I ran with all of my might deeper into the jungle toward the hole. I could hear Gottfried shouting with a new robustness my ears had never caught from his voice before. It sounded deeper than the normal shrill and hateful tone that I was used to hearing from him. It had morphed into something evil sounding that was actually very scary.

“I’m gonna hang you on my wall, Jim!”

As I ran through the jungle, I tried with all of my will to cry. I tried to express the deep sorrow I felt for my dear companion, but nothing came. “Need to go, need to get out, I want to go home.” I repeated this mantra through my head thousands of times as I ran along toward “the hole.” The mantra formed into “The hole, the hole, hole, hole, hole.”

I was nearing the hole rapidly. I could see my tepee and was fast approaching camp. I stood at the hole, thinking for a minute, thinking of what I might find on the other side. What the world might have become since I left it, when I heard the voice of God cry “There he is!” I decided the old world couldn’t possibly be worse than the real world and jumped in the hole head first.

It took a few minutes for my eye to adjust to the dim lighting of the dark bunker. I was confused enough as to where I was to temporarily forget about Billy and a destroyed utopia. I looked down and saw the hole I came out of, it appeared to bore into a stone floor and not clay like I had left it. I was in an oval-shaped stone fallout shelter that was about a half an acre in diameter. There was enough food for thirty people to eat well for ten years, water for thirty for five years, and many breathless and wheezing lifetimes worth of cigarettes. The bunker also housed a liver demolishing supply of wines and spirits. There was a desk in one corner and multiple army-style bunk beds near another. Directly in the center of the warehouse were the tortured, burnt, fingerless, decrepit bodies of Shooshi and Takumat. Both of my beloved brothers had faced the end with enlightened expressions that out shined the stars and with eyeless, toothless grins aimed toward the heavens. I ran and fell at their icy dead feet, in the same weak fashion I displayed when first I met those amazing beings. This time, no one lifted me from my misery to bring light to my misfortune. They just sat there dead, and what was worse was that my caretakers’ recently deceased, lifeless bodies would return to me none of the emotion that poured out from my rumpled reddened face unto their still and lifeless laps. Poor Billy came rushing to my mind to add to the grief and horror of witnessing my dead companions as the ground adjusted itself and rumbled. I rose to my feet when I heard an explosion in the distance. I ran to the door of the shelter and peered through a thick piece of Plexiglas that separated me from the destroyed (nuked it seems) ruins of the world I left behind. Looking out the window, I noticed about five feet from the door to the fallout shelter, there was a dead body in manacles, face down in the clay. I pressed my back against the cold shaking wall and slid down it sobbing until another blast shook me to the floor, unleashing another steady salty stream from my eye. I lay on the floor trapped in the agonizing thought of what had surely become of Sophia, my love from the grocery store.

Success! Tears finally found me again. I could cry. It was all I ever wanted, not only that, I had more to cry about than I could immediately form a list in my mind about (there would be plenty of time for designing that list later). I cried about my dead family, I cried for the dead animals I should have protected, I cried for Billy, I cried for forgiveness for failing Shooshi and Takumat who died trying to protect me, I cried for the two worlds that I let die, I cried for all of mankind including myself, but most of all I cried for myself. 

 All of the answers to everything dawned on me at that very moment in my misery. I struggled to my knees and shook my only fist at my enemy.

“I know you are up there, God! Laughing at me! You did all of this! You sadistic monster you! You dictatorial villain! I hope you enjoyed this! I hope this is what you wanted. Of the seven days it took for you to create this pathetic sideshow, what in your name is wrong with you? Why would you do such awful things? I pray to you God, deny me at the gates, if I for some unlikely reason appear in your kingdom, for I have no desire to meet you, you dick-less bastard!”

 I spit at the ceiling, but the projectile landed hard on my face, splattering on my forehead. 

I screamed.

I’ve spent who cares how much time learning how to write with my left arm. I’ve pushed the desk from the corner snug next to the hole, along with a bunk I hardly sleep in that sits by it and I can still hear murmurs of paradise on the other side with the occasional inflection of the screams and squeals of poor hopeless animals. The only relief from the smell of my friends decomposing body and the overflowing privy I am buried alive with is a cool breeze from the hole that tickle the hairs on my leg as I write.

I have been working on this book for what seems like more than a lifetime. I saw my face for the first time in an eternity today after I found a broken piece of glass in my stumbling search for more booze (the supply is now all but gone, when it’s gone, I am gone, it is decided). My beard is white and my moustache is stained brown from smoking. My once thick hair is stringy and balding. My formerly handsome face has become leather and cratered. My nose that at one time was thin and sharp has doubled in size and is a bright red hub for spidery purple veins to spread in every direction. My liver throbs painfully in my bulging gut. My fingers, that require the company of either a pen or a lit cigarette, are tar stained and shake almost too much for me to write any more of this nonsense. Whatever skin on my body is not red or purple is yellow or green, or both or all four. There has always been enough clothing here for me to never have to do wash and to always wear clean clothes, but I’ve never changed clothes yet. I cough and choke for air every day, and I hardly noticed recently that within the black and brown mucus that I no longer examine for impurities are shiny white pearls of lung and bloody black clots of blood that fly involuntarily from my sandy throat anytime I question if I may still have anything to say, the answer is always “no.” I tried to sing today, but my splintered voice split into three different smoky notes; each within its own respective octave. It is time to die. The mirror I found today has finally given me the courage to end it all and even makes it sound fun at the moment.

I hope this has been at least an entertaining useless apology, or at least an informative examination on human stupidity and vanity: the two main attributes that ended all of the joys and sorrows of the old world. I am sorry, though God is not. You are probably dead if you are reading this, but again, I am sorry. On the bright side, I can still hear bombs being dropped every day, that’s a good sign.

I can try to rationalize in my mind that I wrote this for them, for anyone who may find my crypt of dead and dying things, but mostly and more rightly, I wrote this entirely for me. I am self-admittedly vain and love myself too much; though I am far uglier now than any ugliness I have ever tried to escape, I will not accept the dead me. “I will find the courage to kill myself,” I thought, “after I finish my master piece.” (I was vain then too). Now that my work is at an end, I am less likely to kill myself than I had naively previously assumed. Even my hideous reflection did not end my love for myself, though it did damage it severely. There was a time when death seemed a fitting and epic ending to the climax that was me falling further than any man had ever fell before when I was certain that I would wake again. Death is for real this time. . . Death is finally for real. This will really, really, really, really mean the end.

Killing myself just seems out of the question at this moment, though suicide was a simple thought and pleasant to swallow when I was a God (and was only a cosmetic addition to life and fun to toy with the idea of). Trying to conquer the gravity of the idea now as a pathetic mortal seems impossible.

Why did I leave paradise? I was a glorious immortal! How great I was! I lament the beauty I unwisely fled from; perfection was my reality. My God! How happy I was. . . there was never a dull moment in those times, things were perfect in those most glorious of glory days! The food was better, the air was pure, the animals loved me, and how I loved them! I realize all of this now as I sit and swallow the final gulp from my last bottle of brandy. What did I leave behind? How could I? I was a better man in the real world, and my friends the Illuminati weren’t at all that bad, actually I am sure now they were a force of what is genuinely good, I can see that now, even though I might have tried to smear their pure motives in my bias mind. I was confused. Yes, I can see that as clearly as I can see that Gottfried had every right to kill Billy. War is a good thing, and things really do need to be conquered. But poor Billy! He deserved it, that fool! But oh, how foolish I’ve been! I know it sounds cliché, but things are actually much better on the other side.

In today’s prayer, I begged of God to give me another chance. I told him that I am not done yet and that I know he can hear me. I’m sure he just laughed; my misery probably even turns him on.

My work is done My reign of terror is at an end. I am mankind. I am humanity (I am certainly ugly enough to fit the profile). I have failed; man has failed. I think I am ready to die. It’s time for me to write the final lines and close this book forever. I must open the door that I’ve stared at in fear all of these years and walk into a fate that is far better than what I deserve or slice my throat. I haven’t decided yet. The point is, unlike God, I am sorry. –

 Those would have been my last lousy lines for this book, and I’m glad that they aren’t; from a writer’s perspective (which I like to think of myself as now, seeing that I am the only writer in existence), those lines are absolute garbage and un-poetic babbles, and I probably couldn’t die knowing I ended the only book in existence with such trash. After toying with the last line for another ten minutes or so, I give up and settle for less; and though the muscles in my legs, like the rest of the weedy muscles that hold together the dusty bones in my body suffer from atrophy, I have found the strength to come to a shaking and bent stance, and I might have actually walked out the door, but the plan has changed now. There is a hand tugging at my pant leg.

It had been what felt like over many years that I had been living in paradise and I had not been sick at all. My health was never changing. I never felt energetic or fatigued; pain and pleasure were both distant memories for me. I had an idea of perfection feeling like a great orgasm that never left or weakened in intensity and was disappointed to feel nothing. I could hardly even get a hard-on most of the time. I at least thought that my body would have become mighty and muscular, but my muscles were just a little stronger than they had been in the old world, nowhere near as sturdy as I had hoped. I began to become bored. It took me a year to admit my boredom in my own mind.

“What is my purpose in this new world? What is the purpose of this world at all?” I thought as I was strolling through the jungle and entranced in deep brooding thought. It was then that suddenly a baby bird that had prematurely attempted to leave the security of its mother's nest fell in front of my feet. “That’s it!” I had an epiphany. “I should live my life,” I thought, “for the animals, for nature. I guess that I am God, and it is my duty to make this world even better, to see what man could have done if he were completely selfless.” I lifted the otherwise doomed mortal baby bird from the jungle floor and returned it to its home for a second chance at life.  

Billy and I took off into the wilderness to go see what animals we could help. The first animal in distress we came across was a red and black zebra that we found during our flight through the fluorescent, cinnamon-magenta grasslands. The poor beast was suffering from a broken leg after a tumultuous fall off a hill it was mindlessly grazing on.

 I jumped off Billy’s big blue back to the rescue. I reached into my social services sack and retrieved some rope I had gathered and a few bits of wood to make a splint for the injured quadruped. The thing did not seem to care that it had been saved from its luckless fate or to even notice the pain it must have suffered. The ungrateful animal continued to graze without a thought in the world of its new fortune. After being a little disheartened by the experience, I decided to go home and thought “Maybe I’ll just focus on all of the animals that live near home, just the animals by the hole.

On our way back from the grasslands, I came across a community of coal-black beavers who had been struggling to complete a dam that they had been building seemingly out of their means and capabilities. It wasn’t hard to see that the project was only moments away from failing. Once again, I left Billy in his tracks and came charging to the rescue of my little furry friends.

It was a permanent day that time of year. The only change in the sky was in its color; it was dark green that day and was hard to the tell time, though I believe that I worked for two days straight on the dam, chopping down trees, hacking, sawing, and lugging huge heavy logs around. The more I did to contribute to completing the dam, the less the beavers helped. On top of my methods of building being too sophisticated for a beaver, it was also unnecessary that they lend a hand simply because it was being taken care of for them nor did I want them to help; my labor was my gift to them.

As I packed up to leave after completing the best dam the new world had ever seen, I looked for some appreciation from the beavers and once again found no gratitude. Immediately after I finished blocking the great river, the beavers had seemed to forget that I was even there and carried on with their busy beaver ways without a pause.

When I was new to paradise, I made it a point to keep the hole at least out of sight from my tepee and deliberately built the thing a few hundred feet away and facing toward the east. The day I returned from building the dam, I turned it to the west. (My friends Shooshi and Takumat had taught me how to build my very own tepee in preparation for the real world. If I had known what the hell they were talking about, I would have asked about the jungle juice.)

One day I yelled into the hole as I was sure that I had heard voices, shouting my name. My only answer was the echo of a voice that had become unfamiliar to me.

I never wanted to see another animal again in my life. All of my good intentions to help the animal kingdom had gone unnoticed and unrewarded. The only difference my actions had made in the animal's behavior was a kingdom-wide dependency on me to perform every service I could provide for them. I gave purely cosmetic services such as grooming, gathering massive amounts of food, and allowing critters to use me as transportation as a man does a horse. I maintained the bridges and dams and sick animals that I had helped to build, to secure, or to nurture.

Everywhere I turned, there were sheep bleating for a brushing, dogs barking for a game of fetch, bears awaiting massages. When I would choose to ignore the animals, they would protest the lack of social services by surrounding me crying for more. I became a recluse and eventually retired my social services sack and contemplated throwing it into the hole, instead, I threw it in the thorn-less bushes.

