The Great Chalkboard War

“History sings in their faces.

They are young, they are obtainable,   

and you follow after them . . .”

The Doorway
-Robert Creeley

Our dealer exclusively sold weed, but when he showed up at our apartment in the morning with our usual strains, he told us he’d recently acquired a special bark from the Peruvian rainforest. From his backpack, he took out a gallon sized ziplock of brown wood chips and tossed it on the counter.

“Five bucks a dose,” Murph said. “I’m planning to sell at 30. But for you, I’ll let it go at my family and friends rate. You brew enough bark to fit in the palm of your hand and drink up. It’s like LSD. Stronger than mushrooms. Supposedly trippier than Ayahuasca. And much rarer.”

Murph had that quality that dedicated stoners have where he looked like he could be any age between 25 and 50. Haggard in some respects while youthful in others. We were in our mid twenties, and he liked to linger after he made the sale. Marijuana was still illegal in our state and reliable dealers were hard to come by so we humored him.

“I’ve never taken acid,” I said. “Or mushrooms.”  

“Really, never?” Deb, my roommate, said. 

She was at the stove cooking shakshouka for breakfast. 

“That smells great,” Murph said as he leaned in closer to Deb, so close that his shoulder brushed hers. “If you whip me up some eggs, I’ll leave you each a dose for free.”

“Seems like an even trade,” Deb said.

“We could take it together,” Murph said. “Lead Martha on her first trip. We’ve never hung out before, and you seem like cool chicks.” 

“I’ve got work in an hour,” Deb said.

By eye, he measured out two portions of bark onto the counter. It was shredded finely as if it’d been through a chipper twice. The grain on the wood had large pores that seeped oil. If I hadn’t been told it was a hallucinogenic tree bark, I would’ve thought it was mulch for the garden.

“Got anywhere to be?” Murph said. 

“I’m in between jobs,” I said.

In fact, I had been unemployed for five months. I had blown through my emergency savings, and it felt a bit slothful to take drugs during the day when I could be launching resumes into the black hole of online job postings for marketing assistants. Perspectives, I was told, could change when on hallucinogenics: egos irradiated and revelations unveiled. That sounded appealing. I picked up a shard of bark and smelled it. Underneath an earthy wood scent was a pungent aroma that reminded me of pine oil.

“Are these clean?” I said. “I heard some drugs get tainted with other drugs and cause a bad trip.”

“It’s bark,” Murph said with a laugh. “Not like it’s going to be laced with Fentanyl. You nervous?”

I was. “I just want to know what I’m ingesting.”

“You’ll be fine. I can hang out until you’ve leveled out,” Murph said with a smile. 

Deb scooped eggs and sauce onto three plates. 

“You gonna be around for a bit?” I said to Deb.

“I can be a little late to work,” she said.

“Come on, it’s the perfect time to take it,” Murph said. “Morning is best, so that you’re tripping in daylight. If you’re feeling cramped, you can go for a stroll in the park.”

I picked a shard of bark from the pile and placed it beside my plate of eggs to consider. Murph was already halfway through his breakfast. Deb retreated to the bathroom to finish getting ready for work. I was still nervous, but when else was I going to try it? I’d missed my chance as a teenager to take acid and turned down mushrooms at the music festival I camped at in college. 

I scooped the bark off the counter and dumped it into the kettle, filled it with water, and set it over the open flame of the stove. Murph scraped his plate clean. I was no longer hungry, so I gave him the rest of my breakfast which he happily devoured. Once the whistle of the kettle blew, I poured it into two mugs, using a tea cloth draped over the lip to strain out the particulate.

 After drinking our potions, Murph and I settled onto the couch. We didn’t have much to say to each other, so I put on a Grateful Dead record, American Beauty. It seemed appropriate. The bark hadn’t hit yet, and I wanted to get in the right headspace before it did. Deb had been in the bathroom for a long time, getting dressed for work and applying her makeup and running the hairdryer. Sediment formed dark shapes at the bottom of my mug. Murph was fidgeting quietly next to me on the couch, listening to the record. By the time the last track Truckin’ came on, he was breathing heavy, staring straight ahead. He noticed me staring at him and started to rub his knees vigorously. 

“Shit, I might have overdone it,” Murph said.

“Whaddya mean?” I said. “How much did you drink?”

“Half the mug. Are you feeling anything?”

My hand trembled as I picked up Murph’s mug. He had indeed only drank a few sips while my mug was drained. Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream.

“Nothing yet,” I said as I tried to detect minute changes in my perception. 

