Star Candy (3) : In your mailbox, locker, or desk drawer appears a bag of star candy! There is no indication of where or who it came from other than a small tag that reads: “Happy Star Festival!” The small, colorful pieces of sugar seemed to almost glow faintly, and after eating them, the world looks a bit different. Cartoonish and much less…real. Is it a hallucination? Is it some new reality? The strange vision lasts only half an hour, and after it wears off, the rest of the candy seems to disappear. How strange!

Humming along with the music that was playing in the Jocks' Room, Perrie made his way toward his locker to get ready for the day's racing. It was the Destiny City Star Festival, and to celebrate, The Downs was holding special events all day, including the main event, the Star Festival Stakes. Perrie wasn't riding in that; he was still technically recovering from being thrown and trampled during a race a few years back, so he was only riding in a couple of races before it. Still, the jockeys all got special gear to add to their kit for all the races, and the horses all wore stars on their bridles and saddlecloths, so it was fun nonetheless.

Opening his locker, Perrie fetched his riding pants and boots and undershirt, then he noticed something odd. Someone had left a bag of candy shaped like little stars in his locker! "What the heck," he muttered as he picked up the bag and read the tag. "Happy Star Festival… Marco? Did you get one of these?" he asked one of the other jockeys, who shook his head. "Wonder who left this in here…"

Perrie opened the bag and took one out, examining it. It seemed to glow; the whole bag of candy seemed to glow, in fact. Tentatively he licked the candy to make sure it wasn't a practical joke, and it tasted just fine, like normal hard candy. "Oh well," he shrugged with a smile, "free candy!" He poured out a small handful and shoved the lot into his mouth. If nothing else, he'd get a sugar buzz off the candy, which would energize him for working out and racing without adding unwanted poundage.

Speaking of poundage, he stripped down, put on his jockey's pants and tank and boots, then half-skipped over to the large scale. Stepping on, he waited for the numbers to stop dancing. Wait.. why were the numbers dancing? The dial stopped at 105 and gave him a thumbs-up, and he stepped off in confusion. He hadn't eaten any mushrooms before he'd left home… Perrie looked around the Jockeys' Room. Everything looked really weird, almost like it came out of a cartoon or something. Was it the candy? Was the candy some kind of LSD or something? He came close to panicking for a minute -- the only time he'd done acid, it had been a relatively bad trip that lasted 12 hours. He sure as s**t didn't need that, not on a day where he was riding!

He sat down on the floor cross-legged and waited for several minutes, assessing his mental state. This didn't feel like acid, though, nor did it feel like mushrooms; it had come on real fast, and the most it seemed to be doing was messing with his perception a little, making everything look cartoonish and weird. Perrie grinned. This might make working out fun!

The next half-hour was spent looking at things and playing with the weight equipment and the warm-up horse contraption. This weird hallucination didn't seem to affect him physically, just perceptually; for example, the warm-up horse whinnied at him as he mounted up. It was pretty fun -- at least it made his warm up workout amusing. Marco, the other jockey in the room, just stared at Perrie as the pink-haired jockey giggled inanely and bounced around the room playing with things. He'd have to thank whoever left him that candy.

Soon, though, he felt himself coming down, and fast. That was weird too; normally coming down off mushrooms lasted longer than this. Jumping off the warm-up horse, he went back to his locker to get some more of the weird star candy -- only to find that the bag was gone. "Marco, did you take my candy?" The other jock shook his head. "Where the hell did it go?" Perrie muttered. Marco was the only other person in the room…

Perrie shrugged. That was really, really weird. Fun, but weird.

(wc: 662)