Fear and Loathing in the Shadow Gallery
Prologue
Rated R for drug references.
Please skip this story if you have strong feelings against the use of lysergic acid diethylamide for therapeutic purposes.
Please read on if you are an admirer of Hunter S. Thompson, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Terrence Mckenna, and Albert Hofmann, or are just curious as to what V is going to do next…
Which V? GN!V has the acid, Movie!V has the angst, both have issues
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Moore and Lloyd and WB and I am not a psychiatrist.
It is time again for a bit of therapy. V padded through the Gallery in his socks, his black silk kimono tied snugly around his waist. I will have to keep the mask on tonight. Evey went to bed an hour ago, bit she may wake. I should be safe. Best to be safe. He paused by her open door; listened to her breathe. She is asleep. Should I lock her in? No. The last time I locked a door in the Gallery while in an altered state …not such a good idea.
That had been years ago. He had been uncertain of the dosage. Back then his machines were not fine enough; back then he did not have a mass spectrometer. He had thought it best to lock himself in one of the storage rooms lest he wander outside in a haze and be discovered. Mistake. Here the memory became fuzzy like the experience itself. He had lain in the locked room, seeing, hearing, feeling…but then he felt it was time to go. He had to get out. The room felt too small. The walls closed in. He had stood up, crossed to the door, put his hand on the knob…felt the knob not turn. Felt the locked door. Shook the door. After that…his memory was foggy. He had awakened in his bed the next morning, tired, drained, and his mouth had felt like it was packed with cotton. But later in the day as he walked down that hallway he had seen what he had done and wondered at it.
The hallway had been littered with splintered wood and bits of metal hardware: hinges, nails, screws and hinge pins. The door to his storage room was gone. Obliterated. He remembered looking down at his feet and seeing the doorknob and faceplate lying there still screwed to a chunk of the door. As for the rest of the door, well, there was hardly a piece of wood larger than a toaster. He had never replaced it. That room still has no door.
I won't lock her in, he decided, I know what I'm doing.
He made the rounds of the Shadow Gallery in his robe, lovingly touched a panel here, delicately flipped a switch there, turned some lights on and some lights off. The intimacies of his home and this nightly ritual of patrol were his touchstone. When we take a trip, he told himself, we have to know where we begin. We have to know the starting point or else we cannot tell where we've gone, or how far we have come.
In the kitchen he filled a pitcher with water, put some ice in it and set it on the table, then set a tumbler next to it. Next, he opened a cupboard and removed a pile of neatly folded white cotton tablecloths. He traveled through the Gallery draping a cloth over each mirror. He made a special effort to completely cover the one in his bedroom; the room where Evey now lay sleeping. I don't plan on coming in here, but best to be thorough. Best to be safe.
The clock in the other room made the whirring sound it makes before it strikes the hour. He paused, cocked an ear to the sound. It has been an hour. Do I feel it yet?