I open my eyes, blinking a number of times. My head swings up in a jolt. I lower it dazed and addled. I try raising my chin high, ready to howl in the absence of a full moon. My head is a wrecking ball on a crane. As it begins to lower itself defiantly, I think to let it go. Five more minutes and I’ll rise up, high like the peak of a Portuguese wave.
From a bad inkling sprouts fear. The hibernating bear in me grapples with stout pushback from this fear. Neurotic about predators. Should I be this chary of a snooze? For there’s a kicking horse in my stomach, I cannot stay. A vigilant self overtakes the fourth sin in me. A yen for survival. It’s time. Wake up before you’re comatose.
I circle my head as I raise it with purpose, jutting my chin out. I belt loudly. Not my forte. This, a beginner singer’s ill attempt to hit that last soprano note. My throat’s strained. Leaves dance to the beat of a blowing wind disseminating an unfrequented wood. Confidence in others out here wanes. I dread bright when it’s a predator and not a sight purely glistening upon water. Brown–green swamp water kissed by the brightness of daffodils tinged with white light. Transfixing the greatest of heliophiles.
I’m unsure of how long I’ve been under the sun. I look at my yellow wristwatch. My eyes shift to its detachable compass on its yellow band, two sizes smaller than the case of the watch. The tree’s shadow is pointed east, away from me. The tree’s crown would’ve covered me had the sun been directly above it.
Without shade, my skin has secured a dash of red in its complexion. It partly hurts to move the sections of my body that’ve been exposed to a scorching sun. I get up at a leisurely pace, placing one hand on my chest. The other pushes off the ground with my feet. Both my dirt–ridden hands rush fingers through my hair letting it fall back. Only then do I notice a chub in my pants. Surely, I must’ve been dry humping a smoking hot female in dreams of better days.
I fell asleep but hopefully not for an entire day. It’s 9:34 A.M. according to my yellow wristwatch. The black Jolly Rogers t–shirt I’m wearing seems to have shrunk from all the water it’s taken to. Unlike me, it hasn’t persevered and is now ruined. Pressed tightly onto my skin so much so that I find it hard to breathe. The once white skull and crossed swords under it, printed on the t–shirt, are now an off–shade of beige. As for my highlighter yellow board shorts, the forest inconveniences flunked out of the college of soiling performance fabric. The quality remains pristine.
I struggle to take my shirt off, gripping it from the ends and trying to get it up over my head. It puts up an irreproachable fight at the collar. After finally getting it off in a rage, I wrap it around my head like a clumsily made turban. I pretend not to notice my farmer’s tan nor the marked red lines just under my shoulders from the tightening short sleeves of the shirt. I walk to the edge of the mud water and tap it lightly with my right foot. I shiver, shaking off nerves. It’s cold but a mud bath seems a refreshing offering in this heat.
I get in at a snail’s pace and without hurry, swim to the edge of highland where the scarlet macaws had flown to during the rain. My foot hits a pole as I’m paddling. I stand on the cruddy surface of this marsh and grab hold of an end. I lift the long wooden stick. Out comes a kabob with three white drones straight through it. The wooden pole’s head that penetrated the drone quadcopters is hand–forged steel with a Clovis point. It bears the distinctive marks of craftsmanship—a fluted shape with finely serrated edges and a Damascus texture with its wavy pattern. I let go of the spear, letting it sink with the attached drones. I better not face off against any hostile tribes.
The end of the slough leads me to an upward, muddy, and hole–filled knoll. I try and climb it, wanting to reach the crest where the birds are unwinding. Only fourteen feet high, the knoll is putting up its own fight. I keep slipping halfway up, falling back first into the mud water. I start losing patience and the strength to keep trying. I decide to swim back to the island and maybe see from there if there’re any other available routes onto highland.
As I get back to the small island I see and hear a shudder in the tree branches, rocking up and down like it’s having a spasm. I grab hold of a crocodile statue’s tail, hanging over the edge of the water, to get back onto land. I can’t see any of the parrots from before hanging out in the tree but there’s something stealthily moving within the coverage of mint green leaves that’s the dull green color of roasted asparagus.
I walk right below the tree and stare from the ground up. A crocodile up in the tree gapes at me as if I were a new toy. It looks to be about ten feet in length, but I can’t believe my eyes. Crocodiles don’t climb trees. The more I stare, the more I notice its physical characteristics are separate from that of a crocodile. As a point of reference, I do a double take at the crocodile sculptures next to me.
The head proportions are similar to that of a croc with a long flat top and round snout. The skin however is loose around its neck and stomach with it tightening around its four bowed legs. The end of the body has a huge muscular tail whipping from side to side alike a croc. Even so, this animal has more freedom to move its tail. More flexibility. Some sort of lizard.
Two black lily pads bordered by lava follow me as I step away from the tree. It runs vertically down the tree trunk using its large, black curved claws to grip onto the wood. It stops at the base of the tree and opens its mouth in which it reveals a bloody forked tongue and saffron rotten shark–like teeth. The teeth are so tiny they’d be nearly impossible to see if not for how yellow they are from what I infer is a recent feeding. It smells of mildew on meat or it’s possible the decayed fat of an animal.
