She always figured the closest way to get to “God” or “Jesus”—or whatever name you wanted to give some divine entity—was through psychoactive drugs. That’s why Lenora made it her holiday tradition—at Christmas, Purim, Easter, Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Holi, Diwali, Passover, All Saints’ Day, whatever she could think of—to drop acid and sit outside in the garden. Note the use of the article “the” in “the garden” to indicate that it was not her garden. No, in fact, it was her grandmother’s. Grandma Ellie a.k.a. El Grandma. And El Grandma never seemed to have any idea that her “precious baby granddaughter” was usually out there tripping balls. But, bless El Grandma’s heart, she always seemed to think that Lenora was genuinely just there because she was that good—that “faithful” of a granddaughter. It can be tragic the way the elderly revert to the same sort of innocence they possessed as children. Lenora would have almost felt bad about leading El Grandma to believe she cared so much about her—as opposed to her garden and how it provided the perfect milieu acid-fueled hallucinations—were it not for the fact that El Grandma was, like most people of her generation, a racist puta.

To be sure, if Lenora hadn’t been her granddaughter, she could easily see El Grandma sneering at her with disdain in a public venue like the grocery store. The same way she still sneered at her Mexican father, Juan, whenever he came around. Which had become increasingly rare. After all, Lenora had entered her teenage years, and didn’t have much use for spending time with “Dear Old Dad” anymore. Of course, if Juan had been a halfway decent father, he might have actually tried at breaking down the barrier that Lenora had, in her “required” role as an angsty teen girl, built up so firmly.

But no, it wasn’t in Juan’s nature to put much effort into things, least of all cultivating a healthy, stable family life. Then again, the same could be said of Lenora’s mother (/El Grandma’s daughter), Wendy. A woman who, despite her “wholesome” white person’s name, was often a bit too “spicy” to deal with, even for a Latino papi like Juan. Perhaps especially for a Latino papi like Juan. Because the truth was, he had married Wendy with the assumption that her WASP-y background would infer an ability to dominate her. Once that turned out to be very far from the reality of the situation, that’s when the arguments started…and never stopped. Not until the two finally decided to get a divorce. This was when Lenora was about three years old. And from that moment onward, Juan had effectively “extricated himself” from all responsibilities related to parenting.

With a palpable void to fill, El Grandma stepped in to offer her assistance. Her “caretaking.” Even if it often meant little more than sticking Lenora in a separate room and making her watch one of the extremely limited number of channels she had available on her TV. As a result, Bob Ross was far more of a fixture in her life than he ought to be for a girl her age. And yes, she got her fair share of snickers for showing up to school on Halloween in a Ross-inspired getup—complete with ‘fro. Looking back on instances like that, Lenora had to wonder where the fuck her mother was to guide her. The answer was: either at work or trying to chase some new dick that, like Juan, also wouldn’t stick around. So really, El Grandma had been the lone consistent presence in Lenora’s life.

That’s why, even at her “ripe old age” of seventeen, she still came around to see El Grandma on the holidays. Well, that and, as mentioned, she had the perfect garden for tripping in. Best of all, El Grandma was so “out of it” lately that she didn’t bother with attempts at supervising or micromanaging what Lenora did while she was over there, as she once might have in more “razor-sharp mind” days. That’s why, as the years of her high school tenure progressed, Lenora felt increasingly comfortable bringing over select friends (fellow “orphans,” if you will) to enjoy the fruits of her acid supply with her. By the time this year rolled around, she had collected four additional reliable “guests” to her “party.” Really more of a “happening” with LSD sprinkled on top.

In fact, this year Lenora decided to mix things up by literally sprinkling LSD on top of the carrot cake she decided to make in order to be more “festive” than usual. Pre-informing her friends, Des, Mike, Irina and Franny, of this, Des was the one who took it upon himself to buy everyone an Easter bunny costume to dress up in. He insisted, “It’ll be legit, come on.” And even though no one agreed to dress in said costumes after Des made that declaration, he still brought them over anyway.

As Lenora placed out her delectable carrot cake à la lysergic acid diethylamide on the elegant glass-top table framed at the center of the garden, she laughed as he held the handful of costumes out like he was holding gold or something. Like they were the most valuable, prized things that anyone could ever hope to have access to. And, with all of them seeing how much Des really believed that, they couldn’t deny him his request to don the costumes. “In the name of the holiday spirit,” Des added.

“Easter isn’t a real holiday,” Irina, the most cynical out of all of them, replied. “You can say in the name of the Holy Spirit instead, I guess.”

“Well I don’t want to. I want to say ‘holiday spirit’ and I just fucking did, so don’t try to ‘correct’ me. You’re killing the goddamn mood already with your Russian nihilism.”

Irina stared daggers at him. “How many times are you going to make me say it? I’m not Russian. I was born in motherfucking Hoboken.”

“If the Bolshevik name fits.”

Irina started to approach him with her fist poised to clock him out, and she probably would have were it not for Mike stepping in to stop it. “Alright, alright. No one here is Russian. Let’s all agree on that and put on Des’ stupid fucking suits, okay?”

Irina grumbled, “He’s ruining our trip already.”

Des sneered. “What was that?”

Irina doubled down, “I said: you’re ruining our trip already.”

He laughed outright. “Oh sweetie, I’m the one making this trip. I’m the only one who truly cares about resurrecting minds.”

Franny, always the one who liked getting straight down to business, finally said, “Can we all just shut the fuck up and drop? I’m sick of all y’alls bullshit. I didn’t come here for this.”

Their humble host chimed in to agree, “Franny’s right. If all of you don’t zip your lips and start zipping up in those suits, I’m sending everyone anyway. This is my garden after all.”

Mike pretended to cough as he reminded, “Your grandma’s.”

Lenora glowered at him. “You wanna try being ‘cute’ with me right now? Is that really the play?”

“No ma’am,” Mike answered immediately, grabbing one of the bunny suits and putting it on tout de suite.

About thirty minutes later, everyone dressed as an innocent white rabbit, the effects started to kick in. As the quartet stared at each other in a mindless-looking way that might have suggested they should all be drooling too, the truth of the matter was that they were perceiving each other in quite an ominous light. Almost as if, by wearing these suits, Des had cursed them to see something as intimidating/horrifying as Frank the rabbit in Donnie Darko. And slowly, the reactions to that hallucination started to register accordingly, with each tripper viewing the other as an egregious threat to their existence. And so, steadily but surely, their behavior started to become defensive, violently so.

Later that night, when the senile Grandma El emerged into the garden, briefly remembering that she ought to water her scarlet begonias (The Grateful Dead had to be referenced in some way for an acid trip), the sight of the massacre before her eyes was only momentarily daunting. After which, she entered her usually “fugue state,” of sorts, forgetting what she had come out there for at all and deciding to go back inside until such time that she might recall her purpose in the yard. Like this, the cycle of discovering the bodies and forgetting they were there went on for weeks until one of the neighbors finally complained of the stench and summoned an officer to perform a wellness check on El Grandma.

When El Grandma was made to understand what had happened, forced to have it really sink in (thanks to the harsh words delivered repeatedly by Lenora’s mother), she couldn’t believe, for a start, how little she had known of her granddaughter’s character. And secondly, the irony of Lenora being killed the same weekend that resurrection and rebirth were supposed to be the running themes. But somewhere deep down, she got the sense that she ought to store away one of the hacked-off pieces of Lenora, plant it in her garden. In the creepily sweet (and unapologetically naïve) hope that, next spring, Lenora would be born again. Even if not in her original form.