Hellucination (Wrath Limited Edition) Read online

  It wasn’t surprising which one spoke first. “Do whatever you want, Stephen. Just remember, better men have tried the road less travelled, and even they had to stray off it.”

  My personal angel fell to his knees, right before me. He clutched my legs and said, “Keep doing what’s in your heart. It’s a noble pursuit that many are not brave enough to undertake.”

  Their responses reinforced how frustrating my situation was. I was caught between the subtle machinations of the Hellspawn or the delicate subterfuge of the Holy.

  If that’s even what these two really were. I decided to ask again.

  “So you were both ripped from my mind simultaneously, battling for dominance inside my head? At first you lead me to believe you’re God and the Devil before revealing yourselves as my personal angel and demon. And to make matters more confusing, you both show up looking like me. I don’t know if you’re merely two aspects of my mind or if you’re actually angels and demons. Or maybe you’re both demons doing some good cop, bad cop routine. Is this a game you play to win someone’s soul? Or have I gone insane, and this is shit bleeding over into my normal reality? Hell, maybe I’ve died and this is Hell or Purgatory.”

  My Id laughed and said, “That’s a lot of maybes, Steve. You still don’t know what you’ve unleashed, but I will tell you this: You are not only in the middle of a war, but you’ve gone straight to the front lines—with no armor, no weapons and no clue as to how this is played. And you’re fair game for everyone involved.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I don’t know what is going on but I have a gut feeling now. So I am going to keep searching because that is all that I can do.”

  I reached for the nitrous cracker and began filling it up in front of them. I was already on four hits of acid and my mind had split a long time ago. I didn’t care. I just needed to escape—maybe search a little for God, maybe not.

  “Lets see where this takes me,” I thought. After four cartridges filled the balloon, I began to hit it like a joint.

  I didn’t consciously notice what was playing on TV but somehow felt it in the back of my mind. It was the “The Sandkings,” a stupid Outer Limits episode about alien eggs brought down to earth and hatched by an ex-astronaut in his garage. The eggs produce alien spiders—actually two separate species—and, of course, one species was benevolent and one was evil. It paralleled my life at the moment. But even if I had been paying close attention to the television, I wouldn’t have pondered the episode’s significance to my life.

  Because that’s when it happened.

  My two selves were no longer there. So I was alone in the apartment to witness the alien spiders become real. Five inches long, the multi-hued creatures began crawling from the TV, into my living room. At first, this was amazing to me, so I invited them in. But my attitude quickly changed when they kept coming. Five spiders turned into ten, ten turned into thirty, and thirty into hundreds. Suddenly, I had hundreds of flesh-eating otherworldly spiders crawling their way into my home.

  I jumped up, worried the ravenous alien horde would engulf me. I ran towards my front door, inadvertently squishing a couple of them along the way. A sort of blue blood spurted from their crushed carcasses. I threw myself against the door and pushed spastically as the spiders proceeded to overrun the house.

  I slammed against the door again, but it didn’t budge. I was still pounding on it, terrified, when the spider horde began to swallow me. They climbed my body with terrifying speed. Even though this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, I was in a total panic, because I didn’t know if it would be my last.

  Three spiders clawed my face, and as I yanked them off, I felt their legs grip me harder. My flesh ripped wherever they had dug in. Then I felt spider fangs piercing through my clothes. All I could think of was venom—alien spider venom coursing through my veins, poisoning my body as it traveled through me.

  I jumped back but was basically paralyzed with fear and indecision—and was being eaten alive! The spiders burrowed under my flesh, trying to get deeper into me. Blood began flowing freely from my body as more and more of them burrowed, bit and slashed.

  An incessant stream of spiders entered my living room through the TV. They began fighting with each other out of intense hunger for flesh. I was that flesh, but there wasn’t enough for all. I was still trying to rip them off of my body but was being vastly overwhelmed.

  It seemed I had only one way left to escape: I had to jump through my window. So I ran for it, but my foot caught the edge of my love seat, and I flew towards the window with the momentum of the insane. I hit with a resounding crash.

