This is Not a Drug

Psychedelic Horror. An LSD ritual goes horrifically wrong... or perhaps horrifically right?

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This is Not a Drug

The paperboard package was clinical white, with a plastic sheet and five segments for tiny pills. On the flat side, the words were printed bold and black: THIS IS NOT A DRUG—IT OPENS DOORS. There was no brand name or identifying numbers.

It set him back $25,000 in Bitcoin. Patrick Chase had to dip into his trust fund, but now he had a thesis that might rival Bofield’s unbelievable tale of seducing a 19^th century working girl. Supposedly that ritual involved candles, incense, and a very tender letter written from the heart.

To Patrick’s dismay, the school board ate it up. Bofield submitted his PhD thesis to D’Morte University in the east side of Woodswaite—a major center for occult studies in the pacific northwest. His paper earned glowing approval from the board. Four of the six members were women, for Christ’s sake. Why were they so impressed by his gaudy pulp tale?

Patrick and his coauthor, Gary Weekes, met at the library in downtown Woodswaite, where they brushed up on the DMU canon. Most of their textbooks were written by the late and great sage, Thomas D’Morte himself. Their piles of books grew and grew along with the scope of their research.

That day, they met a girl who was also a student at DMU. She was searching up a book to support her final paper for the semester. In retrospect, the way she struck up conversation was oddly convenient. And no, it wasn’t normal for an attractive woman to approach a pair of guys like Patrick and Gary in the back of the local library. It’s not that Patrick lacked confidence—he was just realistic. Or maybe he was bitter. Either way, he should’ve seen the setup coming.

Felicia Memphis said she was a first-year student of psychedelic occultism at D’Morte University—the same major as Patrick. She was working on a five-page essay from a prompt. God, he missed those days; settling on a master’s topic almost killed him. She asked what their thesis was about.

“We’re not sure yet,” Patrick said. “But we’re thinking of writing about this weird drug we found online. Well, according to the listing it’s not a drug. It just opens doors.”

Gary stared hard at him, like he couldn’t believe the fat mouth on his friend.

Felicia smiled and said, “Oh, that’s cool. I’ve got a friend who fucks with that stuff. Maybe you should talk to her.”

They looked at her like she’d just explained the concept of fire to cavemen.

“What?” Gary said.

“You’re shitting me,” Patrick added. “Hell yeah. How soon can we do it?”

“There’s three of us doing a ritual this Halloween,” she said. “But we need a fourth and fifth for it to work. You down?”

“Sounds perfect,” Patrick said.

“It’s just that we need five people exactly. So if you can both make it, that’ll be perfect. We’re hosting it at a party, so we’ll have some backup heads if you can’t make it. No worries either way.”

She tore a corner out of her notebook, scrawled a phone number, and slid it across the long oak table to Patrick. Gary fumed in his seat—lips pursed, teeth gritted, brows furrowed.

“Text me and let me know,” she said.

“Will do.” Patrick smiled.

They got half drunk in the afternoon awaiting the Halloween party. Patrick was extremely nervous. He’d banked everything on this being the real deal, so if it fell through—well, let’s just say Bofield would be going places while Patrick stays stuck at DMU with all the shit-kickers like Gary Weekes.

“I don’t know about this,” Gary said from the passenger seat. They were driving from their eastside apartment to an old downtown home, down the road from the DMU campus. Patrick was tipsy, not drunk. He only swerved a little when he turned corners and crossed yellow traffic lights.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “This is gonna be perfect. Fuck it, even if it doesn’t work out, we’ll make some shit up.”

“I don’t know about you, Pat, but I’m really serious.”

Stopping at a red light, Patrick shot a glare at his so-called friend. “What are you saying?”

“This isn’t a joke,” Gary said. “Psychedelics are a pathway to communing with God. I’m not about to ruin my relationship with Jesus over your stupid bullshit. So either we do this right, or we fold and hope for a better hand next semester.” He reached out to shake hands. “Deal?”

Patrick sneered before he accepted the handshake. You’re just mad Felicia gave me her number and not you, he thought.

When they showed up at the address, Patrick thought they’d gone to the wrong place. Big drunk guys loomed in the front yard, and the house reverberated with dance music. The front door was wide open, and nobody stopped them from going inside. The entry hallway echoed with the sounds of beer pong in the garage. Whooping and hollering and yelling and screeching.

Felicia met them at the bottom of the stairs with a grin.

