Summary:
This chapter talks about drug addiction as the ultimate solution for Skye to bury her remorse, so be warned.
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
Jenny led Skye in a private room.
"So? Are you sure?" she asked.
And Skye, looking hungrily to the transparent envelope, answered:
"I'm sure.
I desire ecstasy more than the air I breathe!
I don't care about anything else… not even my life.
I need it!
I'm craving it!
I can resist no more to its summons!
I know I'm a slave and nobody can break me free… I'm perfectly aware of that…
But I accept that.
I bow in front of that…"
And then she added, sadly chuckling at herself:
"Otherwise, how could any reasonable being subject himself to such a yoke of misery?
How could anybody in his right mind voluntarily incur into so a servile captivity?
How could anybody knowingly fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?"
She paused, then added:
"There is no such thing as forgetting possible to my mind.
A thousand accidents had continuously interposed a veil between my present consciousness and the secret wonderful memories I have… memories from my past… memories from the Hive…
But, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, while they are only waiting to be revealed again by the obscurity, in the same way I'm willingly bringing back the darkness from deep inside of me, to reveal again in front of my inner self those starry sensations.
…
Oh, goodness… I cannot even restrain myself from trembling in anticipation!"
It was the only confirmation Jenny needed.
The two sat down and prepared everything, then sniffed the white powder and waited.
After some time Skye spoke the first, breathing deeply, eyes half open, smiling:
"Ooohhh… yeah…
My sensitivity is finally increasing… a delicious warmth is suffusing my whole body… it's hot… blissful…
…
Colors start having such a glowing, fascinating, delightful intensity…
Yeah… seeing ecstatic kaleidoscopes of colors… waves of colors whirling up… bouncing jolly… immensely bright… like enormously intensifying masses of light!
…
But it isn't only colors, now…
There are sights… sounds… music… forms… smells… tastes… tactile sensations… all so unimaginably intense, vivid and pleasurable… so rich of nuances!
Everything is beautiful, so bathed in this intense light!
…
I feel like I'm seeing the world for the first time in my life!
…
I'm feeling such an empathy with that plant, that painting, that bird… with you!"
Skye was talking to Jenny, looking languidly at her, panting and smiling.
Jenny answered, with a dreamy voice:
"Yeah… me too…
I feel light… ecstatic… reborn…
Exuberant life energy is pulsing within me…
All my senses are like… cleansed and wide open…
…
You are so beautiful!
Beautiful like the sky!
Your features show a mixture of… infantile bliss and mystical rapture…"
Skye continued:
"It's like multiple layers of thick, dirty cobwebs… have been magically torn away and dissolved… or a poor quality movie projection has been focused and… rectified by an invisible cosmic technician…
…
I can feel each muscle in my shoulders and legs swelling and relaxing, pulsing with power…
Oh, the unspeakable delight of movement!
Every move I do is bringing pleasure to me!
…
It's like the refreshing breath of some angel of wisdom is being gently blown against the surface of my brain… so delicate… so crisp… so exhilarating!
Life is so simple… and exciting… and rich… and joyous!"
Then she looked bewildered to all the furniture in the room:
"The lights reflecting off the mirror are sparkling… with a kind of moist luminescence…
The little green strands of this shag rug are like… undulating!
This is an enchanted carpet!
I can fly away on it!
The furniture, the walls, the floor are all pulsing in slow waves… as if the whole room is… breathing!
It seems to follow my breathing!
…
Jenny, sweetheart, let's go outside!"
They reached, scrambling and wavering, a vantage point of the park among trees, while Skye continued in her ramblings:
"I can feel the ground becoming alive under my feet… connecting me with the earth and the trees and the sky!
I can see the forest shining with the most beautiful radiance… speaking to my heart… as though it wants to encompass me in its majesty!
Oh, what a peace!
Oh, what a rapture!
What an intense… immeasurable… superhuman joy!
This is what it means to see the world in a grain of sand!
Oh, what a beauty!
My every fear is banished!
Mystery is enwrapping me, like I am waking in Paradise!
It seems I'm becoming one with my whole surroundings!
This experience is liberation!"
Jenny spoke:
"Look, look at this leaf! Isn't it beautiful?
Plants are so pure beings, don't you think? Not exploiting and hurting other organisms, they serve themselves as a source of food… bringing also beauty and joy into the life of others! Each new bursting of growth repeats and amplifies the basic design… finally exulting in a flower!
Oh, flowers… they are so beautiful!
They are beauties in which the soul might wrap itself as in a garment of delight!
Oh, it seems ages since the world had looked so beautiful, innocent and undismayed!"
Skye, after a while, spoke again:
"Do you feel how much the sense of space and time are powerfully affected?
Buildings, landscapes, the city itself have proportions so vast as my eyes are not fitted to conceive!
It all seems the work of an unearthly builder… and my soul stands before it in a trance of ecstasy!
