"Psilocybin"

Hey.

Yeah, hey.

Not the most exciting start to a story as I’m sure many of you people expected, but don’t worry, the plot usually picks up later.

Shit, I’ll be picking up some plot myself later tonight.

Never mind that though, we should probably start from the beginning. Back before I was in the position I’m in now. Stuck in this damn town with nowhere to go… This was back back before I met all the good friends I know today. They seem more like annoyances than friends sometimes, but we’ve been through tough situations together. I could never leave them, but they aren’t exactly the right kind of crowd to hang around with. You all know the old adage, stay in school, don’t do drugs.

Date: 20/04/989 A.N.M
Location: Hollow Shades

“Weed Eater!”

Something poked me in my flank, it felt sharp. I really didn’t like it when things poked my flank.

“Hey Weed Eater!”

Another poke in my flank. I rolled around on my very comfortable bed, trying to get away from whatever was trying to disturb my beauty sleep.

“Weeeeed Eaaaaateeeeeer!”

The poking came in rapid jabs, it felt like a nurse trying to vaccinate me over and over and over again! I decided to act, I can’t let this monster win.

“Mmmnnooo! Go ‘way!” I swatted at the intruder with my light green leg, my hoof caught something hard and I heard a loud yelp from behind.

“Ow! You jerk! Papa wants you in the garden in 10 minutes…” The beastly filly monster grumbled, and then got off my bed with the light ‘clip clop’ of hooves landing on hardwood floor.

I groaned, and then shoved my face back into the pillow beneath it. I didn’t like it when papa wanted my help in the gardens. He always made me eat the weeds in there! Sometimes they tasted bad, and sometimes they were prickly, but papa says that I have to be ready to survive out in the wilderness and scavenge when “Nightmare Moon returns.” as he says it.

I closed my eyes and mumbled, “It’s just a stupid story, papa.”

A deep timber erupted from the other side of my bedroom. “What’s just a stupid story, Weed?”

I shot up and out from under the covers and comfort of my bed. I wasn’t paying attention though, so one of my back hooves caught the comforter and left me dangling off the edge of the bed.I smiled at my upside down father, who didn’t smile back… I should probably say something. “I- um- Tea was telling me about something really girly she did with her friends!” I hoped that would satisfy papa, but another voice shot that opportunity down as soon as it came.

“Did nooooot~!” Sung Tea as she clip clopped past my door. Father looked at her as she trotted past, and then back at me, his gaze growing harder.

“Come on Weed, let’s go.” He tapped his hoof against the floor. I twisted and turned, managing to free myself from my cloth restraint, and fell to the floor headfirst.

“Ow! Okay papa.” I rubbed my head through the shaggy brown mane that was my crown, and then quickly trotted over to dad. He looked me dead in the eye through the whole ordeal, and wordlessly left my room. I followed him as we passed his and mom’s bedroom, Tea’s bedroom, and then the bathroom, mine was at the end of the hall! Before I knew it, we were through the kitchen and living room and already out the back door into the gardens.

Papa grew lots of things in the garden, he grew butter squash, pumpkins, carrots, corn, tea, mint, flyberries, and the occasional lionflower. I can’t name all the things he grew, but those were what I can remember from past experiences.

“Weed!” Papa shouted.

I snapped my head up to face him, and he nodded over to the mint section of the garden. Sure enough, there were a few weeds that needed to be eaten. I didn’t recognize a few of the plants, though they were the same. First I ate those fuzzy things that grow with really long stems, then the prickly weeds, I’d gotten used to those, and then it came down to the unusual weeds.

“Um, papa?” I called over to my father, who was scrutinizing a particularly angry looking lion flower. He looked over to me and raised an eyebrow, papa didn’t really talk much. I pointed at the weed that looked weird. It almost looked like a tiny bush, with five pointed leaves spread out in an angle that were absolutely everywhere. “What is this?”

Papa casually trotted over, avoiding any important plants he may accidentally step on. He gave the plant a once over and shrugged, “I’m not sure, did you try to eat it yet?”

I looked at the ground and then back at him, I didn’t really want to eat something if I didn’t know what it was. Shuffling my hooves I managed to stutter out, “N-no, w-what if it’s poisonous?”

