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Chapter 2: LSD
Mikey sat in a huge tie-dye beanbag on a glossy, flat disc of black marble-like material that floated in what appeared to be an endless sea of nothingness; though he knew his domain was only about five hundred feet in diameter.
Darkness spread out on all sides beyond the platform, which extended some fifty yards from the center where Mikey sat reclining. Despite there being no obvious source of light, the space was clearly illuminated.
He watched as Logan’s body slowly materialized a few feet in front of him, the cloudlike substance of his soul congealing into what looked like a mannequin before gradually refining into more recognizable features.
After a minute or so the soul completed its task and resolved to reveal Logan, standing frozen, clothed in a plain white T-shirt and shorts.
For a few seconds he stood there rigidly with a blank expression and glazed, unseeing eyes before suddenly, as if released from a trance, he staggered forwards a few steps then stumbled and fell to a knee where he remained, taking deep, gasping breaths. Vertigo swept over him. Gaining some control, he gazed at the space around him with a look of incredulous bewilderment.
The moment was interrupted by a high, excited voice.
“Hi! I’m Mikey! Take your time, this must be jarring for you! Funny phrase that, jarring. Do jars possess some special property that makes them disorienting or something? I’ve never held one… maybe if you look through a jar? Anyways, take a seat and settle down, the feeling will pass soon.”
Logan looked up. Directly in front of him sat a young adolescent boy, maybe 10 or 11 years old, with a shock of shaped, vibrant red hair that contrasted starkly with his pale, moon-white skin. He sat in a huge, brightly colored tie-dye beanbag that could have easily sat four more people. He was grinning widely, the popping colors of the beanbag and the red of his hair standing out vividly against the impenetrable black backdrop of the emptiness around them.
The boy raised a hand and a blue coffee mug that read “live, laugh, coffee” on its side materialized out of thin air to fill it. He raised it to his mouth and took a long sip, smacking his lips.
“This slaps! Coffee! Wow," he exclaimed.
“I put caramel macchiato creamer in it this time from Sunbucks and its almost unrecognizable. What a versatile drink! It’s just so… mmm!”
The boy, Mikey, squeezed his eyes tightly shut and squirmed with pleasure.
“I hope I remain attached to Earth for a while, there’s so much I want to try there. Not having magic really makes you guys creative!” he said, looking up appreciatively at the mug raised in front of him.
Shocked upon seeing the bizarre boy that could pull items out of nowhere, Logan stood frantically and stumbled backwards just to trip for a second time when his heel struck the edge of something behind him.
He fell backwards, arms flailing, and landed softly on a beanbag that looked much the same as the one Mikey occupied in front of him. He turned his head to look at the beanbag he’d landed in, then back to Mikey.
Not knowing what to do, he just looked at the boy, dumbfounded.
Magic?
“Who are you? Where are we?”
He shouted the question.
He wasn’t sure how to react to the situation, it was so unlike anything he’d ever encountered before that his instincts were a mess. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and the boy, though incredibly odd, didn’t feel like a threat. In fact, he felt strangely familiar somehow, as if this wasn’t their first time meeting; though Logan was sure it was.
“I’m Mikey! And this is my pocket. Think of it like my office!” Mikey replied, returning his attention to Logan, beaming.
“Your… pocket,” Logan said, slowly, the aggression drained from his voice.
The vertigo, like Mikey had suggested it would, faded. He sat wide-eyed, gazing at the boy. Though the setting, the floating dais suspended in empty space, was mindboggling to him, Mikey himself demanded his attention the most.
Looking closer at the boy, he noticed his eyes for the first time. They were startling: the sclera was tinged a light baby blue; inside a ring of fiery orange, the iris faded from orange at the edges to a pale yellow towards the center, flecked with white. In the middle of the eye where the pupil should have been, a burning five-point star sat, radiating a dazzling white light.
Seeming to not notice Logan’s stare, he continued.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Yep! My pocket. It’s a space that I control. It’s like an extension of myself, kind of, or, well the details don’t really matter,” he said quickly.
