Star-Spangled Apocalypse

by Harmon Cooper

  Chapter 5: Salvia Divinorum

  “My fuck is your roommate a dick,” James said as he lit his cigarette. The men were now in front of a detached garage. A Tibetan prayer flag nailed onto the edge of the roof beat in the light breeze.

  “Don’t take him too seriously,” Virgil said, “he’s always threatening something.”

  “It’s sad to see someone so uninformed.” James looked to Virgil for confirmation, but the younger barista didn’t give it to him. They knew each other’s stances; better not to dig too deep. “By the way,” James said, changing the subject, “we will need to get some more whiskey for this journey.”

  Virgil lifted the garage door open and took a step back. “Easy. Tony has some whiskey that he has been saving for a special occasion. He claims it is very special Canadian whiskey and that it is way better than anything we have here in the states. He definitely won’t let us have it, but he also wouldn’t know if we, um, borrowed it?”

  James recalled the stolen diamond ring in his shirt pocket, the one he took off the lady at the McStarbucks.

  Now is as good a time as any to become a thief.

  “Good call. Also, do you have any extra wheels for the bikes in your front yard? Always good to have a backup; who knows how far the jeep will get us.”

  “The ones up front are some old ass bikes that came with the place. Those are the bikes we want.”

  Virgil pointed to the left-hand corner of the garage. Behind a couple of broken chairs were a pair of nice looking mountain bikes, one red with a small Canadian flag tied under the seat and the other white with a couple of faded stickers on the frame. The red bike had a flat tire, but other than that, the bikes were in perfect condition.

  “Meow.” Arjuna the cat walked past the bikes, weaving his tail through the bike frames.

  “If you can’t tell, the red one is Tony’s, which has never been ridden, and the purple one is mine. I have a pump somewhere around here so we can fix the tire. I think it is behind the fake bamboo tree in the opposite corner.” Virgil motioned his head to the opposite corner of the garage. “Also, the bike harness is under that Christmas tree box.”

  “Cool.” For the next few minutes, James made his way through the garage investigating the various objects he uncovered. “Okay, we have freshly pumped bikes, biscotti, cash, some clothes. Hey, does Tony have any guns?”

  “You think we really need guns?”

  Christ, these liberals.

  “Look, Virgil, I know you aren’t into violence, and believe me I’m not either, but remember our previous conversations on Armageddon skills? You know, the ones in which the shopkeeper came after us with butcher knives or the one in which his house was lined with rabied-up pitbulls? Weapons are a must.” James unscrewed his flask and took a large gulp.

  “I think Tony has a pellet gun around somewhere around here. It looks just like a pistol. I’ll look for it.”

  James sighed, the whiskey burning his throat. “A pellet gun?”

  “You said you liked swords, right?”

  James recalled the sword that he almost killed himself with a few days back. “Yeah, sure, I like swords.”

  “Then look no further!” James followed Virgil’s index finger and grinned. A large katana in a sheath decorated with two dragons sat haphazardly next to a discarded EBAYmazon box. The dragons were wrapped around the circumference of the sheath, nipping at each other’s tails.

  James went for the weapon, grabbed the sheath, and pulled the sword out.

  “Not bad.”

  He looked at his reflection via the shiny blade and traced the lines on his broad forehead as he gazed briefly into his own troubled eyes. Taking a deep breath in, James pivoted onto his other foot and drove the blade through a box.

  Arjuna let out a shriek and ran towards Virgil’s feet as James stabbed the box again.

  Virgil cleared his throat. “Well, as I was saying earlier, or at least I think I told you earlier, tonight would be the perfect night to use a divination tool.”

  “What type of tool?” James put the katana in its sheath and hooked the sheath to his belt loop. “Also, where’s that pellet gun?”

  Virgil looked around for another moment then pointed at a box to the right of the dryer. James flung open the box, grabbed the gun, loaded a magazine, and fired a shot into the wall of the garage.

  “Not bad,” he said as Arjuna bolted out of the garage.

  Virgil shook his head. “Thanks for scaring my cat.”

