The gates of hades open, and I flew out like a fucking bat out of hell. I breathed in the fresh fumes. They didn't smell like freedom--so that parts bullshit--but somehow, they smelled better than the air in the Jellyfish. The early morning sun pierced the clouds and shot into my eyes like a spear.

I put on a pair of sunglasses; they were piss yellow with lenses shaped like teardrops.

Outside the rusty fence that surrounded the strip mall there was nothing to look at besides concrete and brown grass. I looked ahead. The setting sun crashed into the line of trees in the distance and bleed red sunlight all over the parking lot. The trees were a green that was almost fluoresce green with spring.

Just below the tree line was the rusted metal fence that kept the trees out, like a line dividing chaos from order. Past the fence was the sports field, the grass swaying in the wind. The grass went up all the way to the cracks concrete of the parking lot. The parking lot was that old, worn-out concrete that looked like blackened hamburger.

The beastly growl of a car engine interrupted: a flash of colors zoomed into a parking lot. The car was an older 70's model, when cars were giant steel rectangles before the oil crisis. The body was dark green but, each door was a different color.

Finally, after I don't know how long, Harrison’s car pulled up. The car was a older 70's model; when cars were giant steel rectangles before the oil crisis. The body was dark green but, each door was a different color. Harrison waved at me from inside. I tried to open the passenger side, but it wouldn't budge. Harrison opened it from the inside.

"Sorry," he said. "It doesn't open from the outside."

I found Harrison in a dumpster, right where the rabbit told me, on 34th street.

I pulled him out and brushed the garbage off of him. He was also wearing a different set of clothes. He wore wife beater and hot pink sweatpants with the words "Juicy" written on them in a glittery cursive.

"Pedal morning shit," Harrison dazed.

I slapped him, hard.

"Thanks," he said, blinking.

I helped him up. The dumpster was in the alleyway behind the Arby's. Every inch of the place was covered in gang tags.

"You good man?" I said.

"I've seen some weird shit man!" Harrison said.

After that Harrison ran off to find his car.

"Hey Harrison, your car is a piece of shit," I said.

"I go through all the trouble to pick you up and this is the thanks I get?" He said.

I got inside of the car. The upholstery was old squeaky leather and the car smelled like bad coffee and cheap cigarettes.

We both sat in silence for a minute, neither of us sure what to say.

Eventually Harrison just said, "Let's bounce," and floored it.

The car lurched out of the parking lot and screeched down the street. Grassy field bleed into urban sprawl as we made our way to the city. Buildings whizzed past the mirror; dead strip malls, neon signs advertising fast-food chains, pawn shops done up like fort Knox, liquor stores offering escape, the tat shop with the blacked-out windows and lots and lots of rundown apartment complexes.

"So how was your trip?" Harrison asked.

"What kind of question is that?" I said.

"I don't know,"

"Rainbow and roses; how the hell do you think it was?"

"Everybody’s different."

I told Harrison about my trip.

“A jellyfish?”

“Yeah.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Fuck...”

My stomach growled.

“Hey, do you think we could grab a bite?” I asked.

We decided to go to Waffle house.

Waffle House smells like grease but like in a good way. Actually, I don't think I could tell you what grease smelled like, other than like waffle house.

"And then I asked, how much cocaine does it take to kill a gerbil?" Harrison said in-between mouthfuls of hash browns. "And then he said, well, there's two schools of thought on the subject!"

Harrison started laughing so much he nearly choked. I chuckled. We were sitting in a booth in front. The morning sun pierced the glass like bullets.

"Ah Mark Wyrick," I said. "I fucking miss that dude. What ever happened to him?"

"I think he's Baltimore now or something."

"What's he's doing in that shithole?"

"Fuck if I know. Some bullshit about hunting ghosts."

I squeezed more syrup on my waffles. I was the only one in the waffle house who was actually eating waffles. I can remember if that counts as ironic or not. "What was that bullshit he once told us about the high monkeys?"

"About how the government was injecting monkeys with cocaine? 'Cause I googled that, that wasn't conspiracy, it's fact."

"No not that, the thing about how apes took some shrooms or something and like, gained consciousness or something."

"Oh, right that," Harrison poured some tabasco sauce on his sandwich. "I think it's called stoned ape theory. It was a Bill Hicks routine."

