The Morning After The Night Before
by Bill Robertson
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: A psychedelic experience.
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Part 1: The Morning After
I wasn’t sure whether it was part of the comedown – but suddenly I didn’t want to stand up anymore. I lowered myself down and sat hunched over on the floor of the shower. Warm water streamed from above: like my own personal rain cloud. It made a hypnotic drumming sound that soothed me a little. I pulled myself tighter – letting the water wash the smell of sweat from my skin. I watched it blister on the glass sides of the shower, the larger drops succumbing to gravity’s pull, rushing headlong down the smooth surface to collect at the bottom. I sat there for a long time, lost in thought: waiting for the last residue of the long night to swirl down the plughole.
Part 2: The Night Before
The world turned orange just before the lights went out. I tasted it, felt it, and saw it. I even smelt it. The coincidences kept piling up: orange walls, orange rug, and the empty bottle of Tango that we drank. We had eaten tangerines, feeling the strange texture of their skins while you told me about the cars in Brazil powered by their zest. Then we got lost in the weave of the rug.
Darkness brought a whole new light.
We were sitting together across a thousand miles of room. Pinpricks of light flared out of the gloom like showers of dancing sparks passing through the air. As the sensory distortion kicked into high gear, I lay down on my back, feeling the walls expand. The ceiling seemed to stretch high above, an ocean of white infinity gently rippling a thousand hidden shades of colour trapped beneath its surface.
For a while, it seemed as if our thoughts were twinned, spinning in eccentric orbits, ricocheting off each other: phases, peaks and oscillations all in perfect sync.
Then things changed.
Each eye-blink brought an eternity trapped inside my own head: looping and spiralling through endless dead-end déjà vu back alleys until my eyes snapped open again, my heart pounding. Each random thought seems woven into the next, forming a thread that leads ever backwards.
I was starting to suspect that I was only someone else’s dream. My breath escaped in slow rasps as I found more hours hidden within each passing second.
Now I was deep in the grip of heavy acid paranoia, anxiety clawing along my skin. I went outside to get some air and saw the trees; their branches reaching towards me like skeletal fingers.
‘Be like a surfer – don’t fight the waves – ride them,’ you tell me.
Talking helps a little. Torrents of words spew out between each hyperventilated breath until I hit another trough and relax a little, but the next peak is always looming ominously on the horizon.
Later, lying in bed, I feel like I am on hold, frozen in time: afraid to move in case it makes a sound. The lucid periods were starting to get longer. My mind was slowly coming together again – like humpty dumpty in reverse.
Swearwords: None.
Description: A psychedelic experience.
_____________________________________________________________________
Part 1: The Morning After
I wasn’t sure whether it was part of the comedown – but suddenly I didn’t want to stand up anymore. I lowered myself down and sat hunched over on the floor of the shower. Warm water streamed from above: like my own personal rain cloud. It made a hypnotic drumming sound that soothed me a little. I pulled myself tighter – letting the water wash the smell of sweat from my skin. I watched it blister on the glass sides of the shower, the larger drops succumbing to gravity’s pull, rushing headlong down the smooth surface to collect at the bottom. I sat there for a long time, lost in thought: waiting for the last residue of the long night to swirl down the plughole.
Part 2: The Night Before
The world turned orange just before the lights went out. I tasted it, felt it, and saw it. I even smelt it. The coincidences kept piling up: orange walls, orange rug, and the empty bottle of Tango that we drank. We had eaten tangerines, feeling the strange texture of their skins while you told me about the cars in Brazil powered by their zest. Then we got lost in the weave of the rug.
Darkness brought a whole new light.
We were sitting together across a thousand miles of room. Pinpricks of light flared out of the gloom like showers of dancing sparks passing through the air. As the sensory distortion kicked into high gear, I lay down on my back, feeling the walls expand. The ceiling seemed to stretch high above, an ocean of white infinity gently rippling a thousand hidden shades of colour trapped beneath its surface.
For a while, it seemed as if our thoughts were twinned, spinning in eccentric orbits, ricocheting off each other: phases, peaks and oscillations all in perfect sync.
Then things changed.
Each eye-blink brought an eternity trapped inside my own head: looping and spiralling through endless dead-end déjà vu back alleys until my eyes snapped open again, my heart pounding. Each random thought seems woven into the next, forming a thread that leads ever backwards.
I was starting to suspect that I was only someone else’s dream. My breath escaped in slow rasps as I found more hours hidden within each passing second.
Now I was deep in the grip of heavy acid paranoia, anxiety clawing along my skin. I went outside to get some air and saw the trees; their branches reaching towards me like skeletal fingers.
‘Be like a surfer – don’t fight the waves – ride them,’ you tell me.
Talking helps a little. Torrents of words spew out between each hyperventilated breath until I hit another trough and relax a little, but the next peak is always looming ominously on the horizon.
Later, lying in bed, I feel like I am on hold, frozen in time: afraid to move in case it makes a sound. The lucid periods were starting to get longer. My mind was slowly coming together again – like humpty dumpty in reverse.
About the Author
Born in Perth and now living just outside Aberdeen, Bill Robertson has created a large body of work showcasing a tendency towards the darker side of life and stories which leave an indelible impression on the reader long after the final word is read.
An active member of Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree Writer’s Group, Bill’s work has appeared in Journeys, an anthology of work from the group, and most recently in a chapbook, Himself by the Seaside. He has performed some of his stories as part of the Word and New Words festivals and other events around the north-east. He has also self published two e-books: Reindeer Dust, a short Christmas story, and When the Revolution Comes, a collection of linked short stories concerning an uprising in a fictional eastern European country. A number of his stories have featured on the website http://www.shortbreadstories.co.uk, where he has been chosen as the featured Friday story a number of times and has won a number of competitions with his short stories and flash fiction pieces.
If you would like to hear an interview with Bill and listen to him read some of his work, please go to this link to hear Bill’s appearance on Mearns FM's Smith on Sunday show. You can also keep up to date with Bill’s work by visiting http://www.billrobertson55.wordpress.com, where he often shares work in progress as well as finished stories.
An active member of Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree Writer’s Group, Bill’s work has appeared in Journeys, an anthology of work from the group, and most recently in a chapbook, Himself by the Seaside. He has performed some of his stories as part of the Word and New Words festivals and other events around the north-east. He has also self published two e-books: Reindeer Dust, a short Christmas story, and When the Revolution Comes, a collection of linked short stories concerning an uprising in a fictional eastern European country. A number of his stories have featured on the website http://www.shortbreadstories.co.uk, where he has been chosen as the featured Friday story a number of times and has won a number of competitions with his short stories and flash fiction pieces.
If you would like to hear an interview with Bill and listen to him read some of his work, please go to this link to hear Bill’s appearance on Mearns FM's Smith on Sunday show. You can also keep up to date with Bill’s work by visiting http://www.billrobertson55.wordpress.com, where he often shares work in progress as well as finished stories.