The next day, Billy and I left the jungle for the blue mountains of the north. Billy was never far from my side and would respond to a perfected whistle (like everything I did, I was perfection). He would come running from whatever part of the jungle he was at to come to bear me to whatever destination I saw fit.

I reflected on my friendship with Billy as he bore me to my destination. I had noticed throughout my travels that of all of the creatures I had met in paradise that Billy was the only tyrannosaurus and was the most humanlike animal in the whole utopia. He was a one of a kind. He seemed to feel more than the other animals did, sometimes more than I felt. I could call him a true friend.

Much to Billy’s disliking and worry, I was to spend what felt like a year, though was most likely much longer looking back on it, climbing the largest mountain I had found during my adventures.

Billy and I had finally reached the base of the great mountain. Before I set off to climb the vast blue wonder, I summoned Billy to lower his head so that I could give him a kiss good-bye, for I did not intend to return from this last voyage. I told Billy that I planned on killing myself and thanked him for being such a good companion. He wagged his tail in excitement and gave me a big dinosaur kiss that again ended with a face plant in the mud. I was fairly certain that I could not die, but I thought I’d give it my best shot. I could tell by Billy’s excited reaction that he didn’t understand my meaning; he simply continued to wag his big blue and yellow spotted tail lovingly and seemed to smile with unconstrained affection.

All the way up the mountain, I could see a tiny blue blob at the base of where it stood, the little blue blip never moved during my entire climb.

At first there was a lot of hiking. Though it was a steep trek, the path I spent the first few months on was never entirely vertical. I never lost stamina or became sore; there was food everywhere, though I still needed no sustenance to live (you couldn’t find a square mile in paradise that wasn’t without food whatever the elevation). Something good that came from the climb was a song I wrote that reinvigorated my hopes to continue to be a songwriter. The song popped into my head from nowhere; it became an obsession to make every word perfect. I must have rewritten it as I hiked over a thousand times. Looking back, the lyrics were mediocre, and angst driven.

Toward the last month of the climb, it had finally become a climb. The walls were jagged and completely vertical. It was still warm, however; or if it was cold, I was unable to feel it. My untiring, unchanging muscles weren’t phased by the rock wall; it was just a matter of finding a place to lie down on occasion that was difficult. I didn’t feel a whole lot of anything physically. If I needed to rest, it was only ever mentally. Sleep was almost impossible, which only came to me once a year or so only after exhausting myself for days on end.

Finally, I reached the highest peak of the tallest mountain in the world. I looked out over creation and lamented over such beauty. I searched for any signs of ugliness in all of the blue-green, red, and gold beauty; but there was nothing but the misery of absolute delight to behold. The whole of everything I could see was positively perfect in every way. I wondered if the real world was round. 

It was time to relive the excitement of the crash that landed me in the jungle. I wanted to feel fear—the fear of losing things, the fear that makes you think you are real, the fear that makes one feel truly alive. I was starved for my heart to race. The last excitement I knew was the terror that sweet old Billy had inspired in me when I thought he was going to make me his dinner. I think that was the last time I laughed as well. I was terribly afraid of heights in the old world and thought maybe falling off a mountain would do the trick. I looked down and could not even see the base of the mountain past the clouds. I lost track of Billy ages before.

I jumped, and I fell for two days. The first ten minutes of the fall were invigorating, though my heart remained pumping at the same, unaltered tempo. I tried to simulate a fear for my life and couldn’t wait to see if I would be spared the perfection and invulnerability, I was positive I had been cursed with. The wind soared through my long shaggy hair and tickled my beard. I was mesmerized by the flat and spinning planet that I was racing to be reintroduced to.

Boredom set in after twenty minutes or so. “How long can I possibly keep falling.” I thought and also “I hope I die” as a sort of half a wish in my mind. 

My yearly sleep found me after a day’s fall.

I awoke to realize that I had not died and to Billy’s big purple tongue drenching me in messy mucus. I had landed safely on the ground, I was immortal, I was perfect, I was miserable. I could not even cry for that fact that I could not cry.

I returned from my fall and immediately moved my tepee directly next to the hole and made a bed right by it. 

“Who are you?” I shouted into the hole. “Where are you? Is that you, God?”

I waited eagerly.

“Yes,” said a deep ominous sounding voice

 “This is God, won’t you come to me my son? The voice seemed to echo forever.

It was true, I was unhappy, but I was also very cautious about this voice. I felt a warning looming within my guts, and I distrusted the voice inside my heart of hearts. Still, I was very curious. Curiosity for an old imperfect world I had left behind became my only happiness in paradise, that’s funny. I thought of Shooshi and Takumat. What would their advice be?

“My son...Come to me.”

While lying in a ditch with spiders crawling all over me that covered almost every inch of my body, I decided to start building a stage for the animals to enjoy the poetry I had come up and had also begun working on the concept for a one-man play. Building the stage took no time at all for me to complete. Time had a different meaning to me altogether.

I had become quite a carpenter living in the woods and helping shelter the animals; as a result, the stage was coming along very nicely. The building of a theatre and the labor involved to do so helped to steer my mind away from my discontent with paradise and away from the hole.

The day had finally arrived that I decided to gather all of the animals together in front of the stage so that they might take heed to my performance and so that I could culture them. The stage was still under development, and there were still various piles of lumber scattered across the stage. I could not wait to finish building it, and I badly wanted to try my hardest to present the art that I had made in paradise to all of my creatures. Billy helped to round all the animals on the continent up. Billy was a good shepherd, and all the animals listened to his commands.

Once I was satisfied with the untold number of animals that had gathered, I began to read, for I could not seem to muster the enthusiasm to sing.

Man’s made of love

With his eye on the prize

Man won’t give up

And man has God on his side

Man’s all grown up

And he’s doing it right

For man all he wants

Is peace on earth and of mind

Just then, a feral but friendly yellow dog in the audience keeled over and produced a litter of a dozen or so varicolored young pups. The animals in the proximity were deeply distracted over the sudden birth, some wandered to the scene and licked the new babes, and some gave a sniff. It was incredibly frustrating. Even when it seemed that I had caught the animal’s attention, they were actually deeply unmoved and easily distracted; no animal cheered, not even Billy, and no animal booed me. They were simply unaffected. I continued.

Man’s on his way

Man has been saved

Man’s never bored

And laughs when he is afraid

I was about to start the chorus and might have even sung it when a tiny pink and orange pot-belly pig bumped into my shin. It had apparently idiotically wandered onto the stage all by itself during my song. There was a time when I would have found the thing to be endearing, I thought as I stared back at its doting eyes. The pig’s little pink and black spotted tongue extended from its tiny mouth. The pig started to lick my leg. I turned the idiot around and kicked the thing in the ass and yelled “Git!” “Shoo!” The pig wandered back to the crowd, falling in once again with the other animals, only facing the opposite way of the performance, like so many of them. I rolled my eyes, sighed, and continued just barely finding the will to do so.

We’re so free

Victory

Everybody’s happy now

We made it!

A fly had begun to buzz noisily around my head; I ignored it and continued to the next verse.

Man’s not ashamed

Man’s proud and brave

And the animals know

It’s man who takes care of this place

Man’s goanna change

For better not worse

The future is his

Whatever he chooses will work

Man’s full of skills

And compassion is one

Man would feel guilt

If ever man could do wrong

One fly had turned into several, all seemingly dedicated to derailing the rest of my song and sabotaging my final performance. I grew to be angry and then livid by the ignorance of the flies. “They know exactly what they are doing and how important this is,” I thought. I convinced myself it was malice not stupidity that motivated them with all of my might, and with sheer livid anger in my voice, I read on.

We’re so free

Victory

Everybody’s happy now

We made it!

As the last words of my unimportant poem passed through my lips, a fly landed on them and began to rub his hands, then crapped. Afterward, the culprit continued to buzz around my face obnoxiously with its accomplices.

“That’s it!” I screamed. 

I was to the brim. I rationalized in my raging mind that one of the insurgents should pay for what their foolishness had ruined. I raised the clay tablet above my head and in a flash of malevolence struck the fly that had made my mouth a toilet and smote it for its insolence.

“You stupid goddamned animals, don’t you know genius when you hear it?” I cried.

I began chucking pieces of the unfinished stage aimlessly at the careless animals.

“I am your God! This is my world! You all belong to ME! You are all a bunch of wasteful idiots; I hate all of you and I hope you all die!” The only animals that seemed to be affected by my tantrum were the ones that got hit with bits of the wood that I was throwing and Billy, who let out a whimper when I accidentally struck him at the base of his mighty shin. Billy ran into the woods.

With blood boiling in my veins, I hobbled home ready to do the unthinkable. I approached the hole. There was a meaty hand with silver hair on the knuckles groping for a mate that stemmed from the dark void. Without another thought, I grabbed the hand and pulled.

The silver hand was attached to a small, rat-faced, sinister looking man, who brought with him another man, and another, and another, until there were at least thirty of them surrounding the hole, and no thanks to God, there were some women, very attractive women too.

At first, I was overwhelmed with excitement to see humans again but felt duped when God appeared to be absent in the crowd. I extended an arm to the person that the silver hand belonged to who also appeared to be the leader. The man was stout and short, with gray hair and an inexcusably evil look in his eye. Gottfried had a silver moustache and a snarling grin and looked like he would have been much fatter, older, and uglier in the place where he came from than he appeared to be in paradise. Everyone was immortal and in their mid-twenties in the paradise.

I smiled and said slowly, “My name is Jim.”

“God does not shake hands, bow to me swine!” was the first thing the half man’s ringing-bell voice said to me.

“I am Gottfried, this is my army, and this is our world now.” He shrieked in his pitchy squeak of a voice.

“There is plenty in this world for all of us my brothers and sisters.” I said, as I pulled a corned-beef-and-cabbage turnip from the warm breathing earth. The portion of man stomped up to me, grabbed the plant from my hand, and beat me on the head with it. The blow didn’t hurt at all, but I said “ouch!” anyway.

“Of courses there is.” Gottfried snarled. “There is plenty that needs to be conquered in this world too.”

I scratched my head. I couldn’t understand why this man would want to conquer paradise.

“Why does everything need to be conquered all of the time? Why can’t we all just share?” I pleaded.

The platoon erupted in laughter at Gottfried’s command. He raised his arms and the crowd became silent.

“What is your name, cur?” he asked.

“It’s Jim. I told you that.” 

“Tell me, Jim, if conquering the last world paid off and allowed me to live as a God in this new world, then why would I stop conquering all of the sudden? It is my duty to the bloodline to conquer this world, it is our duty!” the soldiers once again erupted. This time they were grunting and screaming their approval of what Gottfried had just said.

“My family and the families of the people you see around you ran the old world, and will do a fine job at running this one. We decided who the money went to and from where it came. It was our bloodline that chose which puppet to place on which throne and when. We were the keepers of the ancient crafts and secrets. Nothing happened by accident or without our approval. We were waiting for the signal that was made visible at the very second that the ancient Indian prophecies we protected foretold that it would. He quoted, “A great light from the darkness of the jungle that stretches to the heavens.” In unison with the other thirty-three Illuminati. I could hear the voice of God in the group. “If we had not conquered all, then we would have never had the knowledge to make it to our deserved paradise. This is the moment the bloodline has been working toward since the dark ages; it is time we are rewarded for our consistency and steadfastness. Changing our ways now, now that we claim our prize, is unthinkable. As I told you Jim, help us or get out of the way.” 

I answered lamely “You didn’t tell me that, and I will fight you.” 

They ignored me and got straight to their usurpation. I didn’t try to fight like I said I would. I could not stand for the conquering of paradise, but there was nothing one immortal could do against thirty souls that were equally cursed. The only option was to get out of the way and to try and sabotage them in secret.

For the first time since I had arrived in the real world, I felt I had a purpose and entertained again. Running around committing social services had finally become fulfilling, and the war that the Illuminati had brought to the new world was better than television. Time seemed to no longer drag as it did the more I scouted the world for the aftermath of the Illuminati's ruthless killing, which was always easy to find, and the more I slept with their women.

