Ran up the stairs of the shopping complex, right foot, left foot, up, up, up, fuck I laughed as I stumbled up, up, up. I pushed up Raul’s ass. The slight breeze of wind making me sway, invigorating my stumbling sway. Left and right I swayed, run up. Raul, there was others too.
Several minutes prior we all contaminated the elementary school’s playground, specifically the slide. It was covered, we had stuff on us. We took turns sliding down, but we didn’t slide to slide, we slid, stopped, smoked, slid. The rest ran around until it was their turn to slide. I slid, lit the lighter. The inners of the red slide created a glow that wrapped around my fingers, my hands, my arms, my body. Inhaled deep, the sound faded, I closed my eyes and slid… I fell down the rollercoaster, my stomach feeling numb, I blew out the smoke and I was still sliding, at the end of the slide, I blew out the smoke and opened my eyes and the sound was back. I blew out the smoke onto Raul’s face, his smile contaminating.
I pushed up Raul’s ass off the final step and onto the top level of the stairs. I was the last one up, I went from swaying to stumbling onto the top level. I see Raul’s face only, the rest blurred. Laughter and laughter – of what, I have no fucking clue, but – laughter. So much, he spit out his gum.
He didn’t spit it out, more-so, the gum slipped from his mouth. Was his mouth numb from the incense? It wasn’t incense, I don’t know necessarily what it was but we called it that. We had a friend, he was eighteen at the time, buy us some. It came in a pink packet. I do know it was in the similar realm as space cadet, if not, it was the same. Though, space cadet was banned soon after I tried it for the first time on my fourteenth birthday. Wait, it wasn’t my birthday but like a day before, at a friend’s birthday party, it was during the same time I got scammed and sold weed as catnip. It was that same day actually. But I got extremely messed up off of space cadet. It made my mouth numb that time. Was Raul’s mouth numb, or was it just because of laughing?
His gum on the floor, I stuck out my tongue and pretended I was gonna eat it and he just laughed maniacally, time was so slow. It wasn’t an evil laugh, I’m doing Raul a disservice by saying that, he had a nerdy laugh but it was a loud laugh now, an uncontrollable laugh, his laugh didn’t blend in with the rest of the other’s laughs but in collaboration with the other laughs it gave it this odd, lyrical sonic quality. He stuck his tongue our and pretended he was gonna eat it, though he didn’t, he licked a path on the floor slowly as if it were a snail looking for food, and he licked the edge of the gum until he picked up his head, tongue still out, dragged in his tongue rapidly, puckered his lips, and vacuum-sucked the gum off the floor.
Our souls all ascended from our bodies which lay on the ground, we were all out of our minds, high out of our minds, floating above the stairs which floated above to ground. Earth was sideways and I looked down at my feet, my feet hovered above the clouds, and endless sea of nothingness just below me. Nothingness above. The others all disappeared, I looked around and I was alone, alone on the top of the stairs. Raul’s laugh continued to echo in me.
I don’t know the exact moment I met Raul and I haven’t spoken to him in god knows how long. Recently, I saw him on the Snapchat story of a few of my old friends. Using the word friends without quotations is hard to do right now, especially when describing the others. I highly doubt they really cared much about me. They’ve never reached out to me since and don’t think they care to. We shared moments together though.