The sickening crunch of bloodthirsty, demonic deer ticks, some as big as kittens, tearing through the flesh of hypnotized Stevie Nicks wannabes was muffled by the equally disgusting sound of contemporary, gay dance music.
We were supernaturally enamored of the Pavilion's grand dame, Ms. Stevie Knick-knacks. The Pavilion is the Fire Island nightclub where Knicki (as her life partner Mendelthimble affectionately calls her) has hosted for over thirty years. But now a swarm of blood-sucking parasites threatened to call curtains on the way-past-her-prime ingenue.
If only there was a fierce, gay exorcist not lost in a Stevie Nicks euphoria to help turn the tide of battle and save the day.
No luck there.
I was just as oblivious to the bloated menace slowly creeping through the enchanted Stevies. Considering the circumstances: Fire Island, all of us perishing as giant ticks encroached, it seemed suiting that Stevie Knick-knacks next song on her enchanted repertoire was "Rooms on Fire."
She sang, "Well maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire / Every time that you walk in the room / Well there is magic all around you."
Stevie Knick-knacks sang and seemed to be looking straight at me. And then she blew me a kiss! I gasped as though I'd been choking underwater. But yet I didn't gasp. I continued the zombie two step in synchronous movement with the mob of Stevies, but now I was cognizant to the world around me.
I could hear the shitty, droning music thumping from the speakers (not the magical Stevie Nicks of the dance trance), and I sensed the horde of demon ticks gradually scurrying to the stage as they consumed the innocent souls clustered behind me.
I could not speak other than lip-syncing Stevie Nicks songs. I could not move other than the mimicked shimmying of Ms. Stevie Knick-knacks. All I had was my self awareness.
And an idea!
I had an idea. It was something I've rarely done. One of my biggest scares as a kid, actually. Indian swamis and Japanese ghost-magi are experts at it, but not this body-bound sissy. My only option was going astral, popping out of this useless puppet shell and taking care of bidness with nothing but my consciousness to aid me.
I don't enjoy entering the astral plane. Never have and likely never will. It's the world of ghosts and lost souls. Every direction is up and down, left and right, all at the same time. Oh, and angels exist there too. Righteous, smiting angels with flaming swords and a strict list of sins. The Church (with a capital "C") conjured them during the medieval age and the notion stuck. Don't fuck with an angel.
I had no choice in the matter. I had to enter the astral plane.
There's practiced and proven rituals for going astral, there is for everything actually. But ritual requires time that the human juice boxes behind me didn't have. Jumping into the astral plane under mind control and duress is possible, but it's on par with forcing yourself to hiccup and then not hiccuping when the stimulus hits.
Try it. No... that's belching. Gross. Try to hiccup. Now do it while dancing and lip-syncing. You see? It's impossible.
Luckily, I'm a professional.
I focused. The involuntary dancing became tranquility. I found the pattern of the movement and from there rode it as calmly as one would float in the ocean on a breezy August afternoon. Up. And down. And up. The jarring music was nothing more than the sound of delicate harp chords. I visualized my grotesque Steviesque masque of smeared soot and pressed powder. I imagined peeling it from my face, folding it inside out, and simply stepped through the eyes sockets...
I jolted from my body into the astral plane. I flapped dizzily on the jet black wings of Raven, my totem spirit. Nervously pacing the stage beneath me was Ms. Stevie Knick-knacks.
She, of course, was a white winged dove.
