luck I can blow a bubble big enough, hop inside it, and let it carry me out of this maleficent rainforest. I’m being over the top, but I keep getting wacked by big glossy leaves, dodging trees, running to this boy, and I’m to the point where I can’t help thinking I’m on a wild goose chase. Ramze did say I’d a couple hours left of enduring the jaguar’s spit. I start to walk, biting the air instead of gasping for it, letting it know how much I need it in my chest.
“Stay with me…please,” I barely get out the strength to say. This little one’s taunting me. The boy slows down every time I do, making sure to glance back every couple seconds in case I start running again.
I hear wild boars pass me by inches from where I walk. I can’t bear in mind if I’ve ever seen something as menacingly ugly as these creatures being pulled from right out of a nightmare. They grunt every time their snouts touch leaves, releasing the sound of someone with a cold inhaling snot. I shiver with goosebumps at their squealing.
Thunder roars through the mountain skies, drowning out the pigs’ insignificant cries. Trees sway in the wind, pulsating as if at any moment their trunks will snap. Sadly, I’m stuck in an incoming storm that wails over the deep environment in a blood–curdling rhythm. A crowd stomps their feet on rickety metal bleachers, gaining momentum as their college football game intensifies. With every crack of the whip, the crowd grows louder with feverishness. The befall of floods is promising.
Strident rains are summoned from the abode of Poseidon. Squalls of driving torrents bear the salinity and covariation of nutrient concentrations; key to rejuvenate a primeval dry wood. Earth rejoices. She accepts the feast of rich minerals that the north–easterly trade winds carry from the offshore European and North African countries thousands of miles east. Plant life flourishes here without human intervention committed to deforestation. It’s a lush, unruly landscape. Too bad I can’t enjoy any of it in my situation.
Muddy terrain piled with continuous rain has flooded the ground turning it into a swamp with a slushy surface. The water at my feet gets warmer and I’m suddenly treading on layers of buttery pastry. The comfort is short lived. It’s cold again and the pastry turns rough. The brush of my toes on serrated rocks, hidden by the beige stream I walk across, is tearing the tips of my toenails and heels of my feet.
I’d lost my sandals in the ocean after falling and getting swallowed by it; scattering through all the fuss of the morphed angels and the youthful Samael that choked them. The pigs ransack bananas from the palm trees above me.
Dim sunlight has found a way to come in through the tall trees and I can see a series of batches; batches of yellowish–green premature bananas falling into the mouths of these gray–haired pigs. One pig passes a stack of bananas to their mate as though it were a bouquet of roses. The mate delivers its romantic partner a slurping smooch from its neck to its ear.
They run into the trees, head–butting them till the food dislodges from their branches, becoming one with their foaming dark salmon mouths. Upon the ravenous clasp of their narrow black hooves drips any excess fare they fail to thoroughly chew. As I inspect their behavior, they stomp on any uncaught bananas, leaving sound spoors in the mire. The mushy combination of jaundiced rinds and starch rich banana flesh lies shoddily entombed in their salivating mouths. Vacate they do. Tis after their stomachs’ content.
One of the boars has tusks that fan out from the rims of its mouth. It stands tall over the few surrounding boars that loom out of darkness. While the others stand low, the tusked boar keeps penetrating a side of the tree containing the last family of bananas. The little ones with their little hoofs and their giant heads, much larger in proportion to their compact bodies, move vigorously across the stream. As they push against the mud, I follow.
I locate where they head to for shelter. I stay far from it and cease from any venture that requires movement as the subtle scent of black pudding seeps in through my nostrils. The sound of a grumbling stomach rear ends me. The stomping of an animal progresses, digging deep into the ground. I swiftly turn, keeping eyes locked on the fair view of rain dripping down from the tree palms. Waiting for a bull to ram me but rather seeing a baby boar kicking.
Setting sight on the boar behind me, it shrieks with increasing yawns that show blood stains on its snout. Its body lays crushed under a fallen tree log that seems to have been stricken by lightning just seconds earlier. The end of the log is burnt black as the subdued fire from a lightning strike is put out by the ongoing rain.
