Crooky came back from the toilets. — Goat some acid, eh. Microdot. Ye intae trippin?
— Naw, no really. Wantin an ecky, eh, Calum said uneasily. He was thinking of Ian Gilroy, of Boaby, as they once were. Boaby had put a lot of badness in his head. Then there was Helen, his girlfriend: things hadn't been going well between them. It would be stupid to trip in this frame of mind. Trips were best left to long, hot summer days, with the right vibe and the right company, preferably in a park or, better still, out in the country. Not in these circumstances.
— Moan, Cally, thaire's a perty oan the night, at this cunt Chizzie's. You ken Chizzie, eh?
— Aye . . . Chizzie, Calum replied blankly. He didn't really know Chizzie. He didn't feel so good. However, he wanted to get out of his face. This acid probably would just give a mild buzz; eighties acid rather than sixties acid, as some of the old sages might disdainfully say. There wasn't a lot that could happen to you on that kind of trip. — Like ah sais, ah'd rather huv an E, eh . . . but, well . . .
They swallowed the trips as surreptitiously as their haste allowed. Boaby, dictated to by distress signals from his pain centres, hauled himself up and went to the toilet. He was gone quite a long time anyway, but it could have been months for Crooky and Calum, for by the time he came back, they were seized by a massive trip.
The pub mirrors distorted, seeming to arc and form a strange bubble around them, cutting them off from the rest of the clientele who looked twisted, as their images reflected through these strange, warped lenses. The sense of isolation this gave them was briefly comforting, but it quickly grew suffocating and oppressive. They became aware of their body rhythms, the pounding of their hearts, the circulating of their blood. They had a sense of themselves as machines. Calum, a plumber, thought of himself as a plumbing system; this made him want to shit. Crooky had seen the video Terminator recently, and his vision became as through the Schwarzenegger robot's red-tinted viewfinder, the lettering spelling out alternatives which flashed up before his eyes.
ACID TRIP NO.
372 PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL PROGRAMME
ACTIVATED
1. Go to bar and get pished. [ ]
2. Leave immediately and go home. [ ]
3. Go to bogs and lock self in trap. [ ]
4. Phone someone to come and talk you down. [ ]
5. Chizzie's party. [ ]
— Fuckin hell . . . he gasped, — ah'm a fuckin robot, man . . .
— It's either the end ay the world or the start ay a new one, Calum said, turning away from a distorting grin that transformed Boaby into a cartoon wolf, to watch some creature crawl slowly across the floor of the pub.
It's only really a dug . . . or a cat . . . but ye dinnae get cats in pubs, mibbe sometimes in country pubs in Ireland where they sit in front ay the coal fire, but this yin must be a fuckin dug . . .
— These trips, man, how fuckin wild are they, eh? Crooky shook his head.
— Aye, said Calum, — n Boaby's jist fuckin banged up, the dirty wee cunt. In the bogs like. Look at um! Calum was grateful to Boaby for providing an external focus, before he felt a surge of blood course through fragile veins and he visualised these veins popping under the bubbling power of that blood, like a turbulent river bursting its banks. This was how you died, he thought, this was how life ended. — Goat tae git oot ay here, man!
— Aye, lit's git ootside, Crooky nervously agreed.
It took them a while to actually manage to stand up. The pub was spinning around them, people's faces were distorting wildly. At one moment all was light; at the next they seemed ready to black out, due to the awesome overload of the trip on their senses. Calum felt reality slipping away from him like a rope which was pulled through greased hands by an irresistible force. Crooky felt his psyche peeling away rapidly, like the skins on a multilayered banana, believing that this process was stripping him down, fundamentally altering him into some different form of life.
When they got outside they were immediately all but overwhelmed by a wall of sound and light. Crooky felt himself leaving his mortal flesh and shooting off into space, then snapping with great force back into his body. He glanced back down the street, a buzzing cacophony of strange but familiar sounds and a whizzing kaleidoscope of flashing neon; both producing a bizarre and overpowering interface which drenched their senses. Roughly tangible through this flood was the solitary figure of Boaby who they saw shuffling along behind them.
— C'moan, ya junkie cunt! Calum shouted, then turned to Crooky.— Fuckin waste ay space yon cunt! Despite his aggression Calum was glad that Boaby had tagged on as he did, providing a much-needed source of reality orientation.
