Primal Scream (12 page)

Sparky was in a dungeon like that dungeon in New Orleans, though decades had passed since Mardi Gras and Mother's House of Pain. Hallucinations are a symptom of florid psychosis, and Sparky was hallucinating memories of Ecuador.

Ecuador, too, was decades ago, but not as far back as Carnival. . . .

"Wanta do some acid?"

"Huh?" "LSD. Wanta do some?"

"Oh ... uh ... no ... no, I don't think so."

Selena cocked her head to one side, eyebrow arched archly. "What's the matter, Sparky? Why the hesitation? You've done dope, haven't you? Surely you can't be that straight."

"I've done drugs."

"Well, then ..." The hippie shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not offering you grass or coke or bombers or speed or booze. It's acid, babe. The ultimate. Straight from God to Owsley to me to you ... I mean, you have done acid before, haven't you?"

A pregnant pause, then Sparky muttered sheepishly, "No, I haven't done that."

"Bummer. Look at the living you're missing, the fun you've never had. Try
everything
once, I say. Don't you agree?"

Another pause, before Sparky said, "Yeah . . . yeah, I guess so."

"Good! Then it's settled." And with that Selena's hand popped open like a magician's to display two small tablets of White Lightning washed by tropical sun in her palm. The hippie wet the index finger of her other hand to touch it to one of the hits and transfer the drug on her fingertip to the end of her; stuck-out tongue. Mouth closed, she swallowed.

"Okay. Your turn. Do it, Sparky."

The Canadian swallowed the other tab, and expected something astounding.

Nothing happened.

Yesterday afternoon had been spent drifting lazily down the Santiago. By high noon the merciless sun beat down harshly on the glaring river, and it turned suffocating as the day wore on. Haze shimmered between the dripping trees like a mirage, while musky scents frond the jungle seduced Selena's senses. A
woof
of displea
sure drew her gaze to the riverbank, and she caught anf evil eye going blank as a long snout and armored body sank in the warm tributary. "
Jacare
," said Sparky. "
Cocodrilo
. They make nice handbags."

A covey of vampire bats hung asleep upside down! in a hollow tree, bellies bloated with blood thosdr drained could ill afford.

A crack of twigs, then guttural voices murmured hi the bush. Scanning and squinting, Selena discerned four dark faces peering from the gloom, the ivory teeth that spiked t
heir mouths sharpened to points.
Then they were gone, these furtive men, leaving
be
hind the soft rustle of released branches.

A fetid stench from the bank assailed the hippie's nose. Like pieces breaking off a whole, black-and- white vultures abandoned something bloody in the shore mud to flap up and line the lower bran
ches of
the sun-drenched canopy.

"
Urubu
," said Sparky, nosing the dugout toward the shallows. "Nature's gravediggers. They bury jungle dead in their gizzards."

As the dugout neared the bank, the birds glared in glum silence. The flank of their meal was a sticky clot where hide was torn from the flesh. The bullock's horns had been smashed by savage blows from wooden clubs, and broken spears jutted from the exposed rib bones. Flocks of blue, white, and yellow butterflies hovered over the gore, wings fluttering in ecstasy as tiny mouths tasted blood.

Selena said, "I thought butterflies lived on flower dew."

"Even the most beautiful may hunger with abhorrent desire."

"Those Indians looked savage."

"They're Jivaro. They were headhunters not so long ago."

"I hope they're civilized now!"

"They are," said Sparky. "Or so I'm told."

Once the boat passed on, the vultures swooped down to pick the carcass clean.

Today, Selena had awakened to dawn in the Ecuador jungle. She rolled over onto her back to gaze up at the sky. Huge trees with trunks forty feet in diameter grew to heights two hundred feet above her eyes, lower limbs a palette of every hue of green, the canopy white where sun had bleached life from the leaves. Parasitic growth hung tangled from the armpits of the trees: red orchids clinging to sweet gum hosts, creepers twisting serpentlike from branch to branch, and poisonous fruits luring the unwary. So alien was it down here among these ferns wet from ground mist that she felt as if she lay at the bottom of the sea.

Sparky was not in the campsite.

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Selena rose and wound her way to the riverbank, where she found Sparky in the dugout yards from shore.

"You're up early. Whatcha doing?"

"Taking the last of my water samples. I'll only be a minute." Sparky sealed a jar.

"Take your time," Selena said. "I've nowhere to be but here."

Late yesterday afternoon, they'd detoured from the main channel of the Santiago River into a side stream. A few miles up, this waterway opened into a lagoon, where they pitched camp for the night on its shore. As Selena watched Sparky collect samples, she sat on the bank and basked hi the glory of a new day. Gone was the forest's oppression of constriction and decay. Gone was the murk of the Santiago from loam carried downstream to dump in the Amazon. This was the Garden of Eden, and everything seemed peaceful, primal, and serene. The mud flats were shadowed purple by overhanging trees that paddled their roots in the water. Low in the sky to the east, the sun and moon shone side by side like Gemini twins, as light from their faces forged the lagoon into precious metal. On the far side it was silver tinged with mauve. At her feet it was pure gold.

Foam creaming around its prow slightly raised from weight at the helm, the dugout nudged the bank with its blunt snout.

"Jesus!" marveled Selena, rumpling her black hair. "This spot's a blow-away."

"Like it, eh?" Sparky said, stepping onshore. "Not a soul for miles except a headhunter or two."

"Want some help?"

"Sure. Carry these jars to the shade and I'll moor the boat."

As Selena took the samples she asked, "How long ya been in the Peace Corps?"

"Six months," said Sparky. "I work with the Corps, but I'm not a member."

