BOBBY SAUCE 01: THE GIRL IN THE ETERNAL TRAP HOUSE by Patrick Henley

One of the most vivid and memorable nightmares I’ve ever had occurred when I was about five years old. I was being pushed down a narrow concrete corridor by a crowd of family and friends dressed in a variety of cheap Halloween costumes.

The massive crowd of cousins and parents and preschool children lumbered towards a dark, industrial, indoor cliff, dazedly bumping into one another, shoving me along for the long walk into the void. In heaps they toppled over the ledge into inky blackness and after much struggling against my loved ones they took my small body with them.

I remember falling for what felt like minutes then landing on a hard slab unable to move my arms and legs as a huge mechanical circular saw slowly lowered from above towards my exposed abdomen, the crowd watching with dead eyes behind plastic masks as the whirling, whining blade moved closer, and closer, and closer until I awoke with tears streaming down my face and my Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas soaked through with cold sweat.

I’ve had strange dreams and nightmares such as the one described above my entire life. I believe the root causes to be various, ranging from past trauma to insomnia and an admittedly unhealthy fascination for horror and true crime-based content. In a way I still see these nightmares as a strange kind of privilege. One not entirely consented to, but a privilege nonetheless. I believe it partially means my imagination hasn’t completely stagnated from adult life.

Part of what makes childhood special is the access to an untethered powerhouse of overactive imagination, an important tool used in art by extension most facets of creation that is often ground down or outright sacrificed to the altar of societal expectations and responsibilities.

While I wouldn’t call myself a spiritual skeptic I’ve always tried to maintain a separation between the random imagery my brain involuntarily excretes versus the underling subconscious meanings of what I may be dreaming about. From what I’ve read certain dreams can manifest from anxieties about one’s own life or condition. I believe this to be true since I am in fact an incredibly anxious person, both by nature and by being born and raised in the chaotic urban sprawl of Los Angeles.

Part of the anxiety that comes with living in a place as beautiful and vapid as Los Angeles is the feeling you’re not working or studying or networking or showboating or making every moment of your life about getting that much further ahead in your chosen endeavor than your competitors and rivals, especially if that means a career in the arts.
The landscape of Los Angeles may be bathed in sunshine but there has always been a dark underbelly made from the dead dreams of wasted youth and stagnated potential.

All of that anxiety and self-hatred and pressure both external and internal for not being able to work as hard as the next kid trying to write or act or make films or music or what have you, eventually takes a toll on your mind and body, mainly through toxic coping mechanisms involving the ingestion of copious amounts of illicit substances and alcohol and various unsavory activities engaged in with colorful albeit reprehensibly antisocial characters.
I suppose that’s one of the reasons I ended up in a dodgy treatment center with Blake, other than the terrible life decisions I made and continue to make.

Blake is not her real name nor is anyone else’s in this story, but they’re not far off. I met Blake while attending what we’ll call Revo-lution, a treatment clinic somewhere between Venice and Dockweiler advertised as a
“health and wellness center”. The basic philosophy behind Revo-lution was addiction could be managed and moderation cultivated through practice, mindfulness, meditation, and community. I got into the program through a therapist I first started seeing when I got suspended in 10th grade after I was snitched out by a girl I smoked pot with off school grounds. Yes, off grounds, not technically in school, on a lunch break. But that is yet another story for possibly another time.

The therapist, we’ll call him Kashoo, was kindly and personable when we first met but in hindsight he had no real intention of helping me navigate what was obviously a very problematic relationship with certain substances, mainly marijuana. Kashoo was charming, coming from an Indian background he had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction himself for many years. My mother liked him even though she could never properly pronounce his real name.

Even after I managed to better my grades through a short stint in homeschooling and was allowed back into school I stuck with Kashoo for a number of years. I had and continue to struggle with depression and social anxiety and was blindsided by the intensity of college after going through a private high school that claimed to be “college prep” but was in fact quite the opposite. Kashoo eventually started his own treatment center, where I ended up being the very first client at the clinic after a bad time spent studying abroad in my grandmother’s city of origin, Dublin Ireland. Another story, another time, maybe.

