As Above, So Below

by Richard Lawther

  Cold feet...

  Alex paced the room. He’d repeatedly studied the article on LIFE but nothing new had emerged since the first reading. This drug wouldn’t give him any unmanageable hallucinations – that was good. It wouldn’t adversely affect his mood – that was good. It only lasted an hour – that was good.

  Good, good and good.

  On the other hand:

  Even during the toughest run-in with LSD it still remained the same you down there. Would he still be Alex Stanton as he wandered about in his wordless world? He might do something rash, like get run over, or fall off a building, or worse.., he might abuse someone! The Head article had touched on this aspect, but only briefly. If the facts were correct he’d still have the same instincts as before – he wasn’t going to turn into a wild animal.

  Despite all his rereading and his constant pacing, the essence of what lay ahead remained stubbornly beyond his grasp. Part of him wanted to put the whole thing off, or even forget about it altogether, but the other half, the one that basked in the adrenaline rush of fear, seemed keen to leap into the unknown.

  Alex’s cold feet continued to pace the room as his radio quietly droned away in the background:

  Newsreader: Other news now. Carlisle: Local farmers barracked Agriculture Minister, Michael Lane, today as he attended an emergency conference on sheep-worrying. The minister appeared visibly shaken by the ferocity of the attacks, but he later confronted the farmers’ charges of incompetence head on: ‘Yes, the government takes the issue of sheep worrying very seriously, and yes, I myself am greatly worried by it. But it’s not just a case of throwing money at the problem, we have to get at the root cause: what is it that’s actually worrying our sheep?’

  A quick look at sport now: Next Sunday’s Argentinean Grand Prix has been thrown into–

  Alex switched off the radio, picked up his keys and departed for Hammer’s.

  The first glimpse of Hammer’s street and a sudden flapping of stomach-butterflies. It was like seeing an exam room for the first time: he’d rushed his studies and something might have been missed – he could be in for a nasty shock.

  Get a grip!

  But that unshakeable rumble of doubt endured.

  He knocked on Hammer’s door and the nerves affected a temporary lull. The first action, whether it be switching on your calculator or entering the lion’s den, always helped shove fear to one side.

  Footsteps!

  The nerves came rushing back – worse than ever.

  The door opened.

  In front of him stood Maxim Lorus, Hammer’s oft-absent housemate. Alex had been a regular visitor to Hammer’s for well over eighteen months and in all that time he’d only met Lorus perhaps three or four times.

  Maxim Lorus was about forty; his tall and thin frame gave an impression of sinewy muscular strength: there were no indications of surplus fat – no beer-gut you normally associated with forty-year-old men. Lorus’ head was topped with a thick close-crop of iron-grey hair. His eyes, also grey, shed no light onto the workings of his impenetrable mind. His mouth, as always, remained unsmiling.

  ‘Hello, Alex, come in.’ Lorus held open the door and indicated the lounge. Alex’s nerves were now of the dentist’s-waiting-room variety.

  He stepped into the house.

  The lounge was full of student druggies. What had that arsehole Hammer done!? This was supposed to be a private thing, a low-key and exploratory investigation into the effects of a new psychedelic – if that’s what it was. Trust Hammer to turn this into a jamboree!

  The Man sat at the main table, holding court, spouting some old shit to a pair of fuckwit pot-heads. ‘Hi, Al, take a seat, if there is one.’ There wasn’t. ‘Take a floor, HA, HA.’ Hammer appeared stoned.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee, Alex?’ asked Lorus.

  A hush descended as the druggies awaited Alex’s reply:

  ‘Yes, thanks, err, milk, no sugar please.’ He’d just exchanged more words with Lorus than on all previous occasions combined.

  Along with the assorted pot-heads, speed-freaks, fuck-ups and junkies, the room also contained Hammer’s blonde girlfriend. She sat sullenly in the corner, clearly bored.

  Alex’s nerves evaporated and turned to disappointment; the experiment with diaketamine would be invalidated by this intrusive publicity; it would be postponed. He took a section of floor next to the squatting figure of Angle, a pony-tailed Media Studies student who acknowledged him with a military salute before returning to the grave business of rolling a joint.

  ‘How’s it going, Stant?’ Angle’s affected, rising-terminal accent incorporated erroneous elements of San Francisco and Melbourne into its basic Ludlow twang.

  ‘Going fine, man,’ replied Alex, as Angle handed him the burning joint.

  ‘Whoa, hold it,’ said Hammer, suddenly sober, ‘Al has to stay straight, he’s got a hepatitis B jab later – right, Al?’

  ‘Yeah, right, thanks for the reminder, Hammer.’ Alex took the joint and passed it on, unsmoked, to the next druggy.

  ‘Hepatitis B? You use needles, then?’ asked Angle, surprised and intrigued.

  ‘No, never used needles, this is just a routine jab. It’s offered, free of charge, to any student who wants it,’ Alex lied. It might well be true, though, for all he knew. He considered the implications of this little exchange: these guys didn’t know about the diaketamine – and Hammer wasn’t quite as daft as he seemed.

  Lorus came back with his coffee.

  ‘I never got given a coffee,’ complained Dean, situated to Angle’s right.

  ‘You never asked,’ replied Hammer.

  Alex glanced up at Hammer and received a quick wink in return. Hammer had been acting stoned for the druggy crowd, but he seemed straight now.

  The unbearable nervous tension returned as he drank his coffee and chatted with the other patrons.

  ‘You still doing that physics degree?’ asked a student called Elliot, ‘I was talking to Jordan, he said you’d dropped out.’

