orange on the outside. Inside, each wall was a different color and decorated with paintings that were all hung crooked. There was seemingly as much dirt inside the house as there was outside.

I made coffee and ate a quick piece of toast… well, bread actually. The toaster didn’t work, but that didn’t matter because the oven and microwave also didn’t work. Those were a far bigger problem to me. I never sat down in that kitchen, and that Christmas was no different. My eyes wandered as I finished my bread and I noticed the clock Fox had constructed out of bones that he’d found in the desert. I took note that the big hand, the fibula, was just shy of eleven.

I decided to head to the shack to see how the rest of the gang was fairing. Outside, walking through the courtyard, with my eyes fixated on the shack ahead, I could sense the dirt beginning to swallow my feet. I saw where I wanted to go, but suddenly it seemed a great feat to make it there. The earth was going to swallow me up whole! I fell to my hands and knees and cautiously began a sloppy breaststroke in the direction of the shack, taking panicked breaths as needed. The dirt felt good on my skin. Maybe it could protect me, I thought? I coated my face in the dirt so I’d blend in. Better that way, I reasoned. If the earth tried to claim me later in the day, I’d at least have the small benefit of camouflage.

My desperate swim through the desert got me to the shack, but not the one I’d left.

The shack had grown exponentially. Inside, I felt like an ant entering he roman Colosseum. How long had my swim from the main house taken? Why was the shack suddenly unrecognizably huge? Were these walls always stained with smeared banana and blueberries? Why is everyone wearing pants on their head? This twisted scene was confusing, but I couldn’t be sure how much of it was fabricated by my own acid swamped brain.

‘Hey, why is there dirt on your face?’ One of the pant-heads shrieked into my ear.

Dammit, I thought. As I stumbled back, ‘You're going to give up my disguise. It’s crazy outside. Very unstable.’ I muttered heavily, but I couldn’t manage to put any more words together.

Timmy wasn’t in the shack, and the pant-heads had clearly not understood the world as well as I did. Plus, they were freaking me out. Maybe I needed to find Timmy. In fact, Timmy could probably explain all of this. Yes, that was the solution. Find Timmy. Now! I burst out the door and began to gallop around the farm. My head was now a hurricane of existential thoughts, long forgotten regrets, with interludes of paranoia.

After a frantic search of the property I found Timmy laying face down on a neatly pieced together bed of tumbleweeds, surrounded by a circle of sticks and various articles of clothing. He was laughing hysterically, or cackling maniacally. At this point in the trip, I couldn’t tell which.

My mouth started moving in the natural motion of forming words and sending thoughts, but I could not be sure if sound waves were actually leaving my mouth. I had beautiful questions about life, liberty, and the essence of happiness that were put together with such grace and prose in my own head that I felt I could’ve put Shakespeare and Hemingway to shame. But, if Timmy could hear me, he gave no indication. Or maybe, I’d said nothing at all. I could no longer remember the questions anyway. Timmy had flipped over and his face seemed a grotesque distraction from anything righteous. His face was wrinkled and bubbling up like he was going to shapeshift into the alien he claimed he was. Was he becoming an old man before my very eyes? His wrinkles deepened and his eyes became dark and piercing.

Timmy stood up and as he did I backed up in caution. A fog of fear now encompassed my soul. ‘Oh god!’ I whispered to myself. Can I even trust Timmy anymore? He wasn’t saying anything, and he wouldn’t. And I couldn’t, but that wasn’t my fault, I reasoned. For god's sake, at least I was trying to talk. Timmy had all but submitted to the dark arts. I saw no sign of humanity in his eyes and felt a great urge to run again.

In fact, there was nothing to do but run. Not at a dire time like this. Better safe than sorry in these sorts of circumstances. I felt powerful like an ancient Viking, and each stride propelled me ever closer to the speed of light. The blue skies and desert around me were a magnificent blur. I held myself back from an all out sprint for fear that I’d leave the ground and not come down. Towards the horizon I could see the sun getting lower in the sky. Wow, I thought to myself, was it already that time again? The day had just started! Or had it? I wasn’t sure anymore where the time had gone or if the time had even gone at all. Or where time went once it was gone.

In fact, what was I running from without shoes, and in the New Mexico desert? It was Christmas, I remembered now. I was nineteen, five foot three. I was born in New York. I remembered all these things, and then more all at once. Thoughts flooded in from childhood. Far away memories like when I threw a well-crafted paper airplane at Mrs. Conners’ face in the 1st grade. It had hit her square between the eyes and the whole class roared in laughter.

I sat down, right where I was. Right in the dirt and dug my earthy toes into the desert floor. My big toe touched something. It was smooth, foreign, but was it dangerous? My head was beginning to think straight, but only in bursts, then the acid would grab hold again and send me spinning. I was lying on my back, somewhere in the New Mexico desert, out of sight from the farm. A wave of worry distracted me from the mysterious black book. How would I get back to the farm? Had I wandered too far? Was this the end for me? I’d pushed my luck too far, I was sure of it. What's the worst that could happen if I dig it up? Did mother nature own it? Had she swallowed it up to hide from humanity? If I uncovered the rest of it would I be condemned for eternity? Was this a cosmic test? Had Timmy placed the black book there as a sick joke?

Oh hell! I needed the war in my head to end! Aggressively, before I could reconsider again, I jammed my hand under the black book and pulled it with ease from the desert. Nothing was written on the cover. I didn’t open it, not then. I couldn’t. Whatever was inside would be over my head in the state of mind. I elected to wait until my head cleared.

In the clouds above, and in the fading light of the high desert, I found peace. The clouds were gentle and orange, and the surrounding desert no longer felt like a mind field. I was finally, truly coming down. I took out my phone from my pocket and turned the front facing camera on myself. I laughed at the dirt coating my body and face. My dirty blonde hair was going every direction but down and somewhere along the way... I had lost my pants. They weren’t on my head though. I checked. I might have temporarily lost my mind, but at least I didn’t put my pants on my head like the rest of those fools back in the shack! I decided to walk back and see how the rest were doing, but mostly, I hoped to find Timmy safe at home in the shack.

Timmy was, in fact, back in the shack. But, not looking much better than what I remembered seeing during our trip. His face was weathered and his brown hair was tangled in strange loops like he’d gotten a perm from a blind monkey. Still, he offered a smile as we made eye contact and everything felt okay again. No sense trying to make any sense of what had just transpired and we both knew it. The pant-heads had already puttered out, each laying in their respective corners of the shack. Most of them didn’t have pants on their head anymore either.

The little black book was nagging at me, but I kept it hidden from the rest of the shack dwellers. Even from Timmy. Especially from Timmy. Once on my twin mattress, in my corner of the shack, with the room dim and everyone but Timmy asleep, I opened it. Despite the dim light, I could tell the first page was blank. And then the second, third and the rest. All blank. Even the last was blank, but the journal was not empty. Stowed behind the final page, secured with one piece of tape, I found a check for twenty-thousand dollars. And on the check, a note:

What you’ve found is a dying man’s savings. I lived a bad life. A wasted life. And now, as I’m dying, I realize what that life has left me - alone. Use this money to make your life better. Use it for good things, whatever you decide those things are. It’s your money. My only request is that as you spend this money, write in the journal too. Fill this book with stories of wild adventure, of impossible love, of a life well lived, because mine was not. When the money’s run out, and you’ve had your fun, and the book is filled, send it to:

338 Tallboy Avenue, Arizona