The Secret of Life

“God, Platter,” said Platter as they walked back to the room. “You look terrible. No wonder they’re making this stuff illegal. The pathetic husk of a once-great mind.”

Conrad laughed in mechanical bursts. Platter’s voice sounded so thick and convincing. Platter got Conrad into their easy chair and gave him a glass of water. Conrad spilled the water.

The visions grew stranger. Conrad felt himself and his thoughts as filling a vast balloon, a floppy sphere that floated up miles above the Earth. He was a great transparent balloon with a long neck that stretched down to suck the gray-white December air. He had a terrible feeling that soon the neck would break. He would stop breathing and die. Being dead would feel the same at first ... but then the balloon would melt and the magpie scraps of C. v.R. Bunger’s personality would scatter into bright empty space. He’d get his crystal, and the flame-people would pick him up in their flying saucer. Groovy. Let it happen ...

“CONRAD!”

He forced his eyes open. The easy chair’s cushion stretched out on every side. His and Platter’s room was the size of a gymnasium. He’d shrunk again. Platter was shouting something, lifting the glass of water ...

Splat.

The water. Cold life on cold Earth. Conrad was big again. He was wet all over.

“Conrad,” Platter was babbling. “I was really worried. You were shrinking! Like you said you did under that truck. What’s going on here, anyway? You were the size of my thumb, Platter, I swear! Don’t take these drugs anymore, it’s madness! I’m going crazy just living with you!”

: Friday, December 10, 1965 Audrey shared a New York apartment with two other girls, also graduate students. The apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

The daylong peyote trip had granted Conrad one short revelation.Go see Audrey. As soon as the stuff had worn off enough, Conrad stole a crowbar from the janitor’s closet and pried open the dorm change machine. Fifteen dollars in quarters. A round-trip bus ticket to New York was a prohibitive twelve dollars, so Conrad hitched instead. He made a sign saying NYC and got Chuckie to take him to a big highway. Just before dropping him off, Chuckie gave him some yellow gra

“Take these, Conrad. They’ll help you keep it together.”

He slipped the glasses on. Everything looked thick and su

“Do I look cool?”

“You look like a real blown mind.”

Conrad didn’t have to wait long before an empty moving van stopped. The truck’s cab was full of Italian movers. Conrad had to ride in back.

It was weird for Conrad back there, in the rumbling dark, with echoes of the peyote still bouncing around his skull. It took a conscious effort not to startseeing things. Fast-flickering flame-people, mind-rays, and chains of hidden cause-effect,another order of reality ...

The truck dropped him off somewhere in Manhattan. It was early evening. The store windows were full of Christmas displays. Taking the subway uptown to Audrey’s was the hardest part. The horror-train.

Conrad was scared to look out the windows or at the other passengers. Instead he looked at his hands.

They were flaking like wet cardboard. The flesh was crumbling off, and he could see the bones underneath.

He hadn’t called Audrey, because he was afraid she might say not to come. He had to push the downstairs bell in her building for quite a while before she buzzed the door. And when he finally got upstairs, she was alone there with another guy.

“This is my friend Richard,” Audrey told Conrad.

Richard offered Conrad a glass of wine. He’d just brought a bottle over to share with Audrey. She deserved it, said Richard, because she’d let him store his golf clubs here over Thanksgiving break. Flesh was peeling off his head, and Conrad could see sections of his skull.

“Actually,” explained Conrad, “I have a date with Audrey tonight. We were pla

She paused, thinking, then agreed. Richard took his golf clubs but left the wine. It was Almaden Chablis.

“Why didn’t you call?” Audrey asked.

“Is Richard your new boyfriend?”

“You look terrible, Conrad. What have you been doing to yourself?”

“I took some peyote. It made me throw up and see visions. I still don’t feel quite normal. I feel like I’m from outer space.” Audrey frowned. “Your drinking is already so bad, and now you have to start with drugs. Is that going to be the new thing with you, Conrad?”

“It’s better than golf.”

Audrey looked down at her lap and began picking at a loose thread on her jeans. She didn’t want to meet his eyes. “What if we stopped seeing each other?” she said after a while. “Swarthmore was fun, Conrad, and this summer in Paris was lovely. But couldn’t that be enough? Why should I have to marry the very first person I make love to? Life shouldn’t be so predictable.”

“Having a predictable life is the least of my worries,” said Conrad with a short laugh. “Things are constantly falling apart. You’re the only solid thing in my world, Audrey, you’re the warm center.” He knelt by her chair and began kissing her. “Don’t drop me, Audrey. I need you so much.”

She kissed back with some fervor. He got her breasts out, she unzipped his fly, and a few minutes later they were in her bed fucking.

“Oh, Audrey. This feels so good. Everything’s been skeletons.”

“It’s all right, Conrad. I do still love you.”

After sex, they lay in Audrey’s bed, talking and drinking Richard’s wine. “What have you been doing all month?” Audrey asked. “I was wondering why I didn’t hear from you.”

“I kept calling, but you were never home. And then I was getting drunk. Didn’t your roommates give you the messages?” “I was waiting for you to actually show up. That’s what counts, you know. Being here.”

“I’ve been broke.”

“Can’t youfly here from Swarthmore?”

“I don’t think I can fly anymore, Audrey.” He told how the truck had almost run him over—being careful not to mention that he’d jumped in front of it on purpose. “I needed to fly away from that truck, but I couldn’t. But listen! Instead of flying, Ishrank .”

“You shrank.” They were still naked, and Audrey was nestled on his shoulder. “Can I have some more wine?” “Sure.” He poured out more wine for both of them. “I shrank to the size of a thumb, and the truck went right over me. When you were a kid, did you ever read the book about the five Chinese brothers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, there’s these five Chinese brothers who look exactly like each other. One of them can swallow the sea, one can stretch his legs to be as tall as he wants, one has an iron neck, one is fireproof, and one can hold his breath forever. To do a little boy a favor, the first brother sucks up the ocean so the little boy can walk around on the bottom and look for treasure. But then the little boy won’t come back in time, and the brother spits the ocean back up, and the little boy drowns. So the village decides to put the Chinese brother to death.” “They try different ways of killing, and each time a different brother shows up?”

“Right. They throw the one with stretchable legs into deep water, and he just stands there. The one with the iron neck comes and they can’t chop off his head. The fireproof one comes and they can’t burn him. Finally they decide to smother the Chinese brother in an oven filled with whipped cream, but that day it’s the one who can hold his breath. The judge gives up and they live happily ever after.”

“Let me see you shrink, Conrad.” She was kissing and caressing him.

“I have to be in the right frame of mind. Hold on.” He closed his eyes and let the peyote death-fear come welling back up. He was leaving Earth, his breathing was stopping, the saucer was going to pick him back up ... and right now he was dying, yes, fading out of flesh for ...