“Oh man, oh boy.” Sweat was beading on his forehead. “My stomach is in a twist.”

Maybe I got the weaker cup, I thought, trying to convince myself it was true. Murph had no sediment floating in his tea. Maybe some shreds of bark had been floating on top and he gulped them down. If you ate the bark plain it was probably stronger. Did I eat the bark? I checked my mug again. Only dark sediment. Murph took fast, deep breaths, nearly hyperventilating. I had to move. Busy myself away from him. I got up and flipped the record back to Side A. The needle dropped too hard, and it bounced off the edge with a terrible scrape that burst from the speakers. I righted the tonearm and closed my eyes, focusing on Phil Lesh’s voice. Once I had slowed my breathing, I returned to the couch. Murph’s knees bounced like pistons with their own rhythms and tempo. He wasn’t listening to the music.

“Can I get you anything?” I said. “Water? Juice?”

“I’d do anything for OJ.”

I went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. As I went to bring him his glass, he shot off the couch and ran down the hall to the bathroom. Deb was shoved out into the hall. The bathroom door slammed shut.

“Jesus, you could’ve waited until I was done,” Deb said.

She came into the living room and finished applying her eyeliner with the camera image of her phone.

“Is he okay?” I said.

“Got the shits, I guess.” As she slipped on her flats, she said, “My boss keeps calling, I’m gonna have to go in on time. Are you going to be fine here?”

“You’re leaving?”

“I told you I have work.”

“Don’t leave me alone with Murph.”

“I think you’re safe. He’s really crapping his brains out in there. He’ll be exhausted when he’s done. Will you be okay without me?”

“I guess.”

“Good, enjoy your travels,” she said and promptly left.

The toilet flushed, followed by the running of the sink for several minutes. I heard the bathroom door open but no footsteps on the creaky floorboards. 

“Murph?” 

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Martha.”

“Jesus! You scared the shit out of me. I thought I was alone. I thought I’d imagined coming over here.” He came into the living room. “I was convinced for a minute that this was my apartment. How’re you feeling?”

“The same I think.”

“I wanna get out of here. It’s dim. Too many shadows. Is there a park nearby?” 

“There’s a school with a field.”

“That’ll work.” 

Murph went and opened the front door of the apartment but hesitated as he stepped across the threshold to go outside. He scrambled to put on his sunglasses.

“Doorways are the hardest part. It’s going to be a rough transition. The sunlight is everywhere.” He sounded panicked. “Will you come with me?”

“I don’t know, I think I need to be in my own space when it hits.”

“We need plants. Only shrubbery will save us.”

“You go. I’ll meet up with you,” I said, with no intention of doing so.

“I don’t know the way.”

The room started to wobble. Shadows were shifting like great billowing sheets. The light from the windows hurt my eyes, but the outdoors still seemed more inviting. My sunglasses were sitting on the kitchen counter, shields against the onslaught of sky. I fetched my shades.

“Okay, but I can’t stay out long.”

I slipped on my sunglasses and took Murph’s hand and after a few deep breaths, we stepped out into the wilderness. 

 The streets were crowded with cars, commuters on their way to work. We dodged a van reversing out of a driveway. It was chaos on the avenues. I led us off the main streets to the side roads that zigzagged to the elementary school. We arrived at a chainlink fence. Beyond it was a soccer field and beyond that was a red bricked building. 

“Where’s the gate?” Murph said.

“I thought we’d be able to get in this way,” I said.

“I can’t go back to the streets. There’s too much happening.”

We climbed the fence, the diamonds of chain link rocking and bending under our weight, their wires strangling our hands. We reached the top bar and swung our legs over and leapt off. Blades of grass stretched out their palms and caught us, lowering us to the earth as we rolled and tumbled. For a long time we lay in the grass at that corner of the field, letting the grass massage us as we gazed up at the tree limbs waving their branches in greeting.  

“I want to curl up here for eternity,” Murph said. “I want my body to become an ant colony.” 

I focused my eyes on a patch of grass, trying to spot an ant. 

“Do you think we’re hurting them?” I said, waving my hand through the grass. Each blade a conscious being stuck in place.

“The grass don’t mind. It’s all one creature, not many. Hairs on the head of a great vegetable beast.” 

I believed him, but still I felt terrible crushing so many blades at once. And a panic began to well up in me. My breathing felt labored. I had to focus or I might stop breathing. My body had forgotten how to breathe on its own. Each breath had to be counted. Air pushed out then sucked in. Out then in. A cramp clenched my stomach in its fist. I wanted the trip to stop.

