MESCALITO

Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Begin Reading;Capturing the essence of Hunter S. Thompson's "Gonzo" style, short story Mescalito details his dark and miserably comic first mescaline drug trip. First published in Songs of the Doomed, Mescalito suggests the nascent ideas and energy of Thompson's seminal work on the '60s experience, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "We live in a jungle of pending disasters," the author warns. Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles in February, 1969, Thompsons' alter-ego Duke sustains a fever-pitched bout of paranoia so dark and depraved, it would make most mortals run fast and far from this kind of suicidal experimentation. Filled with disoriented thoughts, Hunter is high on drugs as he cannot face the chaos of the worldwhere they keep undercutting the hills to make house sites, and the hills keep falling; where fires burn the vegetation in summer; and rains make mud-slides in winter. Hunter's suicidal tendencies are seen as he hangs from the eleventh floor balcony of the Continental Hotel, but doesn't have the courage to jump. Now, locked in his room, Hunter sees his head twenty feet higher than his feet, wonders why the charwoman is sucking at his doorknob, and why the marijuana seeds lying on his rug aren't watered? An insightful look into the hopeless world of certified addicts, this deep, psychological work signifies the actual chaos in the opium world. Fiction