H.A. Eugene

The first time he smoked salvia it didn’t do anything. It was described as 20x, and so he made a mental note to maybe next time buy the stuff marked with the larger numbers, despite the protests of his friends, who begged him, please, don’t turn your back on real drugs.

The second attempt was a different story. He took a series of hits, each held in for longer than felt natural and, in no time, felt himself taken aback by a warmth in his ears, which coincided with a ringing, some muscular twitching, and pressure in his joints. Finally, he thought. He closed his eyes and shook his head until the feeling of movement became disconnected from the behavior itself.

He opened his eyes to find a slit of pinkish purple warbling its way open. It presented itself like a gift to him, one that had taken advantage of the stillness in time to incubate, to grow.

Ooh, portal, he thought, as the slit yawned and swelled like an envelope of plasticized rubber melting in the heat of some foreign sun, then fell open, completely.

He peered in. There was a world on the other side and, he could see that, unlike his dungeon of an apartment, this world was bright. There was real natural light over there. Lots of it. Classrooms in his memory were almost always lit by fluorescent lights that buzzed like insects and made the room feel dead. This classroom was nothing like that. This classroom was most definitely alive.

The smiles of the students — about twenty grade schoolers — were wide, and enthusiastic. They wore uniforms that consisted of little white Bermuda shorts and little white button-up shirts.

The room radiated with a chocolate-and-China effect that played the white classroom walls against the dark brown skin of the students and their teacher, who wore the same white Bermuda shorts and white button-up shirt that his charges wore, only the grown-up version. Behind them, through glassless windows, he could see white sand, along which the shadows of palm trees fell. He sensed the Caribbean.

Everything glowed.

The kids burbled with an energy that couldn’t be quieted, though the teacher attempted to shush them with hand gestures and gentle admonishments. This calmed their tittering just long enough for him to notice that the teacher was trying to get them to recite something, to perform something. Perhaps for him.

Me? he thought, as he pushed his hair back into place with his hands, realizing that they were seeing him, too; though this also meant that they could see the rest of him, splayed out on a bean bag, in boxer shorts and a wife-beater. He closed his thighs, mortified, as this also meant that the water bong between his legs was the only thing between him and the indignity of a classroom full of kids in the Caribbean breaking up in hysterics because his balls had fallen out of his shorts.

Before he could do anything else, the slit contracted and faded. The portal was closed.