Mother Mary and All Her Laughing Children

It was spring, the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Three, and it would have seemed to any objective observer that, the way things were going, any moment, if you held your mouth just right, the sky just might fall in on itself crushing everyone below in a torrent of clouds and airplane parts.

The Kids, as some had come to call our group of travelers, had taken a road not often ventured upon by our contemporaries. A beautiful thing was happening in this the land of the free, the patriots, the self-defender, TEXAS, America, and there was nothing that anyone could say or do to put a stop to it. This wave would have to break upon the coast in all the violence and horror that such happenings happen to have. No one could have predicted that the wave would crest so soon. No one saw it coming....Well, almost no one.

It was a February day, we had set a trajectory for somewhere just to the left of the moon and there was nothing, barring nuclear holocaust, that was going to stop us.

Salvia Divinorum, for those among you who are unaware, is one of the most potent psychedelics known to man. Salvia, in its dried and concentrated form, when smoked from a "bong", as the large glass smoking utensils have come to be known among the drug culture of the united states, causes an alteration of conciousness that can, at times, be frightening in its realism and power. The Masotec Indians, an indigenous tribe of south central Mexico, were known to invoke its power as "The Shepherdess" - purportedly because of this plants ability to both aid in the divination of future events as well as to clarify those of the past.

The plant would soon provide me ( and how many others I do not know) with a taste of horror, a warning of all that was to come.

From the moment I went under, I knew that something was not right: the lighting was all wrong, the music much too loud; everything was simply happening way too fast.

I was out of control.

I had no guide.

My angel was no where to be seen.

The effects were unlike any that I had experienced before, and I was - by this time - quite the intrepid traveller. A seasoned psychonaut if you will. The whole thing began almost instantly. The room was beginning to expand to a size a million times that of its original. This left me standing in the center of a plane, nothing but the neon sky, tinted with hints of pink, red and green as far as I could see.

At the outset of my journey, the soundtrack had been one of calm and peaceful ambience. Darker now. Drums and rage that took flight from the poly-whatnot material that modern stereo speakers tend to be constructed of. Every aspect of my surroundings - terrifying. Every aspect of my self - warped.

Welcome to Hell.