Two phthalo green and bright iridescent blue eye feathers fall from the giant lizard’s mouth. Another feather hangs from its jaw in between its lower set of teeth. It reeks of raw sewage. The rapidity of the smell comes to me out of nowhere. I grip my nose tightly to spare my lungs. At the edge of vomiting, I stand my ground.
I’m getting desensitized from the jaguar’s spit to the repugnant scent. I just know it. In a heartbeat I’d faint if it weren’t for the drug blocking the smell. Only a smattering is getting through to me, but I know there’s more to it that’d knock me out past what this drug allows me to sense. The power of the jaguar’s spit is fleeting. The toxins that I can presently detect will increase. With it, their horrid stench. “Come at me lizard monster,” I press for confrontation in a nasally voice.
“It’ll make nice boots!” speaks a static voice through an electronic amplifier. The sound booms and frightens both the lizard and me. The lizard jolts backwards. I rousingly turn to the knoll I fell off previously and there at the top of the hill stands a thin, shirtless pallid man with a violet bowtie. He wears a white towel around the waist and a snow camo gas mask over his head with round chemical air filters at the cheeks that look like two glued on elongated cans of tuna. A pure gold double barrel shotgun is nestled in his arms.
I hear a breathy hiss from behind me. The turning of my body to it results in a quick, short bang. Thick red–orange blood peppers the side of my face. The lizard is tossed backwards in midair onto the tree. The duration of the shot was brisk. Its echo bounces off the surface of every crocodile sculpture surrounding my position. The shotgun fired leaves a trying ringing in my left ear.
“Don’t move,” the masked man orders in a stiff mechanical voice. “Komodo dragon blood is known for its toxicity. Something to do with the multiple strains of aggressive bacteria it carries,” he nods absently as if concurring with himself. “Or perhaps it’s its mouth that’s the conveyor. Either way, let’s avoid the discovery of what’ll happen if it enters the body.”
“A Komodo dragon?” I exhale through my mouth, letting go of my nose.
Don’t know why things are frightening more so when I know what they are. I take the wet turban off my head and unroll it back into a shirt by whipping it. I use it to wipe the blood off my face and then hurl the shirt to the dead dragon, covering its guts. Failing to hide its upside–down head with an open mouth. A cringe inducing sight.
I stare to the man with a secret identity and still, I can’t get any words of thanks out. The spectacular timing of his arrival not only saved my life but everything about this recent showdown is so random that I could’ve never expected it. “Help! I’m stuck down here,” I yelp with a crack in raising my voice.
“Swim on over pool boy,” says the guy who’s wearing a towel.
“You said not to move!” I shout back.
“Well, you didn’t listen, did you? You already used your shirt to wipe the blood. You’ll be fine.”
I plunge into the filth, breaking the surface of grime that floats atop of the water. I’m optimistic that this will be the last time I swim in these thickly mudded waters. At the knoll, the man puts down his shotgun and brings down a metal ladder. The ladder end sits at the bottom of the knoll and vaguely sinks an inch into the ground, just in front of the water. I climb on up.
My eyes nearing the top of the ladder, just over the knoll, hesitate in swallowing the sum total of the view. Recently mowed light–green grass is waving in a peaceful wind. The setting for a gothic castle with its walls overrun by trees—a vertical forest. An architectural feat, above and beyond Kosta’s green project in our home.
The fortified structure is built of salvaged gray stones and has seafoam green shrubbery and neon green trees bolting upright from it. The sweeping, low lively branches are numerous and extensive, draping beautifully from all towers. The castle’s surrounded by a land of evergreen trees, bald cypress trees with Spanish moss, and weeping white pine valleys. Trees unlike those I’ve seen in the rainforest.
“Is it a nursery?” I ask.
“Somewhat. We like trees,” is his mechanized response.
Up high, pitch–black rectangular openings that round themselves out at the top accentuate the small blue birds perched on their ledges. The discreet narrow vertical openings on the castle are arrow slits. The highest tower on the inside of an outer curtain wall looks to be around six hundred feet tall. It’s at the far back of the structure.
The outer curtain wall is in part destroyed. Bricks have fallen over that set way for an entrance into a bronze gatehouse. The turrets making up the crest of all towers look to have also been bronze once. They’ve since aged a greenish–gray color.
I finish the climb, one foot over the other on the steps of the ladder. Seizing the masked man’s offered hand with my muddy fingers, the once–clean hand that pulls me up now bears evidence of a shared struggle in the form of earthy stains. He grabs the ladder and lifts it back up onto highland. Then he rests it on the grass at the knoll’s edge, dangerously close to a precipitous descent. He picks up his gold shotgun and walks me down to the castle.
