I find yet another watering can, full of this same pure water. I drink a cupful.
I haven't seen a river or even a stream, and I wonder where they were getting the stuff from. I am about to lay down to rest when I hear a knock on the door. That's weird, nobody seems to knock around here they just shout through the paper-thin walls like some vaudeville act. I open the door and it's the guy from the drum circle. The guy who knew about the coyote buffet I'd had the morning before I woke up here. He says, you gotta talk to me.
I say, I'm a little fucking exhausted man.
Yeah, but, we gotta talk. We are from the same place, man.
Okay, well, damnit. Come in, I say and step back from the doorway. He does and I shut the door behind him. We sit at a table and chairs that look like they grew out of the ground, mostly I think because the table definitely did grow right out of the ground. It is a tree stump with about two hundred rings in it.
Out in the fading light of the doorway, he looked about my son's age. A man, but still a boy by comparison. Chet would hate me for saying it that way. Inside, by the candlelight, his face looks hard, a youthful demagogue portrayed in effigy. The light from the candle tries to play with the shadows and the contours of his face. He looks evil.
He is dressed differently than the others, than me. He is wearing all black tactical gear. He smells like death. I cough a little at the eminence of his odor, even over the flowers. He sits like a mercenary, knees spread, arms gripping the chair as if ready to thrust himself out of it. Why do you think you're here? he asks. Watching my response with intense scrutiny.
I think someone is fucking with me, I say confidently.
Well, if they are fucking with you, they are fucking with me, and I'll tell you, that's simply not possible, he says.
I don't know, maybe you're an asshole too, I say.
Look man, he says. I kidnapped you.
I stiffen a little, remembering the press of this man and his group squeezing me into submission and unconsciousness. I feel like I should murder him, or at the very least kick him out of my new hut. What do you want then? I ask.
I'm not here to hurt you today. These coyote people. They aren't what they seem or what they say they are.
Okay, that much I knew. But what are they?
I... don't know, he says, looking frustrated, turning his head to the right and looking at the wall.
Look at me, I say.
Man, I got nothing to hide. I picked you up and brought you out to this grove just like we were told. Something happened that was... not to plan. You woke up before we'd marched you all the way to the spot. You bolted. I gave chase. I never saw my guys again after that. I didn't catch up with you either. I spent a night out there with the coyotes. I had my knives and I killed a few of them. They left me alone after that. I felt like a hunter, like a killer, man. So, I ate some of their meat, raw, you know. I thought I could own its soul. I don't think that's the type of soul I was meant to possess. The next day when the sun rose, I was in this place. They been treating me like a guest ever since man, but things aren't right. Do you get the feeling like this is too perfect? Like where do they get all this water from? What happened to the rest of the world? Why is everyone still here after fucking fifty years? You'd think, well, like if the world ended, and you were in a lemon grove, would you just stay there? Would you build a village here? I mean wouldn't you move around a little bit first?
I don't know. I have felt like they were a part of some ruse by my kidnappers to torture me. I honestly don't believe any of this is real.
Shit, man. I'm one of your kidnappers, and I'm not no grunt either. I wrote the plan. But this is not in the plan I wrote. Lemme ask you something.
Shoot, I say, before realizing he probably has a gun.
You are a pretty bad dude. We didn't pick you out of a hat, here's your lucky bad day in hell stranger. You're an evil man.
That's not really a question.
No, it's not. Me, I'm a bad man's nightmare, someone who loves making 'em squirm. You love money and power, yeah?
That's right.
I love murder, chaos, and the smell of the fear of my enemies.
Charming, I say.
You aren't supposed to like me. But I think you and I need each other right now. I don't want to be stuck in paradise unless I'm in charge. I don't know what these guys have for warriors, but I'm surprised nobody has come in here already and murdered the lot of them. What do you say we make a pact. Let's have a coup on that old Abuela and her cuck Waldo. I don't know how they been in power so long, but I got a feeling it's based on a lack of challengers.
I suppose you aren't gonna let me think it over.
No, you know that much, he says, head leaning forward, eyebrows lifting, staring me dead in the eyes. No, he can't let me live if I'm not on his side. Can't risk me letting them know his plan.
What if I do help you? What is my position in the new hierarchy?
You'd be second in command after me. I know these are supposedly all your grandchildren, but if you don't believe that anyway, guess it can't hurt for you to enrich the breeding stock a little. He says this, then he smiles like a true psychopath.
Okay, what's our plan then?
It's the dog, he says.
What? That fucking spastic angry coyote with the kid?
That one.
And?
That dog is the center of it all.
So, we kill it?
Yeah, we do. And the kid too. They're one and the same creature.
I don't understand.
I been watching people around here. They ain't all people. That kid, that dog, ain't a human being.