My enemy had rather quickly constructed a wooden, castle-like compound that they all lived in. I could tell by the angles of the walls of the fort and the sheer craftsmanship of it all that the Illuminati were all stone masons in the old world. They had even begun to construct a castle made of the white stone they had quarried from a smooth, dry rock wall that would feed water to the sea during the monsoon seasons. They had begun quarrying the stone immediately after their arrival in the real world. The castle was coming along very nicely; Gottfried was even occupying the one room they had completed already. It went without saying that I was banished from any of their places of living.

One day I was captured and I was held captive in a sophisticated dungeon that the Illuminati had discovered when it was just a shallow, blue cave that boor into a coastal cliff and peered out into the horizon from the precipice from a few hundred-thousand feet up and dangled high above the foamy sea. The view was far too breathtaking to be a dungeon, and the cave was very well lit. The place was already full of animals that were undergoing the controllers’ enhanced interrogation methods. Some were being messily dissected with sharpened stone knives, and others were being brutalized with rocks and logs. They all ended up the same kind of dead however.

I found myself tied to a chair and was fortunate enough to be tortured by Gottfried himself.

“I am going to break you Jim, but first I want to be your best friend. . .” Gottfried attempted to dig a hot knife into my gut with no affect. The rag in my mouth rendered me unable to laugh at his attempt to hurt me. His tone of voice became scornful and ever shriller.

“Are you hungry, Jim? I like take-out personally; I’ll have my men order us some, GUARDS!”

Two soldiers appeared saluting.

“Yes, sir!” the men answered instinctively.

“Bring Jim and myself some take-out, Chinese! And hurry!”

The men looked confused and scared.

“Sir?” one of the men asked.

“Just do it you idiots!  GET TO WORK!”

The men scurried away.

Gottfried began to sharpen his knife on a stone. 

“Do you like tofu, Jim?”

I made no sound or gesture to reply. Gottfried did not hesitate to jump onto my bound body with his knife in his hand; sitting on my lap, he held the blade to my throat. He brought his cheeky, mustachioed, rat face within centimeters of my cringing glower and then chuckled gaily.

“Good, I’m glad that you like tofu, Jim. We can be friends. Would you like me to flavor your tofu like you, Jim? Because I can, wouldn’t you like that, Jim? The food will be here soon, Jim, very soon. . . GUARDS!”

The room was empty.

Though I knew that there was a wall between us that neither time nor myself or he could destroy—was it something in this man’s psyche that would also never allow us to understand one another or mine? I’m sure that it was a little bit of both—I decided to pick his brain to see what made such evil and how it functioned. I thought to myself, “Obviously, this man is smart to have controlled so much of a world I could not let pass by, but what is it that makes him evil?” At the very same time I questioned myself, I thought, “What is it that makes me good? I feel that I am nicer or at least more even tempered than this person, but if I am good (I am still unsure whether I am or not, I think not) and still possess the same humanity that made this person a tyrant, then what is good?”

It was as if Gottfried was reading my thoughts. The topic of good and evil seemed to be mutually a prominent issue on both of our minds.

“Why the frown, Jim?” he asked sincerely.

“Should I turn your head upside down?”

While still sitting on my lap, Gottfried tugged at my head that did not move an inch. He waited one long minute that he spent staring at the stone roof and finally chuckled.

“I know why you are so unhappy hear in paradise, Jim. It is all really very, VERY (stab to the groin) SIMPLE!”

Somehow, the man had managed to make his breath stink like sulfur in a perfect world.

“It is your ideals that make you suffer so. I will tell you how the real world works Jim, though all of us, who know, know. I am the one who knows but does not pretend that the world has the potential to be a pretty place; do you know how hard it is, Jim? It is not easy to be a monster. . . at first; soon you will grow to like it. I did.”

Gottfried climbed off me and began to pace to and fro across the smoothed stone floor as he stabbed at both hands during and after every word he spoke. He started to skip as he continued.

“Though there were certainly political systems and forms of governance that were initially based on idealism—and some of these systems may have worked on a small scale or for brief instances, like the rice patties in the east that depended on both farmers and bureaucrats working in tandem and as equals—it was capitalism that reigned supreme for one simple reason. Do you know what the reason is, Jim?”

Gottfried came up behind me and started to push my chair toward the edge of the cave. My back was to the ocean as Gottfried continued to pace.

“Well, let me tell you, Jim! (Stab, stab, stab). It is simply this: when I wake up in the morning, all cozy and warm, I think to myself, “Man am I hungry.?” It is my hunger that I feel, and it is your hunger that you feel when you wake, no one else’s. Though I am in your mind evil and you are in your mind good, we share the same unalterable appetite that makes us selfish. Listen to me when I say to you Jim that it will not be until man learns to protect his own ideals as he does his own food that any sort of world based on idealism will ever work. The world can take from you your ambitions but never your hunger, and as long as appetites dictate us, then it is profitable to dictate our appetites.”

“What a fool!” I thought. I had already shown him all of the endless amounts of food and nourishment this new world had to offer, and he still believed that man could only function in an appetitive state of mind. I wondered how he could not see just how far beyond hunger we had journeyed and how we were so lucky to be there.

Gottfried yanked the moist rag from my mouth and—very much like a therapist —asked me how the day’s events made me feel and what I thought about it all. Though I knew that by keeping silent I could steal the man’s thunder, my ideals let my thoughts be heard.

“But don’t you see Gottfried, we don’t have to protect our food anymore. The only thing we can lose in this new world are our ideals. There is plenty for everyone, DON’T YOU SEE?” Tears haunted my eyes but were never made real.

Gottfried smiled when I shouted. I could see it was the reaction he was fishing for. I felt slightly defeated.

“Yes Jim, I do see. I see it all, but they don’t. They don’t see, Jim. And until they do, comfort is a privilege and food is scarce.”

I nodded and smiled, while trying to turn my head upside down. Gottfried clapped and said while laughing,“That’s the spirit, Jim!”

At first the man focused on trying to hurt me physically in any way he could though he knew that he could not inflict any lasting damage onto me. As the guards returned to the room, Gottfried threw at me a made-of-earth gillie suit that all of the Illuminati wore as uniforms. He asked me to join his army nicely. I could see how hard this was for him. I laughed for a good minute. Gottfried untied my hands so that I could examine the suit he threw at me. I was able to get a knee slap in to add to my laughter before he hastily tied my arms back behind the chair

“Do your worst” I yelled at the tiny man, and then I said “Fuck you!”

A guard untied me from the torture chair and walked me to the edge of the cave that over looked the raucous sea and pushed.

A few days passed after I washed ashore, I decided to take to the jungle once more to recover my social services sack, and to find my dear friend Billy.

I followed the trail of dead and dying animals that lead all over creation. The road of carnage took me on a few days journey that ended me back in my jungle. The helpless animals had no instincts to prepare for predators, not even the fiercest looking and gigantic animals. Not even poor Billy.

After recovering my social services sack, I worked every hour of every day to try to help the animals find refuge from the carnage, or I would at least try to ease their pain as they died in vain.  That day, the day I arrived in the jungle, I came upon a group of ten Illuminati who were all lead by Gottfried. They had become aware of Billy apparently and, like me, were tracking him.

I overheard the conversation the men were having. As I listened, I thought I felt the blood drain from my body and began to worry for Billy’s safety.

“Where’s that damn T-rex gone to?” said the tall dark-haired man with the voice of God from the back of the squad.

“He’s close; I can feel the ground shaking,” Said a long slender man with a beard and very pale skin. 

Gottfried with his ear to the patchy jungle floor. He went on to say after standing up and rejoining the group,

 “We’ve got to make an example out of it. If we kill the fiercest creature in the jungle, it will surely strike fear into the rest of the hearts of the animal kingdom.”

Gottfried pounded on his shield and declared, “Were eating dinosaur tonight, fellas!”

The squad followed his example and banged their shields cheering for their leader.

Gottfried, after a few feeble attempts at reading and assessing the dinosaur prints, licked his pointer finger, then raising it above his head in the wind, lost his temper.

“To hell with it, *Weeee-ooo-Weeeeep*” Gottfried pursed his lips and whistled. He was a fuming impatient man and a bad hunter.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom,” the sound was nearing.

Gottfried depressed his pencil lips with the sausage pointer finger of his right hand.

“Shhh! Here it comes. Give me an arrow,” demanded Gottfried as he snapped his fingers.

 Someone handed their leader an arrow. Billy’s big head appeared from the dense wilderness. As the rest of Billy’s body could be seen, Gottfried bent to a low squat and readied an arrow against the tense waiting fibers of his bow for release.

I ran like hell through the jungle, screaming, “Nooooo, Billy, noooooo! They are bad. BAAAD, Billy, BAD. Go home, Billy, go home, you big stupid animal! Go home! PEOPLE ARE BAD, BILLY.”

Billy was running full force to meet and to lick his new friends when suddenly an arrow pierced the beast’s heart.

“NOOO, BILLY! PLEASE, GOD, NO. YOU MONSTERS! YOU MONSTERS! GOD!” 

I felt that I would die if I could not cry and mourn my beloved companion. The tears will come, I thought.

When I finally made it to Billy, I found him lying on his side, with his boulder eyes staring at mine. Billy’s dry purple tongue hung out the side of his mouth, as was his fashion. Billy gasped for air. I stroked the animal’s dumb, sweet head. Poor Billy groaned in agony. I whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry Billy. I’m so sorry Billy.” His breaths became quick, sharp, and short. Billy gave one last attempt to give me a dinosaur kiss. No tears came when Billy’s parched, pebbly tongue limply scraped across my face for one last time. With a loud moan, Billy was gone.

The tragic scene was pure bliss for Gottfried and quenched all of his thirst for blood and misery. The man began to dance and skip around the shady jungle floor. Gottfried had the most disturbing laugh I had ever heard in my life. It seemed that he was coming and making a mess within his gillie suit.

“Aaa-aaa-aaaa-hah-aaaaa-haaaa-aaaaaaa-aaa-a-a-a-aaa-haa.”

Gottfried drifted arrogantly to Billy’s big blue corpse and kicked it, laughing perversely.

“Take the son a bitch’s head off. I want this half of you to bring it back to the fort and I want this half of you to capture Jim. My mantle place needs trophies. Didn’t you idiots hear me? AFTER HIM!”

Tears came rushing back and choked me at that moment. I felt a heavy lump in my throat that could have been my heart trying to leap out of my mouth. I swallowed hard and forced the advancing ball to retreat. I nodded my head as I wept to show Shooshi that I had understood his meaning, again my friends embraced me.

I loved my new companions. I loved our jungle. I felt baptized in holy water and washed clean of the scornful mind that had been nothing but a curse and a weight against my soul. I was reborn.

Shooshi and Takumat were father and son. Takumat was a tall brown-skinned man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He wore a decorative auburn loincloth, as did I, and a necklace of what looked like assorted animal teeth. His hair was black and straight like his father’s. Takumat’s carved and painted face paid homage to his father’s stern and postured but warm and caring features that brilliantly spoke silent compassion and patience toward man, plant, animal, and earth while fearlessly abstaining from embracing any of these things. Shooshi’s brow was carved with lines of kindness and ridges of honesty and deep thought. 

Shooshi’s hair was the white of a cloud, but his skin still glowed with a radiance like that of an adolescent boy even though he was an ancient and gaseous old man and had to have been at least three times my age. Both men were tyrannically strong looking and magnificent to behold to someone who came from a world inhabited mostly by lumpy misshapen dumpling people. Both men were also permanently cross-eyed. (Just before I stopped watching television, I saw a special on the geography channel about how certain indigenous native Indian jungle tribes were cross-eyed. 

They said it was because of how close the Indians were to the trees their whole lives, which never gave their eyes a horizon to straighten out on. I think those were the decedents of the ones who prophesized that the world would end that year.) Shooshi and Takumat both had enormous white stone lip piercings that elongated their pronounced lips passed their chins. They were my only friends in the world. I was utterly dependent on them for everything, from food and shelter to moral support. Also, the jungle juice was a great perk.

It wasn’t about me anymore. I felt so indebted for everything my companions had been doing for me and was pitiful over the fact that I could do slightly more than nothing to help add to our little community. I was a missing an arm, half blind, and incredibly out of my element in everything I did.

My friends never seemed to mind me or ever tried to make me feel guilty for eating too much anteater stew or drinking too much jungle juice. They simply laughed and drank and ate with me merrily. They humbled my soul more in a few days than society had ever galvanized it during my whole life. I asked Takumat why it was that he and his father decided to save me, but each time he would answer with what I thought to be mystic nonsense:

“You save man, Jim.” His dad would always agree with a nod and with a piercing look in his crossed eyes, “Man start real world, Jim. Man must lose his treasure to gain his fortune.”

