Hung Up On My Baby / I Live By the Sword

Boop boop.

Boop boop.

Bedoop.

Paxton Ray: Cliff? What’s goin’ on?

The image on the screen looks to be a screen-recording of a smartphone.  The image in the corner is familiar: jaw like the front bumper of 70’s gas guzzler, mustache as thick as pine tar, almost vantablack with small gray streaks throughout.  Cliff Pike is big enough to fill most rooms, so he looks like he’s about to burst out of a small square in a corner.  In the larger view, the views are a blur–until they settle on that old familiar scowl of The Murdergator himself.  While Paxton is a picture of his usual sunshine, Cliff looks…well, concerned seems a light descriptor.

Cliff Pike: Hey Paxton…uh, got a sec?

Paxton Ray: Yeah, sure…Sage all right?

Cliff Pike: So you haven’t seen him?

Paxton Ray: Not in a minute. Matter fact, I kinda feel bad ‘bout it. Few months ago we were thick as thieves, but a lotta stuff on my end got us thinnin’ out a bit. Ya don’t know where he is?

Pike winces at this.

Cliff Pike: I’m afraid he’s had a relapse.  Like not drugs, cause you can’t really relapse when you never stop taking ‘em, and he’s never been much of a boozer.  But I can’t get him on his phone, and last I heard from him was five days ago.  He sent me a picture and his face was all cut up, his knuckles were scraped to shit.  Looked like he’d been getting into rumbles again…

This news drops the energy from the convo as both men think things through.  Paxton is by far not the one who has ever preached to Sage any sort of temperance, but even he recognized that his buddy was better off focusing his fighting energy toward legit bouts instead of trading bruises with whoever he could find.

Paxton Ray: Well shit. I can give him a ring if ya want, but I’m sure if he ain’t answerin’ ya, he ain’t gonna wanna see my ugly face. Remember Julie?

Cliff Pike: Yeah, man.

Paxton Ray: She didn’t really say it, but she didn’t have to. I looked in her eyes and saw that she thought Sage an’ I could be good for each other. That two objects rough around the edges could smooth each other out the more they interact. Guess what I’m sayin’ is, I feel like I dropped the ball on this one, Cliff. I shoulda been there more. I’m sorry.

Cliff Pike: Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Sure, you could have been there more.  But Im pretty positive you don’t have a pile of missed calls from him either, so lighten the fuck up, Ray.

He chews his lip.

Cliff Pike: Also, it’s not like you told him to get twisted on whatever he’s gotten twisted on and drive off into the night.  I’m just trying to figure out how I can be sure he’s safe before the pigs get a hold of him.  You going to Portland, you booked?

Paxton Ray: Nah, but I’m goin’ anyway. Way I see it, as long as Fred Dick is gonna be there, I’m goin’ too so I can keep remindin’ him that it was a mistake t’break this ugly mug even more than it had been. I’m happy t’keep an eye on Sage.

Cliff Pike: You’re a lifesaver.  I don’t know where he is, but…I dunno.  Find a part of town that smells like patchouli and start askin’ questions, I guess.  And tell that dumbass that I love him.

Paxton Ray: No worries. I’ll let ya know what I find out.

Bedoop.

—

The problem with calling a psychedelic experience “bad” is that it assigns it a binary value judgment.

Too often, we want things in black and white, we want to know the good pure thing is happening and that the dark evil things are at bay.

But that’s all such horseshit, The Bodhisattva has decided.

He’s not even sure where he is, but why should locations bother us?  They’re just creations of man, a way to sow division.  Isn’t it easier when everyone can just be a citizen of the planet?  The Bodhisattva has laid this question to the companion he is with, but he never got a definitive answer.  Then again, his companion wasn’t in a talkative mood.

He looks over his hands, enjoying the throbbing lattice of sacred geometry that has spilled and dried from his chafed knuckles.

He knows why he isn't getting answers.  But what are questions but opportunities to look within?