“Anyways, don’t worry about it! Are you hungry? I brought snacks!” Mikey’s broad smile, an expression that seemed to be a permanent fixture of his face, widened as a table materialized in front of Logan, growing rapidly out of the floor.
Its surface was the same oily, glossy substance as the rest of the platform at first, but once it’d taken shape it gained texture and color. The finished product was a wooden, or what appeared to be wood, coffee table.
Logan stared at it. Mikey clapped gleefully, and a plate rose out of the table’s surface. Half of the plate was filled with Cheetos; the other half was piled high with pristine strawberries. Logan looked down at the plate, then back up at Mikey who stared at him smiling expectantly, nodding towards the plate.
He picked up a Cheeto, inspected it for a second, then popped it into his mouth. Surprisingly, it tasted like a Cheeto.
“So,” Logan began as he continued to eye the strange platform on which they were suspended. “You made this place, and this table, these seats, the food…” he trailed off as his gaze returned to Mikey, who was drinking a huge can of MoonStar Energy.
“You’re not God, are you?” he asked.
Mikey, his head still tilted up, drinking, lowered his eyes to Logan. He put down the can and wiped his mouth.
"By golly no! Nope! Nada! Not a god. Think of me as your guide. You, my friend, are dead. Well, your soul is still technically alive, but your body is being driven to a hospital in the back of an ambulance right now. That piece of meat is long behind ya!”
Logan picked up another Cheeto, placing it in his mouth. He concentrated on it, focusing on its texture as he held it there. He tongued over it, noting how the dry chip turned soft and wet in his mouth. He homed in on the flavor. The addicting savory cheesiness of the Cheeto was an unmistakable badge of authenticity.
Tears rose to Logan’s eyes.
“Is that right?” he asked, the words barely more than a whisper.
Mikey frowned, the common expression a novelty on the boy's face.
“Yes,” he started, “quickly, at least. Easier than most. You fell into the street somehow, maybe you were drunk or strung out on something.”
Mikey’s frown didn’t last. As he spoke his words came faster, more excitedly.
“Then a truck hit you. A big one too, that thing was massive! It flattened you like a pancake! Sort of. Don’t you remember?”
This time, it was Logan that frowned. He was a little offended by Mikey’s joking description of what, in his mind was his horrendous death. He didn’t dwell on it long though.
The kid, for all his strangeness, seemed pretty clueless. His forehead creased as he tried to recall the moments before his death. They were clouded and elusive, but slowly images revealed themselves to him.
He remembered an alley; something about it had scared him, terrified him. He’d ran backwards to get away from it, then… nothing. The next thing he knew, he was here.
“I… do, I think,” he said quietly.
Something was off about the memory, but he couldn’t tell what.
“Mikey… this place, everything around us, how did you make it?” he asked, gesturing.
He was extremely curious, but more than that he wanted to change the subject.
“I can control most everything that happens inside my pocket,” Mikey responded, his voice again high and chipper.
“Outside, though, that’s a different story. Guides like me have next to no power on planet, or anywhere outside of our pockets. There’s no point for me to, really. But to answer your question, I guess the closest thing you’d have to describe it would be magic. No wands or staffs or anything like that, we don’t need those conventions. Nothing for you to worry about, though!”
The words washed over Logan as he stared past Mikey absently.
He'd stopped listening at the word “magic”.
Magic, Logan thought.
Mikey had mentioned it off-handedly earlier, but this time he said it. He’d acknowledged it, made it real.
Nothing had fascinated him more in life than fantasy games, grand, fictional novels, and shows with superpowered characters and fantastical battles. Pretty much anything that wasn’t real captured his attention and didn’t let go.
The possibility—the fact, the evidence was right in front of him—that it might be real filled him with an excitement unlike anything he’d ever known.
An idea struck him.
Hadn’t Mikey made the table rise from the floor from all the way over there?
He stared intently at the Cheeto in his hand, focusing all of his energy on it, willing it to do something. Levitate, maybe. He didn’t really know.
Nothing happened.