Shooshi left early in the morning to collect all of the necessary herbs and fruits needed to make more jungle juice, and I felt awful that the journey was only necessary because I alone had drained our entire one-liter red clay jug the night before of all of its juice, though I had no regrets of dancing and singing all night long with my friends. When I awoke that morning, I was feeling exhausted and belligerently hungover. My head throbbed and my bones creaked with weariness. I felt the need to hydrate and to try again. Maybe my headache would be cured if I crawled into the water, or, I thought, maybe a better cure would be crawling into the quicksand head first. I stooped to the flap of the tepee and opened it. I was blasted with concrete pain to my head, which was caused by the ebullient light that poured from the absence of the flap of animal hide. There was no shaking the morning malaise. 

I tripped on a tree root that fancied itself a doormat and fell on my face in the mud. I could hear the rhythm of Takumat’s feet beating the ground as he came upon me. He was laughing. I insisted on helping myself to my feet. We walked, side by side, for a few feet and sat on the solid mahogany log that rested by the campfire.

  Neither Takumat nor I noticed the brooding thought the other was captive to for ages. Though I had done a decent job of not asking questions and being happy with the life I was lucky enough to still live, I was only suppressing these thoughts that had finally reappeared at the forefront of my consciousness. Questions began to rage in my mind with no sight of answers. 

“There has to be an answer,” I thought. “What happens when I die?” “Is there a heaven or a hell?” I questioned the very definitions of truth and wisdom and sought for a use for either of these seemingly divine but mostly ineffective devices that seemed to be the answer to all of the world’s problems in my still candid mind. 

I grabbed a twig and prodded the vigilant coals that were waiting on a cue to release what was left of their kinetic energy into the pale, open sky. I noticed that Takumat’s deep gaze had stayed fixed on the chill clay earth for the duration of the silence. He held that look for more than a moment after I asked him the worst question one person can ask another,

“Is there a heaven Takumat?”

Takumat seemed like he had not heard my question. I returned to moving coals and ash about the fire pit pondering both the answer to my question and why I had bothered asking it.

“Don’t worry about it, Jim.” He answered slowly.

“Don’t worry about it?” I couldn’t understand how he could say that and how it was supposed to comfort me. I even felt insulted by his answer. Surely the man could not have been claiming to have no fear of his own mortality. I would not believe that.

“Life is frail and horrible, Takumat, and then it is taken from you whether you are a good person or not. How does this not upset you? I am missing an arm and an eye, I nearly died. I should be dead! And might as well be, whether I have to face death in another few decades or tomorrow, I am a dead man, and so are you, Takumat! Can’t you see? How is this not all you think about?”

Takumat’s gaze slowly drew from the smooth gray stone it had been warming and met mine with a severe impact. The weight of his stare made my eyes lower from his. I battled to shoulder the burden of his mighty eyes that searched and passed my shallow first few layers of mind to the deeper parts of my soul. He spoke lucidly and with a distinctly western accent.

“If there is a heaven Jim, that is not where you are heading.”

I was startled to hear what seemed to be hollow and absent words coming from a man of such care and heart. “Why shouldn’t I go to heaven? I may not be perfect and may have committed less than decent acts toward my fellow man at times, but it is not like I am unaware of these things. It’s just human nature to do bad things sometimes, Takumat, and I assure you that the bad things I do eat me up inside because I am good. That is what it means to be good, Takumat. I am a moral man.”

Takumat’s eyebrows lowered, and his face became stern. He looked truly puzzled as he tossed another piece of wood into the fire.

“Moral?” he asked.

“What is a moral man, Jim? I do not think you know.”

I was distracted by the sound of an ecosystem that hummed like a symphony while I tried to create a makeshift definition for “morality.” I thought that I should at least make an attempt to feign that I knew it. No words came.

“A moral man is a man who finds greatness in endeavors that are larger than him. An amoral man finds greatness in endeavors that specifically pertain to him. All questions of morality are answered by a man’s own sense of self, and all men seek greatness.”

Takumat was a young man who had a kindred and youthful spirit that burned with an inexhaustible passion that was impossible to ignore. He lacked none of his father’s wisdom but could sharpen his gracefulness. He had an attacking way of giving me this advice that was at first hard to swallow. When he eventually continued the revelation, his voice would begin to rumble with power and resonate to the core of the dense log we shared, but first I had to interrupt him with yet another dim question, though he seemed to not lose any of the momentum he was building when I did. I asked:

“So, if I have not been a good or moral person, then do you think that I deserve to go to hell?”

I was coming to believe that Takumat and his father were endowed with every answer to every question and listened eagerly for something that might be an answer, or at least something I could use as comfort.

“I do not think that you deserve anything, Jim, whether you have been bad or good. The very idea of hell is redemption for our egos. In order to realize an eternity of the misery and pain one expects they might be subjected to if they should ever be sentenced to hell, one must retain a somewhat familiar and rational mind; one must certainly still possess an undying abiding sense of self to recognize any hardship at all. The consequence of an eternity of being tortured and smote with fire and brimstone is still the promise of the reward of an eternity in itself. The idea of “hell” serves our egos that cannot fathom not existing at all, far greater than the idea of nothingness ever will.”

Before I could try to generate something whimsical to add to his great words, Takumat held true with a voice that gained passion with every morsel of comfort I had to abandon.

 I was feeling deflated, like I had lost my footing on ground that I thought to be solid as Takumat went on.

“I have faith, Jim, that when you are no more, not only will you have no answer for any of this—he raised his arms to the trees, then to the sky, and then slapped the earth with them to add emphasis to the ‘this’—but you will accept not being granted one.”

I was beginning to understand and absorb my friend’s meanings, though it was difficult and offensive at first. (I would later give him a little bit of my own advice and tell him that when administering medicine to someone who needs it, don’t make it a suppository if at all possible, he laughed.) His explanations were certainly not real answers to any of the questions I was asking, but his words did serve as a significant comfort to me and eased the pain of not knowing anything at all.

“You say ‘faith’ because you do not know?” I asked.

Takumat replied warmly, “Yes Jim that is what faith requires, not knowing”

I thought our debate had died like the last embers of the fire that I had poked to death, but Takumat continued with the same might and drive as before, though he sustained with a new found carefulness to his tone, and he seemed to have found the grace I thought he lacked in the next words he spoke.

“I also have faith, Jim, that the only kingdom that you will ever visit is the kingdom of your mind, and when you finally realize that it is you who sits on the only throne, you will see, kneeling at your feet, two scheming servants called “heaven” and “hell.” Though these subjects are both indeed merely jesters and things of amusement, dictate them always with both courage and fear as they demand these respects from their conscious master.”

“That sounds to me to be a  selfish way of thinking.” I was sure I had stumped him.

“Selfish?” He snapped back at me. He needed no time to materialize an answer; all of his thoughts and philosophies were obviously readied in his mind. 

“Tell me, Jim, is it not selfish to believe that you deserve and are worthy of an eternity in heaven? What makes you so special?”

Again, I found no words to answer, and had no answer.

“The very pursuit of such a vain and unnatural reward for already being granted the wonders and beauties of life, and the cold hard fear of death, is self-serving and strictly immoral. Who are you to demand an answer for all of this Jim? And who am I to grant you one? Even if I had the answers you seek, I would keep them from you so that you may live the life you were blessed with, for if I knew the answer, I would surely be dead.”

“So, you don’t think there is a God?” I asked.

“If there is a god, he is a good God to hide from his children. A good God would not curse his children with his own perfection and omnipotence for because of those things he is not alive though he may exist. Do you not think that God would grant life to his children that he has given such life to?”

“So, you do believe in God!” I exclaimed.

Takumat had to laugh, I would have punched me in the head If I were him, but instead he gently nudged my arm with his elbow, pointed toward the pale blue sky that housed the very idea of heaven, and said:

 “Jim, if he’s up there, he is looking down on each and every one of us wishing that he could play too.”

I woke up late in the night to the sound of metal striking the earth. I could hear old Shooshi grunting and his heavy breaths after each strike on the hard-cold clay. I climbed out of the tepee to investigate what my brothers were doing in the night, maybe I could help I thought.

Just beyond the fire pit near the monkey puzzle tree, I beheld Shooshi and Takumat digging with metal makeshift spades that were crumpled and shaped wrong for the job. They were fastened to a couple of broken mahogany branches, which must have been retrieved from the remains of the wreckage, a very brave feat.

I overheard the pair speaking in their native tongues, it was beautiful.

“Ha-se-shoosh-acha-hopa-meena-mow!” said Shooshi. It was the most serious look I had ever seen the man give. He stared into what looked like to me forever and eternity. What he was seeing despite of the murky dark jungle before his dreaming eyes, I still do not know.

“Uh-huh-buh-bub-uba-ticky-monaheliapah?” Takumat had a nervous sounding tone to his voice that I had never heard before. He was always such a picture of courage, I thought

.

Shooshi laid an earnest glance unto Takumat, chuckled affectionately, and gently rubbed the hair on his son’s head and said,

 “Put! Puhna-poka-peka-leef.” What had seemed like tension to me smoothed into a loving and encouraged laugh that belted from deep within the bellies of both of men. I pretended like I understood what they were talking about and approached my friends laughing.

I asked Shooshi what they were doing, digging a hole with rather lousy tools in the dead of night and with the sun threatening to rise so soon. They did not answer. I asked if I could help them dig, they laughed and told me to sit and to drink the dew from the flowers hanging above and to eat their fruit and that I could sing for them if I wanted to help. I decided to just watch. 

After a while, I asked again what the purpose of all of this was. Shooshi answered me.

“It time to start real world, Jim.”

“Who’s starting the real world?”

“You, Jim.”

“And you too?”

“We here for you.”

“What’s happening to this world?”

“It served purpose, it finished teaching lesson, Jim. This world prepared man for the real world, all this world has built to one perfection, you. We need to keep digging Uhhg-Ook! Not very much time now, come Takumat, taareepa-noko-knokokomaulohow! Dig fast”

With that, he turned his back on me and continued digging, making painstakingly slow amounts of progress for the hardened clay was unyielding. I had a week to think about what Shooshi’s real meaning was and to reflect on my visit to the jungle that felt like a lifetime but, (it was probably only a few months at the very most).

“Me? Starting the real world? Yes of course. . .” I thought. These men must be prophets and me the messiah. The world could really be ending as I had already concluded before my ascension to my brand-new healing state of mine. “Those guys know something that I don’t, I am certain of it,” I thought. And I also started to think that I was right to turn my back on mankind, to seek my higher destiny, to find a better life for myself, and to find a perfect world as I so often dreamed of and knew was possible. Something big was about to happen, and I had inside information on it. I would escape the fate of running around idiotically in terror for my life as the end of times swallowed everyone whole.

When the week was up, we shared what I now call in my memory “The Last Supper.” The boys had claimed a family of monkeys hunting that day. We roasted them from the early afternoon till the late evening. I had a vicious appetite that had been tormented all day long by the intoxicating aroma of the roasting monkeys. I ate the baby monkey, which had the greatest flavor of any piece of meat I had ever enjoyed. They laughed and called me cruel for not eating the older monkeys. I joked back that I enjoyed eating baby meat because it was as though I could taste the stolen life that at least their tender little muscles were acutely aware of wanting to live. Takumat accused me of being insensitive and called me a disgrace to our family unit and told me that he and his father should have left me in the plane to die. Shooshi added by saying:

“And we would have been glad to; you were covered from head to toe in your own shit Jim.”

They both exploded into laughter, I felt my face turn red and I came back with:

“It was quicksand!”

We laughed for hours over anything; the night seemed unstoppable. They had such great senses of humor.

After much drinking, eating, dancing, and laughing, the mood suddenly became quite sober despite my spinning head. Shooshi cleared his throat, wiped the monkey fat from his chin, burped melodically, smiled, and said:

“It time to start real world, Jim.”

I agreed enthusiastically and then asked if I could help clean up the mess our feasting had left.

Shooshi continued.

“You left for jungle to find better world. You are ready to start better world, you have learned, you are man, ready to be perfect.”

