Star-Spangled Apocalypse

by Harmon Cooper

  As he stumbled, Virgil reminded himself to calm down, to just relax.

  The frenzied panic of the LSD said otherwise, invigorating him to wander aimlessly as he ground his teeth, clenched his fists together, sweated profusely.

  The roots of all the gnarled oak trees twisted into the ground like oversized earthworms, the flesh of the worms accented with bristly, coarse hairs. Insects buzzed into the crevices of his ears, purring an ambient white tune that would drive a normal man mad.

  But Virgil was no normal man, mad yes, but normal no.

  Virgil had done more hallucinogens than anyone he knew, and anyone he knew knew; if there was a superhero of hallucinatory experiences and expert control, and this superhero wasn’t trite or an overbearing stereotype, that superhero would be named Virgil.

  Determination moving through him like a banshee, Virgil stumbled towards a small clearing, his mind set on finding his way back to Hope’s home.

  I’ll listen to the earth, she’ll tell me the way.

  Virgil lay down in front of a large, warped rock. Soft mother earth caressed his skin, swelled in and out, held him close. He inhaled the smell of the forest floor; it was pungent, fresh, and inviting.

  Is the earth breathing?

  Virgil put his ear to the ground.

  The sounds that came to him were numerous and varied: whispers, screams, love being made, shoes dancing, weapons firing, lightning cracking, cars driving, babies crying, phones ringing, animals howling, people dying, people laughing, bombs exploding, people talking, committees meeting, families gathering, cash registers closing, prisoners weeping, guns loading, highways tolling, money stacking, glaciers melting, pundits lying, power plants polluting, and children starving.

  “It’s too much,” he whimpered, a wave of emotion coming over him.

  Meeeeooow.

  “Ar...Arjuna?”

  Virgil sat up from his fetal position and began looking around.

  Everything his magnifying eyes crossed was clearer than ever before. He sighed, gazed deeply at a blade of grass, tracing the plight of a shiny ladybug from the bottom to the top of the blade; the blade appeared glossed over like a vinyl record in the setting sun.

  Virgil smiled dejectedly.

  Another tear formed and flowed down his face.

  He put his finger to the tear and reached out towards the blade of grass, watching a silvery bubble that formed between his finger and the blade. He moved back into a fetal position.

  Meeeeooow.

  Virgil sat up again.

  Sitting on the rock in front of him was Arjuna, his abandoned cat.

  The hair that formed the outline of Arjuna’s body looked like the blades of a moving fan. His orangey coat seeped through the outline of his body, filtering into the clearing behind him, mixing into the background of old tree trunks and adding a bonfire colored tint to everything.

  “Arjuna…?”

  The phantom Arjuna meowed at him again. The meow echoed through the trees and seemed to float on the wind like an absentminded balloon.

  The wavy features of Arjuna crystallized with every blink of the cat’s eyes, creating a brief moment of clarity that was beyond explanation.

  “Are you real?” Virgil asked as he looked at Arjuna, afraid to touch him. Arjuna cocked his head to the right, and looked at Virgil like he was joking with him.

  I sit before you, real as you or me.

  Virgil lay back down on the grass, this time resting his head on his hand.

  “Go away.” Virgil closed his eyes trying his best to ignore the strange being.

  It’s a hallucination.

  His eyes began focusing on the storyboard of images circulating in his mind’s eye, all spiraling towards the center of what looked to be an illustrious seashell.

  Suddenly, as the giant seashell merged into another form, Virgil noticed Arjuna blurring into focus on the inside of his eyelids. Each individual hair on Arjuna’s back stood up at attention and one at a time, in a celestial wave, flickered off into the moment, wiggling their individual ways into the brushy abyss.

  Open your eyes and follow me.

  Virgil shook his head with his eyes closed. “I’m…I’m not ready to leave, not ready to die. Please, Arjuna.”

  Die? Arjuna’s whiskers slowly filtered up into a smile. Come, Virgil, I want to show you something.

  Chapter 11: Arjuna and the Jiggaman

  A stream of golden butterflies, tiny supernovas, floating stained glass lotuses, and sparkly semi-translucent specks of glittering sawdust cauliflowered out of the earth with each step that the phantom Arjuna took, reflecting broken shards of light to every tree or bush Virgil meandered his way past.

