Babayaga

screen door of the farmhouse slammed opened and Oliver’s friend Jake stepped onto the front porch. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of Le Figaro under his arm. He gave Will a friendly smile and waved. Will did not know what to make of this and stood there dumbfounded. He got that he was experiencing some induced form of dreaming (he knew the electric trolleys on Michigan had been out of commission for years now), but it came with a tangible sense of reality that confused him. Jake gestured for Will to come over to the house and then disappeared back inside. Unsure what to expect, Will crossed the street, walked up the flagstone path, climbed the creaky porch steps, and followed Jake into the dark, old home.
    Entering the parlor, Will immediately smelled bacon and heard the telltale spitting and sizzling sounds of frying fat coming from a room in the back. Going down the long shotgun hall, he came out into a low-ceilinged kitchen, where Jake had all the gas burners on the cast-iron stove cooking, with scrambled eggs in the wide skillet and tomatoes and thick slabs of bacon on the grill. “I didn’t really have time to make anything fancy, the boys only called a few minutes ago to tell me you were coming. But bacon’s good, right? That’s honestly the only food I miss from the States. America sure knows how to make bacon.” He took a plate from the cupboard and, piling the eggs on high and topping it with the mix from the grill, set it on the small table in front of Will. “Eat up. It’s hot and delicious.”
    Will did not know why he felt so comfortable; perhaps it was the odd familiarity of being back in Detroit, or the safe, comforting reassurance of knowing he was in a dream. He sat down and dug in. The food was delicious. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, he could not remember the last meal he’d eaten. “Where are we?”
    “Good question,” said Jake, pulling up a chair across from him. “Simple answer is that we’re in a mix of your mental landscape and mine. Very confusing to move through at first, and tricky to get orientated in, but you get used to it. But basically, like I said, we’re wandering around in a blend of my subconscious and yours.”
    “How’s that work?” Will asked, taking another bite.
    Jake shrugged. “Beats me. I ain’t the pharmacist. As I understand it, the prime ingredient of the drug is extracted from a common root, one plant, and in some way we are both somehow connected back to that single source. I guess this is what lets it blend the different visions of its visitors. Impressive and very deluxe stuff, light years ahead of what the other guys have got. I mean, putting aside how incredible it is that we’re commingling our individual and unique hallucinations, there ain’t many drugs out there can conjure up a decent breakfast, am I right? That doctor is a genius.” He leaned over to the window and pointed past the faded gingham curtains. “Your vision out there. What is it, Chicago?”
    “Mmmn, no, iz Detroight,” said Will, his mouth full.
    “All right, well, see, we’re also in my grandparents’ house, up in Accord, New York. Upstate. So, this here is a mishmash of pieces of your unconscious world mixed with chunks of mine. Now, I don’t know why my mind would conjure up this sad sack memory for me, I’ve been in plenty nicer places, but I guess it’s some sort of symbolic recollection for me. Like I said, it’s fascinating. When Bendix described what he was up to, I volunteered right away.”
    Will mostly wanted more breakfast, but he thought he should ask more questions first. “How do you know Bendix?”
    Jake shrugged. “He’s been doing various tests with us ever since the war. Initially, he was mixing up Thorazine with variations of crank to try to change a soldier’s sense of time, you know, so that things would seem very slow while the GI was actually moving very fast. It had potential, but there were big physical setbacks, massive strokes and coronaries. Then he had an idea for how to interrogate suspects under doses of lysergic acid. That went kinda badly too. Bendix sent over some LSD batches from Bern that were way past the point of potent. Test subjects were flying out of hospital windows to escape the purple dragons and pink elephants. Two strikes were enough, and Washington sent me back here to smoke him. Then he pulled out this ace from up his sleeve, right in the nick of time, too, ’cause his number was up.