Instant Nightmare

First, an apology. Apparently, the post I published last night is unreadable. That is, when people click on the link,  it just goes to the blog introduction.  So, it's do over time. And it's gonna have to be a quick one because I have another deadline. But don't worry. I remember what I wrote.  Besides, it's still happening.


See, people are going crazy from monkey dust. I don't just mean in the larger "new scourge of society" sense. I mean in the, "here, right now, even as we speak" sense. It started when the dust bunny who hangs around our house got hauled into the hospital on Fourth of July night after the police received a call that a girl was walking around the streets "acting like she was on monkey dust," I guess that means she seemed to be "out of it." She says that she was out of it because she snorted some dust from a new batch known as "Instant Nightmare."

Dusters often refer to their drug as "instant paranoia" in general, but "Instant Nightmare", I'm told, is an actual brand name, as it were. When you take "regular" monkey dust, if there is such a thing, the feeling is supposed to be a mixture of the euphoric high you get from Escstacy and the speedy sensation that comes from amphetamines, with a little hallucinogenic effect thrown in. But when you snort or inject Instant Nightmare, all hell breaks loose. The shadow people that dusters see on a regular basis turn into four-dimensional beings that look like ninjas, or thugs, or cops who are almost always chasing the duster. Which is the reason a lot of dusters call the cops on themselves. It's merely an effort to save themselves from death by ninja or some even worse fate. And it doesn't end there. All manner of other weirdness can also overtake the duster's mind. On the day that the dust bunny I know ended up in the hospital, one line of "Instant Nightmare" was enough to make her "nut out."
    "I did one line at eight o' clock in the morning, and I was still fucking high ten hours later," she told me. "Your son and I were afraid to leave the freakin' house. We were just tweakin' out so bad. Then we thought that because it was July 4th, we should go and be outside. So we went to the store to buy a pizza, but we couldn't figure out the money, so we left, and I told him, 'We are not going anywhere else. We're just going home because everyone can fucking tell we're high.'"
    She thinks it would have been worse if she had booted up, but she knew better than to do that because she had taken the same batch of dust before and knew the distortions that were to come.  So, why did she do it again at all? Because it's fun, she told me.
    But that was all a week ago, when monkey dust was still legal in this state. Because it was, the dust bunny was tweaking less than she might be if she were in the same situation now. However, she was still having a hard time with her inability to navigate the simple trek home. She and my son got separated at some point, and it got dark, and it took the dust bunny an hour to travel the three blocks back from the store to our flat. Then, later, there was an altercation at the flat, a complicated argument that had to do with one dust bunny accusing another of stealing, and the dust bunny who's been hanging around our flat marched off angrily into the dark streets where she soon met up with the police.
    "They told me that because dust was legal, all they could do was take me to the hospital," she said. "They asked me if I wanted to go, and I was, like, 'what the fuck? Why the hell not?' So, I let them take me, and there was this guy there who was on the same thing, and he was screaming in the next room because he thought people were trying to kill him."
    The dust bunny didn't think people were trying to kill her, but my son thought people were after him. I found that out when I returned home late that night, and he told me that there was a guy outside who was looking for him. I believed him because, in all probability, there could have been a guy outside looking for him.  I was almost afraid to walk the dog, but she wasn't about to let me tweak out on her, so I took her out armed with a cell phone and a Swiss Army knife. Only ended up using one. But I didn't sleep much that night. This not sleeping thing is great for writing, but it's playing havoc with my hair. I mean that. The last several months seem to be reflected in the fact that my once sleek, shiny, dark hair has become limp and sort of tired-looking.  The rest of my body is working all right, or can fake it. But my hair is aghast.


    It's not just the dusters with whom I have close relationships who are tweaking out, either. In dust bunny words, "everyone is tweaking the hell out on this nightmare shit that's going around." It always comes down to paranoia, it seems. One young woman we know, whose father was visiting, found his gun and thought that people were trying to kill her for reasons that actually made sense, but which didn't happen to be true. She took off into the night, pounding on neighbors' doors, looking for a place to hide, until someone called the police. But she was gone before the police got there, and it's been almost a full day, and no one has seen or heard from her. Her father said that she's already jumped out of one second story window while on the same batch of dust. He's worried sick, of course.

    Now that the stuff is illegal, the dusters are even more paranoid about cops. I know one duster who was convinced her father was wearing a wire and made him take off his shirt before she would talk to him. Some dusters see police cars following them down the street when there are no cars there at all. And of course there are the ones who get so tweaked out that they do things like hide in the bushes all night long because they're afraid to walk six blocks home for fear the cops will drive by and somehow know that they're on dust. I know of two people  in the dust world who were arrested this weekend. Both of them are big time dusters, but both were arrested on completely unrelated charges. Their rigs are still safe and unseized at home. It'll give them something to shoot for when they get out. (Pun intended.)

    I'm just getting tired of always checking through the window before I answer a knock on the door. I know which faces to look out for, but I see them too often, and it always takes me a moment before I can figure out what to say. I favor, "Get the hell out of here and leave us the hell alone", but my son tells me to just "be chill" about it. Lately, though, with the nightmare epidemic, there have been some serious issues which have given the "be careful who you let in" attitude even more important to maintain. I pushed an electric organ and a trunk up against my front door tonight just in case someone tweaks out enough to come here and give me a hard time. I won't go into the details.  Can't say just anything in a blog. But suffice to say, there's one duster out there who has more to worry about than tweaking out over shadow people or cops. He has me. You just don't mess with someone's mother/grandmother. Not even in the dust world.