The Mandrake Experience
By Chris Whitley
Fri, 10 Feb 2023
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The Mandrake Experience
So he, the protagonist came with his tools on this fat black night to take his task to feed his imagination with the ambrosia of inspiration, to kick-start an engine of dreams. An experimenter and a tinker, a drunken druid with a crooked smile he had always been, and had such dream like images of historic romantic magical times of goatherds piping their flocks in Greek glades.
And he had always wished to hear a deeper song, to see the bigger picture of a golden vision. He had stoked this dream his whole life. To one day find, take and possess his own the magical Mandrake, that would bring and make all the worldly power associated with it his very own!
He had now found and situated a fine specimen. And that other worldliness he sought seemed to leave just one final sentry on guard; this clean, black, living earth he now trod.
The silence squeezed in around him as he entered the dense trees following his guiding lamplight, yet watched by the moonlight that made him itch… imagine that…! His excited thoughts leapt from obits like electrons from the surface to the many layers of his consciousness, causing a bewildering nervous turmoil that ran ever downward to a hidden depth of his being to the foreshadowed feelings he didn’t understand…. ‘O subtle imagination, how fine you split and match the hairs of indecision.’ Both desire and doubt….
Taking a moment to clear his head he followed the lamp and the path. He was soon nearing the Mandrake’s domain.
He stopped at the large oak tree and turned a foot and swung a left off the path and soon reached a little glade.
And there it was! Ablaze with violet colour! A flaming charm! The sudden plant smell of sex filled his nose and mind. Nature talking…. He was held by the plant’s beautiful but sinister magnetism scraping like a knife on a stone inside him. The whole space around it seemed to lift up toward him, flattening itself on the retina of his eye like some pop-up cubist painting. The Mandrake’s own accumulated measure of awe glued his thoughts to heaven. The image brought a sudden apprehension that stopped him on the spot, as he felt he was at the mercy of chance. What would be or not be? He raised his hand above his eyes in a mock gesture of looking far into the distance, which denoted that he was really out of range of understanding, yet he chose to proceed….
He began loosening the earth around the Mandrake with his mouth full of uncivil grunts. A feeling of dread entered his mind of some unidentified presence that seemed to get ever closer and more manifest with every stroke of his spade. He could smell the murder in his actions…. As he dug he sensed the breath of the Mandrake’s consciousness trying to back-up further down its hole. He felt to his very marrow the ghostly on going cosmic and earthly struggle between man and this plant that had begun so long ago. He knew the stories of its violent resistance. He had heard of its ferocious power that could come charging from its underworld to save its life or to take his… but he told himself people had taken the plant successfully….
As he took a hold of the plant’s stem it felt in the darkness as if something like burning-black hands reached out of the ground grasping his hands…, and held by an unidentified force that seemed to be getting ever stronger! His shocked brain suddenly jammed... stuck in a trembling-mode that ran through his body, a buzzing mad force that jigged his wits. He feared that once out of the earth’s skin... exposed, it would turn to run the warren of its crazy self.
Looking up he saw a panicked racing sky, the trees waving madly like giant swirling dresses crashing and fighting against each other. The woodland suddenly exploded into an angry vortex of deafening bestial sounds, high pitched bird-like screeches, jaw clacking laughing, and booming roars of voices weaving through the trees from both far and near. He put his hands to his ears! The whole surroundings seemed to distil itself into a giant grotesque grimacing face... pushing itself into his mind. The turmoil seemed physically to be unravelling and rewiring his brain! An alchemy of self… which now began painfully twisting and manipulating, and transforming his body into a nightmarish carrion seeking creature… a hellish ugly troll! His rearranged brain was now corralling his thoughts into an ever smaller area! As if controlled by black strings his mind was being consumed compleatly by the creature! He was down on all fours totally merged and lost in the creature’s horrific form. Event followed event in his body. His awareness was now limited to a possessed disgusted obsverver. He, the creature crawled around salivating from his open gaping jaws. He tried to scream but his voice was nailed in his blabbering mouth. Hating his own image he became wild, crazy, frantic... he was gone, trapped in this distorted body. Suddenly he was violently lifted and flung with force into the air like a rag-doll! His eyes fell back into the darkness behind them, into an airless silent dead and buried blackness.
A smudge of thought made its way into a vague consciousness of an abstract self... it felt itself to be…. A second thought came; ‘rest thankful.’ He was somewhere between stillness and emptiness, but slowly and in silence casting about in his interior with a shallowness of thought on drip. This oozy place suddenly became intimate with more impacting thoughts. With a vague buoyant interpretation and yet inconclusiveness a question was formed…. ‘Was he dead?’
This brought on a fearful queerness, which he realized was a feeling of panic…. He thought he must open his eyes. And in an instant, in a blaze of morning light he knew his face and the wind in the trees seemed to say his name! He was again of the world! He had returned to the mechanics of the universe. The sky was so, so blue and he knew other days would be blue! Smells contended with others expanding the further flung regions of his awaking mind. He sat up. The warm sun struck his bowed head and he heard the birds calling tribute to the sun. and once again he occupied the present. He breathed a deep sigh of relief….
As he looked around, he was no longer in the glade, not in the domain of the Mandrake! How had he come here? Where was he…? Once again his brain was a swirling vortex of thought. Incomprehension crossed his face. His inner voice told him to calm himself. He got to his feet and began walking not knowing if he was headed toward the path to village where he lived. After awhile he reached a path and followed it until he recognized where he was. He walked on until he found the small road to the village. Arriving home he was tired and still emotional. He lay down on his bed and fell into a peaceful undisturbed sleep.
On awaking he tried to assess his ordeal. Had it all really happened? Or was it a hallucination brought on by the contact with Mandrake’s powerful chemistry? From the pollen of its flowers, or through the pores of his skin? He couldn’t remember anything after being thrown in the air….
How had he got where he had awoke?
The vividness of the experience troubled him, the transformation to that hellish creature…. He felt it was the Mandrake’s payback for his arrogance and ignorance. A mirror image of his cruel deed. He had believed he knew about it all from one end of it to the other. Full of screwy swagger! His imposing ugliness had just invited fate! It seemed he had been bent on baseness. As if he had drunk a vial of negativity. To steal the Mandrake! His motive seemed… well… without motive. Self importance! And now, his in abasement! Well, absurdity had swamped the crime scene. He was like a worthless toy, and been treated like one. His notions of his identity had been truly re-established…. Hell’s teeth, he had learnt a lesson. He had been allowed to see the darker part of himself! Who was it said 'character is destiny?' He whispered to himself ‘farewell bad dream!’ But deep down he knew it was no dream….
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Yes! Yes! This was my kind of
Permalink Submitted by skinner_jennifer on
Yes! Yes! This was my kind of story. Loved all the worded imagery, the concept of your creative imagination to a subconscious mind, Brilliant as fas as I'm concerned.
Jenny.
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