Colors of Chaos
Heather Ransom

Part One: An Inflatable Shark Named Frank

9:45 a.m.
The sun heats the inside of our tent to the point of suffocation fooling me into believing, for the third morning in a row, that it’s warmer outside than it actually is. I feel sticky. 
It’s Sunday, day four of the festival, and I have dry-mouth like a mother fucker. I unzip the tent and tumble out into the damp grass beneath the shade of our shanty-town of canopies and psychedelic tapestries in an attempt to locate my Birkenstocks. Instead, from my hands and knees and through a mangled curtain of blonde locks, I find a half-empty bottle of water and a pack of smokes (that could have been mine) with three Camel Lights and an orange lighter left inside. Chug. Spark. Sweet relief.


10:15 a.m.
My eyes, screaming from a three day beer binge, finally adjust to the light of late May as I return from the port-a-potty, ripe now with a weekend’s worth of liquor-shits and vendor-food vomit. Times like this I wish I were a man. I collapse into someone’s fold-up camp chair and notice the litter scattered about the ground below me. Recyclables in the blue bags, trash in the white. Got it. 

It occurs to me, while trying my damnedest to rehydrate, that these water bottles have hardly been sipped. What a waste. I can hear the others shuffling around in their respective tents, waking as dumbed down versions of the humans who first arrived here days ago, and I think to myself that I should finish the opened waters before pulling fresh ones from the cooler. Way to be green, kiddo. 


11:00 a.m.
Mmm, camp coffee. The scent of dark roast beans mingles with that of veggie omelets and dances under my nostrils. Thank God Sammy has the gumption to put together that Coleman camp stove and play chef to this small crowd of lush-bags for one more morning. My hands tingle and my mind is swirly, but I think I’m feeling better? 

I remind myself of the glorious day ahead – dancin’ and flat-pickin’ and all colors of chaos – and I toss a water and a smoke to the cook, my soon-to-be husband. How did he and I become the responsible ones here? That’s terrifying. 

The intoxicating aroma of our five-star outdoor brunch is interrupted by the skunky smell of good weed. I assume it comes from Mason and Kat’s tent. Those adorable little hippies. Smoke on, friends. I feel a strange relief in knowing that I don’t get high (on any drugs) anymore. 


12:00 p.m.
Our less committed friends have hit the road for the trek back to their real world lives in West Virginia or North Carolina or whatever Appalachian hollow they call home. I can almost feel the dull sting of eyeballs rolling in judgment over the backs of their tangled heads as they re-enter civilization. After being here where reality feels suspended, where negative energies dissolve and entire families are born of nothing more than a campfire and a fiddle, nothing feels more surreal than that first gas station.

Here in Maryland the campground population has dwindled to half of its original God-only-knows how many thousand. Who leaves before String Cheese takes the stage? Only Mason and Kat and a few of their nameless friends remain in our shanty-town awaiting the final evening of music. Sammy and Mason crack the day’s first beers and I uncap what must be my fifth or sixth half-water. 

I don’t know who suggested a dip in the river, but the idea is fucking brilliant. The cool air of morning succumbed to a heavy midday heat what seems like hours ago and I desperately need to get my shit together. A quick swim will do wonders. I haven’t showered now in days. 

1:30 p.m.
This is some hangover. The river did not cleanse me of my nausea like a baptism rinses away sin. Too bad. Floating around the smooth water on someone’s inflatable shark named Frank was the closest I’d been to good all morning. 

I make my way back from the shitter for the third time in an hour, now carrying my own toilet paper. I might as well admit this isn’t just a hangover; I’ve been fighting a goddamn panic attack all morning and it’s beginning to piss me off. My heart flutters in a way that doesn’t tickle and I subconsciously grind my teeth. Who goes to a music festival, the only place on Earth where all you have to be is free, and then freaks the fuck out for no reason?  

I try to calm my ridiculous, self-obsessive thoughts. Breathe in, breathe out. Enjoy the day. Be in the moment, not your head. Look, Sammy just tackled Mason like they’re a couple of ten year old boys. Laugh. Listen, Kat’s talking to you. She must have shed her bear costume when this heat moved in. Wonder where you find a full-body bear outfit anyway? Focus. Bear costume isn’t important.
 
I‘m trying to be okay, but I keep telling Sammy I feel off. He claims that he does too. I need to shit again, but for now I think I’m alright. Fucking anxiety.  


2:15 p.m. 
All I want to do is get out of this wet bathing suit and here’s Sammy following me into the tent for a quickie. He knows I’m close to the edge. At this point I can actually see the sound-waves of my heart-beat pumping out of my body and into the air like little music notes.
 
I cave and he climbs on. What can I say, I’m already naked and sometimes finding a good distraction calms my panic. Too bad it doesn’t work this time. 

