WEEDS 7: Psychedelic Trip

Boneshaker kept puncturing my arm with needles and injecting ink and dye into the deep layers of my skin. He claimed that the love of tattoos was the root of all evil, but I say it ain’t so.

“Tattoos is the bread and butter of our economy,” Boneshaker declared, “that’s why they did away with paper money long time ago. And it was a good thing too,” he said, “cause paper notes was filthy. But body art? Now that’s the ticket.”

Boneshaker was right about one thing; the tattoo was a sign of wealth. But it wasn’t no big deal to me. I already had tattoos all ovah my body, which meant I had mo’ money than I knew what to do with.

Some of the people in the Colony will tell you that money ought to be shared. They say that too much of it to one person is a bad thing and that money can go to yo’ head. But only people without money would say that. Only people without money would believe that too much of it was immoral. But the people who have money… now that’s another story. The ones who have it know you ain’t nothin’ without it. That’s why I had to have one mo’ tattoo.

The tattoos on my whole body started tingling like no tomorrow. I told Boneshaker they was buzzing but he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I kept lookin’ all ovah my body but I couldn’t find out which one’a my tattoos was buzzing. Then something caught my eye. It was a pile of comic books that was lying on the flo’ in the corner of the room. The comic books wasn’t nothing special, they was jess an ancient medium that combined words and images in a particular sequence. But when I saw the books move, I realized it wasn’t my tattoos that was buzzing.

I walked ovah to the corner but I couldn’t hardly see what all was there ‘cause the light was so bad. I picked up the pile of books and I felt the stack vibrate in my hands. I shuffled through the pile and the cover of one of the books moved. I dropped it on the table and jumped back. That’s when the cover came to life.

It felt like an incantation. Like it was magic. It was kinda’ strange, like a figment of my imagination, but it wasn’t. I could feel the book looking at me. Starring. Like it was trying to get into my soul.

The drawing on the comic book cover started to move and I could see my future. Three of the panels came to life and I started flipping out. All the moisture dried up in my mouth. I wanted to turn my head away but I couldn’t help but look.

The comic book cover buzzed and I was in the middle of a great forest:

The plants had sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. Plant life had evolved to rule the world, allowing animal life to live either in the desert area where it was too hot for the plants, or in the Polar Region where it was too cold.

Outside the dome the plants reigned supreme. So I ran!

I stayed low to avoid the seeds of the White Snake-root plant. The white fluffy seeds blew around in the wind. The plant was so potent that jess drinking the milk of a cow that ingested it could lead to death. The seeds had so much toxin they could kill a man on contact.

The forest was endless and curling creepers waved from every tree. My heart was pounding. My breathing was muffled in the Bio-Suit. I looked around the forest. My eyes widened when I realized I was standing in the midst of a lair of carnivorous plants. The weeds was alive! They could capture, kill, and digest a man in seconds.

The Venus flytrap was about the size of a small hovercraft. It was green outside and blood red inside its mouth. The leaves on the flytrap was opened wide, like it was waitin’ for me to make one wrong move.

I turned to run in the other direction. I saw another flytrap, and another. I moved with great care not to trigger the sensitive hairs inside the flytrap mouth. One of the flytraps suddenly snapped shut and I drove my heels into the ground in rapid succession.

I was disoriented in the thick bush. I tried to regain my bearing by searching for some small glimmer of light in the otherwise dark jungle. A glare of light shown through the thicket which led to a small clearing.

The clearing was populated with a tropical plant with green leaves and white venomous needles. The plant began to shoot its poison needles at me. When I reached the edge of the clearing, one of the needles pierced my Bio-Suit. The needle came through the suit and punctured my leg. It hurt so bad my eyes rolled back in my head and I fell to the ground like a whimperin’ dog.

An overwhelming feeling of dread took ovah and for a moment I thought the pain would only get worse. I could no longer feel my leg. It took a moment to gather my thoughts, or at least gather enough of ‘em to think a little clearer.

My musings was disrupted by a mound of Dracula ants. I swatted frantically and kicked with my good leg. A porcupine tomato plant swatted the ground where my leg was. The plant was eight feet tall and had green leaves and branches that was covered with sharp red thorns that could pierce a man’s leg straight through to the bone. I moved my leg just in time to save it from the porcupine but by then the Dracula ants had crawled inside my Bio-Suit.

