(Abysmal Terror, in ’99) Written in Lima, Peru, 1-10-2009; based on similar events taken place at the time
(Rewritten as ‘Resurrecting Jonathan’, 11/2011)
He had listened to the voice without interrupting. He was speaking to him slowly, and as his voice faded, his body seemed thicker than a wall, and the man’s voice sent back an occasional echo.
He regarded himself as frozen in place; thus, the young man was forced to listen—; consequently, without embarrassment. Otherwise, he’d not been able to tell the police the part of this story he endured. The rest of the story the girl across the hall, and the police would fill in upon his resurrection.
It was a stranger’s path he had crossed that afternoon, in a bar, in Miraflores, Lima, and an American male with two Peruvian friends, feeling no need to shoo away the company. He didn’t know he’d be wrapped in the anonymous cloak of a strange scheme; these three were up to something. And when he’d cast off the cloak of darkness, removing the unknown, such things are never brought back to its normality, and life never the same.
The waiter informed the young American, pointed out to him—one of the three men put something into his drink, then they all three up and left the bar. What the waiter did not tell him was that there were three other persons, a man and two women also interested in him in the bar (not knowing of course their intent).
The two women were rather on the hefty and broad side; they had blue jeans on, both had a medical bag, both under thirty years old. They rather looked alike, yet didn’t clash.
The man had his back turned away from the waiter, and Jonathan.
“I thought it would interest you,” said the waiter, “because I heard you speaking English, with the two Peruvians.”
Involuntarily Jonathan exchanged a glance with one of the two hefty women, followed by a look of near stale indifference by her, as if she couldn’t care less. He then looked cautiously, peering around the room in all directions, and within his head, the voices within the bar, seemingly turned into whispers, innumerable near silent exchanges.
Within the following fifteen minutes, He discovered himself at his four star hotel opening up his door to his room His head in miseries.
It was imperceptible, impossible closing of his eyelids. He heard voices over him—without the slightest sign of interest to his moaning.
“We know who you are,” said a woman’s voice, “bring me smaller seizers,” she told her female accomplice, as she continued to do whatever she was doing, calmly.
“Where’s … (a pause) said the first voice to the accomplice, making a gesture.
“He’s guarding the door,” said the accomplice.
They needed less than an hour in the apartment; dusk had fallen, and the windows and curtains had been closed by the male. Also the man by the door had turned off all the lights, all but the one by the bed, where Jonathan lay paralyzed as the operation took place.
Had anyone rang, it wouldn’t have mattered, Jonathan couldn’t have answered—but Georgina from across the hall had seen all, everything, and called the police, but she knew it would take them hours to come, if they came at all. They seldom took such calls serious (and more often than not, they were not the solution, rather part of the problem).
For half an hour she sat waiting, listening to the sounds from across the hall. Immense feelings of dread, loss came over her, helplessness, it wasn’t painful I mean, more like a dim shadow creeping over her from under the door across the hall, into her room, she felt as if she wanted to swallow up the police for not showing up. That whatever they were doing to him, they could do to her, to anyone without regard for their liberties.
And in the mist of all this, Jonathan, in helpless desolation, became empty inside, weighting less than before. And the next step would sink the scales of repair probability into the sea, forevermore lost.
“Fill them up with gauze!” said the hefty surgeon, to her accomplice.
The man was half asleep leaning against the door, wakened by the sound of voices on the street, and then they disappeared into the entrance of the hotel.
“Be quick,” said the surgeon. “We can go now,” she added in the second moment.
“We’ll meet in San Juan Miraflores,” said the man, “I left my suitcase there at the Hostel, near the ‘Cristo Redentor’ church and park next to it, around the corner, under the name Garcia.
“Pay your bill and go to another hotel, call me on the cell then,” said the Surgeon.
They went out the back door of the hotel unseen, except for the eyes of the neighbor across the hall. The police showed up, a warm feeling came over Georgina. She opened the door, the layer of paleness that had stretched out over her face, stilled showed, but her eyes sparkled.
“Something was going on in that apartment, I saw one man and two men enter and leave, they’ve been in there for a bit over an hour with a young gringo, what took you so long?” she questioned, knowing she was not going to get an answer, and just a stare which
The police did not reply as expected, as was normal practice for them, and knocked on the door as she the young female kept talking, as if the whole matter involved a murder. Then the door opened, it hadn’t been locked.
A foot inside the door she muttered words that sounded like a prayer. When the police turned on the lights, she held her breath; the young man was laying on his bed, on his back, bandages over his eyes.
“What are you waiting for?” she questioned the police.
They knew now what had taken place, it didn’t baffled hem, as it had Georgina.
Jonathan, druggy, slow in motion, trying to get his senses back, life his body upward with what strength in his hands he had left, said, “Whose here, what’s going on?” Then leaning his back against the backboard of the bed, his mind reactivated from his hour long, and slightly dimmed hangover, came out of his dilemma. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded and shouted; now feeling the gauze over his eyes; Tarring the gauze and its holding tape out from his eye sockets.
“Please calm down young man,” said one of the officers, he new what had taken place; it was a new kind of business going on.
Georgina fainted, the surgeon had stolen his eyes, they would within a short period of time sell them on the black market.
#834 Originally written in 2008, and rewritten in a shorter version 11/24/2011, based on actual events taking place in 2006, in Lima, Peru, fictionalized here by the author.
