A Trip

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

Jack Kerouac – On the Road.

She was still flustered and hazy when she walked in the door of the Elvaston Road house early Sunday afternoon. She had gone straight upstairs to drop off her bags and pick up our tin which she had left behind the night before. Bypassing the shower until later, she'd checked her old bedroom to find her sheets messily pulled back and two wine glasses on her bedside table, both half empty and both with her mother's lipstick on them. When she passed her parent's bedroom, her dad's snoring had stopped abruptly. His sleeping really was getting later and shallower every night.

Pulling me out of the tin, she pads back down to the kitchen towards the soothing sound of her mother ranting at a magazine. As she crosses the threshold, the older woman looks up.

"Oh hey love." She says in the most blasé tone. If this were not the Stonem household, I would be shocked at such disregard for where her daughter had disappeared to without notice the night before. But it is the Stonem household, and Effy likes it better this way.

"Where's your father?" adds Anthea in perfunctory fashion.

Effy perches on the counter behind her mother's chair and lights me in the middle of the kitchen. Anthea doesn't even flinch. "Still in bed. Says he's not getting up today."

"Oh right… good…" It's not clear whether she's glad she won't be crossing paths with her estranged husband or if she's simply not listening. Even Effy is unsure, she makes a mental note to test this.

Anthea returns to her gossip rag. "Bastard… Bastard…" She flicks through the glossy pages and points accusingly at every man staring back at her.

Her mother's voice still has an almost palliative effect on the young girl. And these days, with swearing the new norm of expression around the household, even the cursing is comforting and familiar. Effy takes her first drag and she already feels a thousand percent better for the company and the chemicals. The cold that had crept into her bones from the forest starts to seep out of her as if my tiny flame were a great warm hearth.

Anthea flips to another page and points more vehemently at the picture she finds.

"Oh! Big, fat, ugly, Irish bastard!"

"All men are bastards, mum." Effy doesn't truly believe that yet, mostly she's humouring the frustrated and cynical older woman.

She pulls another breath of smoke into her lungs and sets her highly vivid brain onto replay. Methodically, she begins to go through the events of last night in chronological order, like a forensic expert combing through evidence. She's attempting to piece together a picture that makes more sense than the dim facts.

Her mother continues her man-hating cathartic exercise in the background as her mind drifts back.

The car trip to Gobblers End, the winding walk through the woods, setting up camp. Barring the gun-toting psychos in the jeep, none of it had been out of the ordinary. 'Beware, the moon.' Yeah, right. The howling, that was the boys; the unburdened elation of youth and freedom.

She and Panda had sat against the oldest tree in the clearing. The younger girl had asked her about how love can't avoid going through changes. Her naïve friend always looked to her like a mentor of sorts. Effy liked the attention but she couldn't help but feel Pandora could hardly have picked more fucking unsound footsteps in which to follow than hers.

The questioning had left Effy feeling a bit too exposed for her own liking so she had soon wandered off beyond the camp for some air. As if the objectively fresh air of the clearing had suddenly been rendered unbreathable, clouded with heavy insinuation and implication.

She drags more loaded breaths through me as she relives her meanderings through the woods.

When she had returned a little while later with mushrooms, gathered from the mossy shadow of an elm, she had once again commandeered the attention of the group. Everyone but Katie and JJ had crouched around her and eagerly shared the shrooms.

They would really follow this girl anywhere, at the detriment of their own safety. All of them. To the ends of the earth.

Hours later, when they had added white powder and booze to the cocktail in their systems, the clearing was an unfettered mess of more howls and sparklers. Time lost its footing then. Effy remembers falling asleep for a moment with her hand in Panda's.

It could have been several nights later, she woke up. The sky was still pitch dark. If she didn't know for a fact that today was Sunday, she would begin to doubt how many nights they had all spent in that damp clearing. There was a growing uncomfortable buzzing in her head and a dry wedge of sandpaper in her throat. She softly placed her friend's hand onto her stomach and wandered back into the forest for some more peace and air.

By the time she realised she was lost, the demons that lived in her head were crawling out. Unfurling their armoured exoskeletons across her skin, they began to scuttle over her arms and neck, multiplying at an exponential rate.

Even remembering it, she has to pinch me between her lips and brush hastily at her arms from the phantom sensation that the memories evoke.

