Evil Snack
tl;dr, accidentally ate some hectic mushroom chocolates
I was briefly employed as a part-time cleaner by a company that throws massive bachelor parties.
It was a Sisyphean cycle of bed-making, booze-mopping, and broken-object fixing.
Typical state of dishevelment:
Beer cans everywhere
Sticky floors
The same Murphy bed broken in novel ways
A lot of Zyn thingies stuck to the floor
Pee
Tiny baggies
Green substance in bathtub (i do not know what it is but it happened twice)
Toilet paper in suspicious locations
There were often leftovers. I was blessed with infinite Red Bull and light beers. There was always a lot of junk food, but I would usually put most of it on the curb.
The Action
One sunday, in the aftermath of what looked like a particularly debaucherous party, I was burdened with menstrual pain and was moving sluggishly. There was a mountain of assorted chips and candy on the counter, and I was feeling slovenly enough to indulge. I grabbed a handful of doritos and a couple chocolate hearts in foil. They hit the spot. I continued working, dropping the foil on the floor to sweep up later.
The Consequence
My energy was coming back, I could feel my heart beating. I had my headphones on and was listening to a podcast. I started to feel like I was in the room with the podcast people, laughing out loud at their jokes, hardly able to stop myself from chiming in.
I poured soapy water on the floor and mopped splendidly, pushing pools around the room, making a game out of delivering the soiled froth back to the bucket. I made beds with a winner mentality, snapping the sheets in the air and watching them balloon grandly over the mattresses. I peeled a desiccated contact lens off the floor, dry heaved, and decided to take a break.
I stepped outside and saw the earth rotate under my feet. The heavy door slammed behind me; I could not for the life of me remember the code to get back in. The street was undulating. A couple walked by and I was overwhelmed with a feeling that they would come and pin me to the ground and scream in my ears if they noticed me. I tried not to look at them.
I decided to go to my car, feeling the keys in my pocket. The trees waved their branches frantically, warning me that I would crash if I drove home. I thought about changing lanes in traffic and felt my stomach turn again. I called my boss to tell her I might be on drugs and erupted into a fit of hysterical laughter. She dismissed me for the day. I started walking.
By now I was starting to feel pretty scared, but also fairly sure I had eaten mushroom chocolates, so it wasn’t a real emergency. I called my cousin Dan, who I knew I could trust in this kind of situation. He promised to check in after work. When I hung up, the letters and numbers on my phone screen drifted and stopped making sense. I headed for the park and tried to stay calm.
I laid in the grass and watched the clouds tessellate and disperse. Feathery veils morphed into brooding, sodden objects and then vaporized into nothing. I felt every blade of grass prickling against my skin. It was like a soft bed of nails. A bug landed on my chin and my nerves traced its path to my navel. I could have been there for twenty minutes or three hours. The texture of the air changed and I got up. The people around me did not look at me; I felt like a ghost.
The sidewalk slanted and rumpled as I walked. I moved with feigned, exaggerated purpose and stumbled onto Mont Royal, which was closed to traffic and bustled with people. It was the best way to walk since I wouldn’t get lost or hit by a car. The people on the street seemed to know something was wrong with me, but it was hard to tell since I couldn’t focus my eyes. I persevered and told myself that I look normal. French chatter bubbled around me and I felt like an alien, comprehending nothing.
It wasn’t long before I had a new problem. A large man (could have been a yeti?) with a white shirt was very close behind me. I walked faster and there he still was. I walked slower and thought maybe he would pass, but he did not. It felt real and terrible.
Panicked, I ducked into a grocery store, a brightly lit carnival of orange and green. All of the products looked like moon rocks. The yeti entered the store. I looked away quickly and hurried to another section. Labels were indecipherable. The shelves seemed like they would collapse and kill everyone. I grabbed something at random and went to the cash. The woman at the cash register looked me in the eye and I knew she was trying to communicate a secret to me. She asked if I want a receipt. I almost burst into tears. The yeti was at the back of the line. His eyes bore a hole into the back of my head.
Thankfully, I knew where I was. I started running home. If the yeti started chasing me then people would see and I would be saved. My legs did not get tired. I burst into my cool, dark apartment and took some deep breaths. Tears burned my eyes as my dog greeted me.
By the time Daniel came over the mushrooms had started to wear off. We drank some beer and he made me laugh and laugh. We went out to get a burger. Thank you Daniel.
Also I do not think that man was actually following me.
The trip was not what I needed.
It added an element of terror to the bumpy terrain of my life in semi-employment. I felt like I could just be swept away somehow. I’ve been trying to tell myself that it doesn’t matter what I’m doing for work, that I am not my job, but since then the mantra has changed shape into something much more nihilistic.
I know I’m not alone in this right now; people everywhere are plummeting into this desperate pit of scarcity. Selfishly, sometimes my first mental reaction when another creative person loses their job is that I now have one more talented person to compete with in a climate that feels impossible, inescapable. I dissolve any shred of optimism by reading too much about crises online.
I had to leave the cleaning job because they withheld my pay on the grounds that they doubted my reported hours. (I did eventually get them to cough it up.) I’m doing something else, something physically demanding, a 90 minute drive away from my home. It makes me tired, but presents no risk of poisoning, no risk of stolen labour. When I get home I scour the internet for postings and apply to as many as I can. Usually I get no response at all.
Any tips?? :(
Sorry for being such a bummer this time, but I at least hope you could enjoy my shroom story! It’s kind of funny even though it was also terrifying. I think it was a pretty heavy dose.
this about sums it all up