Thirty-Seven Read online

  This, of course, is bullshit.

  We knew what DMT was. Some of us had done it. We knew any insights gained from the experience had originated in ourselves. We knew it did not matter who gave us the drug. We knew all of these things, yet we still called it Reprieve.

  The truth is, we liked it.

  We felt deserving of it.

  Those not sick from their Cytoxan dose sometimes fornicated.

  We always smoked it sitting by a fire.

  Sometimes we saw God.

  Sometimes we remembered there was no such thing.

  Sometimes we cried and begged to be held.

  Sometimes we imagined the people who had been charged with loving us actually doing just that.

  I don’t remember telling the Feds anything about Reprieve.

  One always said that if somebody tells you they don’t remember doing something, they may not, in fact, remember taking the action, but they always remember the exact moment a decision was made.

  My first Reprieve came after nearly eight weeks. I’d smoked weed and drank before, but nothing harder. I was excited. Everybody else was too. Thirty-Eight was too sick to partake, but he sat next to me and Five. It was sometime in October. Most of the leaves had fallen and the air was thick with cold and smoke and my hands shook with the tin foil. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I took three hits.

  I understand everyone has a different experience on DMT. I understand this to be true about all psychedelic substances. This only makes sense; we have different issues we’re trying to work through. We have different brain chemistry. We have different susceptibilities.

  But maybe that’s only true for people in the world where they’re living in constant efforts to fortify themselves from Truth.

  Because we were connected.

  Everything was connected.

  Everything was a single mind, us tiny bits of energy exploding through a red and yellow vortex of molecular biology, strobes of light, the weightlessness of being propelled over synaptic gaps, tendrils of energy that looked so much like love.

  One told us that any insights we gathered during Reprieve were inherently True. He said they were gifts. He said when done once a month, DMT provided the extra energy to break down walls that were created while we were still in utero.

  I remember my first epiphany well: Honesty is the most synergistic force in the universe; it can, and will, change the world.

  O’Connor writes, “Any grouping of individuals experiencing a traumatic experience with fatal consequences, only to be ‘saved,’ develop an overly dependent relationship upon their savior. There are countless examples of this relationship throughout our history—a platoon being rescued; those stranded being excavated; chronic sufferers of debilitating mental or physical disorders becoming fixated on their doctors or therapists, often sexualizing this relationship to a detrimental level—and The Survivors are no exception. They were dying and Dr. James Shepard gave them a gift. The gift brought them back to life, and therefore, in a form of delusional modus ponens, the dying equated Dr. James Shepard to renewed life. With this in mind, it is possible to give this ritual another name: revival: restoration of force, validity, or effect. In essence, Dr. James Shepard took his followers’ lives, destroyed them, and gave them back through a psychotropic drug. The Survivors received their same lives back, yet these lives felt different compared to the hell they had been enduring. Dr. James Shepard repackaged their lives, placing himself in the role of Savior, month after month, a primal form of behavioral modification through punishment and reward, a process that all but guaranteed a fanatical devotion.”

  17. CULPABLE

  Thirty-Eight’s spirits lowered every day. His desire to live drained with every injection. He made it through his first month, but even dropping to biweekly doses didn’t help. He slept when he should’ve felt well enough to sit with us on the patio. He started talking about his family more and more. He talked about his wife, whom he had become convinced he could win back. He droned on and on about his son, if he was alive, if he needed Thirty-Eight’s help. He said something about being a coward for running from his problems.

  We all noticed.

  We tried not to talk about it because that was slander and slander was a form of character assassination and character assassination was an easy crutch to deflect an Honest gaze at one’s own self.

  But we talked all the same.

  I overheard Five and One talking one afternoon. I scrubbed the sink while they whispered. Five said Thirty-Eight’s attitude was bringing people down. She said it was a cancer. She said it couldn’t go on like this. One pressed his forehead to hers and this made me jealous. He told her some people fought against Honesty more than others, but sickness made a believer out of everyone.

  I tried to be extra kind to Thirty-Eight. I lay next to him and sometimes told him stories and sometimes just kept quiet. I bathed him. He experienced his first Reprieve in November and even that didn’t help. He just kept crying.

  Sometime around Thanksgiving he started telling me he wanted to die again. He looked me straight in the eye and said he was ready. I nodded. I left to go find One. He was in the master bedroom, which he kept locked. I told him Thirty-Eight was saying that he wanted to die.

  “We all say things we don’t mean when engulfed in selfish fear.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I think he means it.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I…I don’t. He seemed serious, is all.”

  One looked at me and then his face was back to how it normally appeared—warmth in the eyes, his nostrils relaxed—and he put his hand behind my head and we pressed our foreheads and he thanked me for bringing this matter to his attention; he would have a talk with Thirty-Eight.