To add to the drama of whatever the hell he was talking about, Shooshi clasped his fist in the air and pulled an arm back rapidly that had been rising open handed the entire duration of those near final words he spoke; the animated dangling skin from under his still strong bicep flapped to and fro as he returned to his normal slightly bowed posture. I agreed with Shooshi that I had felt ready to start a new world for myself but told him that my plans had changed.

“No plans, Jim. Please, get in the hole.”

With a slow wave of his wrinkled hand, he pointed toward the hole that he and Takumat had been slaving away at for over a week.

“You want me to get in the hole?”

“Yes, Jim.”

“To start the new world?”

“Yes.”

“You are crazy, Shooshi.”

     I climbed in the hole. I would have done anything for those guys; it’s not like they would have buried me alive, and even if they did choose to it bury me, it would have been their right. My life was always in their hands.

It was cold, but the night was warm, so the clay hole felt icy in contrast to the humid night heat. Goose pimples pricked my skin as I finished climbing in, and I began to shiver. I looked up at the night sky; there was not a single cloud, just countless stars twinkling for my delight. I was in the ground up to just past my elbow. My friends looked down on me smiling and laughed warmly. A mosquito bit me on the chin.

It was then that I felt the hole shift and start to constrict around me. It pinned my arm and legs and rendered them useless. I became stuck. Takumat told me to look at myself during my panic and to be amazed. I was nothing short of amazed when I looked down at the portion of my body that had not been gripped and swallowed by the clammy earth. I noticed that I was self-illuminated; my whole body was glowing with bright golden light. The light started by creeping out of my torso and then exploding out of my face. I tried to scream but only let out light. It was like a visual noise that was to be heard by everyone within the hemisphere. A noise that came from only me, shining like a spotlight from the swallowing hole in the earth, all the way out of the jungle, into the outer space, without ever dwindling or loosing radiance.

Fear struck me as hard as the clay that tightened around my chest and pulled me further into it. My heart was racing, I continued trying to call for help, nothing left my lips but more blinding light. My companions were bowed on the ground praying and paying no attention to me. 

“What did they do to me?” I thought as tears formed, and as if Shooshi heard my thoughts, he spoke his last words to me. 

“Do not be too important to lose yourself, Jim.”

Slowly I sunk into the ground; it seemed like an eternity of uncertainty and frightfulness. My head was the only thing above ground at the point when I looked up and gazed straight into the sky and then darkness washed over me.

I remembered days in the old world where I would wake, sometimes even in my own bed, totally confused with no recollection to where I came from, who I was, or where I was. Sometimes in those very brief confused moments, I would even forget that I was a person and what people were. I was having that feeling again when I awoke, and I was not in a tomb; however, it didn’t fade away in an instance by a reassuring glimpse of a familiar desk or messy pile of laundry. I was unable to spy anything that might give me a hint as to where I might have ended up.

I was shocked and ecstatic to behold with two eyes that I had both my arms again. My skin glittered gold, and I was surrounded in an atmosphere of light that followed me as my aura throughout my entire stay in the new world I had arrived in. 

 I felt no pain either - one of the very first things I noticed, and the constant heartburn that was a festering and burning inflammation in my chest that was a result of my poor diet and chosen vices was gone altogether. I tested my new eyesight by observing the thick and massive jungle I had somehow found my way to.

There were trees. Awesome trees that stretched from the rich earth upward as far as my new sharpened eyes could see. Each tree bore what seemed to be unlimited amounts of fruit of all different hues, shapes, and sizes, making each boundlessly colorful and was an immense pleasure to witness. Any plant I could tug out of the earth would be attached to a vegetable, some vegetables would be thick and meaty unlike anything I had ever seen, some of those new sorts of veggies would even taste like poultry or roast lamb, and no two pieces of fruit or veggies ever tasted the same as the last. Food could not taste bad, though I later discovered that I didn’t need to eat.

There were animals everywhere of every specie and genus, including many new animals I had never seen before. I called them dinosaurs, but you wouldn’t have guessed by how docile they were. I met a tyrannosaurus that day.

I was helping myself from the warm sunbathed earth and examining the hole that birthed me to a brand-new utopia when the ground began to shake violently. I rose and braced for whatever the catch had to be to live in such beauty in one golden piece. My heart was filled with terror to find that the pounding was coming from a fifty-foot tall, twenty-foot wide, big blue stupid dinosaur.

          The monster had its tongue hanging out one side of his mouth and was galloping over thick masses of peaceful animals. Even though the beast seemed clumsy and terrible, he failed to make chunky animal pulp on the jungle floor as he stormed toward me. In fact, Billy seemed to be going at a slightly slower pace as he neared the massive group of animals that were beginning to assemble around me and as the crowd thickened, Billy practically tiptoed over the other creatures.

The brute knocked down a younger tree as he exploded into my proximity. “This is it,” I thought. “I have been sent back to the Stone Age, and now I am going to be eaten by a dinosaur.” At least I had yet to stare a potentially uninteresting death in the face. I could be grateful for that.

To my relief, Billy did not eat me, and instead, with the massive purple tongue that had been dangling out of his mouth, Billy gave me a hot slobbery dinosaur-sized welcoming lick, which started from my feet and ended at my head. It was so powerful that I ended up doing a backflip as a result and landed on my face.

Again, I bounced back onto my feet. I looked out at the masses of varied critters and insects that had surrounded me. The birds blackened the trees with their masses. There were ferrets, fish, dogs, sheep, deer, mammoths, marmots, raptors, boars, and turtles. There were alligators, stegosauruses, spiders, slugs, bugs, and bees, all unalike one another but peaceably assembled nonetheless, for there was no need to fight in a world where no one had to worry about hunger.

I felt like they may have wanted me to say something. I cleared my throat and spoke sheepishly.

“Hi, hello, creatures of paradise.”

None seemed to understand, I continued.

“I am man.”

“I will do you no harm.”

Still there was no reaction from the mass. I kept on with even more strength in my voice and thought that I needed to try harder. I felt that my presence grew with each word.

“I am your friend, animals and nature. Though mankind can be nasty sometimes, have no fear, I am mankind now, I am humanity, and I am good, I am a moral man, I am incorruptible.”

Again, no animal seemed to understand, and the crowd had begun to thin out, they had come to see what all the fuss was about, as I’m sure my entrance had been as dramatic as my exit from the old world.

Billy, however, hung around as my shadow for a while. He seemed to be the most curious of all the animals, or at least the friendliest. Billy quickly became my companion and means of exploring the new world. I would ride on his back for days scouring the earth for adventure and trying to take in all of its beauty.

There were more than just jungles in paradise, and everything I saw was of extreme proportions. When the jungle opened up into a salmon dessert, I saw the sky for the first time. In the hanging sky, there were massive rolling silver and golden clouds that were touched lightly with puerile shades of tangerine shadows. In the dessert, I found decrial florescent cacti that scraped the sky and observed some of those cacti being trampled by gargantuan, clear-haired dessert mammoths. In the marshlands, I saw electric gators that dwarfed the highways of the old world. Billy was terrified of the creatures.

Billy and I found bluewood forests that spanned the size of the entire planet I had left behind. I used to lay in the forest and watch the sun dust speckles sparkle and fall into the tall grassy metropolis while I listened in wonder to the closest thing I had to real music, which was the song of the carrot snakes and the ant lion moles. I named the creatures “carrot snakes” because they were orange in color and had swollen big heads that progressively thinned out to a pencil lead tail. The creatures would sit at the forest floor and vomit their neon-green insides out that I thought resembled the greens atop a carrot and wait for insects to stick to their trap; the insects were attracted to the snake’s florescent green guts and their beautiful, sad, wailing alto tones that seemed a bigger sound than what the tiny creatures could produce. The lamenting cry reminded me of thea sound an Indian flute would create. The carrot snakes would sing in harmony with the deep voices of the ant lion moles that sounded to me like an incredibly deep trumpet, like a sad laugh.

Sometimes I would leave Billy behind and try to climb the tallest mountains I could find (which were always endlessly larger than even the largest mountains of old) but would lose interest after a day’s hike. The oceans were the only thing that had not seemed to be any larger or greater, for even in the old world, they seemed immeasurable and incessantly deep.

“I will always return to the jungle.” I told myself in my mind that it was because that’s where Billy was most comfortable, but I knew inside why I made the jungle my home. I never wanted to be too far away from or to be gone too long from the hole. Besides, I am Jungle Jim.

“Where is God?” I began to wonder. Incredible prophecies being fulfilled planted a seed in my restless mind that grew to think that there might actually be a God and that I was to meet him if this was in fact paradise. “Am I God?” I wondered.

During my scouring of the new earth, I had kept an eye out for anything that might have resembled marijuana or tobacco with no luck. I began to look for plants that could produce drugs I didn’t even prefer and was formerly against. The goal was to get high, whatever that meant. None of the colossal fungi that I encountered on one of my increasingly boring adventures had any psychoactive properties at all or would even make me sick for eating. I tried to make alcohol in many failed attempts. I should have learned more about that while I was still bound to the fate of the old world. I reflected on this for a lifetime.

Before I came to the Jungle, I lived a pretty average life in a pretty average western city. I spent most of my free time at a Library that served beer and had silent films and yeast to put in your popcorn. They hosted a left-winged movement of people who camped in front of their local federal buildings for a reason that escapes me now. 

I had become inspired by this happening, it seemed like a genuine grass-roots movement against all of the corruption in our country that I until recently thought I had been alone in seeing. I connected with my local sect of the movement.

We would wear sashes that symbolized solidarity. We would eat pretzels, drink, speak, and write clever letters that we would blast the city council with. We felt drunk and high like the founding fathers of our great nation must have.

      “It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that all of what the heroes of our country have fought for over the last couple of centuries, the liberties, rights, and dignities, are being perverted behind the backs of a duped and pacified general public that have fallen asleep at the wheel of democracy.

 Though in our slumber, some of mankind has remained awake and took lady liberty behind the bushes and out of her copper green twat, came the corporation, the bastard child of freedom. “Corporate Person-hood” means that corporations are humans like you and I, and that their money is equal to the same freedoms of speech I have to write you now.

Now it seems that some of man is waking up, and he has started a movement, I’m sure you’ve seen some of us sleeping in the doorway to your work in protest and I hope it has got you thinking.

As a man now waking up to what I myself have squandered in my apathy I am asking you, my elected officials, to do your duty as moral people, to uphold and protect what so many have given so much for and to at least recognize in your hearts that it was not for this.”

The mayor responded with a handwritten note

“Get a job.”

–The Mayor

I was not a complete misanthrope. 

I sustained a failed relationship with my high school sweetheart for years. 

Things had come to a point where it was either going to fall apart or we were gonna get married. It had been decided by the both of us, in order to save our relationship, we would move in together. She wanted me there for her in all the ways one can be there for another that are not just physical, but still, I was checked out. I had retreated on all fronts. We both became more and more sloppy with our cheating on each-other. The end wearily crept at our heels.

Later, my mother and my fiancé had discovered that I was developing plans to leave town forever. I’d take my guitar and my obscure songs that I spent all my time writing, pack my belongings in a gig bag and I’d be off to wherever music would allow me to go. I was bombarded with accusations that I was throwing away the life my mother had given me; the life that my girlfriend insisted on completing. Both women cried in each other’s arms and declared that counseling was the only answer for all three of us.

For a while, my brothers and I stood together in solidarity, and I think it worked as well as it did initially for the sole reason that people would drink enough to tolerate each other’s foolishness. Only after a few cold beers was it enjoyable to talk to my comrades all night long about marches and permits for marches and coordinating with the local police and taking turns guessing how many people we could fit in a three-foot by eight-foot “free speech zone” (Twenty-four, we found out).

Within a few weeks, it was becoming apparent that the revolutionaries were tired and though they were very skilled at pointing out all of the problems of the world and who to blame for them, they seemed to be too beat to put forth the effort that it would take to carry out their carefully discussed and meticulously plotted plans of action. My brothers and sisters that were not poor and hungry were set on working with the city, most of the lot were terrified of stepping out of line, some even threatened to condemn me if I misrepresented their movement to the city. I was too radical for supposed radicals.

 It was football season and everyone at work was wearing their favorite football jersey at the grocery store.

I had earned a nickname I grew to resent. I was christened this moniker during a conversation my bosses and I were having about cell phones and their nefarious implications.

“I’ve got a new name for you! Jungle Jim!” 

I chuckled politely for too long.

“You don’t want a cellphone Jim, go live in the Jungle, please.” Said a co-worker.’

