Duke was halfway through a movie he’d seen ten times before and somehow just now realized, for the tenth time—the lizard was talking. Not metaphorically. Literally.
He paused the screen. Rewound. Watched it again. Still a lizard. Still talking. Or is that an eel? That’s when he knew: this weed was different. The jar of Papaya Bomb from Moon Valley Farms had been sitting on the edge of the table all week. He’d popped it open once, just as a gut check, got hit with melon and soft funk, and figured he’d wait for the right moment.
This was apparently that moment.
He hadn’t planned on getting blitzed, but the day had dragged on in that slow, lazy way that only Wednesdays can. Louie was curled up on the corner of the couch, dead to the world, snoring like a chainsaw, drooling incoherently on an already tattered copy of M Train by Patti Smith.
Duke’s fiancée was in the next room, reading a murder mystery and half-listening to Duke lose his collective shit over the color grading in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
“Have you seen this?! Like, how many drugs does it take to direct a movie like this?” he screamed from across the house. She looked up. Didn’t answer. She knew better.
He didn’t need it, but Duke took another hit. The vapor of Papaya Bomb was silky. Soft and floral with that overripe tropical thing going on—fermented papaya, bruised peach, a little rosemary maybe? Reminded him of iced chamomile with lemon wedges and cantaloupe cubes floating on top, the kind of overpriced drink someone serves you on a farm-to-table patio. Bees buzzing somewhere in the background.
But then came the funk. The “Is this still good?” edge of a papaya left too long on the counter. He wasn’t mad about it – just caught by surprise.
The bud itself had looked like it trained for Mr. Olympia — dense, swole, bright green with just enough sparkle to make the other jars jealous. Moon Valley had grown it in living soil, indoors, which was its own kind of flex. Dragonfly Earth Medicine certified. Real regenerative stuff. The long road.
Duke respected that.
About three hits in, his thoughts took a sharp left into childhood. He got a flash of cherry vanilla Play-Doh, which made no sense but also, if you knew Duke as a child, made perfect sense. That weird synthetic sweetness that shouldn’t exist, but clearly does. He didn’t say it out loud. He’d already used up his weird-comment quota for the night — one.
He gets one
The high hit like a drop of golden syrup. Pressure behind the eyes. Calm. Happy. No fog. Just good energy in a steady pour. His thoughts felt electric. His body felt like it had melted into a pair of sweatpants. The room was now vibrating at a slightly higher frequency than it had an hour ago.
He started monologuing about Gilliam’s camera angles, laughing too hard at his own jokes, offering to make a snack he knew he wouldn’t follow through on.
His fiancée walked into the room. “You’re high, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
She smiled. “Good.”
Went back to her murder.
Papaya Bomb turns your eyes into a cartoon filter, adds three IQ points to your jokes, and reminds you how weirdly good fruit can smell when it’s near the edge of rot. The effects last for hours but never overstay. You come down slow. Still smiling.
For Duke, it was one of those rare nights when everything just clicked—the strain, the movie, the room, the dog, the dumb jokes. And that talking lizard.
Still hilarious.
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