Jane needed some cannabis. So we met at the community garden where I kept a plot. I handed her an eighth, no questions asked. She didn’t have much to offer in return—just a couple of scrappy chamomile plants and what looked like a twig. Well, not exactly a twig. It was a small cutting she’d managed to root, all crammed into a crumpled paper bag. She opened it and handed me the contents. We both knew it wasn’t a fair trade, but I didn’t care. We’d known each other too long to bother keeping score.
My garden plot was in a sunlit corner, tucked beside an old picnic table that had seen better days—its paint faded and chipped, the wood sagging under the weight of too many seasons. The community garden itself was about the size of two tennis courts, but it felt bigger, like it held more space than the square footage allowed. It had a way of sprawling out, with rows of vegetables and flowers competing for life. Nature set the rules there, and I just tried to keep up.
A wooden shed stood nearby, its roof sagging under the weight of vines that had long outgrown their original boundaries. Near the shed sat a greenhouse, little more than a skeleton of glass and wood that leaned into the breeze like a shipwreck.
Jane and I sat at the picnic table, and she rolled a joint with the smooth precision of someone who’s done it a thousand times. She lit it up, took a long, slow drag, and exhaled. The smoke unfurled in lazy spirals, drifting into the afternoon air, mingling with the smell of soil and crushed leaves. The garden was quiet, except for the occasional rustle of wind through the tangled herbs and wildflowers, and the soft crackle of Jane’s joint burning. It was a fragile quiet, the kind that felt like it could shatter with a single word. Neither of us spoke. We just sat there, sharing the silence, daydreaming.
By the time Jane finished her joint, her eyes had that familiar glaze. She gave me a lazy smile, and we got to work in the garden. There was a quiet satisfaction in it—hands in the dirt, pulling weeds, coaxing life out of the soil. We worked mostly in silence, moving in our own rhythms. Jane planted the chamomile, carefully pressing the small roots into the earth like she was tucking in a child. I took the cutting she’d brought, planting it just beyond the picnic table. It felt routine—ordinary, the kind of routine that wraps you up without much thought.
Except for one thing—that cutting. As I pushed it into the soil, something about it felt off—like a single dark note hidden in an otherwise easy tune.
Over the next two months, with a splash of fertilizer here and there, I watched that cutting grow steadily, almost like a child finding its feet. By July, it had transformed into a wild, unruly presence—a dense, tangled mass of stems and leaves, crowned with cream-colored, trumpet-shaped flowers that flared out like ghostly horns.
There was something about it, a kind of reckless energy that set it apart from the other plants. It thrived in a way that felt unnatural, like it was feeding off more than just soil and sunlight. It grew faster, recklessly, as if it had its own agenda. The other plants seemed to shrink away, giving it space, like they knew to keep their distance. And, as time went on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I should’ve done the same.
“Looks like datura,” someone casually mentioned, their voice distant, offhand. The word stuck. Datura. It lingered in the air like a dream I had almost forgotten.
That night, I sat in the dim glow of my room, the computer screen flickering like a ghost in the dark. My fingers hovered over the keyboard before typing out the word: D-A-T-U-R-A. The results flooded in at the speed of light—images, descriptions, warnings. And there it was, staring back at me, the same twisted, clawing plant from the garden—Jimson Weed. The name alone felt like a warning, something ancient and dangerous, hiding beneath its pale, delicate flowers.
“Jimson Weed.” The name stirred something half-forgotten, an echo from high school. I couldn’t place where I’d first come across it—maybe buried in the pages of The Anarchist Cookbook, or maybe it was that episode of Inside Edition, the tabloid show I used to watch religiously in the ‘90s. I was hooked, more interested in its offbeat stories than any homework I should’ve been doing.
They’d aired a story about two teenage boys, both of them out of their minds on Jimson Weed. The footage was haunting—the two kids stumbling through a suburban backyard, eyes wide and vacant, like they’d slipped out of reality and couldn’t find their way back. They kept babbling nonsense, one of them laughing hysterically at nothing, while the other smoked an invisible cigarette and stared blankly at the camera, his face a mask of confusion and terror.
The narrator’s voice was stern, dripping with the kind of authority that made it impossible to look away. “A potent hallucinogen,” he called it, “with effects that can last for days, leading to psychosis, or worse.”
They cut to a shot of paramedics loading one of the boys onto a stretcher, his arms and legs thrashing like he was battling demons only he could see. It had that familiar tabloid TV feel—dramatic, overblown, designed to keep suburban parents up at night.
Or maybe it was Mario who first brought up Jimson Weed. I can still picture us by his white Chevy pickup, one of those long, empty afternoons we spent shooting the breeze. Nothing special—just the usual trash-talk about drugs, music, girls. I don’t even remember how it came up.
“Well, I’d like to try it,” I’d said, half-serious, half-joking.
“Sure, primo,” Mario replied, slipping into his best East L.A. accent. It was an act—he was a suburban kid, just like me. His parents were one of the few Hispanic families in the neighborhood, and they were well-respected. The tough guy thing? A pose. Deep down, he was a momma’s boy, a good Catholic kid who kept his nose clean.
“Loco weed, that’s what we call it, because that shit is cra-zy,” he said. His face stayed blank, unreadable. He didn’t push it, and neither did I. We just let the idea hang between us, like a challenge neither of us was brave enough—or stupid enough—to take.
Jimson Weed wasn’t a casual high. People didn’t just get high on it; they got lost. It wasn’t a party drug; it was a gamble—like flipping a coin, never knowing if you’d come out the other side with your mind intact, or if you’d be forever caught in some waking nightmare.
Over time, I learned more about it—how the plant could drag you down into a hallucinatory hell, where time unraveled and reality bent into shapes you couldn’t name. There were whispers about it, legends that sounded like they’d been passed down in half-forgotten stories—like something out of a fever dream or voodoo folklore.
People said it wasn’t just a plant; it was a doorway, a gateway to hell. The kind of thing that, once you stepped through, you couldn’t come back from. It was a reckoning, forcing you to confront the blackest corners of your mind, dragging into the light the kinds of thoughts best left buried.
Despite the horror stories, there was something about the danger that hooked me, something that whispered at the edges of my curiosity—the pull of something I couldn’t help but want to understand. Why would anyone risk it? Why let yourself slip into madness, lose control like that? I guess that’s why they called it “Loco Weed.” Maybe that was me—”loco,” “cra-zy”—I can’t explain it.
I asked around for it, back in high school and even later, in college. I figured someone would know—a guy with connections, a rumor, a way to get my hands on it. But every time I brought it up, people stiffened. Even the biggest druggies, the ones who’d drop acid with their morning coffee, got nervous. Their eyes would shift, voices drop. For a second, I could see it—the flicker of fear, like I’d just asked them to dance with the devil.
It went by many names—Thorn Apple, Devil’s Snare, Loco Weed, Devil’s Trumpet, Jamestown Weed, Jimson Weed, Hell’s Bells, Mad Apple. Every name carried weight, a history steeped in danger and fascination, stories of people who pushed it too far, who found out too late. And now, there it was, growing in my garden like it belonged there, handed to me by Jane as casually as if it were a pot of basil, nothing more than a harmless ornamental plant. But I knew better. I felt it. Even then.
It’s strange, after all those years of searching—late-night conversations, dead-end questions—the plant found me. I hadn’t sought it out in ages, but there it was, almost like it had been waiting, patient, knowing it would catch up with me eventually. There was something twisted in that, like fate had finally decided to cash in. But now, with the “Devil’s Snare” rooted in my garden, the thrill wasn’t there anymore. What was left was something colder, heavier.
Life’s cruel like that—it gives you what you wanted when the fire’s already gone. When I was younger, reckless, I’d have jumped at it, no hesitation, ready to see where it might take me. But now? I’m older, slower to recover, more cautious. I’m not so willing to play those kinds of games. The pull toward madness had faded, leaving behind the cold caution of age.
I didn’t have the luxury of losing myself in some fever dream, chasing oblivion for the thrill of it. Back in high school, that made sense—when danger was just another word for excitement, and time felt endless. Back when every risk held the promise of something new. Suddenly it felt like a story from someone else’s life, a shadow of a person I barely remember.
But there was still that ember, that whisper in the back of my mind. It was like hearing from an old lover who had left years ago, only to resurface when you least expected it. You’ve moved on, grown wiser, but there’s a part of you that still craves the rush, the adrenaline of those reckless days. Just one more time, for the hell of it.
I could feel the plant calling, like a low hum in the back of my mind, daring me to test its limits. Maybe, just maybe, I could handle it. It felt like an old, dangerous waltz, the kind you think you’ve mastered until you misstep. Jimson Weed was seductive, yes, but there was a sharpness there—a promise that could turn on you in a heartbeat. Something this beautiful, this wild, didn’t let you play without consequences.
Why had Jane given it to me? Did she even know?
I dialed her number, listening to the rings stretch out. But nothing. No answer, no quick text in return. She always responded, even if it was just a “busy” or “talk later,” so the silence felt wrong. Like a signal lost somewhere, drifting out of reach.
Maybe she was in another one of her existential funks or had taken off to Pennsylvania to visit family again. Last time she went back east, she ended up punching her stepdad in the face. She told me that story with a half-smile, mixing pride with dark humor, like it was just another chapter in their twisted history. Verbal abuse, unwanted advances—her eyes gleamed, like she’d finally settled the score. No regret, no second thoughts. Just another mess she shrugged off, leaving me wondering what else she’d buried along the way.
A week crawled by before I finally heard back from her. The phone rang late, the kind of hour where you’re never sure if the call’s going to be good news or bad. Her voice was calm—too calm. She sounded distant, like she was recounting something that had happened to someone else.
“The tie rod snapped,” she said flatly. “I lost control. Car flipped down the hill—once, maybe twice—then got lodged against a burnt tree.”
I pictured the wreck in my head—metal twisting, glass exploding, her world flipping end over end. Her body suspended in the wreckage, blood rushing to her head. “How’d you get out?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
“The airbags didn’t go off. I was hanging there, upside down. Managed to unbuckle and crawl out.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like that.” I heard the flick of her lighter, the brief pause before she inhaled. “No big deal,” she added.
But I knew Jane well enough to catch the tremor in her voice, the one she’d never let you hear unless you were listening close. There was more to it, but she wasn’t offering. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to push. She’d survived, that’s all that mattered—for now.
“Were you hurt?” I asked, bracing for a delayed revelation, something about broken bones or worse.
“Hardly a scratch,” she said, as if the whole thing were a bad joke. “Just some cuts from crawling through the brush back up the hill and onto the road.”
There was a detachment, a hollowness, like the whole thing was a minor inconvenience instead of a brush with death.
“That’s… incredible,” I replied, the words clumsy, inadequate. I couldn’t shake the image of her, trapped in the wreckage, the world upside down. “You walked away from that? And you’re okay? How do you feel?”
A pause. The kind that made you aware of everything else—the hum of distant traffic, the faint buzz on the line, the sound of my own breath. “Ehhhh, fine?” she finally said, her voice floating somewhere far away, untethered. “Barely phased at all. I guess I should be more upset, but… I’m not.”
Her words drifted into the silence, like smoke from a blown-out match, the kind that lingers, that doesn’t belong. I sat with them, trying to make sense of her calm, her distance, the way she seemed to brush off the wreckage like it was nothing.
“What about the car?”
“Totaled,” she said, her tone flat, like she was talking about the weather. “I’m picking up a new one tomorrow.”
“That was quick.”
“Insurance.”
I paused again, the question heavy on my tongue. “Are you nervous about driving again?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, as if she were thinking about it for the first time. “I guess I’ll find out when I’m behind the wheel again.”
