(One more article for you today.)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/34477
First, I'd like to say that I have never taken acid; however, a few of my friends did so quite frequently. If you've hung out with people who drop, you know it's quite easy to mess with them for your own amusement. Playing Dark Side of the Moon at full blast and making sure they're sitting next to a speaker when the song 'Time' comes on is always fun.
This story has been in the back of my mind for year, I had almost forgotten about it. Then today I read a post about LSD and it immediately jumped back into conscious memory. Now I have to write about it or my head will explode... that's the way these things work.
Allow me to set the scene. There are three of us. Sean, Rupert, and me. We're all 17 and we're hanging out at Rupert's house while his parents are out of town. His parents are somewhat well off and own a large house in the country. They have a raised deck on the back of their house that overlooks a small yard which slopes downhill. At the bottom of the hill there is a line of trees where the woods begin.
Rupert's parents are good people. They're both successful and have white collar jobs. There's only one thing... neither of them is 100% emotionally stable. They're what some people call survivalists... I call them hillbillies. Why? They have a full arsenal of weapons stored in their basement.
Have you ever seen the movie Tremors? Remember Michael Gross and Reba McIntyre's basement in that film? It's like that, only not as organized. There are at least a hundred different types of guns in various cases and racks and boxes of bullets scattered all over the place.
Anyway, back to the scene. It's a cool August night in Ohio. It's quiet, the only sound is the wind blowing through the trees, a few crickets, and the occasional sound of someone taking a drink of beer. It's midnight. A few hours earlier, we had watched Return of the Jedi on his parent's big screen. Now we're sitting on the deck at the back of the house, drinking beer and enjoying some quiet time.
Rupert and Sean had each dropped some acid earlier that night and they were both still feeling the effects. I was just drinking beer. I was completely at peace.
Then all hell broke loose.
We were all sitting in lawn chairs facing the woods. Rupert was slouched down in his chair with his head resting on the back of it and his eyes closed. Suddenly there was a noise off in the woods. Rupert's eyes opened.
'Did you hear that?' he asked.
'Probably just a deer or something,' I replied.
He stared at me for a second...
'A deer, huh?' he asked. 'What if it's something else?'
I looked at him strangely (Rupert had always been the paranoid type). 'Yea man, probably just a deer or a rabbit or something.'
'Dude what if it's an Ewok, come to take us back to Endor?' he asked me.
This brought Sean out of his coma.
'WHAT? Ewoks? Where?' he almost screamed.
'There are no Ewoks in the woods man.' I said. 'It's just a movie.'
Then we heard a sound much closer to the deck.
(I should note that there was a family of squirrels that lived in Rupert's back yard. They were quite friendly and would walk right onto the deck to beg for food.)
As soon as Rupert and Sean heard it, they flipped out.
Both of them jumped up and flipped over their lawn chairs, apparently top use them as cover from the furry invaders.
One of the squirrels then jumped onto the deck and ran across it. I watched as the two of them absolutely lost it.
Sean started crying and continued to hide behind the lawn chair while Rupert jumped up and ran into the house. A few minutes later, he re-appeared with a shotgun. 'They're not gonna get us man,' he said. 'I'll kill every one of those bastards.'
Before I could say 'Put down the shotgun,' there was a crashing sound in the woods. Apparently all the noise on the deck had frightened a raccoon or something and it decided to run away as fast as it could. Of course this freaked out Sean and Rupert even more.
'SHOOT THEM!!!' Sean screamed from behind the lawn chair. 'DON'T LET THEM GET ME!!!!'
Rupert then fired two shots into the woods, screaming at 'the Ewoks' the entire time.
As he was re-loading the gun, I noticed his neighbor walking over. Luckily Rupert had not been able to load the gun yet, and I grabbed it away from him. Terrified, Rupert ran inside, locked the door, and stood at the kitchen window staring out at me.
'What the hell is going on over here!?' the neighbor yelled. 'Were those gun shots I heard?'
'Um, yes sir,' I replied. 'In fact, you did hear gun shots.'
He looked at me holding the shotgun, then at Rupert who was looking at us from the kitchen window, a look of terror on his face, then at Sean who was still cowering behind the lawn chair.
'May I ask why?' he inquired.
'Well,' I started. 'The three of us were sitting here and we heard a noise in the woods.'
'Ewoks,' Sean squealed.
'Did he just say Ewoks?' asked the neighbor.
'No sir,' I replied. 'Um...he said Seahawks. That's his favorite football team. He's a little out of it if you know what I mean.'
The guy looked at me for a second, then looked at the cooler on the deck. He smiled and said, 'Ok, so you guys heard a noise? What's with the shotgun?'
'Well,' I said. 'We thought we saw a wolf or something coming out of the woods, do Rupert got a gun and he shot at it. Whatever it was ran away.'
'EWOKS!!!' Sean yelled.
'He really wants football season to start,' I said.
The man looked at me and smiled. 'I've heard a few strange noises in those woods myself over the years,' he said. 'But I've never gone so far as to fire a gun into them at midnight.'
'I know sir,' I replied. 'It won't happen again. We're going inside anyway.'
He nodded and tuned to walk away. Before he reached the steps, he turned and looked into the woods.
'What the hell,' he exclaimed. 'What are those little furry things running out of the woods?'
'EEEEEEWOOOOOOOOOKSSSS!!!!' Sean yelled at the top of his lungs. Then he stood up ran to the door. 'Let me in man!!!' he screamed. 'You heard the guy!! They're coming out of the woods to get me!!'
The man laughed for a minute. Then looked at me and smiled, 'Stay out of trouble,' he said. 'And no more shooting into the woods.' Then he walked away.
Eventually Rupert unlocked the door and let us in, but neither of them could sleep that night. They both swore off acid forever the next morning, but they gave me a story to last a lifetime.