I think twice before assisting this being in helpless need. I do hear the calls of pain, but that kid is close. Enough that I’d catch up to him in a matter of seconds. The boy is my only hope to find others out here. Some civilization that’ll get me down the road to that store we first picked up food and drugs.
I hesitate, switching gears, turning my head left and right from panic. He mustn’t want to be discovered if he’s running so I let him go, leaving behind my existence to the saving of this pig meat. His mystery subsiding for now.
It must be starving. There’re always consequences in doing the right thing. Just when I thought this animal would be grateful for getting this weight off it, it attacks me. I grapple it, taking a hold of the body and flipping it upside down. I latch onto its belly, but it squirms out of my grasp. It ends up bailing, running towards the safety of its clan. The shelter of a downward hill plastered with lanky grass.
The unclipped grass as I sneak ahead and come to view it from the top of the hill is next to a beryl creek with catfish jumping in the air. Water rushes into the creek and exits it in a linear formation. One end must empty into a riverbank but there’re no rivers in sight. I think I’ll find someone if I follow the water but how far? How long must I continue to walk in this downpour?
I’m lost. In a probable eighteen billion square feet of forest land. From the map of light, I might be able to conjure up an exit in my mind, seeing as how the details of this map were so eloquently drawn out to be everything one man may need. If those maps were to ever get in the hands of a thrill seeker or a government organ, the causation would be one of two. Ramze or Lucas. Keepers of these maps. Charted and designed by Jake. Sedately handed over to the three of us. So greatly instilled in our memory that losing them is an inconsiderable worry when navigating foreign lands.
Withal my sluggish activities, I didn’t partake in the studious efforts of my two friends who did take the time to remember all of the maps. I mistook my memory’s recognition of these surroundings for the only map I did study—Malaysia. As this was supposed to be a pit stop on our journey and not an enduring trap on common tourists.
The Malaysia trip would’ve come after the wedding. By a long shot, the maximum days we would’ve been surfing here was four so that we’d be back home by Monday morning. The day of Erik’s bachelor party and then attend the wedding on Tuesday. I assumed that since we planned to be in Costa Rica for such a short time, I didn’t have to remember this specific map but once again I was leaning on my naiveté. My inexperience in expecting the unexpected has bit me in the butt this time around.
How can these maps of so called light and secret access be obtained out of the knowledge of an average Joe like stoner Jake? I didn’t think of questioning it till now. Another dispute I might add is what power can paper hold? There’s a reason us three swore to Jake we’d protect them. We failed him because now one lies in the ocean missing.
Those loaded maps of a beautiful and creative mind. They’ve a tinting that makes glowing possible in the dark and contain multiple layers where one can turn the pages to see beyond the land of natives. In the sky and underground. Every ounce of water, every grain of sand in the database of this fey see–through map.
Its transparent attribute is the work of nano technicians who polish the fibers of recycled paper in order to make paper—vapor. Each piece of the glassy map is a sticky sheet written on with thin blue ink uncovering the dwellings of a particular altitude. The altitudes span from the deepest point in the surrounding oceans to the highest point on the highest mountain. When they’re leveled over the other the reveal is a simulated eye–popping, downsized environment.
You need only use an eyeglass to reveal the rapturous degree of detail. The first one in the series of maps is now gone. Its three–dimensional graphics made it better than any navigational system that awkwardly talks in a robotic female voice. The mechanics of Jake’s gift to our travels are too complex and perhaps too expensive to guide others.
It’s something people have never seen. Something people aren’t ready for. An invention that needs no introduction because it’s simply a map with no patent behind its process. Its craftsmanship as unique as its maker. The maker who I’d compare to Andrea del Verrocchio.
The maps are truly superior to our time. Without limits to the use or wonder it can provide a traveler. Remote from sightseers’ greatest wishes as these maps are unattainable and will remain with Ramze, Lucas, and I so long as Jake doesn’t ask for them back.
