Cthulhurotica

Ahimsa Kerp TURNING ON, TUNING IN, & DROPPING OUT AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

“You are such a drag. You just need to split,” Euphoria told him. She had just been woken up and felt really spaced out. She moved her hand to slide the van’s door closed, but his body blocked her. Tim had found her napping and had come in uninvited. He knew she didn’t like it when people came into her bus without her blessing.

“Mellow out, Euphie, please” he pleaded. His voice was whiny, as it always was when he wanted something. “Don’t be like this. We were good together.” Tim was lean and lanky. He wore, as always, grungy jeans and a battered leather vest, complete with raggedy fringes on the sleeves. His chest was otherwise bare and mostly hairless.

“Good together?” she asked. That just wasn’t true. She’d never liked Tim. She had just shacked up with him when she got to town because he had good weed. They’d dated for two or three weeks and then she stopped seeing him. The message should have been clear enough. “Since when? You are being a major square, man. You will get bad karma. Now, flake off. My friends are coming over,” she said.

“Fine, I’ll split. You never treated me right, anyway.” Tim’s eyes grew crafty. “I have new friends now. I don’t need you. I’ll go. But I want my star back.”

The star he referred to was a beautiful rock she wore on a hemp necklace. It looked volcanic, but was heavier than pumice and not as purely black as obsidian. Tim said it was from the Soviet Union and had come from outer space in the forties. He thought it looked like the sun when you were stoned, with squiggly rays of light ringing the bottom half of the sphere. Euphoria had always though it looked like an octopus.

There was no way she was giving it back to him. “That was my birthday present. What’s your bag, man? Don’t be an LBJ.”

Tim’s eyes flashed anger. “I want that fucking star back, Euphie. I only gave it to you because I thought you would steal it if I didn’t.” She was surprised. She in fact had been planning on stealing it, but she didn’t know that he had known.

Truth be told, stealing pretty things was kind of a problem for her.

Euphoria looked around at her microbus. It was in pretty good condition, considering the long drive from Iowa, but it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. Scarves, bracelets, rings, and her rags covered the floor, her bed still was out, and some macramé needles and pins she had borrowed in Kansas City were scattered all over the place. It was a mess and there was no way she was going to look for the necklace right now. Not for him.

“Tim, I don’t even know where it is. Now is not a good time. My friends are coming over.”

“It never is, Euphoria,” Tim said. His voice was strange and he came further into the van. His eyes were wild and bloodshot.

Fear crawled lightly up her neck. Tim was a peaceful man, but something had changed. He suddenly felt dangerous.

“Hey,” a voice called from outside.

Reinforcements. She nearly melted with relief. Outside stood a man and a woman; some of her best friends. One of them was the big Indian guy everyone called “Lazy Horse.” He didn’t ever say much of anything, and he was always smiling, but he was also really big. Her friend Diane stood next to him.

Tim glared at her. “This isn’t over,” he hissed. He jumped out of the van, nodded to the duo, and strode off. Euphoria followed him out, closing the sliding door to the Volkswagen with a satisfying thud.

“Tim,” she called. As he half turned around, she raised her middle finger in the sky. “Climb it, Tarzan!” As he turned away, scowling, she realized she had been wearing the necklace the entire time. Trippy. Euphoria turned to her friends. “Am I glad to see you guys. He was really wigging out.”

“Sq-uare,” Diane sang. Lazy Horse didn’t say anything; he just smiled at her. He was nice, but Diane was the coolest person Euphoria had ever met. She looked just like Twiggy, only shorter. She was always dressed in the best threads too. Today she wore a suede mini-skirt with a groovy chain belt, a French polo-neck top, and square-toed boots. She often wore a beret, but today she had a rose in her hair.

Euphoria didn’t know how it stayed there. Whenever she tried the same look, the damn flower always fell out. Instead, she was wearing a beaded headband that Lazy Horse had given her. That with a billowing blouse (no bra) and some embroidered jeans made her feel like she’d pass for someone more hip than herself, if no one looked too closely. She was no fashion star like Diane, but her breasts were bigger and her hair longer. They’d met a month ago, the day Euphoria had arrived in Ashland and they’d hit it off immediately. Diane was from Portland and was new to Ashland as well. She said she had made up the “Let’s make love, not war,” slogan three years ago, back in sixty-five at an anti-war rally in Eugene. That was majorly bitchin’, if it were true, and if it wasn’t, it was another sign that Diane was more fearless than Euphoria would ever be.

“What are you doing right now?” Diane asked, but didn’t wait for answer. “Come on out to Lithia Park. It’s really happening today; all the freaks are there. Who knows, you might meet a nice guy.”

“Diane,” Euphoria said, scandalized. “I am not on the make, okay?” She wondered if that was true. She’d been with Tim a few times, true, but he’d never really scratched that itch.