I could see her, even through the phone—a half-smoked cigarette hanging loose from her fingers, her eyes glazed over, staring through the walls like they weren’t there. She was good at hiding it, at acting like none of it mattered. But I knew better. Something had shifted, something in her had cracked.
“I don’t know what to say,” I finally offered, my voice more fragile than I wanted it to be. “That’s… that’s life-changing. I’m grateful you’re okay, really. I had no idea. Funny, it feels like I’m more shaken than you are. It’s a miracle, honestly.”
Her response was a soft exhale, more breath than voice. “Yeah, a miracle,” like she’d left part of herself in the crushed metal of that car. “If it wasn’t for that tree… I’d be dead.”
Silence stretched between us. I couldn’t shake the thought—she’d stared death down, walked away from it, and here we were, talking about it like it was nothing. But I could hear it, that echo of the crash, the sound of metal crumpling, in the space between our words.
We talked more about the car, the hills of Santa Cruz, and how strange the world looks when you’re strapped inside an overturned vehicle, staring at it upside down.
It felt wrong to bring up the Jimson weed, to shift the subject from her dance with death to small talk about a plant. The timing was off, like the world had shifted and hadn’t given me permission to catch up.
There were moments, gaps really, where the conversation with Jane faltered, as if something should be said but wasn’t. Those silences felt heavier than the words we actually spoke, like they held more meaning. Something had been left on that hillside—whether she admitted it or not. There was no way she walked away untouched. And in those pauses, I felt the Jimson weed’s presence— watching, waiting.
It crept back into my thoughts, a quiet whisper at the edge of my mind. Watching, waiting. Its presence more alive now, more insistent, as if it had been biding its time all along. And then a thought, dark and absurd, twisted its way through me: maybe the car wreck wasn’t just some random accident. Maybe it was the plant’s doing, its cruel joke. A reminder that it was still there, still in control, still waiting for its moment.
The thought gnawed at me, absurd as it seemed. The weight of silence pressed down, thick and suffocating, as if the air between us had been rearranged, tainted by something we couldn’t see but both felt. The plant had sunk its hooks into me long ago, but now I wondered if it had started working its way into Jane too. There was something lurking beneath all this, something I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand.
After I hung up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted between us, the plant had already woven itself into my life, tightening its grip like a knot that wouldn’t come loose. Had Jane felt it too, or had she handed me that cutting without realizing what it would become? Maybe the Jimson weed wasn’t just a plant anymore. It had slipped into fate, into whatever unspoken thing was building between us. It spread in silence, like roots twisting underground.
The longer I sat there, the more the silence seemed to hum, alive with something beyond either of us. A presence, faint but undeniable, curling at the edges of my awareness. The weed, the plant—it wasn’t just a part of nature. It was a doorway, a gateway into something darker. Nightmares, maybe. I thought of the stories—the warnings—about people who thought they could master it, control it. They were always the ones it devoured. Reality twisted for them until nothing made sense anymore, and they were left lost, wandering through worlds that blurred into madness.
These weren’t just tales whispered on the fringes. They were truths, grim and inescapable, lurking like the plant itself, patient and waiting. And I was beginning to understand how deep its roots really went.
One guy claimed he watched his friends’ faces melt off like wax, their bones turning to ash right in front of him. Another swore he spent hours conversing with shadowy figures, only to realize later they were never there.
There was a woman who tried to peel off her own skin, convinced it was crawling with bugs, and a man who woke up in the middle of a highway, dodging imaginary cars. These weren’t just bad trips—they were full-blown descents into madness, where the line between reality and delusion wasn’t just blurred, it was obliterated. Some users were trapped in endless loops of paranoia, convinced they were being hunted by faceless monsters, while others were certain they had died, feeling their bodies decompose around them.
And it wasn’t just minds that fractured under its influence; Jimson weed attacked the body with equal force. Hearts would pound like trapped animals, lungs seizing up, fighting for breath as the poison coursed through the bloodstream. Kidneys faltered, organs shutting down one by one, unable to cope with the chaos the plant unleashed. This wasn’t a path to some higher understanding—it was a steep drop into oblivion, a descent into madness few could climb back from. The stories weren’t cautionary fables. They were markers, warnings etched at the edge of a cliff, a dark abyss waiting to swallow anyone reckless enough to lean too far over the edge.
So why the hell would I even consider it? Every rational thought screamed against it, the voice of self-preservation clawing for control. There was no sense in it—no logic, no reward that outweighed the risk. What could I possibly gain? A secret truth so twisted I’d never be able to share it? Some insight people would write off as delusion, the ravings of a man who’d lost his grip? And what was left to lose? My world was already hanging by a thread, fraying at the edges. It wouldn’t take much to snap it.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The cracks in my life, the slow, steady grind—what was I really clinging to? Another day of the same routine, the same hollow motions, the same tired lies we tell ourselves to get by? It felt like I was living in some cruel parody, just going through the motions while the real joke was being played on me. I wasn’t desperate for death—no, that wasn’t it. I wanted to see behind the curtain, to pull at the edges of this flat, monotonous reality until it unraveled, exposing whatever truth lay buried beneath.
There had to be more than this—the suffocating grind of survival, the empty promises that never materialized. Life couldn’t be this shallow, this meaningless. I wasn’t trying to escape—I was trying to see, to understand what everyone else seemed so eager to ignore. Maybe Jimson weed was the key, a door into the unknown. But the risk? The price? Maybe I’d already started paying it without even realizing.
I craved that moment, the one where everything finally made sense, where you saw the gears behind the curtain, the hidden mechanics of it all. Like a fish breaking the surface of the water, realizing for the first time that there’s an entire world beyond the ocean it’s known. Maybe that was the rush—the unknown, the promise of something larger than the suffocating weight of routine. People did crazier things all the time: bungee jumping off cliffs, race car driving at insane speeds, scaling sheer mountainsides without ropes, or even something as absurd as glue huffing. None of it made sense in the cold light of reason. But the thrill, the sharp break from the ordinary, was always enough to pull them in. I felt that pull now—stronger, more insistent. The possibility that there was more than this life of repetition, of slowly being worn down, gnawed at me.
I was hooked. There was no denying it. I knew I’d try the Jimson weed. The only question was when.
A part of me wanted confirmation, a second opinion from someone grounded enough not to laugh me off. So I showed a picture of it to Nate. He worked the farmers’ market down the street from my place, selling fresh produce for a farm out in Petaluma. Nate had seen his share of hell—fighting his way out of a bottle, a divorce that stripped him bare, court battles that left scars deeper than the paperwork. But Nate, somehow, was unshakable, solid. A Deadhead with the soul of a survivor. Nothing seemed to rattle him. His Australian Shepherd, always by his side, seemed to reflect that same quiet endurance, like the two of them were partners weathering the same long storm, bound by the silent understanding that life would keep throwing punches—and they’d keep rolling with them.
He wore his mess of a life like an old, worn-in shirt—comfortable, familiar, never letting it get the best of him. That crooked grin was a constant, like he was in on some cosmic joke that everyone else missed. But when I mentioned the Jimson weed, the grin slipped from his face. His voice came out low, rough with concern.
Nate was the kind of guy who had seen more than his share of life’s bruises, but even he had his limits. I wasn’t sure if he’d have any deep insights on the plant, but something about his presence was steadying. Maybe that’s what I needed—someone solid enough to tell me I was losing it, to pull me back before I wandered too far down the wrong road. Or maybe I wanted confirmation. Maybe I already knew I’d crossed a line, and I just needed him to say it out loud, to make it real.
“Oh no,” Nate muttered, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t mess with that.” The words came out heavy, weighted with something more than just caution—almost like regret.
I tried to brush it off, downplay the tension. “Yeah, I get it, you’ve gotta be careful with that stuff.” My voice came out awkward, like I was explaining something he already knew. And of course, he did. The way he looked at me, the way he looked at the picture on my phone—he didn’t need my warnings. He’d seen enough to understand what I was getting into.
The farmers’ market was slow that afternoon, quiet enough to hear the shuffle of leaves in the wind. Nate stared at the picture I’d shown him, his fingers hovering just above the screen, like the image itself had some weight he wasn’t ready to carry. After a long beat, he nodded slowly, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“Yeah,” he finally said, his voice quieter than before. He tapped his temple with one finger, a subtle gesture that carried years of stories he wasn’t telling. “Sometimes people don’t come back.”
The silence that followed hung between us, thick and unmoving. There were no more jokes, no more reassurances. Just the weight of what he’d said and the sense that I was standing at the edge of something I wasn’t sure I could handle.
There was something in the way he said it, like he’d seen firsthand what the plant could do, like he knew the wreckage it left behind. This was different than the stories I read which I could dismiss as hysteria. It made me wonder about the stories Nate carried, the ones that stretched beyond the courtroom battles and whiskey bottles. He didn’t need to spell it out—whatever he’d seen was etched in his eyes, in that quiet, unspoken way men who’ve seen too much carry things.
“You know why they call it Jimson weed, right?” His voice dropped, low and conspiratorial, like he was letting me in on something people weren’t supposed to know.
I shook my head, trying to stay casual, though the tension in the air made that nearly impossible. “No. Why?”
“Jamestown,” he said, leaning in slightly. “They used to smoke it there. Jamestown—Jimson. The name shifted over time. Pronunciation, you know? The settlers thought it was just some local herb, like tobacco or medicine. But it wasn’t. It made them crazy. Some of them never came back from it. They went crazy, died, or disappeared. Poisoned themselves without knowing what hit them.”
The words settled between us like a stone dropped into deep water. I could feel the weight of it pulling me under, dragging me toward a history I wasn’t ready to face. This wasn’t just some drug people dabbled in, chasing a high. It was something darker, older, with roots tangled deep in the past, waiting to pull in anyone reckless enough to play with it.
Nate leaned back slightly, the moment passing, but not without leaving its mark. His gaze slipped away, like he’d said enough, like the rest didn’t need to be spoken out loud. The silence was louder than any reassurance he could’ve given, as if the plant itself had taken on the role of storyteller, its tangled vines creeping through time, weaving tragedy into fate.
And there I was, standing on the edge, staring down into that abyss.
For a fleeting moment, I could almost picture those settlers—their wild eyes, stumbling through the Virginia woods, their minds shattered, lost to whatever the Jimson weed had dredged up from the depths. The plant carried their weight, the weight of every soul who had tried to control it and failed, each of them leaving behind their madness like footprints in the dirt. And now, centuries later, here it was again—creeping up from the soil of my own garden, waiting, patient as ever.
Nate’s story wasn’t just a myth to scare people straight. It was history. Cold, hard fact— in the 17th century, starving Jamestown settlers mistook it for something edible. They cooked the leaves like spinach, sealing their fates with that single, desperate mistake. What they thought would save them became slow poison. The harsh land they were trying to tame gave them its answer—and it wasn’t mercy.
“Well,” I said at last, letting the irony settle between us, “it’s not for everyone.” The words felt hollow, like I was trying to build a shield out of tissue paper, something flimsy to hold against the weight of everything we’d unearthed. But I could tell it wasn’t enough—not for me, not for Nate, and definitely not against the darkness coiling just beneath the surface.
Nate gave a slow nod, his eyes carrying a heaviness that told me he wasn’t fooled. He knew better. “If you really want to dive deeper into that stuff,” he said, his voice low, each word deliberate, “read Don Juan—Carlos Castaneda. It’s like an instruction manual for dealing with plants like this.” His tone was casual, but there was something underneath it, an undercurrent that twisted around the words, a warning disguised as advice. It wasn’t about reading, not really. It was about knowing. About opening a door you couldn’t close once you’d stepped through.
