Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘Who said that?’ called Toby, his mouth somewhat muffled by bosoms.

‘It’s Tyler,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Toby. ‘Exactly who I’d hoped for.’

‘What did you say?’ I asked. Putting my hands upon something naked that didn’t belong to me.

‘Hands off my bum,’ said Toby. ‘I said, “Lets all do Banbury Bloaters.” You can do one first.’

‘Could I have some sex first?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been really hoping to get some sex, but so far-’ And then I said no more, because I became aware of a lot of female sniggering.

‘But I suppose that’s how it goes,’ I continued. Loudly. ‘When you’re Ringo Starr.’ And the sniggering stopped. But no one offered me a shag.

‘Down here,’ said Toby. And I located him in the fug. But did have to turn my face away. Because he was having sex. With two women simultaneously. How did he do that?

‘Stop ogling my bits,’ said Toby, ‘and score a Banbury Bloater.’

‘You were going to tell me why it was so called,’ I said. Accepting a large tartan something that strongly resembled a psychedelic gobstopper. ‘And what am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Firstly,’ said Toby, who continued with his dual-lovemaking as he spoke, ‘it is called a Banbury Bloater because it was developed in Banbury by a Druid named Pendragon Bloater. Pendragon was employed by the CIA to develop the drug. It was designed for soldiers in Vietnam, for them to take when they were dying.’

‘To revive them?’ I asked. Then I had to apologise to a groupie for stepping on her bottom.

‘To revive them? No. To send them on their way in a correct fashion. I read all about in it Conspiracy Theories Today magazine. Those soldiers in Vietnam, they are nothing more than sacrificial victims offered up to placate the War Gods. I bet you didn’t know that.’

‘I’ll bet you that I did,’ I said. Because I did.

‘Yeah, well, it has been in all the Underground Press,’ said Toby. ‘But the drug was designed to be taken at the moment of death to bestow a universal consciousness to those who took it. It’s not so much a psychedelic gobstopper.’ And Toby held this item towards me, between his forefinger and thumb, and I viewed it very closely amidst the swirling smoke. ‘It’s not so much a psychedelic gobstopper as a universe within itself. It isn’t a chemical, it’s a micro-universe. They’re everywhere, apparently, but you have to know where to look and then how to encapsulate them into a form that can be taken orally.’

I was staring at the psychedelic gobstopper. And I could see that although it appeared at first glance to be a solid glass marble sort of a body, it was in fact something rather more than that. The closer I looked, the further away it seemed. There appeared, indeed, to be an eternity of nothingness within this spherical something. A fathomless, bottomless pit in which microscopic galaxies gently revolved, and all this was very very cosmic indeed.

‘How many of these do you have?’ I asked of Toby.

‘Just the one, so far.’

‘And you are offering it to me?’

‘Well, you don’t think I’d be so dumb as to…’ Toby paused for a moment, though not in his lovemaking. ‘What I mean to say is that I’m not as cosmic as you, am I? You’d be the first to admit that you are very cosmic.’

I was aware of a lot of chuckling, but I did not consider that any of it could possibly be directed at me. Because, after all, Toby, with more awareness and wisdom than I would have given him credit for, had, in his way, struck the nail right upon its enlightened head. I was pretty cosmic. And if anyone would be the suitable someone to take such a cosmic drug, then that cosmic someone would be me.

Cosmically speaking.

So to cosmically speak.

‘Orally?’ I queried. Staring hard at the fair-sized cosmic something. ‘It does look rather big.’

‘What it appears to be and what it is are two different things,’ said Toby. ‘Just to the right a bit there, Marianne… yes, that’s perfect.’

‘What?’ I queried.

‘It has no absolute size. It inhabits no absolute time. It inhabits no absolute space.’

‘How exactly did you come by it?’ I enquired.

‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’

‘That isn’t much of an answer.’

The groupies were growing restless. ‘Bung it in your gob,’ called Mama Cass.

‘Well,’ I said. And I wobbled a bit as I said it, because I had been breathing an awful lot of dope smoke. ‘I would take it, because I am pretty cosmic, but I’m just wondering whether-’

But whatever it was I was wondering, and I cannot in truth remember now just what that might have been, my wondering about whatever it was was abruptly curtailed by the opening of the green room door.

And Mick Jagger entered, tripped upon bodies and fell forward, right on top of me. Knocking me forward and the out-held Banbury Bloater right into my mouth.

And right, in a Cosmicky kind of a gulp.

Right deep down my throat.

It didn’t so much creep up on me as hit me straight in the brain. It felt as if I no longer had any flesh and blood and bone inside of me. These had ceased to be and I was instead literally filled with the Spirit.

Hugo Rune wrote about something that he referred to as soul-space – a kind of interior equivalent to the exterior space that surrounds the human body. An interior universe, inhabited by spiritual beings, where events occurred that had a separate reality from exterior events, but were nonetheless real for that. Rune believed that the imagination and what the imagination conjured up were real, but that their reality was only a reality within the soul-space. He developed the idea in many directions. Were, perhaps, the revelations of so-called visionaries the real and genuine revelations offered by entities that inhabited the soul-space?

The mind boggles, and the more you think about such stuff the more inwardly turning become your thoughts, until you begin to believe that what goes on inside is more real than what goes on outside. Or you begin to confuse the two.

And then you are, by definition, mad.

I suppose, then, that the first sensation I experienced was absolute terror. I had suddenly been thrust, as it were, into completely alien territory. I had nothing to cling on to.

Outside me I could see and sense the exterior universe: the Winnebago green room, with its dope-smoke and heaving bodies. I was aware of this and that it existed as a reality. But I had become aware of this so much more. So much more that I couldn’t even have guessed existed. The internal universe. And although it was seemingly contained within the boundaries of my body, it was vast, endless, limitless. And it had been there all along, but I hadn’t known it was there. A multiverse within me and I never even knew.

And that is a lot to take in.

And so I freaked. I foamed somewhat at the mouth and I ranted away like a loon. And I must have done quite a bit of leaping up and down also, because very very soon, I was taken hold of by many hands and cast bodily from the Winnnebago. And how uncool was that?

You are supposed to care for people when they’re freaking, not shout abuse at them and throw them out on their ear. Uncool. Uncool. Uncool.

I arose from the grass upon which I had landed. And became suddenly completely aware of the grass. And I mean totally so. I understood the grass. Knew its motivations. Sensed its sadness. I knew grass. I was grass.

For I had entered Phase II.

All the Phases of Banbury Bloater have now been thoroughly researched, studied and catalogued by many a Harvard scientist. Many a learned fellow has taken the old Christopher Mayhew journey into the other world of the hallucinogenic. Those who studied the Bloater were changed men for ever. And most dispensed at once with science and took to more spiritual occupations. They did, however, write a lot about their experiences.