• As I ran through the door I felt the fabric of my reality shatter as I ceased to exist. Not consciously, but physically. My body was torn to shreds, and then those shreds themselves were torn asunder. For a brief moment I felt nothing, but then...I did. At a snails pace I could feel my physical body being pieced back together.

    I felt warmth on my face, not unlike the sun. And I felt damp soil under my body. I was laying on the ground. I opened my eyes thinking I had been somehow been ejected from the cave, or more simply had been dreaming again. I had not. That is to say, I had not come out of the cave I had come in, and therefore I had also not been simply dreaming.

    The same white rocks were scattered everywhere. I stared at them with contempt. These caves related somehow. I picked up a regular fist sized stone and hurled it at one of the god forsaken white rocks. The small rock blasted apart, leaving the white one completely unscathed. It was glowing nonchalantly as if it had never been assaulted in the first place.

    I turned and looked at the surrounding landscape. it was a temperate forest, but the flora was completely alien to me. the first tree I saw had bark like a pine, but it was gray in color, not brown. It also had broad leaves instead of needles. There were no conifers with broadleaves that I knew of. I glanced around once more, seeing a tree that I was almost sure to be sourwood.

    I walked up to it, and grabbed a low hanging branch, ripping a leaf of of it. I briefly looked a the leaf, then ripped it off of the stem, and popped it into my mouth, beginning to chew it. I stopped, it was bitter, not sour. I spit it out, it was defiantly not sourwood. I began to walk around examining trees, failing to identify a single one.

    Confounded and frustrated I leaned my head back and yelled. As I had done that something caught my eye. The sun was roughly 1 1/2 times larger than it should be. Then it suddenly began to shift colors and patterns emerged in the rays. Then it hit me. Two things that is, first of all I was no longer on Earth, and secondly that leaf I had chewed on was a hallucinogenic.

    My knees weakened and buckled. I fell to the ground feeling euphoric and disoriented. The sun was singing to me with soft hushed whispers, light lullabys. The trees around me dance a cadence to the music. 1, 2, 3,... 1, 2, 3...BAM! They exploded into a shower of sparks. i tasted them. Electric popcorn. Fizzling and snapping the air zipped around making love to the branches.

    I began to laugh, to laugh with the plants and the sun. All giggling in joyous matrimony. I was on, in, I was a pillow. Wallowing in my own feathery down, so soft and sweet. Like cotton candy. I could taste everything I touched. It was all so bright and melodic. The crystal grass rang out with the sharpest, most pleasing sweet sweet I note I had ever heard. Joining in harmony with the rest of the world.

    Then it turned sinister, sour, cynical. A two-tone tangle of tyrants. Their wavelengths battling for dominance in a dance of death. Shredding all senses. I screamed, it jumped from my mouth and joined the fray, amplifying the melee of unmelodious mayhem.

    I was having a bad trip. I had to stop it, my brain was going to jump out of my skull and eat me from the legs up. I grabbed my legs and hugged them. Not my legs. I had to stop, needed to stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Red, stop signs are red. The sun looks like a yellow stop sign. Yellowaftergobeforestop.

    I needed help, medical assistance. Medic, a doctor, hospital, medicine, pills. Did I have pills? I checked my bag for pills. Pills here. Anti-depressants. I felt myself feeling depressed about my circumstance. Wait...A mote of logic careened through the veil of my high. Anti depressants, more specifically SSRIs, which I took and happened to have with me, can stop a trip in it's tracks. Assuming this hallucination was caused LSD. I was betting on it.

    I dry swallowed the lot of them, coughing as they went down painfully. I sat and waited, feeling terrified for my life. Black swirls spiraled around my head then doing a switch back spinning in the other direction. I felt like I was taking some sort of psych test, and failing miserably. I felt the urge to rip my hair out. Like something was drilling outward from my mind. My brain trying to escape again.

    This went on for several minutes, ending with me beating my head against the trunk of a tree. I fell over exhausted, the hallucinations were reducing. My gamble had won out. I sighed, although I might be plagued by nausea in a few minutes. I had endangered myself in another fashion. I lay against the trunk of a tree. Feeling tired by the ordeal. Thinking that I might as well take a nap.

    I settled slowly into a light slumber, the world around me color stained a shining brightly. My hand twitched, and I reached up to scratch my face. I rubbed the ache from my facial muscles, and then pressed the heel of my hand into my eye socket. I rubbed, producing a squelching noise that only I could hear. Then I heard a noise, above me.

    My eyes shot open, and I peered into the heavens. Up, in the canopy was a creature. A creeping mass about the size of a basketball. It was staring at me, it was staring at my with twenty eyes. A silent scream ricocheted through my skull. It hissed, and leaped at me, fangs outstretched. It was not unlike a giant spider.

    I ran, legs pumping, thudding as my feet slammed into the semi hard top soil. I ran to the only place I knew I could get away, the spider thing landed behind me, then scurried across the ground with rabid gain. It was almost upon me when I glanced back. I tripped, and sprawled through the cave entrance.