They made their tentative way through an obviously familiar terrain, yet the drug had given it an alien hue. When Leith Walk did look like its old self, it was only for short bursts of time, which popped like bubbles to reveal a newer, different reality. Then they found themselves walking through Dresden after the bombings; the flame and smoke and smells of charred flesh around them. They stopped, looked back, and Boaby emerged from the fire, like, Crooky thought, the Terminator robot from the gasoline explosion. — Too fuckin risky . . .
Once again, Crooky and Calum felt themselves drift out of, then snap back into their bodies from a long way out in space. Reality briefly asserted itself as Calum gasped, — Ah cannae handle this, man . . . it's like thaire's some kind ay fuckin nuclear war gaun oan . . .
— Aye, right. They always droap the fuckin bomb whinivir you droap a tab. They dae it just tae fuckin spite ye. Nivir mind that Saddam-whit's-the-cunt's-face, Cally's jist droaped a fuckin tab, Crooky mocked.
Calum laughed loudly and therapeutically. It settled him down. Crooky was a sound cunt to trip with. No freakouts with Crooky. A cool cunt. This was fuckin brilliant.
They moved into a tunnel of golden light which pulsed and resonated as they looked on in bewilderment. — Fuckin no real, ya cunt. How good is this? Crooky commented, his mouth open.
Calum could not speak. Thoughts came into his head, but they were related to undefinable objects. It was if he was a baby again and had rediscovered pre-speech thought. The objects were distorted household artefacts; a lamp, a table, a chair, but they were the lamp, table and chair that had furnished the house he lived in as a baby, when he was trying to get to grips with his environment. He'd forgotten about them, never really consciously remembered them. Rhymes and rhythms flashed incessantly through his mind, but he couldn't say them, as these thoughts had no proximity to traditional spoken language. It would all be lost when he came down; this secret mental language, this pre-speech thought. He began to feel terrible, deflated at the prospect of losing this great insight. He was on the threshold of some superior knowledge, some great insight. If he could get even further back, beyond consciousness, birth, into past lives . . . but no, there was no way to break through. You could look, that was all, but you couldn't learn as there was no point of reference. He felt it slipping through his psyche like sand through his fingers. There was no way to break through, if you wanted to come back. And he did. — We ken nowt, we ken fuck all . . . nane ay us ken fuck all . . .
— Take it easy, Cal, c'moan, man, Crooky implored. — All hands on deck. Look, wir nearly at Chizzie's. Here's Boaby, fir fuck sakes. Boab! Stick in, ya cunt! Ye awright?
— Ah cannae speak . . . ah'm on heroin, man. Heroin, Boaby slurred.
— Daft cunt. Should've taken one ay they microdots, eh? The Raven said that they were the business and jist tae take a half, but ah thought that wis jist the usual fancy sales talk. But naw. How good is this, Cal?
— It's good . . . Calum said doubtfully. This was not acid. This was something else. He'd been tripping for years, thought he'd seen it all; become blasé about the drug. Old fucked-up sages who now never touched the stuff because of that one-too-crazy trip had warned him: just when you think you've got the measure of it, you get hit with a trip which changes your life. They were right. Everything else he'd taken was just a
preparation for this moment, and it was no preparation at all. Whatever happened, things would be different after this.
They walked on, with the minutes feeling more like hours. They seemed to be constantly double-backing, as if in the type of dream where you appeared to be going one step forward and two steps in reverse. They would pass narrow roads with pubs on the corner. Sometimes it was same pub and road they'd just passed, sometimes a different one. Eventually, however, they seemed to arrive at Chizzie's stair door without recognising any of the landmarks between the pub and their destination.
— Eh . . . ah dinnae ken which yin . . . Crooky tried to read the faded tags on the stair intercom system. — Thaire's nae Chizzie.
— What's ehs real name? Calum asked, as Boaby boaked up some bile. The pubs were beginning to leak drunks. It was important to get into the flat. Calum felt the presence of demons in the streets around them. At first it had just been a suggestion. Now it was unbearable.— Jist git the fuck in, the demons ur oot here, man!
— Dinnae talk fuckin shite! Crooky snapped. It was a thing they had when they were talking about tripping, about how tripping always brought out the demons. That was fine after a trip, but they'd always tacitly agreed never to mention it on the trip itself, and now this fucked-up cunt was . . . Crooky composed himself. — It's, eh, Chisholm, ah think . . .
— Fuck, shouted Calum, — jist press the fuckin loat! Press the toap yins! Whin some cunt opens git in the stair n follay the sound fir the perty!