Papa looked at the plant once more, and then sighed. “You know what, Weed? You’re right, I can’t have my only son dying on me just yet.” He smiled and ruffled my mane. I hated it when he did that, i always liked my mane neat and stuff. I know he loved me, but still. He set his mud colored hoof down and then pointed to the shed in the back of the garden. “Just uproot them and burn them out back, I trust you, son.” His light green eyes locked with mine, and I nodded at him furiously. I wouldn’t let me papa down, I would DESTROY these weeds!

That’s when my life was changed forever.

I found a place to grip the stalk of the weed with my teeth, and that’s when I noticed the smell. It smelled absolutely awful, all that fertilizer that papa used must’ve been absorbed by these weeds. Yeah, it smelled that horrible. I wrinkled my snout, trying to ignore the smell, and tugged upwards. The weed uprooted with no fault on my part, and I tossed it to the side. That would be my pile. I looked back to see what papa was doing, and he had gone back to arguing with the lionflower, who roared at him defiantly.

I turned back to the two other weeds, and quickly uprooted both of them. I grabbed all three of the plants in one go with my mouth, they tasted and smelled bad, but I managed to get all three at once! I walked past all the rows of fruit and vegetables and other miscellaneous plants growing and out of the back gate of the fence, towards the shed. I walked behind the shed and spotted the fire pit that we sometimes used whenever we had a bonfire. I liked to invite Mud Trot and Dank Mist sometimes, but papa usually supervised the three of us.

It’s not we’re doing anything bad.

I set down the three weeds in the fire pit and looked around, sure enough there was the can of starter fluid papa kept. I looked around, nopony was here. Awesome! I could finally start a fire all by myself! I excitedly took the starter can in both hooves and greedily dumped a lot all over the bush like weeds. I found a box of matches nearby and I struck one against my hoof, this was gonna be good. It caught, and I tossed it on the weeds, which quickly caught alight. I reared back, feeling my fur curl slightly, but I walked closer over as it started to smoke.

Wow, did it smoke. It didn’t smell too bad as smoke, in fact, it smelled pretty good. I inhaled deeply, breathing in as much smoke as I could, and then exhaled. Ohhhh yeah this was definitely not bad. I watched the weeds burn, and boy did they burn. They were slow to burn because they were bushes. I inhaled deeply again, breathing in a bunch of the white smoke, and then exhaled. Yes yes yes this is the life. Sitting back and watching the fire burn. Inhale, exhale. I should REALLY do this more often.

Something about the smoke calmed me down. It relaxed me… Sitting here watching the fire was pretty cool, mesmerizing, I think that’s the word, yeah. I was watching the fire, and breathing. Do you ever think about how you’re breathing? You don’t realize you’re breathing until you think about it, and then boom! Breathing becomes a manual task! The fire was wavy, it made waves all over the place. Even behind me, it was pretty funny when I thought about it.

I started laughing at the waviness of everything. It was just so hilarious, seeing everything move around. Hilarious. I saw a cloud shaped like one of the leaves from the weed, and I laughed at it. I looked back at the fire, it wasn’t really a fire anymore, it was just ash. It really burned out fast, just like my appetite sometimes. Wow, I forgot that I hadn’t eaten yet. Wow... I’m really hungry. That’s pretty crazy, because… I really couldn’t think why actually. Was it because I hit my sister in the face? I laughed, that was pretty funny.

I heard a voice from behind me, so I turned around. It looked like papa, with his wet dirt colored self coming towards me or mud, that’s another word for those two words combined. What’s that called? I’ve never learned. His yellowish orange mane blew in the wind, it looked like that fire that I was watching earlier… How early? Papa spoke again as he came closer, but it sounded too sharp if that makes sense, it sounded like his voice was out of this world.

“By Celestia, Weed, your eyes are red! Get inside, I’m calling a doctor to the house.” I stared at papa’s mouth, it was so weird how our mouths just moved automatically, like we only had to think about saying the words and we just said them. Nobody ever thinks about some things. “Weed?” Papa’s hoof waved in front of my face, and I looked at him, but my head tilted to one side slightly so it was frustrating.

“Yeaaaah? What’s up daaaad?” I managed to get out, talking was hard in between laughing and trying not to laugh.