I pulled the blood-sucking ants from my skin and moved a safe distance from the porcupine. I tried to get up but my entire body was trying to force me to the ground. I was exhausted but refused to rest. The agonizing pain was the only thing keeping me conscious. Everything started spinning and a nauseating feeling crept up on me. I closed my eyes and fell backward. My head hit the ground with a violent thud and day turned to…

“Lucky I came along,” the man said. But I couldn’t make out what else he was saying.

He put a serving tray on the table in front of me with what looked like a miniature chicken. The plate had leaves that looked like parsley on it but I knew it couldn’t be ‘cause any type of plant was illegal.

“What is that?” I yelled, pointing at the plate of food. “You must be playin’ the dozens with my uncle’s cousin!”

He smiled and slid the plate across the table in front of me, “It’s quail and hemlock,” he said.

I jumped up and flipped my chair ovah and pushed the plate back at’em, “Hemlock!” I yelled. “Every part of that plant is poison!”

He told me the hemlock couldn’t be poison ‘cause it woulda’ killed the quail. Made sense to me, so I ate, and… bada bing!

Turns out the hemlock was poison! Who woulda’ known that quail is somehow immune to hemlock. That jess meant the quail couldn’t die from the poison but I sho’ could.

My throat closed up and I couldn’t breathe. Desperation overtook me. My esophagus began to close and the energy escaped my body. My face turned a sickening color. My eyes burned with emptiness and my lungs burned with pain. My muscles was paralyzed and I was half past dead.

I popped my head up and turned my eyes away from the comic book. I looked at Boneshaker and he acted like he didn’t have a clue about what jess happened. He looked at me like I was the bearded woman in a freak show.

Clearly I didn’t wake up dead so I must’ov been flipping out. I wasn’t dead but I sho’ was famished so I wiped the sweat from my brow and summoned my man with supper. The servant put the plate on the table and removed the round metallic lid. The universe must’ov been selling wolf tickets ‘cause when I looked down at the plate, it was quail! Ain’t that a blip?

My Mama ain't raised no dummies. I didn't know if the quail was full of poison but I wasn't try'na find out either.

The comic book buzzed again and the cover came to life. I didn’t wanna look at it but my eyes had a mind of their own. The cover was alive! I looked into the future again and saw a plant in my living quarters:

The Pruners had filled the canisters with poison and was on their way back to the Code Enforcement Division, chatting about nothing in particular, when their People App jumped to life. Most people would give a NEGATIVE review on the People App to any person who had any kind of plant. Plants was a violation of the law and the Pruner’s job was to deal with the lawbreakers. They aimed their hovercraft north and whizzed off in the direction of the violation.

They set the hovercraft down on the concrete lawn. When they jumped out, they ran into a woman, half naked, and irate about the plants.

“He’s in there!” Yelled the half-naked woman. “He’s in the house,” she said, pointing her devilish finger toward my living quarters.

The Lead Pruner slipped into his hazmat suit and picked up the battering ram from its resting place on the hovercraft. His partner helped him slip on the gauntlet gloves and hoist the canister onto his back. He glared up into the bright sky at the small bugs that swarmed the house. He wondered how many was bugbots. It was impossible to distinguish a bug from a bot; some being as small as mosquitos, allowing them to hide in plain sight.

The Pruners creeped up to the front of my house and, without knocking, smashed the door with the battering ram.

“Violation of Weeds Code Section Zero,” is all they said.

They slipped through the door like it was butter and stormed in like they owned the place. The Lead Pruner didn’t bother to look left or right, jess made a beeline for the coffee can that was sittin’ atop the kiosk in the food service area.

He looked in the can and then looked at me. A supercilious smile jumped across his lips. He adjusted the nozzle in his hand and pointed it at me. I don’t know what bummed me out most; the fact that I was about to die or that silly grin plastered across his pie hole.

The man seemed to be enraptured by the poison. Its aroma was intoxicating and its power was absolute. The poison was authoritative. No man could argue with it or challenge it, lest he himself be trampled like a weed. The Pruner’s whole body was filled with great excitement and liveliness. His heart pounded so loud I could hear if from across the room. His eyes narrowed, then he pulled the trigger.

I turned to run but the poison leaped from the nozzle like quicksilver. It covered me from head to toe. I spun around and the liquid stream consumed me, scorching my face and my skin, seeping down my nose and throat, and causing me sudden and violent convulsions. I whirled around several times like a spinning top until my body hit the flo’ with a raucous thud.