  “It happens.”

  “Anyway, have you heard of Salvia Divinorum? Or Salvia for short?” Virgil asked.

  “I think I read an article in the paper about some high school kid smoking that stuff and driving his car into his living room and killing his parents.”

  “It happens. But in all seriousness, salvia isn’t your normal divination tool. It isn’t your normal hallucinogen either.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I believe that using a little of it may guide us on our journey.”

  “You do?” James started to roll his eyes, but stopped when he saw the conviction on Virgil’s face. “Fine, fine.”

  ***

  Here we go, James thought as Virgil launched into his explanation.

  “If people really understood salvia, they would know that it produces a female god once inhaled. If a male who isn’t in touch with his feminine side smokes salvia, it will produce a pretty fucked up effect. These are just the facts I’m telling you here, dude. Salvia was discovered by Gordon Wasson in a shaman’s garden in Mexico. So, yeah, the shit is basically the shaman’s secret stash, from Mexico.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  “So, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to get in a meditative space, utilize the salvia to open channels to another dimension, and figure out our next step. I know it might sound a little strange, but I have done it before and it is surprisingly successful. Last time I used salvia, I needed a question answered. Boy did I get my answer…”

  James sliced his katana into one of Tony’s television boxes. He looked like a vampire slayer with his katana and pellet gun tucked into the front of his pants.

  “Heads up!” Virgil pulled the tire pump out of a small plastic crate near the garage door and tossed it at James, who quickly sheathed the katana and caught the pump in midair. “Damn, man, you got grace.”

  “Thanks. Also, what was this answer you got when you took salvia?” James asked again. “You never mentioned that to me.”

  “I was invited on a trip to west Texas about two years ago to go on a vision quest with some friends. I had had a bad dream about the trip two nights before we were supposed to leave. Anyways, I didn’t quite comprehend the warning of the dream, but I did know something wasn’t right.”

  “And then you smoked salvia?”

  “Yup. I needed to see if I could possibly find a solution to the strange anxiety I was experiencing. I sat in my usual spot, steadied my mind for a bit, and inhaled a large amount of the plastic tasting stuff. As soon as I exhaled, I experienced this fucking terrifying feeling of being hooked from the back of my neck.” Virgil placed his hand on his neck. “I was ripped skyward as my consciousness struggled to maintain equilibrium. I really don’t know how to explain how salvia makes its taker feel…”

  Virgil paused, searching for the right words.

  “Crazy?”

  “That’s the understatement of the year. All of a sudden, I looked down and saw my hands moving forward like I was flying. I noticed these small television looking things. Imagine a million televisions spiraling towards an infinite core. These weren’t your normal televisions though, their individual casings were fleshy and pink, and each television was playing a different reality happening in the world at the same time I was experiencing this ‘stream of consciousness.’”

  “I see.”

  “Anyhow, as I floated along looking at everything happening in the world in an infinite moment, I noticed one particular television short circuiting,
which obviously caught my attention. I floated over to it and reached to pick it up. As I reached toward it, it shrank in size, and I instinctively plucked this short-circuiting television out of this wall of televisions. As soon as I did this, the other TVs melted into its spot, like totally replacing it.”

  James finished inflating the tire and lit a cigarette as Virgil finished his story. He walked over to the washer and dryer, examining what appeared to be a collection of bobbleheads near the detergent. His mind drifted back towards what Virgil was saying as he watched one of the heads tremble.

  “…So here I was, floating in the stream of consciousness looking at the television I had just plucked and holding it by its stem like it was a flower. I looked closer and saw an image of my bro’s jeep burning on the highway, and my friends and I lying around the vehicle. I knew instantly we were all dead. As soon as I understood the image, I blew at the television like one would blow a dandelion, and the little TV shattered into a billion pieces all over the other televisions.”

  Virgil pantomimed blowing a dandelion to show James exactly what he meant.

  “I opened my eyes and decided that I probably shouldn’t go on the trip to west Texas. I warned my friends, but they went anyway. I got word a few weeks later that they had been in a horrible car wreck killing my friend’s girlfriend, who I’d known since like the fucking fifth grade. Now, I am not saying that salvia can see the future, but it sure did for me in this instance. That shit basically saved my life.”

