“In the big rock candy mountain, all the bulldogs have no teeth… “ Levi mumbled, tapping out the last brown crumbs from a wrinkled, tiny, dime bag into a spoon that started life with the best of intentions, but now found itself an unwitting participant in illegal activity.

There is a hundred reasons I won’t give you my real name, but for our purposes, you can call me Kevin.

“Again with that fucking song? “ I say, my bank card moving like the trowel of a master bricklayer, creating three equal lines of off white powder.

Levi looks to me with a half-there grin, the dog kibble in his spoon starting to melt and sputter, “ You wouldn’t get it. “ he almost whispers, giggling to himself.

I don’t press the issue, but I find myself thinking that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say.

Levi and myself, we’ve been through everything from kindergarten to weekend jail together. Small towns make close friends, hard drugs make shit-brothers, between the two of them, Levi and I may as well be the same damn person.

But lately… he hasn’t been himself.

The sharper folks out there may have caught on to the fact that neither of us are what you’d call, positive role models. And while it’s true the two of us like to live like rockstars in the 6 hours a day we don’t work, this change, it’s not getting in a little over your head with coke or pills. It’s something else.

The steel straw seems to ring as I make short work of the lines, my heart begins to kick, and a grin begins to brew, one that only slightly falters when I see Levi fall back to the couch, rig still sticking out of his arm.

I can’t say I’ve never touched a needle, but that shit being your go to, shows you’ve taken the first step to giving up on life. For a better person, the sight of their best, almost only, friend in this state would be a wake up call. And maybe, it would have been for me as well, but I had to listen.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it. “ Levi mumbles, finally taking the blood stained needle from his arm, and placing it on the table.

I know it’s nothing more than heroin ramblings, but I’m in the takeoff stage of a night of uppers, so paint drying would be golden globe worthy to me.

“Every culture has one, you know. A place better than heaven, the romans had the land of wine and cheese, we have the big rock candy mountain. “ For a second I hear a little of the old Levi. Before we both decided it was easier to weld 18 hours a day and fry our brains for another 4.

I’ve always been a bit of a dumbass, I’ll be the first to admit it. But for a while, it looked like Levi was going to get out of this shit hole little southern Ontario town. Debate club, international exchange, even a bit of a scholarship.

But at the end of the day, where I went, Levi went, and by the end of grade twelve, I wasn’t going anywhere good.

He stayed on that nod for hours, spewing crazy shit about tunnels under our old high school, free drugs, smokes and booze. Just real dope-head fantasy crap.

But high as I was, I wasn’t going to stop listening.

I’ve seen a lot of friends fall to drug use. Probably one of the most common side effects of using your brain as a chemistry set. But the month long rocket train from Gonzo Journeyman to meth goblin I saw Levi take, it shocked me, it fucking disgusted me.

Not even 30 days later, early December, I was staring at a shadow of the man I knew.

We’ve always had an unspoken rule, our problems, our business. And while Levi hadn’t borrowed or stolen a cent, I couldn’t let him keep screwing up his life to this extent.

Fired, homeless, he’s wearing a spring jacket, jeans stiff with grime, and a shirt I hope wasn’t white at one point in time. His hair is peach fuzz and psoriasis, and his gaze is vacant.

“Man, you need to get your shit together. “ I’m not angry, or even loud, I want to reach him.

“My shit hasn’t been this together in years Kev. “ regardless of his look, his voice is clear, with it, despite all evidence to the contrary, he seems sober. “ I know you think I’m just going down the same road all our old friends did, but I’m not man. You’re never going to understand it, but I’m Christopher Columbus, or Buzz Aldrin. I’ve found something new, something real, something God damned awesome.

But getting there, it isn’t just a matter of finding the place. It’s not a physical journey, but a spiritual one. “

I spent a lot of time thinking of what Levi might say when I called him out, and how I was going to respond. I thought I was ready for anything, but I find myself staring at him, dumbfounded.

“I know you think I spent my life just riding in your wake, but I realised something pretty early.

I’d never be happy being one of those poor assholes who get out of this place for a couple years only to come back, strap on a hardhat and work myself to death on a pipeline. I wanted something more, or at least, something different.

And I found it man, after all this time, I God damned found it. “ Levi has a look of cultist bliss on his face.

I find myself at the same time wanting to dump out every bag in my place, and dying for a hit of something. With a snort I make the wrong decision.

“So why haven’t I found this place Levi? “ I say, out of my depth.

