I BLAME ALL OF MY PROBLEMS ON FUTURE SHOCK

Echo suddenly felt embarrassment for having such strong and selfish thoughts about his bottomless pit of despair and shame, and pulled deep inside of himself, trying as hard as he could to crawl into his metaphorical third eye and scream at himself to shut the fuck up. Although at this point he believed that this wasn’t a metaphorical third eye and that it was very much a real third eye probably lodged somewhere inside his brain, maybe his pineal gland, but then he was afraid that he was letting his hippie friends, from his real and/or planted memories, from his college years speak for him. 

Or maybe this was Dio’s fault. Damn Dio’s sage advice and his drugs and the calamity and the chaos and the death and the suffering and the using of postmodern and psychedelic fiction as a way to hide in a fantasy world. Maybe that tattered copy of Future Shock is to blame for all of this. Maybe if he hadn’t ditched class at Berkeley that one day in 1982 and while on acid stumbled into The UWS Used Books & More and found that paperback and sat on the floor and read it until the owner of The UWS kicked him out and taken the paperback without paying for it and finished it at that coffee shop down the road, I wouldn’t be an addict. Maybe if Dio had gone to class and graduated from Berkeley and gone on to become a super progressive attorney or a sexy doctor, I wouldn’t be an addict.  

His cheeks burned and waves of Krelmetus energy tremors rolled across his body. His eyes glowed red and the flight reaction tore through his mind. 

Instead of running, Echo only fantasized about running into that glass tomb in the fuzzy distance. 

Inside the glass tomb, Dio – the old rapscallion of a wise old man archetype that had taught Echo the ways of postmodernism and given him his first taste of opioids, psychedelics, and dirty-under-the-sink drugs – dropped the bark into Echo’s bowl and whispered sage advice at him. Echo couldn’t hear Dio’s words on this side of the glass, but he could hear every word in his head. The tail ends of his words trailed and the trails of the words that followed layered on top of each other, building in volume. The auditory hallucination escalated as his own childhood screams from various hazy memories layered on top of those. Echo frowned and began hyperventilating, the same way he did when he took too many pills at Flynn’s house and opted out of going to the hospital, convincing Flynn and himself that he wasn’t overdosing, that he was only on the edge of overdosing. 

To prove that he still kind of had his wits about him, Echo said, “I’m an edgy motherfucker.” 

Flynn wasn’t comfortable not taking Echo to the hospital, but he decided to let Echo crash on the couch. Flynn stayed up all night checking Echo’s pulse.

Purple lightning crashed in the postmodern novel’s climax mountain base, a literal mountain base that is much too on the nose for your dear author, but fuck it. 

The purple lightning cracked again and the crack sustained and rose to a high-pitch screech in Echo’s head. Echo put his hands over his ears and silently begged for the noise to stop. He wasn’t sure if he ever thanked Flynn for staying up all night with him. 

Thank you, Flynn.

“In some Verses,” Dio said from their precipice, “the veil does parish. Those are the Verses fully integrated into SORA. They have no Free Will.”

“Fuck you, Dio,” I said. “Who let you into my psychedelic nightmare fantasy world?”

“You let me in,” Dio growled. “You always let me in. You need the wise old man archetype. You have an essence and your essence is a scared little blob that needs me. Since that very first time we met, and you and your buddy accepted hallucinogenic book pages from this ragged old guy who used to read Future Shock over and over under the banyan tree in the center of our middle school lawn. But it wasn’t really hallucinogenic book pages, it was something much more real. You hide behind psychedelic fiction because you’re scared.”

“Old man,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”

“My name isn’t old man. My name is Dio. Remember I used to introduce myself as, "Dio like Diogenes, the cool ragged Diogenes that met Alexander the Taint, and not like Dio the false singer of Black Sabbath - Ozzy for life - and fuck you very much.” I used to hang out, bumble, sleep, and tell stories on the lawn of my middle school. Yes, the administration of Russell Middle School allowed this tattered-grown-ass rapscallion to wander school grounds because this was a pre-Columbine pre-nine-eleven world. I'm not being nostalgic right now. I'm stating a fact. In the pre-Columbine pre-nine-eleven world, old rapscallions were allowed to scream their idioglossia-laden interpretations of postmodernism at middle schoolers. I mentioned Future Shock in almost all of my rants and I always carried around a tattered copy of this book. Weird fact about Tampa rapscallions: All of them, no kidding, carry around a copy of this book. This was that same weird time period of the mid-to-late 90’s when that positively medieval diet trend took hold, the body part shaped food diet. Eat grapes if you want healthy eyes. Eat tater tots if you want healthy toes. Eat a hotdog if you want a healthy penis.

