From above, napalm bombs rain down from the open bays of tetradactyl B-52s. It’s Robin’s revenge, the poetic irony that the final acid trip of my life should be the worst. No one gets out of here alive. I bend lower until a sharp pain erupts at my waist. My bright-red appendix is the size of a sweet potato, filled with the noxious pus of regret. I’m chained by wrist and ankle to bare rock, my guts being torn open by the ravenous black-winged vulture. Goddamn goofball! Underachiever! Loser!

It’s true! I am a goofball. A weak, pathetic loser. I don’t deserve Robin. I don’t deserve life. I deserve to be added to the kill ratio in Vietnam, a useless, expendable bit of protoplasm sacrificed to the God of Capitalist War Machines. Can I tell the draft board that the proof that there is no Supreme Being is that no loving and caring god would allow so many decent young men to die so needlessly?

But the draft board doesn’t give a shit. Not as long as it needs lambs for the slaughter.

Now from out of the dark roars the worst specter of all, the glowering many-headed hydra of everyone I’ve disappointed — my father, mother, Robin, Miss Landers. The hydra’s long sharp claws extended, keen on tearing me to —

An arm goes around me. Fingers pry my hands away from my ears. Through the enormous rupturing Zeppelin apocalypse worms a savior’s voice: “It’s okay, Lucas. It’s just the acid. It’ll pass.”

Hold me, Milton. Don’t let me go.

The speed of dark

In Central Park.

The houselights are on. The stage is empty, but the crowd refuses to leave. Mammoth waves of “More! More! More!” fill the air. Milton and I are on our feet. My eyes are watery and my cheeks are wet; I didn’t know I’d been crying.

The band returns, plays an encore, leaves again. The crowd shouts for yet more. Space and time are still quite squishy, but having been rescued by the ever-watchful Milton, I’ve crawled out of the blackness and back from the terrible abyss. I never thought of this before, but there was a famous poet named Milton.

Loudspeakers tell the crowd it’s time to go, but no one listens. They keep shouting “More!”

The band comes back and plays another encore.

And then another.