It must’ve been a spare bedroom, so bleak and empty it was. No furniture except cheap folding chairs arranged in a five-point circle. In the corner sat a supply of water jugs and boxes of soda crackers. There wasn’t even a table to set anything down. Felicia led them inside, and two more people waited to greet them.

Stanley Clarke must’ve been six-foot-three with about two hundred pounds of muscle packed on his enormous frame. He had long ropey hair with black metal logos tattooed on his massive arms, and four garish rings on each hand decorated with sigils and runes and pentagrams and the like.

Next to him sat Felicia Memphis, and in the last chair was Jack Wagner—an overweight skater guy who got pulled in as the obligatory skeptic to a truly bizarre affair. In truth, he said, he was only there for the free drugs.

Gary said, “Didn’t you say you had a lady friend who’s an expert on this stuff?”

“I did,” Felicia replied, a smile spreading across her cheeks. She took a wad of tinfoil out of her pocket and unfolded it, revealing a blotter of acid. “This is my good friend, Lucy. Shall we?”

Patrick took the cardboard package from his pocket and broke apart the segments, handing one encased pill to each member of the party.

“Wait a minute,” Gary said. “We’re actually gonna trip while we do this?”

“Of course,” said Felicia. “That’s the only way it works. Just ask Stanley.”

“Yeah man,” Stanley said in his low-octave voice. “It only works if you’re on the level. We’ll take the acid, wait ‘til we peak, then pop the gates.”

“I don’t know about this,” Gary said. “My relationship with Jesus is pretty shaky as it is. I don’t really wanna fuck with all that right now.”

Jack blinked at him and said, “What?”

“Don’t worry,” Felicia said. “Jesus loves you. Taking a little acid isn’t gonna change a thing like that.”

“It—it—it’s not that.” Gary chittered like a nervous bug, his fingers dancing in the air like he was playing scales on an imaginary piano. “I was just telling Pat a little bit ago. Psychedelics are a pathway to God. I’m kinda worried, you know, ‘cause I just had a pretty major life change recently, so if I take acid now it might fuck with me in a way that’d change my baseline personality.”

“Dude,” Patrick chuckled. “Take it easy. We’re just tripping here. I’ve done it before, and it’s always just fun. There’s no personality change or Jesus bullshit or whatever, all right? Let’s get this show on the fuckin’ road.”

Without further protest, Felicia divided the blotter into five hits, one for each of them. As soon as the tab was in Jack the skeptic’s hand, he threw it in his mouth and swallowed.

Felicia gasped and said, “Wait!”

“Whoops,” he said. “Too late.”

“Well then, we better get started. Otherwise we’ll screw up the ritual.”

Stanley crossed his arms while his girlfriend stood up and took the center stage. Felicia whirled her hands and shifted her eyes between the other four people.

“I’ll keep this short. We’re about to undergo a unique and transcendent psychedelic journey. Only a handful of people on this planet will ever see what we see. Once we start, there’s no leaving this room for any reason until our trip is complete. So take a piss, take a shit if you have to. Otherwise, you’ll be holding it in for six or nine or even twelve hours.”

Jack the skeptic giggled. He stuck his hand in the air and said, “I’ve had, like, six beers tonight. I should prolly take a leak.”

“Well, hurry up about it,” Felicia said. “And just in case, we’ve got an empty bottle and a bucket. But I’d rather we don’t stink up the room.”

They took their last bathroom breaks while the party raged downstairs, a cacophony of shouts and laughter rumbling the room. When they all sat in a circle, Felicia locked the door and said with a bow, “Without further ado. Drop your acid, but do not remove the gate from its package.”

Patrick and Gary bumped fists and knocked their heads back, swallowing the tabs. The cardboard was rough going down his throat. They cracked the first water jug and passed it around so everyone could wash it down.

“So how many hits was that?” Patrick said, scrawling a note in his pad. “Two or three or so?”

Felicia grinned and said, “Ten drops each.”

“Holy shit.”

She wasn’t kidding. Not half an hour passed before Patrick melted against the metal chair. The peak came stronger and faster than he expected, and the world dissolved all around him in throbbing rhythmic waves. He licked his dry lips and glanced at the participants of this so-called ritual.

They were all melting, too. Every one of them. Sunken back against their seats, staring at a shifting ceiling like their bones had simply surrendered control to the rise and fall of the waves. The colors were already shifting, brights looking brighter, and Patrick looked at his hand and grinned when his palm lines shifted like ocean water.

“Do you guys feel that?”