“Different kinds of people Kev. I love you man, but drugs, they are not doing you any good. In fact, that’s why I came tonight. Not for your almost intervention here, but to tell you something.

After tonight, I’ll be gone. I don’t want you wasting your time trying to find me. If I could take you, I would man, but this is where we part ways.

For your own good, just move on, from all of this shit, me, the booze, the coke, and all the rest of it. I worry about you. “ Levi’s voice is that of a professor, his body a mess of minor wounds, filth and sores.

I handle the stark truth about as well as someone addicted to stimulants (for the most part) can, I scream and rage, defensively protecting my ego and making only petty, snide comments toward Levi’s situation.

He keeps that Buddhist level of calm, replying to me with acceptance bordering on pretention.

I didn’t see him pick up the box cutter, and I was too slow to stop him jamming it deep into his left arm and wildly dragging it through his flesh.

He doesn’t scream, or bleed, the flesh hangs open, tattered, glistening, but missing even a single drop of crimson.

He wiggles his fingers, it should be impossible, tendons and flesh hanging like ruined wiring. At the limit of my mental capacity, I fall to the couch, stunned. Levi says nothing else, simply pulls his jacket over his arm, giving me a look that says “You don’t understand, but that’s okay. “ as he walks out the of my apartment for the last time.

It wasn’t the last time I saw him though. That was when I was brought to the city morgue to identify his body.

He looked great, healthy, ripped, no signs of the hard turn into pure addiction he took about a year previous. I chalked it up to coming to his senses, maybe a good stint in rehab. Something else drew my attention more than the 40 pounds of muscle, or the clear skin, his nails.

Could have been polish, or gloss, or whatever the hell people use, but it looked too deep, too dark.

“You noticed it as well? “ the coroner says. Flying in the face of tradition he was a large, dark skinned jovial man, “ keratin vascularization, rare, but not unheard of at all. In affected individuals the body supplies keratin, nails, hair, etc. With an overabundance of nutrients via tiny, almost filament like veins. Nothing life destroying, but from what I hear, makes haircuts and nail clipping a bit of a chore. “

I understand about half of what he says, but that’s enough to make me break out into a cold sweat that, for once, has nothing to do with narcotics.

I leave, a coroner is a bit too close to being a cop for my liking, and while I know I had nothing to do with Levi’s death, pigs will find a way to screw you over given enough time. If I felt like being dramatic, I’d say this is where my journey started. But that’d be a lie, my journey started at about age 15 when I decided that every bit of good advice I was given didn’t compare with playing Pac man in the medicine cabinet.

Smart people, they don’t start that kind of journey.

I didn’t come to some eureka moment, no, my fixation was immediate, blunt, and unfocused. Hours after I left the cold, antiseptic morgue I was doing a shit job of research with a lot of gusto.

I cut down on the drugs since the night Levi decided to play operation. Though that still leaves me somewhere between casual user and waste of skin, my mind is as sharp as it’s been in a long time.

It's boring at first, but as I find myself swimming deeper into this ocean of myths, religion, conspiracy theories and urban legends, I book weeks, then months off work.

The first and most obvious point, is that, Levi was right, the concept of a sub-heaven, a place that isn’t connected to the divine or the infernal, but still a paradise was a trend going back to the first depictions of the afterlife.

But it was more than that. It wasn’t simply a running trope, or a bit of religious copy and paste. The more you looked, the more you could pinpoint this concept, changing and evolving.

Which, of course, lead me to the song I’m sure a lot of, if not all of you are aware of.

If you haven’t heard it, I’ll spare you the trouble, it’s a stupid sounding fucking song. Seriously, I’m not trying to be dismissive here, the song is dumb as hell, given context, or not.

But no one has ever lost money betting on the lowest common denominator. Stupid can spread in certain circles faster than herpes.

A catchy tune, promises of one legged cops, and cigarette trees, well, it spread quickly through folks down on their luck. Stupid, sure, but when you are half dying of starvation, half insane from self induced brain rot, and all the way given up on life, what’s the harm in trying to find the end of the rainbow?

Levi didn’t have some rare condition, something changed him, and as much as asking the scariest people I knew if they had heard of “The big rock candy mountain. “, made me feel like a complete God damned idiot ( and once got me punched in the face.) I knew it was the only way to find answers.

Answers name, as it turned out, was Johnny. And it cost me 1500 and a handful of gratis party favors to find him.