How long has he been gone?

He reaches into the plastic bag, popping a stem and a cap in his mouth and chewing them.  Raw.

Sure, there are demons in the corners.  And bad vibes all around.  Death is closer to all of us than we think, he considers, and we have as human beings this obsession with control.  We want to control death, control aging, control chaos.  That's what his companion never seemed to be able to understand.  He had this obsession with control, obsession with making sure that everything was fair and equitable and nice and pretty and perfect, an obsession with bringing law to a jungle that has no stomach for it.

What an idiot.

But he knows, somewhere beneath the psilocybin, that he’s being missed.  That ever-increasing digit next to his icon of a phone on the handheld computer tell him as such–but he can’t face it.  That shame is there.  Because he knows he shouldn't be here, shouldn't be in this headspace, shouldn't have done what he’s done…but here he is.  He did it.  He’ll have to deal with the fall,ouit later, the fallout with the companion and…well, fuck, maybe even his job.  But caring about a job–what sort of counterculturalist cares for such things?

But it’s there.

Rattling, a ball-bearing in the empty spaces of his ribs.

He’s tried to drug it and fight it out of him but it’s just so stubborn.  Is this who he is now, who he’s supposed to be?  Worried about a job, of all things?  It’s not a crisis of identity so much as it is The Bodhisattva trying to determine what identity means, what use is counterculturalism in the late stages of the world as it stands, when all empires feel like they’re wobbly aloft on stilts that erode further and further the more weight we add to the top?  Companion, got an answer?  He doesn't.  He’s resting.

Still, though he’s enjoying the existential nightmare of his trip, even though this batch is leaning more cerebral than most, he feels a degree of shame.  He knows he’s violating many things that were sacred by virtue of just being…things that he committed to.  Sometimes that’s all it takes to make magic happen on this plane of existence, is just belief and intent.  Just as easy to create, just as easy to defile and destroy.  Of course, he doesn't know that he’s destroyed anything.  Maybe that man he’s fallen for will forgive him, maybe not.  That great unanswered question is the second largest demon holding court in the shadows.

The biggest one, he figures, is if he can maintain it.

All the blood on him is not his own.  He can taste the difference, even through the residue of dried magical sacrament on his tongue.  Idly lapping at his knuckl;es until the red, irritated open wounds on them glisten like starlight.

Can he truly avoid this fate?  Can he avoid flaming out?

Forget the right now, this is fucking blip.  The biggest demon in the room feels like a road with cliff faces on either side: even if he wanted to turn off the path, he wouldn't be able to.  That’s what it feels like.  That’s why he’s here, he figures, wholly and entirely out of his own mind, on enough psychedelics to kick off the Age of Aquarius en masse.  Avoiding these demons is rookie shit, the move of people who are afraid.  And Sage Pontiff, all his faults aside, has never shown an ounce of fear to god or man or cop or opponent.  So rather than avoid the demons or believe himself above them?  Face them, head on.  Speed down the road.  Jump off the edge and see if you’ve got the desire/skill/wherewithal to claw your way back to the surface.

But is there going to be a life for him when he gets there?

A realization hits.

He nudges his companion.  No luck, dead to the world.

This is about himself, sure.

Trips are.

But it’s also about his life.  It’s not just will he crawl back, the will he get his feet back under him.  Will his relationships?  Will his employment?  Will his reputation, such as it is?  These great unknowns are why he even broke with his sobriety, he figures.  Somewhere deep in him is a sickness, and that sickness needed him to stress test his entire life.  He looks over to his companion, to the man he knows he’s beaten so thoroughly that he’s passed out, and feels a sadness over him–sadness so thick that the demons don;t even take this opportunity of distraction to consume his soul in one gulp.

He grabs his phone with bloodstained digits.

He can’t call Cliff.  He can’t.

Beep boop boop.  Boop.

Ring Ring.

Ring Ring.