  Virgil caught his leg on a root, and fell knee first to the earth below. His body hit the soil, creating a splash of bright, flesh pink colors on the insides of his eyelids that quickly dissipated into deep emerald green glow.

  Arjuna looked back at Virgil and waited for him to get back on his feet, the earth throbbing beneath Virgil’s leathery palms.

  “Just... leave...me here,” he whispered to the phantom cat, who sat on a contorted tree stump in front of him.

  Take too much did we? There’s no turning back now...

  The telepathic cat’s words bubbled in Virgil’s mind as he labored relentlessly to pick himself up. He set his head back down on a wet patch of grass and glanced back up at the glittering feline, staring in a mixture of horror and awe as yellow flower petals began falling to the ground from Arjuna’s sun burnt coat.

  As they touched the ground, spiny legs with fluorescent, zebra-like patterns pushed their way out of the circumferences of each lemonade petal.

  Soon, all the flower petals looked like insects trapped on their backs, slowly struggling to pull themselves to an upright position.

  The insects emitted a bizarre high-pitched noise, like the cacophony of whales singing to each other over a mile of ocean. Long tentacles with sticky hairs grew from the back of the yellow flower petal insects.

  Virgil sat up quickly as the insects moved closer to him. One crawled up his leg and disappeared into the flesh near his knee.

  Virgil ripped off his dinner jacket and began swinging the jacket at the insects as Arjuna watched, licking his paws.

  Are you ready to come with me?

  Time had disappeared, infinity had vanished.

  The darkness of the forest swelled and oozed, painting abstract humanesque silhouettes on the mossy ground. Each silhouette interacted with the one next to it, surging then merging into large ink blots that looked like mangled continents.

  The phantom continents ballooned and disintegrated into shadowy psychedelic forms akin to Pangaea’s collapse and aftermath. Soon, the ink blots grew even larger, forming giant amoebas that splashed into the trees like tidal waves.

  Amidst the seismic, silhouette ridden chaos, Virgil grew increasingly concerned that the neon insects seemed to be gaining on him.

  They moved closer, their pinchers clicking together as they neared Virgil. The rhythm of their clicking created a complex cadence of taps and ticks that accented the LSD infused tsunami of time spiraling through the young barista as he lay down in the dirt.

  Virgil looked up at Arjuna. “I can’t… I can’t go any further.”

  With a predatory smile on his whiskered face, the hallucinatory feline sulked over to the bugged-out former coffee slinger. He sat, tucked his front paws under his body, closed his eyes and started purring.

  “So, this is it, huh?” Virgil clenched his eyes shut and choked back a sob.

  As he lay face first in front of Arjuna, a beautiful, melodious tone erupted from the opposite end of the forest. The all-encompassing sound was accompanied by a series of flashes and powerful electrical sparks.

  A slow ripple in time moved towards Virgil, briefly crumbling everything around him like plastic bags. The ambient hum that followed flooded his senses, water-boarded his consciousness, filleted his psyche.

  Open your e
yes. This is what I wanted to show you.

  Standing behind Arjuna was a man dressed in an oversized black t-shirt, a black baseball hat, and a single gold chain, which dangled and sparkled as he swayed back and forth. The man held a flute near his dark jeans, jeans that sagged slightly beneath his waist. The light radiating behind him shielded the man’s entire body, making it hard for Virgil to make out the details of his form.

  “Who are you?” he asked from the back of his mind.

  Allow me to re-introduce myself, my name’s -----

  ***

  “We need to go find him.”

  Hope sat on a beanbag chair in her room, surrounded by Amita and James.

  “We really, really need to. Oh Virgy...” She pushed her dreadlocks aside and laid her head off the edge of the beanbag, gazing at the stars and galaxies she had painted onto her ceiling when she was nineteen years old.

  The galaxies and stars exploded every time Hope blinked or adjusted her gaze. She felt so bad for the people in Austin, so many people, good people who had died for nothing.

  A tear slowly slid down her face as James and Amita argued.

