October 5th, 2014 - Leah Mueller

It was almost Halloween when I swallowed cannabis edibles for the first time.

Washington was exhaling final puffs of dry air before its annual descent into a trench of perpetual drizzle. After two years of living on a rain-soaked beach, my husband and I had fled Vashon Island’s claustrophobic gloom. Both of us felt eager to embrace Tacoma’s unrestricted canvas. Anything to get off that rock.

Once widely considered a shithole, Tacoma now burst from every sidewalk crack. Shops offered hundred-dollar dresses, bumper stickers that read “Keep Tacoma Gritty”, and $20 a pound, fresh-roasted coffee.

After Chihuly hung his glass blobs downtown, Tacoma became a cultural beacon. It still cost half the price of Seattle but was catching up fast. All available houses had been rented by the time my husband and I disembarked from the ferry. We settled for a temporary apartment in suburban University Place, run by one of those management companies that advertises a month’s free rent, a pool, and a welcome basket. Four months later, we were still there.

Russ was a Seattle native, but I was a transplant. Marrying a single mom with two kids had caused a serious depletion of his finances. Mostly inherited money, since my husband didn’t enjoy working and had a hard time faking it. He doggedly commuted to his low-paying software job in downtown Seattle, while I stayed home and wrote poetry.

His family thought I was selfish and immature, and I couldn’t disagree. Still, Russ bought the edibles. His need to escape was even stronger than mine.

We wandered downhill, trying not to think about how difficult it would be to climb back up. Gravity pulled us towards Puget Sound. The Sound was a cold, look-but-don’t-touch body of water. Stay in for an hour, and you’d sink to its crustacean-littered bottom, perishing from hypothermia. A sea crab’s fondest revenge.

“I’m really feeling it.” Russ’ voice seemed to emanate from the end of a hollow tube. “My brain is floating in the water.”

Russ spent a lot of time reading Terence McKenna and was convinced there was something holy about the psychedelic experience. Sometimes he took McKenna’s books into the bathroom and perused them on the toilet. I thought that psychedelic drugs were a cheater’s fast track towards manufactured enlightenment, but I didn’t say so.

The edibles had gone to my head, as well. Russ and I floated past increasingly more expensive houses. They barely seemed anchored to the earth. On the far horizon, a freight train hurtled along the slate-gray skyline. Dozens of cars, each carrying products that Americans couldn’t live without.

“It’s beautiful here.” Russ stretched out a hand, swept it in an awkward circle. “Like nothing disastrous will happen again.”

This struck me as an odd thing to say. Disasters erupted everywhere, especially in places where it seemed like they could never occur.

“I have a PhD in self-sabotage,” I said. “I can whip up a pretty good disaster within a couple of minutes. Just give me time.”

Russ and I had left Vashon Island under humiliating circumstances. Our waterfront rental house was infested with rats. We complained to the landlords, but they became irate and refused to do anything.

Weeks later, a wind gust blew open one of the glass doors, and it shattered on the deck. Like the rat issue, broken glass was somehow our fault. When I phoned one of the owners, he screamed at me and ended the call.

Post-relocation, he and his wife sent us a bill for the damaged door. Since they hadn’t done a move-in walkthrough, I demanded a return of our security deposit. The war was on.

Judge Judy’s office sent Russ and me a form letter, inviting us to settle our differences on her program. I followed up but never heard back. Apparently, the show employed a crew who scanned legal notices and cranked out invites. Our problem just wasn’t that interesting.

“Look,” Russ said, pointing towards a half-darkened building. “A waterfront bar. Let’s go inside.”

We selected a window seat and ordered a couple of microbrews. A server slid two coasters in our direction, placed our pints on top, and disappeared. We had the entire place to ourselves.

The beer felt good in my parched throat. It took the edge off the edible. As I gazed at the waves, an odd sense of calm enveloped me. A sailboat drifted past, causing swirls of turbulence.  Seconds later, the sloshing ceased, and the water became still.

Perhaps this was all my husband and I needed—a comfortable perch beside Puget Sound with a view of somebody else’s riches. Russ reclined in his chair, long legs akimbo. He always wore the same shoes— tattered black Converse high-tops with dirty laces. I could never convince him to buy a different brand of footwear.

“This was a good idea,” I said.

Russ smiled, took a sip of his beer. “I have them occasionally.”

The moment offered no clues about what lay ahead. In five years, my husband would land in the emergency room with a stage four colon cancer diagnosis. In seven, he’d take his final breaths inside our new house in Bisbee, Arizona. I would stay beside him until the end. It was the least I could do.

Ten years later, I’m living in an Oklahoma condo—sterile and plain, like the University Place apartment. But this time, I’m an owner. Like we ever own anything. Even our bodies are on loan.

Those ten years dissolved like the blur of freight train cars.

I used to feel frustrated about my inability to foretell the future. Now, I see that ignorance as a gift. Knowing would rob me of moments when everything appears perfect—those tiny bits of satori that are meted out at random, for no reason except I happen to be sitting in the right spot.

Or perhaps that’s just the cannabis talking.

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Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, "Stealing Buddha" was published by Anxiety Press in 2024.