Ayahuasca
07-06-2011, 06:11 AM
I have been told that this tale is somewhat icky. I therefore advice the reader to proceed with caution.
He wakes up in the morning with the nastiest headache in the universe, or at least that's how it feels at the time. As he opens his eyes the first thing he sees is the circumference of the ceiling fan, whose white center, browned and irregularly shaped, moves in a circle apparently dangerously, though it's been in service for ten years now and there hasn't been one accident yet. There is a maelstrom in his stomach, and he feels like vomiting. He entertains the thought of vomiting there. Screw hygiene, he would say, I have more important things to do, like getting high and drinking vodka..
The thought of alcohol makes him nauseous. He tries to recall what happened last night, but it's all a blur, hours upon hours of what he presumes was great fun all melted together into a series of cliched, vague and unremarkable events: walking in a club, taking shots of tequila with friends and then having some vodka afterwards…tripping on the pavement and bruising his face (he knows this only because when he flexes his cheek it hurts and when he touches it he feels it is swollen.), getting into fights with random strangers, who would either leave indignantly, or fight back, more so the former than the latter.
The reminisces make him smile as he gets out of bed. He does this slowly, tired and dehydrated, and when he stands, it feels like his head's been hit by a stick. For no reason then, other than a bizarre desire to be counterproductive, he imagines the taste of tequila and this is the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel's back. His stomach cannot take it any longer.
First, there is a rumble, and while a rumbling stomach could mean any number of things, he knows full well what it means this time. It all happens so fast he barely has time to even acknowledge what's going on. Firs his stomach lunges forward. Then his esophagus expands from the bottom *** muscles tensing bring viscous liquids upwards. When it finally reaches the top, it catches him by surprise as a sour liquid fills his mouth. Frantic, he makes a dash for the bathroom, the impact of each step sending impacts through his body making it harder and harder to keep his mouth shut, until it reaches breaking point.
He jumps through the opened door of the bathroom, mentally comparing himself to Michael Jordan slam-dunking with three seconds left in the last quarter of the final game, though he doesn't really watch basketball. When he lands, he opens his mouth ever so slightly in surprise, and that small gap is all it takes. Like the hole in a spaceship in a science fiction movie, vomit immediately rushes out, and before he knows it, his mouth is wide open and vomit is flying everywhere, as he issues from his mouth an ungodly sound, which for some reason reminds him of a turkey being sodomized. As the vomit emerges, he only has a split second-no not even that-to turn his head down towards the floor so that hopefully he won't get vomit on anything worth saving.
After vomiting, he coughs, saliva mixed with undigested food issuing from his mouth like a toxic stream, while a sour smell begins to rise. He swears, trying to figure out a way to deal with this mess. This is an old hotel room, old and broken. Cheap, too: the most he and his friends could afford pooling their money together. The thought upsets him.
The rising smell is like a black cloud, and he could practically feel the weight of the stench on his shoulders. He swears, and the smell fills him with an urge to vomit again. His head still hurts like hell, though not as much as before, and yet this is not a relief because he knows for a fact that his nasty headache will come back soon, and nastier than before. He imagines for a moment how great it would be to have room service, so that he can just leave the mess behind and call someone, but honestly, you can't expect anything even remotely decent from a place like this. It frustrates him to know that whatever conventional means of cleaning this mess exist are not options, because the hotel, if you could call it that, does not provide anything more than the bare minimum to justify its existence. The best thing he can think of doing is asking the front desk lady for extra towels, but she is a bitter and rude person, and he would rather keep her out of mind for as long as possible. He can almost see the stench fill the bathroom. He is dimly aware of the fact that smell is caused by breathing in tiny particles of matter, meaning that rig now, predigest food is being breathed in by him and covering his shirt and going onto his toothbrush. He can practically see wet stains forming on his shirt, though that may be sweat, for he is a notoriously sweaty man, and this gives him a distinctive stench, which he likes to think makes him unbelievably manly, never mind the looks of disgust on the faces of those he gets near to.