Space is swelling, amplifying to an extent… of unutterable infinity!"
And Jenny answered:
"Yeah… but it is nothing compared to the vast expansion of time…
Can you feel it?
This timelessness is unbelievable!
It seems to me to have lived for a millennium… or anyway a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience!"
Skye was beyond happiness:
"Oh, mighty, volcanic ecstasy, healing the wounds that will never heal… and bringing a balm for the pangs that made my spirit suffer so much!
Oh, eloquent elixir of pleasure, stealing away all the purposes of wrath…
You give me back hope, and wash my hands pure of all the blood!
…
Jenny!
I feel I'm leaving my past behind…
I'm capable of starting an entirely new life!
I'm finally free from anxiety, depression and guilt: it's exhilarating!
…
I'm floating through the universe…
My body is both swimming and flying!
I've been turned on to life!
I'm so happy!
I finally see!
This is utopia!
This is heaven!
This is ineffable ecstasy!
Oceanic ecstasy!
Cosmic union!
Totalizing oneness!
I want to tell everyone this wonderful thing I know, this secret that explains everything and will bring such rejoicing and happiness!"
Skye casted off all her restraint, breaking into a full joyous laughter, and with convulsive gaiety leapt into the air, clapping her hands, hugging and kissing Jenny, and finally crying for joy.
A little crowd started to gather near them, curious at seeing two such beautiful girls in that strange attitude, disturbing them: in that ecstatic state, crowds became an oppression to them. They were naturally seeking solitude and silence as indispensable conditions for them, now, so they returned inside.
Jenny abandoned herself on a couch nearby, with an ecstatic smile on her face and her eyes closed, laying on her back stunned, amazed and euphoric, following the phantasmagoria of her dreams.
Skye, too, was suspended in the buoyancy of her triumphant journey, exulting in her ecstatic state of non-ego, aware she was no more herself, but a selfless, egoless, joyous representative of all humanity, loving, searching and soaring into the infinite…
She continued muttering almost to herself:
"Every human being has the right to achieve this titanic euphoria…
We all have the right to get so high… to experience these sensations… to expand and change our consciousness, in this immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of confining selfhood melt down…"
Then she calmed down.
She almost fell asleep.
After a little while, a sense of drama, like a bad surprise, started growing in her.
It was peculiar… she started feeling as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of her stomach…
She grasped her belly, which was starting to ache more and more.
Strange! The pleasure of drugs, when once generated, should have been stationary for eight or ten hours… at least at the beginning of the administration… and never should they give pain… in the immediate, at least…
What the hell was happening to her?
Instantaneously the cloud of the profoundest melancholy rested upon her brain, like some black vapors rolling away from the summits of a mountain.
It wasn't possible that all that had already finished!
Jenny was still there, with a wide smile and a dreamy look!
Skye started panicking.
She needed more!
It couldn't stop now!
Why was the ecstasy stopping so abruptly, leaving her almost desperate? Has it something to do with the Kree blood running in her veins?
Maybe she took too little…
So she grabbed the remnants of the white powder and inhaled it all.
And then waited… again…
And then again she started seeing things…
The splendors of her dreams changed, becoming chiefly architectural; she started seeing such pomp of cities and palaces never seen by waking eye, buildings of indescribable magnificence… The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, was of mighty cities, a wilderness of building, sinking far into a wondrous depth, into splendor, without end… They seemed fabricated of diamond, and of gold, with alabaster domes, and silver spires, and terrace upon terrace, high uplifted; serene pavilions in large avenues illuminated of all gems; towers with battlements that bore stars…
Then, to her architecture visions, succeeded dreams of lakes, seas, oceans and silvery expanses of water.
These started haunting her so much that she feared that they could become real and she could drown in them…
And then she suddenly felt like drowning!
She felt like suffocating!
So she ran outside to go to Raoul, asking him, begging him for more.
At the beginning he was surprised, because he didn't expect such a sudden dependency.
Then he seized the moment and, with a devilish grin, said her:
"You wanted fun?
I gave it to you, for free.
But now the party is over.
If you want it, you pay for it."
Skye asked:
"Pay? How? How much?"
"It depends on what you want…"
"I want something strong, something that will kick me out for hours, days even…
I want oblivion!
I want to forget everything!
I want to escape, to run away from this life!"
"It sounds to me that what you really want is… committing suicide…
But this is not my concern.
I don't care anything about you.
I'll get you what you want.
Whatever you want.
But the price will be high.
You can pay it in nature…" Skye grimaced at that "… or, if you prefer, in money."
He said the price and she almost felt dizzy at hearing it, but she steeled herself and said:
"I'll get the money and then I'll be back. Prepare everything."
"Good girl!"
After she left he commented:
"I knew I just stumbled on a chicken.
What I was not aware of was that she is the chicken of the golden eggs!"