I couldn’t save money at all. I was immoderate and munificent with every paycheck I slaved away for. Gambling had become therapeutic and the prospect of winning my way out soothed me.

The movement was adamantly against corporations, then the movement became a corporation. It happened pretty much like that.

This meeting was held in a bar, instead of the library, I remember. One of the revolutionaries that was on his way to play a game of pool happened to bump into me. The guy briefly told me about the changing of (more rightly the becoming of) a business. As I passed through the back door to the brightly lit pool room, the art that was displayed on the lime-green walls made me involuntarily scoff; it was a gallery of unframed, wrinkly, grainy photos of homeless people that someone printed out and had stapled to the library walls.

I wedged my way through the crowd to take a seat in the main room where the general assembly was being conducted. It was the last weekly meeting I would attend.

I found everyone holding hands in a circle with their heads down. I was very concerned to see that no one was drinking beer. 

As I was taking a seat, The head facilitator began chanting in a low emotionless voice: 

“We do not feel angry feelings toward anything”

 And in unison the rest of the cult of revolutionaries regurgitated the same insane statement without even thinking of what it meant to them. They seemed to forget they were all gathered together in the first place because they were angry.

For the first time since I had joined the movement, I used one of the silly hand signals my comrades would demand used.

 I walked to the middle of the room, I raised my hands above my head, and I formed a cross with my arms. The chanting continued. Some of the lower people on the totem pole. would steal a one-eyed peak during the chant, not at me but at the leaders to see if they were looking at me. After about ten minutes of me standing with my arms crossed above my head, the meeting started. No one paid any attention to me., A short and spotty, box-shaped college student facilitator who appeared to be a neither gender, cleared their throat and started the meeting by explaining the rules about hand signals. The facilitator stressed that you only ever make an X with your arms if you’re willing to walk away forever from the group and that if a member makes this signal, all others must stop immediately and address the issue at hand.

I left the Library and I took the road by the Truckee River on foot. I tore my solidarity rag off as I arrived at the river and intended on casting the thing in the raging winter waters, but rather just balled it up and slipped it into my pocket. I gripped it hard and in a malevolent stupor met the year’s first storm with my head bowed and my neck in throbbing pain.

There was this dream that I had that had been reoccurring for years. 

 I am running through a bustling Metropolis and it’s eerily silent and everything is sepia-toned.

I can’t find anyone for miles and there are abandoned cars everywhere. Finally, I come upon two men pulled over near a cafe. 

They’re idling in a cherried-out old Buick. I go to ask for their help but before I can talk, both of their mouths drop and they begin to scream and they start pointing at me. 

The two men exit the car and start coming at me pointing and screaming. Soon others come out of the buildings and join them in pointing and screaming and they chase me to a dark tree-line.

For some reason I am wearing in-line roller skates and I keep hurtling myself faster and faster into the forest. The screams at my back lesson but the darkness around me grows.

I get to the same idling Buick in the forest. It’s under a half-moon-blue streetlight, parked near a chain that says “Private Property, Beware of Mountain Lions and Me!”

I open the door to the car and sitting with hands on the wheel, is a skinned man, only it’s the opposite. He is just his skin and everything inside of its body had been sucked out of his face. The skin-man chokes on his banshee-like scream and begins to wiggle himself out of his seatbelt then shimmies towards me with rapid seizure-like convulsions, like the morbid offspring of a night crawler might have.

I dressed in my blue cotton robe and ventured down the hallway of my new three-bedroom rental, following the awful sounds to my guitar-player/roommates door. On the other side, I could hear him having sex with my girlfriend. They were both panting heavily and could clearly hear Baby’s all-too-familiar shrieking and moaning.

I poured a glass of water, ate peanut butter from the jar with a spoon, and went back to bed. It’s a shame the band ended because I found solace in the cathartic effort of composing songs that were imbued with my thoughts. It became an addictive passion, alas it was no anchor in the failing world.

The band broke up shortly after my roommate and my girlfriend hooked up and my dreams of running away from society went from a fantasy to a possibility that night. I got dressed, and went for a walk and found my way into a casino.

The casino was full of lifelessness; everything that wasn’t the living dead in the lightless trap could be considered the plain dead, and since the bubble busted a few years back, the casinos had been almost completely emptied. Fewer people could afford to travel, and most would sure as hell find a better use for their money than pissing it all away in a gloomy casino. The majority of the people I saw in the golden-walled, red-carpeted palace were old and haggard, seemingly taped-together cocktail waitresses whose bodies failed to form to the black, skintight, coat-tailed, showgirl work uniforms. The girls exuded the same sterility from their hollow eyes that could be heard in the form of robotic beeping and electric buzzing of the slots at every corner. While I was playing a slot called “King-tuts something” I thought, “What now?” 

There was a girl that I had worked with at the grocery store for years who I was absolutely in love with. I was already codependent on her but she had a boyfriend.

I had to tell her that I love her. That was all that was left for me in society. 

I would write a letter, or a speech, or maybe I would see if I had any talent at writing love songs. I thought of many different ways and ideas to tell her how I love her in the past but I was not a strong writer and I was too shy. How would I find the words to tell her I loved her? The more I planned and contrived the moment in my head, the more strained my feelings toward telling her became. Fear had begun to turn on the desire to express my love to her. As quickly as the idea had entered my mind, it left.

“BUFFALO!!” Screamed the slot machine that I sat at.

I was so deep in thought when it hit that I had no idea how much I had bet or what I had actually won. I was confused and bedazzled by the machine as it flashed and chimed. For half an hour, it yelped and beeped and danced with colors and lights.

The whole ordeal of getting my winnings took a little under a year. They only gave me ten grand on my way out of the casino, and I was told that I was to receive the rest of the winnings over the next year.

Even though I had wizened up enough to keep my mouth shut about my far-left agenda and my contempt for society, the name Jungle Jim never went away at my job. It was an on-going joke that one day I was gonna get so fed up that I was gonna end up living in a jungle somewhere as a savage. It was irony or destiny, or it was something but that’s just what I did. 

I went and I lived in the jungle.

I would find a quiet spot where my money would go far, where there would be no more movements and no more disappointing relationships. No more crushed dreams and apathetic eyes. No more processed foods and boxed-in ways of thinking. I would be a one-man force of nature that would thrive, living off the rich lands of South America. There’s was just one thing left to do.

All life’s choices can be distilled down to either a brave choice or a cowardly choice.

On my way out of my last shift at the grocery store, I exited by detouring through Sophia’s checkout line. I handed her a letter and dashed away in a hurry, and I never saw her again.

Did she open the letter? I hope not, but probably so, if she did it would have read:

“I finally found the words to tell you I love you, good-bye.”

Struck by lightning, that’s how I felt when I had earned my precious fortune at the casino the previous year. The captain’s voice blurted over the intercom and tried to reassure the passengers and myself our guaranteed safety. He told us that the left engine that had erupted into a cauldron of shrieking white fury had less of a chance of exploding than the plane had of being struck by lightning, which happened immediately after he spoke. The captain retracted his previous statement to clarify what he had meant. The captain said, “We are all going to die!”

Maybe part of my subconscious had realized I was destined for greater things and that I was to survive the ordeal because I was completely dispassionate and calm as the plane violently roared towards the dense jungle below.

The cabin rocked noisily and jerked back and forth. My calmness did not last long though. Fear set in but I had also become excited, sexually.

“This is life!” I thought. I had never felt as alive as I did that day, in retrospect. 

I quickly climbed over piles of scattered luggage and splattered food trays and slipped on a greasy cheese thing. I was determined to go down with a bang. I headed toward first class searching for some company, and people with money were usually hotter than those without. I pulled back the blue fruit punch-stained curtains, I remember thinking of clever last words but being at a complete loss.

There she was, a breathtaking golden-haired angel, clad in a snow-white sundress. She was sitting with her back to the window and her arms round her legs rocking back and forth and crying. I had seen enough. I climbed with all of my might toward her while the plane was leveling out at a forty-degree angle. When I finally made it to her, she paid no attention to my arrival, her face was pale, and her eyes stared through me. I found the perfect last words just then, an answer for everything. I noticed the smell of feces as I neared the damsel. Looking down, I saw a little brown stain on her white sundress and realized the smell was because she had emptied her faculties. 

“Gross!”

She didn’t hear me.

I couldn’t have found better last words if I had an entire lifetime to decide. It is very unfortunate that those weren’t my last.

I missed my arm and eye immediately; I felt that I was a horrible disfigured monster that could no longer compete genetically with the rest of the free world. My idea of being a one-man force of nature that could combat and harness the powers of every element at my disposal had died 

"Me? Me of all people!?” I sobbed, “This could not happen to me!” I would have screamed out-loud if I could, “Something is wrong!” I wanted proof of God so that I might take my grievance to the bastard and rub his nose in it. I wanted to demand from him that there must have been some mistake and that he was obligated to correct it.

Near to and looking over the grim and gaping display of twisted metal and the charred and bent cadavers of folks of every sort sat our tepee. It could not have been any closer to the quicksand that the plane rested on as it was treacherous. 

I learned that solid soil in that part of the jungle was rare. I also learned that I was surrounded by the same quicksand the plane had impaled. For miles and miles, there were thick mahogany woods, horned bushes, and many creeks and rivers, all of which were founded in or surrounded by brown and gray quicksand. I was on a mound of blush-brick bare clay earth that bore what was left of me from the quicksand. The mound was approximately one-half acre in diameter and almost perfectly oval, nothing grew in the brumal clay, though vivacious green roots scanned its sides. No matter how hot and muggy the jungle made the day, you could always burry your feet in the cool chilled earth for some relief if you felt up to the digging, I miss that. 

         The tepee was disappointing and lacked any aesthetic appeal to me in the sense that it looked exactly like—down to the colorful hand paintings of horses and the animal skin it was made of—what I would have expected a tepee to look like, and it even had a dream catcher in it.

The first few days in the jungle was only a formless memory because of the intense pain the cauterization of my wounds entailed. I vaguely remember the burning in my throat from the steaming hot liquids that were routinely being forced down it. It’s funny how I am barely able to recall the memory of the pleasing sounds that were produced by the birds of paradise that surrounded me during those arduous first few days. I have no memory of the gamboling birds that crooned ardently to one another for a chance to procreate and the mating dances they would instinctively perform, which I would later grow to love and even fancy, at lolling times of delight that the birds existed purely and only for my own personal entertainment. I was aloof to the gorgeous scenery of lush nodding trees that swayed passively in the confused gold and green wilderness. I paid no mind to the trickle of the tropical breeze that caressed the leaves of the trees that surrounded and protected our mound; trees that bore a dozen different tropical fruits that would soon become a staple in my diet. The crimson velvet passion flowers danced waiting for my caretakers and me to make tea with, and the emerald suede pineapple guava berries hung heavily, but not with despair, and all to my complete ignorance. The only memory I can now recall vividly from those early days of disaffiliation with the ending world, save for the constant stone-smell of rain was the malady I endured from my infected wounds. Even in my subconscious, I focused entirely on the prominence of pain and not the subtleties of beauty; it is in my nature to make these terminal mistakes

“Feubr auury – Ferary – Februauuruuy – Fregrehairy.” I coughed. My caretakers had been away for too long. I was beginning to worry about everything. It was a cool jungle night. I lay in the tepee helplessly, and my mouth was like fly paper that only ever knew moisture in the form of vinegar carelessly spilt on it longer ago that anyone remembered. 

For no reason in particular, I chose a tongue-twisting word to start learning how to speak again. I chose a word that I had never had very much luck pronouncing properly even at my physical and mental peak as my very first word to conquer the road to being able to explain to the real people of the real world that they are in fact disfigured and should be so lucky to experience such a unique way of existing.

A plan began to hatch in my mind for what I would do if ever I made it home. I obsessed on the thought and plotted out every possible scenario. I was terribly worried about the money I had won from the casino. My heart sank when I realized my pants and luggage with all my worldly belongings were missing and that I had been clad in a rag that resembled a loin cloth. I could not truly rest until I knew what had become of the money. If I still had money (if it was no more, I would be no more, it was decided), I would make it home anyway possible and do whatever I could to fit into society and to make more money (happiness) and to live a normal life. I was no longer picky and reserved about selling out artistically, professionally or culturally. I was ready to drop any moral that may prevent me from having a normal, maybe even moderately successful life in a heartbeat to anyone who would give me (a cripple like me) a chance at fitting in. I thought half in a coma of agony, “I’ll settle with not being noticed. I’ll play covers in a cover band. I’ll work forever, I’ll marry someone safe and with money.

