The introduction

It was once again one of those typical chill evenings: They were sitting together on the sofa, it was already dark outside and the room was bathed in a warm orange light. Sweet and salted treats lay on the small glass table and a collection of different drinks was lined up at the foot of the large sofa. The television was playing one of the usual cartoon series as casual entertainment.

Jonah held a mason jar in his hand. It was filled with dark green, trichome-covered cannabis flowers that were pressed against the glass, leaving sticky stains. Infused with reddish strings, they created a hypnotic piece of art that Jonah had been gazing at absent-mindedly for some time now.

"Go for it," Eve said, nodding at him in sympathy. Torn from his thoughts, he looked over at her and gave her a loving gaze.

As he opened the glass, a penetrating sweet smell rose to his nostrils and

brought a bright smile to his face. The strong smell strengthened his belief that this time it was a really good harvest.

"Mr Haze Amaze" was the name of the strain he had grown from a single seed. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember how he got the seed. One weekend, when he was cleaning his room, he found a small bag in which the seed was packed. On the bag was a big green face with a big grin, red eyes and a black top hat - probably the logo of the seed bank.

Jonah took one of the green, sticky buds out of the jar and examined it. Then he stuffed it into his grinder and packed everything into a blunt cone. As soon as he had completed his task, he stood up, placed a kiss on Eve's forehead and then walked out of the room, through the front door and out into the garden.

Outside, he sat down on a wooden bench, which was right next to his front door. He put his headphones in his ears, took the blunt in his mouth and lit it. Jonah took a deep draw, leaned back and disappeared in a thick cloud of smoke.

Sighing in relief, he took another puff and closed his eyes. Everything around him went dark and all he could hear was the music blaring through his ears. His whole body felt incredibly heavy and all the weight of the past days just seemed to fall off him. It felt like all the problems around him were getting smaller by the second.

The soothing track that sounded through the headphones faded away and came to an end. Then suddenly a completely different song played. A fanfare sounded, then a hypnotic distorted voice sang "Du kommst zu mir und rauchst einen Blunt..."* *[You come to me and smoke a blunt ...]

Suddenly Jonah opened his eyes and he was not prepared to believe what he was seeing. He was no longer in front of his house on the bench, but on a solid mousy stone floor. Around him he could see nothing but the rocky ground and absolute darkness.

"Am I hallucinating? Is this stuff really THAT strong?" Jonah shook his head in confusion.

Then suddenly he heard the voice singing again in the distance. He could not

explain why, but like a sirens song, this voice seemed to draw him under its spell. Like in a trance, he put one foot in front of the other and slowly moved towards the voice.

When he had taken a few steps, long black shadows loomed before him. Stepping a little closer still, he realised what was in front of him.

"Is ... is that grass?!", Jonah asked himself incredulously as he stroked along the oversized leaves of grass. He bent them slightly to the side and recognised a violet light that seemed to be somewhere behind the towering meadow. The singing of the mysterious voice had now changed into a melodic humming and also seemed to come from the direction of the light.

A little clumsily, Jonah tried to fight his way through the jungle of grass, clover and dandelions, always moving towards the voice. The closer he got to it, the brighter the light became. So the singer had to be there too.

A fine mist slid across the damp earth between the large stalks and soon covered Jonah's feet. Confused, but still keen to find the owner of the voice, he continued on his way.

Pushing aside a large dandelion leaf, he looked onto a kind of a glade - if there could be such a thing in an oversized meadow at all. Before him rose a mighty white mushroom. From its cap, clouds of mist wavered down like waterfalls and from its lamellae shone the violet light that had guided Jonah to this place.

As he walked towards the mushroom, the melodic hum suddenly stopped and silence fell.

"Who are you?" came a raspy, scratchy voice that sent a shiver down his spine.

In the dark night sky that towered over him, two fiery red circles suddenly appeared.

Jonah was paralysed and wasn't sure whether to answer or run away. So he remained rooted to the spot and said not a word.

"Who are you? Don't be so impolite, boy!" The voice now sounded much more threatening than before. The red circles came closer to Jonah and grew larger. With them came a thick wall of snow-white smoke rolling towards him. Out of the haze large white rocks peeled out of the smoke, that seemed to float in two rows on top of each other.

