Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2017 23:12:22 +0000
From: revjpgibson@hotmail.com
Subject: Home in the Woods Chapter 8

			    A HOME IN THE WOODS
				    By
		   Rev Jesse Penfield Gibson, MDiv, DMin


DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction.  Any similarities between any persons,
living or dead, is coincidental.  It involves bisexuality on the part of
teenagers, including intergenerational sex, as well as drug use.  If this
offends you, please reconsider your browsing choices.  If it appeal to you,
enjoy.


Complaints, compliments and comments to revjpgibson@hotmail.com

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stories like this.



					EIGHT

	The three of them drank some of the liqour that night and none of
the mushrooms. Nate passed out leaned up against wall in the cabin and woke
to a pounding head, a cotton mouth, and nausea.  As good as the getting
drunk was, as fun as it was, the day after was bad.  They had nothing to
do, really, that day and Nate did nothing.  He read some of Grandpa's
books.  There was one by a British guy, Bertrand Russell, called Why I am
not A Christian, that he read from cover to cover in a slender volume.  He
didn't understand a lot of it because it was old and British but he got
enough to have to really think about it.

	The next day, he felt better.  Normal.  Part of him wanted to visit
the Men's camp, located somewhere out in the woods, but he didn't ask where
it was.  He trusted Grandpa that much.  Nate knew that he would go and see
one day but thought that maybe Grandpa would know best and would tell him
when. Somehow he was in some magical world where the old rules don't apply
-- he hadn't even heard a train come through the whole time he's been there
and they were close enough that he would -- and he just had to accept it.

	On the third day, Grandpa made the mushrooms into tea. Hot water,
steeping the fungus, some ginger root, some sour orange.  It smelled
disgusting. Nate was unsure about it.  Even if they were real, he was
uncertain.  He was getting used to wine and the moonshine and even enjoyed
it, feeling free and liberated, open and talkative, less self-conscious.
He liked the pot too but in a different way.  Even though he was more
closed in it was still fun.  Mind expanding.  Perhaps that's the point of
this too.  Grandpa said it was.  Mind expansion.  But it seemed different
to him.

	"How do we know they're even real?  Don't the really dangerous ones
look a lot like the magic muschrooms?" Nate asked.

	Grandpa laughed. "You ain't gonna die, boy.  But you might live.
That what you afraid of?"

	"I'm not afraid" Nate popped back

	"One thing I'll say for you, you can't lie for shit" Grandpa said.
"Mattie's doing it.  He's game even if you ain't"

	"I didn't say I wouldn't" Nate mumbled.

	But Mattie is a teenage daredevil, willing to do anything.  Any
dare, any suggestion would send him off for an adventure.  Nate held back,
weighed the risks.  Mattie sensed when it was ready, late in the afternoon,
several more hours of daylight but the shadows lengthening.  He was in the
cabin eager.  Grandpa dished up a cup full of the tea and handed it to
Mattie.  He took it back and gave the cup to Grandpa to refill.  Dishing
out more, he stuck the cup in his hand in Nate's direction.

	'You joining us?"

	The moment of decision.  Yes or no.  He looked at Mattie, beautiful
one and the one he still desired even if he knew more and more that Mattie
was incapable of returning the desire completely, who urged him on.  Nate
took the cup.  They told him to slam it back.  It tasted every bit as bad
and he thought it would.  Earthy like mushrooms should, he supposed, but
more like stinky feet.  He gagged a bit as he did it. Fortunately, he held
it down.  Grandpa took his own swig and they settled in.  NOthing happened
at first.  Everything seemed normal.  Nate looked around, and even asked
how long it should take to kick in.  After about 15 minutes, though, he
began to feel ever so slightly stoned.  But not like pot.  Not like
anything but definitely not normal.

