“Yes, yes, yes, I for­got it too,” sighed Franz over-dra­mat­i­cally. “But we are in luck!” With his index fin­ger pointed at the nox­ious yel­low sky and speak­ing in a charis­matic Ger­man ac­cent, “Since it’s tat­tooed across his shoul­ders, we need only to ‘con­ve­niently drop some­thing’ to the ground for him to pick up. When he bends over we’ll know his name with­out hav­ing to rudely ask a sec­ond time!” Franz acted out his plan with the flower he’d been twirling.

An­thony paid lit­tle at­ten­tion. He was eye­ing the house’s di­verse col­lec­tion of trop­i­cal flora na­tive to a thou­sand Pa­cific Is­lands ex­cept this one; they were just props in some land de­vel­oper’s dream. The thick yel­low smoke waft­ing in from the sugar plan­ta­tions made the flow­ers ap­pear dou­bly ar­ti­fi­cial. From the caus­tic smell of gaso­line-charred cane he could tell they were har­vest­ing up is­land today.

Palm trees swayed ner­vously in the morn­ing breeze. As he wiped sweat from his brow, An­thony thought he felt an early drop of rain from the ris­ing storm. It had show­ered every­day he’d been on this side of the is­land and today was un­likely to be an ex­cep­tion. He picked at the lam­i­nate peel­ing from the faux-bam­boo mail­box while Franz in­tently stroked his beard. Fi­nally Franz re­mem­bered: they were wait­ing for Multi Khan.

In­side the house Mrs. Woof (as An­thony liked to call her) was up and about. She ran her or­ganic farm like one of his for­mer drill sergeants. Her nag­ging was op­pres­sive and in­ces­sant: “Don’t burn the ba­nana bread! Smile for the tour buses! And on days off, don’t let me catch you up in the cow pas­tures!” He was fin­ished work­ing like a dog for one woman’s self­ish vi­sion of trop­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity.

“What­ever his name is, as soon as he comes back let’s get the hell out of here.” An­thony came to the is­land for es­cape: from dis­hon­or­able dis­charge, from his mun­dane life, but mostly from re­al­ity. Franz, with his in­suf­fer­able en­thu­si­asm for life, made a wor­thy com­pan­ion in their quest for Party. “Good times, jah!” So when a wild haired, bare­footed, half-naked man ap­peared along­side the re­mote jun­gle road that morn­ing promis­ing the Moon, they knew just what to do.

Multi Khan reemerged from the for­est. With his curly dark hair, brown skin, and youth­ful step he looked like an African faun; per­haps the Nu­bian cousin of the God Pan. Con­trary to his ap­pear­ance, he claimed di­rect lin­eage from his Mon­gol name­sake. Pink plas­tic twine served as makeshift belt for his soggy cut-off jeans which fit loosely around his slen­der hips (stan­dard issue for a mod­ern day Mon­gol War­rior). He was flanked by his dog Nemo and a very stoned Angel.

In his right hand he was hold­ing a brown paper bag filled to the brim with freshly picked psy­che­delic mush­rooms. His left hand car­ried a bam­boo staff.

An­thony had had a taste of al­tered states of con­scious­ness and fan­cied him­self spir­i­tu­ally in­clined ever since that first joint. The chance meet­ing with a self-de­scribed “Psy­chadelic-War­rior-Shaman-Priest” was a clear sign from the uni­verse to re­sume his as­cent of the Holy Moun­tain.

“Like the chil­dren of Orien, lis­ten care­fully when the mush­rooms speak to you and you shall re­ceive a devine cleans­ing,” Multi Khan in­structed as he handed An­thony the bag. He spoke in a hushed, solemn voice and a Cal­i­for­nia surfer twang that made every­thing he ut­tered sound like a para­ble. The four seated them­selves cross legged while Nemo curled up at the feet of his mas­ter. Franz pro­duced the small bag of ganja they’d promised to ex­change for Angel and Multi Khan’s labors up in the cow pas­tures. Angel ac­cepted it greed­ily.

“It’s truly a beau­ti­ful thing when peo­ple un­der­stand the virtues of shar­ing a boun­ti­ful har­vest,” said Multi Kahn. “We humbly ac­cept your shar­ing of the Earth with us.” An­thony rolled his eyes.