“Sage, Where th’fuck–” “Hey Paxton.  I’m…I’m real fucked up.  Pretty sure I hurt someone.  Can you uh…can you come by?  I’ll drop you a pin.”

Bedoop. 

—

I am alone right now.  Kinda wild where the path will take you, I guess.  I mean, you and me, right?  We’ve been in it, together.  Achieved, together.  I've shed blood with you on my side, and I’ll be real with you dude, that’s a short list.  Probably by design.  Fuck, probably for everyone's best interest and safety.  Because I’ll just end up here.  End up here time and again. I’ve always viewed this part as…war, y’know?  It’s all war.  Me against the world, me against a person, me against someone who I view as an avatar of some ancient and undying poison on this planet. Me against people who need saving and salvation.  Me against someone who I just plain don’t like or agree with. Who am I without war?  That’s what I keep coming back to.  I want to be a good person, Sean.  I want the peace I’ve been seeking.  I can get it, for these moments, these bursts, but I always spiral out.  This thing with Cliff has been the longest burst, the longest moment yet.  But is it sustainable?  It is something I can live within and not visit?  I have no fucking idea, man.  I wish I did.  I wish I was blessed with foresight and wisdom and not with war and destruction, but here I am.  There you are.  Here we all are, the sons and daughters in PRIME, trying to find our peace and our homes in a world that grows smaller and smaller for folks wired like us every day.  So you don’t need saving.  Maybe I don’t either.  Maybe we just meet and do the one thing that comes most naturally to us, that we have the best acumen for.  As at least acquaintances, if not friends.  We do what we were blessed to be good at, and that will be enough, that will be its own form of peace for us.  And Sean, I know you don’t owe me shit, but I have a favor to ask.  Don’t hold back on me.  Namaste. 

—

The door of the rental thuds.

Then it bends inward before the cheap lock fails.  Doors can't contain a Murdergator with intent in his heart.  Paxton steps in, hesitant to what he might find.  The first assault toward him is the smell, days of copious weed smoke and incense burning the obvious stink, but his nostrils twitch at what he’s catching underneath those.

Blood. 

The living room/kitchenette is unremarkable, but he notices that the bedroom door is cracked, and a purple/blue light is pouring from the cracks.

Setting his shoulders, one half of Crunch and Punch advances to the bedroom.  Shoves the door open.  Looks at a scene bathed in the light of a television with zero input.  Freezes.  The walls are a mess.  Drywall full of holes, some sections cracked in with large ovular shapes which are clearly the general size of a torso.  A mirror on the wall has been blasted to pieces, but what’s most notable is the sheer amount of blood, rough smears, some spray, stains soaked into the carpet…the whole room looks like a crime scene.

“Hey, Paxton.”

The Bayou Butcher nearly jumps from his boots.  So involved was he in his assessment of the room itself, he didn't even check the bed.  But there he is.  Naked as the day he was born, his beard and some dreadlocks crusted with days old blood, his arms and knuckles an absolute mess.  His eyes are still dilated with whatever it is that’s still running through his system.  He blinks slowly, a smile creeping across his face as he realizes who it is–we can see he’s missing two teeth.

“Sage? Jesus, ya ran into an F-150 or somethin’?”

“No, no.  Just I uh…got into it real hard with this guy.”  To punctuate this, Sage cocks his head toward the other side of the bed.  Paxton's eyes narrow.

“...what guy?”

“This guy right–”  pontiff turns to the other side of the bed, and his eyes widen in confusion.  Shock.  Maybe some horror.  Because the other side of the bed is unoccupied, empty, even strangely unmasked despite the condition of the rest of the room.  The Bodhisattva looks around the room, memories flooding back through a haze of drugs.

How all the wounds on his body have easy explanations.

How those holes in the wall are the shape of his hands, his head, his body.

How every drop of blood in this room is his own.

He feels something in his hand.  Two of his own teeth.  He starts to shake, then looks to Paxton with teary, brilliantly bright, dilated eyes.

“Help.”