Dandon

It’s a warm sunny day and I’m riding my bike along the sidewalk of one of my city’s main streets toward downtown. I keep almost colliding with people, doors that swing open, etc., and I consider riding on the street since that’s what bylaw says you’re supposed to do anyways, but I very much prefer the sidewalk and I notice multiple riders doing the same ahead of me so I decide to keep on doing what I’m doing.

I end up in an unfamiliar clearing, and I think it’s rare to find myself somewhere I don’t recognize in this part of town. There is long yellow grass, sparse clusters of trees, and slight hills that partially enclose the space. Directly across from me is a mound that reminds me of a pingo, with people walking across it single file to the other side. I wonder what is over there and consider joining them, but they seem to be some sort of tour group and it might be awkward. Based on my general sense of location, I imagine what might be on the other side and conclude that is likely just a field that I have seen countless times while passing on the highway.

Somehow I end up in the house of someone I don’t know. Not wanting to make it obvious that I’m intruding by leaving right away, I decide to stay a little while and pretend like I’m supposed to be there. I see a guy named Ronan who I’ve talked to a few times but who doesn’t seem to recognize me, but I casually talk to him anyways, then make myself at home by pouring myself a glass of water and using the washroom. Then I sit down at a table with a few others and we all chat and play board games.

It turns out the house belongs to Ronan’s parents, and his mother offers me a bicycle helmet, saying she had noticed that I had ridden here without one. I don’t want to accept it because I prefer to ride without one, but it is of exceptional high quality, so I concede after all.

Eventually enough time has passed that I feel I can leave without it seeming strange. I get up and head for the front door, but just as I’m about to open it someone asks me who I know there. I say I’m friends with Ronan, who has left the room at this point. Everyone seems skeptical. I’m asked how I know him, so I try to keep things vague by saying “I actually know him through a couple different sources.” I’m asked if it’s through people from Westsyde, and I say “Sort of. They’re not from Westsyde, but they live there now.” Ronan re-enters, and I quickly leave the house before I can be questioned further.

Outside, I go to board my bike but realize I still have the helmet with me. I don’t want to take it knowing that I have obtained it under deceptive circumstances, but at the same time I don’t want to return to the house knowing that my lie has likely been found out. I can’t decide what to do.

I’m trapped in some sort of convention centre with a bunch of other strangers. A band is playing and we are free to roam around and do as we please, other than that there is a man with a grotesquely large, swollen, disfigured and scab-coloured face who keeps showing up to haul us away one by one to torture us in some unseen area.

I’m sitting around talking to a man whose arm has been forcibly removed and another whose face is severely burnt on one side. A third, possibly dead, is sprawled face-down on the floor, his shirtless skin so covered with welts that his back looks like it’s covered in Cheerios. A woman in great pain hobbles in to collapse on a seat nearby, one of her heels having been freshly sliced off.

I feel lucky that I have not been taken so far, but am afraid knowing that my turn will inevitable come. I try to hide in the rafters, although I’m sure my doing so is futile.

I’ve just awoken from a night alone sleeping on the sand at a public beach, by a tree line at the far end away from the entrance. There are only a few people in the distance at the other side. It is the first full day of my vacation, and I feel at peace and excited at the open-ended possibilities of what is to come in the weeks that follow. I decide that the water is warm enough for a morning swim, and I scroll through the music in my phone for the perfect soundtrack. I settle on “Black Cat” by Coyote Kisses, and with a freshly cracked beer in hand I walk into the waves.

All government in Canada has suddenly collapsed, and there is a lot of speculation and tension as to what will happen to society in the country. I know of a group who have chosen to live nomadically for the sake of being able to flee and hide easily if necessary. They have set up tents in a park by the river, and I plan to join them. In preparation, I begin filling a backpack with all of the things I think will take up the least space while being the most useful.

