Getting into Gnosticism simultaneous to discovering the pleasures of coffee enemas was not how I expected to spend my winter break my first semester home from college. While lubricating my anus for my third enema that morning, I maintained that pleasure is just an illusion, a neurochemical sideshow distracting me from the Truth, that my soul is part and parcel of the Monad, the One, the Holy of Holies, and that I am really as much a divine being as I am a worm, a physical object. I was learning that the cheap stuff, Chock full o’Nuts wouldn’t cut it, I needed artisanal, hand roasted, small batch blonde roast to ascend to the steps of Heaven, to reclaim my birthright as a God among men. How I craved reintegration with the godhead, with Sophia, to raise my humanity back to the divine where it belonged. I would stop at nothing to find the perfect blend of caffeine and alkaloids in which to unlock, awaken my Kundalini energy from the bottom of my root chakra, all the way to my crown and beyond to Ogdoad, the 7+1 Heaven. It didn’t matter if I splattered my toilet with shit and cold coffee afterward, I would transcend on my porcelain throne to the throne of God, the Monad, and take back what was stolen from all of us when the material realm separated from the divine. I would wear adult Depends if it meant that I was becoming like Christ, returning light to the darkest of domains, this mortal shell that we have been trapped in since the barring of the gates to Eden with swords of flame. Never mind that coffee would slowly leak back out of my asshole throughout the day, that I was flirting with caffeine overdose, no, if it meant reclamation of the Truth, so be it.
My mother opened my Amazon package that contained the Apocryphon of John and a jar of pure caffeine powder. She said that I had a problem. She said, Robby, you need Jesus. I told her that He and I were one in the same, and that if she only knew of the soaring rush of pure, unadulterated caffeine in your rectum, your colon, she would understand. She said that she didn’t understand where she went wrong with me and I smiled a knowing smile, knowing that once I reached divinity I would forgive her for her transgressions. I rushed off to the bathroom and poured as much of the powder into solution with distilled, sterile water as I could manage and began intoning the Secret Revelation of John. I inserted the apparatus into my anus, hanging the bag above me as I lay prostrate on the ground, ready for the supplication, for the Source of All Things to take me back where I belonged. I closed my eyes and saw the Light and cried out, “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna!” as consciousness slipped away, my heart pounding through my chest as I heard a great whoosh of fluid and the world went black.
— Jeremy Scott is from Albany, Georgia. He’s @possiblyarhino on Twitter. His debut novella, Marginalia, was published by Alien Buddha Press. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming from BOMBFIRE, Expat Press, Misery Tourism, Nauseated Drive, and others.