The End of a Long Trip

Life choices suddenly open before a lost young woman

Alice sighed. She knew how this went. A certain pill, a particular mushroom, a late night "tea" party—she'd done it all before. "Sure," she'd told her aunt, who acted as the dispensary for the group. "Sure I went through the looking glass. And the wall, and the door—that one was not a good trip at all. I even went through the toilet one time!"

She looked around the room. Just a bunch of heads, one of them already through his own looking glass, mind as light as a feather, body slumped like a drooling stump. She wanted out. But how bad do I really want out, she thought, looking at the smiley dots on the table. Maybe just one—

That was when Ravin' Dave wigged out. "They're on me again! Holy shit, Ally, they're on me again!" He had an hallucination of giant ants on him every time he dropped. Alice felt a seed of anger flare within her. She huffed and covered him in a blanket. As always, it worked. Dave's ants, apparently, couldn't see in the dark and fled from his makeshift cocoon.

Alice shook her head, seeing them all as they truly were for the first time in years: lost, waiting, paralyzed. No, she thought. Not "one more." There's no real life beyond the looking glass. No wisdom to find there at all. She ignored Dave's mumbled thanks and stepped back into the hallway of the cheap motel.

She closed the door quietly behind her. She didn't have anything against any of them, so why disturb them. Let them enjoy their altered worlds. As she walked down the hall, she felt herself smile. She felt a thrill at finally facing the prospect of a real life; and that was the headiest trip she'd ever known.

NOTES: ▶︎

Word Count: 300
Submitted for "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge" 
Prompt: Use the words mushroom, feather, seed

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