You wake up on the train to Ta'Maghis

On the Train

You wake up on a dingy train to Ta'Maghis. The carriage you're in is filthy and grey. Your brother, who has been traveling with you sits next to you and your bags are piled up in between. Across from you is a young woman with a slim figure in party dress that is little more than some veils and black silk underpants. A wanton, oversexed creature. Your brother is hitting on her gamely despite her lukewarm reception and you butt into the conversation with some rude interjection. She turns to you and her attention causes a warm red tingle in your groin. She isn't fully human, or not anymore. Some uncommon mutation that you can't put your finger on. You're overwhelmed by the feeling that she's going somewhere you want to be. But from the psychic feel around her you know her ultimate destination is Yass-Waddah, where you don't want to go.

"Business in Ta'Maghis?" you ask.

"Pleasure," she says.

"Time for a drink before your stop?"

She snorts. "Boring. I'm going to [REDACTED]'s for a night of orgiastic drug-fueled marathon sex."

"Uh huh. We invited?"

"That's bold," says your brother, certain that you are not invited.

The Yass-Waddah woman-creature looks you up and down, stands on the seat, turns around, pulls her panties down around her ankles, revealing a smiling face. It reminds you of an evil Mickey Mouse. "Sure you are," she says from the second mouth as it licks its jagged teeth.

In the Theatre

You disembark from the train at the central station and she leads you through dark streets and alleyways. You chew up three paper hits of LSD and swallow them as you follow her into a graffiti-covered door. The men inside let you through when they see who you're with.

You're in a dark theatre. There are already a number of people inside, sitting against the walls, making small-talk; you second-guess yourself about the timing of dropping the acid, not wanting to find yourself suddenly out of sync with a mass of unpredictable strangers. Rather than chemically bypassing the effects of the drug, which you have plenty of practice at, you decide that you didn't ingest it in the first place and a moment later you know that this is true. You have another four hundred hits in your coat after all, more than enough to share if you judge it appropriate.

Your host or guide or whatever she is has recognized a large man who resembles Santa Claus or an Amish farmer. "I've got a whole lot of ICE with me," he says conspiratorially, then adds, "really it's more like slab" - meaning dirty or otherwise impure, some admixture or impurity in the formula preventing it from crystallizing fully. Your brother looks at you and you assure him you're not interested in that, while at the same time working out potential terms of an exchange in your head. In the dim light there are snakeskinned women dancing in a poisonous, seductive fashion.

A toothless prospector comes up to you, holding a sieve up to your face close enough that whatever's in it is brushing up against your lips and nose. "FROST?" he says excitedly, "PIE CRUST." By the look and smell of it it's kief, mixed with some other floral essence that you can't place. You half-eat-half-sniff a reasonable amount of it; it's delicious. A warm tingling sensation fills your extremities and you relax a bit. You gesture to your brother to come on as your guide slips through black curtains to the next room and you follow behind her trying to temper your quickening urges with caution. You don't know what's waiting for you in the next room.

The next room is a movie theatre. No film is playing but the girl, the large man, and a few others sit down in one of the middle rows. You sit behind them. They toast Ah Pook the Destroyer and begin passing around glass pipes full of the adulterated methamphetamine, along with some kind of self-heating smoking apparatus that puts off huge wasteful clouds if no one's sucking on it constantly.

"Hey listen", you say to your brother, "I'm definitely going to smoke whatever's in that pipe and fuck that succubus now." Your brother shrugs, impassive, and you accept a hit from the Yass-Waddah creature who looks at you expectantly with empty eyes. The warmth in your groin spreads to your legs. As you exhale the strange vapor, a policeman comes down the aisle with a German Shepherd on a leash. It sniffs you, sticking its nose in your pocket. You look down the aisle. "Anybody know what this dog wants?" you ask no one in particular. No one so much as acknowledges the question. The dog pays you no further attention, the policeman even less. They are looking for someone or something that doesn't belong here. They move on.

A film begins to play on the screen; you all keep smoking and melt into each other's bodies in a pointless ecstacy.