The Six Tiered Nightmare
By Beau Gentry

One day we all wake up. No, not just one at a time, but all at once. Yes, one massive blow to a gargantuan brain. All little cells, spiking and splintering around a small oblivion. It's so peaceful, isn't it? Well the story I'm about to tell is anything but peaceful. These are things which I have seen beyond the true flow of time and space. Those spaces in between the spaces, or the things we see only because we cannot see them. I've been there, you see. I became a part of it. Bits and pieces. Bits and pieces from all of you.

It began at the end. There was too much of everything around me, everywhere. Unavoidable things were always in my path. What was the point of the stupid path if there were so many things on it. Nobody could go faster than I, so there was no chance of catching up with nobody. It didn't have to worry about all those things in its way. I was quite jealous of Nobody. There was only one way to satiate that hunger. I had to become nothing. There was but one simple solution I could ponder. Drugs!

Drugs were a very ancient texture to be a part of. The very roots of drugs are so uncertain to so many people. That is why it is so easy to become lost in them. But I had been given a divine mission! I would not be swayed by pleasure. What I sought was the deep dark trenches of the void, and I would not stop until it had left me. The journey was to be more treacherous than I had bargained for.

I started with simple things. Mostly sleeping pills. Tylenol PM, Alcohol, Benadryl, NyQuil. The list went on from there to prescription drugs. Vicodine, Oxycodone, Percoset, morphine. These things did remove much of the things in my path. But often they would replace them with other things. I was not so much clearing the course as I was altering it. They were out of my way, but they were still there on opposite sides. That would not do. I moved to the more conventional drugs. Marijuana, LSD, crack, speed, all the way up to Heroin. Heroin seemed so close. The Euphoria was almost pure. But it was littered with blissful stupidity. Innocence was still a point where I was waiting for something to happen. Which means I still knew something was coming, even if I had no idea what it was. So something was still in my path, and nobody was far ahead of me. Damn it! But there was one I had skipped. From this point go back one year.

It was such a strange night. My colleague and I had decided to try a little experimentation. A simple ingredient in a cough syrup could act as a hallucinogen when drunk in large qualities. Not being above drinking an entire bottle of cough syrup, I decided to give it a go. The things we endured that night we're so incredible, so bizarre, that I could only mistake them for some incredible fluke. A frozen fog came over the town we were in. The earth grew silent and time stopped. When I awoke the next day, I couldn't quite grasp the night that had taken place. I decided it was not for me. Perhaps some distant night I would retouch on my notes there. I couldn't remember what I had seen anyway. It was all too mysterious, too overpowering to have been more than a fleeting glance. Fast forward one year.

It was a cold evening, and none of my usual drugs were around. Another of my friends had heard of my strange experience with the cough syrup and its disassociating properties and wanted to give it a go. Something in my memory jaunted then, and I decided it would be a blast to give it another go. Perhaps it would be different with someone new. So we downed our bottles and took to the streets. Within the hour, I was well on my way towards some place entirely new. Or had I been here before? One year ago.

Still no way to truly grasp it. One moment a long time ago, life had been normal. Then, it was quiet. Quiet inside and out. Time was no longer a part of me. I could walk through everything, if you could even call it walking. No communication from anyone or anything I did not want communication from. Nobody had lost the ability to block me. I was faster than nobody. Tomorrow was none of my concern, because It would never come. I had found my link, and for one year I had simply ignored it. How silly our former self was. How silly were we together. I was hooked.

It became a weekly habit from then on. At least once a week we would take some new person on our journey. For an eternity I would know them in a small bubble that we would float freely on whereever we wanted. So perfect, and the world seemed equally oblivious. Nothing was ever very funny. It didn't need to be. Bits and pieces from everyone around my companions and I. I loved my companions. But sometimes I would take time to go out alone. I didn't need much for amusement. I was slowly becoming integrated with the empty spaces around us. No time could hold me, no space could confine me. With every night's sup of this foul tasting potion of true freedom, I was becoming something wholly sub-human. I began to up my dosage.

