Void

Major Havoc marched around the apartment in a bulletproof vest that looked like it had seen better days—or maybe just a better owner. His hands ran over the stiff material as if he were testing its authenticity, muttering, "It's made of cardboard!" over and over, as though trying to convince himself of its inadequacy.

I trailed behind him, peering into corners and occasionally ducking into rooms. "Has anyone seen my brain?" I asked, half-joking, half-serious, as if it might have slipped out of my skull and wandered off. I even checked the bathroom, poking my head behind the shower curtain with mock urgency.

Beard and Snide, the closest thing we had to sober companions, observed us from the couch. Their expressions hovered somewhere between mild amusement and resigned acceptance, as if they'd long since given up trying to understand the spectacle unfolding before them. Havoc and I could have been conducting an avant-garde performance piece, and they would have nodded along as if it all made perfect sense.

Our experiments with psychedelics had taken us to some truly bizarre places—both literally and figuratively. The list of locations where we'd indulged in syrup-fueled escapades read like a scavenger hunt dreamed up by a lunatic: birthday parties, the subway, abandoned forests. There were nights so strange they blurred into dreams, and mornings where none of us could remember exactly where we'd been or how we'd gotten home.

We drank syrup under the open sky and beneath crumbling ceilings. We tried it underground in drainage pipes and on rooftops where the air felt thin, almost electric. Up there, the sky seemed flatter, the stars a cheap imitation, and the moon—without a doubt—was made of cardboard.

I remember lying on a foam mat one night, staring at the heavens. The Earth seemed to tilt beneath me, its rotation tangible, as if it were a giant amusement park ride I couldn't get off. A gust of wind rushed by, and for a terrifying moment, I thought I might be flung into the void.

A week later, we decided to take our experiments underground. We descended into an old drainage system just as twilight bled into full darkness. The syrup hit hard, transforming the dank, narrow tunnels into something otherworldly—a launch pad for interstellar travel.

In the pitch black, our imaginations went wild. Shadows turned into strange creatures, the dripping water became the hum of a spaceship engine, and the cool, stale air felt like the vacuum of space. Havoc, always prepared, turned on a flashlight at one point, shining it ahead like a beam from a UFO. "Let's see how far we've gone," he said, his voice tinged with wonder.

The irony of it all wasn't lost on me. Not long ago, we'd been too paranoid to leave the apartment while high. Now we were wandering the city's underground systems, convinced we were exploring new galaxies. By the time the first rays of dawn filtered through the tunnel grates, we felt as if only a minute had passed since we'd entered.

One particularly surreal night, we decided to take syrup on a river cruise. It was a cheap tourist boat, nothing glamorous, but it felt like the height of luxury at the time.

A storm rolled in halfway through the ride. The air grew heavy with electricity, and the sky turned an ominous shade of gray. Lightning streaked across the horizon, jagged and violent, illuminating the water in bursts of white-hot light. The storm seemed to stretch on forever, and time itself felt like it had unraveled.

I stared at the endless expanse of water, hypnotized by the rhythm of the waves and the raw power of the storm. Somewhere in the back of my mind, memories stirred—fragments of a time before existence, before consciousness. For the first time in ages, I felt the faint echo of something pure and untainted, as if I'd glimpsed the void from which I had once emerged.