It’s so disgustingly hot in the tent and despite my best efforts to remain absolutely silent my breath feels so loud. Sammy is loud too but somehow muffled. His hair is waving, bouncing in the strangest slow-motion patterns. Feels like I’m lying at the bottom of a pool looking up at him as he dives down to meet me. His dark, shoulder-length curls are growing and they’re radiating outward like the petals of a flower floating softly around his face.
​ 
All I can think of is the heat, the noise, my racing heart, his hair. I feel sick. Really sick. 


3:00 p.m. 
The air-conditioning inside my Honda Fit feels clean and for one fleeting second I find relief. After hours of listening to me moan about a hangover, a panic attack, a heat stroke, Sammy has agreed to take me to an emergency room. 

The more he tries to calm me, the more he says he’s feeling bad too, the worse I feel. We’re driving around a town we’ve never explored in search of an E.R. that may or may not exist and my head is spinning so fast I can’t tell which lane we’re in. Now he’s feeling it too?  

By the time we reach the gas station I’m officially freaking out. He’s been inside for days now. How long does it take to get directions to a hospital? My eyes are rolling around in my head without my permission. I lay on the horn. 

“Just calm down and look at me,” Sammy says, his words coming quick as he soars back into the driver’s seat and slams the door behind him. I struggle to meet his gaze with my own, and when I do I think his eyes are strange. 
​
He grabs both my shoulders and leans in close to my face, cautiously slowing his words as he asks, “Do you kind of feel like... like you’re trippin’?” 
An epiphany. Light-bulb. “Holy shit… I’m on fucking drugs.” 


Part Two: “Stand up, Wake up”

3:30 p.m.
Back at the festival grounds, we try to appear “sober,” but I have no idea how we made it here alive. Sammy boarded the acid train with me before we even left the gas station. The good news: I now know I’m not dying. The bad news: the panic of thinking I’m dying has been replaced with the panic of wondering what the hell we’re on and how much of it we’ve had. 
The sky morphs into strips of light in vibrant pinks and purples and greens and they spin. Eyes open, eyes closed, the colors are there and they spin. My world exists inside a light-up hoola-hoop like the ones the hippie girls dance with and I’m stuck inside just watching it spin. 
I remember reading a book titled “Just Say Know to Drugs” when I worked at the head-shop a decade ago and know there’s no undoing hallucinogens. All we can do is hold on for the ride. Might as well take the plunge surrounded by awesome jams and good people who know a thing or two about trippin’. Stay positive, that’s key. I guess it could be worse. At least Sammy is coming with me. 


3:45 p.m.
The fairgrounds where the main stage overlooks a horseshoe of vendors hocking instruments and hand-made everything are twice their normal size. We’ve wandered in circles for hours now, I’m sure, gazing at the stage-right mountain and the twisted look it wears on its rock face. We used to do this shit on purpose, remember? But there’s a reason it’s been so long. 
Focus on the music. Why does Bela Flek just keep playing the same song on repeat? I remember now that time stretches and bends when you’re tripping... I have no idea who the woman on stage is (Abigail Washburn), but she’s got some awesome pipes and an infant in her arms. I’ve never seen an infant on stage before, but he seems content and Sammy assures me he is real. 
    
4:00 p.m.
My legs quiver as I top the bleachers in slow motion with Sammy guiding me by the hand. We probably look like one of those tiny old couples, fragile, withered by time and shrunken down, made small by our oneness. Or I could just be dehydrated and scared. I’m pretty sure now that I don’t want to be on this roller-coaster, this tiny ship on skyscraper waves in the middle of a vast ocean, but I try to smile anyway and keep talking myself out of vomiting. 
​
Finally, we reach Kat and Mason and as Sammy shares with them our discovery that “we’re not sick, we’re on fucking drugs,” I find myself believing I understand Frodo’s struggle as he climbed Mount Doom. Myself and my swollen brain, a heavy weight to carry, are my One Ring. This journey, already so long in the making, is not nearly over... and when it ends, I won’t be the same. We must get back to our camp. 


4:30 p.m.
It comes in waves, now. They’re closer together and increasing in intensity. I’m watching a hurricane approach from a beach front patio and I’m chained to the front door.  
I’ve now lost my ability to form real words and I sink into myself, knees clenched to my chest, curled under the canopies of our shanty-town, our temporary home, with banjos in the distance and Sammy lying next to me stroking my hair. Waves wash over me, refusing to let me up for air, and I know this is the climax. I don’t know how long it will last. 
​
I sigh to remind myself I’m alive. Hearing my own breath briefly opens a swinging door to some kind of reality. I catch glimpses of where I am and remain - off and on - aware of the fact that I’m on drugs. I mumble the word “babe” to Sammy when I start to get lost. I see sound. As it echoes and fades “babe, babe, bae... bae...” I watch the colors of my own voice spin around me. Golden turquoise, star-fire indigo, diamond-on-pink. The elemental colors of the neurons in my brain. And as the rainbow of sound dissipates I eventually make my way back to wondering how long it’s been since I last spoke. I throw it out there again, just to be sure. “Baaaabbbbeee?” 
What I mean to say is, “are you still there, are you okay, am I okay,” but that many colors would make me dizzy. I know that he understands. He replies with a soft “yes” each time and for a short moment, as I reach the wave’s crest, I feel okay. I wonder what it’s like to trip in his head. Then I’m sucked right back into my own, the next wave bigger than the last. “Baaaabbbeee?”