“Remember that first day we met. You and Flynn were in PE and Couch Stephenson gave you the same choice he gave you everyday, "play baseball or walk laps around the lawn." Couch S, who was the oldest, angriest person on Earth, only knew baseball. You called him Gawd and you’d draw it out, Gaawwwdd. He was probably 125 years old and he sat in a chair in the shade the whole hour and he’d get winded simply watching his students walk to the baseball field. And you’re pretty sure he literally didn't know about other sports. So you and Flynn were walking laps like you did everyday because you didn't like baseball and you used the free time as an opportunity to work on your - you called it improv comedy magick (magick with a K). Really this was the only time and place you could practice this because your parents had banned you from this fine magickal art. You two had recently finished reading the exegesis of obscure psy-fi author Rocco Atleby and in this lengthy, ramble-y text, he talked a lot about using improv comedy as a form of ritual magick. A lot. And in the text he gave instructions. So you started messing with this improv stuff. Rocco basically claimed you could get anything you desired if you did the magick with a K the totally correct way, so of course you were going to try it out. Infinite Santa. Think of the pizza and N64 games to be had. Yes, you remember. Santa brought you pizza a couple times. Santa brings pizza sometimes. It’s a fact. Look it up. 

“After a couple weeks of practice, you were getting results. Excellent results. Yes, lots of pizza. But also, the magick taught you how to steal N64 games from Kmart and how to break into houses and steal jewelry. How many houses did you break into? The improv gave you a rush. A pounding heart and an insatiable desire for more kind of rush. You could give me the jewelry and I would give you potions even more powerful than the rambles of a psychedelic fiction writer. You knew I could get you what you wanted because you observed me and the eccentricities I revelled within.

“And it became a problem for your parents. All of it. Whatever it was exactly. 

“There’s no essence to all of this so it is hard to say what it is.

“Parents don't like it and don't understand when you and your buddy wander around under the overpasses of Tampa while talking about Marky's Mom's nipples and the Goddess Sophia and you say things like "What if we found super cool jumpsuits, kind of like the jumpsuits from the Intergalactic Beastie Boys music video?" And then right after that find a box next to a pile of used needles filled with brand new Intergalactic Beastie Boys jumpsuits and then get naked in public to change into the jumpsuits and then wander home wearing the jumpsuits while talking about how Marky's Mom and Sophia watch over all of Florida the South of the South and when parents ask you, "Honey where's your school uniform and why are you wearing a jumpsuit that looks like it's from that fabulous award winning music video for Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys and what are those holes in your arms?", you say "Echo and I found a box of these nifty jumpsuits and got naked under the Howard Avenue overpass and gave our clothes to a gaggle of pigeons." And parents don't like it and don't understand when you and your buddy are sitting on your front porch and you see a helicopter and riff and say something like, "See that helicopter. It's coming for us.", and your buddy says, "Yes and it's going to drop a lifetime supply of bacon bits on the driveway.", and that helicopter really does drop a lifetime supply of real bacon bits on the driveway. When stuff like that happens parents tend to say something like, "Did you boys, like, hack into a government site or something? Is this some initiation rite into a creepy extrajudicial branch of the government? I mean, we're proud of you for pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps and getting a job but couldn't you have taken the bar and become super young progressive attorneys or graduated early from medical school and become doogie howser?"

“And you would say, "You overestimate our intelligence."

“And they would say, "Well no more of this. Whatever it is. Because it's too much. Who needs this much bacon? Who needs this much beastie boys jumpsuits? What's next? Too much failing out of school and becoming rapscallions who hang out under the banyan tree and scream about Future Shock?"

“And you would say, "Where's the connective tissue? How'd you get from bacon to rapscallion?"

“And they would say, "Exactly."

“So, you had to practice your improv in secret while walking laps during PE. And you had to cover up the sores on your faces with makeup. And you had to prop each other up, arms over shoulders in a display of teleodynamic zombie work - like you were both Bernie from Weekend At Bernie’s 2 - in order to hide our inebriation from teachers and parents and pets and the ghosts of your ancestors.