	Fifteen minutes after that, sitting outside under a giant oak tree,
it seemed the normal noise of the forest was unaccountably intense.  Every
leaf rustling, very squirrel or rabbit moving, pounded in his ears.It was
all around him.  Nate looked around trying to find the movement, the source
of the cacophany around him.  Even the leaves on the trees rustling with
the wind grated down deep.  Then his thoughts came.  In torrents.
Unrestricted by any filter.  Memories and grudges, flooded over him.  He
could see it all in his head.  The betrayals. His brother hiting him, the
last punch as he tried to struggle up off the cold floor of the bathroom,
the one that put him down, and then a kick to the kidneys.  The sad
twilight of sedation on the ventilator, breathing through a straw and
terrified about why and what, not knowing.  The mean and evil things that
were said to him over in Alabama.  Being homeschooled and denying it all,
saying he wasn't gay but asexual.  He was nothing.  NAte had for a time
stripped himself of everything human, became an automaton. Breathing and
body functioning but feeling nothing.  It didn't last becuase it couldn't.
Then the anger, the fury.  Then alone.

	All of that, like a bucket hitting him.  His hands seemed red.
When had he started bleeding?  Was he?  He asked Grandpa if he was and the
old man confirmed it.  Although the blood drops poured off they never fell.
He couldn't decide if it was real or not.  But nothing around him seemed
fixed anymore.  Things straight were crooked.  The crooked was undulating.

	Mate thoght of death and not for the first time.  More and more
though, the thoughts seemed to be better, still rapidly processing but not
as evil and dark.  Dying in such a state of mind seemed too overwhelming.
He had to go off and be alone.  In the back of the cabin, Nate sank to his
knees and stared at the trees, which seemed to be respiring and moving as
if alive.  Not alive in the sense that trees are supposed to be alive but
alive in the sense of being men trapped in cellulose.

	Mattie came and sank down next to him. He spoke and Nate couldn't
process the words clearly.  They made no sense but it was like the voice of
angels.  It was soothing and calming.  Mattie held him and that seemed
right too.  His body seemed right.  It all was all right.  They stayed that
way for a long period, neither moving.  Slowly it seemed that the whole of
the forest got back on key and the whole of the world was musical.  The
forest was an orchestra, playing an organic melody.  Everything he saw had
an aura.  Red, green, yellow and blue.  The trees and the bushes, the
animals that streaked past leaving contrails in the disturbed atmosphere,
all had their subtle aura.  It shifted and moved but Nate could feel a
golden energy inside of him.  It suffused through him and radiated outward.
He felt the connection with all life around him.  Oneness with it all.

	"Is any of this real?" Nate asked Mattie

	Whether he spoke or not is hard to say. The noise of the forest
drowned him out. Nate no longer trusted his senses.  Things moved that
shouldn't and then he looked back they had retreated to their original
position.  Trees switched places and then back again.  Animals that didn't
exist scampered through and disappeared.  Unnatural noises prevailed and
smells unattached to anything substantial lingered. And none of it bothered
him.

	"It's all magic" Mattie said.

	"Yeah" Nate agreed.  It was.

	"Not just now.  Always"

	"Yeah, I know"

	"You do?" Mattie asked.  Question or accusation?

	'Maybe" Nate said.

	It was fear that was holding back.  The negative energy of caution
and restraint.  Everybody seeks the light, the positive energy but it is
all so self-defeating.  Worry and stress, fear and caution, and petty
morality most of all.  It was all negative.  It pushed aside the positive.

	Nate got up and went in search of Grandpa.  There were some things
he wanted to know.  And he wanted the old man, not the girl.  Storming
around the cabin, he saw Grandpa, shirtless in his overalls.  Nate stormed
up to him.

	"Is any of this real?"

	Grandpa must have laughed.  "Not a lick of it"

	Nate was frustrated.  "Not the hallucinations, this.  You. This."

	"I guess it is as real as you want it to be"

	"That's not an answer"

	"That's all the answer you get" Grandpa said

	"Why me then?" Nate asked, getting in his face.

	"I have my reasons"

	That really made him mad. "I hate you"

	Grandpa leaned forward, took Nate by the head and kissed him. Not a
quick peck but a soulful kiss. "No you don't" Grandpa said.