“Why…” Papa looked behind me for a moment. “Oh, you’re joking. Come on Weed, let’s go.” He looked back at me and then grabbed me before I could react. I didn’t really feel like reacting though, so that was okay. He just set me on his back, I really didn’t feel like sitting upright so I just laid down on his back as he walked, and I looked at the sky. I looked at the birds flying through the sky, and I looked at the leaves blowing around, intermingling with the birds and the sky.

It was really beautiful out today. I could really feel the world around us moving as my father walked. My mouth hung open as I watched the world go by, and I squinted my eyes as the sun peaked out from the clouds and hit my eyes at just the wrong spot. I hissed and almost tumbled off papa’s back, but I managed to keep myself up. He kept mumbling something about “High…” and “Book…” but his voice was so echoey I couldn’t really tell exactly what he was saying.

Suddenly, the back door slammed shut. My entire body jerked reflexively, and before I knew it I was tumbling off of papa’s back and onto the floor beneath. I plopped on my rear and quickly stood back up, looking up at my father who snorted in amusement. He got real close to my face and looked me straight in the eye. “I really should’ve known… Weed, go upstairs and back to bed, and don’t tell your mother what happened.”

I smiled up at him and turned around, bolting for my room. Ignoring my father shout something about running around the house, I flew up the stairs and down the hallway, rushing past my sister who screamed. “Weed! Quit running!” I ignored her of course, she’s too bossy sometimes. Slamming the door to my room, I jumped back up onto my bed and quickly became best friends with the blankets. They were soooooo much more comfortable now than they were before, and I could hardly keep my eyes open.

So I closed them.

Now, that was the first experience with drugs I ever had. What I had accidentally inhaled as a colt was something called marijuana, cannabis, Marey Jane… There’s a lot of street names for the stuff, a lot of ponies smoke it actually. That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, if a little colt like me was feeling like that, then imagine how much the adults smoke, hell, imagine how much I smoke now! That’s not the point though, my point is that that was the first drug I ever did, accidental or not.

We stayed in Hollow Shades for a few more years, but my mother passed away sadly, and my father began to have back problems that made him unable to continue work as a gardener. So… In order to make ends meet, we had to move to the developing city of Manehatten, where my papa took on a much less strenuous job as being one of the groundskeepers for the highly respected Manehatten University, where many ponies go to study and learn about things and stuff. I used to go there, but then… Well. I got involved with the wrong crowd.

That’s going a little too far ahead, no, lets pull it back a notch, where I would end up going to high school. Manehatten High, a place to get a better education and to better yourself. I wouldn’t exactly do terribly well there, but I managed. It’s just that this is where my problems with that wrong crowd began.

“Come oooooon Weed! Just try it, it won’t hurt you!” My friend Blue Spores hopped up and down on her hooves excitedly with a bag in her mouth. The contents flying wildly about inside.

I wasn’t sure about this, I never really was interested in this kind of stuff. Stuff being, well, drugs. “What even is it…?” I asked, poking the bag tentatively with a hoof.

Blue Spores stopped hopping up and down, and dropped the bag on the ground, then slid it over with a baby blue colored hoof. She squinted at it real hard for a minute, and then smiled once more, perking her head up and looking at me. “Magic Mushrooms! They’re fun! Just eat a few and you’ll be out of this world!” She waved her hooves around her head and made what sounded like rocket ship noises.

I deadpanned at her, she was expecting me to eat some mushrooms? What even would they do? “You really think those mushrooms will do anything?” I almost laughed, she had to be kidding.

Blue just sat there and nodded, she nudged the mushrooms a little closer to me, and then flicked her midnight blue mane. “Go on, don’t be a sissy, I’ve done them before!” I looked down at them, then back at her pretty ‘all smiles’ looking face. She fluttered her eyes at me, and I just couldn’t resist.

“Awww alright fine!” I shouted, grabbing the bag with a hoof and dumping out three of the caps onto the flat side of my other hoof. Spores smiled wider as she watched me down all of them into my mouth and chewed. They were nasty! How could anypony eat them like this! I swallowed as quickly as I could, and waited. “How long should these take to kick in?” I asked Blue, who shrugged.

“I dunno, usually it takes like… thirty minutes I think.” She looked at her wrist and nodded. “Yeah, about thirty minutes.”

Thirty minutes until my life could possibly be over.

Author's Note

Hey, how's it going guys. This is my first story, so go hard on this shit like you go on that blunt man.