The Pruner disappeared through the broken doorway and returned with a metal cylinder that resembled an enclosed tanning bed. He and his partner in crime lifted my lifeless body from the flo’ and placed it in the cylinder, which filled with a mixture of water and lye, and heated to 320 degrees Fahrenheit. He pushed a red button on the side of the machine and a loud humming sound ensued.

These dudes was cold. His partner started playin’ with his tattoos like he didn’t have a care in the world. The lead Pruner casually made his way through my living quarters, whistling and humming melodically, and spraying, until every room of my house was covered with poison.

Then abruptly, the whistling stopped. He looked at his partner looking at his tattoos. His partner had one thing on his mind. He was preoccupied and found it difficult to think of anything else, “The vegetarian,” his partner said out loud.

“What’s a vegetarian?”

“A person who eats plants,” came the reply.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such person as a plant eater. It’s against the law,” said the Pruner. “Anyway, what’s so wrong with that?”

The man looked at his partner like he had two heads. He pondered the perverse idea of humans eating plants and was repulsed by the thought of it. He pressed the red button on the metal cylinder and checked to ensure that my body had completely dissolved. What was left of me had liquified into a small quantity of coffee-colored liquid substance that smelled like ammonia. He touched a keypad on the side of the machine, which opened a valve, releasing the coffee-colored substance from the metal cylinder. He drained the liquid into a small container and tossed what was left of my liquefied carcass into the garbage chute.

I popped my head up and turned away from the comic book. Then my eyes wondered across the room and landed on the coffee can atop the kiosk. I slowly meandered over to the food service area and stood there, staring at the coffee can, trying to will my hands to pick it up. I turned to walk away but my body turned back on its own. It felt like I was being pulled by a colossal magnet.

I opened the can and looked inside. My body swayed to the left, then right. Boneshaker grabbed my arm to help me steady myself. He was growing impatient ‘cause he wanted to get on with the tattoo job.

I slowly stretched my hand out toward the coffee can, almost afraid to know what was inside. I prayed to the heavens that it wasn’t a plant. I reached my hand inside and half-smiled at the absurdity of it all. Then I pulled out two chewable coffee Go cubes. Popped one in my mouth and slid the other one into the super flex pocket of my bio-skin.

Boneshaker jess looked at me and shook his head. Then he pulled out the longest hypodermic needle I ever seen.

The comic book cover buzzed a third time and I was in a cave:

The cave was jess beyond the clearing, outside the massive colony dome. The entrance was marked by a short graveyard, which was covered in dirt and small bones and remnants of a makeshift barricade. Behind the barricade, jess inside the cave entrance was a group of skeletons.

At first the cave was serene; then, in an instant, it was animated with bats. Bats that only seconds befoe’ dangled upside down in solitude. The nocturnal mammals exploded in the darkness, their wings feverishly fluttering, propelling them at a ground speed of 99 miles per hour.

I tried to maintain my composure but my body quivered. I held motionless as an endless black carpet of bats rained down. I hit the ground and the bats rolled through the mouth of the cave and vanished into thin air.

I laid down and kept my mouth shut the whole time. Boneshaker was after me and I didn’t want to call attention to myself.

Boneshaker was a scratcher; what some people would call an illegal tattoo artist. He offered underground services in body art theft and he had a photographic memory. Body art was the currency in our time. Hit one tattoo to lock the door to your house. Hit another to start your car. Tap a different one for your phone, clock, maps, wallet, weather; whatever. With one look, Boneshaker could copy a tattoo and steal a person’s identity. But if he couldn’t replicate the tattoo on your arm, he jess cut the arm off and took it.

Right now he was after me ‘cause I was one of the wealthiest men in the Colony. He kept coming and I kept running.

I crouched and made my way deeper into the cave. I had a little bit of light that was given off by the thousands of snails that illuminated the cave like fireflies.

I saw a door up ahead so I tapped a tattoo on my left forearm. A scanning and data analysis image projected in the air, blasting light into the cave. I manipulated the image with my finger. My analysis showed no humanoid lifeforms or weapons behind the door so I gently pried it open. A long tunnel led to a bend, which led to another door.

The walls of the cave was black and they was covered with red markings in the shape of hourglasses. The walls began to move. The cave was filled with black widow spiders that came to life. The spiders was big and round; the size of baseballs!

I ran.

The tunnel was filled with the venomous insects. They had made webs that consisted of silken fibers. The webs was tangled and sticky. I turned and jetted outa’ there like gangbusters. I brushed up against the spider web and my body attached to the silken fibers like flypaper.