“How long will this last?” I said.

“Eight to twelve hours,” Murph said.

“That’s too long. I can’t do this for twelve hours. Will it stop if I throw up?”

“It’s already latched on. You have to ride it out.”

The grass was moving below me, making it difficult to stand still. I was inadvertently inflicting pain, and the grass undulated in revolt and tried to buck me. I wanted to flee to solid ground, stand on top of rock and sand. Rocks couldn’t be hurt, only made smaller, cracked and ground into tinier rocks until they were ocean dust buried deep underwater. I got up and started running across the field. 

“Where you going?” Murph said.

I didn’t want to tell him. And he didn't chase. Our destinies were dividing. Each footstep felt like a scream. Dozens of lives squashed under my feet. It took years of running to get across the field and make it to asphalt. Thousands died along the way, but I couldn’t remain stranded in that sea of green. 

Once I was safely across, I wanted to peer through the windows of the school. The sight of children would ease things. I was sure of it. Sweet, little kids learning. I needed to see what childhood was like after so many years of distance. But I couldn’t be noticed. It would shatter my mind to see their eyes on me. The teachers, if they saw me, would suspect foul play and call security. 

Before I could devise a plan, a door flew open. A line of children poured out of the school. Teachers were shouting, trying to corral their movements. The alarm rang. They were in the middle of a fire drill. It felt easy to disappear in all that mayhem. I was enjoying it. But they weren’t assembling in the parking lot as I expected. They dispersed between cars like antelope and galloped off the grounds. The stragglers exited and ran to catch up to their peers. Before the fire door could shut and lock me out, I grabbed its edge and went inside. 

The halls were empty as the fire alarm blared. It formed an angry chord through those cold, dark halls. I was in an ancient place, a place I could feel in my marrow, where the klaxons of a long defeated army echoed within the crypts of a castle. Lockers had been left open. Backpacks and notebooks were scattered all over the floor. 

A classroom door was propped open. In the darkened room a projector displayed an image out of focus on the board. On the chalkboard were histories written in neat printed script. Names and dates and places of war. Markers of death. They were closing a lesson. The outline on the chalkboard read:

Battle of Berlin - April 16 to May 2, 1945

-Hitler commits suicide April 30, 1945

Victory in Europe Day - May 8, 1945

Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima - August 6, 1945

Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki - August 9, 1945

-Japan radios intention of surrender - August 10, 1945

Victory in the Pacific Day - August 15, 1945

The projector was in the middle of the room. Desks were pushed aside to make way for it. The fuzzy gray and white square it projected was shifting like the shadows of clouds over ground. 

It wasn’t a window. That much I understood. It was a doorway. Only, this door looked out on memories, and it only allowed entry, no retreat. The lens of the projector rotated as I touched it. The clouds grew larger and bleary in their stark square. I focused the light until the shadows grew razor edges. It hurt my eyes, and I almost racked the lens again to dull it and save myself. 

In sharp focus were photos of shadows. Shadows of people. Shadows on steps, shadows on a wall, shadows on the pavement. The shade of a bicycle, of footprints, of a person. The places where people had once moved. Only their marks remained. The negative of their matter. The computer attached to the projector displayed on its screen descriptions of each picture. “Hiroshima Shadows”, the folder was labeled. Shadows of the dead. 

A creature peeked over a desk and startled me. That’s when I noticed the bodies all about the room, hidden in the darkness as they lay motionless. A small girl ran over and clung to my pant leg.

“The door’s open,” the girl said. 

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“It shouldn’t be open.”

“If it was closed we couldn’t leave.” 

Another child stirred from where they lay. A boy. The rest remained on the floor. 

“Can we go with you?” the boy said.

“Where do you want to go?” I said.

“Where can you take us?” the girl said. 

“I suppose we’ll see what other doors are open,” I said.

The two children formed a line behind me, just like they’d been taught. Another girl from the floor pulled herself to her feet using a desk and limped over to join the line. The door of the classroom was open, but a pressure existed beyond it, making it difficult for me to pass through. Transitions were difficult, like Murph said. Doorways held back so much except when they were open. 

We stepped over their classmates and filed through the door and into the hall. The girl behind me clutched my shirt tight. I turned to check that the three of them were still with me. They held onto each other. 

Down the hall from behind us came another little boy, crying as he walked in our direction. 

“We need to go,” the girl said. 

“Does he want to join us?” I said.

The children began to pull me down the hall, begging me to move faster. The limping girl tripped over a backpack and went sprawling across the well polished floor. Thunderclaps roared through the hall. The fallen girl was screaming. Her classmates were almost at the fire exit. I picked her up. 