She can still hear the echoes calling her name, bouncing around the small kitchen's walls. The sound is so tangible, it's a wonder Anthea isn't looking up from her magazine in search for the source of it too.

"Effy… Effy…" at first it's in the howling of the wind.

Effy had begun to run. She couldn't tell if she was running towards or away from the cries but she just knew she couldn't stay still. Her own cries died in her dry throat.

"Effy" again, only clearer. It's Katie's voice.

Katie had come looking for her. Katie was running after her, chasing her. The next thing Effy remembers, the redhead had collided with her full pelt, knocking the wind out of both and some of the bugs off Effy in the process. They tumbled painfully to the ground and rolled among the leaves.

Sure, in hindsight the sound of the bugs scuttling over her entire body was probably just the rustling of the leaves underneath. And yeah, the prickling under her skin was probably the contact of the other girl's flesh again. Fine, the burning sensation of thousands of legs crawling and clawing at her was likely the fever brought on by the drugs and another manic episode. Fucking easy to say now. The shifting forms and shadows against her pale complexion were obviously as many tricks of the light. And ok, it was all just a very, very bad trip. But in the thick of the forest and the dark of the night, under the weight of the smaller girl, the peril was indeed very, very real. A different kind of peril, perhaps, but it was enough to shatter Effy a million times over.

"Get them off me!" Effy sobbed, more vulnerable than she had ever felt before, trapped under the dumbfounded redhead. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it all to stop.

Then had come the moment that shocked her more than any of the vivid hallucinations that had preceded it. Katie had probably panicked, but that much was real, Effy is sure of it.

The redhead's eyes had flickered wildly in their sockets before locking onto Effy's own. Katie managed to pin both of Effy's flailing arms to the ground to avoid further injury to either of them. Then, before Effy could panic any more about being suddenly trapped there by the surprisingly strong Fitch, she had leaned in and pressed her lips forcefully to Effy's, silencing the brunette's remaining cries.

Effy shakes her head as she takes a more conscious inhale.

So… fuck… she hadn't expected that. In the heat of the moment she had gone from panic, to shock, to realisation. As Katie's lips slowly parted against hers, she very slowly coasted back to calm. She relaxed gradually in Katie's grip. The sensations withdrew one by one, leaving only her thumping heart and a completely empty mind.

Effy's mind had never ever been blank. It was the most elating feeling of all. Like a moment of complete lucidity, thrown into sharp relief by the fact that it had immediately followed the most intense trip of her life.

Somewhere in the confusion, she had rolled on top of the smaller girl and begun to kiss back. No more thinking. Her lips and her tongue moved on their own and so did Katie's.

When her breathing had calmed to a human rate again, she pulled back and looked beseechingly into Katie's eyes. The other girl merely tightened her embrace. So Effy had soon collapsed against the redhead's body and passed out from the exhaustion.

"So how are things, love?" Anthea asks her daughter without turning around.

Effy is brought back into the kitchen by the sound of her mother's voice. "Oh, you know, usual teenage stuff. I've been out in the forest making out with this totally fit girl." Brutally frank, another Stonem sibling trait.

Anthea hums as if it were a question mark, still obviously immersed in her magazine.

Effy flicks some ash off her left leg into the adjacent sink, and decides to test her theory, laying it on thick.

"Her name is Katie, she's rather beautiful; so I was nailing her. First she kissed me, so naturally I went down on her like a hungry nympho, until she came hot and fast and sticky in my mouth. Then she finger-fucked me to a screaming orgasm that echoed round the forest. Never had an orgasm like that with Freddie, not even in your bed. So anyway, finally we fell asleep in each other's arms. And here I am, back from Gobblers End with a newfound taste for pussy."

Ok so that second last bit was true. She had passed out in Katie's arms and Katie had stayed there on the cold forest floor, holding Effy steady until she too had fallen asleep.

"That's lovely darling" says Anthea. Ok, evidently not listening.

But it had been lovely. And Effy allows herself a sly smile as she crushes me against the cold metal of the sink, slips off the counter, past her mother and back up the stairs into her bedroom.

Yeah, so there are all different kinds of trips. Good ones, bad ones, ones that take you somewhere real, ones that take you somewhere meaningful, ones that take you deeper into your own head than you'd like. Somewhere you planned or somewhere you never thought you'd go but you're glad for it once you come back.

Best

Froggie