Now you are starting to sound as crazy as the rest of them.
That's fine, he says. Just keep an open mind and do what I say.
Okay, I say, and I stand up and put out my hand.
He grabs my outstretched palm with a steel grip to seal the deal. I'm old. I'm also a little torn up by spending five days living off of water from an irrigation system and eating coyote intestines, translate: dog shit. I'm also a rank-less member of a specific nameless art. I practice arts known to only a few men, and this guy, tough as he is, isn't one of them. He doesn't even come close. I do something with my hips, push and pull him a touch to feel his equilibrium. It's just as I thought, he's locked his sacral vertebrae in some kind of macho wingding spread em' posture. I pull him right over the table, which is very sturdy, as it is made of solid tree trunk rooted into the soil floor. Thunk! I nail him in the face with the half-full watering can. He is trained well, doesn't make a noise as I compress his ribs against the edge of the table while disarming him of his weapons, which I find all over him. He continues to struggle of course, but once I have one of his knives, it comes to a swift and bloody end.
I manage not to ruin his tactical gear. It gets a little bloody, but at this point, human blood has become innocuous in comparison to the things I've been wearing. He's about my size, a little thicker the way younger men are when they are lifting regularly, which also happens to make them stiff and easy to throw around a room.
After stripping the body and wrapping it up in the hand-woven fiber rug from the floor of the hut, I lay back on the cot and rest. My eyes flutter and close. I have never been at peace and have always managed to find some kind of sleep very easily, and other kinds not at all.
In my dreams, Abuela comes to me. She tells me that the reason I am displaced is that my spirit is fractured. I walk on through the hellish dreamscape, patio furniture clinging to my legs, overhead shadows blot out the nether sun. Bricks form walls and tunnels that look like buildings and streets at a glance, but further inspection reveals them to be simply puzzles and doors to more twisted realms. I come upon a demon seated with its back to me. In one hand it grasps the skull of a young child. It has the child's face buried entirely within its dark demon lips. The boy's body inflates and deflates with the demon respiration like a paper bag over the mouth of a hysteric. I walk past and see high distorted cheek bones, a forehead like a white anvil. I feel the sucking out of eyes and breath. Watch the rising and falling of the shapes, one into another. Some kind of dark spirit parasite drinking the life breath of the child. They may even be symbiotic at this point. I can't tell, and I'm not going to pull them apart.
I walk on past the powdery pale neck and arching spine in black burlap suit heaving and sucking on that little body. Next, I come upon another pair. This time the boy is in adolescence. He is screaming a choking lament as the arm of a torturer presses down into his body through the throat. It's trying to jam something inside him or pull something out. The boy is damaged and twisted. His lips are torn open at the corners from being stretched by the nearly sexual onslaught of the demon. I see it pull now, and out comes some human remains, a fistful of jawbones and teeth, glistening with ectoplasm and blood. Sharp like a grip of macabre knives. The boy sits and vomits into his hands. He looks at me but doesn't ask for help. The demon focuses solely on him.
I walk back into the room with Abuela. She says, you are forgiven. I can't help but see you in all my children and grandchildren.
I wake up shivering. It's not cold, but there's some adrenaline from the fight being burned off. I dress in the other guy's gear. Now, I'm armed. I am not helpless anymore. I walk outside and the sun is setting. The sky is lavender above a fog of white flowers. Bees are rushing home. An eagle flies across the sky from left to right. I go looking for Abuela.
I find her and Waldo at the center of town. They are blessing the evening meal. They tell me to sit down and eat, which I do. The stew is the same stew we've been eating since I got here. How long has it been now, a week? They don't ask me about my clothes, which is telling. This is a small community; surely, they all noticed the change and the absence of the other stranger. Only the kid, who swaggers up to me with his dog, says, nice clothes.
Thanks, Puedes, I say, reminding him he's still a little shit.
I sit next to Abuela and get right down to it. Look, I say, if you don't tell me what is actually going on here: who hired you? where am I? and how do I get out of here? bad things are gonna start to happen around here, and I don't think you people are ready to handle it.
Hmm, she says, as though disappointed. Didn't you get my message? From the dream?
I say, look, I don't know what kind of advanced psy-ops you are running here, but I got a feeling that if I start sinking knives into people, you'll be dropping the act pretty quickly. I would rather not do that.
At least you are consistent, she says. One of the answers you seek, you will find at the river.
What river?
Mani will take you.
Fine, but tell him to leave the dog behind.
He cannot. They are inseparable.
If I kill the dog?
That will not go well for you. Mani likes you, despite yourself. He will not allow the dog to hurt you.
That's reassuring, I say with my best and most serious sarcasm.
Finish your meal, it won't do you any good to go hungry, she says. And I do.