The Time I Thought I Was Satan

This story is about drugs. Of course, as an aspiring lawyer, I would never incriminate myself by publicly admitting to illegal drug use! For the purposes of this story, lets say I was using aspirin. I promise this will make sense, but first let me set the scene.

Halloween 2019 - though I didn't know it then, this was to be my all-time favourite Halloween. I love this holiday - an excuse to dress up in my most daring outfits, get outrageously battered, and eat all the chocolate my heart desires. By about 5PM, me and my friends had already been thrown out of three pubs for being too intoxicated, so we moved the party back to our house for a quick power nap. At 9PM that night, we were to leave for the opening night at Area 404 in Bristol, their big Halloween apocalypse party. I don't know how familiar you are with the Boomtown events, but every year they point on a spectacle of a festival, full of extravagant costumes, enthusiastic actors, and full facades are built for their stages (all designed around various themes). This was to be Boomtown's debut "nightclub" event - I use the word nightclub loosely because they had effectively built a whole town as a venue, but more on that later.

We woke up at 8PM, and spent the next hour rushing to shower, sober up enough to be allowed in the club, and put on our costumes. I, in classic basic-bitch fashion, went as a slutty zombie schoolgirl. We packed ourselves into an Uber, and made it there with plenty of time to spare. My friend, lets call him Monty, popped round the corner to hide his supply of aspirin in a place I'd rather not disclose. Ten minutes later, we were walking up to the glowing sign at the entrance of the club. Hundreds of people were milling about, each costume cooler than the last - there were people in full steampunk gear, group costumes of the spice girls, angels and demons, and even a group of men dressed as various condiments. Excited to start our night, we went into that tiny portaloos and took some aspirin. We immediately strutted over to the bar, where I bought a round of over £120, and that's where the night starts to get a little blurry for me.

I won't bore you with the details - honestly I don't think I could if I wanted to as I remember almost nothing! There were rooms with mannequins legs hanging from the ceiling, jazz-rock bands playing remixes of old 80s hits, people in their mid-20s throwing up all over the place, and security guards doing drugs in the corner. What I'm trying to explain, is that the whole place was chaotic in the most spectacular way.

Fast forward to about 3AM, and I've lost all sense of reality. I didn't know where my friends were, what had happened to my phone, how much aspirin I'd had, or who the people I was with were! I'd ended up making a whole new group of friends somewhere along the way. We ended up in a dark room, lit up with flashing red lights, and a DJ playing some (absolutely amazing) hard techno. It was here, that I forgot who I was. I forgot where I was, what I was doing - all there was in this world, was the silhouette of the DJ, the flashing red lights, and the all-encompassing music. There must have been a hundred other people in that room, but they all vanished. And then my mission came to me - I had to kill the DJ.

I'll put this the way I saw it at the time - I was Satan, on a top secret mission to kill God. God, of course, was the DJ. He controlled the room, and the lights, and thus he controlled my whole world at the time. I couldn't possibly explain the logic behind it, but all I knew was that I had to eliminate him. I know you're probably thinking "what the fuck?!" but I genuinely could not elaborate further if I tried because I, too, have no idea what I was thinking. Thankfully, the aspirin was both a blessing and a curse for me that night. After having become determined to complete my mission, I started to walk towards the DJ. Except I didn't.

Have you ever tried on ski boots? You know that feeling, like the lower half of your calf, your ankle, and your foot, is trapped in a block of concrete? That's what happened to me. I had no control whatsoever of the lower part of my body - and not in a "slipping around, jelly legs" kind of way - I mean the bottom half of my legs may as well have been made of stone. So the moment I tried to take a step, the top half of my body went forwards, and when the bottom half didn't, I fell straight to the floor in the most comical of ways. Smack bang face first on the floor. And then reality came rushing back. My friends were laughing at me, the DJ was just a DJ, and I was most certainly not sent to kill him. I stood up, and the laughing stopped. It took me a minute to realise that I was covered, drenched, in blood.

It turns out when I fell flat on my face, I broke my nose. Smashed it, obliterated the cartilage. My friends tried to take me to medical, but thanks to the aspirin, I couldn't feel anything - aspirin is one hell of a painkiller. So we finished the night out. At 7AM, as shells of our former selves, we crawled towards the taxi rank. I thought about the night, about how much of a mess I was, the entire ride home. The bleeding had thankfully stopped, but seeing my reflection in the window made me question every decision I'd ever made. The decision came to me then, to be better. To not be such a liability all the time, to not abuse aspirin, and waste my youth partying when I could be studying and thinking about my future. To care more about others, be more selfless and kinder. I decided, in that taxi ride, that I was going to re-convert to Christianity, and re-discover my connection with God, and to use religion to help me become a better person.

This revelation lasted all of six hours. By the time I had got home and napped, I was back to my normal self. So when my housemate came to my room and said "pub?" at 4PM that day, I said "yeah, you got any aspirin left?" and off we headed. It was a nice moment, my brief elation, but alas it was not meant to be. I do try now to be kinder to others, because at least this way when I go out on an aspirin-fuelled five day bender, people will have nice things to say at my funeral. But I am young, and if the occasional hallucination and broken facial feature is the price I have to pay to enjoy my youth, so be it.