Who said that? he thought.

It was Felicia, of course—the only woman in the room. She sounded like the narrator in a nature documentary.

“This is some good shit,” said the musclebound Stanley. His voice came high pitched now, like he’d inhaled helium. Patrick couldn’t help but sputter a laugh.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “So when do we open the gates?”

“Shhhhh,” Felicia said.

They were quiet now. No sound except the ambiance of the party downstairs. The acid throbbed through Patrick’s soul. His teeth were grinding, he was sweating, and he tapped his foot to the rhythm of the dance beat. Somebody below screamed yaaaaas, and wailing laughter bounced around the ritual room.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered.

Nobody spoke. Then Felicia rose with her arms spread.

“Now it’s time.” She punctured her segment of the package and waved her hands like a conductor. “Go on and open the gates. Wash it down with some water.”

The five of them swallowed their unmarked white pills.

“So what’s gonna happen?” said Jack the skeptic. “Are we gonna double trip now or some shit?”

Felicia took her seat with her legs crossed and folded her hands in her lap. “It’s best you see for yourself. But first, we need to speak these words in unison: Voluntati tuae me trado.”

“What does that mean?” Gary said.

Jack chuckled. “It means, ‘Come suck on this, you Deadite son of a bitch.’”

Nobody laughed at the quip. Felicia turned a serious eye on him and said, “It means, ‘I volunteer to go on a trip.’”

They repeated the words together, chanting in unison. Voluntati tuae me trado. Voluntati tuae me trado. Voluntati tuae me trado. Every time they spoke the words, Felicia tapped her phone, keeping reps like a bodybuilder’s assistant. The world shifted all around Patrick, pulsing with the rhythm of the words.

Voluntati tuae me trado.

On the thirty-sixth iteration, Felicia raised her offhand and gave a theater whisper: “Quiet.”

And then they waited.

Nothing happened. They sat together in that five-point circle, sparing few words. The dance music downstairs throbbed on. Patrick felt the swirls in his vision settling into the ambiance.

Then something slammed the door, like someone kicked it from the outside. Everybody shot their head at the violent sound. And then there was silence.

As the hours passed, the party downstairs finally died down. Patrick kept tapping his foot. He checked the time on his phone—a quarter ‘til three in the morning—and he let out a lion’s yawn.

“I feel like I’m past the peak now,” he said. “Was something supposed to happen?”

They chanted another thirty-six iterations. Voluntati tuae me trado. Voluntati tuae me trado. Voluntati tuae me trado.

Halfway through, Patrick started to notice something manifesting. The noise of the party downstairs followed the rhythm of their chants. He lowered his voice to a mutter, and he listened to the muffled voices. They were saying the same thing.

Voluntati tuae me trado.

Like a clap of thunder, something snapped all around Patrick. An invisible force yanked him backwards, pulling him and his chair back into the wall—through the wall—to a realm of total blackness. The ritual room got smaller and smaller as he was yanked away. Nobody noticed his departure.

Patrick jumped up and kicked the seat out from under him screaming, “Oh my God, no!”

Everybody stared at him. His chest raced, and he couldn’t stop panting. He was back in the room again, four pairs of eyes piercing his soul.

“Shhhhh,” Felicia said, louder now.

He stopped and listened. The music downstairs kept thumping. A quivering Patrick put his chair back up and sat down.

“The gates are opening,” she whispered. “Our souls are moving. Soon we’ll meet angels, spirits, and demons.”

“Oh my God,” Gary whispered.

Patrick let out a heavy breath and wiped the sweat from his brow. Everybody in the room was distracted and anxious. That’s a problem with psychedelics. You see your buds acting some way—nervous or scared—and you start to feel that way too. It only works if you’re tripping with people who know how to chill, even when things are going to shit.

Then Stanley jolted upright and started tatting out words like his mouth was a machine gun.

“That reminds me of the time my dad brought me out to his friend’s pig ranch. He was dressed in black with a black hat. We had lunch, and my dad drank too much and passed out. Then a pair of crows circled around a burning baby. It was in a fire, you know, like you’d make for camping. And then my dad was burning, too. He was smiling.”

Stanley poured sweat. His face deformed like a clay mold, looking ready to break down into a sobbing fit.

Felicia chuckled and said, “Hey, that’s a good one.”

The others laughed at the joke. Even Stanley started laughing, tears streaming down his cheeks, but he didn’t seem to get it. Patrick didn’t get it either. He glanced over at Gary, and Gary wasn’t laughing. He was hiding his face and crying.

