(Abysmal Terror,
in ’99) Written in Lima, Peru, 1-10-2009; based on similar events taking 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 had 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 him in on, upon his complete revivification.
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 the 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 member. 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, still showed, but her eyes
sparkled.
“Something was going on in that
apartment, I saw one man and two women 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 kind of knew now what had taken
place; it didn’t baffle them any, as it had Georgina.
Jonathan, druggy, slow in motion, trying
to get his senses back, lifted 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 endure, and slightly dimmed hangover, came out
of his dilemma. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded and shouted,
again; 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 knew what had taken place; it was a new kind of business
going on in Lima.
Georgina fainted, the surgeon had stolen
his eyes, they would within a short period of time be sold 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. #555
