I Think I’ll Meet God Tonight

One thirty. It was only one thirty in the afternoon. I already had my break and tuna and mustard sandwich, and I had already done the work I was assigned for the day. I sat there staring at my computer screen, trying to figure out how to fake the rest of my day in a convincing way. There was literally nothing else to do because my insignificant task was completed within the first two hours. Yet I had to maintain the illusion of diligent and hard work. So, I found myself doing what I usually did. Sharpening pencils.

You see this is a sure-fire way to buy time. They really didn’t pay attention to what you were doing, as long as it was something. The only other requirement is that the little numbers they desired were accomplished by the end of the day. All I had to do was kill time until five, and I had a lot of pencils.

It had been an especially hard week, with Joyce in the cubicle over being insufferable as usual. I can’t even imagine how someone like her exists. Not to mention in the cubicle next to me. What miserable luck, the manager never knows how to hire people anyway. I decided I would put all of it behind me and use The Substance tonight. It was a long day, after all. I deserved a reward.

So, the bull shit maintained itself until five. Soon I was swimming in the steel sea of the freeway home listening to some German electronic music I didn’t know but was passively enjoying. The song had a decent beat you could zone out to. It was something you had to do on the freeway if you didn’t want to send yourself careening into someone just because they had it coming. My peace was broken by some piece of work that was following my car a little too closely, so I slammed on my breaks to give him a start. He fumbled to stop and the coffee he was drinking spilled all over himself. I couldn’t help but laugh. Serves him right.

I drove into the driveway past my parent’s house into my backhouse’s parking spot. I had just paid my stupid father his rent so I wouldn’t be bothered today. It was a couple weeks late, but it didn’t matter because he was a dick anyway.

There was only one goal on my mind. I had to do The Substance again. The last trial was pure insanity, and now I thought I knew the secret to synthesizing it to its best potential. It would be around one hundred and ten percent stronger now. My hands trembled unlocking the door, keys rattling in my shaking hand.

The door opened and I walked into my house. Immediately I took my tie off and threw it on the table next to the door. I went over to the back corner of my main room and lifted up the carpet. Underneath was a loose floorboard that when removed revealed the tiny bag that contained The Substance. It was a gram’s amount and was a light green. It was the finest creation I had, a drug beyond others.

I had majored in chemistry in college and accrued a fair amount of debt just to learn how to make it. I had dropped out before I got a degree, as I didn’t even like chemistry to begin with. It was just an annoying and tedious means to an end. After my first psychedelic experience I was instantly enthralled and sought to make the ultimate experience myself. My journey brought me to chemistry and biology, and I think I found the answer after an immense amount of research.

Four days ago was my first trial. It was brutally insane. The room turned to crystals and a being of literal godly light appeared and told me “Not yet” with a flood of good feeling. I came to and immediately devoted myself to perfecting the formula. A few days later I found a way to make it exponentially stronger, proceeding to create it last night. Tonight, I would try it again.

I sat on my couch and grabbed my bong, loading half the powder into its piece. I figured it would be more than enough to get my desired result. The measurements were complete, but I had no idea how potent it would actually be. I loaded more than the previous trial, just to be safe. Using a torch, I lit it up. Immediately the world turned to crystals again, and I felt compelled to closing my eyes. My body went away for a moment.

The world was black. Everything was black. There was nothing but white lines that led to the center of the cosmic abyss. The lines snaked and flowed to the center and came together to form a face that sent feelings of unadulterated evil through my body. All positive emotion and feeling felt like it was being smothered in my soul. Soon I was quite literally faced with every insecurity and fear I had. I was in a realm of nothing good, nothing pure. I floated in this hell trying not to not have my mind break. I was afraid to lose who I was and fought the black. A light was in the back, and I pleaded to it to leave.

“Then Leave.” It said.

I awoke on my couch, a harsh sweat on my face. My heart was pounding. I checked the time. Only five minutes had passed. It felt like an hour. I couldn’t believe what just happened. What did I find? What the hell did I make?

A knock on my door.

“Adam, I saw your car. Dinner is ready.” It was my mother.

I couldn’t answer. My mind was in literal shambles after the experience. I felt like I barely survived. “Okay mother.” I squeezed out. I opened the door and took the plate from her, giving her the best smile I could, which was a tiny raise of my lips. My soul hurt; I couldn’t even fake a smile. She gave a genuine smile back and I closed the door. I was still sweating. What had happened?