  “I could totally take you out, Jamessss!” Amita snarled. “You’re an East Texas pussy!”

  James glared at her. “You don’t know the firssst theeeng about martial artsss. Stupid!”

  He stood up on one leg and wobbled as he lifted his other into the air. He stumbled and caught himself just in time, making a Drunken Master pose.

  “You wasted assss!”

  “I’m nawwt eben that fuggin’ drrrunk! I jussss…had a sipper two.”

  To prove his point, James grabbed the nearest bottle of wine and chugged it, a trail of wine spilling from his chin to his shirt. He felt his phone buzz, knew he needed to charge the thing, but didn’t give a fuck at the moment.

  James collapsed into another beanbag chair, which created a loud umph and shook the ground of the upstairs bedroom. Amita, drunk herself, continued to pester him as he settled into the beanbag chair.

  “Fucking alcoholic! I bet you are allllways drunk, huh?”

  “Ahh, fuck dat. Ime jusss relaxin’. Sheet! Itzz freakin…Armageddoooon! Fuck. Get auff my fuggin’ assss!”

  Amita sat down on Hope’s bed, grabbed one of her pillows, and threw it at James. The former barista kicked his feet into the air to combat the pillow, which rolled him backwards over the beanbag chair. He collided with a small side table, which ended up catching onto a hanging cord of lights and ripping down a tapestry.

  The tapestry fell, taking a statue and a lamp with it.

  “Seee what you deed! Daaammmit, Ameeeta!” James bellowed. “Fucking Boodah statuee! Bullshit!”

  Hope sat up from her beanbag, her eyes narrowing at James.

  In the clarity of her hallucinatory blur, she saw James behaving like a child and enjoying it. She also saw Amita taking pleasure in stirring the flames. Drunken behavior looks different from a psychedelic perspective.

  Hope felt bad for Amita, who could sometimes only be fun and her true self while inebriated, and James, who seemed to function with alcohol as his only fuel source. She was also a little frightened – things were starting to get out of hand.

  “Ohhh,Virgy,” she murmured under her breath.

  “Fuck you, Jamesss!”

  “Eat my assss, Amita!”

  Hope waved her arms hysterically and called to both of them. “Guys, pay attention! We need to find Virgil!”

  Amita pointed a half empty wine bottle at James. “You think you are ssssoo tough, huh? You redneck fuckin’ inbred MAGA motherfucker!”

  “Da fuck you jus’ say?”

  “I challenge you to a duel, motherfucker.”

  “A doool? You stupid dumbassss, you don’t eben fuggin’ know what you’re sayin’, dammit!” James pulled out his flask, realized it was empty, and took a sip from the damn thing anyway.

  “Outside. Driveway.” Amita’s threw her hands wide. “Unless you’re a pussy.”

  “Amita!”

  James nodded, his lips in a snarl and his eyes cross as he rocked back and forth. “You’re gonna goddamn regret thisss.”

  ***

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because you asked to see me.”

  Virgil sat up, crossed his legs, and began swaying back and forth.

  His eyes traced the flute in the strange being’s hand and observed the circular keys on the flute’s stock. He still couldn’t understand why the man who stood in front of him appeared to be dressed like a rapper, or why he was radiant like an angel.

  He felt bombarded by the image and quivered with fear. The man’s voice was highly peculiar, it emitted from the man and at the same time from behind Virgil, secreting from what seemed like the back of his skull.

  “Who…are you?” Virgil gritted.

  “I am neither tangible nor an illusion. I am a vibration. I am the product of habit.” The man’s neck piece swung back and forth like the pendulum of an old clock. “I am the product of habit.”

  “How are you a vibration?” Virgil asked.

  The man in black adjusted his stance. He gripped the brim of his black ball cap with his free hand, stardust emitting from the brim of the hat and sprinkling to the ground.

  “The entire universe is a vibration. You and I are but single notes in an infinite symphony.”

  “Is it really Armageddon?” Virgil asked. He’d felt enough vibrations over the course of the last few hours and was ready to change the subject.