Junkies man, I probably talked to thirty old heads who thought they could bullshit me into a payday. But this guy, he didn’t seek me out, he didn’t even seem to want to talk once I found him, but with a little bribery, begging and being a bastard, I got him to agree to a sit down.

I meet him in an old run down warehouse, par for the course as far as my day to day life goes, but this place…

It wasn’t somewhere he knew, I could tell the moment I turned the rusted doorknob, and saw inside, this was where he lived.

He was 60, studded leather jacket barely restraining his shirtless gut. He was a relic, someone old when punk was new, and holding on to its long since purchased morality with every ounce of strength he had.

If it sounds like I’m shit talking him, I’m not. What I’m saying is, this guy, he had a vibe, no, more than that, a fucking aura.

He smiles, sunglasses reflecting the flames of a toxic smelling fire in a vented barrel. It’s damn near 3 in the morning, but he seems to have no trouble seeing me.

Numerous, horrible tattoos, faded by years and fights, shift as he points to me, cheap rings covering almost every finger.

For a second he appears more Roma shaman than Sex pistol.

“You don’t look nearly fucked enough to wanna talk about this. “ he’s drunk, even if I was deaf I’d have smelled the astringent waft of his 100 proof breath.

“When you have to spend 1500 on a conversation, doesn’t leave much for smack. Been doing conspiracy theory rehab you could say. “ I survey the ground for anything pointy before I sit beside the man.

He rummages through a leather sports bag, the contents within shuffling and clinking together, I notice his smell, something off, but could just be the dozens of half empty takeout containers scattered around the hovel.

“Oh were gonna fix that tonight, my son, don’t you worry. “ Johnny says, producing what I can say with no exaggeration, has to be the world’s largest freebase pipe. It’s a it’s a home brewed monstrosity, an ancient neon tube, still stained a faded pink, the bowl, I later found out was made out of a glass piece, usually used to connect power lines, a fist sized Hollow glass half sphere.

“Big enough set up, bud? “ I say, legitimately shocked.

Johnny laughs, a toxic, phlegm ridden, cough filled chortle.

“It’s never big enough, kid. You see, the hippies, and the shaman, all those self discovery assholes and Hunter S Thompson wannabes, they’re dumb as fuck. Not as touched as your average Joe Lunchpail, but at least Joe fuckin Lunchpail isn’t trying to figure anything out.

They got down how to find a car, but never learned now to drive, if ya follow. If you are looking to start a journey that doesn’t end anywhere the rules apply, there’s only one way, little guy.

And it sure as shit isn’t droppin acid and making mushroom tea. “ The old man gives me a rotten grin, packing the pipe full of a combination of the worst things you can pay for as he talks.

“All I want to do is know what happened to a friend of mine. “ I reply.

“Oh, you want me to tell you a bunch of stories you’re gonna stop believing in about a week? Naw, that’s not how this goes. You asked for what might be the most sensitive information in the whole fuckin universe. And more than that, kiddo, you asked me to tell you about the only time in my life I’ve been scared. “ Johnny shakes his head, I don’t like the unspoken malice in his voice, and despite the fact he has to be old enough to be my grandfather, something is holding me back from just grabbing the old bastard and beating what I want to know out of him.

“You want to know? Well, you have to understand, and if you want to understand… “ Johnny pops a long wooden match, running its orange flame around the glass bowl, after a few seconds the contents begin to crackle and hiss.

He takes a pull of this arm sized stroke waiting to happen, that’d have been impressive if it was filled with nothing more than tobacco. I try to remember any cpr, and realise if this old prick starts to O. D., I’ve got nothing other than good wishes until the ambulance shows up.

But he doesn’t, he simply keeps smoking, the thick yellow puffs, reeking of battery acid and cat piss begin to build up until they are floating like low hanging clouds.

I begin to get impatient, waiting for the old man to start talking, and staring to wonder how in the hell the cloud of bad decisions and broken dreams around me isn’t just blowing away in the drafty warehouse.

A contact high begins to set in as Johnny puts down the pipe and suddenly shoots out his right arm, holding it in front of the fire.

One by one he begins to take off the rings covering his fingers, dropping each one onto the ground with a high pitching ringing.

I find myself entranced, my heart beginning to race, why? Maybe high, maybe something a little harder to explain, who’s to say?

He pauses for a moment when he gets to his pinky finger, the rings begin to pop off, seemingly of their own accord. As the last one falls what I see sends me scrambling backward, reaching to my waistband for the Saturday night special I purchased in the event things got shittier than expected.