  ‘That’s an improvement on “dead”! Jordan’s full of shit, I’ve not dropped out, I’m still hanging in there, and I’ll get my degree.., pay no attention to Jordan.’ Alex bristled as he thought of Jordan spreading malicious rumours to anyone who would listen.

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t believe him,’ replied Elliot, helpfully.

  ‘What about you–’

  ‘Alex.’ It was Lorus. ‘I’ve got some information on the hepatitis jab, there are some side effects of which you should be made aware.’

  All of this artifice troubled Alex’s state of mind, so did Lorus’s obvious interest.

  Hammer piped up. ‘Yes, it’s in the second spare bedroom, Maxim.., actually it’s buried under a load of crap, I’ll show you. Excuse us, chaps. Come on, Al.’

  Alex followed Hammer as he headed for the stairs, and Lorus manoeuvred silently to the rear. When they arrived at the second bedroom Hammer closed the door and nodded to Lorus. The enigmatic forty-something reached into his pocket and retrieved a black leather wallet; from within one of its many compartments emerged a small packet of white crystalline powder. Alex felt sick.

  Lorus held up the transparent packet. ‘Diaketamine – pure. Do you know what this drug does?’

  ‘Yeah, it, err, shuts down the, err, talky part of the brain.’ Alex winced at his own banal description.

  ‘That is essentially correct,’ said Lorus after a short pause, ‘it shuts down activity in several key areas of the left temporal lobe; you will have no concept of language. After you take this you will inhabit a radically new world.’

  Alex now felt faint as well as sick and he slumped down onto a nearby packing case. Lorus sat next to him while Hammer looked on – transfixed.

  Lorus continued: ‘Don’t worry about this, Alex, you’ll be in complete control. The only time to be... wary, is right at the very start. As it kicks in, you’ll experience a kind of... seizure.’

  ‘What!!’ The Head had said nothing about that!<
br />
  ‘It’s... unsettling, but it quickly passes. After that–’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ began Alex, ‘this stuff is too risky. I’ll just stick to–’

  ‘There are no risks, Alex, none at all, it is completely safe, and furthermore, this stuff is fucking dynamite! the greatest drug in the world!’ Lorus held a fearsome glint in his eyes, very disturbing.

  For the first time, Hammer cut in: ‘Look, I’ll have to go back downstairs in a moment. Al, you got the cash?’

  Alex was tempted to say he’d forgotten the money; he regarded Hammer and then Lorus, but the gatekeepers of Dis just blandly stared back. He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a bundle of cash. ‘One hundred, I’ll take the two scores.’

  Hammer took the money, and Lorus extended a bony arm.

  He gave Alex the diaketamine.

  ‘Are you going to do it now?’ asked Hammer, as the three men walked back down the stairs.

  ‘Yeah, fuck it, after Maxim’s sales pitch, I can’t ... there’s no going back now, grasp the nettle, etc.’

  ‘Yeah, by both horns,’ added Hammer. ‘Go to Deepdale Enclosure, Maxim will go with you, just in case. He knows what to do if you–’

  ‘If I what!?’ demanded Alex.

  ‘I’ll just see you on your way, Alex – provide you with some kind of continuity as you make the transition,’ advised the paternal Lorus.

  Hammer was keen to close this conversation and return to the others. ‘When you’re up and running, Maxim will return here–’ It all sounded so well organized, thought Alex. ‘–head for the union bar, I’ll see you there about three-thirty or four. You got your phone?’Alex nodded. ‘Good. You’ll be fine, but if you do go AWOL, we’ll get to you asap... and Alex..?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Good luck!’

  Hammer returned to the lounge leaving Alex alone with Lorus.

  As the two men walked briskly to the nearby park Alex found himself deep in thought: What defined his conscious mind? Was it the omnipresent inner voice? – The English Language Speaker? – that entity or ‘self’ that planned ahead and defined events and articulated emotions? What would it be like when that was gone? Would anything be left? It wasn’t too late to call off this madness. Then again, maybe it was: Alex’s curiosity had finally won the battle against his fear.

  In less than five minutes the small triangular park of Deepdale Enclosure came into view; its early spring trees remained bare of foliage but the countless buds served notice of impending change. The two men sat down at one of the park benches – and waited.

  Apart from one elderly woman and her small highland terrier, the park remained deserted. The two portly figures ambled slowly up the central path towards the sitting men, seemingly taking a lifetime to arrive.

  The woman moved by, but then halted as her terrier discovered an interesting smell at the base of a tree trunk. She waited patiently and the seconds ticked by, but the dog remained rooted to the spot while it steadily decoded the various dog-pee aromas. The woman began to edge away, encouraging the dog to follow with a call of its name, but the dog stuck fast. The stubborn little bastard.

  In frustration, Alex took his eyes off the dog and peered up through the overhanging branches to the mainly cloudless sky above. The English Language Speaker made its final pleas: “Call it off!! This is madness!!”

  ‘Come on, Barry!’ The dog finally trotted after the old woman, happily oblivious to the stress it was causing. A minute later, the park was empty.

  Alex searched his pocket and removed an old train ticket. He folded it in half, and then opened it up again. Next, he took the packet of diaketamine and sprinkled half of the contents into the fold of the ticket. Lorus handed him a rolled up twenty and Alex put it to his nose. At this point he realized that he needed an extra hand. Lorus took the powdered ticket while Alex blocked a nostril and shoved the banknote into the powder. Closing his eyes, he violently snorted the powder.

  It all disappeared in one go.

  At last, done.

 

  Let there be light.

  Everything that made up Alex Stanton’s mind became inundated by blinding white light. Vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch; all memories, all emotions, all thoughts. Everything translated into the purest brilliance. Everything reduced to empty whiteness.