  “Whatever, Virgil. If smoking this shit will help you, then by all means, do it. Just don’t go crazy on me. This shit doesn’t last long, does it?”

  “That’s the other thing – the effects of the hallucination only last for a few minutes. I’ll be back to my good ol’ self pretty quickly after smoking it.”

  “Good. And it’s legal?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Close enough. Back to the situation at hand: we need to find another flashlight or two, maybe some non-perishable foods from the pantry, Tony’s whiskey – all you have to do is tell me where it is, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t notice that it’s gone.”

  “I have a large flashlight in my room that I’ll grab before we leave. Hey, what should we do with the coffee cambro? I mean it might be useful to have a large container…”

  “Let’s just keep it empty for now,” James replied. “Whenever we stop to get gas, we can fill it up as well. I saw a small tube behind a box over in the corner; we can use that to transfer the gas from the cambro to the jeep. It shouldn’t be too hard to transfer some gas. Actually, that totally won’t work. Fuck it. We’ll fill it up with gas anyway. Maybe we can trade it.”

  “It’s prophesy time, bro-migo. I need to prepare myself if I’m going to smoke salvia.”

  “Got it.”

  Virgil tossed James the keys to the jeep. “I’m going to head to my room to get ready for the mind journey. I’ll give you some instructions at that point as to how you can help me. Tony’s whiskey is in the fifth cupboard, to the left, above the sink.”

  “Got it and, um, good luck with your preparations.”

  ***

  Roughly an hour and a half later, after the sun had set, James softly knocked on Virgil’s door.

  Virgil opened the door and silently motioned him in.

  The thick stench of nag champa incense attacked James’ nostrils as he followed Virgil to the window. He grimaced; the odor was too powerful for such a small room, and he felt even more uncomfortable once Virgil lit some sage and walked to the corners of the room, cleansing the space.

  Without further ado, Virgil opened the window and stepped outside.

  “Hey,” James began to say as he felt a tremor in his heart.

  From his perspective, it looked like Virgil had basically hopped out the window, but this thought was quickly squashed when the younger barista stood up and beckoned him forward.

  “I see …”

  The tiny deck that covered Tony and Virgil’s front door created a small balcony outside Virgil’s window, a space not fully visible from inside the room. Shaded by a tree, the makeshift balcony was decorated with a bright orange collapsible chair and a rolled-up yoga mat on the ground.

  “Are you coming?” Virgil yelled to James through the open window. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “Right behind you,” James grunted. He stepped out of the window and refamiliarized himself with what he saw. Fires burned in the distance, the sound of ambulances, police cruisers, fire trucks and explosions made up the cacophony of the apocalypse.

  “Almost time.” Virgil sat cross-legged, staring out across the tumultuous napalm skyline. He held in one hand a small pipe, and in the other, a blue Bic lighter decorated with the Dallas Cowboys emblem. “You can take the seat behind me.”

  “Got it,” James said as he sat in the collapsible orange chair pressed up against the house.

  “Okay, so I’m going to smoke this a second here, and I need your help making sure that I don’t jump off the ledge here.” He nodded left, right, and center. “As soon I exhale the second time, I want you to wait about thirty seconds and tell me to open my mind to my mind. Can you do that? And if I get up or anything, grab me. Hold me down. You have my permission.”

  This is going to be weird. James took a sip of his flask and nodded at the back of Virgil’s head. “I’m ready when you are.”

  “The effects of the drug will only last five minutes, which doesn’t give me a lot of time to waste. No worries though, I should be prepared enough by now to get most of the information presented to me. At least I hope so.”

  “No problem, man,” James said as he gravely observed the post-apocalyptic sky.

  I can’t believe I’m buying into this. James swallowed the thought down with another small gulp from his flask.

  “Here goes nothing,” Virgil said as he raised the pipe to his mouth and lit it.