In the meantime, a friend and I order a pizza to be delivered to my house. When the delivery guy shows up he tells me it will be $100, which I think seems fair since the governmental situation must impact the monetary system. I count out the remainder of my cash, $120, which I doubt I will need as part of my impending new lifestyle. I’m about to give him the extra $20 as a tip, but then he asks if he can have a slice of the pizza, so I consider letting him do that instead. Then my friend and I get into an argument about what proper tipping etiquette might be in the new order of things.

I head to the park, which is swarming with people. There seems to be some sort of festival going on, complete with a parade. I keep running into old friends of mine, all of whom I have not seen in a long time and who have struggled with serious drug problems. They now seem happy and healthy, just like everyone else in the area. It occurs to me that perhaps society might go on functioning communally of its own accord.

I enter a small, square, low-ceiling plywood structure that looks like it had been through a fire. Inside, some sort of recruitment session is taking place for a Satanist cult, led by a woman of about 50 with me and three others in attendance.

The woman tells me she can answer any question I have about my future, as long as I join the cult. I don't want to be indebted to her, but I am concerned about my parents for some reason so I ask her if they are going to be okay. She tells me that in 3 years my dad will be in jail, wrongly convicted by a judge who is presiding drunk over his trial, and that in 2 years my mom will be dead.

In exchange for this information, I join the others in injecting cortisol into our palms, and am told that we all must return here every day at 4pm for additional injections. I don't intend to follow through, but when 4pm approaches the following day I begin to feel nervous, as though I am being watched. I navigate a cluster of buildings, hiding behind walls as I go.

I come across a television, on which I see a live news shot of a courtroom, with one of my fellow recruits among the jury. I feel relieved for him, since I know that he is in a safe place where he won't be forced to return to the cult. Then the leader appears next to him, smiling evilly, and the screen goes blank. She has come for him, and I know she will be coming for me next.

It’s a warm sunny day at Salmo River Ranch just days prior to Shambhala, and a whole bunch of volunteers are busy getting things ready for the festival. I’m in an area that’s being set up with what seems to be a Flinstones theme, complete with enormous multi-coloured dinosaur bones and stone-looking structures surrounding a pool. A few of the buildings look like open jail cells with beds on the floors.

Two women next to me are talking about how one of the beds is just a pile of straw, but that it’s because people specifically requested it, and how strange that is. I hesitate to chime in because I worry they won’t want me talking to them, but then I resolve to just go with my natural inclination to say something.

“Yeah, what the hell?” I say. “They put mattresses in all the other rooms. Why not just put one in there too?”

One of them hands me a beer, it’s from Four Winds Brewing, and we get to chatting. They tell me how they’re volunteering there with a group as part of a class project. I tell them that I’ve been to Shambhala before, but only on a day pass, and that I’m excited to attend the full festival for the first time this year. I realize that I was right to go with my gut and speak to them because otherwise I would be on the periphery instead of having this meaningful interaction.

Another woman wades by in the pool and motions at my beer as if she wants some. At first I refrain from handing it to her, thinking she might walk away with it, but again I decide to go with what I think is proper and I pass the bottle to her. She pours a few drops of the beer into a tiny glass vessel she is carrying, returns my bottle, smiles at me and walks away. I feel glad that I have shared with her and decide that I should always just do what I feel is right in the first place.

A gruff-speaking man in aviators approaches and starts guessing things about me. After three incorrect guesses he asks if someone has been to look at my house recently.

“Sort of,” I tell him, since I did have a contractor come quote me for a kitchen renovation a couple months ago.

“See, I knew that!” he says with a grin.

I leave to go home, excited to come back in a few days when the festival begins. I pop into a pizzeria near my house, where a customer is looking for a T-shirt that he lost. I help him search for it but neither of us can find it, and the staff seems annoyed by us.

Outside, a cop car shows up and the shirtless man explains the situation to them, but they arrest him. I know I should stand up for him since he has done nothing wrong, but I’m worried I might be arrested too and that I’d end up missing the festival. The car drives away with him inside, and I feel terrible for acting without integrity.