POTSTORY: Stories Under the Influence

By Charlie Loeffler

I was a lightweight in college. I rarely drank, hardly ever partied, and never, ever smoked weed. I was what you might call a "good kid". Then I moved to Boston, broke off a toxic relationship with my girlfriend, and discovered the mind-expanding power of marijuana. I spent months holed up in a tiny bedroom in Somerville, MA, smoking copious amounts of weed in my spare time. One hit and my mind would start racing a thousand miles a minute. The only outlet I had was to write every stream-of-conscious thought down as it entered my mind. Fortunately for me, I type really fast. This book is a collection of stories that I wrote over the course of a year. I resisted the urge to significantly edit or reformat what I wrote 20 years ago in order to maintain the stream-of-consciousness feel of how the stories were written to begin with. The way these thoughts unravel may feel very familiar to the veteran stoners out there - I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlie Loeffler
• Release date: Nov 22, 2016

Book preview

POTSTORY

Stories Under the Influence

Copyright © 1996, 2016 by Charlie Loeffler

Published by Charlie Loeffler at Smashwords

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This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, then encourage your friends to download their own free copy.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1: The First in a Series

Chapter 2: The Talisman of Death

Chapter 3: The Epic of Jimmy Whizbang

Chapter 4: Wonder Genies of Yore

Chapter 5: The Effigy of the Apocalypse

Chapter 6: The Milkman Cometh

Chapter 7: Sparky Windjammer

Chapter 8: Phat Sax

Chapter 9: McDougall the Crime Snuffer

Chapter 10: Pavlov’s Phone

Chapter 11: Distant Meat

Chapter 12: No One Asks the Light

Chapter 13: Spanky McCartle and the Meat Mulcher

Chapter 14: Willow, that Fucking Freak!

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Hi! Thanks for downloading my book! Seriously, that was awful nice of you, you didn’t have to do that. I wrote this collection of stories a very long time ago when I was in my mid-20’s. I had recently ended a toxic 7-year relationship with a girl I met early on in college - I moved out of our sweet loft apartment in downtown Boston and into co-op in the suburbs of Somerville with 5 strangers. It was the first time that I felt truly happy and free as an adult - it’s also when I started to smoke copious amounts of weed. It was a transformative time for me, and it was just what the doctor ordered.

I used to get super chatty when I was high with friends, but when I was high at home alone in my tiny bedroom, my only outlet was my computer. I’d let my stream-of-conscious thoughts race unfiltered from my mind and onto the screen at 70 words per minute. I'd never know where the story was going to take me when I started, but once finished, they always gave me a good laugh. Writing at that time was a necessity; I couldn’t contain my thoughts, they HAD to come out. And thus, Potstory: Stories Under the Influence was born.

I hope you enjoy this book. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback and encouragement over the years to release it in digital form, and I’m only now finally getting around to it. One note about the formatting - I’ve left it in its original, single-paragraph form rather than break it up into separate paragraphs for easier reading. This is intentional, and is meant to better communicate the stream-of-consciousness style in which it was written.

If you like what you’re about to read, please share with your friends. And if you have any stories that you’ve written under the influence, please feel free to share them with me. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

The First in a Series

Once upon a time there was a mad cow named Daemon. He was a simple cow, the four-hooved type with spots. He did normal cow things, hung out in pastures, and didn’t even consider how could he be a he if he was a cow. It was the type of identity crisis that doesn’t quite apply to this story, so we’ll leave it out for now. Anyway, being a cow he obviously had an aversion to all sorts of milk, chocolate included, therefore he didn’t drink it. He mostly got by on calcium pills (atomic symbol CA), and would drink the occasional Parmalat, but he just couldn’t do the milk thing. I guess that would be like eating your own flesh… I wouldn’t want to eat my own flesh unless I absolutely had to, and then I would probably only eat a little bit at a time with the hope that it would grow back over time. I would probably have calluses all over the place from eating my own flesh and then having it grow back, but I don’t think anyone would really notice if I were wearing high socks, like back in my elementary school soccer league. I thought it was a great idea to make the game day shirt reversible. That way you only had to wash one shirt per week rather than two. Our shirts were either yellow or blue. For some reason, I always lost my game day shirt so I would inevitably end up wearing my practice shirt (blue) during the game even if we were yellow, unless someone had an extra shirt, which was rare. Back to the cow. He was evil. He liked to carry a gun when he could… would cows ever wear leather if given the chance? Do you think anyone ever put a leather horse saddle on a cow? What would it be like to put a human flesh hat on a human? Probably not nice. People wouldn’t think it looked cool. I think I am a good barometer of that. I pretty much can look at someone and for the most part tell if they are closer to one extreme or the other. If you walked up to a group of 20 people and had a scale of -50 to 50 and you could only choose one or the other (either -50 or 50, nothing in-between, making it much more like yes or no, or black or white), I could pretty much tell you if a guy was closer to cool or dorkdom. Regular syrup is much better than flavored syrup. Since when does syrup taste like blueberries? Since never. That’s why I don’t eat it. So obviously, the cow was a vegetarian, mostly carrots and broccoli for him. It helped keep his evil thoughts clear. It was a well-known fact that carrots promoted evil, especially from the great outbreak of evil knife wielding rabbits incident back in ’42. Who knew that rabbits had opposable digits? That’s why people keep rabbit feet for good luck. So, Daemon was the only cow in the neighborhood who could scale trees; that’s how he escaped the pen. My favorite cake is chocolate with fudge. I don’t like fudge. The traditional fudge, I mean. It got me really sick at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, TN. That sucked. Who is to say what