I shook my head and took a sip of my coffee. It wasn't great but it was miles better than what they served in prison.

"So did I, what did you see?" I asked.

"Well, at first I thought I was on this beach. It was a really nice beach on like a typical island or something. The water was super clear like glass. I could see the clouds and stuff reflected in it. I was looking into it when I slipped on the sand and fell right into the water. But instead of getting wet I fell, like, into the reflection and fell up into the sky. I don't know how to explain it.

So, I was falling through the sky, but then I like fell into the ocean, for real this time. The water was so dark, I couldn't see shit. Then, I was in a blank white room, it was really bright. There was this guy there in a bee costume, like they used to have at old country buffet. He was like, hey, and I was like, hey, and then I fell through the floor.

Then I was in an abandon mall. It was like a normal mall with people in it, except, you know, abandon. There weren’t any people in it. Anyway, I was in the, like, main corridor of the mall. Suddenly there was a bunch of fuck balloons everywhere and I turned around to see this--hey I’ve told you I'm afraid of clowns before, right?"

I remembered once when Harrison and I were in high school, we went to a haunted corn maze. We were pretty desensitized to horror tropes, so we basically laughed are way through the whole thing.

But then as we were rounding a corner a clown came out. Harrison lost and booked it. Except he ran straight into the corn and disappeared. The clown and I just stared at each for a bit, neither sure what to do. It was whole "kid lost at toys-r-us" type situation, I had to get them to shut down the maze so we could find him. After thirty minutes of searching, we found him somewhere in the corn, curled into a fetal position and weeping gently.

"You might have mentioned it before," I said.

"Yeah, well," Harrison said, "I hear this voice whisper 'Harrison' and I turn around. It was a motherfucking clown. He starts to say something but I'm already running for by the time he opens his mouth. I kept running for I don't know how long. Then I tripped and woke up when you pulled me out of the dumpster."

Harrison looked behind me and saw something. He bolted up from the booth and ran towards it. I looked to see him fiddling with a jukebox.

I followed him. It was one of those digital jukebox’s with a touch screen and stuff, basically an oversized iPod done up to look like a jukebox.

"Look at this shit," Harrison said. "There's musical soundtracks in here man!"

"What musicals?"

"Dude there's Annie in here!"

"Really?" I asked. "Hey, did I ever tell you, when I was a kid, I used to have a big crush on Annie?"

Harrison laughed at me. I punch him in the arm a little harder then I was intending.

"Ow!"

"Shut up!" I said. "I was like five or something like that. I guess I just have a thing for girls that need somebody to rescue them. It’s all the video games, I guess. And redheads. I got a real thing for read heads. I don’t think that’s the video games though."

Harrison grabbed the jukebox and dry humped it.

"Yes Daddy Warbucks! Yes!" he said in a falsetto.

"Shut up," I said while looking at my shoes.

Harrison continued to laugh. I suddenly got self-conscious and looked around. Luckily, none of the employees or customers seemed to give a shit.

I heard the ring of a bell and saw the most beautiful girl in the world walk through the door. She had bright red hair, pale skin and the figure of a model. The sunlight from outside followed her and made her look luminous.

"Dude!" Harrison said like a person having a religious experience. "Waffle house has original music!"

I ditched Harrison and approached the girl. She sat down right at the counter and was flipping through the menu.

I leaned right next to her. I didn’t say anything for what felt like an hour, why can’t there be dialogue choices in real life?

She answered, "I'm on lunch."

"Hey," I said, trying to smile like normal humans smile.

"Go away."

"Well, that was fast," I said. "Usually, they let me get out a shitty pick-up line before they tell me to leave."

I have never uttered a pickup line. That line was stolen from Stealth-Type: Vietnam on the PS2 and original Xbox (2006); it was spoken by the protagonist Reeve Graves to fellow secret agent Lady Night.

"I'm off work," she said.

"Oh yeah?" I said, trying to pretend to be interested. "What's your job?"

She hands me her card. It smells like perfume. I read it:

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL MAGGIE 1-800-555-6969

Red hair. This must be fate. Should I marry this girl? She ordered Waffles. Just like me. That synched it.

My thoughts were interrupted by the worst song I had ever heard in my entire life; "I Met My Lady At The Waffle House." Harrison nearly collapsed on the floor; he was laughing so hard.

I looked back where Maggie was. She was gone.