Behind him comes a groan as she groggily sits up and looks about, eyes barely open, vaguely repulsed, though she doesn't know yet what she has to be repulsed about. She bears a manly countenance, amplified by her scowl. Her skin is pale and cancerous under the hot, tropical sun for which she is not adapted to survive against, and her skin is mottled like lasagna from all her rashes and scratching. None of this matters to her friends, who stick together like a colony of cockroaches through thick and thin.
"What's that smell?" she asks, though to no one in particular. Nevertheless, he answers. "Some guy vomited here, and I woke up." A half-lie, true, but there's no need to be cynical. "Jesus Christ," she says as she gets up and walks towards the stench cautiously. Her nose cringes in disgust at the smell, and he notices her scratching her abdomen, an idiosyncrasy which has become second nature at this point, and he pretends not to notice the first signs of a wound forming under her yellow, square fingernails. He also tries not to imagine the bedrock of dead skin accumulating in the area between her fingernails and her fingers.
Both of them look at the vomit, trying to think of something to do with it. They frown in concentration whilst stroking their chins, emitting soft "Hmmm" sounds and imagining Jeopardy thinking music playing as if in a cheap movie. Their minds are both empty. At last, after a minute of serious thought, he waves his hand in theatrical dismissal and says "Screw it."
She pauses for a bit before saying "Why?" and he is about to respond cleverly but doesn't have the time before she continues saying, "We have to do something." He responds saying "Later. Right now I have to shower," and he leaves before she can retort. She finds his rudeness offensive, but cannot be bothered to do anything about it. So she goes back to her bed where she dreams a dreamless sleep.
I wrote this some time ago and had no idea what to do with it so I put it here. The pacing is intentionally slow in order for one to appreciate the tediousness of the characters' lives. They are not given names in order to dissociate the reader with them, making it akin to watching an animal documentary. I still should edit it properly, but I think it's important for it to be peer-reviewed first, so I don't accidentally omit the best parts or keep the worst parts. That is all I have to say about this thing I wrote.
He wakes up in the morning with the nastiest headache in the universe, or at least that's how it feels at the time. As he opens his eyes the first thing he sees is the circumference of the ceiling fan, whose white center, browned and irregularly shaped, moves in a circle apparently dangerously, though it's been in service for ten years now and there hasn't been one accident yet. There is a maelstrom in his stomach, and he feels like vomiting. He entertains the thought of vomiting there. Screw hygiene, he would say, I have more important things to do, like getting high and drinking vodka..
The thought of alcohol makes him nauseous. He tries to recall what happened last night, but it's all a blur, hours upon hours of what he presumes was great fun all melted together into a series of cliched, vague and unremarkable events: walking in a club, taking shots of tequila with friends and then having some vodka afterwards…tripping on the pavement and bruising his face (he knows this only because when he flexes his cheek it hurts and when he touches it he feels it is swollen.), getting into fights with random strangers, who would either leave indignantly, or fight back, more so the former than the latter.
The reminisces make him smile as he gets out of bed. He does this slowly, tired and dehydrated, and when he stands, it feels like his head's been hit by a stick. For no reason then, other than a bizarre desire to be counterproductive, he imagines the taste of tequila and this is the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel's back. His stomach cannot take it any longer.
First, there is a rumble, and while a rumbling stomach could mean any number of things, he knows full well what it means this time. It all happens so fast he barely has time to even acknowledge what's going on. Firs his stomach lunges forward. Then his esophagus expands from the bottom *** muscles tensing bring viscous liquids upwards. When it finally reaches the top, it catches him by surprise as a sour liquid fills his mouth. Frantic, he makes a dash for the bathroom, the impact of each step sending impacts through his body making it harder and harder to keep his mouth shut, until it reaches breaking point.