It had been since the previous morning that I had seen my caretakers, and it was now late in the afternoon of the next day. It was hot and damp. The gnats had made their presence permanent in my life and were getting the very best of me in my weakened state. I could no longer ignore the weak signal of the urgent and violent spasms of pain that my shrinking stomach was sending to my unreceptive brain.

 “Where were they?” I thought. “What were they going to do next?” I had no idea what those two mysterious men were capable of and didn’t want to find out. I had begun to think they were nursing me back to life in order to sell me as a one-armed one-eyed gimp slave. 

  I settled in my mind with the conclusion that they were planning to ransom me for money using bits of my remaining body as leverage for their sick scheme until their shallow demands were met. I had been wearing very nice clothes when I first arrived, I could have been thought to have been rich or important by the Indians who stole me from my grave. Most of my tan suede jacket had melted to the remnants of my right arm, and my shoes, which were squared at the front, had disappeared into the murky jasmine green jungle or perhaps into the quicksand. The only article of clothing that remained from my old life, though burnt and tattered, was my 99% solidarity rag from the social justice movement that betrayed me. It seemed that my caretakers had rescued it with me and had wrapped it around my head as an eye patch.

The flap of the tepee had been left open. I peered out past the curtain of fruit trees that shrouded our mound of clay. I could see the husk of the plane and noticed that it was actually sinking. The left wing of the plane that recently extended; from my stationary view, the height of the bottom branches of the tree line it rested in front of had clearly sunk to be level with the tallest horned bushes it was near.

    Without any more thought to what the Idians might do to me if or when they might return, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Waking and seeing what the Indians were doing I yelled out, “You FOOLS!”  “Don’t you know what that is?” “Don’t you know what you’re doing, that’s a Federal crime!” I stood up for the first time since the crash and made an attempt at a mad dash but failed when my legs gave way. I fell at the Indians two feet begging. 

    The final nail through the coffin was struck, life was over. I yelled, pouted, pleaded, I cried for mercy and begged for compassion. I promised the hunters more money than the amount of the remaining cash they had not used as fuel to entice the dwindling campfire to stop. Ninety thousand dollars really made that fire dance.

The Indians had apparently returned sometime during the day from a journey to the hunting grounds. It was the engaging smell of roasted jungle opossum the hunters were preparing that begged me awake. My caretakers would later explain to me that they knew a way through the mud and where to hunt and that they would climb down the reaching arms of the jungle that bore us the fruit for our feast. Then they would lead each other down to a hidden, treacherous path of solid clay and mud, where they had set up a sort of a balancing zip line of tree vines that hovered over the path; they would use this to steady their delicate footing on the unsafe road to the hunting grounds.

There was nothing to continue; no life or love to look forward to. Anything that enticed one of my bodily senses to function was a curse. “Kill me,” I thought. My body was in ruins, my fortune disintegrated, and my ego in tatters. Even a monotonous, prescription drug —induced slavery sounded like the Promised Land to me at that point.

Not even blind and raging blame could comfort me anymore (though it certainly works for me now). I could no longer lock myself away in a fragile shell of confusion. Distaste did nothing to promote any comfort in my mind. I was a tree, the grass, the breeze, the gnats surrounding my face, a spectator with no flesh or bounds of selfish goals and with nothing to be selfish for. I had no presumptions about what life needed to be or what I rightfully deserved.

I lay still at the feet of those two awesome, dark, strangers, with their eyes smiling and imploring mine to see the love they were trying to share. They reached out a long steady arm each and with their firm rugged hands sat me on a log. The older looking one, Shooshi, while laughing, reached out one of his massive hands to shake. I would have returned the gesture if I had a hand to give. He had deliberately gone for my missing arm. When he saw that I was unable to shake, he pulled away quickly and pointed at me with his tree-branch finger, shot a contagious smile at me that grew steadily across his churlish old face, and said “Gotcha!” followed by the disruptive laughter of both men.

Takumat gave me a red clay plate with many tender cuts of jungle opossum; they gave me the butt piece and the legs. The dish was garnished with passionflowers and scattered pineapple guava berries. Takumat poured for me in a clay goblet what I began to fondly call “jungle juice.” 

He handed it to me and said, “Do not keep too sober a state of mind Jim, you risk finding God.” 

The liquid Takumat gave me was surely a wine made of the bounty of the collected fruits that rained daily onto our mound from the encompassing arms of our tree protectors. The smell of fermenting fruits was never absent from the heavy air, and there were always flies buzzing about but was worth the inconveniences because the wine actually tasted great and was exactly what I needed to cope with whatever hell life is or is trying to be. 

I began to speak with my rescuers for the very first time—which I called that night and now my guardian angels—over my first solid meal in over a month as all three of us tossed the jug about and heartily drank to each other’s health. What luck to drink with company. It made no sense to me, and still doesn’t - to discover that both men spoke a great deal more than just broken bits and pieces of English like I had first thought. 

Though there was an exceptional language barrier between my friends and I at times, both men were highly intellectual beings and seemed to understand everything I said. Sometimes they would speak to one another in a foreign tongue that I could not understand, and other times they would operate in what I called “grunt mode,” acting like cavemen in speech and body language.

Sometimes my caretakers would speak like an immigrant who had just learned English, but what I found that makes no sense at all is that whenever Shooshi or Takumat would express their philosophies or speak broader concepts with more than just a few words, both of their accents changed from being deep tribal grumbles to having a familiar and soft western accent. I never asked for an explanation for why they spoke my language even better than I did at times. I was done questioning every little thing that made no sense, which was the greatest relief I have ever known. I did wonder what was in that cabin though...

Within two or three generous swigs of jungle juice, my caretakers and I were laughing hysterically and giving cheers. I told them both how much I truly loved them and begged for their forgiveness. I called them saints for having mended a poor old wretch like me back to such a standard of health; they only laughed at me and begged of me to sing. They had shown interest in what they called my “craft” after hearing my explanation of wanting to be a singer in my old life. I told them that if I ever made it back, I would try my hardest at it and would do whatever it may take to make it as a singer. It took a great deal of begging and pleading and jungle juice for them to get me to sing my song. I told them it was called Shed A Tear.

Beg your pardon,

I wasn’t listening.

All the horror

Of the things I’ve seen

I think I know what to fear

It’s the end shed a tear

I was surprised to hear the lightness of my voice in all of its strength. My voice had never sounded so rich to me before. It must have been the lack of smoking and the passionflower tea or the building confidence and security I was beginning to find in the presence of my new friends. I could see in the eyes of my guardians that my song was captivating to them. They seemed eager to hear each word. I could hear every part in my head, the lamenting cello, a bellowing but careful bass, and the weeping of a viola. I could hear an entire symphony building through each phrase, and I am sure that they heard it to. I cleared my throat and continued.

I’m a monster and so are you

We’ve done more than

We could ever undo

I think I know what to fear

It’s the end

Shed a tear

I loved the hunt

Now I’m on the run

They’ll have my head for

The things I’ve done

I think I know what to fear

It’s the end shed a tear.

I held the last note and let it fade with my slowing vibrato into infinity to become some other, never-resting form of energy. A tear swelled from my eye. I tried to blink it away, but I began to cry uncontrollably. My friends held me with open and loving arms. I felt as though I had released all of my negative energy and harmful thoughts to the world. No longer was there a bitter taste to life; it had been replaced with a pallet for all of the flavors the world had in store for me. 

A new boundless respect and appreciation for life and my ability to still be a part of it, whatever I looked like, was born that day through the grace and respect of two absolute strangers. It is incredibly embarrassing to revisit this memory now, but that night I drunkenly cried and begged for Shooshi to share the answer of being content and happy with me for he seemed to have all the answers that I, as an exploited-from-birth westerner, was without. 

The old man told me, “A truly cursed life is a life that believes that being content is being happy, Jim.” 

I replied by saying that at least I was happier alive than I would have been dead. Without a word, I could tell that Shooshi disagreed. He put his hand over the shoulder of my good arm and looked out into the jungle at the last debris of wreckage and knocked over trees that the quicksand hadn’t swallowed. 

He could see I was concerned with the sight. Shooshi smiled and said tenderly to me, “Death is true satisfaction, for you are no longer fruitlessly looking to be satisfied, Jim.”

Every time the man opened his mouth, he seemed to have some ancient wisdom for me that would provide days of philosophical reflection for my restless but occupied mind. 

Shooshi continued by saying,   “I do believe you will be happier here than you ever remember being in the short amount of time we have together Jim, for man is at his best when he is surviving and at his worst when he is thriving.”

*To Be Continued*

Here is a story about a desperate green bird named Senior Verde and his attempt to win the heart of the woman he’s adored since he was a chick. Her name is Rosita. 

 Every mating season since adulthood, Senior Verde has danced for Rosita in front his bright green nest that he decorated just for her. No matter how bright the colors of his nest or no matter how hard he danced for her, she was unaffected by his efforts to court her.

 One day a chameleon comes into their village and wanders past senior Verde’s nest. Senior Verde sees the chameleon and he jumps out of his nest quickly.

“Hey lizard! Hey you with the eyes! My name is Senior Verde and I could use your help with something very important to me, please!”

The chameleon paused and gave his attention to Senior Verde.

 Why, you are the most brilliant green thing I have ever seen in my life! It is nearly the end of our one day a year to find a mate and Rosita is still unimpressed by me. Will you stand next to my green nest and make it even greener for my love?

The chameleon answered, “I am the chameleon of sunset.”

“That’s great” - said Verde, “Just a little to the left and…PERFECT! Don’t move an inch. Look lizard! she’s coming.”

Rosita approached the nest and again, she had very little enthusiasm for Verde and his love of the color green. What about her favorite color, pink; she asked internally.

She began to move to the next suitor when suddenly the sun began to set and the sky changed to all the colors of the rainbow. The colors of the sky met the chameleon on the jungle floor and began to change the hue of its skin. Rosita paused to watch the display. The chameleon rapidly changed from blue to green, then to red and then to orange, then purple and gold and finally pink. Senior Verde ran to the chameleon and told him to stop changing colors and to immediately return to the most vivid green he could produce. To Verde's shock, Rosita immediately fell in love with Senior Verde for putting on such a wonderful show for her.”

“Lizard! My friend. I am so sorry that I tried to make you into something you are not for my own selfish cause. It was your ability to change colors that won my love’s heart, even though you were the brightest color of green I’ve ever seen, you were also the most beautiful shade of every color that exists! Please tell me your name so that we can name our first born after you, my dear friend!”

“I am the chameleon of the sunset” he said and walked into the setting sun.

   Betty June loved all of her flowers with all of her heart and that love did not stop at the seeds. She knew that each and every one of the seeds had a special gift stored inside and she was overjoyed to see the gifts they gave each time one would grow.

In Betty's flower shop, it was considered cruel to keep seeds within pouches to sell to the customers. Instead they were contained within clear jars so they may gaze in wonder about the flower shop at all the plants that used to be little seeds just like they were. 

    Jeb was especially eager to grow as soon as possible. As far back as he could remember, he had always desired to become a rose. He wasn’t like the majority of other seeds in the jar who had not figured out what they wanted to become yet. Jeb wondered how the other seeds could have any doubt about what they should become in adulthood. Roses were beautiful and cherished as gifts of affection from lover to lover. They also had thorns which could prick those who we’re not delicate enough and do not appreciate their beauty. The ultimate goal for Jeb was to be chosen as a flower that will be gifted to someone to show affection. Jeb considered that life would be easy for him, seeing as he already had the answers to his future, or at least an idea of what he will become.

 One day a man came to Debbie’s shop and purchased a handful of seeds from Jeb’s jar. Jeb was one of the lucky ones to get picked. He squealed with joy the entire ride to his new home where he would turn into a beautiful Rose.

 Jeb was given his own pot with rich soil that glistened with vermiculite. The other seeds from Jeb’s jar were in the garden too; each having their own pot to grow in.

  Jeb joined the conversation his neighbors were having around him and soon found himself bragging about how quickly he would turn into the most wonderful shade of red they had ever seen. 

One neighbor expressed that he could not understand why Jeb wanted to be a rose so bad.

Another seed told Jeb that he doubted that anyone of them would turn into a rose at all, nor did he want to. He went on to say that it would be embarrassing having to deal with all the attention that roses generate.

