tannoyblanc

I believe that there’s a God. 

I tell myself that if there isn’t a higher being watching over us, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. That if there isn’t a plan from above, then all this would be for nothing at all. Every night I try to get closer to the divine ineffable. I try to touch what lies on the other side of the mirror. Because what’s in front of me can’t possibly be all that there is. 

Rummaging through the pockets of my faded jeans, I take out a small, crumpled piece of tinfoil. Under the orange glow of the streetlight, I carefully unwrap the tinfoil, revealing a sheet of LSD, neatly cut into tiny little white squares. Against the obsidian black of the night, the tabs seem to glisten like crystals. I rip off two and pop them into my mouth.  

We are all fallen angels. It doesn’t matter who you are. A lawyer with a penthouse in Hudson Yards or a custodian living in a studio apartment in the Bronx. We are all on the same path.  

I make my way down the street, towards the sound of people. A distant thumping of techno music gives the night a hazy throb. Above me, the F train rattles by on the overpass, carrying with it a fresh batch of dark sprites, decorated from top to bottom in makeup, glitter, and powder. They thunder down from above, yelping and screeching and giggling, and storm into the various nightclubs of Myrtle Avenue. I walk past a group of goths hunched over, smoking cigarettes and casting side-eyes, and then a few junkies with sunken looking faces and hollowed out cheekbones, and then a morbidly obese drag queen retching on the streets.  

There’s nothing like Brooklyn on a Sunday night. Sunday nights are where the ghouls and goblins come out to play. These are the ones who don’t live on regular people time. The ones with no 9-5 they need to wake up for. Or the ones who simply don’t care. The degenerates. The weirdos. The enlightened. I love Sunday nights, they make me feel so alive.  

On Sunday nights, I go to the Void. I’m a regular, so the bouncers let me in without the line and the hassle. I go there to sell acid, molly, coke, pills, anything that I can get my hands on. On good days I can lose myself to the pulse of Brooklyn’s finest house music.  Tonight might be one of those nights. Enslave, this legendary DJ from Sweden, is playing, and the spot is packed, more so than usual. It’s a rare opportunity – if I sell off my whole batch, I’ll be good for the entire week.  

I believe that everything happens for a reason. That I ended up in these streets selling pills for a living is written in the divine plans. I don’t feel bad doing it… drugs aren’t evil. They’re just tools, like anything else in the world. We’re all trying to ascend. Pills are just one way.

As I step into the spot, I feel the first wave of acid hitting me. It’s a small club, taking on a rough oval shape much like a tribal den, with the DJ at the helm. Dim lights shine down from all directions, drenching the dancefloor in this venomous neon purple lighting. The smell of sweat, booze, and smoke permeates the air like some sort of sickly perfume. A layer of fog engulfs the room so that you can barely see a few feet in front of you, just the silhouettes of people moving hypnotically to the rhythm of the music. A tiny bar hides at the back of the dancefloor on the right side, an unobtrusive hole in the wall where the worn out can rest and revive.  

The dancefloor tonight is filled with dirty sprites. Some are busty, clad in leather, wearing chokers with the spikes. Some are tall and intimidating, swaying like sleepy giants, almost daring you to wake them from their slumber. Some are big and burly, wearing permanent sneers on their faces and looking for any opportunity to get physical. It’s an atmosphere that might be uncomfortable for many, but I don’t mind it – the acid makes the Void feel like another realm and me feel like its deity.  

At the front of the room was Enslave, tonight’s holy messenger, looking a bit like an astronaut himself with a futuristic helmet on, nodding coolly to the beat. Slicing synths and woozy bass envelop my ears, and for a moment, I lose myself. A rare moment of ascension. 

You can never let life get too real for you. The moment everything makes sense, you’re lost. Back when I was at Yale, I used to try to figure everything out, to find an answer to everything. But every time I felt like I came close, life became so dull and brittle, like a dry cracker that could break apart any moment. I learned that there was no use in trying to reason with the absurd.  

The lights fractured and became an intense violet. Snapping back to reality, I proceed with business as usual. Exchanges of hands in the dark. A few pills here. A tab there. You do this shit long enough and they start to come to you. Half the batch gone. Half left to go.  

I feel a tap on the shoulder and turn around to find myself face to face with a pair of dirty sprites. One is a seductive looking woman in a body jumper, with jet black hair and piercing cat eyes, lined with black eyeliner. The other is a bespectacled, bald-headed man with a thin frame and a flat, reptilian face. 

They motion with their heads, let’s go to the back. The woman gives me a hand signal that I instantly recognize, we want to buy, and we want to buy a lot.  

I shrug, sure.  

I lead them across the dancefloor towards the back where the bar was. It was surprisingly vacant. The bass got a bit thicker, like sludge – it was the part of the night where they played deep techno, a droning, hypnotic sound. The sound bounces off the walls and hug my ears like a warm blanket. I bob my head to the rhythm as I make my way, feeling a rush to my head and an elevating sensation. 

When I was 21 years old, I tried acid for the first time. It was an experience that I can’t put into words even ‘til this day. But it changed everything for me. It made me see the “other side”. The divine ineffable. I saw the futility of everything that I was working for. That was when I decided to drop out of school and devote my life to the other side. I’m 27 now and I have no regrets.  

“Stop.”  

A sharp whisper in my ear. I try to whirl around, but I feel a knife pressed up against my back. Shit. 

In that instant, the atmosphere shifted. The synths turned into sirens, scintillating screeches that drilled into my eardrum, piercing into my brain at a singular point. The thick bass melted into candle wick, piping hot candle wick that poured over my ears and molted over them like a cast. And suddenly, everything became so far away.  

“You’re going to slowly walk out the backdoor with us, okay?” The lady purred into my ear. Trying to stay calm, I comply. 

I find people to be very predictable. We’re all human, so we all kind of follow the same rules, more or less. In that respect, a normal life is just too boring for me. But everything comes with a price. And I’m okay with that. 

I walk out the backdoor and into in the cold. It’s an empty alleyway, lined with dumpsters and puke. I myself feel like I’m about to puke. Flies and rodents circle around me like vultures, watching from a distance. I’m pushed onto the ground into a pile of snow. Is that snow? Why is it snowing this time of year?  

The man began to speak in a deadpan voice, “You gave our client coke laced with fentanyl. He was hospitalized for 3 weeksss. We are here to ressstore the balance.”  He was no longer a man, but a serpent. A serpent with bulging, empty eyes and a squirming, writhing body. And the woman, a tiger the color of the night. Her flesh clung to her bones, like she was starved. Her eyes intelligent and patronizing, as if she felt a pity for me. 

There was no space for me to respond. Not that I could manage anything anyways. In a  flash, the tiger pounces at me and begins to tear at my upper body. First, my hands, taking her time with each individual finger, and when that was done, the joints of my  arms. I hear the crunch of my bones in her jaws and feel a weight like nothing I’ve ever felt before. At the same time, the man slithers up the right leg of my pants. A scorching sensation suddenly envelops the leg, like a million fire ants was biting into me and injecting their cursed poison into me. The ants crawl upwards, up my leg to my thigh and upwards and upwards… I let out a bloodcurdling scream.  

— 

It’s 4AM. I’m lying in the snow. Everything is so far away. As I fade out of consciousness, I hear the dirty sprites of the Void dancing their last dance, their yelps and screeches and giggles backed by the metallic groan of the F train, their harbinger, echoing into the obsidian night.  

We are all fallen angels. It doesn’t matter who you are. You could be a DJ in Brooklyn. You could be a law student at Yale. You could be a contract killer. We are all on the same path. Eternally.