On these mystic grounds walk blue peacocks that drag their luxurious tails across pliant blades of grass. In a single feather, a glittering gold egg is painted with a light blue iris. Within that iris, a lily pad–shaped pupil the darkest shade of blue resides as was the crater in the ocean. It’s not long before the dark green and misty teal expansion of feathers is revealed. Our steady stroll directly behind a peacock along our path gives it time to turn its long neck to us. It stares blanky at me, squawks, and fans out its aquatic colors, showing off its glamour shot before elegantly maneuvering through the space we’ve made between us.
“Stunning. The Komodo dragon you killed ate one of them you know.”
“Yes. Baba Azul will rage if he finds out. Best to keep quiet about that sad fact.” The static from the in–made voice amplifier of his snow camo gas mask leaves a tingling in my ears. Clear from the ringing of the shotgun fired that continues to curse my left ear.
“Take off your gas mask. I want to thank you but I’m afraid your seasoned, yet utile gas mask is a barrier between us getting better acquainted. The robot voice changer’s also unhelpful in making this feel like your average meet–and–greet.”
“We’re all human here. To–a–moderate–extent,” he pauses in between each word. With his elbows bent at a right angle, he animates a robot character using some mechanical dance moves in a silly fashion. “Ha–ha. Come with me into Neptune and I’ll reveal my face. If it helps, I’ll give you my name too.” He stops doing the robot as we continue walking forward, closing in on the massive stronghold.
Further into land, we pass more of the delightful blue peacocks who faintly retreat as well as the scarlet macaws who restfully stand watching over us in the trees. “Not accustomed to new guests, are they?”
The masked man guides me to the bronze gatehouse. No, he says, stating this place doesn’t get much guests because of the smell. That explains the gas mask he’s wearing. I’m not in need of one because I’m drugged up at the moment on foreign narcotics. At least the drug isn’t acting as a hallucinogen anymore. The grid gate opens upward by a simple wave of the hand on part of the masked man. A gust of warm air tears past two glass arched doors opaque with steam.
“You speak English. Are you from the US?”
Entering past the tall doors into the gatehouse, we come into a long windowless hall with fourteen portraits of men in wine purple suits and white top hats, donning proud expressions, each cradling a different human organ like it’s a baby. The realistic portraits are lined on the left wall with magnified blurry photographs of ghostly white orbs framed directly across from them on the right. There’s but one clear photograph of what looks like a full, greenish-gray cantaloupe, its rind possessing many rugged ridges, against a black backdrop. The cantaloupe hangs facing the man with the gallbladder.
Perhaps the most macabre portrait is of the suited man carrying a sheet of skin, folded like a blanket to look neat and tidy. A standalone frosted glass wall is erected at the end of the hall. A large monochrome Union Jack is moved ninety degrees to the right so that it hangs vertically on the glass wall.
“English. Native to Manchester,” he states, putting his shotgun onto a hung wooden display case with a shamrock velvet inside to the left of him. Gripping the ends of his gas mask and lifting it up over his head, he tells me his name. “I’m Leonid!” His voice resonates with joy.
Beneath the gas mask is an older gentleman, perhaps around his late thirties with shallow and steady light–brown eyes. He’s well–groomed with a slick vintage hairstyle that has the brown curls atop his head swept right. On his square face are thick eyebrows that could use a bit of a cleanup and a black handlebar mustache that’s neatly trimmed with the sides not connecting to the rest of his facial hair—a triangular woolly goatee. The man’s as tall as me and within his direct eyesight he asks for my name in return.
“Koata.”
“I’ll call you K. Do you have a lath name K?” The English accent is more prominent now without the gas mask. A slight lisp has also made an appearance.
“Of course, I have a last name. It’s Califf,” I say smugly. The glass arched doors automatically close behind us and the bronze gate is lowered over them, ending with a final plink.
“Wasn’t thure if you were a bathtard child. Tho, K, how’d you get lotht in Costa Rica’th cloud foretht?”
“I was drugged,” I respond somberly. His easily deciphered expression doesn’t initially fit a concerned one but firstly it conveys interest. Then it switches posthaste to worry.
“Are you awright?”
“Yes. I’m fine now. What is this place?” I ask staring at the color–washed British flag. The ends of the single wall it covers are openings into another zone of the castle. I hear men quartered in what sounds like swimming pools from beyond the wall, laughing and conversing while splashing water.
“Thith ith a thanctuary for a group of men known ath the Immortal Jaguarth. Check it out.” He points at the two–dimensional tattoo of a black cat on his right shoulder.
Its stocky, muscular body faces right. Standing on its hind legs with its feet pointed to the right and its upper paws reaching upward also to the right. The short tail is in the shape of a reverse S pointed left. The inflated head hardly manages to contain the cat’s broad face within its boundaries. It has an overdone, elongated mouth so that its jaws are the foreground for the artwork. The round eyes above it have a strikingly demonic resemblance and are a touch squinted due to its mouth hung agape. I can only just make out its sinister stare—cold enough to forever bedevil an admirer of the tattoo should they look a second too long.
This two–dimensional tattoo is precisely identifiable as Abeni’s black panther tattoo. Noted for its head’s frontality and exaggerated features. Received by her from a tribe in Eritrea. Not even a negligible difference in the two marks. But how?