“So about how many of these things should we eat?” he asked. Al­ready Franz had shoved a fist-full into his mouth.

“Tastes like grass,” he said. “Very Earthy.” He was chew­ing like a horse and ca­su­ally in­spect­ing one of these moist spec­i­men.

“Lis­ten to the mush­rooms brother, they will tell you how much to take,” said Multi Khan as he closed his eyes and placed one hand over his heart.

An­thony popped four stems and three caps into his mouth, chewed once and took a hard swal­low.

“You’ve cho­sen to fly on an aus­pi­cious day, broth­ers. Today marks the end of the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade and the en­trance of Jupiter into it’s sev­enth house. To cel­e­brate, I’ll be host­ing the Feast to End All Feasts at my beach.” Multi Kahn’s voice swelled with pride. Rais­ing his staff, he gave care­ful in­struc­tions: “Travel by way of the Red Sand Beach and the Sa­cred Pools. Gather some food of­fer­ings from the dump­sters there and you may be granted per­mis­sion to join the cel­e­bra­tion and re­ceive my ser­mon.” Franz and An­thony un­der­stood this to mean only one thing: Party. Multi Khan, Angel and Nemo dis­ap­peared into the for­est from whence they came.

A few caus­tic drops of rain fell from the sky as Franz and An­thony began to walk down the re­mote jun­gle road. They had packed only the es­sen­tials for their trip: a sandy towel, three joints, matches and a flip phone al­ready low on bat­tery.

As they passed the Church’s weekly rum­mage sale, the vol­un­teers were leav­ing their posts to to go in­side and re­ceive their trop­i­cal gospel. With the con­gre­gants were dis­tracted, An­thony slipped around back and ca­su­ally stole two over-sized Hawai­ian shirts off the densely packed racks. They put on their new clothes and con­tin­ued walk­ing down the jun­gle road. With their psy­che­delic flack jack­ets, they were fi­nally pre­pared for lift off.

Like the rain drops that were now falling steadily, the ef­fects of the mush­rooms landed softly and rhyth­mi­cally on their bod­ies. Franz stopped for a mo­ment and held out his hand, sway­ing while he ob­served the drops land in his palm. An­thony took a deep breath. The nox­ious smell of burn­ing sugar cane rose and fell. At last they reached the beach path.

The Red Sand Beach was walled in by sheer cliffs made of charred vol­canic rock. Lush green veg­e­ta­tion swung down from a dense, im­pos­ing jun­gle that loomed fifty feet above the blood red sands. Waves crash­ing onto the jagged out­crop­ping of boul­ders sent spray soar­ing into the jun­gles above. The boul­der out­crop­ping cre­ated a nat­ural swim­ming pool of vi­o­lent white­wash that teemed with min­er­als and mi­crobes. An­thony noted a young woman bathing nude in the pri­mor­dial soup, her hair tied back in dread locks, as the two de­scended the steep, gnarled path.

Throngs of human lizards were en­joy­ing a salty chem­i­cal bath of acid-rain and sea spray along the shore. Franz was quick to take his place among the rep­tiles but An­thony with­drew cau­tiously. Fear­ing the they might de­tect his al­tered stated of mind, An­thony held his breath and crept along the rock walls until he reached the safety of a low ceil­ing cave op­po­site the en­trance path. He hugged his knees close and felt grat­i­tude for tem­po­rary re­lief from so­cial and sen­sory en­gage­ment. His cell phone, now con­joined to his body, beeped out the end of its life.

Franz, hav­ing re­moved his shirt and fas­tened it into a drift­wood pole, pa­raded his flag around the beach with joy­ous shouts and howls. He planted his flag next to one group of beach goers and joined them in song. Waves con­tin­ued to crash with tremen­dous force and made it ap­pear that their voices, with each breath, un­leashed a tor­rent of air into each oth­ers laugh­ing, wind-swept faces.

The rain started to come down in sheets and every­one re­treated to the shel­ter of the cave. An­thony ner­vously emerged from his shell and wel­comed the soaked masses. Franz took his place to the right of his com­pan­ion while Dread Locks sat to An­thony’s left. She mag­i­cally re­vealed a pur­ple ukulele and handed it to Franz who promptly began to ser­e­nade this pierced nip­ple god­dess. An­thony, now mes­mer­ized by the tat­too of Fred Flint­stone be­neath her right col­lar­bone, fig­ured he must be watch­ing a movie and de­cided to relax for just a mo­ment. He lit up a joint and shared it with the dozen or so cave dwellers.