He glanced sheepishly at Mikey, who, Logan was relieved to find, wasn’t paying attention to him, instead swirling the contents of his coffee mug with a finger.
Mikey seemed to remember that Logan was there and looked at him, smiling, then said “We’re getting off topic! As I said. You are dead. And I,” Mikey said, still seated, gave a half-bow and flourished his arms, “am here to ease your transition into the afterlife.”
Logan looked at him blankly. Logan was atheist, and though he was pleasantly surprised that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of eternity in a grey sleep, he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Were heaven and hell real after all? He wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospect of potentially suffering in damnation forever.
“So… What does that look like?” Logan said.
“I’m so glad you asked!” Mikey replied gleefully.
“We tailor the afterlives of all intelligent creatures to what they believe they deserve. For your planet’s atheists, that varies. It’s not as simple as what you tell people you deserve, though. All Guides like myself have the ability to see into souls; Into their deepest, most foundational beliefs and motivations. That way, we are able to discern one’s true beliefs about themselves and their behavior. There are flaws with our method, but ultimately it gets the job done.”
Logan took it all in. He was admittedly confused, and a little worried.
“Yours is a pretty common one! You get option 39817264B.197H. Also known as: dreaming forever.”
He wondered what the other options were, but Mikey continued on like he was reciting a well-rehearsed spiel.
“You will have no memory of this encounter, or of your life. After a few centuries, once you’ve lost every trace of humanity and fully integrated with your afterlife, you may be pulled out of stasis to serve as a guide like myself.”
The words rang in his ears. After a few centuries? Become a guide like Mikey? If that’s how Mikey referred to time, how old was he really?
“So this is it?” he asked.
“Why bother doing this?”
Logan gestured at the beanbags and the space around them.
“Why didn’t you just, put me in the dream or whatever to begin with?”
Mikey smiled at him, his childlike face taking on the archetypal posture of a motherly woman condescendingly explaining something simple to a dumb child. It kind of pissed him off.
“You can’t go as you are. Your planet hasn’t discovered the knowledge of souls yet. It’s not exactly a secret, but they’re hard to detect without magic. Your soul has to decompose. It’s breaking down as we speak. Once it has completed the process of disintegrating, I will alter what remains, imprinting the selected experience on the constituent parts. Then you’ll be reforged. You will be an entity capable only of comprehending the afterlife I’ve chosen for you. By taking you into my pocket, I’m ensuring that none of the pieces get lost as you break down. Also, The Company doesn’t require this of me, but I wanted to explain it to you. You’re the first human I’ve spoken to! I half expected you to be totally stupid; you’re classified as an 'intelligent' species, but that word can be pretty misleading sometimes, you know? But you’re actually really fun to talk to, so I don’t mind going into a little extra detail with the explanations!”
He looked at Logan and his expression changing to one of uncharacteristic seriousness. His face was warm, but serious.
“You’ll be at peace, Logan,” he said warmly.
The words carried a promise imbued with an inexorable finality, and Logan let out a sigh he hadn’t known he’d been holding in.
Tears flowed unrestrainedly from him.
No magic, but peace.
Finally, peace.
He closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling with his quiet sobs.
“Thank you,” he said finally.
Though relieved by the revelation, something itched at him that he couldn’t identify like a splinter scratching at his brain, tickling his subconscious.
Logan regained his composure.
“So how long do I have before,” he paused, “I fade away?”
“That depends on you. The age of the soul, the density and profundity of memory and experience, that’s what determines how long it takes for it to break down. Your individuality is being dispersed. What was once a singularity is becoming a multitude. You’re young, so I’d expect the process to move quickly for you… but oddly it’s taking a while. It’s nothing to be concerned about, humans are bizarre creatures after all!” Mikey jibed.
Logan smiled. The cosmic entity, Mikey, that had been assigned to guide his soul to the afterlife was a strange, oddly charming, childlike creature. He wondered if they might’ve been friends.
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Shards of what looked like black glass, the material that comprised the walls of Mikey’s spherical domain, shattered inwards from countless fissures, flying towards the two seated figures.