“But you never hid from Dio like Diogenes, the cool ragged Diogenes that met Alexander the Taint, and not like Dio the false singer of Black Sabbath - Ozzy for life - and fuck you very much - who usually only ever talked to himself under the banyon tree and said things like, "An Age of Entanglement is spilling over and overlapping with the Age of Paranoia, turning the very real and reflective history and tragedy into fake chunks and units and objects that could only be sniffed, scorned, and imitated as if it were all about the glory rather than the lesson. Come on people, we know what that man said so long ago about being trapped in the bottle and what that same man said about the beetle in the box. I know who I am. I know where I hide. Do you know who you are? Do you know where you hide? We've all read this book. Seriously, did we make this or did it make us and by continuing to push our stories further and further away from the prima materia do we make this reality more and more of what we were warned about or is it okay to push further and further out from ourselves because that is how we learn – the meta-narrative is what makes us human and let’s not pretend all narratives are not meta-narratives (I mean for Gaawwwwdd’s sake the first novel is a super meta-narrative called The Tale of Genji). I’m panting. I’m raving. This is what they want. This is what they need. This is what we have always been crashing toward. We know where this is going. We know we're stuck in this loop of too much going around and around like we're stuck inside one of those novelty boxes that when they're switched on a plastic finger pops out of the box and switches the box back off." 

“You never hid from Dio because Dio understood you. Dio could teach you things. Dio could get you what you needed. Stay close to Dio.

Echo interrupted. “Dio, it’s super creepy that you’re talking in the third person.”

Dio ignored Echo. “One day, when the sores weren’t covered in enough makeup and the arms were heavy and falling from the shoulders, Dio stopped you in your tracks as you were walking and riffing and trying to use improv comedy like it was a Santa giving out infinite gifts. 

“You said to Flynn, "I was trying to listen to the new Blanket Town album on my discman. The CD skips with every step I take, even with the mechanism’s guaranteed skip-resistance. I need a new discman. Also, Marky's Mom's nipples were so hard yesterday that I swear to Gaaaawwwwwdd they stabbed through and tore open her favorite sunflower blouse."

"And Marky jumped out from behind a bush and said, "Stop talking about my mom damnit," and then scurried away.

“Dio jumped out from behind the banyan tree and screamed, "You're abusing the magick with a K."

“Flynn put his hands on his hips and said, "Dio, how do you know we're performing magick?" Flynn grabbed your discman and chucked it. It sailed high into the air, flew across the street, and crashed through the third floor window of the Shady Lane Apartments.

“An old lady stuck her head out the window. "I don't like that! How bout I throw a D battery at ya!" She chucked a D battery and it whacked Flynn in the face.

““Oof," Flynn said and grabbed his face. "I don't like that."

“You said to Dio, "How are we abusing the improv magick?"

“Dio silently tap danced for several minutes as you awkwardly stood there and watched.

“He stopped abruptly and said, "It's not like some Santa who can give you infinite gifts. One shouldn’t use the improv for selfish reasons. One should use the improv to improve the lives of others."

“A chilly breeze blew through the air as if the universe was adding emphasis to Dio's words. 

“Dio said, "Rocco Atleby, Aleister Crowley, Philip K. Dick, Salma Hayek, Hilary Page, James Joyce, Virgina Woolf, Castaneda, Robert Anton Wilson, Mathew Macconehey, Madame Bovary, Don Chedle, the entire cast of the 1990's version of Land of the Lost, the guy that runs the Color Me Mine a few blocks that way, the 1985 Chicago Bears, Oprah, Double Penetration Delemore, Edmond Edmond, Bowie, Lydia Lunch, My Bloody Valentine, the inventor of glass windows, and Ursula Le Guin all had to learn the big T truth about improv magick the hard way. You know this. We all know this. It was all over the news the other day."

“Flynn licked the D battery "Yes. We all watch ABC nightly news."    

“You said, "Yes. We might be snot-nosed twelve years olds but we're up to date on current events and we're angry about what went down just like everyone else."

“Dio nodded. "Good. Hold out your hands.” 

“You held out our hands. Dio held out Future Shock and opened the book. Two dime bags filled with gray dust fell from the pages. One bag landed in Flynn’s hands and one landed in my hand. 

““This is book page dust,” Dio said. “I’m not being cute. I’m not trying to say that knowledge is power and that if you read a fucking book you will stop abusing magick. This is literally book dust. The book dust of an ancient hallucinogenic text that will hopefully make you boys a little less selfish by the time the trip is over. Now off you go to the locker room, for this period is about to end.”

“Dio put his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes like a carny soothsayer and the bell rang.

““Some trick," Flynn said.

“You snorted the book dust under the banyan tree while Dio watched and then you ventured across the lawn into the locker room. 