“He’s coming,” she said. “He’s coming for you.”

The little boy trudged toward us, his movements almost reluctant. He was nearly in shadow himself. On the walls were dark silhouettes of children and teachers. Like the Hiroshima Shadows. Only these were riddled with holes of light. The images shined from the boy, projecting on the walls of the hallway, over lockers and posters. He spoke to us through them. He was scared we might try to hurt him, so he traveled faster toward us, getting louder and louder, while his body grew dimmer, turning to shadow. Cracks of lightning exploded over our heads. A great electrical storm filled the air.

“Play dead,” the girl said. “Like this.” 

And she crumpled to the floor as sparks burst from the metal lockers beside us. I fell over the girl, covering her small skeleton with my own, sheltering her.

“Hold your breath,” she whispered.

By the time the boy was standing over us, I could hardly see him anymore, just the hall beyond him. Only his outline remained—the burnt spaces where the light couldn’t fill in. He moved on toward the exit, searching for the rest of the school. His body grew dimmer, disappearing until he appeared again, framed in the doorway of the exit with light all around him. Then the darkness shut over him and he was gone.

I took shallow breaths, playing dead, living a lifetime as a dead actor on that school floor. The building had a familiar smell of youth, of dirty socks and cleaning solvents. The walls were shifting as if we were in the stomach of a giant snake. My shoulder was numb. I was propped on an elbow, trying not to crush the girl beneath me. She was being very good, playing the game well. 

A child stepped quietly past us, and I carefully raised my head. It was another little girl. Behind her was a procession of many children, walking in line as they traveled toward the fire exit. They were connected by a great umbilical cord that strung their movement together. In unison, they took steps and made turns, repeating the gesture of the child ahead of them. Their calmness communicated that the ordeal was over. I got up and tried to stir the girl, but she wouldn’t stop playing. I shook her.

“It’s okay, come with us.” I told her, but she wouldn’t stop pretending. 

I joined the line of children and walked toward the exit. The door was glowing like the sun as the last child passed through. I couldn’t see outside. The world was too bright. Blinding. I stepped outside to find nothing but the flashing lights of police cars, still piercingly bright even in the morning sun. 

Amplified voices of men shouted at me to raise my hands and walk backwards toward them. I was afraid, but I followed their directions before I fell. Something had been left in my path. My legs were draped over a boy, laying facedown on the ground. It was the boy who the children had been afraid of. He lay on the asphalt as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, filling a great river that ran across the asphalt, dampening my clothes.

I was lifted and dragged by the policeman and placed in an ambulance. It was difficult to convince the paramedics that despite the blood covering me, I was not hurt. Still we drove past crowds of children and teachers as their parents and friends collected them in cars after being questioned by the police and reporters. 

“Her pupils are super dilated,” a paramedic said, shining a tiny flashlight into my eyes. “They don’t contract at all. Did you hit your head?”

“I fell but I didn’t hit my head,” I said.

“Are you on any kind of medication.”

“Yes, sunlight.”

“She’s in shock.”

Once the paramedics had examined my body and agreed with my own assessment that a hospital wasn’t necessary, they dropped me on a corner near home before returning to the school. Others needed help. I wanted to take a shower and crawl back into bed, but as I turned the doorknob and opened my front door, the inside of my apartment felt like the last place I should be. I wanted to be with the school. It felt strange to be alone again.

When I managed the courage to step inside and close the door behind me, I heard laughing. It came from outside. I went to the living room window. It was almost night. Hours had passed. On the lawn outside were kids, dozens of them in single file, circling my building. They watched me in the window as they circled. 

There was laughter everywhere, inside and out. They sounded like children joking and playing but by the look of them, none were laughing. The laughter was false, a mock laughter. A mimicry of joy where none existed. The door opened behind me. I expected them to start filing in and running amok in the apartment when Deb walked in, home from work. 

“How was your trip?” Deb said. Without looking at me, she went to the refrigerator and rummaged for something to eat. “What’d you do with Murph?”

“I went to school.”

“So you heard about the shooting. I didn’t want to say anything in case you were coming down. Isn’t it horrible.” At last she turned to me and her eyes widened. “What’s on your face?”

Deb ran to me. She spoke with a troubled expression, though I couldn’t hear a word as the laughing grew louder. The children were shaking the walls, trying to get me to react, taunting me from the windows because they hated me, hated that the door had been open to me while they were left inside. 

Artwork by Noor Althehli