6:00 p.m. 
The worst of this trip has to be over, it’s been hours now. Though the painful waves of confusion and nausea still overcome me at random, they have become less frequent and somewhat less claustrophobic. I can finally speak real words again and Sammy seems to think that walking around will be better than basking in our own cottage-cheese brains any longer. What the hell, I might not be quite right just yet, but I’m so happy to be back on Earth I feel compelled to begin investigating what the fuck just happened - is still happening. Let’s explore.

There’s always been the basics. Acid, LSD, PCP, Shrooms, Ketamine, Meth, Ecstasy, Coke, Heroin, Mescaline. But now, apparently, it’s Angel Tears, Blotter, Electric Koolaid, Liquid Sunshine, Molly, Rollies, Dex. There’s synthetic shit that rots people’s limbs off made from gasoline by addicts in alley-ways. There are weird combinations of everything. A-bomb, Banana Split, Dragon Rock, Dust, Hippie Flip, Candy Flip, Pikachu, Screw-ball, Super X, Troll, Waffle Dust, Wet Sticks. You can bump it, bang it, shoot it, smoke it, toke it, snort it, trip, parachute, play, roll, drop, dip, flip, bib and split. The shit they make these days can be absorbed through any orifice or none at all. Splash it on your skin, you’re fucking high. Mind-blown.


8:00 p.m. 
The sun, that hasn’t quite disappeared over the mountain yet, is casting the shadow of a small bear on its hind-legs against the outside of our tent where we’ve taken refuge. Kat unzips the door with the paw of her strangely adorable suit to make sure we’re alive and force us to eat. 
She and Mason are hoping we’ve unknotted our intestines and resumed normal enough brain function to join them for the final show. Though this isn’t exactly how I expected to “see” String Cheese, who’s to say they can’t be appreciated from inside a tent several football fields away? The music is faint, but it actually doesn’t sound that bad. Sammy says we might meet up with them later, but we both know that’s not happening.
 
I think I can discern the distant lyrics, “The sun is sinking fast now and the night is moving in... And I know that it’s not real but I can’t break out of this dream... Stand up, wake up.”


12:00 a.m., (and 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 a.m.)
I roll over again, wide awake. All I want to do is lay flat on my back, but it still makes me dizzy. I know I won’t sleep for weeks. Never do after a trip like that. All I can do is toss around the possibilities in my head, half afraid to close my eyes for what I might see. I’m slowly trying to decide if my mind is back. It’s like finding your legs again after a week at sea. Just when you think you’ve got it, your knees give and you face-plant on the ground. 

I’m amazed by the entire situation as I replay every detail, imagine all scenarios. It couldn’t have been the food because we all ate omelets -- only Sammy and I tripped. I must have had more of whatever it was -- it hit me way faster and way harder. Then again, I’m a fraction of his size. 
How does someone accidentally trip anyway? Was one of those half-empty water bottles laced with something? Did someone seriously forget their acid water at our camp site the evening before? I chuckle in spite of myself. Wonder if they were as upset about losing it as I was about finding it? 

Could it have been that first pack of smokes that I claimed as my own? Maybe they were dipped in something? Or maybe one of the stoner kids we passed along the river trail threw liquid acid on us, naively believing that everyone should feel as good as he did right then. What a dumbass. Maybe that river itself is made of drugs! Endless ridiculous questions. 
    
One year later:
I’ve been circling the campground in search of the perfect spot to set up shop since we entered the festival an hour ago. The afternoon sun shines brightly, but I hold a plastic umbrella over my head. It will remain there for the next four days just in case it starts raining acid. In a moment of desperation I consider making our home base next to the family area, but I can’t bring myself to do it -- screaming kids and all.

I pull the tent poles from my pack with my head on a swivel and my water-bottle resting on my hip. It’s attached to my waist by a carabiner, not to leave my side. 

It occurs to me, again, as I refuse a shot of moonshine from our neighboring campers that I’m pissed and I have nowhere to direct my anger. I’m convinced there was no malicious intent, but tell that to my anxiety. Accident or not, a sacred virginity beyond explanation has been stolen from me, forever lost in the confusion of a psychedelic surprise that I did not sign up for. 
I really want to taste that moonshine, but something won’t let me. Sigh. If they haven’t lost their minds by the late night shows, it’s probably safe to sip. Tread carefully, kid.

About the Author:
Heather Ransom recently obtained an M.A. in English from Marshall University where she taught Composition. Most recently she was recognized with West Virginia Writers Inc.’s 2014 Emerging Voices Award and had work published in the Chattahoochee Review and Written River: A Journal of Ecopoetics.

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