	He sat in the woods alone the rest of the night.  The purple sky
and the mobile trees and all the hallucinations swept over him. He was one
with the unreality of it all. At some point, he was asleep and his dreams
were untroubled.  He awoke and it seemed that Grandpa was sitting Indian
style a short distance away.  Nate was groggy, bleary eyed and the warmth
of the day was hanging over him like a blanket. The old man motioned to him
and got up and started walking away.  As he did, he turned to look to see
if Nate was following him.  When he saw that he wasn't, Grandpa motioned
again for him to come on.  Nate struggled up and reluctantly followed
him. The old man led the way and Nate jogged some to catch up but couldn't.
Even as the old man continued to walk, he couldn't make up the
ground. Frustrated by that, Nate stopped and the old man turned and
motioned again.  Shaking his head, Nate followed on.  They pushed deeper in
to the woods, further away from their own cabin and to an area without a
path where Nate had not been.

	There was a clearing.  He heard the voices. aware that they were
voices but not clear what they were saying as he approached the tree line
but at a distance where he should have heard them clearly.  He came into
the clearing and realized that Grandpa had gone away. Disappeared.  In the
clearing there were about a half dozen teenage boys and about a half dozen
men, all shirtless, working.  They stopped what they were doing when Nate
emerged from the tree line.  There was a man, hairy chested and muscular,
brown beard and long brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Nate recognized
from before.  He was Josh, one of the ones they gpt the shrooms from

	 "What are you doing here?"  Josh asked.  It seemed unfriendly.

	"I'm Nate. Nate Morgam. I've been living with Grandpa the last week
or about. I thought... I was following him and he led here"

	"We knoe who are you" the filippino Gonzalez said, standing behind
Josh as before.

	"You said when I came I would be welcome."

	"You are welcome." Josh said.  "You just came before we thought you
would.  A lot sooner"

	"I was following Grandpa"

	"The fuck you were" Gonzalez said.  "Half man and half girl has no
place here.  This is men only."

	Josh softened a bit. Put his arms around him.  "You thought you
were.  Strange things happen in these woods.  Lucifer led you here.  One
day, you are going to come back and serve him here, with us.  But not now"

	Nate looked around.  The boys were no older than him, no more
mature.  A couple had facial hair but all the men did, unshaved and rough,
muscular and lean, all male and masculine but the boys were no different
from him. All of a sudden, the place was very alluring. He wanted to stay.

	"Why not now?" Nate asked

	Josh shrugged. "It's not your time.  You don't have enough
experience of the world yet."

	Mate shook his head and gestured toward the boys.  "Neither do
they"

	"They don't need it. You do" Gonzalez said

	"Why?"

	Another man stepped forward.  Black. Powerfully built. "Because you
do, fucker.  You do.  You know you do. Go back to that one, Grandpa or
Tempest or whatever he calls himself and came back when it's time.  Go."

	Reluctantly Nate turned and left.  He took one last look as he did,
a dozen males, alluring and calling him back.  It seemed right to him in
that instant.  But they didn't want him.  Another rejection. This time, the
men rejected him. His own kind.  He walked back through the woods toward
the cabin, looking for a trail.  He couldn't find it at first but then he
crashed through the underbush and found the path.

	Mattie was standing there and Nate came up short.

	"It's not what you think." Mattie said

	'I don't know what you mean"

	Mattie looked down at the ground, staring at it for an instant and
then looking him in the face.  "It's not what you think. They don't reject
you.  They know you're going to be special but it takes time.  Grandpa
knows it too. And Mama Ruth.  And me. But you don't have to go anywhere
right now.  There is so more to know.  Those pwople, your parents, those
people, made you think you were worthless and no good and nobody but it's
not true. They don't want you until you know it too"

	"Okay" Nate said.  He was unconvinced though. "They said Lucifer
guided me but it was Grandpa"

	"You sure?"

	"No" Nate admitted.  "Weird things happen here.  If it had been
you, I would have been more sure that it was Lucifer"

	Mattie smiled.  It was enignmatic.