The map’s primary limitation is it only reveals the natural topography of each area we’re in so there aren’t any actual roads on the maps. We follow the land as most of the time, the reason these maps don’t have roads is because there aren’t any man–made roads from the populated areas of a country to the secret beaches. There’s no point in including the roads that do exist outside the beaches because they don’t lead us to the beaches themselves. Instead, we find nature’s obstacles that keep the beaches hidden and decipher a way around them.
If only I had that first map now. I set sight on the tall grass as a screech is heard from within the singular. A line of blood cruises down from the pit of hidden boars into the stream. The group of them scramble out of the grass in opposite directions. I hear heavy munching sounds within their shelter thereafter. The baby boar is the only one that didn’t come out. I retreat from the hill staggered, backing away from the stream as sleek as a black mamba. Once more, I miss the opportunity to find people.
Now that I’ve limited my source of flowing water who knows how long before I find another. I bulge ahead with blunt intuition. Searching to find the light again but at least in coverage from the rain. The trees here are thicker than past with colorful trunks of army green, marmalade, and maroon.
The Cimmerian forest with its damp tropics sees fit to provide yellow eyes in every outlying depth I perceive to be corners. Phosphorescent like the chemical gleam in the maps. I can tell they’re eyes because they’re blinking. They’re tiny in shape. As small as a pebble yet as bright as a firefly. There’re a couple dozen pairs up in the trees.
My foot gets caught on a tree’s surface root. I do not falter to the animals amongst me. Instead, I reach to grab a mango off this smallest of trees that holds me with twisting arms dangling above. One of the yellow–eyed creatures is locking lips with it. I bring it close to my face noticing the short patches of bruising on the mango. Rotating it so that the fresh side is given to the animal, I take a bite of it with the umber furred creature sharing the bite.
Our eyes meet one another. This nocturnal I find has only one eye. Not sure if a birth defect or a fight with another creature cost it its eye. I ease the mango back on a low branch. It keeps its thorny teeth clenched to the fruit. It clings to the branch, flapping its brown wings upside down. I giggle as it starts swinging, making a scratching kind of sound through its wee fangs. In rocking itself it allows the fruit to fall from its mouth. Not certain if the rough sound it’s made is echolocation.
I pick up the mango and put it back in its mouth. I swipe my forearm across my mouth wiping the mango juices from my face. I jerk my foot away from the curved tree root that rises out of the ground.
I return to the mudded grounds of this forest and drag my feet along with the modest wind current pushing the water against me. I hang low fearing that whatever ate that boar might still be near but glad that those fruit bats didn’t have an acquired taste for blood.
The water I’m treading on is a marsh. The brown thick mud rises to my waist as I enter an area of little land and no trees. Not even at the borders I see. Finally, I’ve a good view of the sky.
The sun, partly hidden by two clouds, permits me to see better but the rain and lightning show no signs of retreat. The rest of the sky has a grand nebulous glow. The darkest of clouds distinct themselves from the glow. They’re the two that cover the sun; the main concentration of heavy rain and lightning. Meanwhile on the ground, a low white haze floats above the water. It submits itself to the environment giving me little assurance as to where it is I’m headed.
My feet can touch the bottom of the marsh if I decide to walk but swimming will be faster. I swim towards a patch of land in the middle of this slough. About five yards in diameter, it’s surrounded by water and home to one fairly tall tree, six times my height, with a thick base that tapers the higher it gets. I didn’t see it from land due to the fog, but I see it now as I’m swimming up to it. The tree’s crown is characterized by a shrub of mint green leaves.
Encircling the base of the tree are fat, fine–grained textured rocks that’re wider at their center and angular at their ends. I climb onto land by grabbing onto the dangled, over the edge, tail–like end of one of the rocks. As I pull myself up, I’m rankled for I’ve the taste of bitter burnt rice in my mouth. I spit out some mud that’d smuggled its way into my mouth as I swam. All the same, it’s made a home for itself in between my teeth. I inspect the similar rocks while standing but elect on kneeling to get an even closer look.
Crocodiles!