The smoke poured out between them and showered down like a flood on Jonah, who was still standing there petrified.

He gathered all his courage and stammered, "My name ... is ... Jonah."

Suddenly the white rocks burst apart and a booming laughter rang out at him. "HYAHAHA, DUDE!" Then the laughter ended abruptly and the voice became more serious again. "I didn't ask for your name. I wanna know who you are!"

Jonah's blood froze in his veins as he realised that those white rocks were actually huge, ragged teeth of an even bigger creature throning there in front of him on the tree-sized mushroom.

With a creaking sound, two black pillars flapped down from the mushroom and dangled in the air. Judging by two large black shoes, these were the creature's legs. To the left and right of the massive legs, two hands dressed in white gloves gripped the edges of the mushroom.

The large teeth and red circles came even closer to Jonah and slowly he realised that the circles were glowing red eyes. They glared at him from a round green head and on top sat a pitch black top hat.

With a sly grin, the huge face looked down at Jonah and grinded its massive teeth. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's rudeness!" the deep voice growled. "TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!" The roar of his voice threw Jonah to the ground.

He raised his arms in fear. "I just had a smoke and ended up here," he muttered.

Suddenly the face moved back into the darkness and mumbled something not understandable. The mumbling was interrupted again and again by a bubbling sound and shortly afterwards a new wave of white smoke spilled down from the mushroom. The sound seemed to come from a water pipe, which would also explain all the smoke.

Then the murmuring stopped and the bubbling also paused. The figure lifted one of the white gloves and slammed it down on the top of the mushroom with a muffled impact.

There was a sudden explosion of colour that shot out from the lamellae of the mushroom. The whole glade and even the dark night sky shone with the violet light of thousands and thousands of glowing mushroom spores. They quickly spread out in all directions and enveloped the entire surroundings in a magical aura. It was almost as if someone had suddenly switched on the light.

Jonah was startled when he realised the immense size of his opposite. The figure was dressed in a deep black suit and the green skull enthroned on it stared directly at him with its red eyes. He dropped the hose of the water pipe and it crashed thunderously to the ground in front of Jonah.

Then the figure took a deep breath and lunged forward in a flash:

"SORRY DUUUUUDE !"

The blast of the voice swept over Jonah like a storm and almost swept him across the ground a second time.

"I forgot all about that, dude. I'm really sorry. I was actually just waiting for you."

" Waiting? Why? Who are you anyway?" Jonah had now dared to come out of his guard a little.

"DAMN! I hate rudeness and I forget to introduce myself? Unbelievable!" After these words, he picked up the hose from the bottom and took a good pull from it. The hookah, which was next to him on the mushroom, vibrated from the rapid rising and bursting of the bubbles.

The giant blew a few smoke rings into the dark night sky. They changed colour the further they got from him until they finally faded.

Then he cleared his throat and tapped his chest. He chattered his teeth and blew separate little clouds into the air. They unfolded into letters that floated colourfully in front of him.

A few seconds later, they flew in a row one after the other, forming the words 'Mr Haze Amaze'.

"That's my name, brother! Nice, isn't it? Should look familiar to you." And suddenly the scales fell from Jonah's eyes: that head, that grin and that hat - all resembled the logo he'd seen on the seed's packaging.

"Mr Haze Amaze?" Jonah repeated, stunned. Was he really just having a heavy trip, caused by the weed he had smoked? It all seemed so real, except for the fact that he had shrunk to the size of an ant and imagined a giant manifestation of a seed bank logo, smoking shisha, sitting on a mushroom.

"Now don't look so confused. You raised me and here I am." Mr Haze straightened up, put the shisha hose to one side, hopped down from the mushroom and walked towards Jonah. With each step he took towards him, he got smaller and smaller. When he finally stood directly in front of Jonah, he was already as small as him.

Mr Haze reached out his hand and grinned at him. Jonah, still a little lost in confusion, grabbed the white glove, which was clutched by the other hand with and shook it up and down heavily.

