Thrill Seekers (9 page)

So you want to know what happened? What I did?

The acid had been around for months but bloody Brian never let me do any, even though he was taking a tab every weekend. I wasn’t allowed, he said, not after all the loony stuff. But I’d been taking my pills.

‘I’m fine,’ I told him. ‘I can handle it. I can hold my booze and my smoke as well as you can. I deserve to have a go. Just because you reckon I’m schizo is no reason for me to
miss out on all the fun.’ I was sick of being left out. It wasn’t fair. Everyone reckoned acid was unreal, totally wild. I was dying to try some.

Tables and Chairs they were called. Little blue cardboard squares with pink pictures in the middle. Didn’t look much like furniture.

‘Pure. Real fucken sweet. Good shit,’ said the guy who was handing them around at the party, stuffing money into his jeans pockets.

I had my cash ready this time, and shoved my crumpled notes into the dude’s hand before Brian had a chance to stop me.

But as usual he had to cramp my style. ‘No way,’ he said, ‘He’s on drugs.’

‘Aren’t we all mate, aren’t we all?’ The guy dropped one into my hand before Brian had a chance to stammer, ‘No man, not like that. He’s schizo.’

I chucked it into my mouth and swallowed.

‘Oops,’ said the dealer.

‘Too late now, Brian,’ I skited, patting my belly.

He rolled his eyes and shrugged. ‘Don’t go blaming me when you freak out. I’m not going to baby you if you can’t hack the pace. You’d better not spoil my trip.’

‘I’m not going to freak. I can handle it. I had more mushies than you that time you ended up on the roof talking to God.’

‘Shut up about that. Do what you like. Just don’t come crawling to me later.’ He put a tab in his mouth and left the circle.

‘You going to be all right, Douggie?’ asked Steve, sucking on his own square of acid.

‘Yeah sure. Why shouldn’t I be? You fellas are a bunch of old women.’

‘Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on you.’

‘Thanks mate. I’ll watch your back too.’

‘What’s up with Jacko tonight?’ Steve asked. We looked over to where Jacko was sitting on the couch pulling cones one after the other. Beck was pressed to his side as usual. It looked like she’d been crying over Russ again.

‘They had a fight or something. He was yelling at her before.’

‘Women.’

‘Oh come on, Beck’s all right. Jacko can be a real arsehole sometimes. Doesn’t know how to treat a woman like I do.’

‘Yeah right, Douggie the Sex God. Don’t get started.’

Everyone was in the lounge room, some at the table by the window with Jacko and Beck, pulling cones in the skull bong, playing cards and drinking rum from the
bottle. The rest were hanging around the couch where the bucket bong was in action, some poor fella coughing his guts out like he was going to cark it. Steve and me squashed in together on one of the couch’s red vinyl arms and waited our turn. A tidemark of black slime and green specks was smeared half way up the cut off plastic bottle that was slowly being pulled out of the water and filling with smoke. It smelt good, familiar. Safe.

The telly was on but with the sound down. The zombies on the screen seemed to be marching in time to the AC/DC on the stereo. A whole pile of other DVDs with bloody covers were on the floor for later. Jacko loves horror shows.

There were a few girls hanging around. Beck, but she was glued to Jacko’s side and off limits. Her friend, Angie, but she was with that big Goth, Jase. There were a few new faces too, not bad some of them, though they were all sucking up to that poofter Pete.

But anyway, tonight was for the fellas. A tripping party. Men together, off our faces. It was a special night. I could feel it. The trip in my guts was my chance to prove that I wasn’t a fucking mad bastard anymore. I was just like all of them. One of the gang again.

Half an hour later, Steve and I were rolling on the floor, pissing ourselves. We’d had a couple of buckets, but when I looked at the cigarette burns in the floral carpet and they started to swirl and go all psychedelic like an album cover, I knew I was tripping.

‘Hey Steve, I think it’s happening.’

‘Yeah man. Check out the curtains.’

We laughed and spun around in circles till everything was a crazy mixed up whirl, like a rainbow cake mix. In the bottom of the kitchen cupboard we found the tinfoil and made ourselves space hats and ran around the house pretending to zap each other. Jacko got pissed off with us making too much noise and getting in the way of the
TV, so he shoved us out into the front yard and told me to shut up or they wouldn’t let me back in.

It was great outside. The stars were like sparklers and when the Taubmans’ paint factory sign came on across the road in red and blue, it was like an outer space sunset or something. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Then my head started to go really weird on me. All the colours got too much. I couldn’t see the real shape of things anymore and Steve’s face seemed to be melting. He changed into one of those freaky zombies. Barking dogs’ heads were sprouting from my legs. The grass was too pointy under my feet. My tongue felt swollen. Too big for my mouth.

I started to pull at it, but it didn’t feel like my tongue anymore, not a part of me. An alien or zombie or something had possessed me and turned into a huge slimy slug growing in my mouth. I tugged at it and clawed but I couldn’t get it out. Steve
tried to stop me but I punched him away. Or was it him? I screamed.

