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I was vacationing somewhere in South or Central America. Panama? Brazil? Peru? No idea. We came down, as a group, to spend time relaxing under a glorious bright yellow sun, adjacent to an endless sparkling blue ocean. There were about five or six of us. We stayed in a relatively nice resort-type setting, which bothered me a little bit, but I didn’t come out and oppose the idea. It was very luxurious: ‘swim up’ bars, a band every night (playing less-than-stellar Beatles covers), massage tables, palm trees sprinkled throughout, the whole nine. The American inside us reveled under these circumstances. An atmosphere of exoticness without the danger or tribulations of alien land was just what the doctor ordered. Safe and familiar enough, but still strange and foreign enough; hundreds of thousands of miles away from your neighborhood Target probably helps.
Sitting on the beach, perfectly content in our little version of South America, a local stumbled onto the resort grounds. He was bearded and disheveled, moving quickly from white person to white person. He spoke nearly perfect English though, which I thought was strange. Looked to be in his twenties, but hard to tell. He finally came to us, as a father of three from Nebraska, in no rush, walked to the ‘welcome desk’ to report a trespasser at his temporary Latin home.
I gazed up from a cross legged seated position in the fine white sand, the man’s head swayed in and out of the sunlight directly behind him, blinding me for a minute, then shielding the sunlight. Blinding, then shielding. He started asking us if we wanted to buy any cocaine from him, or drugs of any kind; to which the group responded unanimously “NO”. He picked me out of our crowd, and sat down next to me just as security began trekking out onto the beach to kick him off the property.
All these fuckin’ people, I thought to myself, we act like he’s intruding on our territory. When it’s us, and this Godforsaken resort, that’s encroaching on his. The man leaned in real close to my face and his voice changed completely. Calmly, quietly, he tells me: “They going to kill me. I need to find someone. They kill me. You and friends need to buy drugs for me. Hurry. I will be removed. What say you?”
Without knowing what to say, I asked him his name. “Araújo. Tadeu Araújo.”
Meanwhile I’m being scoffed at by the other beach goers for even entering into a conversation with this man. He was clearly in trouble of some kind. Desperate enough to venture into the very private ‘Beach White-Tooth’.
Security finally got close enough (you know… to flex their ‘security’ muscle), as he’s telling me his name. They yell, talk down to him in Spanish, point at him, grab him. Tadeu looks extremely embarrassed; I’m not sure why, I didn’t see what the big deal was. As they began forcing him back to the trees where he emerged from (north of the very last cabana) he grabs my upper arm tightly, and for some reason I got up along with him and followed the whole ordeal. Nobody in my small group even seemed to notice or care what I was doing; sitting there half-baked in the Latin sun and heat, forgetting all about staplers, rush hour traffic, batteries, channel 108, dinner parties, and the like. As we approach the woods I told myself very adamantly, YOU’RE going with this man whether you want to or not. The resort workers just kept telling me to go back to my friends, forget about all this. But I couldn’t. Hastily, they shoved Mr. Araújo back into the jungle, which, I didn’t know at the time, separated the nearest city from the resort.
Even with warnings flying at me from all angles, I ventured into the jungle with this man. I followed behind him. There was a series of paths treaded into the ground, with brush cleared out ahead. I kept walking faster and faster trying to catch up to him, but I couldn’t do it. He was panicking. We were both sweating bullets, and the bugs were starting to eat me up quite a bit. I started running, but carefully. I nearly stepped on a snake; which looked very frightening but beautiful, it was yellow and brown and green with a long strip of black down its back. Probably poisonous.
“Tadeu!” I tried yelling to him, he wouldn’t look back. The path began to ravel, entangling into a web of cut down vines and plants. I started losing him. I thought about going back, but I’d gone too far at this point. There was no going back. I kept yelling his name each time more desperately than the last. With each twist and turn I saw even less of his body through the lush green landscape. And sure enough, soon enough, he was gone completely.
You’re in some deep, quicksand-esque shit now. The only way is to walk; with any luck I’d been turned around, back towards the resort, while following Tadeu. On I walked. I couldn’t make out which way the sun was moving overhead, through the thick jungle coverage. I stopped to rest a couple of times. My thirst, like the bugs, was starting to eat away at me. No matter how much I tried to put it out of my mind, it crept back in as an image of sparkling clear drinking water. Legs starting to fail. Miraculously, I made it out into civilization before the sun started to set.
