On The Run

by J. M. Parker

  Bannon ran a hand through his hair and headed for her table. “Excuse me,” he said. “Mind if I get your next one?”

  The girl looked up from her drink. Her eyes were pale blue except for a slightly darker band around her pupils. Wavy golden locks ran along her slender face and down to the top of her back. Faint freckles covered her high cheekbones and Bannon thought he saw a tiny scar hidden in among them. “Sure,” she said.

  Bannon introduced himself and eased into the opposite seat.

  “Alina,” said the girl, and he heard the faint traces of an accent as she raised her arm to him, “nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” said Bannon, signaling for a beer and chuckling as the bartender scowled back. “I’d say you got yourself an admirer.”

  “Sweet, isn’t he?”

  “Guess so,” said Bannon. “Are you traveling alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re surprised?”

  “Well, it just ain’t the norm for girls. Especially girls as—well, you know…”

  His voice trailed off and Alina smiled in his direction. “Especially girls as what?”

  “As pretty as yourself.”

  Alina laughed as the bartender slammed the bottle onto the table and foaming beer spilled over the top of it. “I suspect I’ll be paying double for that,” said Bannon.

  “Oh nonsense, don’t be such a sore winner.”

  Bannon smiled, relaxing a little as he drank his beer.

  “So,” said Alina. “What’s your story?”

  “My story?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at the bus ticket protruding from his front pocket. “Seems like you have just arrived. Why are you here? Hiking, photography, adventure? What brings you north?”

  “Nothing much. Just felt like getting out the city for a while.”

  “I was hoping for something a little more fun.”

  “Alright then. What’s your story?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “I came here for a hit.”

  “A hit of what?”

  “Various things. Rare plants, a mixture of roots and leaves.”

  “Leaves? Like peyote.”

  “More like ayahuasca.”

  Bannon stared back, taking her in, the smooth red skin of her lips still glistening from the drink. He felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck and felt his throat lump slightly. “Not sure I’ve heard of it.”

  Alina smiled. “It’s a Peruvian stew, a highly potent hallucinogenic. It too is made from a natural mixture of flora.”

  “How powerful?”

  “Shamans would use it as a conduit to another world. Another plane.”

  “Another plane?”

  “An external reality. Full of different beings, aliens or spirits…gods maybe.”

  Bannon took another drink of his beer. “And you’ve taken it?”

  “I have taken it.”

  “And?”

  “You really want to know? You might think I’m crazy.”

  “It’s alright,” said Bannon, thinking over the months. “Lucky for you, I am in the process of reconsidering what crazy might look like.”

  Alina smiled again, leaning closer and setting another bead of sweat running down his neck. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  *

  Bottles and glasses lined the tables and Bannon watched as Alina swayed to the music of the bar, her eyes closed as she hummed the tune.

  “Think I’m about ready for that story,” said Bannon.

  “The ayahuasca.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I took it in Peru, with an intensely alternative crowd. They’d found the shamans and they took us out into the jungle and made the stew for us.”

  “How’d it taste?”

  Alina grimaced and she took another sip of her drink. “Like something burnt, unpleasant to say the least. The shamans, however, were very insistent that I drank enough and I ended up drinking the extras too.”

  Bannon laughed.

  “We waited for about an hour and a half for it to kick in, maybe you know the feeling, wondering if every little thing is the first sign of the drug.”

  “I’d know a little about that.”

  “I got up a few times, sure it was a hoax, but the shamans insisted I remained lying down. So I did. I lay back down, stared up at the trees, and for a moment I was sure it was raining, except, I couldn’t feel any water against my skin. I looked a little harder and realized it wasn’t rain, but droplets of color.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I saw the color running out of the leaves. Little green droplets at first, then other colors: yellows and browns and blues, all of them washing out of the trees. I could feel my heart thumping inside me, but I wasn’t afraid, I was completely calm, euphoric almost. I started to get a real body high, trembling as all this energy pulsed through me. A huge wave of it running and tingling through my body.”

  “Like an electric shock?”

  “Like an orgasm. A huge wave of pleasure. And I closed my eyes, trying to absorb as much of it as I could. I remember digging my fingers into the dirt and feeling them stretch out into the earth like the roots of a tree. I heard other trippers playing the drums and I felt the impact of the stick on the drum skin run through the instrument and into the ground around us. I saw all the shamans standing above me but I could see right through them. Their skin was completely transparent and their muscles were watery and clear, like, like…”

  “Like a jellyfish.”

  “Exactly,” said Alina, smiling at Bannon. “And through their muscles I could see their bones, but their bones were branches and twigs and they were rooted to the ground: the bones of their toes running out into the earth in the same way that my fingers did, all of us tied into the same space and same world. I felt tears of happiness streaming across my cheeks but I couldn’t move to touch them. I just lay there, watching as visions appeared and disappeared and the whole world unraveled and reinvented right before my eyes.”

  Bannon let out a long whistle. “And that’s what you’re looking for here?”