For several months, in between my pot smoking habit, my DXM drinking habit ruled my weekends and a great many of my weekdays. Something was drawing me closer. I could sense it. Some vision was becoming ever clearer in the pools of my own reflection. Progress on my trips was dwindling, so I decided to cut myself off for a good month before another journey. It was in this time, as my mind became more focused on the future that I perceived what it was I had been searching for. In my dream, I saw a new shape overtake my body. A very beautiful and terrible shape it was. Ink black it spread itself without viscosity or buoyancy, over the mind of self-consciousness. The black goo was mighty in its judgment, which was without boundaries. I hungered to be a part of it. So much so that I vowed to make my last intense trip the following week. Little did I know what fate I had sealed for myself.

It was cold that night, though I had no way of telling. Every where I looked we're signs of something uncanny making it's way through my blissful existence, though I had no way of realizing. The stage was set, as I fell into a strange trance on the carpet. Lost in a song that was becoming more and more mute as each note passed through, until there was only silence. Silence for so long. Then something called softly. No, it wasn't a call at all. It was a cry! Such a pitiful cry. What was making that? My trance still had a hold of me. My heart was struggling. My blood was thinning itself inside. What is this occupying me. Words began to leave my brain, I had no way of describing what I was feeling. No way to grasp onto anything. I began to thrash, grasping the air for something to grab hold of. But I had no concept of hands, or of grips. I was dying, and I had no way of reversing it. There was but one real feeling left in me, fear.

At this time I have small cognitive memory of being transported to the hospital and being strapped down to a bed. It was at this time I remember slipping into the realm I call "The Six Tiered Nightmare". Six Tiered, for the six dimensional cathedral that enclosed itself around me. There were no gaps, and no corners. Nothing matched anything that had once made sense. There was no concept of anything. The only thing I could surface was fear. Fear that I had nothing to help combat or accept what was happening to me. Fear that I no longer had means for communication with such horrors, whether I could make my point or not. I could not even recall ever having a point. Something was very terrible about this place. Panic grew stronger, as outside stimuli grew fewer. I was in a sort of Limbo.

Around me, the tiers grew higher on each other. They showed me things that cannot be seen with eyes or even the mind. I crashed through each tier, no particular direction, and time ceased its comforting tick. I was trapped in a small eternity. No way to go back, and no way to relax. I would simply have to fight my way through each one. Nightmare after nightmare assailed the very depths of my soul. There was nowhere to cower and nowhere to fall. After an eternity of suffering, I began to awake. The awakening was no comfort. Only small things came to me at first, nothing good. I was in a humiliating position. These people around me had nothing but contempt and disgust to convey. One by one, my senses and memories began to return. Try and read something. Still not strong enough. Starting to slip back into the nightmare. It became a struggle to stay afloat.

Hours become apparent once more. The struggle is finally weakening. It's the early morning now. I can read again. I'm strapped to this cursed bed. The doctor is speaking to me as if I were a child. I think he is incredibly stupid. He's trying to tell me I'm suicidal. I don't care what he thinks. How stupid he would seem to himself it he had just seen what I had seen. I manage to bluff my way through his stupid tests. Nothing he thinks of me is accurate. I've been broken in half and I need to return home. It's a long wait, and a cold ride, but I make it into my bed. A harsh sleep overtakes me. I am plagued by nightmares I have no capacity to remember, save one image. The black goo. It was a part of me. A blight on my soul. I had done what I had come to do, and now there was no turning back.

One day, I know it will take me. I have seen another side where substance ends. I have washed in the tides of the void, where light cannot penetrate. They are not evil. They are that part of us that struggle to be nothing, against the other part that in opposition longs to be something. So we stumble on our emotions everyday like a newly spawned foal on its first legs. From seeing through both ends of the spectrum, I could only reach one frightening conclusion. Existence and nothingness are not meant to mix, and can never achieve a totally peaceful balance. Because the only thing that both can comprehend completely, are pain and suffering.