The city/town I emerged in breathed with a very distinct personality of its own. Cluttered courtyards and steep, crooked sidewalks. Everything had a yellowish tint to it. The architecture felt layered, one decade on top of another, on top of another, and so on. I walked through a small street, too small for a vehicle of any kind besides perhaps a bike. Above me, suspended on lines going from one window to the next across the way, hung a large number of flags. Venezuela, Brazil, Columbia, Paraguay. The children were stomping their feet in a puddle under a home’s balcony; an old woman weaved some sort of garment together and watched them play casually. Plenty of time to find some help. I tried talking to police, store keepers, etc. I couldn’t get any help from anyone. Some of them spoke English, but none of them even knew the name of the resort I was staying at. It was as it if didn’t even exist in their minds. Plus it seemed every single person I bothered with my predicament just happened to be extremely busy and/or in the middle of something.
What IS this? The sun was now starting to go down and I was making no progress. My head started throbbing, not painfully but dizzying. I’d been on my feet almost all day. I knew I probably should find something to eat, before I started hallucinating, but all I could think about was DRINK. I motioned suggestively to a man filling buckets with water from a well if I could drink some, he motioned back ‘by all means.’ Across the street I noticed a small motel where I could probably stay for the night safely. Buy myself some time, start again tomorrow.
Luckily I still had a wad of red and purple bills in my left pocket. The main building sat at the end of a relatively short line of rooms. It had gaudy red stripes, which weren’t painted properly. There was a front deck that paced the same distance. Rotting and warped. Part of me felt terrified to spend the night at this place, the half of me who didn’t object to White-Tooth; but deep down this was a relief from the perfection and cushy flavors of tourism. I needed an experience to remember for the rest of my life, this was it. It looked as if only two or three rooms, if any, were being used. This was confirmed when the clerk, who was incredibly nice to me, gave me a choice of almost any room at the motel. With no things to speak of, at all, I walked into Room Doce and shut the door behind me.
It didn’t feel right from the get go. The toilet was in its own little room, hardly a ‘bathroom.’ No sink, shower, closet, towels, nothing. Head… The ceilings dripped a little bit, water I hoped. Almost immediately I ran to the sink for a drink. The water was colored and tinted, more yellow than brown. It tasted like erosion, probably because it once participated in erosion; the same liquid tickling my throat once tickled a river bed. Repeated over and over a billion years until now, and I’m drinking it. And oh my I pounded it. LOTS of it. After trying to clean myself up as best I could, without a shower, I figured I’d go out for one more stroll before locking up and staying in for the rest of the night.
As I opened up my room’s door, this time from the opposite side, the world around me had changed. Foliage was more over-arching, and active, than before. The sky seemed somehow larger, and bright even though the sun was down. Can’t seem to shut my eyes. Try rubbing. People - many, many more people than I had remembered - were laughing, hysterically in some cases. The desk clerk was manically, obsessively, pounding away at an old typewriter. Smoking cigarette after cigarette.
What’s going on here? I need to go back to my room. Quickly. I tried approaching a familiar face, the old woman still weaving on the corner but the children gone, but she shrugged me off. Can you help me? What’s happening? Ahh!! Her eyes…. they’re… pupil-less… not blind though. Go back. I stepped backwards, away from her, and I almost tripped on a couple of extremely large salamanders peering up at me from the ground. At once, they both scurried off under some brush.
This town. Is it me? Welcomed only hours ago. I turned and began walking back to my room. Hurriedly stalking past the pool, which looked very dirty, I saw an American couple laying on some beach chairs in suits and sunglasses. Are those two trying to sunbathe in the DARK?? I shook my head, closed my eyes, squinted, thinking I’d seen things. Sure enough, upon second inspection there is this American man, with I assume is his wife, laying out by the pool catching some rays… from the moon or stars? It was the most bizarre thing I’d seen yet. Motionless, I continued staring in disbelief. I couldn’t look away. Why would they be here, at this motel, when there are much nicer hotels all over the coast? Where is the coast from here? You should make a run for it. The stars won’t catch you. Just then, the man slowly tilted his head in my direction. He stared at me for the longest time, through those goddamn too-expensive shades. Uncomfortable, even more so than before, I finally turned away and continued walking past the pool to the line of rooms.