“I’ve read them,” I said, the memory of those books flickering in the back of my mind. I could still see the yellowed pages, the spines cracked from too many re-reads. Castaneda’s world of shamans, visions, other planes of existence—it all felt distant back then, like a trip I’d never planned to take. But now, standing there with Nate, it didn’t feel so far away. It felt closer. Tangible. Like those teachings had been waiting in the shadows, patient, for me to finally catch up. “It’s been a while, though,” I added, more to myself than to him.
A laugh slipped from my lips, dry and humorless, like I was trying to shake off the weight of it all. “Funny,” I said, “my housemate, he’s 83, keeps a neat row of Castaneda on his bookshelf. He swears by them, says those books changed his life.”
Nate’s eyes flicked toward me, not surprised, but with the kind of look that said he’d seen this before. “Yeah,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “That makes sense.” He didn’t need to elaborate. I knew what he meant. My housemate had lived through the era when those books weren’t just read—they were devoured. The Teachings of Don Juan wasn’t just a manual; it was a map for people who felt like they were lost, a guide to places you couldn’t see but could almost touch if you just knew how to look.
Maybe that’s what it all boiled down to—looking too hard. Trying to peel back the layers, to see the gears grinding beneath the surface, those unseen forces we weren’t supposed to touch. It’s a dangerous thing, chasing the truth like that. Some doors, once opened, don’t close easily. And here I was, standing at the edge of that same threshold, wondering if the next step would bring me closer to understanding or drag me down into the same madness that swallowed the settlers at Jamestown all those years ago.
But even as the thought crossed my mind, the words felt like a distraction. This wasn’t about what I’d read in the past. This wasn’t about some half-remembered lesson from a book. This was about now, about what was sitting in my garden, waiting. The Jimson weed had its own language, its own pull, and somehow, I’d already started following its lead. The rules? They were something I’d have to figure out—if there were any.
Nate leaned in again, his voice low, tethered to a memory that felt heavier than it should. “Remember the part in Don Juan where the guy gets that datura balm? Don Juan warns him—don’t use too much. Of course, he does. Rubs it right into his forehead.” He tapped his fingers against his temple, the same place where Castaneda’s apprentice had applied the balm. “And then next thing you know, he’s a crow, flying out of his own body.”
I let out a dry laugh, the story flickering through my mind like a reel of old film, edges frayed and jumpy, a scene from another lifetime. “Yeah,” I said, the memory catching up with me. “I’d forgotten about that one.”
But the laugh didn’t land right. It felt out of place, like I was trying to shake off something I couldn’t quite ignore. Nate didn’t laugh either. He just nodded, letting the moment stretch thin between us.
A customer wandered up to his stall then, offering a reprieve from the tension. Nate turned to help, but not before shooting me a glance, something sharp and serious behind his otherwise casual demeanor. “Just be careful,” he said, the words cutting through the space like a cold wind, heavy with the weight of people who’d come before me. People who didn’t listen. People who thought they could handle it.
The customer didn’t notice, too busy picking through the tomatoes. But I felt it, deep in my gut. Nate wasn’t just handing out advice—he was handing out a warning, passed down like an heirloom from those who’d seen too much and lived to talk about it.
The Hopi and other Indigenous peoples had long known the dual nature of jimson weed. It wasn’t just a hallucinogen; it was a bridge—a way to connect with spirits, ancestors, and forces that shaped the unseen world. In their rituals, the plant was treated with reverence, its power understood and respected. It wasn’t for idle use. The journey it offered required preparation and knowledge, a risk only the wise dared take. For those with the insight to wield it, jimson weed wasn’t just a drug—it was a guide through the unknown.
They handled it with precision, grinding seeds and leaves into a fine powder, tempering its potency with other elements, always mindful of the thin line between insight and destruction. In small, careful doses, they used it to slip into altered states, where the veil between worlds thinned, and visions emerged from the shadows. Through Jimson weed, they sought wisdom from spirits, clarity in times of crisis, glimpses of truths too vast for ordinary perception. Theirs was a tradition steeped in reverence, passed down through generations—each one learning to respect the plant’s gifts and its perils. In their hands, the plant became a tool for spiritual exploration, its dangers acknowledged and carefully managed. Their mastery was passed down through generations, a sharp contrast to the reckless edge of my own curiosity.
Over time, the plant’s reputation shifted—from mystical gateway to deadly substance. For those who didn’t understand—or thought they could handle it—it became a trap, its alkaloids twisting reality into something unrecognizable. Scopolamine, atropine, hyoscyamine—these names rang out like gunshots, substances capable of obliterating the senses—turning the mind inward to face its own fractures. Jimson weed held up a mirror, revealing profound truths to some, while driving others to madness. The line between those two outcomes was thin, and I could feel myself standing at its edge, unsure which way I would fall.
The plant had burrowed its way into my thoughts, an invisible thread tugging at me. Even when I wasn’t in the garden, it clung to the back of my mind, like a presence hovering just out of sight. That creeping unease shadowed me, a constant reminder that the plant was watching—waiting. It wasn’t just a plant anymore; it was something sentient, a force that had taken root inside me, feeding off my uncertainty.
Not long after Nate brought up that passage from Don Juan, I asked my 83-year-old housemate if I could borrow his Castaneda books. He raised an eyebrow, curious but cautious. “What for?”
“Remember the datura in the garden?” I said.
He nodded, his gaze sharpening. “Yeah, I remember.”
I leaned in, lowering my voice. “I’ve got an idea.”
A flicker of light broke through the haze that had been hanging over him for days. Castaneda always did that to him—took him back to a time when he believed in transformations, in the impossible.
Barry is 83, but you wouldn’t guess it by the way he moves through the world—slow, yes, but deliberate, as if every step he takes is grounded in a kind of wisdom only decades of experience can bring. He was once a neurologist, sharp and clinical, the kind of man who built his life around Western medicine, science, and reason. But all that changed after he took ayahuasca in the late ’80s. It wasn’t a recreational experiment for him—it was a seismic shift, a reckoning with everything he thought he knew. The trip tore down the walls of his rigid, scientific world and opened up something far more expansive and mystical.
After that, Barry couldn’t go back. He gave up his practice, walked away from the sterile world of hospitals and prescriptions, and carved out a different path. Now he works part-time at a health food grocery store, stationed in the vitamin department, doling out advice to customers looking for holistic cures, herbal supplements, and ancient remedies. There’s a quiet irony there—he went from writing prescriptions for pharmaceutical drugs to recommending turmeric and magnesium. Yet he approaches it all with the same gravity he once reserved for neurosurgery. He believes in what he does, believes in the power of plants, minerals, and the mind’s ability to heal itself.
We’ve been housemates for 20 years, with our share of problems, but living in a kind of unspoken harmony, with his bookshelves full of Castaneda, Ram Dass, and Seth crowding the walls. Barry’s the kind of man who walks with one foot in this world and the other in some ancient, mystical realm, the kind of guy who’s just as likely to be found meditating in the garden as he is chopping vegetables for a salad. He doesn’t lecture, but when he speaks, there’s a weight to his words, a depth that suggests he’s seen and lived through things most people can’t even imagine. His past as a doctor is almost a shadow now, a former life that lingers just out of sight, replaced by this other, more grounded version of himself.
He still has that sharp, observant mind of a neurologist, but it’s tempered by years of reflection, by the plant medicine journeys that took him far beyond the confines of medical textbooks. He believes deeply in the unseen, in the way energy flows through people and things, how the universe speaks to those willing to listen. His faith in magic, in the power of intention, has never wavered, even after all these years. That’s who Barry is—part mystic, part healer, a man who traded scalpels for sage, but never lost his edge.
That afternoon, I sifted through the yellowed pages of his dog-eared paperbacks, looking for something tangible, something real. I found the passage where the man becomes a crow, but it was all metaphor, nothing practical. No recipe. No steps. Castaneda was all broad strokes, painting in a way that blurred reality and vision, leaving you to wonder where one ended and the other began.
His words were like smoke, twisting around you, making you question where the ground ended and the sky began. The thing is, when you’re already drifting between worlds, it doesn’t take much to push you through. And that’s when it clicked. A single line on the page, like a match struck in a dark room, illuminated something I hadn’t been willing to admit. Datura, jimson weed—it wasn’t just a plant. It was a doorway, a tool for those who knew how to use it, a conduit between this world and whatever lay beyond it. The shamans in Castaneda’s stories knew that line well. They feared it, respected it, understood that once you stepped over, there was no turning back. And I was already halfway across.
The idea sank its teeth into me and wouldn’t let go. I could feel the pull, the slow unraveling of reason that starts when something whispers at the edges of your mind and makes you question everything. The plant had chosen me, or maybe I had chosen it. Either way, it had woven itself into the fabric of my thoughts. The more I tried to shake it off, the deeper it dug in, burrowing beneath the surface until it became impossible to ignore. I wasn’t looking for trouble—but it had found me anyway. And now, it felt like it had always been waiting, patient, watching, just out of reach until the moment was right.
Later that night, I found myself on the fringes of the internet, drawn into one of those dimly lit chatrooms where people whispered about mind-altering plants and ancient remedies as if they were secrets passed down through generations. It was the kind of place where everyone spoke in half-truths, never revealing too much but giving just enough to let you know they’d been there—that they knew the darkness you were inching toward. The screen cast a cold glow on my face as I scrolled through threads, half-expecting to find nothing but empty talk. But buried deep in a forgotten post from years ago, I found it. A recipe. A man had shared how he made a balm from jimson weed leaves, claiming it worked for joint pain.
‘But tread lightly,’ he warned. ‘This isn’t aspirin.’
His words clung to me, sharp like a needle under the skin, just enough to remind me that danger was part of the bargain. Yet, they didn’t scare me off. They couldn’t. Something had already shifted inside me. I printed the recipe, telling myself it was just for reference, that it wasn’t a commitment. But there was something in the way the ink dried on the page that felt like inevitability, like the plant had been guiding me all along, waiting for this moment to reveal itself. Destiny. Or something darker. Either way, it was too late to turn back now.
I printed the recipe, telling myself it was just for reference, but there was something about it that felt like destiny, like the plant had been waiting for me to find this.
By mid-August, the jimson weed had grown wilder, more menacing. The seed pods emerged like medieval armor, thorned and heavy, their spikes curling outward like they’d been forged in a furnace. The plant itself seemed darker, its leaves denser, the air around it dimming as though it absorbed the sunlight, drawing it in like a black hole. There was a raw beauty in its violence, a dangerous allure that stirred something deep and primal. It felt alive, more than any ordinary thing growing in the soil—it felt like something conjured from the edges of a fever dream, summoned rather than grown.
Thorns, spines, prickles—each a different adaptation of survival. Thorns rose from the plant’s core, turning branches into weapons. Spines, emerging from leaves, traded vulnerability for defense. Prickles, the least deep, could still draw blood, a reminder that even the smallest defenses have their price. In plants, like in people, the evolution of armor comes from necessity, a response to the threats that shape them. Each wound leaves its own scar, marking both the cost of survival and the strength it brings.
Jimson weed grew spines, not from leaves, but straight from its seed pods—a natural armor protecting what lay inside. That knowledge didn’t calm my nerves. It only deepened the feeling that this plant didn’t belong here. It was too wild, too primitive for the orderly rows of the community garden.The more I understood about it, the more its presence unnerved me. This wasn’t just some exotic curiosity—it was a predator, lying in wait, like a copperhead coiled in the grass.