  Later that afternoon, I was with Five on the couch. She pressed against each of my vertebrae, pausing, telling me a story of each of their lives. We saw One and Thirty-Eight emerge from a bedroom. They were dressed for outside. I didn’t want Thirty-Eight to make eye contact with me because he would’ve known I’d tattled. They walked outside.

  “Thank God,” Five said. “It’s about time he got his shit together.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Probably the boulder. Have a heart-to-heart. A chance for rededication. And if Thirty-Eight can’t get back on board, One will send him on his way.”

  I nodded. Five pressed on the next nub of my spine. She told me this little guy was a fighter, real scrappy. She told me he came from nothing, but unlike everyone else in the world, he wanted to remain as nothing. I waited for her story to continue, but she moved on to my next vertebrae.

  An hour or so later, One walked in through the patio door. I was dusting. One was alone. He didn’t smile when we met eyes and then he walked to the kitchen and opened the cupboard and pulled out a handheld bell the size of a softball. He closed his eyes as if steeling himself against the sound or maybe the act itself. He rang the bell.

  I had no idea what was going on.

  A few people ran down the hallway from the rooms. They appeared panicked, in need of guidance. One kept ringing. More people rushed into the main room. Something wasn’t right. Twenty-One leaned against the wall, a bucket in his hand, sweat covering his naked body. I knew he’d received his shot the previous morning because I’d given it to him. If he was out of bed, something was horribly wrong.

  One set the bell down. The ringing muted itself instantly. It was then I noticed his hands. They trembled. They were covered in red.

  Thirty-six of us stood in the kitchen and family room looking at One.

  “Today,” One said, “I have seen the power of what we are up against.”

  Twenty-One wretched into his bucket. One waited for him to finish. Nobody helped Twenty-One because we were all too scared.

  “I have seen the power of selfish fear and selfish want firsthand. I have seen a small fraction of what it is capable of.”

  One held up his hands. A few of u
s cried.

  “I watched a man refuse to carry on with the work of breaking down Self. I watched a man choose the Big Lie over Truth.”

  I didn’t understand.

  I understood just fine, I simply didn’t want to understand.

  “Nothing happens by accident. Nothing. Not because there’s some Czar of the Heavens, but because everything that occurs has the capacity to be a learning moment. Everything relates back to the search for Truth. Everything—even the tragic—can bring us closer to Honesty.”

  Thirty-Eight was dead. He had jumped instead of continued on. He was a coward. I hoped he found peace. I hoped he was in more pain. I thought of fathers always failing, no matter the circumstances.

  “This is on all of us,” One said. “We all will take part in his disposal.”

  Thirty-Eight lay face down at the bottom of the boulder where I’d decided to embark upon my search for Truth a few months prior. Bone stuck through his right elbow. A pool of blood had melted the snow underneath his head. His one eye I could see was open. I stared into its whites and I told myself the whites couldn’t lie and maybe his couldn’t because I noticed the back of his bald head was caved in and I thought that was strange because he’d obviously fallen the other way.

  We loaded Thirty-Eight into a wheelbarrow.

  A lot of us cried as we hiked through the mountains.

  The sun was close to setting and it was cold and some of us got sick and I wondered if it was because of our treatments or seeing a family member dead.

  One brought us a few miles into the woods. We made our way to the cliffs. We veered away and down until we were covered by pines and then it was black out. Some of us carried shovels. We started digging. The first foot was easy and then it wasn’t. When it was my turn, I tried to be strong. My hands sprouted blisters, then blood. We all took turns. Three feet down we hit granite. One told us that was enough.

  We understood this was what had to be done.

  We drank grape Pedialyte.

  We understood this was the only way to ensure our safety. This was the only way we could keep living in Honesty with a loving family of our own choosing.

  One walked over to the wheelbarrow. He held a large pair of pliers. He tapped them against his black pants. He looked down at dead Thirty-Eight and then back at us.

  “Some of us are not strong enough for this journey. I want you to look at this man and realize it could easily have been you. Any of us. Any single one of us has felt, at one point or another, it would be easier to kill ourselves. This is all of us.”

  We nodded and sniffled and rubbed our freezing hands together.

  “Just as this man is all of us, so too is his burial. We are all complicit in his death. We are all complicit in not being strong enough to help guide him to Honesty. We are all culpable to his selfish actions.”

  One put his hand on Thirty-Eight’s jaw. He pried open his mouth. He grunted and yanked and then there was more blood and One straightened and held up the pliers, a tooth so close to the whites of Thirty-Eight’s dead eye.

  “I will call those of you in need of this experience to do as I’ve done. You will be in charge of this tooth, this reminder of what lies are capable of causing. You will file it down every day until it is dust. Then, and only then, will you have fully grasped the severity of this death.”

  Nobody said a word.

  One pulled out a sheet of tin foil and a baggie of DMT. It wasn’t a Reprieve night. One spoke to this fact: “Those I call upon will be rewarded with a Reprieve after the act is completed. This will help internalize the Absolute Truth that is death.”