  A few weeks passed and one morning Jeb noticed that nearly all of the other pots in the garden had budded. Little green leaves could be seen on the tops of all the pots surrounding Jeb. This worried him deeply. Why had he not started to grow yet? He was exhausted from trying so hard to grow each day. He would stay up at night later than the others and stare at the moon, hoping it would help him grow.

 A few months passed and now it was clear to Jeb that the other seeds were turning into blackberry bushes. Every last one of them had begun to produce their first berries. 

 Jeb was not a berry bush. He knew that. How could he possibly become something that did not even have a flower? Sure, they had thorns like roses, and that was sort-of appealing to Jeb, but it was simply not what he wanted to be all in all.

 A year passed and Jeb had not grown into anything.

     He hadn’t given up on becoming a rose and knew he never would. This thought scared him. If all he wanted to become was something that he could not be, then would he turn out to be nothing at all? He would even settle for becoming a blackberry bush. They were not adored such as roses and no lover would ever give one as a gift, but they sort of looked like Roses and at this point it was about survival for Jeb. 

  Jeb pictured all the other flowers besides Rose’s that he used to see at the flower shop. He tried with all his will to grow into a morning glory for a few days and then after that decided that he was to flower into a daffodil; that phase lasted for a few weeks. He even tried to talk to the bushes about his new identities as various different flowers and pretended to have as much enthusiasm about being a lilac as he had shared about becoming a rose. The bushes ignored the tiny sound coming from their former peer and around that time,  most of the bushes had resolved to flat out ignore Jeb when he spoke. 

   The man who’s garden they lived in came out one day and picked the season’s wealth of berries from the bushes around Jeb and the bushes were all very pleased that their fruits were being so thoroughly enjoyed. 

  Finally, the man came out to the garden again one day and looked down into Jeb’s pot. He grabbed Jeb and placed him in a tiny jar and put the jar in his car. Jeb was nervous at first but soon ecstatic to be in  Betty June's flower shop once again.

  The man complained to Betty that this seed had not grown into a bush. Debbie exchanged  Jeb for another seed. Jeb could not return to the jar with the other seeds, he knew that. He was too old and didn’t grow. He was certain that he was to be thrown into the trash. 

   He gazed at the Roses that he grew up admiring within the flower shop and he wept. 

   Betty loved her seeds too much to just throw Jeb in the trash. She tried a few different mixtures of soil and exposed Jeb to different amounts of lights each day. Jeb sat in his new pot and thought to himself that Debbie was sure to give up trying to make him grow, but sure enough, suddenly Jeb began to sprout little green leaves. 

  Within a month, Jeb was a full-grown Marigold.

Betty said to herself that he was the most beautiful Marigold she had ever grown.

  A young man came into the shop shortly after Jeb had grown and asked for the most beautiful flower he could buy for his wife. Betty didn’t need any time to decide which one to send the man home with. The man agreed with Betty that Jeb was certainly the most beautiful flower he had ever seen.

Foreword: 

             No adversity is meant toward the gay community in this opinion piece.

         I have been transitioning from male to female for almost two years now, and I’ve witnessed what I consider to be the implications of what could be a potentially genocide within the so-called “gay community.” in years to come.

     Transwomen are displaced within the LGBTQ community and this will lead to more trans suicides. 

        The suicide rate for transgender people is a staggering statistic that I need not mention, because as we all know; transgender people have a very high risk of killing themselves. What’s worse is other people within the LGBTQ community including gay men, do not represent trans culture. It turns out, the queer community does not have a whole lot in common with us, thought they at one time faced the same struggle. Therefore transwomen have very few outlets for support.

 I’m not saying that people within the queer community do not empathize with us, simply put, they do not face the same challenges of survival that transwomen face. A gay guy can get a job pretty much anywhere nowadays and so can a lesbian or anyone else within the spectrum, that is...except for transwomen.

There is no community for trans people yet. 

  This is not the fault of queer folk and their community, it’s also our fault. Transwomen have failed to come together as their own community and willingly alienate themselves from each other because of learned behaviors that are reactions to how society treats us.

       How did this happen?

               Well first we must consider how queer communities' function. There is such a small percentage of gay to straight people in the world. Non-heteronormative people must find very subjective scenarios in which they can meet with their fellow community. Usually bars and businesses within the hospitality industry are the only place that queer people can go to where they know they will be unanimously accepted and will have a chance at finding more like-minded individuals. The problem with queer folks only having a handful of places to go to meet, is that bars and clubs are very niche by nature and do not whole-heartedly accept all who come. Therefore, individuals who seek others who are the like-minded, must first be accepted by the establishment and social circuit of the queer folks, before they are allowed to enter the “gay community” which nowadays seems to me to be just a catch-phrase that is tethered to the social clique that claims to be it.

              It has been detrimental us transwomen having been lumped in haphazardly with gay men and gay women who are simply put, different than us and us transwomen face urgent and unique struggles that they do not face anymore and have not in decades.  In my experience gay men and women, generally don’t understand trans issues as much as they would like to think they do, to no fault of their own as they are not trans people.  Having said that, I am not mentioning female to male trans-persons because females can become passable with hormones with much greater ease than a man can become a woman, also a woman is generally allowed to look like a guy in society already.

   Since the queer community is so tight-knit, belonging to it is a popularity contest and nothing more. There is an incentive for gay folks to be critical when deciding whom they deem may enter their exclusive and coveted community, as a newcomer may threaten their volatile position within the clique that they’ve jockeyed so hard to achieve. 

So, where else can transwomen meet besides gay bars?

          It is unacceptable still, to be a trans person and especially a crossdresser in this world, unless of course you are “passable.” 

“It’s 2020, what do you mean that it’s unacceptable to be trans.” You might say.

Guys, do me a favor. Go put a dress and some makeup on and try to find a job and then tell me that it is acceptable. People say it that doesn’t matter what others think and to just be you. Well, it actually matters to the point of life and death. If you don’t get work because you are not passable but identify as a woman, you end up on the streets and then you either die from poverty,  kill yourself, or contract HIV from hooking; which is the only real job for transwomen besides porn (unless you were grandfathered into your current job, that I guarantee loathes the fact that you still work there and that there’s nothing they can do to get rid of you.)

         Since transwomen are reduced to using sleezy hookup apps in order to find one another, if they attempt to do so at all, there is real missing sense of community. On these sites, transwomen basically work as escorts or camgirls, because being transgender - they are unable to obtain regular jobs or virtually any work that is not sex-related.

    If you are a fellow trans and try to reach out to other trans on these sleezy hookup sites, the chances are that you will not get a response of any kind from your peer who is just there to work. I have not seen a desire for transwomen to have any connection with others alike in such sites, in my brief experience as a transwoman on such sites.

    Transwomen treating each other like human beings is counterintuitive to our nature now as we have been programmed by society to accept being treated like dirt, and when you feel like dirt, you don’t have the self-esteem or will to lift others up. I fear that transwomen are beginning to see other transwomen as they might see themselves. Worthless.

              A transwomen communicating with another transwomen, does little to validate their identity as a sex toy for men and could even compromise their self-image, if they feel inferior to the transwoman they are communicating with in some way and thus instead of coming together in one of the only places we can find each other, we avoid interacting with one another and are instead competitive because of this toxic mentality.

   There are chatrooms for trans people, but anything political is strictly prohibited. This makes no sense to me as we are at a time in our history where our sect of society desperately needs to be organizing with one another and not just following those who do not understand or have our needs.

   I’ve seen other transwomen being standoffish to each other too many times to remain silent about it. I understand it though. Transwomen treating each other like human beings is becoming counterintuitive to what we have been programmed to believe by society. On a large scale, the only economically viable utility a transwoman has to offer society is sex. We now accept being treated like dirt by the people we have no choice but to entertain in order to survive, and when you feel like dirt, you don’t have the self-esteem or will to lift others up, which us transwomen so desperately need to do for one another but alas, it seems that transwomen see other transwomen as they see themselves - as worthless. 

             The gay community has failed at making being a transwoman or male crossdresser acceptable in society, we are merely tolerated. Just because gay men put on drag shows, it does not mean that they know what it is like to live life in those clothes and it’s like calling a Mexican person Brazilian just because they are both south of us. I’m not saying that queer folk have an obligation to us to change the world for trans people, but it is offensive to see them march every year for freedom for LGBTQ folk during the embarrassing shit show that is pride and accomplish zero political or social change with the effort. Every year there's a new parade for the community in cities all over the world and not a damn thing has gotten better for people like me. If the gay community used the man-power and finances they have for Pride on raising the issue of transwomen being unable to make a living in this country unless they become a prostitute.  I would argue that an African American man in the 50’s had a significantly higher chance of finding work of any kind than a transwoman does in America today. We face discrimination every day to a similar degree that an African American person did in the 60’s and that is unacceptable.

If you don’t understand what I mean so far, you are probably not trans or you are and are passable as a female.

      If you are a man and you are reading this, go put a dress and some makeup on and try to find a job and then tell me that it is acceptable to dress in women's clothing. It is worse than having a face-tattoo and five felonies when looking for work. People say it that doesn’t matter what others think and to just be you. Well, it actually matters to the point of life and death. If you don’t get work because you are not passable but identify as a woman, you end up on the streets and then you either die from poverty, kill yourself, or contract HIV from hooking; which is the only real job for transwomen besides porn (unless you were grandfathered into your current job, that I guarantee loathes the fact that you still work there and that there’s nothing they can do to get rid of you.)

           If you’re trans and you’re reading this and it makes you angry, I’m sorry but please express why! Maybe you feel like you let yourself and your community down by not engaging with your peers and you might feel embarrassed for buying into the competitive rat-race of being accepted in a community that doesn’t quite understand you Maybe after you read this, you will take the time to give extra effort towards your sisters or brothers who reach out to you because, whether this is a rant or not, you know very well that your actions may be the last straw for someone who is considering ending their life because they have no place in this world….yet.

I’m calling for transwomen to come together as a community and to realize that the LGBTQ community has failed us and that we are failing ourselves. I am asking my fellow transwomen to become okay with having a political dialogue, because this world does not accept us yet and it is time to find our voice.

I've seen what life is and I've got no right to it and you know something? I've made up my mind, I can't decide.

That's three strikes, there's a red light and the lonely stars are blinking and they're twinkling in the twilight.

Oh holy, Oh holy light. You're burnin bright the people say

Oh holy, holy light. One look and I'll be saved.

Holy, Oh holy light. I thought I might of seen you one day.

So holy, So holy Light

Come 'round to guide my way.

So I can see the light.

No I wont believe my eyes.

I got two minds and I got one heart

There's a thousand ways to be who you are.

I never knew the real me before.

My hearts aching and I'm making love to you and I'm

Tired of breakin' all the rules

I'm making fools of us

Holy, Holy Light. I'm on my knees, I might as well pray.

Oh Holy, Oh Holy Light. Don't you shine me on,

don't you come too late in my life

Oh holy light...

I know! I know I'm gonna die someday!

Oh holy light!

Won't you make the darkness go away

No, I won't. No, I will never never believe my wretched eyes, holy light!

Heaven dont you spare me no angel yes I’m crying but there’s a silver lining and I know that I alone can save myself, I dont need no help I dont need no angel. No no no. So heaven dont you spare me no angel. I’m down, so down, but you just stay put on your cloud and save your Angel’s for somebody good. I dont need mo angel. No no no. In the corner of my eye. I saw a ghost, well, it wasn’t christ. It was just my bath towel in the corner of my room. It werent no angel. No angel please.

Give me a good song, a real work of art. Come on and take your pen and stick it in my heart. Give me a good song. Play it on guitar. No dont look at them, they dont know what you are. Wont you get through the hard, hard, hard times? Is there a tune to carry me through the hard times? I’m counting on you, I read the news, these is hard times. Would you get me through the hard, hard, hard times with your good song. Find it at the bar, dry it out, take it to the charts. Give me a good song. A song about childhood. A song about being a man who demands to be understood. Now I’m driving around, think I’ll leave town, that’ll make me feel good. There’s a world on my mind. On my mind. An entire world on my mind. On my mind. Wont you get me through the hard, the hard, the hard times. I need a tune tonget me through these hard times. I’m counting on, I saw the news, these is hard times. Get me through, through, through the hard times. With your good song. Iyi yi yi need a good song for those hard times.