“Yeah, and you know,” Felicia said, wiping streams of laughter from her cheeks, “that reminds me of this dream I had, where my orange cat was walking around like a man on two legs. He was big as hell. But the weird thing is that he was already dead in real life.”

Stanley slapped her and yelled, “That’s not what I was talking about.”

Then the room went quiet again. She started crying, and Gary cried too. Then Stanley went next, and now Patrick wanted to cry.

Somebody tapped his shoulder. It was Jack the skeptic. He leaned over and whispered.

“Hey. Just start acting cool. If they see you acting cool, they’ll act cool too.”

Patrick nodded and took a deep breath. Then he tried it out. He folded his arms, crossed his legs, and sat back with a cool smile.

“Have you guys noticed,” Gary said, “that the animals have been acting different ever since my dad died?”

“What?” said Patrick. “When did your dad die?”

Stanley and Felicia shared a hearty chuckle.

“You think that’s funny?” Gary said.

They stopped laughing.

“What’s funny?” she said.

Nobody talked. The party was dead downstairs. Somebody had turned the music down, and Patrick could hear muffled voices murmuring and chuckling.

“What were we talking about?” Gary said.

“I was just gonna say,” Jack stammered through a bursting laugh, “is it just the acid, or is it getting really cold in here?”

“Well, I gotta admit,” Gary said, counting out on his fingers like he was doing first-grade math, “the numbers have been lining up a lot more than they used to. Two, four, six, eight, ten. Forty, eighty, a hundred twenty, one-one thirty.”

“Wait, what are we talking about?” Stanley said, rubbing his red eyes.

“I dunno.” Gary chuckled and shook his head. “But I think it’s got something to do with my dad.”

“Did you hear that?” Felicia whispered.

Like a cue from God, the power went out and cast the room into pitch darkness. Felicia yelped and tumbled backwards over her chair, slamming her head into the hardwood floor. The wind pumped out of Patrick’s chest, and a long wince gnarled across his face.

“Holy shit,” Jack said. “Is she okay?”

Downstairs, the voices hooted and hollered. Someone cried out about the power. Minutes passed, and there was no sign of it coming back without some form of competent intervention. The voices died out while the crowd moseyed out the front door.

Jack stood and said, “We’ve gotta get help.”

At that cue, Stanley jumped up and rushed to guard the door.

“No,” he said. “We can’t open this door until the ritual’s done.”

“Well, we’ve gotta do something.”

Jack rushed over to the stilled form of Felicia. He leveled her head and pulled the chair out from under her, lying her body flat on the floor. The others just sat in the darkness and waited for something to happen.

“Listen,” Stanley whispered with his back against the door. “Do you hear that?”

“Shhhhh.”

They all looked at the source of the sound in the pitch black. It was Felicia’s voice, but she wasn’t speaking. She was moaning, low and faint at first, then her voice grew louder and louder.

Jack said, “She needs help right now.”

Except the moans weren’t coming from Felicia. They were coming from Stanley’s throat, louder and louder, and he pressed flat against the door with his head turned sharply upright. His eyes bulged from his skull, his mouth forced open by some invisible force, groaning louder and louder.

Felicia opened her mouth and joined chorus with Stanley, louder and louder.

Jack sprinted blindly at the door, battering through the seats of Patrick and Gary, knocking them to the floor. He grabbed Stanley and tugged him out of the way. The big guy came down surprisingly easy—arms floating behind him, like he didn’t even try to break his fall. His head cracked against the ground, and he started convulsing, moaning louder and louder.

“What’s happening?” Gary cried.

Patrick couldn’t reply. He watched the shapes in the darkness, rigid from nerve-ripping horror. Stanley shook violently and unnaturally. His skull made another loud crack every time his head struck the ground.

The moans grew into wails that filled the room and echoed like a valley. Jack fiddled with the lock and tugged the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Patrick and Gary laid trembling next to their overturned chairs, gasping and sweating, fighting off the throbbing acid and the pulsating terror.

Some invisible force raised Felicia and Stanley onto their feet like marionettes yanked upright by their strings. The side of Stanley’s head was battered, blood matting his ropey hair, and Felicia had a thick gash on the back of her head. There were no expressions on their faces.

In perfect unison, they each produced a switchblade from their pocket, unfolded the metal from the handle, and drove the blade into their own jugular. Then they dragged it across their throats to the opposing veins.