  Thirty pulled the second tooth.

  We stood and shivered.

  We hoped we’d be left alone; we hoped we’d be chosen.

  Twenty-One and then Three and then Twenty-Five.

  They were given their Reprieve with blood-soaked hands.

  I stood taller.

  I felt ashamed at my selfishness for wanting to be included.

  Thirty-Four and Five and Nineteen.

  One looked directly at me. It was too dark to see anything but his whites. He called my name, Thirty-Seven, and I smiled.

  The only teeth left were molars.

  I kept gouging his gums.

  I felt the shudders of roots ripping through my entire body.

  The tooth was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It had a tail, a cone-like bottom because it hadn’t died on its own.

  One gave me my Reprieve. I held the glass stem stained red with the others’ bloody fingerprints. On my third inhale, I fell backward into the snow. I surfed upon a communal consciousness. Everything was shades of red until it was blinding white, a color I knew was Thirty-Eight’s eyes. I arrived at Truth. The eyes told me. They told me he hadn’t jumped. He’d been beaten over the head with a rock and then pushed off the cliff because he’d questioned One, told him this whole thing had gone too far. James, this has to stop. But this wasn’t the real Truth. The real Truth was that this act needed to happen. Because regardless of what One said, nobody could leave. We’d chosen a loving family. Because we were all we had. Because once a single person left, it was over with, the harmony of those surviving.

  There was one Truth even deeper, one I fought toward with all of my might as the tentacles of consciousness clawed their way back into my mind’s eye: by ripping out Thirty-Eight’s tooth, I was as guilty as One in this old man’s murder. And I was okay with that. I was more than okay with that. I was excited to have been chosen.

  18. TWO

  Three weeks pass with no word from Talley. I don’t go into work because I know she would just yell and tell me to leave. I don’t do much of anything during that time besides meet with my PO. I tell him lies that he knows are lies, but he doesn’t question them because it’s easier. I feel alone in a bad way. I worry about Joshua Smith telling everyone in Boulder that he’d seen me. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that nothing matters. Sometimes this feels okay. I wonder why my parents haven’t tried to track me down.

  I read Dr. Sick with an orange highlighter.

  I watch Netflix.

  I eat rice and drink Mr. Pibb.

  I tell myself she’ll come back because there are no accidents and then I tell myself there are accidents all the time and nothing One said ever held up over the long haul.

  But on the twenty-third day, there’s a frantic pounding on my door. It’s the middle of the night. I climb out of bed. I wear only boxers. I press my face to the keyhole and see Talley and it takes a second for me to compose myself and quit smiling. Talley barely seems to register me. She clomps around my apartment in her clunky boots. She wears a purple wig and a miniskirt and her face is the sloppy of the crying or the drunk. She finally speaks—stop looking at me—and I realize she’s been doing both.

  I don’t say anything.

  I understand she needs to feel some sense of control. This moment has not been planned, and probably wouldn’t have happened had she not been drunk, but she still needs a sense of power. She needs to vent. She needs to inflate her sense of Self. I’m okay with this.

  But I’m not expecting what she says: “Are you even gay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? You don’t know? You either like dick or not. Pretty straightforward.”

  “I have been with a man.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “But I would not consider myself homosexual.”

  Talley shakes her head. She’s about to say something, but she just shakes her head more vehemently. She paces. She makes her fingers into a sharpened point, which she wields in my direction. She says, “That’s practically rape. Like…” She points to my bed on the floor. “All that shit we did on there. Here you were getting off on it the whole time.”

  I am mute.

  “Pathological,” Talley says. “A complete pathological liar. You are, you know that?”

  “I lie no more than anyone else.”

  “Oh my fucking God,
are you serious? Because I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I’ve never lied to you, at least nothing big.”

  “Nobody can be Honest all of the time.”

  “Shut the fuck up with your bullshit. Listen to yourself. You’re crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

  “I do not believe myself so.”

  “Only crazy people talk like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a fucking psycho robot.”

  A month before, she would’ve laughed after saying this. Her comment is light in nature, one designed to get me to smile, one intended, at least subconsciously, to get my approval. She wants to forgive me. She wants me back in her life. She wants to confide in me. She wants something I had.

  It’s my turn to talk. “How did you find out?”

  “What? Are you retarded? You were there. That kid you grew up with.”

  I shake my head.

  “You’re so crazy,” she says.

  I know she would only come to me when something she perceived as catastrophic occurred. For Talley, this revolved around Derek. I know he cheated. I know she finally discovered this Truth. I know this because she has no one else to run to.

  “About Derek,” I say. “How did you find out he was cheating?”

  “What?”

  “I know that’s why you’re here.”

  “Fuck him. And fuck you.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “No shit it’s fair. Thanks for your permission, Dad. Oh, that’s right, your dad’s dead, sorry. Suicide. Your mom from cancer. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “My parents are alive.”

  “No fucking shit.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “Derek cheating?”