Sud­denly the clouds broke and sun­light poured through. Every­one slowly emerged from the caved to land softly on a sunny, rain­bow pro­tected beach. With this sign of prov­i­dence, the two friends de­cided to con­tinue along their jour­ney. De­spite mo­men­tar­ily re­call­ing Multi Khan’s re­quest, the two con­tin­ued past the food laden dump­ster with­out skip­ping a beat.

The calm did not last. The skies dark­ened and vi­o­lent winds sprayed salty air as they at­tempted to crawl along the rocky shore to­wards the Sa­cred Pools.

They ar­rived at the site of an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial rites to dis­cover it over run with hea­thens. An­thony, fear­ing the un­holy reg­u­la­tions of a Na­tional Recre­ation Area, hid be­hind a large rock to se­cretly ob­serve the des­e­cra­tion rit­u­als. Tribes of Pen­tax­i­ans, Can­non­ites and Nikonos were po­si­tion­ing their lenses on the exact spot of a thou­sand vir­gin deaths. “Now, smile!” The me­chan­i­cal mouths of their de­vices clicked with de­light.

The word dweezils is often used to de­scribe the ac­tion of going to war with one’s own mind, most often in­cited by po­tent psy­che­delic com­pounds. The dweezils had fi­nally set in for Franz. Pow­er­ful drugs af­fect­ing his brain had talked him out of his re­main­ing cloth­ing and into a state of pri­mal ag­gres­sion. He lay com­pletely naked, clutch­ing a large rock and look­ing men­ac­ingly at the un­know­ing throngs of tourists. “Schaden­freude… ” he softly mum­bled in Ger­man. “Schaden­freude… ” An­thony re­mem­bered that loosely trans­lated to ‘tak­ing plea­sure in an­other’s pain.’

Now fear­ful, he col­lected him­self and wrapped a towel around his con­fused friend. An­thony furtively made his way be­hind a dis­tracted tribe of Can­non­ites and hero­ically stole a sarong to clothe his friend. Fear­ing for their lives, they left the pools.

Calamity had robbed Franz and An­thony of day­light and three of their four san­dals. With night ap­proach­ing and their trip just be­gin­ning, the two de­cided to make their way to a place where the world would make sense again. It began to lightly rain as they started for the Party.

The Plas­tic Beach was lit­tered with the rub­bish and refuse dumped from a nearby five star re­sort. Wood was scarce so they burned what­ever they could find: sty­ro­foam con­tain­ers, plas­tic fold­ing chairs, flip flops, bat­ter­ies, ceil­ing fans, car up­hol­stery, golf club bags, and any other ob­ject ca­pa­ble of a gaso­line bap­tism. The re­sult was an ol­fac­tory ar­maged­don un­sur­passed by any on the is­land.

Franz and An­thony de­scended upon the Party.

Ma­genta fog. Fire. Drum­ming. Beer. Fight­ing. Vomit. Sex. Trash. Nu­dity. Danc­ing. Drugs. Rage. It was raw, un­fet­tered, volatile hu­man­ity dis­tilled into glo­ri­ous shit, piss and blood. They dove straight in, em­brac­ing the mad­ness of it all.

Multi Khan’s hoard was a mot­ley crew of a dozen or so drunks, dropouts, losers and tran­sients who had scraped to­gether enough cash to af­ford a one way ticket to the is­land. These in­vaders lived off the fat of the land, raid­ing dump­sters at the fancy ho­tels and set­ting up camp on the fringes of par­adise. There was the Cougar: a hag­gard Eu­ro­pean who with her bro­ken Eng­lish was al­ways try­ing to se­duce a man about half her age. There was The Tweaker: a young, sa­tanic drug­gie whose pos­sessed yelling was cel­e­brated with laugh­ter. There was The Young Vet­eran: a griz­zly, saronged thirty-some­thing who ap­peared to be suf­fer­ing from PTSD after too many Phish shows. He was ex­am­in­ing a large knife and keep­ing a watch­ful eye on Multi Khan.