"Oh, Dude, we're gonna have a great time, I can feel it. We gonna be best friends, trust me!"

"O... Okay." Jonah couldn't bring himself to say more and returned an uncertain smile. "But now it's time for you to get back to it. I gotta lot of work to do."

Jonah looked questioningly at Mr Haze. "What do you mean by that?"

"Preparations, boy!" Mr. Haze waved his pointer finger in the air. Then he started counting the fingers on his other hand, "I really need to start preparing everything now, getting the locations ready, putting the flowers into production, inviting the guests, getting the machines up to speed ..."

He went on and on listing things that needed to be done, simply growing a new finger each time. Noticing this himself, he shook his hand and turned his gaze back over to Jonah. "It's going to take all my strength, but I'll be happy to do it for you." Mr Haze came so close to Jonah that the brim of his cylinder almost touched Jonah's forehead. The green figure's wide grin was inches from his face.

Even though Jonah wasn't sure if he would regret his next question, he asked it anyway, "What is this all about?"

His counterpart's red eyes widened. Suddenly Mr Haze jumped back a step, cleared his throat and posed like an actor in some bright beams of light that now shone out from the lamellae of the mushroom behind him. Then euphoric music sounded.

"We present to you, the ultimate, the absolute best and most educational show on our all-time favourite subject, Mr. Haaaaaze Amaze Story Tiiiiiiiime!" Mr. Haze bowed deeply as a flashlight of bright colours from the mushroom lit up the night behind him, creating a veritable laser show with the music.

"This is where you learn for life. Questions about growing, processing, consuming, just everything you need to know, you get it here in this extraordinary show! We will climb mountains, cross rivers and always risk our lives when it comes to finding the most isolated places and the most prestigious objects. Because thaaaaat's ...", suddenly a chant sounded out of nowhere, "HOW MR. HAZE AMAZE!"

There was then a roar of applause, even though there was not a soul in sight except Jonah.

He was still standing in place, somewhat perplexed, eyeing the weird showmanship of the green hat wearer in disbelief. "Um ... yeay?" He looked sceptically at Mr Haze, who was now slowly raising his head and grinning mischievously at him. "So fucking yeay, brother." He winked at him, sticking out a long, poison-green tongue. "But right now I gotta smoke one."

"You have to?"

Mr. Haze patted Jonah's shoulder and walked past him. "Sure. Only when I'm stoned I can concentrate on stuff like that." He laughed and fished a joint out of the breast pocket of his suit. He stuck it between the massive teeth of his wide jaws. Then he snapped his fingers and the joint ignited, as if by itself. "Amazing, isn't it? It takes a lot of practice and concentration. You can have this though, works just as well."

With those words, he dug something black out of his other jacket pocket and threw it like a spear in Jonah's direction.

With a hissing sound and a flashing flame at the end, the black something shot towards him like a missle and hit Jonah on the head before he could duck.

"A jet lighter, huehuehue!" Mr Haze laughed spitefully as Jonah grumbled and picked up the lighter from the floor, thanking him for it with a sarcastic expression on his face. The imprint of the lighter was still visible on his forehead.

When Mr Haze recognised it, he burst out laughing again. "Oh boy, we're going to have a lot of fun." With those words he blew a huge cloud of smoke in Jonah's face. Everything around Jonah disappeared into the dense white mass.

When he became conscious again, he was sitting outside again on the wooden bench in front of his house. In his hand he held a half-smoked blunt from which a thin wisp of smoke was rising. It was early in the morning. A fine white mist flooded the green meadow and wavered over the grey stone plates that led along the meadow from his house up to the road.

Had he been sitting here from last night until just now? Probably not, otherwise Eve already would have been worried. But what kind of crazy dream was this? Or ... was it even a dream?

Sceptically, Jonah got up and walked along the paved path. He looked down from above into the mist-shrouded meadow. Then his gaze stopped on a large white mushroom. Below it, something seemed to be lying in the meadow.

Jonah bent the mushroom slightly to the side and discovered a black lighter. On it was a large green face with wide white teeth, glowing red eyes and a large black top hat on its head.