The creepy spiders crawled toward me. I pulled and tugged at the webs but I couldn’t free myself. Tiny droplets of glue was suspended on the silk threads. My arm was fast attached to the web. The threads sprang out and trapped my upper body like I was a giant bug.

The more I struggled, the more vibrations I sent through the web. Freeing myself was impossible. The spiders was as close to me as ninety-nine is to a hundred. It looked like all it’s legs was about to wrap around me and for sure I was a ’goner. I jess wanted it to git ovah fast. Then I fell to the flo’. I jumped up like it was no tomorrow and got in the wind. My heart pounded like a jackhammer and I had to stop to catch my breath. I doubled ovah and put my hands on my knees ‘cause my chest was on fire.

“What a shame,” a voice said from the darkness.

Boneshaker smirked and stepped forward from the shadows. “All wrapped up with no place to go!” he said.

He was tall and thin. He was naked from head to toe. His only covering was the tattoos that wrapped and covered his body. He had a human skull tattoo on his face that made him look like a skeleton. Small metal studs littered both his ears. His lobes had holes large enough to fit a small egg through. His nose had several rings on one side and a large bone ran through his septum.

When he spoke he slurred his words ‘cause his tongue had been split down the middle to resemble a forked-tongue serpent. He looked like somebody had slapped ‘em with an ugly stick. The only part of his body that didn’t have no ink was his fingertips, which had magnets that had been implanted under the skin.

I made a move for my disrupter.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he said, shaking his finger in the air.

Several scratchers stepped out of the shadows.

Boneshaker looked at his henchmen, then at me. “Probably wondering how you got out of the web, huh?”

He paused for a response. “Not rhetorical,” he said, hunching his shoulders and throwing his hands in the air.

“The webs lose their stickiness after a few days,” he said. “Dust accumulation and air exposure you know.”

I pointed my disrupter and fired. The energy pulse leapt toward Boneshaker. He sprang sideways and waved his hands in the air. The magnets in his fingertips influenced a magnetic field which diverted the energy pulse.

The energy beam ripped through the scratchers. It punched a hole through the midsection of the first man, then the next, then the next. They toppled in rapid succession, hitting the deck like so many dominoes. Boneshaker disappeared into the shadows.

I took a big gulp of air and ran. But before I could turn the corner I was trapped and was lying face down in a giant size cobweb. It was shaped like a funnel. My arms was stretched wide like I was being crucified upside down. My entire body was attached to the web. My feet was at the wide opening at the top of the funnel and my head was stuck in the narrow chamber at the bottom.

The female black widow woke up. She rushed forward from the recesses of the cavern. The mammoth spider had eight eyes, eight legs, two body parts, and long fangs coming out of its mouth.

The spider crawled on top of me. It used its hind legs to cover me in silk. The black widow punctured the back of my head with its fangs. I let out a blood curdling scream. Then silence. My body twitched and then I was still. The spider oozed a poisonous enzyme into my corpse.

The black widow’s fangs worked like a hypodermic needle. It had a small hole in the tip and a hollow duct inside. The spider squeezed the duct, injecting a lethal amount of venom into my skull. The poison enzymes liquefied my innards. My internal organs melted and reduced to a liquid state. The black widow sucked up the liquid remains and left the husk of my body to rot in the tattered cobwebs.

I threw the comic book across the room and plopped down in the closest chair. I wouldn’t let Boneshaker come near me after that and I told him what I saw in the comic book.

He jess looked at me cross-eyed, “Man, you jiving me,” he said.

“If I’m lying, I’m flying,” I responded.

Boneshaker was cool as a cucumber; like ain’t nothing happened. “Where you coming from, man?” he said, “I ain’t no underground scratcher. And do I look like I got a photographic memory to you? ‘Sides, can’t no graphic novel predict the future.”

Boneshaker had a point. I ain’t dead so obviously I must’ov been on a psychedelic trip. And besides that, the image in the comic book had been wrong every time.

We had a stiff drink and a good laugh.

That's when he told me he was an underground tattoo artist; stealing people's identities. His method of madness was to replicate their tattoos and hack their wealth. And if he couldn't copy the tattoo, he jess' cut their limbs off and took 'em.

We had another good laugh and I prepared for my new tattoo. I closed my eyes and relaxed. And then I saw it as clear as day. Boneshaker had a needle that was a foot long and he was about to stick it in my ear and clean through to my skull.