  “Yes,” said Alina, reaching for her drink, her cobalt-blue eyes sparkling in the light of the bar, “but stronger still.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “I have heard it called a number of things, voodoo milk is my favorite.”

  “I didn’t realize that there was such a thing out here.”

  Alina took a sip of her drink and the fluid shone on her lips. “There are thousands of species of plants in the world, maybe only a hundred are known to be hallucinogenic. Is it not possible that there is one more we do not know about? Is it not possible that it could be here?”

  “I suppose there could be. But I don’t know how you could get turned onto it.”

  Alina grinned. “Rumors pass through certain circles, I heard it is being eaten with some regularity in the northern jungles.”

  “And that’s where you’re thinking of going,” said Bannon, wondering for the first time if the girl was really serious. “You know they’re not the sort of places that take tourists?”

  “I can look after myself.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just saying it’s a hell of a risk going that way.”

  Alina waved a hand nonchalantly into the air. “What did your father do?”

  Bannon felt himself blush. “He was a mechanic.”

  “Mine was a dentist. Though he would have rather been an explorer. He would spend holidays in the Alps, mapping new trails for hikers.”

  “And?”

  “And that is what I am doing,” said Alina. “Exploring, just a different kind of exploring. Not just earthly places, you see, but internal exploration too, the edges of the consciousness.”

  “Not sure I follow.”

  “I want to live at the farthest ends of the spectru
m. I want to experience happiness and sadness and love and all those other things with the most intense feeling. Now, I know it is not just the drugs that get you there, it is the places, the people, the events, but the drugs, they are important too. The chance to feel more, laugh more, sense more, the unlocking of the mind, feelings of extreme energy, extreme placidity, the stripping away of worry and doubt.”

  “That right?” said Bannon, thinking suddenly about the Frenchman and the opium den. “You know. I had a friend, said something about someone licking the backs of toads, helped them search out gods in the rocks.”

  Alina smiled. “I think that drugs have often been used as an escape, a sweet escape into something better. I know it is dangerous. I know you might think it is foolish to try and search this thing out, but the chance to experience something extraordinary, a chance to go somewhere truly uncharted—is that not worth the danger?”

  Bannon looked back at the girl, struck by the energy of her speech. “Well, when you put it like that.”

  Alina laughed. “One time,” she said, “one time on as good a product as possible, one time to see how good the hit, one time to see how wonderful the ride.”

  *

  They stood smoking joints outside the bar, the street long deserted. “Which way’s home?” said Bannon.

  Alina pointed down the road with her free hand. “That way.”

  “Oh, me too,” lied Bannon. “Maybe I could walk you home for a bit.”

  “I’ll bet you use that on all the girls.”

  “No, no, really.”

  Alina laughed. “It’s alright, handsome, I’ll call for you in the morning. I have a good day planned, you should come.”

  “You want my address?”

  Alina paused, an odd expression vanishing as quickly as it arrived. “You gave it to me,” she said. “You don’t remember?”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, you did,” said Alina, smiling before she started down the road, Bannon watching with a sort of childish excitement as her lean figure disappeared into the darkness and he thought of the coming day.

  *

  He woke to a soft rapping on his door and he rose, draping the bed sheet around his waist and rubbing at his eyes. When he opened the door he found Alina, her hair wet and sending little droplets of water running down her bikini-covered chest. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

  “Forget?” said Bannon, trying to flatten his ruffled hair. “No, I thought we were meeting midmorning.”

  Alina laughed. “It’s almost one,” she said, moving into the room and perching on the end of his bed.

  “Sorry,” said Bannon, “drunker than I thought last night.”

  “Well hurry. Get ready, we still have plans.”

  “Alright, mind if I shower?”

  “Sure,” said Alina, making no effort to move from the bed.

  Bannon pushed past the bed and opened a drawer, removing a joint and handing it to her. “While you wait?”

  Alina smiled as she took the joint. Bannon stepped inside the bathroom and started running the water, the smell of weed creeping in from the room outside. “So, what we got planned today?”

  “We’ve rented some boats, some hikers and me.”

  “Boats?” said Bannon, thinking over the night’s conversation. “Seems a bit tame for you.”

  He heard a little laughter from inside the room. “We have some mushrooms too.”

  “Mushrooms?” said Bannon, cutting the water to hear a little better.

  “Yes, the magic ones.”

  “Man, been a while since I ate those.”

  “See, I knew you were fun. The hikers bought them from a pig farmer on one of the trails.”

  “Pig farmer?”

  “They grow in the shit.”

  “The things we do to our bodies, huh?”

  Alina laughed and Bannon felt his mood improve immediately. “You’re funny,” she said. “And don’t fret. They have been washed.”

  *

  They pushed the boats out into the water, six people in total, three to a craft, and Bannon stumbled as he stepped into the boat. They’d eaten the mushrooms about an hour before and the first wave was starting to hit. Bannon felt his body tingle, a big high coming as he dragged himself onto a bench. He slapped an oar against the surface of the water as the boat listed in the current. An enormous kite swept over the surface of the river and Bannon stopped, mesmerized by the thing, its broad wings beating steadily, and he thought he heard the water ripple beneath them.

