Vinny and the Vision Factory

The little boy ran, smiling.

This little boy, he dragged his frayed scarf behind him as he ran, smiling. To all around him, he appeared homeless, like a Dickensian street urchin.

He was not. Not a homeless Dickensian street urchin, I mean.

Now the little boy ran, still smiling, still dragging his frayed scarf behind him, into a very tiny house. Most of the space inside this very tiny house was occupied by an impossibly enormous bed.

“Oh, Granfathas!” the little boy exclaimed. He was inside the house now. “Granfathas, you’re never going to believe it! I’ve found the last Golden Ticket, I have! I’m going to Adri Anna’s Vision Factory!”

At this, the granfathas danced, or they appeared to dance, though it just as easily could have been synchronized seizures.

“Oh, Vinny, my boy, I knew you’d be the one to find it!” one of the granfathas shouted as he danced and/or seized. “No more huffin’ paint in the pantry fer you! No more givin’ handjobs to strangers for crack out on Fairview Street! Adri Anna’s Vision Factory’s a magical place, my boy, where the best drugs ever found can be found! They’ll take you out of this miserable existence and into a world of pure imagination (and/or enlightenment)!”

It was true. True about the magic and the drugs and the enlightenment, I mean.

 

*          *          *          *          *

And the Fractal Elves went like:

“Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-doo

I’ve got a couple mind fucks for you

Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-dash

Adri is sober and tossing her stash

What do you do when you’re out of Detox

Finding old drugs in your cupboards and socks?

Since you can’t smoke them, then they cannot stay

You have no choice but to give them away

 (Like a Psychedelic Santa Claus)

Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-dar

Everything must go, it must go far

You can swallow, snort it or chew

Like the Oompa Loompa doo-ba-dee do!”

*          *          *          *          *

 

And outside Adri Anna’s Vision Factory gates, there were people. Lots of people. There were lots of people outside the gates and all of the people were trying to get close to the five lucky, lucky finders of the Golden Tickets. All of the people wanted to go inside the Vision Factory, you see.

Of course they wanted to go inside!

They wanted to go inside the Vision Factory, but they did not go inside. For at the stroke of the designated hour, who should appear but Adri Anna herself, and she gathered the five lucky, lucky finders of the Golden Tickets. She gathered them and then off they went into that magical Vision Factory of dreams!

They went with Adri Anna.

And Adri Anna is me. So I suppose I might as well stop talking in third person now.

I climbed into the Adritania, which is what my boat is called. And the Fractal Elves and the five lucky finders of the Golden Tickets, they climbed into the Adritania, too. Together, we sailed the Adritania upon a river of codeine and DXM cough medicine, and we sailed and we sailed until we came to a door.

“Now children,” I said, somewhat overdramatically. “Beyond this door is a Very Special Room. You see, everything that is in this Very Special Room is made out of psychoactive substances.”

I said, “Everything in this room will get you high. Even the sheet rock is infused with ergot.”

I said, “You children need to take it all away from here.”

And the children wandered wide-eyed and breathless into the Very Special Room. It wasn’t even five minutes before ticket finder Veruca Salt kicked the bucket, bloody needle hanging out of a blue arm down by the banks of the cough medicine river.

But little Vinny with his frayed scarf, well, he was still exploring.  “Adri! What does this do?”

“Well, Vinny,” I said, “I’m very glad you asked that. This is a very special, very complex hookah. It’s the only one like it in the whole wide world.”

I said, “This right here is the bowl. This is where you put, say, your DMT, or your salvia, or whatever it is that you’re wanting to smoke.”

Vinny gasped. “And then what is that part for?”

“That, Vinny, is a revolving, remote control, iridescent tube to suck the smoke through. And that is a heat-sensitive trapdoor handle for when the person you’re smoking with assists with the… with the… Oh dear…”

I began turning an unhealthy shade of stop sign red. “Vinny… Vinny, I’m afraid I was mistaken. This isn’t a hookah at all. This is a four-person sex toy and I am not going to want to give it away like the rest of the things in this room.”

I picked up the sex toy and I climbed out the window onto my roof, but not before the heart of ticket finder Augustus Gloop exploded, and certainly not before ticket finder Violet Beauregarde knifed ticket finder Mike Teavee in the kidney during a street fight over a ceramic crack pipe.

*          *          *          *          *

I was out on the roof now, but I was not alone. Out there with me, I could see a man wearing a purple top hat, a purple coat, green slacks, and carrying a cane with him.

Obviously, this was the ghost of Timothy Leary, sitting out on my roof with me.

And the ghost of Timothy Leary said, “I can’t believe you actually quit, Adri. I NEVER quit. I was hardcore to the very end!”

I slapped Leary in the arm. I said, “No you weren’t, numb nuts!”

I began pacing back and forth across the slanted roof. I said, “You burned out your mind. You became a self-parody! You spent the last decades of your life pursuing your S.M.I.I.L.E. project – Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension. But all those things are linear! They’re all just on the first three levels of the Eight Circuits of Consciousness you had described in your prime! You lost the depth, the color, the evolution and Eternal Now you’d been seeking before. You turned into a sad old burnout, man.”

I said, “Just like Burroughs and Crowley, Bukowski and Thompson.”

The ghost of Timothy Leary got quiet. He looked a little sad. Then he cocked his head to one side, obviously trying to figure out how the four-person sex toy I was carrying worked.

Finally, the ghost of Timothy Leary said, “Be that as it may, Adri, would you, um, mind terribly much if I…if I?” He looked back through the window, back into my Very Special Room. Back into my quickly depopulating Vision Factory.

“Go get high, Tim,” I sighed. “Go get real high.”

And so he did.

That left only me, out there on my roof, stone cold sober. Now, if only I could find the pull cord on this four-person sex toy contraption, I might be able to rev this baby up…

And the Fractal Elves went like:

“Oompa Loompa, doo-la-dee-lugs

She ain’t Nancy Reagan but says no to drugs

Will it bring her happiness too

Like her Oompa Loompa, doo-demons do?”