It's gone, Johnny holds it in one hand, cylinder open, bullets no where to be seen.

“Thought going around armed to the teeth was an American thing? “ he says, as he stands, the flames rise, and I can make out the tattoo across his chest through the scars and grime, it’s a Caterpillar heavy equipment logo, that I’m sure has quite the story behind it.

But all of this strangeness pales in comparison, to what those pinky rings were hiding.

It started folded, thin black segments, like a spiders leg bound by the metal rings. When it unfurled it was nearly two feet long, with a wicked looking flat point. The fire made its glossy surface shimmer and flare with light. Johnny reaches down with the appendage, it begins to poke and prod the smoldering narcotics, expertly rearranging substances to keep the bowl lit and the smoke billowing. And with one final ‘fuck you’ to any rules of reality I’ve ever known, the proboscis starts to glow red, heat haze shimmering off of it, as it, somehow heats the bowl.

Johnny drops the gun, walking over to me, I still haven’t managed to stand, transfixed as I am, I take the pipe when offered.

My brain screams with overload, my ears ring, and I hit the floor, coughing, gagging, then puking.

My world is out of synch, speech won’t come, it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open, no matter how fast my heart is hammering.

“Little present from my time at the mountain. “ Johnny answers a question I don’t remember asking, “This is how far things can and will go, you know what I was before all of this? “

The thin black tendril runs it’s point down my cheek.

“ A fuckin anthropology undergraduate, I went into finding the mountain with a paid for staff, doctors, lawyers, even a couple hard men just to make sure we all stayed safe.

I was so close I could taste it, I had evidence, and plenty of it, as God damned out there as the concept was, it can’t hide itself completely.

But what I failed to realise, was this isn’t a journey you can take with other people. At the mountain there are plenty of other idiots who think they found Valhalla, but to get there, you’ve got to take that challenge on yourself. “ Johnny preaches, there is power in that voice, and his sermon holds me rapt, “ But, silver linings and all that shit. Losing my career, my home, my reputation, well, that put me in the perfect place to actually find the mountain.

Or rather, have the mountain find me. See, there is no actual place, no entrance, all of the bull shit junkies spew about secret tunnels, or abandoned factories, that’s metaphor wrapped in exaggeration, filled with idiocy.

It isn’t desperation that gets you there. Fuck, if that was the case it’d be full of cancer patients and hurricane victims.

What gets you there, is a full and deep understanding of what you are giving up and what you are willing to take in return. And piece by piece, bit by bit, if you are strong enough, dedicated enough, you find your way there, already changed and welcomed with open arms. “

Johnny snaps his fingers a half inch in front of my nose, and in an instant, I find myself brought back to reality, the air around me, somehow lo longer a toxic miasma, the man in front of me no longer some Demon Priest, but a high, blown out old rocker once again.

“But you already know that’s not really what the place is doing, don’t you? “ Johnny asks, bending down with a groan of pain, and beginning to collect his rings from the floor.

“Yeah, pretty sure they…. It…. Whatever killed a friend of mine. “ I reply

“Not unheard of, but a little strange. The mountain, it does everything it can to keep the folks housed there, living. It gets what it needs from willing subjugation, corpses aren’t too good at that.

Your friend, he must have came across something he shouldn’t, and not to make you shit yourself too hard, but the fact they let someone find the body, that’s likely a warning. “ Johnny sits, starting to put the rings back on.

“Fuck them, I’ll… “ I start, but get interrupted by a hoarse laugh from Johnny.

“You will do what exactly, little boy? You think you’re the first person to try and go in there all piss and vinegar?

Mary’s tits, kid you’re thick.

I got out because of pure luck, I got out almost as soon as I got in, and I still didn’t come out whole. That is what all this has been about. Showing you, this isn’t a fight you want, and even if you are so damn stupid you think it is, , that it’s not one you can win, because there is no fight to be had.

You could nuke the fucking world to glass my son, and somewhere in the centre of the fish bowl, the mountain would still be there. “ I want to argue, but based on every bit of information I’ve gathered Johnny is right.

But I didn’t come to this Voodoo meth shack to argue. I didn’t even come here expecting some kind of road map to my own damnation, I’d already did my work, that map was pretty much drawn already. But Johnny gave me that last, but most crucial piece any map needs, scale.

Link to part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/10phn14/the_big_rock_candy_mountain_part_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button