Ocean became aware of an inhuman, guttural scream only seconds before her mother’s body crashed into her own, and then she was tumbling backward, the base of her skull thudding against the concrete with enough force to make her jaw snap closed painfully.
The older woman scrambled over Ocean’s small body, scratching bloody furrows into her shoulders and neck, screaming so loudly that her shrill voice caused a quiver in her daughter’s eardrums.
“Mine, mine, mine, mine!”
She was throwing punches now, driving her fist repeatedly into Ocean’s nose and mouth with flat, wet smacks. Ocean squirmed below her, writhing and twisting like a headless snake, trying to buck her mother from her body. The other woman had her pinned squarely, her knees pressed painfully into Ocean’s collarbones.
“Mine! Mine!”
Her mama gripped the jagged length of metal in both hands and raised it above Ocean’s throat.
“You can’t have any, you greedy little bitch! It’s mine! Just fucking die, you ungrateful whore! Fucking die! Die! Die!”
Her arms trembled, and Ocean grew perfectly still, eyes focused on the sharp edges of the metal. She tried to say something, to say anything that would keep the weapon from being plunged into her neck… all that came out was a choked sob that gurgled deep within her throat.
CHAPTER THREE
Now that’s a damn good question.
If everything I say is true, then what makes me so flippin’ special? How come the Eye of Aeons doesn’t open for just any Joe Schmoe walkin’ down the street? I’ve got to confess man, that’s something I’ve invested a lot of hours in. You know how many nights I’ve spent, tossing and turning, as I’ve tried to figure out the answer to that very question? Shit, there was a time when I was getting two, maybe three, hours of sleep a night. Tops.
The best I can figure, it’s because I’ve done drugs, man. A lot of drugs. Sticky purple pellets of opium all wrapped up in foil pockets that you can fashion into a little pipe if you’re hard up, hydroponic reefer so fine you can see all these crystals clinging to the bud like it’d been flash frozen or some shit, pills of every imaginable shape and color… fuck, it was like a pharmacological rainbow jumped straight down my throat. And acid, man. Lots and lots of blotter dissolved on this tongue of mine, believe you me. I’d shotgun down the OJ, cause vitamin C really kicks that shit into overdrive and all these doors I never even knew where there started flyin’ open in my mind. Fact is, I was high so frickin’ much that sobriety was my altered state, man.
Don’t get the wrong impression, though. I wasn’t just another sorry-ass son of a bitch searching for a way to escape the mess his life had become. I wasn’t some doped up loser just lookin’ for the next fix. Fuck that shit, man. I had goals. I had plans. All those drugs were just an end to a means, if ya can dig that.
See, I used to live with this cat by the name of Johnny Necessary. Swear to God, that was the dude’s real name. Look it up, if you want, he’ll be in that there computer of yours. Picked up on possession about three, four years back. Tall guy, shaven head, goatee. Got this excited little quirk to his eyes that makes it look like he’s always going through REM, even when wide awake. Makes some people nervous ‘cause they feel like there’s always something going on in that mind of his, that he’s constantly sizing things up and forming schemes that don’t involve them. Never bothered me much, though.
Me and Johnny, see, were what you might call like-minded individuals…. No, I don’t fuckin’ mean enablers, man. Enablers are for people with problems, people who’ve got a monkey shittin’ down their backs and whisperin’ in their ear. We weren’t like that. We were fuckin’ pioneers, man. Visionaries, even. The Wright Brothers of Instant Zen, you might say.
See, me and ‘ole Johnny weren’t just recreational users, man. We had this wild idea that you could totally destroy the ego. Just wipe it all away like a faulty equation on a chalkboard. And when you’re staring at a blank slate, everything is possible. You can fill that space with anything… anything, man. You can have you everything you ever wanted but were too afraid to ask for. All you gotta do is start fresh. Just like a newborn baby, but one who has a lifetime of experience waiting to shape his personality and mind.
Don’t look at me like that, man, it happens all the time. You just don’t realize it. When you were giving me that cigarette earlier, I noticed the Semper Fi tat on your forearm. So you should know what I’m talkin’ about. Why the hell do you think they give you cats such a hard time in basic? They’re breaking you down, man, crushin’ your ego beneath the heel of a combat boot that just keeps comin’ down again and again and again. They even shave your heads, try to make you look as much like one another as humanly possible, strippin’ your individuality like ethanol on shellac.
And once they’ve totally broken you… then they rebuild you into the perfect marine. They can form you like you weren’t nothing more than a little lump of clay.
That’s so negative though, ya know? Me and Johnny, we wanted a more positive experience. I never wanted to kill anyone. I never wanted any of this shit I’ve been through. But you know what they say about the best plans of mice and men, right?
Anyhow, there was one small difference between Johnny and me. See, he was trying to do all this with just the drugs alone, but me, I’ve always been into the great mysteries, ya know? Astral projection, mysticism, astrology, mind over matter. I didn’t really identify myself with any one particular belief system or practice. The way I see it, all these different schools of thought are like that parable about the blind Indians who stumble across this elephant. One of ‘em touches the tail and says, ‘Oh, it’s a rope’, another touches the leg and says, ‘Oh, it’s a tree’ and so on and such.
Well, God is that elephant, man. Everyone thinks they’ve got the one clear picture because they’re limiting their understanding to a fixed set of perceptions. I wanted to see the whole damn animal, dig? So yeah, I did it all—Santeria, Golden Dawn, Freemasonry, Thanateros, Wicca. I panned each of them for the little nuggets of truth hidden in all that other worthless silt, and eventually, it all came to a head.
See, there was this dude Johnny knew. Real lanky guy with long hair and these little John Lennon glasses. I never could remember this cat’s name and wouldn’t tell ya if I could. He supplied most of the valley with their shit, but he was a good guy. Wouldn’t sell to kids, stayed away from the really fucked up stuff, and always smoked one out of his own stash with ya. Quality fuckin’ individual. He’s forgotten more about drugs then your whole narc squad ever knew, man… a walkin’ fuckin’ encyclopedia, that dude was. Which is why I just called him Professor Weed.
So anyhow, Professor Weed stopped by our pad this one night to hook Johnny up with this new shipment of chronic sativa that had come into his possession. He’s got the baggie out on the coffee table and he’s hunched over the tray, rolling up a nice fat one with his bangs all down in his face, when he looks up at Johnny.
“I’ve got something The Dude might be interested in as well.”
See, that was one of the funny things about Professor Weed. He always spoke to Johnny as if I wasn’t even in the room. And he always called me The Dude because he said I reminded him of Dude Lebowski.