“Holy fuck,” Patrick gagged.

Gary turned over and puked on the floor.

Felicia and Stanley dropped to their knees, throats waterfalling, and they collapsed. Thick red pools gathered around them.

The overhead light exploded in a staccato of glass and sparks, then the three survivors went limp and fell like ragdolls on the floor. Moments passed in darkness, and everything stayed quiet.

Gary rose to his feet with a wobble. He walked over and helped up Jack, then they crowded around Patrick.

“How do you feel?” Gary said.

Patrick tried to speak. He tried to move. He tried to blink. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t even breathe. Fuck, he thought, did I just break my neck?

“Remember to breathe in,” Jack said. “With your lungs.”

A gasp of air ripped down his throat involuntarily. His eyes watered. Patrick’s chest seared with pain, and he felt light headed.

“Now let it out.”

His body obeyed. But he couldn’t move a muscle, not even his tongue. He couldn’t even blink.

“Now keep doing that at a steady pace. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Patrick sucked in and out with ragged, heaving breaths. He felt like a drowned man choking for air. Gary and Jack pulled him up to his feet, and he wobbled before his body stabilized itself.

But he still couldn’t move.

“I know it’s rough,” Gary said. “It takes some getting used to. If you don’t like this body, we’ll get you a new one.”

Patrick tried to force the words out of his throat. What the hell are you talking about? A new body?

“Actually,” Jack added, “we should keep this one alive for a little while. You said he’s got a trust fund, right?”

“Yeah. But what matters right now is that he’s happy with his body.”

Patrick stood there swaying, his eyes out of focus, his breathing hard and heavy.

“Take it easy,” Gary said. “You don’t gotta breathe that hard. Just do it slowly and you’ll settle into the rhythm. It becomes second nature.”

Patrick’s mouth muscles moved, and his vocal chords vibrated. He tried to say, What’s going on?

But the words that came out of his mouth were, “This sucks. Why don’t you just send me back?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Gary said.

Jack snickered and said, “Just wait ‘til he learns about sex.”

“I know about sex,” Patrick’s body replied on its own cognizance.

“Yeah, but it’s better when you’re actually human. None of that half-rate bullshit.”

“We really ought to get some girls next time,” Gary said. “I’m not used to having a dick. We’ll keep Patrick alive and dip into his trust fund. Next time, when we kill Gary and Jack, we’ll get some chicks.”

“This body’s out of shape,” Jack said. “I liked Stanley’s muscles better.”

He unlocked the door and swung it open. Light flooded into the room. Patrick’s hand raised to shield his eyes. Whatever was pulling his strings hadn’t quite figured out how to work the eyelids yet.

And that’s when the bleak helplessness washed over Patrick’s soul. He was awake and alive—but something else was piloting his body. Gary and Jack were there too, but you’d never guess that from talking to them. Nobody would ever know what happened to the real them.

“What are we supposed to do now?” came an agonizing groan from Patrick’s throat, his own voice that was not willed by himself.

At the doorway, Gary looked back and shrugged. “You know. Whatever it is people do. Eat, sleep, fuck, stay alive.”

“That’s it?” Patrick wheezed.

Gary grinned. “What else is there?”

“Like he said,” Jack replied, “you’ll get used to it. And once you do, you’ll never want to go back to the other side.”

“But in the meantime,” Gary said, “we’ve got promises to keep. We need to do more rituals—which means more husks.”

“And some girls this time,” Jack said.

Patrick tried to scream but nothing moved, his mind surging with impotent panic.

“So then,” came the involuntary gurgle out of his vocal chords. “Let’s go get some girls.”

Jack and Gary gave him a wince and said, “Let’s work on your social skills a bit first. It takes a real person years to learn all this shit, but we’re on an accelerated schedule here.”

Over the next few days, the guest of Patrick’s body learned to walk around without falling. And every time it fell, Patrick felt the pain shock through the fresh bruises on his knees, elbows, and skull. He felt the swaying imbalance every time he fell over, and he felt the dryness in his throat when his guest forgot to drink water, and he felt the pressure in his belly when it neglected to relieve itself.

A few weeks later, he felt the orgasms when his guest used his body to fuck piles of sweating flesh, and he felt the hot red slickness on his hands when it killed folks, and he felt the body modifications that it made to itself without anesthesia, and he felt everything all the way through his next ritual—the switchblade dragging across his throat, the fountains falling down his chest, and the fade into darkness when his body finally relinquished him.