Magpie Tales#63

Tess at Willow Manor has a psychedelic prompt for us this week to help keep our Muses alive and well

Bad Trip

  First I phoned the police and got put through to the Drugs unit. Then I phoned my tutor. Could he meet me? I named a bar in the West End. Not the usual students' watering hole. A bit posh.  He agreed like I thought he would.

  He was there when I got there and looked sniffy when I wanted only juice. The barman set it on the marble counter. Beautiful, Italian stuff, black mottled with pink veins. Very expensive. Very solid.

  "So how was the trip, Lucy?"

  "Isn't LSD old hat? I thought this was the E era?'

  "We have to start somewhere."  He's the sort that uses a beard to mask a warped mind.

  "My trip? Well, it started with coloured lights coming at me but never getting any closer, sort of curtains of shifting colours, like the Northern Lights. Too bright to look at but still there when you close your eyes. And spinning. When they stood still, I was spinning. I thought the lights were bad till the frogs started. I was nude and covered in frogs, all different colours. I could feel them, slithery. And they stared. It seemed to go on for hours. I freaked. I could feel myself screaming and pleading with them but couldn't hear anything. The biggest one got one of my hands in its mouth. I could feel my hand being crunched. I couldn't shake it off. Then the frogs turned to stars that burst into bits of coloured glass, swirling around and shifting. The bits chased me round my room."

  "Not unusual" he said. "Lights better than frogs, eh?"

  "You could say that, except as I began to come out of it, I found I really was undressed and I'd been dribbling everywhere because my period had started and I'd smashed up a lot of my stuff."

   "Sorry about that. Valuable stuff? PC?"

    His unconcern was monumental. Was he stoned?  

   "That was my trip. Thanks, Partyman.  You really sewed up my education for me."

   "You only graduate once, Luce!" 

    "You ever have hallucinations like that? Frogs eating you alive. Stars exploding at you. Your own blood dribbling down your legs? And just as a matter of interest - where are my clothes? And how did I get home?"

  "You were the star turn, Lucy!  Hal . . lucinations. Lucy nations. Like it! Froggy bits not nice, though" He made it sound as if it should have been nice, really. "Your trips will get better. With practise. I promise. You need something stronger. I've some lines of coke? In my office?"

  Some things are just too much.

  "Ever seen a marble counter close up?" I said

  "Pardon?"

  "I mean, really close up?"

  "I'm not following."

  I put my hand on the back of his neck and shoved his head down. When his nose hit the marble I said "That close!" and the barman said "Bloody hell, lady!'

  "He's seeing stars. And I'm going quietly."

  I said something about how feeding drugs to students might just cost him his job if the Red Tops got to hear about it. And then, "By the time you've wiped your tears away and shanked it back to your office, the drugs squad will be snorting . . sorry . . sorting their way through your stash."

  I walked back to my ransacked room, thinking maybe the dope hadn't worn off, 'cos I'd just shopped a university professor and given him a bartop kiss and my heart rate hadn't gone up a hairsbreadth.  Then I started laughing so much I had to sit on a garden wall for a bit, thinking, if he's a typical male he'll put it all down to the time of the month . . .