— Aye! Right! Crooky did this and they gained entry to the stair. Their rubber legs carried them up towards the sound.
They were relieved to see a distorted but discernible Chizzie standing on the top landing. — Awright, chavvy! Chizzie roared. — Good tae see yis! Good night, aye?
— No bad . . . wir really trippin likes, Crooky admitted, slightly guilty about showing up without a carry-out or drugs.
— Whit yis fuckin like, ya daft cunts thit yis are? Chizzie laughed, then noted that they were empty-handed. — C'moan in, he said, with less enthusiasm.
The flat appeared claustrophobic to Crooky and Calum. They sat by the fireplace, drinking cans of lager, looking into the imitation coal fire, trying to blot out the party that was going on around them. Boaby, who had shuffled up behind them, went to the toilet and lurched back half an hour later, depositing himself in a pine rocking chair.
A square-jawed guy with a moustache approached Crooky and Calum. — Awright, boys. Raffle tickets fir sale. Club 86. First prize, Rover Metro. Second Prize, five-hundred-pound hoaliday voucher fae Sphere Travel, eh. Third prize, Chrismiss hamper worth a hundred bar. Pound a ticket likes.
— Eh, ah'm no wantin a ticket . . . Crooky said.
The guy looked at them with an expression of beligerent outrage.— Chrismiss draw-aw, he snapped, swishing the book of tickets in front of them.
— Eh, aye . . . Crooky fumbled in his pockets. Calum thought that he'd better do likewise.
— Chrismiss fuckin draw then, cunt . . . A pound a fuckin ticket fir a hamper or a hoaliday or a motor – dinnae dae ays any fuckin favours!
— Eh, ah'll take yin . . . Calum started to hand over a pound coin.
— Eh! One fuckin ticket! Moan tae fuck, ya tight cunt! Chrismiss fuckin draaaww! Club 86. Hibernian Youth Development . . . Yir no fuckin Jambos, ur yis?
— Eh . . . naw. . . ah'll take five! Calum shouted, with a sudden surge of enthusiasm.
— That's ma man! said the guy with the moustache.
Crooky, who was a Jambo, reluctantly handed over two pounds.
— Ye gaun oan Setirday? Calum asked the salesman.
— Eh? The man looked at him with hostility.
— Easter Road.
The man stared at Calum for a moment and shook his head in an aggressive, surly manner.— Ah'm here fir a fuckin perty n tae sell fuckin tickets, no tae talk aboot fuckin fitba.
He departed, leaving Crooky and Calum feeling extremely paranoid.
— Bevvy's the only thing for a trip like this. It's a depressant, brings ye back doon, Crooky said, raising the can of lager to his lips.
— Ah jist wish we'd fuckin brought some along, Calum nodded nervously as he drank.
— Thaire's a wee pile behind ays, but whin thir finished, it's your turn tae go through the kitchen n nab some mair, Crooky told him.
Calum swallowed heavily.
After about an hour, however, they began to feel better, and decided that they would be less conspicuously out of things if they got up and started dancing with some of the others. Somebody had put on a trancy tape, which went well with the acid. Calum moved to the music, looking at some girls, then at Boaby, who was fast asleep in the rocking chair.
A wiry guy with a crew cut was shouting: — CHIZZIE! PIT MA FUCKIN TAPE OAN! MA FUCKIN TAPE, YA CUNT! PRIMAL SCREAM, CHIZZIE! He held up a red cassette box with a blue splash in the middle, stabbing at it with the index finger of his other hand.
— Naw . . . Finitribe, eh, a skinny guy with hair in his eyes mumbled. Crooky thought he recognised the guy from somewhere.
Calum was starting to feel a bit paranoid again. He didn't really know anyone at the party and he began to feel more and more out of place, as if he wasn't welcome. They should have brought along a carry-out. It was out of order, coming empty-handed like that. He sat down alongside Boaby.
— Boab man, this is really fuckin weird. Ah ken it's just the gear n that bit thaire's a couple ay cunts fae Lochend here n ah think one ay thum's the brar ay that radge Keith Allison, the cunt that chibbed Mooby. That whole family, man, total blade merchants. Ah heard a story that one time some cunt tried tae gless one ay they Allisons doon at the Poast Oaffice Club n eh jist took the gless oaf ay the boy, cool as fuck, and ripped the cunt's face apart wi it . . . ah mean, total psycho like, eh . . . thaire's that many bad things in ma life right now, Boab . . . a bad time tae take the acid . . . ken Helen, like? She's ma bird, ah mean, ah dinnae think you've met her like, Boaby, but she's goat this sister called Julia . . .