“Yes, yes,” Echo said and the purple lightning cracked again. “I’ll take over from here, Dio. Flynn shook his hips until his gym shorts dripping with sweat fell from his waist and slapped onto the floor. As I changed out of my gym clothes into my civilian gear of cargo shorts and Dwayne The Rock Johnson tee I watched in horror as Flynn shoved the shorts into his locker, whipped out a can of body spray called Swamp In A Can, and sprayed his shorts with the liquid that smelled like sunscreen, eucalyptus, saddle wood, orange peels, cozy beach cottages, burnt palm fronds, and summer vacation in the St. Petersburg with David Blaine. He held down the button for several minutes until the entire can coated his shorts. 

“The entire locker room filled with the Swamp vapors. Dizziness hit me fast and the dizziness was immediately followed by hallucinations. I turned around and we were no longer in the locker room. We were deep inside a Florida swamp being hugged by a full moon. Our classmates skipped and frolicked and giggled in the marshy clearings. Piles and piles of book pages sprouted from the sludgy greenery and flapped in the wind. 

“Our classmates giggled and crisscrossed like they were participating in a Scooby Doo montage in and out of the murky envelopments of oaks and palms with all the winged clacking creepy crawlies undulating and exposing themselves in the pinhole beams of moonlight. The bugs landed on their skin and the classmates stopped their frolicking and towel whipping and picked the bugs off each other and feasted. 

“Flynn giggled at this and pulled his sopping wet and way too fragrant shorts from the locker, which was now nestled in the trunk of a massive oak, and slapped the shorts onto the tiny patch of swamp that was still smooth concrete locker room floor. He crouched and flattened the shorts, smoothing them out with his hands. 

“I asked, "Why are you doing this?" My voice echoed in my head.

““Exactly," Flynn said and wiggled his eyebrows at me. 

“An anole lizard crawled onto Flynn’s hand and he did that thing a lot of Floridian kids do. He softly grabbed the lizard and held the tiny creature up to his earlobe and rubbed the tip of the lizard’s mouth against his earlobe until the lizard chomped down onto his ear. Flynn let go and revealed his new jewelry to us.

““You must be from Sexytown,” I said.

““That I am,” Flynn said and shook his head in the breeze bouncing off the guts of the swamp, the breeze that had manifested just for Flynn, just to make his hair dance. 

““The anole lizard let go of Flynn’s ear, landed on a palm frond, and scurried into the night. Flynn picked up his shorts which had dried into a stiff shorts-shaped frisby. He shook the shorts and they made a wibbly-wobbly sound.

"I smacked the ass of the shorts frisby and they wibbly-wobbled again. 

““Watch,” he said and flung the shorts frisby into the swamp.

“The shorts spun into the distance, up and away, through the swamp canopy into the unknown.

“Coach Stephenson’s voice cracked – like the voice of Gawd – through the roar of wind, clacking and whooping creatures, and tinkling auditory hallucinations. 

““Why is this locker room a swamp?!” 

““I spun on my heel in an attempt to find Coach S’s bearded face. When I stopped I found facedown Flynn in the running shower. 

“Coach S boomed, “Why is Zielinski facedown in the shower?!” 

“I looked up and found Coach S’s oversized face surrounded by a halo of blue light popping through the canopy.

““Sorry S-man,” I whispered and offered him hands of prayer.

“Lightning shot from his eyes and landed inches from my feet. I yelped and jumped into a run toward my friend. I exited the swamp, crossed the shower threshold onto the wet tile, and slipped. I slid across the shower and landed on top of Flynn. He shot up and coughed up gray water.    

“Flynn cackled. “What a stupid trip, man. I’m a fucking lizard and I wish I could bite Marky’s mom’s nipples. She's so hot and I'm the only one that deserves to be with her.” He laughed really hard, so hard that it looked like his big fat front teeth were going to pop out of his gums and ricochet across the locker room like stray bullets, and slammed his head into the water and onto the tile below. Flynn slammed his head again, chlorine-stinking shower water splashing across the locker room as our classmates frolicked and giggled and whipped each other with towels inside the swamp, and when Flynn came up blood poured from his head.

“He asked, “Where do you think those shorts ended up?”

“I said, “They ended up on a journey to become this novel’s Chekov’s deus ex machina gun.”

“Flynn rolled onto his back and the water swirled like a halo around his body. “I like that.”

"Then Gawd tased us there on the shower floor before our classmates, before the anoles, before a swarming of invisible creatures, before Marky's Mom and Sophia – the Goddesses of South of the South."

by Chase Griffin

Chase Griffin is not a CIA Operation Realityfuck asset. He has stories in Oyez Review, Maudlin House, Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Breadcrumbs Magazine, and more. His debut novel, What's On the Menu, was published by Long Day Press in 2020 the year of our Fnord. He is also Co-Author of How To Play A Necromancer's Theremin which is forthcoming from Maudlin House.