Steve came back with Brian who grabbed my arms, pinned them behind my back, pushed me into the house and onto the couch and shouted at me, ‘Just stay there, and don’t do anything else stupid. I told you you’d freak out. Shit.’ And then went back to the table to pull cones.

Steve sat next to me but I didn’t want him to. Well I did but I didn’t. I was scared to be by myself but I knew I couldn’t trust him. It was like I could see inside people to what they really were, slugs or zombies. Monsters. I tried to focus, keep my head from turning itself inside out, by staring at the TV, though I couldn’t see a picture – only the red and blue and yellow dots behind it.

Brian and a few of the other fellas were still sucking bucket bongs.

‘Let’s go dancing!’ yelled one of the girls.

‘Nah, we’re too out of it. They’d never let us in,’ said Jacko.

So they started dancing in the lounge room. They pushed back the couch with me and Steve huddling wide eyed in a corner of it, cleared a space and put on some rap, then started throwing themselves against walls, making the house shake.

I couldn’t move. I just sat staring at the jumping legs and waving arms, watching as the dancers morphed into creatures from galaxies far away.

Next thing I knew someone was sprinkling me with salt and sticking a fork into my arm.

‘Hey!’

‘We’re hungry.’

That snapped me out of it. ‘Shit!’ I got up quick smart. ‘Get away from me, Jacko. Where’s Brian? Bri!’

‘Come on, Jacko. Leave Douggie alone. He was freaking before,’ said Beck. Always knew she had a soft spot for me, that kiss did the trick.

‘So? Who the fuck asked you?’ said Jacko, but he stopped jabbing me with the fork.

Where was Brian? Maybe the aliens got him.

‘Come on, let’s go out,’ said Jacko, ‘I’m going bloody stir-crazy in here. Let’s go do something.’

‘What?’ everyone yelled over the music.

‘I dunno. Anything. We’ll make it up as we go along. Everyone bring something.’

The fellas rattled around collecting stuff to take, buckets and bike chains and
power tools and saucepans. Steve shoved a kitchen knife into my hand. ‘Here. In case he tries to eat you again.’ He was holding a potato masher.

I didn’t want to go anywhere. Everyone was acting wild, whooping and calling, waving knives and chains and hammers around their heads. Playing war games. I just wanted to stay sitting on the couch with Steve, trying to watch TV, maybe make my move on Beck once I could think a bit straighter.

Through the crack in the door I spied Brian in Jacko’s room with his arm around Beck, who was sobbing again. He was edging his hand up under the back of her t-shirt, trying to cop a feel. Bloody hell. As if she’d look at Brian when I was around. He obviously wasn’t thinking about what Jacko would do if he caught him either.

‘I don’t want any part of it,’ said Jase, packing another cone and passing it to Pete.

‘Loser,’ said Jacko, as he pushed me and Steve into the parade that was already starting out the backdoor. ‘Come on you dickheads. We’re going hunting.’

It was cold outside. Cold and wet like it was raining a bit, ticklish on my skin. I wished I could take some of that soft rain and scrub it around inside my head where all the monsters were hiding.

We climbed over the fence and stumbled through the neighbour’s yard to the road.

‘Where’re we going?’ I whispered to Steve.

‘Dunno. Just hunting I guess.’

‘I’m hungry,’ said Jacko, ‘bloody starving.’

‘Me too,’ said some of the other guys.

‘Me too,’ we echoed.

A possum scuttled across a nearby roof, its claws scratching on the tin.

‘Meat!’ Jacko roared.

And we hunters stampeded in the direction of the sound. Not that any of us had ever eaten possum or knew how to skin one or anything. But it seemed like a good idea.

‘Meat! Meat! Meat!’ we all chanted, like we were cave men hunting T-Rex. It felt great. Hunting together. I was glad Jacko made me come. It chased away the spooks from my brain, cleared it with the cry of ‘Meat! Meat! Meat!’

Something scurried behind a bin out on the footpath.

‘There it is!’

‘Get it!’

‘Get it Jacko.’

‘Kill it!’ we screamed.

We threw the bins over and Jacko swung down his chain with a heavy thunk onto the shadow.

It wasn’t a possum.

He picked it up, limp and sagging, and we saw that it was a cat, a fat old cat with its brains smashed in. Jacko took it by the tail and spun it around his head like a lasso, whooping and pounding his chest with his other hand.

That started us all doing an Indian war dance, making ‘Wa, wa, wa, wa,’ noises with our hands slapping on our mouths, just like they do on TV, dancing around Jacko and the cat.

A light came on at a window so we raced down the road laughing and hollering till we got to the park. Jacko threw the cat up into a tree where it stuck in the branches. He wiped the blood from his hands across his cheeks like war paint.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s do a job, get some money and go into town. Get some burgers at that all-night takeaway.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ We all thought it was a brilliant idea. It would be a piece of piss.