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The following post is a short story about a salvianaut who ends up inside a psychiatric hospital. After his friend visits him, things start to get interesting. The story reads like a ‘Twilight Zone’ or ‘X Files’ episode. I posted it elsewhere a couple of days ago. I thought I would also post it here at the nexus. Enjoy.
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Salvia X Files: “Anomaly at Lompoc State Hospital” I sat gazing through the plexiglass partition that separated me from two California State Police officers. The bench seat I was sitting on had a bad spring. I wondered how comfortable the two officers up front were. Looking out into the night, I noticed that our vehicle was sandwiched between two other police cars. Fog was rolling in as usual for this time of year. The California coastline streamed by like a dream. I thought about my friend Lane who worked with me at the Santa Barbara Mail Processing Facility.
After a polite knock on the plexiglass, I asked one of the officers why they needed three cars instead of one to get me to the hospital. The officer driving glanced back and chuckled, “That’s what we’d like to know. All we know is that the hospital is under some sort of lock down, and they’re taking a lot of precautions.”
“What the hell is going on,” I thought to myself. “This can’t have anything to do with Lane.” I tried to piece together the events that had occurred during the last few days. All I knew for sure was that Lane had been placed under section 5150, an involuntary psychiatric hold. He had supposedly been considered a threat to himself and to others after the police picked him up for creating a public disturbance.
This wasn’t the first time he had gotten into trouble. I should know, because I was with him the last time he screwed up. We were doing something that we had been doing for the last couple of years, smoking salvia extract. I usually limited myself to 15x tops, but Lane always wanted to go farther. Smoking 40x was no big deal for him. One night after hitting the 40x, he suddenly jumped up and exclaimed, “I can fucking manipulate reality!” I told him to calm down, but he pointed at something in the room. “Look!” he screamed. I quickly turned my head and saw something flash alongside a wall. Lane then bolted through an open door. I ran after him, but he had already ripped off his shirt, and he was waving it in the middle of a nearby street. How he was able to run around like that under 40x without falling on his face was beyond me.
The three police cars turned off the highway and made their way to a large campus like group of buildings. Surrounding the buildings was a twelve foot high chain link security fence. After stopping briefly at the front gate, we headed toward an imposing looking brick building. Chiseled in marble above its front entrance were the words, Lompoc State Hospital.
After exiting the police car, I was given a visitors badge and escorted inside. A tall middle aged man wearing glasses walked up to me and said, “Are you Mr. *Edit*? I answered that I was, and I asked him what was going on. Before he answered, I glanced around at the central area and the surrounding hallways. There were armed security guards everywhere. The tall gentleman then said, “ My name is Dr. ######. I am the lead psychiatrist here at LSH. Your friend, Mr. *Edit* was remanded to us by the superior court of Santa Barbara County. We came to the agreed upon conclusion that your friend was showing symptoms of schizoaffective disorder.
There was an uneasy silence before I enquired, “Why all the police and security guards? Does it have anything to do with Lane?”
The psychiatrist raised a hand up to his face and ran a finger across his receding hair line. He then uttered, “Your friend was involved in an anomaly along with several officers who were guarding him.”
“What?” I asked incredulously.
The psychiatrist motioned with his arm and said, “Come with me.”
We proceeded to walk down a flight of stairs to an underground system of tunnels. During working hours, these tunnels were normally used to safely escort patients around the facility. An armed security guard joined us and we continued along one of the tunnels for what seemed like a hundred yards. The psychiatrist then began to explain the situation.
“Your friend was first sent to a hospital in Santa Barbara, but something very peculiar was going on with his behavior. It was decided that it would be better if he were sent here to Lompoc.”
“What kind of peculiar behavior?” I asked.
“Your friend was somehow involved in severe physical disturbances at the other facility.” The psychiatrist then looked over at me. “We know that the two of you have been using salvia divinorum.”
I stopped walking and turned toward the psychiatrist. “Sir, could you just please tell me what’s going on?”
The psychiatrist gestured toward a door and we climbed a flight of stairs. Now we were in a totally different building, a building with a slight odor of death wafting through its halls.
The psychiatrist’s demeanor began to change. He became more serious. Grabbing hold of my shoulder, he guided me to a holding room. I started to get nervous. I could feel my asshole puckering up. Moving closer, I noticed that the inside of the room had been grotesquely rearranged. As I stood at the open door, I got chills. Appearing before my eyes was something that looked like a fucking scene out of the movie ‘Alien’.
………………..Continued……………….