  The window comprised six small windowpanes separated by metal framing. I had hit it hard enough to break four panes, but the metal framing kept me from breaking through. I slammed back onto the love seat, but immediately jumped up, regretting my mistake. The spiders again attacked me in wave after wave.

  I decided to try the front door again. This time, my desperate body somehow forced it to give, and I fell into the cold winter air.

  I leaked blood like a sieve and wanted to scream, but I needed to check behind me in case my open doorway was allowing thousands of alien spiders to pour outside in pursuit. But they hadn’t followed. I could see them still spilling out of the TV and crawling all over each other. I felt my mind spasm just a little, a fluctuation. Then a wave of energy erupted from me, dissolving the spiders in my apartment as if they were melting under intense heat.

  I could see them liquefying, disseminating into nothingness as I tried desperately to regain my breath. I was finally able to inhale again, and I looked at my body. Every slash, rip and bit of mutilated flesh was gone. The blood, too, was mostly gone, but curiously, some of it remained.

  Although I couldn’t spot a single leftover spider, I was still wary. I walked onto my patio, hoping I’d feel safe there, but I didn’t; my flesh crawled. I looked at my forearm and saw a huge gash. I poked it to see if it was real. The skin spread apart, oozing blood, and I knew it was real.

  After checking around again to ensure I was still safe, I took a moment to consider my next action. It was pretty easy to figure out: When attacked by alien spiders, what’s the sensible thing to do? Why, visit the hospital for some stitches, maybe get x-rayed for alien spider eggs beneath the skin. So that’s exactly what I did.

  Every inch of me checked out, and there wasn’t a single alien spider egg under my skin. I only had the gash from the broken window, and I had that sewn up into a scar—eternal proof that I was attacked by alien spiders. Not that I need a physical reminder, I’ll always remember that intense experience.

  There’s something else about this episode I’d really like to reveal to you. If I jumped ahead, I could tell you how this all makes sense, but I’d be ruining this memoir.

  I can’t yet tell you how I got here, or how I came to believe in the limits of our reality and the ability to bend it—how our minds can turn fantasy into reality or can be shaped and manipulated by unforeseen forces. These are the forces some might read about but most dare not touch; they turn away because the light is too bright.

  But I’m inviting you in—starting from the beginning—because I need to tell it, and you hopefully want to know. To understand how one person has faith and another has nothing, it’s helpful to know how I first lost my faith, my belief.

  So let’s start from the very beginning, and I do mean the very beginning…

  BIRTH, DIVORCE AND CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

  One cold February day, my parents decided to fuck. I have no assurance that the act they shared was one of love. More likely, it was the get-it-over-with, release sort of sex. My mother later confided that my father was a minuteman. So to my eternal shame, I was probably conceived in less than three minutes.

  I know my parents were thrilled by my birth, because my mom had previously suffered a number of miscarriages. Twelve, to be exact. So it took thirteen tries to produce little ol’ me! It’s a little om
inous, being number thirteen, so maybe it’s not surprising I came out screaming.

  I don’t remember much about my early childhood, which is lucky for the reader, as I’m sure you’d rather be spared the details of what was, apparently, an early life stunningly uneventful. I remember some huge styrofoam blocks that could be transformed into a castle, but that’s about it.

  My parents divorced when I was five. Mom later told me my father had been a wife beater and that she had been a slave to his manipulations. There are always two sides to a story, but I know from experience my dad had a temper that would put Hitler to shame. It’s probably not fair, likening my dad to Hitler. But who says I have to be fair?

  Most of my childhood memories are from after my mother moved away from Dad. My little sister and I lived in Ronkonkoma, New York with Mom. I was in the fourth grade and my sister was only three. I remember walking to the school bus stop, and I remember hanging out with friends. I’m not sure a fourth grader can really hang out, but I somehow managed it.