  In the other boat Alina worked the oars alone, the hikers curled up between the benches, looking fascinated through the cracks of the boards and down into the river. “Men,” said Alina. “Can’t trust them with anything.”

  Bannon tried to paddle but his muscles felt limp. He looked to the stern of the boat where Henrik, a big, fair-skinned Austrian, sat basking in the sun. “Mind giving me a hand here, boss?” said Bannon.

  Henrik moved into his seat and Bannon slipped back into the tail of the boat. “Thanks,” said Bannon.

  “Don’t worry,” said Henrik, “we can row.” Beside him a girl, Lana, settled onto the bench, her large breasts squeezed into undersized swimsuit.

  Bannon leaned back against the boat and watched as the two of them began to row, their muscles appearing to grow with every stroke, enveloping the space in the craft as the breasts of the girl inflated like balloons. Bannon took a deep breath as Henrik’s bulbous limbs seemed to swell to twice their normal size, and he turned away in a fit of delirious laughter. He heard Henrik’s words carry across the boat. “The shrooms are crazy,” he said, and the girl beside him laughed as well.

  “Man,” said Bannon, “I am fucked up.”

  They tied the two crafts together and Lana hopped into the other boat, she and Henrik now powering the doubled craft as it passed underneath an overhang of branches. Light fell in enormous shafts and shimmered on the surface of the water. The boat passed through them and Bannon felt suddenly like an actor beneath the spotlight. He giggled as he remembered the Frenchman’s line. “Imagine it” he had said, “your favorite actress or actor with their cheeks spread and a tube stuck up their…”

  “What?” said Alina, slipping in beside him, her skin brushing against his arm, and Bannon felt the heat of her touch run through his limb.

  “Nothing,” he said, as the boat turned toward the bank. “Everything’s good. Everything’s good.”

  *

  They moored the boats in a small enclave. Thick jungle stretched out behind and Bannon peered into it, trying to find faces in the overgrowth. The hikers hopped from the boats, Gary and George, brothers from Tasmania, talking excitedly about building tents from the foliage. They settled in the end for tying a hammock between a pair of trunks and George hopped into it, cocooning himself in the cloth. “Man,” he said, “I feel bloody safe in here.”

  Henrik disappeared into the undergrowth, dragging Lana with him and singing an old Austrian drinking song.

  Bannon felt the second wave of the mushrooms come on. He sank into the river and peered out into the surrounding water. A shoal of golden fish dug into the sand and his drugged eyes studied every shimmering scale, every grain of upturned sand. He stayed that way for a few minutes before the water clouded as Gary waded out to Alina, his feet churning up the bottom as he did.

  “Henrik says you’re from Germany,” said Gary, “said he could spot the accent a mile off.”

  “Yes,” said Alina, and for the first time Bannon heard the accent properly.

  “Must have a left a long time ago.”

  “I go back once in a while”

  “What did you do there?”

  “I was a nurse.”

  “You like it?”

  “This is better.”

  “Sure is,” said Gary, edging a little closer, and Bannon felt a sudden pang of jealousy.

  Water splashed around him as he tried to stand. The movement sent blood rushing to the back of his brain and he
wobbled on the spot before he staggered forward, his anger subsiding as he saw Alina turn and smile in his direction.

  “Bannon,” she said. “Are you enjoying it?”

  The uneven bedding of the river made it hard to balance and he fought another fit of giggles. “Yeah.”

  “Come,” she said, easing back into the water. “You must try to swim. It is like learning to swim again.” Bannon began to follow, stopping as a scream erupted from the undergrowth and Lana came sprinting out. Her legs buckled as she hit the soft sand of the enclave and she fell face-first into the water.

  Behind her came Henrik, a massive snake outstretched above his head. “Look what I found,” he said. “Look what I found.”

  Lana emerged gasping from the water. “Get rid of it, it’s poisonous.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Henrik.

  “Christ, man,” said George, peering out of his hammock cocoon. “It’s a bloody krait.”

  “No,” said Henrik, looking at the snake. “You think?”

  “Yes, yes it is,” said Lana. “It is a krait.”

  “Scheisse,” said Henrik, releasing a hand from the snake and swinging it like a lasso. It spit and hissed as it spun above his head before he released his grip and it took off in a long arching throw. The group stood and stared, silently tracking the snake as it sailed across the river and landed with a thump on the other side, sending all sorts of creatures scurrying out into the bush.

  “Close one,” said Henrik, reaching into the river and gathering up Lana, who sat shaking in the water.

  “God, you’re a bloody mentalist,” said George, retreating back into his hammock, and Bannon spun to check on Alina, finding her standing in the river with an enormous smile dimpling her cheeks.

  “Superb,” she said, “just superb.”