For some reason, it seemed essential to know these things, to get them right. Like knowing the difference between aspirin and cyanide. It was the kind of knowledge that allowed you to move carefully, to know when to touch and when to pull back.
I couldn’t shake the sense that I was feeding more than just a plant. Each time I poured water at its roots, it felt like an offering—a silent pact with whatever force had drawn this thing into my life. This wasn’t just a garden anymore. It had become a place where something waited, something that had slipped in quietly, now watching from the shadows.
Over the next few days, the air in the garden seemed to change. The plants swayed in the breeze as usual, but there was a stillness underneath, a silence that didn’t belong. It wasn’t just the passage of time—it was as if the space itself had shifted, the balance of life and light somehow altered. The jimson weed cast a strange energy over the garden, like it was claiming more than its share of sunlight. With each visit, the feeling grew, settling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was paranoia or instinct, but I knew one thing—it wasn’t just me anymore. The garden felt crowded with something that hadn’t been there before.
Jane came by the garden on one of those days. We sat at the same picnic table, the afternoon light slanting through the plants, casting long shadows across the soil. Her fingers traced the edge of a joint, her gaze distant, lost somewhere beyond the plants, as if she were still recovering from the accident. Despite everything, she looked well—better than I would have expected after flipping her car. There was a calm to her, the kind that comes from narrowly avoiding something worse.
“Remember that plant you gave me?” I asked, pointing at the Jimson Weed, “That one with the spiny pods. What do you know about it?”
The weeds along the path had grown wild, untamed. The Jimson weed was among them, its broad, toxic leaves casting small, dark shadows on the earth, the spiny pods swelling like they had absorbed all evil in the air, ready to burst.
She took a drag on her joint, absentmindedly. “The chamomile?”
“No, not that one,” I said. “The other one.”
For a moment, she stared at me blankly, her face unreadable, then her lips curled into a small, dry smile—a flicker of the old Jane returning, like a match sparking to life. “Oh, that one,” she said, her voice light but distant. “Honestly, I didn’t know much about it when I gave it to you. It just… caught my eye.”
“Where’d you get it?” I asked, feeling like there was more to the story than she was letting on.
She let out a small laugh and walked over to the plant, fingers grazing its leaves. “I found it when I was visiting my mom in Pennsylvania. She saw me looking at this plant on her property, and next thing I knew, she was sending me some seeds. I grew it on the rooftop of my apartment. Not sure what it is, but the flowers are pretty, and I like the thorny pods.”
She touched one of the spiny pods, her hand lingering like she was lost in thought. For a second, it was hard to tell if she was speaking to me or to the plant itself.
There was something unsettling about the way she said it—too casual, almost dismissive, like it was just another garden-variety plant. But I could feel something deeper, a presence, an energy humming beneath the surface. It didn’t feel like some random rooftop experiment. It felt intentional, almost too convenient, like it had found its way to me through her, as if we were part of something larger, a game we didn’t even realize we were playing.
“Did you know it’s used in witchcraft? That it’s one of the most poisonous plants on the planet?” I asked, my voice walking that fine line between caution and curiosity.
She turned to look at me, her brow furrowing slightly. “No kidding?” Her voice shifted, tinged with satisfaction. This news fit neatly into the way she saw herself—a pagan at heart, a dabbler in the mysterious and wild, someone who instinctively flirted with magic. “So it’s not just a pretty plant?”
“It’s called Jimson Weed. Ever heard of it?”
“No,” she replied, the word slow, as if she were tasting it, weighing its meaning.
“Thorn Apple? Devil’s Snare? Loco Weed?”
Still nothing. The afternoon sun cast long shadows through its broad, dark leaves, as if the plant itself were listening.
“No.”
“Devil’s Trumpet, Jamestown Weed, Hell’s Bells, Mad Apple?”
For a moment, I thought I saw something flicker in her eyes, a small spark of recognition or maybe just intrigue. She shook her head. “No, but I like the names.”
Her casual curiosity made me uneasy. The names weren’t just catchy labels—they were warnings, echoes from people who’d tangled with this plant and regretted it. But something in her—maybe in both of us—was drawn to the danger, unable to resist the pull. We stood there, teetering at the edge of something we couldn’t fully grasp, but all the more tempted because of it.
“The names fit,” I said, letting each name hang in the stillness between us. “It’s part of the nightshade family—same as tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco. But this one’s different. It’s loaded with alkaloids, the kind that can either kill you or make you lose your mind.”
“Interesting,” she murmured, her eyes shifting back to the plant, as if seeing it in a new light. “So… it’s dangerous?”
There was a subtle shift in her tone, a quiet draw toward the danger itself.
“Lethal,” I said, watching her reaction.
Her laugh came quick, sharp, cutting through the air with an edge that caught me off guard. “That’s funny. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I didn’t know what it was, but something about it…” She trailed off, eyes narrowing as the truth settled in. “It just pulled me in. Makes sense now.”
It did. Too much sense. There was something deliberate in how this plant had found its way into my life, like it had chosen us, winding its roots deep into the cracks we hadn’t even noticed. Neither of us fully understood where it was leading. I nodded, “It’s not just some random weed.”
Jane extended her hand, offering me a hit of her joint. “That’s crazy,” she murmured, her voice trailing off, as if trying to thread together the threads of something too wild to pin down.
I took a drag, the smoke rough in my throat, lingering bitterly in my lungs. Then the garden gate creaked open, its rusty hinges breaking the moment. Instinctively, I palmed the joint, blowing the smoke away in a hurry.
Kim walked in, her two daughters trailing behind her like perfectly dressed shadows. Another community gardener with her own plot, she wasn’t just passing through—she belonged here, as much as any of us. This was a public space, technically open to anyone, but we treated it like a private sanctuary. An unspoken rule among the gardeners, we acted like it was ours, our secret refuge.
Kim moved with purpose. Short but fit, she was the kind of woman who could make a garden feel like a boardroom. Her hair, perfectly highlighted, framed a face that rarely gave anything away. Always dressed in designer athleisure, she walked the line between casual and polished—ready for a yoga class or a PTA meeting at a moment’s notice. She wore her ambition like a badge. A yuppie with an edge, she blended Stanford polish with a laid-back vibe that felt rehearsed. Living in the neighborhood, she knew everyone—families, kids, even the dogs by name.
Kim and her husband were new to the community garden, but they’d already made their mark, turning it into a more family-friendly space, a place where their kids could run safely. To her, this was a hobby, a wellness boost, another box to tick off her lifestyle checklist. The garden was another project, something to gentrify and perfect. She envisioned tidy rows of herbs, colorful flowers, and maybe even a small play area for the kids. Kim moved with purpose, already molding the garden to fit her image—one family-friendly improvement at a time. The wild, tangled mess of plants didn’t sit well with her. She saw potential, but not in the chaotic beauty that had always been there. It was the potential to reshape, to tame, to turn it into something more structured, more controlled.
Her energy was relentless—always planning, organizing. Even her casual conversations felt like they had an agenda. She’d come up to me with questions like, “Should we be landscaping the outside area of the garden?” She asked like it was an SAT question, her tone more testing than curious. When I’d shrug and say I didn’t know, I could see the judgment in her eyes, masked by a friendly smile. There was something insecure and condescending about her, a mix that made me nervous. It felt like she was always evaluating, sizing up whether I belonged in this vision of hers.
But for all her polish, there was a tension in Kim, too. Something just below the surface, like a hairline crack in the carefully maintained veneer. It was subtle, but it was there—in her eyes, in the way her hands hovered, never fully at ease, like she was bracing for something to fall apart. She carried an invisible weight, like she was holding her breath, waiting for a crack to show in the life she’d carefully constructed.
The jimson weed didn’t fit into her world. The jimson weed was everything she wasn’t. It didn’t fit into her manicured, structured life. With its spiny pods and strange, toxic beauty, it was wild and unpredictable—an outlier in her carefully controlled world. If she knew what it was, what I was growing just a few feet away, she’d probably want me arrested. She’d see it as a threat, a danger to her perfect little vision. But the jimson weed was a reminder of what the garden had been before people like Kim—before anyone had tried to tame it.
This was a clash of two worlds—the garden I knew was something else entirely. You had to duck beneath the low-hanging fig branches, feel the sting of blackberry thorns on your skin as you passed. It was alive, unpredictable. The kind of place where you might stumble upon a snake weaving through the undergrowth, its scales glinting in the sunlight, or catch sight of a stray cat, a rat clenched in its teeth, vanishing into the brush. It wasn’t just a garden—it was a world of its own, wild and untamable.
Kim’s younger daughter skipped alongside her, curls bouncing, carefree. The older one trailed behind, already mirroring her mother’s posture—straight-backed, hair neatly falling in a smooth curtain. There was something in the way she carried herself, though, that felt too careful, like she was always looking for approval, glancing toward Kim every few steps, afraid of stepping out of line. Her tie-dye shirt hinted at rebellion, but her cautious movements told another story. She had the look of someone used to being watched.
Kim’s eyes flicked over us—just a glance, but enough to make me shift, hiding the joint in my palm.
Kim’s gaze flicked toward us—a quick glance, but enough to make me shift, hiding the joint in my palm. Her smile was bright, practiced. “Hi, how are you?” she asked, her voice smooth, not missing a beat. If she saw the joint, she didn’t show it.
“Fine, thanks. You?” I replied, matching her tone, paranoia buzzing beneath my words.
Kim and her daughters busied themselves with watering their strawberry patch, their laughter mingling with the soft rustle of leaves in the afternoon breeze.
I caught Jane’s eye, a flicker of unspoken understanding passing between us. Without a word, we stashed the joint, packed up, and left before Kim could find a reason to dig deeper.
I didn’t hear from Jane for a few days after that. When we finally spoke, it was surface-level—weather, garden progress, the kind of small talk that filled time but left nothing behind. Nevertheless, something had shifted.
Meanwhile, the more I learned about the plant, the more it unsettled me. The jimson weed was no longer just a curiosity or a symbol of defiance. It was dangerous—deadly, even. Ten, twenty seeds, maybe fewer, could kill an adult. For a child, it would take even less. This wasn’t just a hazard—it was a loaded gun, waiting for the wrong hand to pull the trigger.
But those spiny pods, sharp and menacing, were impossible to ignore. I kept thinking about the other gardeners, about some unsuspecting person brushing too close, or worse—one of the dogs swallowing a seed, dying before anyone could even figure out what had happened. It felt like I’d brought something into this space that didn’t belong. Something that could tear apart the fragile peace we all pretended existed here.
My unease deepened when I arrived at the garden one afternoon to find that some of the pods had split open. Their skins had peeled back, naturally, exposing the seeds inside. The seeds rested in their open husks like tiny cups brimming with death—black, hard seeds as dark as coffee. A chill ran through me.
With a pair of scissors, I carefully snipped off the pods, trying to contain the seeds, each one a potential killer. As I worked, one of the pods pricked my finger. My heart hammered as I waited for the dizziness, for my legs to buckle beneath me. But nothing came. It was just a prick, nothing more.
I learned quickly that I couldn’t handle the pods barehanded, not after that first prick. So I wrapped my fingers in a paper towel, careful not to let the sharp spines dig into my skin. The pod felt brittle yet dangerous between my hands, like something that could snap or bite at any second.
I carried the pods over to the picnic table, where I’d spread out a canvas bag, its rough surface ready to catch whatever spilled. Gently, I lowered the pod onto the fabric, its spiny shell cracking under the pressure of my hand as I rolled another canvas bag over it, slow and deliberate. The brittle spines gave way with a soft crunch, collapsing under the weight. Then, like a tap turned on too fast, the seeds tumbled out—dozens, maybe hundreds of them—scattering across the canvas like tiny black beans, each one potent enough to kill. They shimmered in the fading light, hard and small, the weight of their potential heavier than the seeds themselves.