  A couple older girls lived nearby, and I sometimes went to their houses to play. We had kissing contests, and I would squeeze their boobs as we smooched (or is this memory colored with wishful thinking?). They must have been at least 14, but I don’t remember their names. I do recall breaking one of their beds while jumping on it. The bed damage got me kicked out of the house of the biggest-chested girl. Oh man, those boobs were big!

  I also recall having a rock fight with some neighbor kids and pegging a girl in the forehead with a rock from about 25 yards away. Kids know enough not to get close during a rock fight, so when I hit her from such a distance I was simultaneously shocked and thrilled. At that age, I didn’t realize the kind of damage a thrown rock could do to the human head. The girl ran home screaming, and I knew I was in trouble as I raced home to tell my mom. I’ve never felt a desire to physically hurt anyone, so I wasn’t trying to do something dangerous. Later, when the girl’s parents came over to complain, I learned she had needed seven stitches. “Stupid girl shouldn’t have messed with a boy,” I thought, showing myself to be a chauvinist pig at the tender age of eight! I felt bad she was hurt but felt little guilt, as I hadn’t started the rock throwing. I just finished it. Nonetheless, I was sent to bed without supper (not such a bad deal; my bedroom was full of toys). In the end, I was forbidden from playing with that girl again.

  Around the same time, I got a pair of shoes that seemingly enabled me to jump an extra ten feet off the ground. For hours, I jumped the bushes with that pair of shoes, believing every jump to be higher than the last. I know now that it wasn’t quite as it seemed, but as a kid, that stuff sure felt real. It’s something we lose as we get older: the magical ability of a child’s mind to fuse reality and fantasy into a single experience. As we grow older, the re-evaluation of those magical feats is sobering; they may not have been as real as they seemed.

  My father was a good-looking man. To me, he looked like a young Clint Eastwood, with similar hair, jawline, and features. He loved outdoor sports, and when he came to visit, we played outside and had a wonderful time. But on the downside, he was a major neat freak, a sort of Felix Unger clone from The Odd Couple. It really could make it hard to be together.

  My harshest Dad memory occurred when he came to pick me up for a weekend once. He arrived in a huge green van he’d bought after the divorce. He was about three hours late, and I’d been excitedly waiting in the front yard all morning. I had even insisted on eating my PB&J sandwich in the driveway so I wouldn’t miss him. When he pulled up, I jumped into the van and rushed into his arms to give him a huge hug. After my excitement settled, I got into the passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt, ready to go.

  Then, for the first time this visit, my dad spoke: “Let me see your hands.”

  I looked at him, puzzled, as he lifted my hands. He saw dirty fingernails and went ballistic. He yelled for me to get out of his van and go back to my mother. He wasn’t going to take a dirty kid with him. I begged and pleaded, and when Mom came to the car to bring my sister, angry words erupted between my parents.

  I ran into the house, crying, and found solace under the bedcovers. Mom tried to console me but the wound had been inflicted and would never fully heal. My dad rejected me because of dirty fingernails, and because I only saw him twice a month then, this was majorly traumatic. The divorce had been especially hard on my mother and me (my lucky little sister hadn’t a clue what divorce was), and it was, while crying under the bedcovers that I realized the divorce had been my fault; my father had wanted to get away because I was dirty.

  From that point on, I blamed myself for everything. And that’s when my nightmares started. I was soon taken to a psychologist and treated for being a nightmare-haunted, eight-year-old chauvinist who caused his parents’ divorce.

  It was a painful period, so I’ll not re-open too many old wounds. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, my mother was suffering from bi-polar disorder. Over the next few years, her condition worsened and she struggled to care for my sister and I. As children we enjoy a temporary ignorance from the pains of adulthood, so I was unaware of the heartache my mother was experiencing. Children watch their parents do crazy shit and wonder, “Why are they doing this?” Little do their innocent minds comprehend how miserable adult life can be.