He jumps through the opened door of the bathroom, mentally comparing himself to Michael Jordan slam-dunking with three seconds left in the last quarter of the final game, though he doesn't really watch basketball. When he lands, he opens his mouth ever so slightly in surprise, and that small gap is all it takes. Like the hole in a spaceship in a science fiction movie, vomit immediately rushes out, and before he knows it, his mouth is wide open and vomit is flying everywhere, as he issues from his mouth an ungodly sound, which for some reason reminds him of a turkey being sodomized. As the vomit emerges, he only has a split second-no not even that-to turn his head down towards the floor so that hopefully he won't get vomit on anything worth saving.
After vomiting, he coughs, saliva mixed with undigested food issuing from his mouth like a toxic stream, while a sour smell begins to rise. He swears, trying to figure out a way to deal with this mess. This is an old hotel room, old and broken. Cheap, too: the most he and his friends could afford pooling their money together. The thought upsets him.
The rising smell is like a black cloud, and he could practically feel the weight of the stench on his shoulders. He swears, and the smell fills him with an urge to vomit again. His head still hurts like hell, though not as much as before, and yet this is not a relief because he knows for a fact that his nasty headache will come back soon, and nastier than before. He imagines for a moment how great it would be to have room service, so that he can just leave the mess behind and call someone, but honestly, you can't expect anything even remotely decent from a place like this. It frustrates him to know that whatever conventional means of cleaning this mess exist are not options, because the hotel, if you could call it that, does not provide anything more than the bare minimum to justify its existence. The best thing he can think of doing is asking the front desk lady for extra towels, but she is a bitter and rude person, and he would rather keep her out of mind for as long as possible. He can almost see the stench fill the bathroom. He is dimly aware of the fact that smell is caused by breathing in tiny particles of matter, meaning that rig now, predigest food is being breathed in by him and covering his shirt and going onto his toothbrush. He can practically see wet stains forming on his shirt, though that may be sweat, for he is a notoriously sweaty man, and this gives him a distinctive stench, which he likes to think makes him unbelievably manly, never mind the looks of disgust on the faces of those he gets near to.
Behind him comes a groan as she groggily sits up and looks about, eyes barely open, vaguely repulsed, though she doesn't know yet what she has to be repulsed about. She bears a manly countenance, amplified by her scowl. Her skin is pale and cancerous under the hot, tropical sun for which she is not adapted to survive against, and her skin is mottled like lasagna from all her rashes and scratching. None of this matters to her friends, who stick together like a colony of cockroaches through thick and thin.
"What's that smell?" she asks, though to no one in particular. Nevertheless, he answers. "Some guy vomited here, and I woke up." A half-lie, true, but there's no need to be cynical. "Jesus Christ," she says as she gets up and walks towards the stench cautiously. Her nose cringes in disgust at the smell, and he notices her scratching her abdomen, an idiosyncrasy which has become second nature at this point, and he pretends not to notice the first signs of a wound forming under her yellow, square fingernails. He also tries not to imagine the bedrock of dead skin accumulating in the area between her fingernails and her fingers.
Both of them look at the vomit, trying to think of something to do with it. They frown in concentration whilst stroking their chins, emitting soft "Hmmm" sounds and imagining Jeopardy thinking music playing as if in a cheap movie. Their minds are both empty. At last, after a minute of serious thought, he waves his hand in theatrical dismissal and says "Screw it."
She pauses for a bit before saying "Why?" and he is about to respond cleverly but doesn't have the time before she continues saying, "We have to do something." He responds saying "Later. Right now I have to shower," and he leaves before she can retort. She finds his rudeness offensive, but cannot be bothered to do anything about it. So she goes back to her bed where she dreams a dreamless sleep.
I wrote this some time ago and had no idea what to do with it so I put it here. The pacing is intentionally slow in order for one to appreciate the tediousness of the characters' lives. They are not given names in order to dissociate the reader with them, making it akin to watching an animal documentary. I still should edit it properly, but I think it's important for it to be peer-reviewed first, so I don't accidentally omit the best parts or keep the worst parts. That is all I have to say about this thing I wrote.