They both ask: “Do you find us more attractive like this?”
I ignore their remark and ask, “Are you some kind of parasite stealing my body energy?”
One of them answers: “Close. We are not organic but composed of a different kind of organic atoms. You are right that in all organic atoms permanent material enters the psychical world from the corporeal. Alas, there’s our problem. We are mostly corporeal, barely psychical, and not intuitive in the way you are. Our psyches are entirely logical and rational. We feed our bodies and psyches with that which we seek: diverse energetic materials not available in our planet.
“We spent so much temporal and spatial energy harvesting your planet’s atomic energy until we realized that what we need is the greatest force in the cosmos, your erotic energy. Like the fungi in your lab, we reproduce by parthenogenesis, our spores detach from our bodies and create an identical copy of ourselves. Not even like insects, but like self-reproducing worms, we have no concept of the Other.
“We attempted to reproduce a human erotic-other as an information set of light waves, sound waves, and touch waves, so that we could bring a sample to our planet. At first it only required carrying a brain and a one of the phonographs your colleague Edison invented for us. Now we do not need the actual brain, any information-processing device will suffice. Edison, Einstein, and you have mastered atomic and electrical energy, yet the energy of an atomic bomb pales in comparison to the energy released in a human orgasm. Einstein’s discovery, gravitational attraction inside an atom’s nucleus, pales in comparison to the electricity of sexual attraction.
“We both have been studying the mathematics of your sexual fantasies; such study has allowed us to experience lust. We both want you. We wanted to kidnap you and bring you home. Unfortunately we need your erotic attraction to you so it has to be willing. We are departing for our home planet, Yuggoth, in a night and a day, when its orbit aligns with our location. We will come back to your dreams, tomorrow night. You then have to give us your answer. If we cannot entice you with our bodies, would millennia of scientific knowledge be enough?”
And suddenly the waterfall turns into a geyser, no, into a whitewater rapid. I’m swept by an orgasmic blinding white ecstasy, pleasuring both my body and my mind. The rapid carries me and throws me into my bed, leaving me covered in sweat, uncomfortably wet and fully awake. Now I have a new question to confront and I have less than twenty-four hours. Only one thing I do not have yet.
An answer.
Ahimsa Kerp
TURNING ON, TUNING IN, & DROPPING OUT AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
“You are such a drag. You just need to split,” Euphoria told him. She had just been woken up and felt really spaced out. She moved her hand to slide the van’s door closed, but his body blocked her. Tim had found her napping and had come in uninvited. He knew she didn’t like it when people came into her bus without her blessing.
“Mellow out, Euphie, please” he pleaded. His voice was whiny, as it always was when he wanted something. “Don’t be like this. We were good together.” Tim was lean and lanky. He wore, as always, grungy jeans and a battered leather vest, complete with raggedy fringes on the sleeves. His chest was otherwise bare and mostly hairless.
“Good together?” she asked. That just wasn’t true. She’d never liked Tim. She had just shacked up with him when she got to town because he had good weed. They’d dated for two or three weeks and then she stopped seeing him. The message should have been clear enough. “Since when? You are being a major square, man. You will get bad karma. Now, flake off. My friends are coming over,” she said.
“Fine, I’ll split. You never treated me right, anyway.” Tim’s eyes grew crafty. “I have new friends now. I don’t need you. I’ll go. But I want my star back.”
The star he referred to was a beautiful rock she wore on a hemp necklace. It looked volcanic, but was heavier than pumice and not as purely black as obsidian. Tim said it was from the Soviet Union and had come from outer space in the forties. He thought it looked like the sun when you were stoned, with squiggly rays of light ringing the bottom half of the sphere. Euphoria had always though it looked like an octopus.
There was no way she was giving it back to him. “That was my birthday present. What’s your bag, man? Don’t be an LBJ.”
Tim’s eyes flashed anger. “I want that fucking star back, Euphie. I only gave it to you because I thought you would steal it if I didn’t.” She was surprised. She in fact had been planning on stealing it, but she didn’t know that he had known.
Truth be told, stealing pretty things was kind of a problem for her.
Euphoria looked around at her microbus. It was in pretty good condition, considering the long drive from Iowa, but it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. Scarves, bracelets, rings, and her rags covered the floor, her bed still was out, and some macramé needles and pins she had borrowed in Kansas City were scattered all over the place. It was a mess and there was no way she was going to look for the necklace right now. Not for him.
“Tim, I don’t even know where it is. Now is not a good time. My friends are coming over.”
“It never is, Euphoria,” Tim said. His voice was strange and he came further into the van. His eyes were wild and bloodshot.
Fear crawled lightly up her neck. Tim was a peaceful man, but something had changed. He suddenly felt dangerous.
“Hey,” a voice called from outside.
Reinforcements. She nearly melted with relief. Outside stood a man and a woman; some of her best friends. One of them was the big Indian guy everyone called “Lazy Horse.” He didn’t ever say much of anything, and he was always smiling, but he was also really big. Her friend Diane stood next to him.
Tim glared at her. “This isn’t over,” he hissed. He jumped out of the van, nodded to the duo, and strode off. Euphoria followed him out, closing the sliding door to the Volkswagen with a satisfying thud.
“Tim,” she called. As he half turned around, she raised her middle finger in the sky. “Climb it, Tarzan!” As he turned away, scowling, she realized she had been wearing the necklace the entire time. Trippy. Euphoria turned to her friends. “Am I glad to see you guys. He was really wigging out.”
“Sq-uare,” Diane sang. Lazy Horse didn’t say anything; he just smiled at her. He was nice, but Diane was the coolest person Euphoria had ever met. She looked just like Twiggy, only shorter. She was always dressed in the best threads too. Today she wore a suede mini-skirt with a groovy chain belt, a French polo-neck top, and square-toed boots. She often wore a beret, but today she had a rose in her hair.
Euphoria didn’t know how it stayed there. Whenever she tried the same look, the damn flower always fell out. Instead, she was wearing a beaded headband that Lazy Horse had given her. That with a billowing blouse (no bra) and some embroidered jeans made her feel like she’d pass for someone more hip than herself, if no one looked too closely. She was no fashion star like Diane, but her breasts were bigger and her hair longer. They’d met a month ago, the day Euphoria had arrived in Ashland and they’d hit it off immediately. Diane was from Portland and was new to Ashland as well. She said she had made up the “Let’s make love, not war,” slogan three years ago, back in sixty-five at an anti-war rally in Eugene. That was majorly bitchin’, if it were true, and if it wasn’t, it was another sign that Diane was more fearless than Euphoria would ever be.