Flames rose higher to­wards the dark, omi­nous sky. The once peace­ful Multi Khan was pac­ing around the fire and stew­ing with rage. He had be­come fix­ated on the fail­ure of his vi­sion of shar­ing and broth­er­hood. Hadn’t he given spe­cific in­struc­tions? Every­one was sup­posed to bring an of­fer­ing to share be­fore re­ceiv­ing his ser­mon. Alas, no one brought any­thing.

Fi­nally, he lashed out. “Didn’t any of you ever go to El­e­men­tary School?? Haven’t any of you ever heard of shar­ing!?!” His eyes glowed red through the dark­ness as he shouted with child­ish rage. His bam­boo staff splin­tered as it came crash­ing down into the fire, send­ing em­bers fly­ing to the heav­ens. He con­tin­ued to spit fiery in­sults and curse his friends until at last The Young Vet­eran at­tempted to sub­due him. Multi Khan at­tacked with all of his strength and had him pinned by the throat. At­tempt­ing to break up the fight, Dread Locks ap­peared from the shad­ows and sunk her teeth into The Vet­eran’s leg and it be­came a proper brawl. The drum­ming con­tin­ued as more and more peo­ple piled in.

At last, Nemo let out a long howl. Si­lence. No one spoke, or even moved as they no­ticed the full Moon ris­ing over the pale green ocean.

Multi Khan got up first and pet his loyal dog on the head. He paused, took a long stare at the fire, brushed sand from his beard and at last spoke, “Yo guys, I was trip­pin’. was trip­pin’… I’m sorry, I was trip­pin’.” He forced out a laugh and walked into the shad­ows.

Mutli Khan promptly re­turned with two large green, re-us­able shop­ping bags filled to the brim with dump­ster food. The shiny goods were dis­trib­uted among the masses and a Bac­chian feast en­sued. There was a cor­nu­copia of soggy french fries, half eaten bologna sand­wiches, stale potato chips, bruised ap­ples, frozen waf­fles (still in the pack­age!) and the crumbs of choco­late chip cook­ies mixed with sand. There was sour tuna fish, moldy muffins, and plenty of donuts and pizza crusts to go around. Every­one sat cross legged around the fire and laughed as they shared in the bounty of Multi Khan’s raid.

An­thony hes­i­tated as Angel handed him the con­tainer of sushi. Raw fish? With a scoff, Multi Khan seized the con­tainer. He popped the slick ahi into his mouth, chewed once and took a hard swal­low.

With their bel­lies now filled, every­one was at last ready to hear Multi Khan’s much touted speech. Multi Khan raised him­self in front of the fire.

Pas­sion­ate, in­co­her­ent non­sense is the best way to de­scribed what fol­lowed. Every­one tried to keep up, but this des­per­ate rant was mak­ing every­one a lit­tle sick. Mutli Khan’s eyes darted around search­ing madly for any­one who was en­gaged in his meta­phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual dis­course. Even Nemo let out a yawn. This went on for what could have been hours until at last Multi Khan took off down the beach em­bar­rassed, dou­bled over and look­ing a lit­tle sick. The fire was dying down and one by one the guests ei­ther de­parted or found a quiet spot to curl up and pass out. The party was over.

The sun rose into clear, pris­tine skies. Party goers brushed sleep from their eyes to dis­cover them­selves in peace and har­mony with the earth. A newly wed cou­ple, who had wan­dered too far past the bound­ary of the re­sorts, paused briefly to sur­vey the scene but con­tin­ued strolling.

Not far from the great fire, An­thony and Franz dis­cov­ered Multi Khan’s body. He was lying face down and folded over; his soft cheeks pale blue and life­less. He had choked on his own vomit.

In a somber daze, An­thony and Franz re­called the events of the night and pre­ced­ing day. Now com­pletely purged, they both felt eerily cleansed as they’d been promised. EMTs de­scended upon the scene. A young of­fi­cer took down their de­tails and ques­tioned them about the de­tails of the young man who had just passed away.

Their mem­o­ries still foggy, An­thony and Franz had to read his name off Multi Khan’s back; his fleshy tomb­stone mark­ing the be­gin­ning of the final trip.