“That’s okay. You might find something you like.”

“I don’t have any bread,” Euphoria said.

“Me either. You can get the five-fingered discount though. And maybe I’ll just show them my tits.”

Euphoria laughed and then realized that her friend wasn’t kidding.

Ashland was a town of college students and their moneyed parents, filled with duck ponds, hiking trails, wild blackberries, and plenty of culture like art exhibits and free theater. Mt. Ashland frowned in the sky above the town, and lesser hills flowed by like water. Towards the Pacific, to the west, rolling oaks covered the foothills. And at the epicenter of it all was Lithia Park, where the free people gathered.

Euphoria looked out at a sea of color as pinks, blues, yellows, and greens walked by. It was a world of bell bottoms, tie-dye, ankle fringes, flower patches, beads, bandannas, buck-skin vests, flowing caftans, Mexican peasant blouses, gypsy-style skirts, halter tops, and granny glasses.

“Far out,” Euphoria said. It was just her and Diane; Lazy Horse had gone off looking for dinner. She was focusing on a beaded peace sign belt buckle. Next to it were a series of Smokey the Bear stickers. The big brown creature was smoking a joint, holding the jay delicately with his enormous bear paws.

While the vendor was talking to a couple of guys playing Frisbee, Euphoria slipped a couple of stickers into her purse. Diane tisked softly. Euphoria ignored her. What was a girl with no money supposed to do? Her karma was generally still pretty good.

The vendor turned to them. “I love this place,” she said to Diane, covering. “It’s not like Iowa.” She didn’t miss the place she’d grown up, but occasionally she wondered about calling her parents. Her father’s birthday had been last month.

“Iowa. Ha,” the guy selling the stickers said. “I’m from Akron — same shit, sister.”

“Yeah, it’s a real scene,” Diane agreed. She seemed bored.

“Right on,” the guy said. “Hey, you two got a guru? There’s a new dude in town, and he is way far out. He can tell prophecies, that kind of shit. He’s camping here in the park.”

“The soul brother?” Diane sounded surprised. “I, uh, yeah I know him.”

“Sounds like fun,” Euphoria said. She needed some guidance in her life. “Let’s beat feet.”

It took them almost two hours to find the camp. They had to wade through the creek, walk up through a forest, and past something that looked like a giant hamster wheel. Once they were close, though, they could hear the drums beating and smell the smoke of the bonfire. The sun had set and the summer sky was filled with waning, streaming light.

There were already twenty or thirty people. Lots were getting high, some were playing drums, and plenty were just chilling out.

“There he is,” Diane said. She didn’t need to say it though, he stood out.

Lithe and swarthy; he stood by the fire but was wrapped in darkness. Shadows wreathed languidly about his body. His face was dark except for his eyes, which shone with an awful, joyous light. He wore camouflage fatigues and a combat vest with lots of pockets, with black leather sandals on his feet. His beard was curly and neatly trimmed. On his head was an almost rectangular headpiece that immediately made Euphoria think of an Egyptian pharaoh.

He clutched an elongated ivory flute. The instrument appeared to be made from a hollow reed or a bone, bleached white, with several finger holes along the shaft. The man was very beautiful.

“Look at that dude,” Euphoria whispered to Diane. “He is seriously far out.”

As they watched him, he lifted his flute into air and played. The sound filled the air. It was fey, wild music that may have lasted seconds or hours. It transcended beauty, and spoke directly to the soul. It was over all too quickly. The world itself seemed to have changed, to have been destroyed and clumsily rebuilt in an instant.

Her heart was beating fast and her head seemed to be swimming. She found herself approaching him.

He looked at her. His smile was smoldering, but cruel.

“Where ya’ from, man?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” he answered. His voice was low and gruff.

“My name is Euphoria. What’s yours?” She pressed her breasts into him, slightly, as she leaned in to talk with him.

“I have many names. You can call me… Nyarlathotep.”

“That’s a trippy name. Are you, you know, from Egypt?”

“I’ve been there. Amongst other places.”

“Like, where?”

He paused. “It might be easier to tell you where I haven’t been. I have looked on sights which others saw not. ”

“You’ve been to Kathmandu? Kabul? Benares? Ceylon?”

He interrupted her. “That’s not the kind of traveling I do. Think more… celestial.”

She understood all right. She wondered if she could bag some acid off of him.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked her. There was no mistaking what his invitation entailed. She was thrilled at his directness. She glanced over to Diane, who was chatting with a guy who looked like Jesus.

When she saw Euphoria, she nodded. “Go,” she mouthed.

When Nyarlathotep took his vest off, Euphie gasped. Hanging on a dull metallic thread was a stone like the one Tim had given her. Instead of an octopus, however, this one was wide and triangular, like a pyramid.