I peeled back the split skin, its rough texture scraping my fingers, and snipped it free with the scissors, each piece falling away like something sacred. Pressing my fingers into the exposed flesh of the pod, I felt its spongy folds—soft, damp, unsettlingly intimate. The seeds slipped through my fingers, scattering like droplets of water, some disappearing into the cracks of the picnic table. For a moment, a strange euphoria washed over me, a contact high, brief and disorienting, as if the plant was whispering its ancient, dark magic into my ear.
I paused, looking down at the seeds now scattered on the canvas, tiny and lethal. They looked harmless, almost inviting in their smallness, but I knew what they were capable of. They were alive in a way I hadn’t considered before, something older than I could grasp, something far beyond my control.
As I worked, a hornet appeared, its angry buzz cutting through the stillness. At first, I tried to ignore it, hoping it would lose interest, but it was relentless, circling my head, growing more aggressive with each pass. I got up and stepped away, giving it space, but when I returned, it was back, louder, more insistent.
I’d never seen a hornet in the garden before. “It’s a protector of the plant,” I thought. “It’s here for a reason.” Like the pods, the hornet had its own weapon—its stinger, a defense as natural as the spines on the Jimson weed. My head grew heavy, the world blurring at the edges. Was this a test? A message? Did the hornet demand something from me, or was it my place to destroy it?
I told myself it was just a hornet, but the buzzing wouldn’t stop. I felt the weight of a decision pressing down on me. Kill it, I thought. It’s the only way. I reached for a stick, my hand moving slowly, deliberately, as if under a spell. I waited, tense, and with a swift motion, I knocked it to the ground.
For a moment, it lay there, stunned, its wings twitching in the dirt. I moved in to crush it beneath my foot, but before I could act, it recovered, lifting off into the air with a furious whirr, disappearing over the garden fence. I watched it go, a strange mix of relief and regret settling over me.
Had I done the right thing? Why had I tried to kill it? I sat down on the bench, the weight of my actions lingering, a knot tightening in my chest. The hornet was protecting the Jimson weed—wasn’t it? And yet I had tried to destroy it, just as the plant seemed to want to destroy me.
The hornet wasn’t just an insect—it felt bound to the plant, and somehow, to me. The Jimson weed had woven us all into its web—me, the hornet, the seeds—all connected by an invisible thread, ancient and unbreakable. Each moment with the plant felt like a step deeper into something I no longer could control, something older and darker than I had ever imagined.
I had just finished tucking the Jimson seed pods and plant parts into the canvas bag, making sure they were out of sight. The garden felt quiet—too quiet—as I brushed the last of the seeds from the picnic table into my palm, except for the ones that had slipped into the cracks between the slats. I folded the canvas bag carefully, a layer of fabric separating the pods from the outside world, as if that could somehow contain their potential for harm.
Kim and her daughters had shown up about ten minutes earlier, their voices soft but distinct, drifting in from the far end of the garden. They were gathering flowers—roses, zinnias, cosmos—for a bouquet Kim had promised her youngest. I could hear the rustle of stems being cut, the shuffle of feet as they moved through the beds. A calm washed over me, knowing I’d already finished with the Jimson weed, its seed pods safely hidden away before they got too close.
As I packed up my things, Kim’s older daughter wandered over from the far side of the garden. Kim followed close behind, a freshly picked bouquet of flowers and roses cradled in her hands. They were heading toward my cosmos, which grew just next to the Jimson weed.
“Look at the pretty flowers,” I said, referring to the bouquet, injecting as much warmth as I could into my voice, though my guard was still up.
“Can I pick some of these?” the girl asked, her eyes bright as she pointed at the cosmos, the delicate pink and white petals swaying gently.
“You better ask first,” Kim advised, her tone measured, as if she were balancing the scales of politeness and caution.
“Of course,” I said, managing a smile. “Go ahead. They’ll grow back, and they’ll look lovely in your bouquet.”
The girl bent down to pluck a few blooms, but her gaze shifted, catching on the plant that stood out among the more familiar greenery. “What kind of cactus is that?” she asked, pointing directly at the jimson weed with a mix of curiosity and wariness.
I hesitated, the question hanging in the air between us. “Oh, that?” I said slowly, buying time. “I don’t think it’s a cactus.”
Kim’s attention snapped to the plant, her eyes narrowing with that same calculating suspicion she often wore when something didn’t fit her plans. “Yeah, what is that?” she pressed, her tone sharp enough to cut through any pretense.
“I’m not exactly sure,” I replied, choosing my words carefully. “A friend of mine gave it to us because it had such beautiful flowers. The spiky things you see are just the seed pods. The flower was so striking that I thought I’d try to harvest some of the seeds.”
Kim studied the plant, her brow furrowing as if it were a puzzle she needed to solve. “It’s a weird-looking plant,” she finally remarked, her voice laced with unease.
“Well, yes,” I conceded, keeping my tone as neutral as possible. “Those spikes, I mean spines, technically they’re spines, are something, aren’t they? That’s why I tied it back against the wall. I didn’t want anyone accidentally brushing against it.”
“Yeah,” Kim said, her voice flattening with an edge of finality. “Those look like they could be dangerous. That’s a scary plant.”
I could feel the tension thick in the air, Kim’s unspoken judgment clinging to me like a shadow. Without another word, I finished packing my things, my fingers tightening around the canvas bag, the weight of it pulling me down as though it were filled with stones instead of seeds and plant parts. As I walked away, the heat of Kim’s glare burned into my back.
The tension from the garden clung to me like a second skin, a cold knot in my gut that coiled tighter with every block I passed. I could feel it there, festering, growing like a sickness.
By the time I reached the front steps of my apartment, the sun had dipped low, casting long shadows that stretched across the cracked pavement. The familiar cityscape had shifted in my absence, as if the world had tilted slightly off balance, and I was just now noticing the slant. Everything around me—the hum of cars, the distant conversations floating up from the street—felt distorted, muffled, like a dream you can’t fully wake from. Even the air tasted different, thick with something I couldn’t name.
My mind was elsewhere, consumed by the quiet pulse of the jimson weed hidden in my bag, alive with its own energy. I could feel it as I unlocked the door, the cold metal of the key against my palm, the quiet click of the lock giving way. Stepping inside, the creak of the floorboards beneath me and the faint smell of damp walls felt distant, like echoes of a life that belonged to someone else. Everything seemed muted, drowned out by the weight of what I’d brought into my home.
Inside, the kitchen felt like a sanctuary, a place where the outside world couldn’t reach me. I took the jimson weed out of the bag, laying it on the counter with trepidation. The leaves were a deep, almost unnatural green, and as I rinsed them under the faucet, the water seemed to slide off their surface as if the plant refused to be touched. The seed pods, heavy and bristling with spines, clinked softly in the sink like bones rattling in a drawer.
I reached for the printed recipe, the one I’d found during that late-night internet search, tucked between other notes I wasn’t sure I’d ever need. It was crude but detailed enough: heat the oil, add the leaves, let it steep. Simple. But the words on the page felt incomplete, a translation from a language only half understood. I glanced back at the jimson weed, its presence heavy in the room, reminding me of every warning I’d ignored. I told myself I knew enough. I’d read, researched. I could handle it. I was in control.
The motions were deliberate, careful—less like cooking and more like performing some forgotten ritual. I set the crockpot on the counter and filled it with coconut oil, the thick liquid catching the kitchen light. Slowly, I lowered the jimson weed leaves into the pot, watching them drift below the surface, swallowed up by the oil. For a moment, they seemed to disappear altogether, but then they settled, suspended, like something lying in wait.
As the pot warmed, the kitchen grew thick with a scent that clung to the air like humidity after a storm—earthy, rich, and laced with the musk of decay. It was ancient, untamed, a smell that carried with it something unsettling, as if the soil had given up a secret it was never meant to share. Slow, curling tendrils of steam rose from the pot, twisting like cigarette smoke, snaking their way around me, crawling into my lungs and settling deep in my chest. It wasn’t just a smell anymore; it was something heavier, alive, spreading through the room, coiling in the corners, creeping into my thoughts.
I stood there, motionless, feeling the plant’s presence pushing back, reminding me of my place. There was no question who held the power here. I could feel it. The scent was pulling at me, testing the boundaries I thought I’d set. The steam swirled, wrapping me in an atmosphere that felt both familiar and alien, as if the walls of my apartment had been pulled back to reveal a world far older than my own. With each breath, I drew the scent deeper into my lungs, feeling it settle inside me, a living presence that seeped into my thoughts, merging with them, until it was impossible to tell where the plant ended and I began.
The smell was overwhelming, an aroma so primal that it seemed to carry the weight of centuries, a scent that had been breathed in by countless others across time. My head felt strangely hollow, as though the vapors had reached in and loosened something in me, twisting it just enough to unsettle the edges of my mind. I had the sense that I’d crossed a line, ventured into a space where I didn’t belong, where nothing modern could reconcile the weight of what I was doing.
The crockpot, the appliances—they felt absurd now, laughable in their modernity, their clean lines and sterile efficiency out of place in a ritual that stretched back through history. There was something almost profane in the act of using them for this. I imagined the hands that had worked with this plant before mine, stained dark by its sap, guided by knowledge passed down through generations, a language I hadn’t even begun to speak. And here I was, fumbling with instructions I’d printed off the internet, thinking I could control something that had slipped through history’s cracks, something far beyond my grasp.
My thoughts wandered to the Hopi, their reverence for the jimson weed like a knife’s edge between respect and fear. They knew the plant’s power, wielding it with caution, understanding the dangers better than I ever could. To them, this plant was far more than a simple herb—it was a conduit to the spiritual world, a bridge to the ancestors, used only in the most sacred of rituals.
I let the oil and plant simmer in the crockpot overnight. As the hours dragged on, the scent grew thicker, saturating the air until it felt like the walls themselves were exhaling it. I could smell it even in my bedroom, the aroma clinging to my clothes, to my skin, as if the plant itself had somehow become a part of me. When I finally lay down, sleep kept its distance, my mind flickering with restless, half-formed images that refused to stay in place. And when I did drift off, it wasn’t into the usual darkness—it was into something alive, nightmares crawling up from the soil, pulsing with an ancient energy that gripped me tight. The jimson weed had taken root, not just in my home, but in my mind, its presence a constant, inescapable shadow.
Lying in bed, pinned beneath the weight of the night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the plant. Its grip was relentless, tightening with every breath. It wasn’t just in my home anymore—it was inside me, threading through my veins. My thoughts drifted to its poisons, each one unlocking a different door to madness.
Atropine—the chemical that widened pupils, quickened heartbeats—was known for throwing people into feverish delirium, leaving them disoriented and helpless, drifting between realities. Then there was hyoscyamine, the one that stopped muscle spasms but dried up everything else. It parched your throat, hollowed you out, pushed your organs to the edge of collapse. And scopolamine—that was the worst of them. The devil’s own breath. It could strip away your memories, distort reality into a paranoid hellscape where nothing made sense. It didn’t just alter your mind; it tore at the seams of reality itself, twisting the world into a paranoid nightmare where nothing made sense, where everything was a lethal threat.
The plant’s history was as dark as the compounds it held, a shadow stretching across time. And now it was here, with me, its tendrils sinking deeper, pulling me into its world.