Revo-lution is where I first met Blake. She was statuesque with brilliantly blue eyes and long blonde hair. She had an adorable slight gap between her two top front teeth that made her, in the best way possible, look vaguely like a reversed-anthropomorphized Lola Bunny from the Space Jam Looney Tunes franchise. I know that may be an odd reference to some but I assure you dear reader the description is quite accurate and well accented by her sweetly pitched voice. She had a wonderful, classically beautiful smile.
Blake was not only bubbly but well read. She enjoyed English and writing.

We talked Roald Dahl, Hunter S. Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, Vonnegut, Bukowski, Jane Austin, Burrows, Octavia Butler, Ginsberg, Margaret Atwood, and Kerouac. She pursued and eventually obtained a degree with high marks in English from one of the best universities in the United
States. Blake was smart and had so much to offer. I considered her a friend, and knew a side to her, a private side, a side that struggled, that one could only have the privilege of knowing in a group therapy setting. She confided in me, and I to her.

Blake eventually left Revo-lution, feeling that she was better in control of her addiction. I soon followed suit but not before having a passive falling out with Kashoo, whom I felt had taken me for a bit of a ride. Life moved on. I got my own degree, had my own demons that I still struggle with. The same week I walked for my undergrad degree one of my best friends from
childhood died from a fentanyl overdose. That is also another story, for another time, but life still went on and eventually I had to continue moving forward.

A little over two years later I was doom scrolling late one weekend night as one does in this day and age and I got curious about Blake. We were still friends on Facebook and followed each other on Instagram. I hadn’t heard or reached out to Blake since Revo-lution. I became curious about her current whereabouts and found myself typing her name into the search bar.
I was met with an obituary, posted by her parents. Dead at twenty five years old from an accidental overdose. I had forgotten just how young Blake was when we met. I dug deeper and found out she had died with cocaine, ecstasy, and fentanyl in her system.

She had been dead for almost half a year and I had no idea. Another young person swept away from the light of the world by the most wretchedly cruel poison ever created. I was saddened, and then very, very angry. I read comment after comment, article after article. I found myself in the middle of the night on an Instagram page dedicated to recent obituaries of young people. Comments made by strangers who never knew Blake were atrocious, lacking any common decency or compassion. Some of what angered me the most was the assumption people had that Blake ingested
fentanyl willingly. I’ve known a few drug addicts in my time and I’ve only known one who truly sought out that evil to put inside of them. Blake loved uppers, she loved the rush of a clean cocaine high and that is not something that should ever result in a perfectly healthy young person’s demise.

My best guess, while removed from the situation, was that Blake went clubbing with some friends. She took some molly, and on the comedown did some lines to even out. It was just so god-damn, fucking unfair.
I was also angry at Kashoo for pushing such a relaxed position on addiction. Kashoo once used a misinterpretation of John Calhoun’s experiment called “Mouse Heaven” as an allegory for why people struggle with addiction in modern society. Kashoo described, incorrectly, that theexperiment was to give a group of mice a city-like structure to live in with all the amenities a
mouse could want. The catch was, some of the water feeders had cocaine and heroin in them.

There were also water feeders that were not drugged, it was up to the mice to determine which one to drink from. Kashoo would say that with all their needs met the mice would use the drugged water recreationally while still balancing out their other needs like food, water, and sex because there was no need to struggle for any resource, all was provided. In reality the Calhoun Mouse Heaven Experiment resulted in most of the mice dying
from drug related overdoses, violence, or self-isolated depression, the parallels to the modern societal plight of drug epidemics being nothing short of parody. It was years before I found this out on my own and it has left a long, lingering resentment towards that new-aged fraud.

