I walk immediately into the kitchen, unceremoniously dumping my belongings on the counter. I locate a clean plate, set a pot of water to boil, and shed my jacket as I proceed to my bedroom to retrieve my stash.

I’m not about to tell where I hide my stuff; after all, you might come and rip me off, especially after I’ve bragged about the quality and variety of my collection. Worse, you could be an undercover narc. Suffice it to say, it is well concealed.

Less Japanese Red left than I thought; better save that for when the weaker stuff is gone, to overcome my tolerance. More Hydrochloride, on the other hand, than I recollected, at least a half V. I start with the Blue Anasket, primarily because it is the most plentiful, though “weak” isn’t really an accurate description. Blue Label is indicated for veterinary anesthesia for use on goats and larger mammals. In spite of recent gains, I am still somewhat smaller than a goat, so a vial should render me unintelligible for the next few hours. I crack the aluminum seal, unplug the rubber cork, and empty the tiny bottle onto the plate, adding just a few drops of vanilla extract for taste, and set it gingerly on the pot.

I activate my lighting system, consisting of strobes and “smart” lasers, which oscillate to the beat of the music, as well as liquid wax wall holograms, and a large-screen TV with a panoply of psychedelic DVD’s in the player. I select a two-hour program of computer-animated weirdness prepared by a friend to the hard-trance tracks of Astral Projection’s Another World. As an afterthought, I flip on the Jacuzzi, though by the time it sufficiently heats, I’ll probably be too fucked up to crawl into it.

Damn shame to be doing all this by myself. Ah, well, that’s what you get for being a player. Some days, no one else wants to play.

Razor blade. Mirror. Straw. Vick’s inhaler. A plastic bottle of water. A pack of clove cigarettes. Remove all sharp-edged furniture.

Check.

The pot is nearly bubbling over, so I turn the heat down a tad. The K has already begun to curdle. I rake it gently, mixing the solidifying portions into the liquid. Won’t be long now at all.

I go to the bathroom and use my electric nose hair trimmer, not for vanity but to clear a path, and run a few drops from the tap through each nostril to lubricate a vigorous noseblowing. I wrinkle my face at the greenish-brown slime on the tissue, dotted with black flecks of winnowed hair. Why must bodies produce so much…gross…gunk?

I watch the last whitish bubbles pop and flatten on the surface of the plate, then extinguish the burner and remove the plate with terrycloth oven mittens.

Not really needing anything like a full vial of K, not fresh out of the bag with no tolerance, I scrape about a third of the pale, plastic-like film from the plate to the mirror. The translucent crust readily converts to opaque white powder. I shuffle the pile into a neat rail.

I aim and shoot.

Bullseye. I throw my head back in pleasure/pain.

Half the line remains, but I am so overwhelmed by the power of what I’ve already had, that I decide to leave even that for later. How easily is grandiose ambition subsumed! How humbling, to be knocked upside by a fingernail length, not even a proper $20 bag. Why, back in the day…but there is no arguing with my spinning head and queasy gut.

I stumble to the recliner.

The world dissolves.

Somewhere between the signing and cashing of the check, I dimly recall.

She answers the door wearing a low-slung pink chemise and no bra, judging from her smooth, tanned cleavage and prominent nipple bumps. Two rows of perfect white teeth shine between her inviting, ruby lips. Her brown, curly hair is down, fluffy, a tendril resting on each of the breasts I am involuntarily ogling. A part of me wants to take her right there in the doorway, but my calmer head prevails.

“Victor…come in, have a seat. Let me grab a drink and we’ll get started.” I watch her ass as she struts across the room. Miniskirt. My blood is boiling.

“So, did you find out about the biopsy?” she asks innocently, which has the effect of ten gallons of icewater on my lust. Why is everybody suddenly so goddamned concerned about my health?

Especially psychics?

“No…listen, today I want to try to put some things together from my last life. I’ve had some odd dreams lately.”

She nods her beautiful head, and goes over to the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. “Your life as a Merry Prankster, right? Let me get my notes on that one.” She chooses a folder marked “Norman,” extracts it and sits down, setting her drink, which turns out to be coffee, on the appropriate table beside her. “Do you, uh, want anything, before we begin?”

Most past-life regression professionals stringently discourage the use of chemical agents for experiencing their services, and recommend avoiding even the most innocent of drugs prior to a session.

Llewellyn Reece is not among them. In her care, I have consumed psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, LSD, and Ketamine, and a host of strange herbal brews from the dark jungles of the hot wet ancestral lands, all of
which evoke a different phase of memories. Her policy is to match the subject’s psychedelic state by ingesting the same prescription-to be on the same “wavelength”-but it in no way hampers her effectiveness as a therapist. Llewellyn has a fantastic capacity for any amount of any drug, from either a biological quirk, specific tolerance to each, or supreme discipline over her body and mind.

“Acid,” she explained, “is for ‘birth’ experiences. E can bring you back to when you met a soulmate. K summons the sensation of dying, and mushrooms can take you to the interstice between lives.” Her justification was that these drugs were actually analogous to chemicals produced at these momentous times in the brain itself.

My first impulse is to demure; then I think better of it. “Dose me,” I say. “I should be frying for this. After all, I practically tripped my way through that entire incarnation.”