In South America, it wasn’t just a medicine; it was a weapon. A whisper of scopolamine, barely a dusting of powder, could turn a person into a puppet, stripping away their will. Extracted from plants like Datura or Brugmansia, a small dose could disorient, making someone suggestible, wiping out their ability to form memories. Criminals used it to unlock doors, empty bank accounts, turn ordinary people into accomplices in their own undoing.
A drink spiked at a bar, a powder blown into the face—within minutes, the victim would be under its spell, moving and speaking like normal, but with their mind trapped in a haze. They’d hand over everything, wake up hours later with no memory, just a faint dread clinging to the edges of their consciousness. But high doses? They brought worse—hallucinations, seizures, death. There was a reason the plant was feared, a reason it was considered one of the world’s most dangerous.
These alkaloids were a toxic trinity—each one capable of wreaking havoc on its own, but together, they became something far more dangerous. A marriage of chaos. A blend of poisons that could unravel a mind, a body, an entire life. It didn’t take much—10, maybe 20 seeds—and an adult could be sent spiraling into convulsions, a coma, or worse. For a child? The line between life and death was so thin, it might as well not even exist. Every time I tried to push the thoughts away, they circled back, more insistent, gnawing at the edges of my sanity.
What was I thinking, bringing this plant into my life? What kind of madness had taken root in me?
That night, sleep came in jagged, broken shards, splintered by nightmares that crawled out of the darkest corners of my mind. I saw Kim’s daughter, her small hands clutching a seed pod like a treasure, her innocent face warping, contorting into something grotesque. Her smile split unnaturally wide, then collapsed into a lifeless void—her eyes gone blank, hollow, staring through me. Her skin turned sickly pale, veins darkening beneath the surface, as if the poison was seeping into her, taking root. The dream shifted and twisted, her frail body shrinking into the earth, and the plant surged—its vines thickening, curling around her, choking the life from her as it spread, blooming wildly. It swallowed the garden, the house, everything—its tendrils creeping toward me, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop it.
I jolted awake, my heart racing, the weight of the plant pressing down on me even in the dark. Maybe keeping it in the garden was a mistake, a dangerous indulgence driven by curiosity, or maybe something darker. What if Kim’s daughter wandered too close, her innocent curiosity drawn to the strange, spiky pods? I could see it so clearly—the way children do, on impulse, without thinking—her fingers pulling one free, holding it to her mouth. The thought sent a shiver through me, a creeping dread I couldn’t shake.
Why would she? I didn’t know, but I also knew it didn’t matter. Children didn’t need reasons; they acted on instinct. And it wouldn’t take much. Ten seeds, maybe fewer. Five? Even less for a child. The uncertainty gnawed at me, a silent terror burrowing deeper with each passing thought. Was any of this worth the risk of a child’s life? Was I really willing to gamble with something so dangerous? What was I doing, nurturing this lethal, insane thing in my backyard?
Just before dawn, I woke to the frantic sound of crows clawing and pecking at the skylight above my attic bedroom. It wasn’t the first time; my landlord had started feeding pigeons, and now the backyard was a breeding ground for all kinds of creatures—rats, squirrels, and lately, crows I often heard their claws dragging across the glass, their footsteps tapping above me. They’d scream when I left the house, like they were guarding something. But today, it felt different. Their calls cut through the last fragments of my dreams, their screeching relentless, as if something had stirred them, driven them to madness.
They threw themselves against the skylight, wings beating furiously, bodies slamming into the glass like they were trying to break through. I lay there, staring at their dark shapes against the bruised sky, a knot of unease tightening in my chest. It felt deliberate, as if something had stirred them, driven them mad. And I couldn’t shake the thought that it wasn’t just the pigeons or the food that had drawn them. No, this was something else. The plant’s presence pressed against me, heavy and insistent, like it had whispered its secrets into their black feathers, calling them here for reasons I didn’t want to understand.
I was drenched in sweat by the time I woke fully, heart racing, the echoes of the dream still clinging to the edges of my mind. But when morning finally broke, the sharp terror of the night dulled, swallowed by the pale light of day. My fears, so vivid in the dark, faded into the background, like shadows retreating. There was still work to be done, and I pushed the night’s visions aside, burying them beneath the demands of the morning.
I went into the kitchen and pulled on two pairs of blue latex gloves—the kind from the doctor’s office. I’d swiped a box of them when the doctor stepped out during my last visit, slipping them into my bag without a second thought. Now, with the gloves doubled up, my hands felt clumsy, but the inconvenience outweighed the potential alternative. Better that than touching the plant directly, risking exposure, tripping out on my own kitchen floor, my body convulsing in silence, found hours later, too late to save.
With a steady hand, I strained the cooked plant parts, now reduced to a dark, soggy mass, and poured the thick coconut oil through coffee filters. It dripped slowly into a glass jar, the color deepening into the shade of a pine forest at dusk. The spines from the plant pricked at my gloves, a constant, minor irritation, each prick a reminder of the danger I was flirting with. I couldn’t shake the thought of them piercing through, just once, injecting me with the plant’s essence, a quick, unseen sting that would start the slow infusion of madness. As the last of the oil filtered through, I stared at the jar, its contents now a dark, gleaming green. A question lingered in the back of my mind, one I couldn’t quite answer: what had I created, and why?
The kitchen grew quiet, the ticking of the wall clock the only sound breaking the stillness. I felt a strange mix of satisfaction and unease as I looked at the jar, the culmination of days spent teetering on the edge of something both forbidden and alluring. The dark liquid inside seemed to hum with potential, a dangerous promise of the unknown. The thought of discarding it briefly crossed my mind—pouring it down the drain, erasing the evidence of my reckless curiosity. But another part of me, the part that had started this journey, urged me to see it through. There was no turning back now; the creation was complete, and with it came a responsibility I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready to bear.
I left the jar on the kitchen counter, the dark liquid settling into stillness, and stepped outside. The air was sharp, cutting through the heaviness that clung to me like a shadow. I wasn’t walking anywhere in particular, just moving, hoping the streets might shake loose the unease that had taken root. But no matter how far I wandered, the jimson weed lingered in my thoughts, a presence that refused to be ignored. It simmered quietly, a low thrum beneath the ordinary sounds of the city, reminding me of what waited back home.
By the time I returned, the sun had crept higher, casting long fingers of light through the windows. Noon. I found Barry standing in the kitchen, the jar of jimson oil cradled in his hands, his face half-lit by the amber glow it cast. He was turning it slowly, letting the light filter through the liquid, as if searching for something hidden inside.
He glanced over when I walked in, his eyes narrowing with curiosity. “What’s this?” His voice had that familiar rasp, aged but sharp, like the curiosity in him had never dulled, no matter how many decades had passed.
I paused, words sticking in my throat, thick with uncertainty. “It’s… just something I’ve been working on. An experiment.” The word felt inadequate, like it didn’t capture the gravity of what was in that jar. But I wasn’t ready to tell him everything. Not yet.
His gaze sharpened, a spark of recognition flaring up from beneath the years. “Like Don Juan’s brews?” His voice softened, drenched in nostalgia. “The kind that could turn you into an animal? Make you see spirits?”
I forced a smile, but my mind was elsewhere, already tracking the potential consequences. “Yeah, something like that. But risky. Dangerous, even.”
His eyes lit up with interest, and I could see the old spark in them, the one that had never quite dimmed. “Like Don Juan’s concoctions?” he asked, his voice softening with nostalgia. “The stuff that could make you see spirits, turn into animals?”
I smiled, though it was tinged with nervousness. “Yeah, into a crow. Something like that. But it’s risky—dangerous, even.”
Barry let out that low hum, the sound he made when the weight of a thought settled deep in him. Drugs weren’t new in this place; they lived in the bones of the apartment. Mushrooms, MDMA, acid—like ghosts in the walls, remnants of a life lived on the edges of reality. The kind of substances that once cracked open his mind and reshaped everything.
I’d seen it myself—how Barry had turned his back on the old world of medicine and leaned into something far more unpredictable. He didn’t need to tell me again about the ayahuasca that rewired his brain, or how his hands once held scalpels, not sage. It was all there in the way he moved through the world now, with one foot in the mystical and the other in some long-abandoned past.
We’d gone to Peru together, chasing the same questions, both of us hungry for answers that couldn’t be found in textbooks. But for Barry, it was more than a quest—it was a continuation. His lover had started it all, years before I even came into the picture, opening the door to a world that was as dangerous as it was enlightening. They chased the magic together—burning through pages of Castaneda and Ram Dass, dissolving the boundary between what was real and what was possible.
When his lover died, the magic didn’t leave with him. It stayed, lingering in Barry’s gaze, in the quiet corners of his life, like a shadow that would never let go. And Barry—well, he held on to it, the way some people hold onto memories, refusing to let them fade.
Now, here he was, holding the jar like it was an ancient relic, a doorway to something he couldn’t resist. His eyes glinted in the light as he turned it, inspecting the liquid with the kind of reverence that comes from decades of believing in the unseen.
“Magic,” he murmured under his breath, the word almost swallowed by the silence between us. Then, louder, he said, “Can I try some?”
My heart skipped a beat. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said, my voice tight with hesitation. “This isn’t like anything we’ve tried before. It’s potent—maybe too potent.”
But he was persistent, his fascination growing. “You said it was magic. Just a little, to see what it’s like.”
I was torn. Part of me knew I should refuse, but another part—a deeper, more reckless part—was caught up in the excitement, the possibility of sharing this experience with someone who understood its significance. I was mostly confident I’d gotten the recipe right, that it was safe enough, at least in small doses. And maybe, just maybe, I wanted to see the magic work, too.
The question hung in the air, suspended between us. For a moment, I hesitated, feeling the weight of what could come next. He wasn’t afraid of risk—he never had been. But I couldn’t shake the unease coiled in the pit of my stomach. The jimson weed had a power we didn’t fully understand, something darker than the plant medicines we’d known before. And now it was here, ready to take hold if we let it.
I met his gaze and nodded, though the knot of tension in my chest refused to loosen. “Be careful,” I murmured, knowing that the words were hollow. Neither of us truly understood what that meant. Not with this. The weight of the decision pressed down on me, thickening the air in the room. There was no going back now, not really.
I sighed, the sound heavy, like a release of something I hadn’t realized I’d been holding onto. “Alright,” I said slowly, the words dragging out of me. “But just a tiny bit. If things go sideways, we wash it off. Right away.”
Barry’s eyes lit up, the eagerness in them almost childlike, a spark of the old curiosity that never left him. “Deal,” he said, a faint smile creeping up one corner of his mouth.
But then, something shifted. His face clouded for a moment, hesitation flickering across his brow as if he was weighing the gravity of it all. “Hold on,” he muttered, the brightness dimming as practicality kicked in. “Better hit the bathroom first.”
I watched as he shuffled off, his steps slower than they used to be, the years evident in the way his body moved. I felt a strange mix of relief and dread as he left the room, a brief reprieve from the tension—but only temporary. The room felt heavier in his absence, the jar of jimson oil sitting on the counter like a specter, casting shadows that seemed darker than they should’ve been.
Needing to fill the silence, I turned on the radio, and the soft strains of jazz floated through the room, mingling with the thick, nervous energy that hung in the air. The saxophone’s slow, winding melody seemed to stretch the seconds, making each moment feel like it was slipping away in slow motion.
I moved to the drawer, hands restless, and pulled out a toothpick. Rolling it between my fingers, I let the familiar motion calm me, but it did little to shake the feeling gnawing at the back of my mind. I tried to focus on the rhythm of the jazz, the way the notes seemed to hang just out of reach, like they were teasing something unspoken. But my thoughts kept circling back to the jar on the counter.
