Dragon Minds

It was a small pill, a red pill, flecked with creamy white--when I asked Benny about its provenance, he said it was from this guy he knew who cobbled shoes and pressed powder on the side--and you wouldn't think a small pill of any color would do so much, but here it is now six weeks later and I can still see the dragons of other people's minds which, while not entirely unheard of outside of pill time, is not necessarily the kind of thing you want to be stuck with for longer than, say, three or four days. Great leathery wings of ideation beating slowly, their horny clawed tips curling down beneath the chins of the thinkers, while atop their heads the scaled lizards crouch, with whipcord tails coiled loosely about their shoulders and necks. It can be distracting to see: someone lays in about Middle Eastern foreign policy, say, and the dragon huffs and chuffs smoke and small flame, its head bobbing, serpentine, above the speaker's brow.

So I called Benny, earlier today, to tell him about these reptilian representations of thought, about how simply everyone seems to be wearing a dragon hat, and about the chuffing of smoke and fire during conversations, most distracting. And Benny said, "Hey, I can appreciate the trip, man, but that pill wore off weeks ago, and I think you're onto a whole 'nother trip now, like you're making your own brew between your ears, know what I'm saying?" Which, he went on to say, was sad for him, because now that I'm making my own I clearly have no further need of his services. I protested, telling him that I didn't necessarily want to be seeing what I was seeing, and telling him of the distraction of it all, but he laughed his slow and grinding laugh, and told me to adapt to the new reality. "It's all about adaptation," he said. "You can get used to a lot if you just accept the flow."

I told him that this is not a flow. It is dragons on people's heads. But he was too cool for me and had other business to attend to.

So if we happen to meet and it seems like I'm being shifty and can't quite meet your eyes, it's because you've got an iridescent mythical flying reptile crouched up on your noggin, and the more you believe what you're saying to me, the more smoke and flame it huffs out from behind its blackened teeth and between its burnished lips.

I haven't gotten into a serious argument with anyone since I started seeing their dragon minds.

I'm a little concerned about what will happen when I do.