  “Armageddon is an infinite process,” the cloaked being answered. “Does a man at war not feel the suffering of Armageddon? Does a person being abused not feel the pain of Armageddon? Does an imprisoned being not see the visions of Armageddon play out on the wall in front of them? Does a person enslaved to another person not feeling the depravity of Armageddon? Armageddon is happening all the time. No change is possible without destruction, and what’s produced is produced to be destroyed.”

  Virgil looked at Arjuna, who purred quietly. The cat’s eyes opened slowly, the slits looking deep into Virgil’s heart. He shuddered and gradually raised his head back towards the cloaked entity.

  “Why…?” he asked weakly.

  “Politics as usual. Like my neck piece, time swings back and forth. It doesn’t stop yet it never started. Revolutions, technology, love, progress, regress; all are just cycles happening all at once. Never has there been a time when neither of us existed nor will either of us be absent from the future. All I see is life cycles just repeating themselves. I’ve seen hoop dreams deflate like a true fiend’s wait.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Virgil asked, his voice raising. “Who are you? And why are you dressed like a…a rapper?”

  The strange entity adjusted the brim of his hat. “You asked for me, did you not? And your habits have made it easier for me to show myself to you.” A ripple of radiance flickered off the man’s body as he pointed at Virgil. “You should know who I am, your cat is named from a famous story I participated in. My true nature, as the story goes, can be hard for most to handle.”

  “My cat is named Arjuna from the…wait.” Virgil gasped. “Krishna?! No. Fucking. Way. From…from…The Bhagavad Gita?” Virgil placed his hand over his eyes and started waving the hand up and down, hoping to snap himself out of it.

  The Bhagavad Gita was an epic Hindu poem that Virgil had read a few years back. Around this time, an orange cat began coming to his apartment and having just read about a character named Arjuna in the story, Virgil had given the name to the orange tabby.

  “This can’t be happening…” Virgil blinked rapidly. “It’s impossible…!”

  “Is this really the time to doubt?” Krishna asked. “You’ve come so far on belief alone. This journey that you and your companion have found yourselves on is as much a mental fabrication as I appear to be. However, it is also your destiny, part of your story.”

  “But…you…you are just a story written thousands of years ago! A stor
y I have read, therefore you are not real…figment of my imagination…you are just a story…you aren’t real! You are ... real? No, impossible, not real, not real!” The words spilled out of Virgil’s mouth as he sobbed. He tried to clear his head by rubbing his temples. His thoughts muddied, a voice inside his skull screamed for him to wake up, to come to grips with what was happening.

  “You’re just a story,” he whispered. “A story.”

  Krishna shrugged. “All of us are stories waiting to be told, ideas on the cusp. You are a story and so is the adventure that you have undertaken. We are birthed into immortality through the spread of other people’s stories and ideas. When you pass to the next level, your story will remain with the people who knew you, the people you interacted with, the people that understood you. When I leave here tonight, I will be a story as well, one that you might relate to others, or one that you might not. Regardless, I will have become a myth and my thoughts, an idea.”

  “But…no one is reading about me…I read about you. How can I be a story or a myth if no one knows?” Virgil wiped his tears away and looked up at who he assumed was a Hindu god.

  “Because you and I are both vibrations,” Krishna answered. “Like an orchestra, some people play louder instruments than others. However, all instruments complete the sound that emerges. All play their part. The symphony that is the universe can be divided infinitely, but by doing so, one will find that even on the subatomic level, all are vibrating, all are playing their parts. Viewing it at the macro level will spawn the same conclusion. Orchestrated chaos, music that will never be heard yet music that we’re all familiar with. Such is the glory of it all; such is the glory of unity. What more can I say? The masterpiece produced from this symphony is vast and boundless, and like the universe, always expanding, always revealing new parts, and above all, never-ending.”

  Virgil shook his head. “So, if it is never-ending, then what is dying?”

  “All I can say on the subject is that all things are innately immortal, it just depends on what one defines as alive. Everything becomes something else, and everything stems from what it was birthed from. If one dies on this plane of existence, he is born on another, and like most things, the opposite holds true. I simply do not know how something could ever truly die because to truly die, this thing must have, itself, truly lived, and that raises a question on existence itself. Both questions in regards to living and dying will continue to be pondered by all entities for all eternity. Such is the nature of existence.”