I sat on my couch in silence for over an hour. The plate of chicken and broccoli was already cold on my lap. I sat there and thought of everything I experienced. The fear, the isolation, the despair. It was the worst thing I had ever felt. But I was compelled to try again. something in me told me that I had to face that fear again, or I could never live with myself again. I somehow knew there was something there. That light that was there was something real, something I had never seen or felt before. I put my plate aside and loaded up my bong one more time. The smoke filled my lungs, and my body launches at the speed of light past the now crystal world. I emerge through a gate of infinite color.

I am in a world of light. My body is gone. I am immortal. That face of light appears.

“All of life is the same. I am all and I love you, and all is love.”

All at once it is all clear. Every living being is related and is made from the same stuff. Each creature that runs or crawls or swims wishes to live happily. Even those you don’t like should be loved for they are just like you, beings on their own journey to happiness.

My heart is incinerated with love and reformed in the same motion. My form is thrown into an impossible infinite realm of shapes and color and emotion, the zenith of human experience. I experience a thousand lives, and none at all. At my very core I am imbued with wisdom beyond my years. This lasts for an eon, when suddenly everything starts to decay.

All of existence was turning to dust, dissolving into black waste. A low-pitched hum is rising in the background. The feelings of dread and fear appear, followed by the horror of existence. At first I am scared, but then I remember the real thing I learned. I told that field of black that I had no place for it anymore. The love I felt was all that mattered, and the miserable and cruel actions of my past should cease. It went away immediately after I thought this and the brilliant impossible world was restored. I was conscious enough to be filled with one question which was: “What is this.”

A strange and Godly voice calls back, the same I heard before. “This is your gift.” I accepted and reveled in the experience, basking in the pure nirvana until I came back to the world, and looked at my room. The world was crystal and warped, but it was the world. I was back on my couch, back in my life. by now I had lost a lot of what I learned like sand through my fingers, but what I kept was so vastly more than I had. I looked at my plate of chicken and broccoli and saw the horror that I killed both of these creatures. Solemnly I ate them, thanking them for their life adding to my life.

My neglected filthy room filled me with a sort of pity for my past self. The empty cans and junk food wrappers and drug paraphernalia now looked like alien objects in my room. I spent the rest of my night cleaning my room of all the objects that now made me a little nauseous to look at.

I went to bed early, laying down and attempting to recall all that happened to me. It now seemed like a vague memory, a nearly forgotten dream. The details didn’t matter now, I would keep the important information forever now.

Before I fell asleep, I remembered all the things that I wanted to do before school and my current job. I had stayed away from them because they seemed hard and I was afraid of failure. At that time I was satisfied with my booze and drugs, drowning myself in an incoherent haze for the rest of my life. Now that seemed insane. That world was full of opportunities I wanted to try out.

The next morning, I woke up and got ready for work. I had no idea what to take from my refrigerator, so I took an orange to work. Having left early I clocked in well on time at eight fifty and went to my cubicle. Joyce said some crude remark to me, and I just felt sad for her. I only wished she could find what would make her happy. My requirements for today were presented to me and I accomplished them. I looked at the clock. It was only eleven. There was still six hours to kill.

I stared at my screen until twelve and went to lunch, eating half of my orange. It didn’t seem right throwing the other half away, so I gave it to a coworker who forgot lunch. Before I knew it, I was back in my cubicle.

Taking a long sigh, I took out my pencils. I stared at them for what seemed forever. With hesitation I sharpened three and then stopped. What the hell was I doing? What world was I living? I got up from my chair and stood up, looking around at the other cubicles. Everyone was doing something, and nothing. They knew nothing.

The sadness and oppression of this beige hell hit me, and I remembered my student debt that brought me here. I had inadvertently trapped myself here until I could pay their ridiculous amounts off. All I had cared about was getting loaded. That seemed so trivial now. In recent times I had fallen behind in payments and couldn’t afford to miss any more. I knew my dad wanted any excuse to kick me out and I barely made enough money for rent and the loans. There was no money in my accounts. It seemed like I would be here forever.

All my new aspirations would have to wait. The knowledge that I had gained would torture me the entire time. I sank into my chair and silently let tears fall down my face, sharpening my fourth pencil.