Other Earths (collection)

It was as she said. Once guided, the smoke seemed to find its own way, plating my throat and lungs with coolness and enforcing a dizzy, drifty feeling. I lost track of what Lucy was doing, but I think she, too, smoked. We lay facing one another, and I became fascinated by the skin on her lower abdomen, pale and, due to shaving, more coarsely grained than the rest. My limbs were heavy, but I managed to extend a forefinger and touch her. The contact was so profound, I had to close my eyes in order to absorb the sensations of warmth and softness and muscularity. With effort, because I had little strength and not much volition, I succeeded in slitting my eyes, focusing on an inch of skin higher up, a tanned, curving place. My focus narrowed until I appeared to be looking at a minute fraction of her whole, a single tanned atom, and then I penetrated that atom and was immersed in a dream, something to do with a lady swimming in a pool floored by a huge white lotus, its petals lifted by gentle currents, and an anthropomorphic beast with the head of a mastiff who ate cockroaches, pinching off their heads, draining them of a minim of syrupy fluid that he chased with diamonds, grabbing a handful from a bowl at his elbow and crunching them like peanuts, a fabulous adventure that was interrupted, cut off as if the channel had been switched, and replaced by the image of a night sky into which I was ascending.

The lights in the sky appeared scattered at first but grew brighter and increasingly unified, proving to be the visible effulgence of a single creature. It was golden-white in color and many chambered, reminding me of those spectacular, luminous phantoms that range the Mindanao Trench, frail complexities surviving at depths that would crush a man in an instant; yet it was so vast, I could not have described its shape, only that it was huge and golden-white and many chambered. Its movements were slow and oceanic, a segment of the creature lifting, as though upon a tide, and then an adjacent segment lifting as the first fell, creating a rippling effect that spread across its length and breadth. All around me, black splinters were rising toward the thing, sinister forms marked by a crookedness, like hooked thorns. Dark patches formed on its surface, composed of thousands of these splinters, and it began to shrink, its chambers collapsing one into the other like the folds of an accordion being compressed. Unnerved, I tried to slow my ascent, and as I twisted and turned, flinging myself about, I glimpsed what lay behind me: a black, depthless void picked out by a single, irregular gray shape, roughly circular and, from my perspective, about the size of a throw rug. The gray thing made me nervous. I looked away, but that did nothing to ease my anxiety, and for the duration of my dream—hours, it seemed—I continued my ascent, desperate to stop, my mind clenched with fear. When I woke near first light, my heart hammered and I was covered in sweat. I recalled the mural in Stung Treng, noting the crude resemblance it bore to the glowing creature, but a more pressing matter was foremost in my thoughts.

I put my hand on Lucy’s throat and shook her. She felt the pressure of my grip. Her eyes fluttered open, widened; then she said, “Is this to be something new?”

“What did you give me last night?” I asked. “It wasn’t opium.”

“Yes, it was!”

“I’ve never seen a record of anything like what I experienced.”

“Not everything is written down, Tom.” She moved my hand from her throat. “You’re so very excitable. Tell me about it.”

I summarized my evening and she said, “You may have had some sort of reaction. I doubt it will reoccur.”

“I’m not smoking that shit again.”

“Of course you won’t.” She sat up. “But to more pressing business. I may get my period today—I’m feeling crampy. So, if you want to get one in before the curse is upon me, this morning would be the time.”