Acid Diary

Playpeople came sneaking around the corner.
All brightly dressed in primary colors, Playpeople were cartoonish entities that slid across walls just out of sight.
Some might attribute this to some very real spectrum of light that humans cannot see, and maybe the actual form of the Playpeople is very different if seen through the eyes of another animal like a bird or a cat. And maybe they don't sneak at all, but rather slip passed my vision.
Yet, in the throws of a massive psychological tear, they were very real.
Some day out in the woods, I could be 18 or 32…
The tenses change and I'm not so sure I'm writing this all down or whether I'm experiencing it. But, like I was saying, it all began out in the woods with some friends and where I'm sitting in front of a fireplace in an apartment complex. I'm walking away from the others and the apartment deep into the forest.
The colors in the woods are tinged gold as the sun sets behind me and when I look around again I'm in the gymnasium of my elementary school. I'm nine and I'm playing basketball, only I can't play very well because I keep seeing the Playpeople out of the corner of my eye.
They slide across the brick walls and the last thing I see before being hit with a basketball is bright colors moving around in the PE teacher's office.
I get up and I'm back here writing this all down.
The effects of the acid have no visible effect on the room I'm in, only that my legs and arms feel weak and it's hard to write.
I try to think what day it might be or what I'm supposed to be doing and I only get a very vague sense of it - a job down the street, a car out front, and a family here and there.
The chair begins to vibrate a bit and I look up from my writing and I see a very tall Playperson barely visible in the coat closet.
I raise a hand and it slides further into the closet and I get up and follow it back into the forest from years ago.
I run into a friend and he's trying to describe the Playpeople to me and I keep patting him on the shoulder saying, "I know."
My friend looks horribly twisted and I realize this is symbolic of his state of mind which is twisting to try to grasp the new reality of his situation.
Namely, that he is me.
I breathe deeply and try to calm us both down, but he keeps twisting in on himself and before long he's a Playperson and has bent around a large stump and I can see bright red through the stump where he is hiding himself.

"Why do the Playpeople hide?" I ask.

"To get away." He says.

"From us?" I ask.

"No, you don't understand. We are us."

It takes me a moment to understand this. I sit down on the ground and ask "So, you-you-you hide from yourself?"

"Yes." He says and moves further into the log.

"Why are we so scared of us?" I ask.

"Because we don't understand us."

"But I understand me."

"That's why you don't understand." It murmurs and I realize I'm moving through the dirt under my own feet and I vibrate back to the apartment where I'm writing the word "cat".
The closet door is closed, but inside I can hear the voices of the others at the camp and I can't be sure if I'm here or there.
I ask my friends how long we've been out here and I hear a woman's voice state "Nearly forever."I ask if she saw the Playpeolpe and even though I can't see her I know that she nods.