Bryan Smith [Smith - Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories

Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories copyright 2019 by Bryan Smith. All rights reserved.

Grindhouse Press

PO BOX 521

Dayton, Ohio 45401

Grindhouse Press logo and all related artwork copyright 2019 by Brandon Duncan. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Matthew Revert 2019. All rights reserved.

Grindhouse Press #051

ISBN-10: 1-941918-48-4

ISBN-13: 978-1-941918-48-7

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

Other titles by Bryan Smith

House of Blood

Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies

Darkened

Highways to Hell

The Dark Ones

Some Crazy Fucking Shit That Happened One Day

The Freakshow

Soultaker

Queen of Blood

Grimm Awakening

Blood and Whiskey

The Halloween Bride

The Diabolical Conspiracy

Deathbringer

Strange Ways

Slowly We Rot

Surrounded By Bastards

The Reborn

Bloodrush

All Hallows Dead

Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill

Seven Deadly Tales of Terror

The Late Night Horror Show

Go Kill Crazy!

Wicked Kayla

Murder Squad

Last Day

Depraved

Depraved 2

Depraved 3

68 Kill

68 Kill Part 2

Kayla and The Devil (Kayla Monroe: Haunted World Book 1)

Kayla Undead (Kayla Monroe: Haunted World Book 2)

The Killing Kind

The Killing Kind 2

Dead Stripper Storage

Kill for Satan!

Fuck peace, let's jam.

Matthew Shannon Turbeville, circa about 1990

You left this world too soon. RIP (Rock in peace).

CONTENT

DIRTY ROTTEN HIPPIES

ONE

IN GREAT NUMBERS, THEY CAME from far and wide to congregate in the southern countryside for a long weekend of peace, love, and groovy jams. For days in advance, a long parade of vehicles wound its way through the narrow and rutted back lanes, backing up on the interstate and causing traffic delays that dragged on for hours on end. In normal backed-up city traffic, horns would honk endlessly until the logjam cleared, but out here there were few outward displays of impatience or cantankerousness. The hordes on their way to the big outdoor music festival were blissed-out and happy to be there, away from the noise and filth of urban life and away from the vast array of concerns that make so much of modern life such a dreary drag.

The massive festival featured dozens of acts performing each day across multiple stages on six-hundred and fifty acres of farmland. Thousands of tents dotted the land. Attendees without tents spent the nights outdoors in sleeping bags or simply on the muddy ground itself. Conditions for the weekend were clear, but thered been rain for several days beforehand. As expected, the drugs that had long been standard at such events circulated widely. Molly, marijuana, LSD, shrooms, etc. All the feel-good drugs. The ones that enhanced pleasure and expanded the senses. Recreational psychoactive substances that connected with the vibe of the event. Drugs that fueled aggression and negative feelings, such as meth and cocaine, were present only in minimal quantities and consumed only by that element not truly in tune with what the festival was all about.

As the festival got underway, however, something new began to circulate among the gathered masses. This new thing was called Delight, and it came in a pill form, delivering sensations of euphoria and intense empathy that initially mirrored the effects of MDMA, aka Molly. Indeed, most who tried the new drug that weekend at first assumed it was MDMA under yet another new name.

That this was not the case began to become apparent deep into the first night of the festival, in the wee hours of the morning after the last notes of live music performed across the various stages had finished resounding through the countryside. The temporary cessation of performances did not mean the party had come to an end for everyone in attendance. Masses of people stayed up until dawn and even beyond, singing and dancing around bonfires and making even more of a mess of the muddy ground. Scores of people with acoustic guitars led group singalongs. Many present that night experienced a sense of bonding with like-minded human beings so intense it was unparalleled by anything theyd ever experienced. Instead of slowly fading as the hours passed, however, the effect intensified steadily. People clung to each other and wept with joy as their minds were assailed with what felt like fresh revelations about the nature of existence and the true origin of the cosmos. A celebratory sense of all things wondrous and magical held sway over all of it.

This lasted until the transcendent feelings peaked with a sense of almost unbearable euphoria, at which point the experience began to transform and take a darker turn. Some whod taken the drug early that day began to perceive an ugly, screaming blackness lurking just beyond the illusory veil of light and love. An endless void seething with horrors almost beyond fathoming, hungry and horribly sentient entities howling madness and rage from the edge of the universe. Beings aching to surge forward and consume them all, consume the entire world.

Tears of the purest joy became the anguished wailing of the hopeless and the damned. Laughter got louder and louder and finally gave way to screaming. Hundreds and then thousands of people dropped to their knees or flopped to the ground and rolled around in the mud while giving agonized voice to the rot taking root in their souls. Some attendees immediately killed themselves instead of trying to ride out the effects of Delight. Perhaps because they were intensely troubled human beings to begin with and didnt need much to push them over the edge. This was undoubtedly true in some cases, but others who took this route had been perfectly happy and well-adjusted. The drug broke them, overwhelmed previously strong psyches and twisted them into unrecognizable shapes.

As dawn neared, most in attendance began to recognize the new and strangely prevalent drug as the likely culprit behind the crushing wave of bad vibes. Not everyone had tried Delight, but the supply was so plentiful the opportunity had been there for virtually all attendees. The unaffected soon found themselves engulfed in a frantic effort to start bringing things under control. The general consensus was that roughly half the festivalgoers had tried Delight at various points throughout the day, some early on and some as recently as just before the drugs dark side began to reveal itself. The long onset of the worst symptoms filled them with foreboding. Getting a handle on the situation was looking more and more like an impossibility. Like it or notand most of them didntthe authorities would have to be brought in. Calls were made. The wait for help started.

And went on until well after sunrise.

Other symptoms began to manifest, starting with a vile odor emanating from the orifices of all whod taken Delight. A stench of rot and death. A graveyard smell originating from within. At the same time, the skin of the affected began to take on a yellow hue that darkened and became purplish within an hour. The sickened complained of unbearably bad headaches that caused them to moan at a high volume. Many of the unaffected had the eerie sense of being surrounded by thousands upon thousands of walking corpses. Speculation ran rampant. The odor of death and ugly external transformations meant the victims were rapidly rotting from the inside out. This in turn had to mean Delight had been deliberately circulated among the festival attendees by an unknown person or group with evil intent. The purported happy party drug was the ultimate Trojan Horsea disguised delivery system for a powerful and possibly lethal toxin.