This wasn’t like ayahuasca, or peyote, or any of the other plant medicines we’d danced with before. Those had come with their own risks, sure, but this—this felt different. It was darker, more unpredictable, as if the plant was aware of what we were about to ask of it.
The toothpick snapped between my fingers, the sound sharp and sudden in the quiet. I stared down at the broken wood, the jagged edges almost mocking. I tossed it aside, feeling the weight settle back onto my shoulders. The moment was closing in, the threshold just ahead, and once we crossed it, there’d be no pretending we didn’t know what we were getting into.
I glanced back at the jar, its amber liquid catching the dim light of the room, casting faint shadows on the wall. It sat there, silent and still, but it felt alive, like it was waiting—patient, but expectant.
And the plant—well, it had been waiting for us too.
When he returned, his face a little more resolved, I took the toothpick and dipped it into the jar, pulling out a tiny, glistening dab of green oil. “Hold out your wrist,” I instructed, my voice steady despite the nervous flutter in my chest. I reached for his wrist, my hand steady as I rubbed the oil into his skin, careful to use the toothpick so I didn’t get any on myself. His arm tensed under my touch, and I could feel him holding his breath as he stared at the spot, waiting for something to happen.
“There,” I said, pulling back, watching him closely. “Now, we wait.”
He stared at the spot where the oil had been applied, his breath held in anticipation. “Feel anything?” I asked after a moment, trying to keep my tone light, though the gravity of the situation weighed heavily on me.
“Not yet,” he replied, his focus inward, searching for any sign of change. His expression was a mix of curiosity and skepticism, the kind of look that spoke of years of experience with things most people would never dare to try.
I leaned back, forcing myself to stay calm. “If you start feeling weird, we wash it off. No hesitation.”
“Not yet,” he replied, almost absently, his focus shifting inward, as if he were trying to coax some reaction from deep within himself.
“Just wait,” I said, leaning back, trying to sound casual. “If you start freaking out, just wash it off your wrist.”
He glanced at me, his expression hovering between doubt and curiosity, then back at his wrist, staring at it like he could will something extraordinary to happen. I watched him for a moment longer, but the silence between us grew heavy, filled with the anticipation of nothing.
We both got bored waiting for it to kick in, the initial excitement fading into a kind of restless uncertainty.
“If you start freaking out,” I repeated, more to fill the void than anything, “rinse it off your wrist.”
Minutes passed, and the initial excitement began to wane, replaced by a growing sense of uncertainty. I could see it in his eyes, the doubt starting to creep in. “Anything?” I asked again, more out of a need to fill the silence than anything else.
He shook his head, a little disappointment slipping into his voice. “No.”
I nodded, a mix of relief and lingering concern settling in my chest. “Just remember, if you start freaking out, wash it off immediately. And yell out to me.”
He agreed, though the gleam in his eyes had dulled, a flicker of doubt creeping in as the weight of reality settled over us. The thrill of the experiment faded, giving way to the sobering realization that perhaps, this time, the magic wouldn’t come through. I lingered for a moment, watching him with a mix of concern and resignation, before turning to leave the kitchen, my thoughts heavier than before.
As I climbed the stairs to my room, each step seemed to echo louder in the stillness, the worn carpet muffling the sound yet amplifying the silence around me. The house felt unusually quiet, the kind of quiet that presses down on you, makes you aware of every creak and groan in the old wood. My thoughts trudged along with me, growing weightier with each step, pulling me deeper into the solitude of my room in the attic.
Something on the floor caught my eye—an old newspaper, its edges curled and yellowed with age, a relic of time passed. It was dated August 15, 1996. My housemate had handed it to me recently, his hands trembling slightly as he did, as if passing on a fragile piece of his history. He often found these kinds of things among his belongings, remnants of a past that refused to stay buried.
I picked up the brittle pages, the paper crackling under my fingers as I flipped through, searching for what he had wanted me to see. Near the back, tucked away in a corner, I found it—a small obituary, easily overlooked. It was for his old lover, the man who had once shared in the new age explorations, who had lived in this very house. His presence still lingered, like a shadow in the corners, a memory that refused to fade.
He had died of AIDS, one of the countless taken by that merciless wave in the ’90s. The obituary was brief, matter-of-fact, but the details struck deep. He had been an athlete once, breaking the high school long jump record in 1974 and winning three medals at the Gay Olympics in 1990. There was a grainy photograph beside the text, the man’s face captured in a moment of life—friendly, open, with a spark of mischief in his eyes. It was a life cut short just two weeks before his 40th birthday, a reminder of how fragile everything truly was.
I lay back on the bed, the newspaper still in my hands, feeling the weight of those years, of lives lived and lost, stories that had slipped through time’s fingers like sand. The thin mattress sank slightly under my weight, and I stared up at the ceiling. The redwood beams overhead were cracked and splitting, the kind of decay that silently creeps in over the years, unnoticed until it’s too late. Just like the passage of time, I thought. Just like everything.
The weight of it all pressed down on me, heavier now. What was I doing with my life? The question slipped into my mind, uninvited, like a fog rolling in off the coast, thick and stubborn. It obscured everything else, leaving only that gnawing sense of aimlessness, of life slipping by without purpose or direction. The more I tried to push it away, the more it lingered, clinging to my thoughts, refusing to lift.
I closed my eyes, but the darkness only amplified the uncertainty, the doubts that had been festering for too long. What was the point of any of this? My life had become a series of distractions, one absurd experiment after another, each more ridiculous than the last. And now, here I was, rubbing datura balm on an old man for kicks, like it was some kind of twisted game. A game where we tested the boundaries of reality, as if turning into a crow was just another outcome on a list of possibilities.
The absurdity of it all hit me like a punch to the gut. Here I was, in an attic room with decaying beams overhead, playing with magic in a world that seemed to reject it at every turn. The thrill of the experiment had evaporated, leaving behind only a gnawing sense of futility. What was I really chasing? The idea of transformation, of becoming something more—or perhaps less—than what I was? The lines between possibility and delusion had blurred, and I could no longer tell which side I was on.
What the hell was I thinking? My 83-year-old housemate, a man who had lived through more than I could ever comprehend; reduced to a guinea pig in some half-baked experiment. What was wrong with me? Was this really what my life had come to? The weight of it settled on my chest, pressing down harder with each passing thought.
The questions echoed in my mind, growing louder with every repetition until they became a relentless drumbeat, pounding at the edges of my skull. What was I doing? Anxiety twisted in my chest, a knot tightening with every breath. My thoughts spiraled, each one darker than the last. He could be in a coma right now. Or worse—he could be dead.
The possibility hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs. A sudden, icy rush of panic swept over me, cold sweat prickling my skin. What if he was lying there, unresponsive, because of me? What if my reckless experiment had killed him? The thought rooted itself deep in my mind, refusing to let go. I pictured him, slumped over in the kitchen, the light in his eyes extinguished.
This wasn’t just a game anymore. It was real, and the consequences were staring me in the face, cold and unforgiving. I had crossed a line, one that couldn’t be uncrossed, and now I was left to reckon with the aftermath.
My heart pounded in my chest, each beat a jarring thud that echoed in my ears. I bolted upright, the room spinning slightly as I tried to steady myself. I had to check on him. I had to make sure he was okay. The fear was too strong to ignore, driving me to my feet. I stumbled out of the room, my legs trembling, the worn carpet scratching against my bare feet as I rushed down the stairs. When I reached his room, I flung the door open, bracing myself for the worst.
There he was, sitting comfortably in his worn armchair, a serene smile plastered on his face, big white headphones clamped over his ears, as he watched a video of African kids dancing on his computer, just like he always did. The screen’s soft glow flickered over his features, and the familiar sound of rhythmic drumming filled the room, grounding me in the present.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice still edged with panic.
“What?” he yelled, his voice loud, almost comical, unable to hear me through the headphones.
I pulled the headphones off with a shaky hand. “Are you okay?” I repeated.
He turned to me, his eyes twinkling with that familiar mischief, the same look that had gotten us into this mess in the first place. “I’m fine,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
“Do you feel anything?” I pressed, not ready to let go of the worry gnawing at me.
He shrugged, the gesture so casual it almost made me doubt everything I’d just gone through. “No, not a thing.”
The words should have brought relief, but instead, they left a hollow ache. The panic that had gripped me just moments before still lingered, like a shadow refusing to dissipate. Something had shifted—if not in him, then in me. The experiment, absurd as it was, had left a mark, one that I couldn’t quite identify but felt deeply nonetheless.
I exhaled slowly, trying to release the tension. It was like air escaping from a punctured tire, the pressure easing but not disappearing entirely. “If you start freaking out, wash it off, okay?” I said, my voice carrying a thread of concern that I couldn’t fully mask.
He chuckled, clearly unfazed. “I think I need more.”
I shook my head, a small, strained laugh escaping me. “Let’s just start with that,” I said, my voice softer now. “if you start freaking out, wash it off. I don’t want to have to call an ambulance.”
He nodded, turning back to his computer screen, lost again in the joyous dance of the children on the other side of the world. I lingered in the doorway, my heartbeat finally slowing, as I watched him—alive, smiling, and completely unaware of the storm that had just raged in my mind.
Without another word, I grabbed my keys and slipped out the front door. My thoughts narrowed to a single focus: the garden. The jimson weed had to go. The lethal plant that had seduced me with its dangerous allure was too great a risk. I couldn’t afford to let anything else spiral out of control, not when the line between curiosity and death was so precariously thin.
The drive to the garden was a blur, my thoughts racing ahead to what needed to be done. When I arrived, the sight that greeted me made my stomach drop. The gate was wide open, swinging lazily in the breeze like a careless invitation to disaster. Tacked to the wooden fence was a bright, colorful sign that read: “Summer Party Here, Come In!”
The garden, my sanctuary, had been transformed into a chaotic playground and nightmare. Children were everywhere—laughing, sneezing, running wild through the once orderly rows of plants. The picnic table, the one where I had carefully collected the jimson seeds, was now a battleground of crumpled paper plates and half-eaten cupcakes. The cracks in the table where seeds had fallen were now smeared with frosting. This kind of gathering in the garden was rare, but never had it been this chaotic. Why today, of all days?
I scanned the scene, my eyes locking onto Kim, her kids swarming around her, along with a crowd of children I didn’t recognize. She was the eye of the storm, calm amid the chaos, laughing with the ease of someone who belonged in this mayhem. I forced a smile, feeling the strain at the corners of my mouth as I raised a hand in a half-hearted wave, trying to appear nonchalant. But inside, the anxiety clawed at me, the urgency of my mission weighing heavily as I tried to suppress the rising tide of frustration and panic.
“Hi! I guess we took your spot,” Kim called out, her voice bright with a hint of apology.
I forced a laugh, though it sounded brittle to my own ears. “Looks like a fun party. You’re making better use of the table than I would!”
But inside, I was far from calm. It was a public garden, sure, but today, it felt like the public had landed directly on my plot—the place I had painstakingly cultivated with care. My chest tightened as I realized how exposed the jimson plant was, how dangerously close it was to curious hands and wandering feet. The thought of those toxic seeds ending up in some unsuspecting child’s hand sent a cold shiver down my spine.
“Would you like a cupcake or a drink?” Kim asked, holding out a plate with a generous smile, completely oblivious to the storm brewing inside me.
“Maybe later,” I replied, my voice wavering slightly as I struggled to keep my composure. “I just came to give the plants a quick watering.” I shifted the conversation, trying to sound casual, even though my mind was racing. “So, what’s the occasion?” I asked, forcing a lightness into my tone that I didn’t feel.
