Reading: "Altar of Incantation" from COVEAL OF THE HEDONIC (A.Glass 2025)

 

“Nice meeting you Nalina.” She holds out her hand, as Nalina shakes it.
“Likewise, you have beautiful hair. Let me guess your background.” Nalina closes her eyes, with her right hand, in anticlockwise way she waves it over the woman’s face who is looking up at Nalina’s hand, which is beginning to resemble a flesh colored circle.
“Moroccan?”
“Close! Tunisian, on my mother side, dad is old school generation Irish New Yorker!..” The start laughing again. “...Do you reckon they're aliens up there?”
“Gotta be...” the man says, also looking up, noting a faint star in the sky. “...That’s Sirius, right?” Turing to Nalina, who in a mocking way holds up her pager.
“No more digital network reliance and star charts hey?...” She says, placing her pager into her bag. “...Or the use of GPS…” She stares up the star, which appears to be flashing. “...I know it! It is Sirius!…” Looking around into the now darkened park, only illuminated by its street lights. “...And we are East, so it has to be. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, and we are in the middle of fucking New York City.”
They all start laughing, as the man also lies down, Nalina eyes his crotch.
“More Nexus?” Nalina asks, removing the top of the vial, tilting her head back she allows three droplets of the clear psychedelic fluid to flow down her tongue.
“Yes,” the man says, sitting up as Nalina repeats the same method, followed by Jacky and Carrie.
She places the small plastic cap on. “Might as well use it all up, and trip into oblivion…” She places the near empty vial into her bag, as Carrie begins to sway back and forth,
“Look at me, I’m in slow motion,”
“...As long as you don’t freak out.”
Jacky shakes her head from side to side. “Nah, we’ve all good. You got two wannabe psychological therapists over here.” She points with her left index finger at Carrie, with the same finger turned inward, pointing at her cleavage.
Nalina shrugs her shoulders, as she views what she thinks is a collection of elm trees in the distance looking warped and out of shape. “Yeah, what could go wrong?”
Laughing again, Jacky flops onto the Scott’s stomach, to which he lurches, in a playful manner, upwards slightly.
“Everything! Fuck the world in a peaceful way.”
“The only way! So, aliens, y’know there was this guy scientist, physicist, or something, waffling on about the rare Earth hypothesis, like we are the only intelligent life form out there in the vast cosmos. I thought,…” Nalina looks up at the night sky. “...What a fucking idiot. We are a spec, nothing, a dot, a fuck up. Lets face it, after the shit of the last Ten years, the human race is a fuck up. We went backwards.”
“Over thinkers. They’re just pissed that they will most likely not be around, when we do hear from intelligent aliens out there somewhere. Human lifespans are short in comparison to the cosmos, and the Earth is a young planet. Frustration and mathematics are a bad mix,” Scott's says, as Nalina eyes his crotch again, with Jacky’s head positioned on his stomach. Envisaging wads of semen spurting upward from his erect cock, to which she and the other woman are sucking on his penis.
Smiling, Nalian lifts out her bag the small glass vial with the last remnants of Nexus inside, she removes the plastic cap, tilts her back, as a small droplet falls into her mouth, standing, although feeling like she is sinking into the Earth, chuckling to herself, attempt to do the same to the others lying around her with their mouths open, but to no avail. “Tons of mathematicians have met unfortunate deaths anyway or gone fucking bonkers, so I agree with you my friend.” Pointing at Scott, who is now sitting up.
“And I said what?...” He replies, waving his hands around. “...I think I am producing electricity, check it out, they’re glowing.”
Nalina lifts her bag, throwing the empty vial into it. “You said, they’re over thinkers...” she says, repeating the comment he made earlier. “...I best be going.” The two other woman stand, as does the man, to which Nalina throws herself at him, wrapping hr arms around him, grinding her hips up against his. “You can come, if you want,” she says in a coy manner, as the two other woman start laughing.
“And what will my boyfriend think?” He replies.
“Don’t laugh!” She says, facing Carrie and Jacky, as she embraces them both.
Carrie, looking into the darkness of E 7^th Street, places her right hand on Nalina’s shoulder. “Be careful going back.”
“I’ll be fine. Nice meeting you Jacky and Scott, have fun with your guy tonight.”
“I will! Sex on Nexus, what a combo!” He replies, as Nalina shakes her head in a sardonic way.
“I know!”
Waving, she turns and walks back towards the main entrance of the Park, turning left at Avenue A.
“I am so trippin’ here. The car lights, like lasers streaking by, and in slow motion. Which is very cool. Still, it’s got a good vibe going on here tonight...” Nalina passes people walking past, others sitting outside the various eateries. As she nears the corner of E. Houston Street, the street appears darker, with less foot traffic, some bordered up shops, graffiti, and rubbish strewn about. “...There was a restaurant here once, I remember.”

___

Reading: "Altar of Incantation" from COVEAL OF THE HEDONIC (A.Glass 2025)