On the side of the pool, I noticed the desk clerk was gone from his post, but his typewriter was still there. “Hello?” I called out, sticking my head in through the window. Nothing. What’s this he’s writing? I grabbed piece of paper out of his completed tray and began reading:
“¿Quién es este hombre? Él llegó confuso, pero sonriendo. Él doesn’ t sabe qué he’ s que parece aquí. La ciudad del misterio. La ciudad de cambios. La ciudad de la luz brillante. La ciudad de la experiencia. It’ s qué you’ el re buscar, isn’ ¿t él? Bien, usted lo encontrará aquí. Prometo. ¡Mire hacia fuera detrás de usted!”
Desperately, I tried translating. “This man,” “Experience”, “Look out behind you!”
Shit! BAMM! Blasted with a fucking lead pipe in the small of my head, just above my neck, from behind. Like the desk-clerk’s writing said. The bastard didn’t hit me hard enough, or maybe in the right spot, to knock me unconscious. Mmmnaaahhh… rolling… over. Ca…. an’t… put…. together.
I remember looking up from the dirt and seeing the American in sunglasses above me; staring down at me as he did over at me from his pool chair. In a blur, he hit me again, this time with his fist. Uhhggh! Thngs.. getttn fuzzy nw…. stay awake…. HElp!
He stomped on me, kicked me in the ribs. Opened up my left eye. Swelled up my entire face. Broke a couple of my fingers. Dropped his rusted, metal pipe next to me and walked off with his woman as the blood slipped into my eye sockets. Shit, oh shit… I can’t see well. Need to get back. NOW.
Pushing off the ground with my good hand, I struggled getting to my feet. Someone grabbed my shirt though, and helped yank me up. Before I could say thank you, he or she was gone. Once to my feet, the rest was easy. I had only been about 100 feet from my room when I got nailed. I made it back ok. After about six or seven tries, I finally got the key in and closed the door sharply behind me, locking it as tightly as possible.
Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths. I went to the sink once again, splashed my face with water, and made a cup out of my hands to drink from. Could it have been the water? Don’t drink the water. KNOCK, KNOCK at the door. My head uncontrollably whips in that direction, like a wild, lost dog. I can feel the fresh blood trickling down my head and face. Using my shirt as a towel, I wrapped it around my head, gently pushing down on the wounds on my face. There wasn’t a peephole on the door. Don’t answer that. Please don’t. But I did anyway. I unlocked the door and swung it open to…
“Tadeu?!?!? Is that you?! Tadeu! Oh man, it’s so good to see you!” But he wouldn’t say a word to me. Staring at me, with purpose, but not saying a word.
“Tadeu! I need your help! I need to get back to the beach… the beach you found me on today!!! Tadeu!” Still nothing. He sighed deeply and reached into his back pocket, slowly bringing forth a relic from behind his back. It was an arrowhead of some kind. Almost looked Mayan. He grabbed my hand, opened it up, and placed it gracefully inside. Closing my hand on it and then looking up to my face. His eyes held an aura of sorrow and apathy. Then, he turned and was gone. Just like that. Stunned, I couldn’t believe it. How could he have found me?
I closed the door once again and retreated to the one chair in my room, still clenching my fist. As I opened up my hand, the arrowhead was gone, but the outline of it looked to be burned, seared into my skin. It hurt, but in a good way. I took the shirt off my head: it felt as if the bleeding had stopped. I walked over the mirror to examine my shredded, swollen face and head. Moving toward the center of the mirror, to my sheer horror, I looked to be wearing some sort of animal head. It looked like a bear’s face. With big round ears and a snout, and devilish, sharp teeth and fangs. It frightened the hell out of me. My human hands moved up into the mirror, grabbing the furry sides of my own head and pulling upwards. But the head wouldn’t come off. And that’s when I realized that this wasn’t a fake head or mask I was wearing, this was MY head.
By Dan Black, copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
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