Boaby said nothing.
— MA FUCKIN TAPE THEN, CHIZZIE, YA CUNT! PRIMAL FUCKIN SCREAM! The wiry guy with the crew cut screamed, but not particularly at Chizzie, and then started frantically dancing to the tape that was on.
Calum turned back to the silent Boaby. —. . . it's no that ah fancy her, Boab, Helen's sister Julia like, ah mean, no really. It's jist thit me n Helen, wirnae really speakin, n thaire ah wis up the toon n jist sortay ended up at Buster's, n her sister Julia likes, well, she wis thaire wi some ay her mates. Well, the thing wis, nowt happened, no really. Ah mean, ah wee bit a neckin n that . . . thing wis, ah wanted somethin tae happen. Ah did n ah didnae, if ye ken what ah mean, eh? Ah mean, you ken how it is, eh, Boab?
Boaby said nothing.
— See me, Boab, ma trouble is thit ah dinnae really ken whit ah want oot ay ma life. That's whit it aw comes doon tae . . . fuck this gear . . . every cunt looks fuckin ancient . . . aw decrepit likes . . . even that Sandra lassie, she's here, mind her that used tae go oot wi Kev MacKay . . . you legged her one time, Boab, ya dirty cunt . . . ah mind ay that . . .
— Yi'll git fuck all oot ay that cunt, a skinny guy with black hair said to Calum, — he wis bangin up smack in the bogs. Bangin up in thaire whin thaire's lassies tryin tae git in fir a fuckin pish.
This guy looked hideous. He was like something from a concentration camp: he was skeletal. As soon as Calum got a sense of this, the guy actually was a skeleton.
— Eh . . . whaire's Crooky? Calum asked him.
— Yir mate? The skeleton's jaw rattled.
— Aye . . .
— He's through in the kitchen, ootay his fuckin nut. Bit ay a lippy cunt is eh no?
— Naw . . . eh . . . aye . . . ah mean, whit's eh been sayin?
— Too much ay a fuckin lippy cunt, eh.
— Aye . . .
The skeleton departed, leaving Calum wondering how to get out of this nightmare.
— Hi, Boaby,
mibbe wi should go . . . eh, Boab? No that struck oan the vibes here, eh.
Boaby said nothing.
Then a girl in a red dress came over and sat down beside Calum. She had short blonde hair with light brown roots. He thought that her face was pretty, but her bare arms seemed sinewy and scraggy. — You here wi that Crooky? she asked.
— Eh, aye. Eh, ah'm Calum, likes.
— You're no Ricky Prentice's brother, are ye?
Calum felt as if he had been electrocuted. Everyone knew his brother Ricky was an arsehole. If they knew that he was Ricky's brother, then they would think he was an arsehole.
— Aye . . . bit ah'm no the same as Ricky . . .
— Nivir says ye wir, the girl shrugged.
— Aye, bit what ah mean tae say is thit Ricky's Ricky n ah'm me. Ricky's nowt tae dae wi me. Ah mean, he goes his wey n ah go mine, eh. Ken whit ah mean likes?
— You're ootay yir face.
— They microdots . . . eh, what's yir name?
— Gillian.
— They microdots, Gillian, no real.
— Ah nivir touch acid. Maist people that dae acid end up in the funny farm. They jist cannae handle it. Ah ken one guy thit did acid n went intae a coma . . .
— Eh . . . aye . . . no bad perty but, eh, Calum bleated nervously.
— Hud oan the now, Gillian said, suddenly distracted. — Be back in a minute.
As she rose, the guy with the crew cut started shouting again. — CHIZ-AY-AY! GIT MA FUCKIN TAPE OAN! PRI-MIL FUGH-KIN SCREEEM!
— Aye, Chizzie, pit Omelette's tape oan, Gillian agreed.
The loud guy called Omelette turned to Gillian, nodding in stern vindication. — See that. He looked over at Chizzie, who was rolling a joint on an album cover, and pointed back at Gillian. — Listen tae that! GIT MA FUCKIN TAPE OAN!
— In a bit, chavvy. Chizzie looked up and winked at Omelette.
Crooky came over to Calum. — This is too fuckin mad, Cally . . . n there's you chattin up that Gillian lassie n aw, ya dirty cunt . . .
— Ye ken ur, like? Calum asked.
— Yir well in thaire, a fuckin easy lay, Crooky smiled.