My hands swing to my mouth. One hand is highly pressured over the other to prevent the startled me from releasing inherent screams out of a concrete fear. I steadily rise from my bent position and take one step back. Jaws snap shut. A wheel of primary colors surfaces from the canopy above me. I don’t catch on to what it is right away. It swivels deftly in the rain. A hellish squawk warns the flock of imminent danger. The psychedelic wheel breaks in a fracas. The scarlet macaws were sundered by panic. Alone, each multicolored red, blue, and yellow parrot sets flight from this minute island, evanescing into the fog. It’s possible a cluster of trees awaits their union on high ground.
The birds take shelter in the opposite direction from where I swam. I rapidly turn to another crocodile behind me. I resort to ripping bark off the center piece of this land—the tree of jarring mint—by digging my fingers deep into a somewhat already tenuous part of it. The bark that’s given onto me by tearing quickly is thin and soaked by rain. I, without any aim, throw it like a dart to the crocodile closest to me hoping it stunts it. It lands on top of the one that’s now at my front.
A strike of blue light blinds me and leaves me with a repellant metallic taste in my mouth. I’m forewarned by maddened thunder of stronger to come. I’m so terrified that I must’ve missed the warning train as my tingling skin tried to tell me not to pursue a straight course through the water. I clumsily trip over another crocodile. I crawl hysterically on my hands and knees to the peeled tree, spin around and lie back on it, staring attentively at the reptiles for any subtle movements.
None dart to me for an attack. It’s only seconds later that I can separate fear from fact and process—these animals aren’t alive. They’re formidable statues. “Rocks,” I say aloud. I sigh with a nervous laugh but even then, I’m unsure if I’ve made a mistake. I’m put back on the offensive. My throat tightens, prompting me to swallow hard, waiting for any of the rocks to start moving. I push my feet deep into the dirt to get my back as tightly pressed against the tree as possible.
They’re so realistically made that man must’ve sculpted them but surely not for art, out here where no one can see it. Unless that art’s purpose is to provoke fear in local wildlife. The sound of jaws snapping was most likely a broken tree branch falling. Not sure how I feel about the inclement weather and being so close to an object that’s a call for lightning strikes.
I loosen up a little. I’d rather stay under this tree however for I can’t know for certain if there’re any live crocodiles in the water longing for live bait. I’ll make an effort to swim through the thickly muddied waters after this rain and fog dissipates. I’d feel safe with a clearer vision of the water. My state of mind need be at peace from an animal attack now that the thought of being torn up by crocodiles is sunken into my head.
I lower my head while sitting and wait, overwrought by the image of encountering people again. More so, I’m nervous about how I’ll get to that point. A few hours from now I could be sipping whiskey on a one–way flight back to Florida. Surely, I’ll cherish my sister’s wedding to come. All that scrumptious food that I could use now, I muse as my stomach grumbles.
Steamed steak marinated in black pepper, soy sauce, garlic, and just a hint of lemon to give it that kick. Accompanied by a nice green decadent salad and crusty bread. And who can go wrong with roasted red potatoes and sautéed shrimp. A meal fit for a king and for dessert, colorful macaroons that’re sweet, creamy, and share in the tasty blend of coconuts with pistachio. Being random, I also feel like eating chili lemon octopus with cucumber salad at the moment, even though this dish wasn’t an option at the wedding.
The sound of rain is so pleasing. I mostly enjoy myself when I surf in the rain. It’s the feel of water droplets falling all over me and then making them dance to my rhythm as I purposefully wobble that’s invigorating. The oceans tend to move cautiously when there’s a delicate rain and charge with an offensive tackle when there’s a storm. Each experience of surfing in the rain reminds me of the high seas pirates endured in the 16th century when their presence was in the grassroots phase of leaving behind a legacy.
I manage to zone out the damning thunderclaps by zeroing in on the rain. I’m absorbed into each drop, resolving my trial.
Resolve…ha!
O this illusive conclusion on which I’ve dropped anchor.
Land, ho! I’ve arrived in the kingdom of forty winks.
Dare you close your eyes numb nut?