“No occasion really,” Kim said, her smile widening. “End of summer, back to school. We thought we’d just do it for fun.”
“That’s really great,” I murmured, though my mind was miles away from the celebration. Dark images flickered through my thoughts—visions of children crumpled like wilted flowers, dead in pile, victims of my own reckless experiment. The worry tightened inside me, a knot pulling tighter with each passing second.
The picnic bench was swarming with kids, their laughter mingling with the sight of the jimson plant’s leaves, reaching ominously toward them. The noise, the chaos, the sheer number of people—it was all too much. This wasn’t just a crowd; it was an invasion, and it was happening in the one place where I sought refuge from the world.
The thought wouldn’t leave me. I needed to get rid of the plant—right now—before something went wrong, before something irreversible happened. The urgency gnawed at me like a wild animal, propelling me forward.
I wove through the maze of children darting around, sidestepping a dog that bounded past me, and made my way to the tool shed. My hands trembled as I fumbled with the combination lock, the cold metal biting into my skin. The shed, tucked close to the entrance and partially obscured by the greenhouse, was just ten feet from the action of the party, yet it felt a world away. It was a wooden relic, stocked with clippers, rakes, and shovels of all sizes—tools of cultivation, now repurposed for my redemption.
As I finally wrenched open the shed door, panic clawed at the edges of my mind. The kids were everywhere, tumbling onto the mulch, their laughter sharp and shrill in my ears, a cruel contrast to the dread gnawing at me. What if they found the jimson plant? What if their innocent curiosity led them to touch it, unaware of the danger it held?
My breath quickened, each inhale a struggle as I grabbed the big, heavy clippers, the metal cold and solid in my hands, a weight that seemed to anchor me amid the chaotic swirl of the garden party.
I turned and walked the short distance past the greenhouse, threading my way toward the picnic table that served as the bustling center of the party—moms, dads, kids, cupcakes, and pets all clustered together. I squeezed through the crowd, inching closer to the jimson weed, its thorny presence now almost within reach. With each step, I wove through the throng—moms chatting over sodas, a dad digging into chips and guacamole, children squealing with delight. I moved like a shadow among them, careful not to draw too much attention, though I could feel curious eyes tracking my movements, as if they sensed something was off.
Just beyond the picnic table, barely three feet from the jimson weed, a young girl sat cross-legged on the ground, completely absorbed in coloring a picture. Her crayons were scattered around her like tiny, vivid offerings, their bright hues stark against the muted greens and browns of the overgrown garden. The space felt tighter here, the air thick with the mingling scents of earth and vegetation, as if the garden itself was closing in on us. The surrounding plants—lavender, cosmos, morning glories—loomed over her.
She remained in her own world, utterly oblivious to the danger brewing just a few feet away. The jimson weed, with its spiky pods and dark, almost hypnotic allure, stood poised like a silent predator, its danger concealed beneath the guise of a harmless plant. The narrow paths and dense foliage twisted the space into a trap, every step requiring careful precision to avoid brushing against the lethal leaves.
I hesitated, my gaze lingering on the girl, her small hands methodically working over her crayons, filling the page with bright strokes of innocence. The simple act of her coloring, surrounded by the chaos of the party, was an unwitting contrast to the peril lurking inches away. The proximity of the jimson weed to the picnic table sent a chill down my spine. I could almost feel its presence reaching out, as if it too was waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
I took a step forward, the girl and her scattered crayons just behind me, their bright colors suddenly a haunting reminder of fragility. Without another thought, I leaned over, raised the clippers, and with a quick, sharp intake of breath, severed the jimson weed plant at the base. The action was swift, deliberate, final. The blades sliced through the thick stem with a sound that seemed too loud in the stifling quiet of the garden.
The plant fell without a whisper, crumpling to the ground like broken promises. Its severed stalk landed with an eerie finality, releasing the tension that had built around the garden, like the end of something long held in check. But as the clippers echoed in the stillness, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something irreversible had already been set in motion.
There was a faint crunch—a sound almost lost amid the party’s background noise—but to me, it was deafening. I froze. A couple of seed pods had split open in the process, spilling their contents onto the mulch in a whispering cascade that sent a jolt of panic through me. My heart pounded in my chest as I watched the seeds scatter—tiny harbingers of danger, black against the earth, each one a potential threat.
I dropped to my knees, trying to gather them as discreetly as possible, my fingers trembling as I scooped them up, feeling the weight of each one as if it were a ticking time bomb. The party continued to hum behind me—children laughing, parents chatting—but in that moment, it all seemed impossibly distant, like I’d been pulled into a different reality where only the plant and its relentless danger existed.
The string I had tied around the jimson weed was knotted tight, refusing to give beneath my fingers. It seemed like the plant didn’t want to let go, clinging stubbornly to life, its spines catching on the string as if fighting to stay tethered. I pulled harder, but it resisted, unwilling to surrender. The plant was tangled in a morning glory vine, the delicate tendrils winding themselves around the jimson weed’s thorny stems. The two were locked in a silent, stubborn struggle—one thriving, the other lethal.
I had no choice but to sever the vine. My hands shook as I cut it away, its delicate green threads snapping one by one as I freed the weed from the wall where it had clung like a lifeline. There was something sacrilegious about the act, like I was cutting through more than just plants—cutting through something sacred, something that connected me to the living, breathing world around me.
By the time I finally freed the plant from its tangled web, the garden had fallen into an uneasy silence. The laughter, the chatter, the playful shouts—all had evaporated, replaced by a thick, palpable tension that hung in the air like the scent of overripe fruit. The tight, winding paths of the garden, once a comforting maze, now felt suffocating, closing in on me, shrinking the space until it was impossible to breathe.
When I looked up, everyone was staring. The picnic table—still crowded with cupcakes and half-eaten food—where I’d been working so close to the Jimson weed, now felt miles away, though the danger it represented was still very real.
Kim stood at the forefront of the small crowd, her eyes wide with a mix of surprise and something sharper—suspicion, maybe. Her gaze cut through the thick air, sharp and questioning, dissecting the scene as if trying to piece together the significance of what had just happened. It was the same gaze she used to give me when something didn’t add up, when she could tell there was more to the story than what I was willing to say.
“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt by the spikes,” I said, my voice distant, barely my own. The explanation was flimsy at best. The words hung in the air, hollow, not enough to fill the heavy silence between us.
For a moment, no one moved. The garden, usually a place of quiet solitude, had transformed into a stage, and I was the unwilling actor at the center of it. I could feel their eyes—some curious, others wary— weighing, measuring, trying to make sense of what they’d just witnessed.
I stood there, still holding the clippers, the severed plant at my feet like a discarded secret. There was no escaping now. Whatever invisible line I had crossed in those few decisive moments, it was too late to go back.
Kim’s expression shifted slightly, the suspicion still there but now mingled with something else—uncertainty, maybe even a hint of fear. She was used to being in control, to shaping the world around her to fit her vision, but this was beyond her grasp, something she couldn’t quite pin down.
“Thanks,” Kim finally said, her tone measured, cautious, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation. “Those spikes look sharp.”
With those words, the spell broke. The tension that had gripped the garden dissolved, and the party’s rhythm resumed—conversations and laughter bubbling back to life, as if the moment had never happened. But something had shifted.
The garden, once my sanctuary, no longer felt like a refuge. It felt exposed, vulnerable, as if an intimate secret had been accidentally laid bare for all to see. The tight paths, the hidden corners, the sense of wild freedom—all of it seemed different now, as if the garden itself had absorbed the unease of the moment.
Kim lingered for a second longer, her gaze still fixed on me, before turning away to rejoin the others. But I could feel it—something unspoken between us, a new layer of tension that hadn’t been there before.
The garden had changed, or maybe I had. It wasn’t just a place of tangled greenery and overgrown corners anymore. It was a reminder of how thin the line was between safety and danger, between order and chaos. In an instant, the peace of the place had peeled away, revealing the raw, untamed wildness beneath. And it wasn’t going back.
I carried the plant, now severed and wilting, to the far side of the garden. The spines pricked at my hands, each jab a reminder of the menace that had been hiding in plain sight. As I cut it into pieces, I felt a strange sense of both relief and dread—a duality that sat heavy in my chest. The Jimson weed, for all its menacing beauty, was being reduced to nothing more than compost, yet the act felt like something else entirely. More than just disposal—it felt like a burial, a final reckoning with something dark and unknowable that had grown too close.
I dumped the remains into the compost bin, the plant’s jagged edges now hidden beneath layers of garden waste. I stood there, staring at the pile, hoping the danger had been neutralized, but the familiar lightness began to creep in—the eerie sense of intoxication, as if my thoughts were floating somewhere just beyond reach. There was too much space between me and the world, a hollow feeling that made everything feel disconnected, untethered.
“Bye,” I called out, forcing a tone that felt brittle, fragile. “Have a fun party.”
The words felt wrong in my mouth, like they might crack if held to the light too long. I didn’t wait for a response. Instead, I slipped through the garden gate, the sounds of laughter and distant chatter fading behind me as I moved away. My body felt like it was on autopilot, walking to the car, starting the engine—the drive home a blur of colors and motion, my mind spiraling into the endless what-ifs that gnawed at me.
What if one of the kids found a seed? What if the dog got too close to the severed stumps, or worse, licked them? Each question spun tighter in my head, the potential for disaster growing like a shadow I couldn’t outrun. The world suddenly seemed full of hidden dangers, unseen threats, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control them. The Jimson weed was gone, but the sense of unease remained, woven into the fabric of the day, impossible to shake.
When I finally walked through the door, the familiar quiet of the apartment greeted me, grounding me in its stillness. My housemate was exactly where I left him, hunched over his screen, the glow of the monitor casting shadows on his face. Oblivious. Unmoved by the unraveling chaos that had transpired in the garden. I stood there for a beat, letting the ordinary scene anchor me, pretending for a moment that everything was fine.
Then I turned toward the kitchen.
The balm and the jar of datura oil sat innocuously on the counter, remnants of the morning’s experiment. But now, in the dim light of the evening, they took on a more sinister glow—like something tainted, something that should’ve never been touched. My hands trembled slightly as I reached for a paper bag, carefully placing the jar inside, sealing it with an odd kind of reverence, like locking away a curse. I grabbed a marker and scrawled on the bag in large, deliberate letters: “Jimson Weed. Danger. Do not touch.” The warning wasn’t just for anyone who might stumble across it—it was for me, too. A reminder of the line I had crossed, a line I couldn’t un-cross.
I shoved the bag into the freezer, pushing it to the farthest corner, hidden behind old bags of frozen vegetables and ice packs. As if distance could erase what had been set in motion.
Then there were the seeds.
I still had a small bag of them, harvested during my earlier experimentations with the plant. They rattled against the glass jar as I poured them in, a sound that echoed too loudly in the quiet kitchen. The noise sent a shiver down my spine, each tiny seed a malevolent heartbeat, a pulse of something dark and unpredictable. I marked the jar and stashed it away in a cabinet that nobody ever opened, hidden behind old tins and forgotten spices. But as I closed the cabinet door, it felt like a mere formality—a thin barrier against something that refused to be contained.
The house felt too quiet, the shadows too long, as if something had shifted, something unseen but deeply felt. I stood there for a moment, listening to the silence, staring at the closed cabinet. I could still feel the seeds—small, black, lethal—whispering to me from behind the door. A warning. A promise. I sensed that one day the jar would break, the lethal seeds would slip free.
I turned back to the cabinet. Reaching for the jar, I tightened the lid another quarter turn.
Just in case.