  Mom had a close girlfriend who had three boys from a previous marriage. Lets call her “Rebecca,” and the boys were, say, “John,” “Jacob” and “Asshole.” The boys were all blonde and fair skinned while Rebecca sported a blonde beehive hairdo. They were truly horrible kids and used to beat the shit out of me to ease their pain of not having a dad. I didn’t understand this at the time. All I understood was the weekly ass kicking I received from Asshole. John was five, and Jacob was my age. Asshole was twelve and beefy. Perfect bully size.

  The worst beating I took from Asshole was during the winter of 1976. We were having a jovial snowball fight until Asshole got hit in the face by an icy projectile thrown by one of his brothers. For some reason, Asshole reacted by charging me and punching me on every conceivable spot on my body. Punching, kicking and jumping on me, he pummeled my body deep into the snow on the side of the road.

  It felt like the beating lasted 15 minutes. Scratch that. It felt like the beating lasted a lifetime. I vaguely remember his brothers standing around, egging him on as he trounced me.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that Asshole was infatuated with Sylvester Stallone of the recently released Rocky. He had apparently seen the film five times in the theater. He would constantly dance around singing that stupid freaking theme music, and he always sang it while stomping my head into the snow. I hadn’t seen Rocky at the time and at first didn’t realize that his singing of the theme meant an ass kicking was forthcoming. But I eventually learned that Asshole’s rendition of “Dun du du duh du du dun dun dunnn” meant for me to scram. Even today, I can’t hear the Rocky theme without feeling a twinge of panic.

  Luckily, Mom’s relationship with her friend became strained and they moved away. So ended my weekly ass beatings.

  My mother was dating several guys at once, and they each had their own approach towards her and us kids. The nicest one was named Frank. He taught me how to carve a ring out of a peach pit and was always supportive and easygoing. He was a big man with a bushy beard. I wished my Mom would have kept him around.

  Momentarily jumping ahead to the present, with your indulgence: My Mom recently died from cancer, and a couple of months before she left us, she began wanting to find Frank through the Internet, saying it was a huge mistake to have let him go. I felt bad for her as she talked about him. He must have been a genuinely good guy to be remembered on her deathbed. Past regrets can come bubbling up when the end is near. It’s something many of us will have to face someday. Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve—those words haunt many people, not only in death but in life.

  Jumping back to age eight: While rooting around for lost change, I made a discovery under the cush
ions of the living-room couch. If I had known the word at the time, I might have called my discovery “kinky.” Most would simply call it disturbing. I had fished a magazine out of the couch and had immediately recognized it as an adult thing. I checked to see that the coast was clear and made a mad dash to my bedroom. I closed the door, jumped on my bed and began leafing through it.

  Ironically, I don’t remember what the magazine was called. But I can vividly recall each and every sordid page in it. It was a porno magazine about a woman who, while walking through the park, is abducted by two men, bound and raped on a park bench. This being the 1970s, rape and bondage publications weren’t illegal and had become a staple of the new adult industry that was just emerging.

  The text was printed on the side of the pages, next to the pictures, and represented the woman’s thoughts as she was being raped. It mesmerized me, and my immature mind turned it into an obsession. I read it every day as soon as I returned home from school.

  I read and re-read every page about this woman, who was just minding her own business when two masked men grabbed her and took her to a remote park bench. She kept thinking to herself, “Oh my God! I’m going to be raped, and I have no control over it!” The abductors tied her up in different bondage positions and took her at the same time. After they finished their second orgasm each, they left her tied to the bench, and she’s left alone with her thoughts and actually begins to romanticize the situation, considering herself fortunate to have been chosen by the two men who desired her purely for her sexuality.

  Behind closed doors and in total awe, I soaked in these images and descriptions. I didn’t know anything about what adults do (the birds-and-bees talk was a ways off), but I nonetheless took a crash course in the advanced subjects of rape, bondage, threesomes and cumplay. Too young to know it was fake, I was surely warping my impressionable psyche with this rape mag, so maybe it was just was well that Mom eventually busted me with it and took it away.