"How come?"

"You gotta be American to volunteer. I was born in Quebec."

"So how'd you end up in this neck of the woods?"

"Long story," Sparky said, coming up the bank. "My mom died in New Orleans when I was young. As my dad was already dead, my grandma took me in. She loved the sun, so for a while we lived in Tahiti, then Martinique, and finally French Guiana. She passed away some months ago, and I kicked around the north coast, pondering where to go. Then I met two guys in Venezuela, on the beach, whom the Corps was reposting to Ecuador. I had money from my grandma's estate, so I tagged along, paying my own way. When we got to Quito, one guy caught dysentery, and the other didn't want to brave the jungle alone. He had the Corps take me on as 'local labor,' and
voila
, I'm here. Mostly I take river excursions by myself. Which is fine since I like my own company."

"I like your company, too," Selena said, and again rumpled her hair.

Sparky grinned. "You hold the samples while I tape and label the jars."

The hippie held each container as the Canadian cut adhesive tape from a roll with a knife withdrawn from a belt sheath. A yellow and blue macaw shrieking from the treetops caused Selena to squint up and see a flight of green parrots taking off. The four jars labeled, Sparky sheathed the knife.

"You finished work?" Selena asked, fishing a glass vial from the breast pocket of her shirt.

"Yep," Sparky said.

"So we got time to relax?"

"Sure. Nowhere to go."

"Oh, but there is, babe. Let's take a trip."

"Where'd you have in mind?"

"The mind," Selena echoed, tapping the contents of the vial into her palm.

"What's that?"

"
Heaven
, babe. Wanta do some acid?"

"I don't feel so good "

"It'll p a s s."

"No, really. I don't feel well a t a
l
l."

"Hey, don't freak out on me, babe. Acid always starts in the gut."

"It's not my gut. It's my h
e
a
d."

"Shush. Listen to the sounds."

Forty minutes had flown since they had dropped the acid, and now it seemed to Sparky as if the slow-moving river were an eerie sound conductor, an evil whispering gallery that gathered the noises of an entire continent and delivered them in distorted form to this lagoon. It seemed as if the Amazon jungle had gone electric, every rustle adding to a shrillness that rose eventually into a nerve-shredding, brain-fraying crescendo of metallic abuse. Paradise had transmogrified into something weird . . . something dank and plagued like a diseased, festering wound.

God! What's happening to me?

Barbs of acid-addled thought hooked into the flesh of the Canadian's brain, and each tug on a fishing line yanked latent psychosis up another notch . . .

Nothing to fear but fear itself. . . Fear itself afraid of fear . . .

Nothing but fear. . . FEAR . . . FEAR . . .

I gotta get outa here!

Stumbling in the effort, Sparky stood up. Whatever was expected, it was far from this. Distortion . . . nausea . . . tremors . . .
My body is out of control!
Sparky's heart had lost its rhythm to take on a crooked beat. Sparky's lungs were choking, unable to squeeze enough oxygen out of this putrid decay. Throat dry, very dry, and tasting the color gray. Sounds formed geometric patterns before Sparky's eyes, a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope that fused with the background until the boundaries of life, body, and self were fluid and dissolving. Sparky was becoming a part of this vast, foul-smelling, oozy stretch of bog undulating like an unsqueezed sponge.

My brain is out of control!

At first it was gradual, like the rot that follows death. Selena's skin seemed to fluctuate between pallor and flush. Pupils dilated, her eyes began to bulge like a fish. Increasingly, her body took on a surreal pulse, throbbing arteries and veins worming through her flesh, flesh which itself was changing as half turned metallic blue, the muscles beneath the jumping skin telegraphing erotic cues. Selena's face contorted into a frightening caricature, a perversion of female incarnate with every orifice dripping sex, as something tore within Sparky's mind for a total letting go, with Selena uncoiling from the ground like a waking cat, the real world as elusive as the fragments of a dream, her arms stretched skyward to worship the sun, psychosis going latent to florid as the hippie unbuttoned her shirt, Sparky plummeting into the deep valley between her breasts, a tiny white tick, a
garapate du chao
, adhered to one milky mound, turning pink as the woman's blood filled its transparent belly, vision on vision wavering in the flicker of afterimage, this slow strip seemingly planned a century in advance, paranoia creeping up from the dungeon of Sparky's id as Selena shed her shirt, danger hiding everywhere, inside and out, Selena's breasts bursting forth in challenging nakedness, exposing every pocket of fat, every duct and highlighted blemish, as one breast bloated larger, then shrank smaller, before again ballooning larger than its mate. Both nipples were dry and cracked like a sunbaked riverbed.

"It's positively primal! This p
l
a
c
e is fucking alive!"

Black mane tossing in wild abandon, Selena pranced down the mudbank toward the lagoon. Hers wasn't a fluid motion, for after each step she seemed to disintegrate, her flesh reconstructing in time to disintegrate again, first one foot, then the other, buried ankle-deep under ooze, mud
suuuck suuuck suuucking
each retracting foot as Selena threw back her head and growled, "Eat me, you horny b
i
t
c
h. That's it, Mother Nature. S
u
c
k your daughter dry."

Eat me ...

Eat me, Sparky . . .

Yes, child. I'm baaack . . .

Sparky froze.

Eat me, Sparky. Take your Mama awaaay . . .

"But . . . but . . . you're dead. You're buried in New Orleans."

Selena turned, frowning, and beckoned up the bank. "Who you talking to, babe? Come on. Let's go!" Reaching for the waist button, she fumbled, loosened her shorts, paused for dramatic effect, and pushed them down. Naked as Genesis, Eve was back in Eden.