  James did as he had been instructed, reminding Virgil to “open his mind to his mind” and sat patiently as Virgil convulsed, leaned forward, and started shaking his head like a rabid dog.

  Suddenly, the younger barista snapped his back straight.

  He sat quietly for the next few minutes, humming a single tone. As he hummed, the wind picked up in strength.

  As James watched his counterpart, his mind shot back to their evacuation plan.

  He wanted to avoid the main highways, especially I-35, but he was also a little wary of driving through small town Texas, especially during what he was convinced was the start of Armageddon.

  If anyone is going to have an arsenal, it’ll be those fuckers.

  His thoughts were interrupted when Virgil stood up, turned, and peered into James’ bloodshot eyes.

  It was a stare of a man who had seen the devil himself.

  “We have to leave,” Virgil whispered. “Now.”

  Chapter 6: A Newborn Journey with Wild Wolves All Around It

  Packing up had been rather easy in the time James had given Virgil to prepare himself for his hallucinatory experience.

  Knowing Tony’s whiskey was in a cupboard in the kitchen, it didn’t take the older barista long to get up the nerve to steal it. After all, he’d already robbed somebody once today, and there really was no sense in stopping the theft train. Only problem was that Tony’s door was open, the entrance to the kitchen in plain sight.

  So, James took his time.

  He stuck to the living room with his eyes open and his ears pinned on any movement in Tony’s room.

  Boy does this guy listen to a lot of fake news …

  Once he heard Tony start to snore, he sprang into action.

  James stole the whiskey and ran down to the jeep, stashing one bottle under the passenger’s seat and one bottle in the back. He filled Ol’ Faithful up, and it was right around this time that he decided to see if Virgil was ready to smoke the salvia.

  But that was nearly an hour ago, and things were different now.

  The journey had be
gun. The whiskey was stashed, Virgil’s epiphany, while obvious as fuck, had already happened.

  Now the only thing that separated them from their destiny was a couple days’ journey.

  “Colorado, here we come,” James whispered as he drove along a feeder road to Highway 183, avoiding much of the traffic on the main road. Next to the east Texas good ol’ boy sat Virgil, who busied himself by tracing invisible circles with his right pointer finger.

  It was almost too quiet on the streets, which added a bit to the eeriness of the situation. James imagined I-35 was fucked though – after all, the constantly congested highway actually cut through downtown Austin.

  He’s a drug addict, a voice said at the back of his mind.

  James scoffed at this. What am I supposed to do about that? He remembered talking to the younger barista about six months ago about it, cautioning him to be careful with hallucinogens, but the problem with addicts giving addicts addiction advice is self-explanatory.

  There is something dangerous about opening Pandora’s Box, James remembered telling him at the time, surprised that those were the words came out of his mouth.

  At the same time, James knew that he had no right to point his finger. After all, he did say this to the younger barista while pouring a shot of whiskey into a cappuccino.

  Have I opened Pandora’s Box myself? James thought as pulled up behind one of those Texas trucks that he wished he had. Wheels the size of kiddie pools, and enough testosterone to fuel a war. James had had a truck when he was younger, but nothing like the big ol’ fuckers on the roads these days.

  His sword experience from three days ago came to him. I could have done it right there. Why did I stop?

  James swallowed the thought, stuck it in a box, filled the box with cement, wrote Pandora on it, and tossed the trapped thought into the ocean of his psyche.

  Someone needs to talk. James flipped on the radio and turned to BreitFox radio news.

  ~~~~ … See, folks, these media moguls, these Weinsteins and Hollywood liberals aren’t like you and me. They live in mansions, huge estates, bigger than you or I can imagine. They aren’t like you, these leftists, they aren’t like you the forgotten men and women of America. This is why, as I’ve suggested before, it is too damn early to call who attacked Austin, Texas, liberal hellhole that it is. We need the facts before we pass judgment, unlike everyone in the liberal mainstream media. I mean, you saw Morgan Freeman, right? What kind of actor gets on TwitchTube Red and says that Russia attacked Austin and uses evidence of some Russian general saying he attacked the city to prove his point? Give me a break!~~~~