“Far out,” she said. They were in a house that bordered the park. It was nice, like one that her parents might own, but Nyarlathotep had walked in as though it belonged to him. It wasn’t empty — there were a few other couples and lovers in various states of intercourse, but to her relief they were in a private room. She wasn’t ready for orgies just yet.

His hands were around her, and her shirt was over her head and on the floor before she knew it. He leaned in and lightly licked her right nipple. She felt a flood of warmth fill her, then she giggled as his beard tickled her breast.

Something was wrong. He had stopped and was staring strangely at her breasts.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“This necklace. Where did you get it?” He wasn’t looking at her breasts at all.

“From the cosmos, man,” she said. She really didn’t want to talk about her ex right now.

“I know of this. I didn’t realize how… important it was.” His hand was before her and it flexed as though he was suppressing some deeply hidden emotion. “Never mind. We have an entire night before us,” he said. His mouth moved to her other nipple and surrounded it with a soft wet kiss.

Her jeans were off, then. And she was lying in his bed as he filled her from above. It was like being high, but somehow so much more. She was screaming, having lost total control of her inhibitions and feelings. At the end, as he pumped his essence into her, she felt she was watching herself; a disconnected observer of her own pleasure.

She awoke to the sound of knocking. Nyarlathotep slid out of bed and, fully nude, flowed to the door. His erection hadn’t subsided while they had slept.

“I’ve been looking all night. I can’t find it,” the voice from outside said. The man sounded whiny.

No, she thought. Impossible. Not here.

“Never mind,” Nyarlathotep’s deep voice answered. “I don’t need you anymore.”

“Never mind? That’s a real drag, man. I just spent hours…”

“Tim,” Euphoria asked. She knew it had to be. “What are you doing here?”

Tim stepped into the door so that he could see the bed. When he saw her, his face collapsed, like it was melting. Then it was replaced by a mask of rage.

“What the fuck, asshole!” he half-screamed at Nyarlathotep. “You told me if I got the necklace I’d get her back.”

“You didn’t get the necklace,” the dark man said. He moved to close the door.

“Fuck you, man!” Tim swung a fist at Nyarlathotep’s face. Moving faster than humanly possible, Nyarlathotep caught his fist with his left hand. He squeezed and a horrible crunching sound filled the room. Even in the dark, Euphoria could see red pulp oozing out of Nyarlathotep’s fist.

Tim screamed for a half-instant, but almost instantly passed out from the pain. His body crumpled to the floor.

Euphoria was out of bed; she too was naked and her nipples were hard in the cool night air. “I think — I’ll be going now.” She was panicked, out of control. Her hands reached for her clothes as she tried not to look at the door.

She felt him behind her, that most terrible phantasm of the night.

“You mortals always amuse me,” he said. His voice was soft. “You work so hard for your miserable survival. Why fight for such drivel?”

“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her voice quavered. She knew she was going to die and thought suddenly of her parents, and felt sad that she hadn’t talked to them for so long.

“Not much more than I’ve already gotten,” he leered at her. He was so beautiful, yet so masculine, she thought, that even now she half-feared him, half-craved him. “But I’d really like your jewelry.” He reached out his long, slender hand.

Her fingers were too shaky to try and untie the knot. She slipped the star over her head, and gently placed it on his palm.

“Just so,” he said. “I will be back — there’s never been a better time to be a messiah. But for now, I must go. He waits for no one.”

“Wait,” she asked suddenly.

He turned and looked at her. Her knees shook; he seemed on the verge of destroying her.

“Can I… can I get one more kiss?”

Nyarlathotep smiled a huge glowing smile. His teeth shone. “You were… energetic. Much more so than your friend Diane. I can reward you, yes.”

He leaned down, grabbing the back of her head while his lips pressed to hers. “Diane?” she wondered, then forgot. Her hands, much more still now, were clasped around his neck as her body flushed once more with desire. She moaned as his tongue slipped into her mouth. Her fingers worked busily and then her left hand clenched. He half dropped her, stepped away and then, surrounded by a thousand stars, he disappeared.

She pulled on her blouse and jeans and followed him. She stepped over Tim and his bloody hand. That’s karma for you. Nyarlathotep was gone, and the revelers were all asleep. She walked out into the street, and smiled.

She opened her hand and examined the contents. Not a bad trade, she thought. The pyramid wasn’t as cool as the octopus, maybe, but the new chain was cool and she had a groovy story now. Best of all, she had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to do with it.

Once it was morning, she needed to find Diane and say goodbye. It was time to get out of Ashland. The sunshine of California would be nice, but might be better to cruise up the I-5, head to Yellowstone, and then back out to Iowa. After all, she had one hell-of-a late birthday present for her father.