The Abyss

Still needs alot of work. Especially the ending.

"Into the abyss," we said. Acid lined the dark night sky, dripping from our tongues and minds like technicolour perspiration. Somehow, we had come to this children's mock up of a queenslander, and tired from exploring its nooks and crannies I let my back fall against the grooved steel floor. My friends were playing with an archaic water pump, a tribute to the olden days where sand stained settlers, tired from their beaten track, sat back and soaked their crackled lips. They were singing a parody of oldtime blues and saddling phantom horses.

"Where are we going?" asked Robby.
"Into the abyss," I said,
as knees unbent and sent us on our journey.
A ghost of empty streets sauntered past, and we arrived.
Lights hung from cold steel leviathans, illuminating an empty car park.
"Where now?" asked Mikey
"Umm I'm not sure, it's around here somewhere."
I had promised my friends a Japanese garden, a place of surreal beauty I had visited a year earlier for an architecture assignment. In the empty dark, with chemicals spinning around my brain, however, this place looked alien. I knew it was there, somewhere, nestled in the black depths of Mt. Cootha, but finding it would be something else. After a brief search of the perimeter we found a gate, closed, as gates tend to be at 4am in the morning. For a moment eyes looked at eyes to garner the group's intention.
"Fuck it, let's climb over. It'll be an adventure," I ventured.
"Yeah fuck it mannn," came the parody from Robby's lips
"I ain't climbin' no gate," mumbled Phil, who for the night had adopted the drawl of a New Orleans Negro.
"C'mon dude, just climb the gate."
"I ain't climbing no gate!" he repeated.
He said he would find another way, so I grabbed the thin steel bars, and hoisted myself up and over. Mikey and Robbie followed suit, and before we knew it we were delinquent kids again, busting into botanical gardens to smoke weed and cause a kerfuffle. Chuckles echoed through the night as we wondered what had happened to Phil. Mere metres away stood our answer, hand on chin and judging a large metal gate with what looked like Socratic method. He laid himself on the ground and rolled smoothly into our midnight playground. With a smug grin, and a cerebral palsy voice, he aped us:
"C'moon Phwil, just crime de gaate."
When he had finished, eyes turned to me.
"Where now?"
"Err...I think it's this way," I murmured. Suddenly I felt like Moses leading Jews through the desert.
The road swerved and curved and transformed into a dirt path surrounded by giant, dark and looming trees. They enveloped the sky and usurped the starlight.
"So this is the abyss huh?" said Phil.
"It ain't so bad," jibed Ling.
I led the tribe through countless black paths, deeper and deeper into the darkness. It became more and more apparent that I had no idea where the fuck we were. Mikey asked me the percentage likelihood of us finding the garden in the next twenty minutes.
"Hrmm...maybe 70?"
He seemed content with that. I pondered my optimism. I had led my friends half an hour into a never ending black, and the sounds of creatures scuttling around us created a sinister synergy with the drugs. "There's no panthers in Queensland right? Cool, just checking."

Mikey heard it first. A faint clicking noise in the distance.
"Can you hear that?" He asked.
"Shit it's the feds!" Robby cracked, in reference to a previous trip where I ran arms in air into the bushes, fleeing from ethereal squad cars.
"Maybe it IS the feds..."
"What else could it be?"
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out..."
We walked towards the noise. Anticipation mixed with fear and curiosity, and the clicking grew louder as we stepped along the dark concrete path.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The noise grew as we neared, and was now streaming in from all around us. A glint of moonlight pierced an opening in the trees, and fell upon a small wooden bridge. Our tired feet landed on its wooden slats, and we had reached the epicentre. We stood, in the midst of a midnight cacophony. A moonlight orchestra sang over the gentle gurgle of the stream. Frogs. Croaking, all around us. Frogs. Bewildered, and then entranced, we sat and smoked, soaking in symphonic beauty.
"I wonder what they're saying?" I queried
"Oi cunt!" came the reply.
"Wanna root?" came another.
We sat in silent bliss, pins of orange ember illuminating wisps of smoke as they swam through the air. For a moment, time forgot to care, as we stared into the starlit sky. A brief eternity passed by, and I remembered my promise.
"C'mon lets go, I think we're near."
My knees creaked as we stood to continue on our way, and with a touch of regret, I stepped back onto the familiar concrete. A few short steps and we came across the silhouette of a wooden signpost.
"I can't make it out. If only we had a light..."
Mikey pulled out his phone.
"Genius!" I exclaimed.
The sign read: "Japanese Gardens"
We stepped, carefully, into the clearing behind. Giant trees loomed around the perimeter, as if scared to step on sacred grounds, and a hidden waterfall gurgled in the shadows. A pebble path, lined with little bushes, snaked around a solemn pond as it yawned into the clear night sky. We hopped across some rough cut stepping stones and onto a newly cut lawn, where we sat back, rolled up a fattie and watched the stars winking from the night. The abyss, it seems, was not so bad.