The night I learned of Blake’s death was uneasy to say the least. I finally got to bed sometime around three in the morning. What followed was very far from my usual nightmares. I dreamt I was at a house party in a large mansion. The dream started with me in a massive light brass and obsidian-colored bar right out of the club scene in 1970’s New York City.
It felt as though hundreds of people were in attendance crowded around the wraparound bar where dozens of bartenders served lavish cocktails while patrons snorted lines of shimmering neon white powder off the dark corners of the bar. Adjacent to said bar was a dancefloor, disco ball, smoke machines, and a laser lightshow included.

Everyone was dressed in fine suits or dresses, surprisingly formal wear for such a display of nightclub decadence. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was wearing myself in this strange place but I felt very out of place.
The bartender came up to me and I ordered a double Michter’s American Whiskey neat. I was about to take a sip of my drink when I got a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and there she was. Blake, in a beautiful dark blue rhinestone dress. She smiled, and she became a walking revelation of beauty, a shining epitome of what it means to look absolutely fucking stunning. I got it in my head right then that maybe I’d somehow been sent back in time, and maybe I could warn Blake of her impending overdose.

I opened my mouth, words came out but I could barely hear myself over the booming music, a DJ’s personal blend of Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees and hardcore 1990’s euro jungle. I tried to tell her if she ever needed someone to talk to I was always here for her. I started to tell her I had read that she died from an overdose. She just smiled at me, so radiant, the club lights
making her silhouette look like a Catholic stainless of the Virgin Mary. Then she turned away from me and I lost her forever in a sea of beautiful strangers. I tried to go after her to further warn her of her death but I lost her and suddenly the dancefloor morphed into one room to floor and back again, shifting me around a seemingly endless party with increasingly insufferable people.

I don’t recall exactly how but I ended up in a large bedroom where classical art hung from the walls and large bean bag chairs littered the
floor. I sat down next to two grody-looking dudes who passed a bong between one another. We struck up a very surface level conversation about music, who and what I forget, while I internally contemplated where I was and what the hell was happening. And then I woke up, in bed, next to my beloved dog Coltrane, a red brindle-colored eighty pound American Staffordshire Bull Terrier whom I love more than 99.999999% of people
I know. It was a great comfort being back home, safe, and far away from that strange party. I concluded that I had somehow stumbled into a kind of specialized purgatory, an eternal trap house where the young and beautiful casualties of good times gone bad had come to spend their eons on the infinite dancefloor keeping each other basking in their own vapid yet envious company.

Blake had made a visitation but my efforts to warn her of her doom had seemed to only persuade her I had nothing new to tell. In retrospect it made sense to me, what specter or spirit or ghost wants to hear about their fate after having already experienced it first hand? I spoiled my brief reunion with Blake, and was subsequently exiled into the backrooms where signifyingly less interesting spirits occupied their time with plush cushions and water pipes.

There’s not much of an ending to this story, which is personally disappointing on my behalf. Life goes on with yet another young bright person taken before their time. But Blake’s light still touched my life and in my heart I like to think she still shines on in that dance floor.
Maybe hopefully one day her spirit will move on from that place if she ever feels inclined to, but there’s no rush. I’m certain that pressure and anxiety is not much of an issue among the dead.

The morning after this strange experience I did my best to write down the major occurrences in the dream, and my good friend Robert Tilden decided he would give me a chance at writing for his newsletter. I appreciate you, Robert. Your friendship has been one of the most rewarding relationships of my twenty eight years and I don’t believe this piece would be possible without you. This story was inspired by “Stop the Dams” by Gorillaz, found on the personalized playlist Robert made me to find inspiration for these stories which, God-willing, there will be many more coming soon.

I thank you too, dear reader, for getting this far. I hope to entertain and bring some small levity and humor to your life with my words, and I am more than excited to be doing it here. And remember, tell those in your life you love and care about them as often as you can. People who suffer the worst do so in silence. Be kind, be compassionate, and if you are struggling remember there are always resources and people around you there ready and waiting to listen to your story, much like you’ve read mine today.

Friends Only, Forever. And I thank you, friend, for reading.

-Patrick Acosta Henley