The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found (7 page)

The animal I see are the animals that
are too many on Isla Iguana… iguanas! There are too many iguanas
there really. When you walk they go away quickly but we went to
snorkel in the water to see turtles and when you swim close to the
beach you do not scare them and you can count too many… 10, 15, 20.
In my dream there was one iguana… this means my partner… maybe is
older than me and wise.

I don’t remembered all the dream at
one time. But we walked and I saw where the North Americans hit
with the bomb. The hole now has water. In my dream I looked into
this water and I saw Mike and I remembered this when I saw this.
The bomb hole now has water and this is the pond. In my dream I
looked into the pond and I saw Mike. The water was warm and perfect
and I went swimming in the water in my dream. The water is
sexuality.

That night when Mike explain to me all
the significance I understand a lot and Mike and I decide to be a
boyfriend and a girlfriend.

There was a part of the dream that was
not happy. The key. It was old and broken. When Mike help me to
know all this… to know what the key is I really understood. I take
the key but when I look very close I see something and I want to
vomit. It was a symbol that I not understand and Mike was very
surprised when I said I saw this symbol in my dream. It was the
same I saw over a door at a museum in Panama City. I am sick but I
put the key in my pocket.

The United States America’s Navy made
holes in Panama.

I found one on Isla Iguana.

But when you can find the hole and
understand you can put something else in the hole and then it isn’t
a hole.

The First
Apparition

By María
Concepción

I return to the church of gold. I
light a candle in front of a woman cradling a tiny church of
people, and I can’t help thinking that whoever made this got the
priestess right. Exhausted from the heat of Casco Viejo, I sit down
in and rest in the pew in front of the shrine of women. Above the
shrine is the Last Supper, with the Magdalene sitting to the right
of the Christ… the Isis and Osiris of their time. I feel safe here
with Santa Rita, with her head bloodied like me. The church is cool
and empty. I stretch out in the pew and I look over at The Christ
on the cross. He stares at me. I want to touch him. I decide to try
to lucid dream.

I look at the sphere on my hand. I
slip seamlessly now into my dreams…

Ahhhhhh . . .

…
I no longer need to find
my hands. It’s like shooting up. The eyes of stained glass saints
light up to acknowledge my presence. I walk up to them and then
stand on the gold altar in front of a full but silent congregation.
I remove my white shoes, my blue summer dress, my brassiere and my
panties with the pink flowers. I kick them onto the dusty Church
floor. I do not feel out of control or in control… I am an
automaton.

I move my hands over my body and begin
to fiddle around between my legs. Eventually I find what I think I
am looking for, something wet, cold and metallic. Very slowly I
begin to unzip my body, working a straight line up my stomach
between my breasts, up my neck, taking it right on through the
center of my face to my forehead. It is a freakish release, like
ripping a long dry strip of flesh from the base of my thumb
nail.

My fingers probe up and down, the
resulting slit finally coming to rest on either side of my navel. I
pause for a moment, before meticulously working the flesh apart.
Slipping my right hand into the open gash, I push up through my
throat, latching on to something buried solid at the top of my
spine. With tremendous effort, I loosen it and pull out a hard,
blood-slick chain. I yank on the chain and it pulls on the back of
my skull. Something lights up. I release my grip and my crumbled
body, neatly sliced, slithers around the liquid surface of the
chain to the floor.

Splat!

Now I watch from the eyes of a new
stained glass saint. The golden orb hovers with the dangling chain
and the congregation rises.

Then the gold, the colors of the
stained glass, turn black.

I could smell him. His mustache. His
cracked yellow teeth and his fucking fedora. He walks from the back
of the church to the front row with his stupid fuckin’ grin. Now I
try to wake up. I look at the palm of my hand. I am lucid dreaming
but I can’t make him go away.

Then the congregation stands up and
shouts.

Shekinah! Shekinah!

She appears instead of the orb. He
walks toward her, stroking his cock. She lets out a whimper but
will not cry. And then I fall… tumbling down the stairs. I try to
stop, try to hold onto something and make my way back but I know I
lost control and will not wake until I hit the bottom.

Volcano Nightmare

By Mathew Hope

My first attempt at lucid dreaming was
really surreal. I did fall asleep finding the symbol on the palm of
my hand, like Dr. Mike suggested. I guess because he had just told
us the story of Isis and Osiris, the first thing I saw was a huge
Egyptian obelisk. But unlike any obelisk I’ve ever seen, this one
had a small door at the base. I crawled inside and found a narrow
winding staircase. I climbed slowly, and at the top it opened up
and I found myself at the top of Volcán Barú. There were children
singing gospel songs in a circle --

“…
we will walk with each
other, we will walk side by side…”

They were expecting the big floods to
come. The clouds rolled in quickly. The children were chanting now,
with growing excitement. When it began to rain they became
ecstatic. God sends the great floods to wipe out evil and save the
children who believe. God will save only them, the
righteous.

They smiled when I walked over to
them. A little girl took my hand, inviting me in.

“
No,” I shouted. I tried to
take control of my dream. It was a lucid dream, but I couldn’t seem
to stop the children. I needed to stop them but I didn’t really
know why.

They were soaking wet in the rain.
They formed a connected circle of joyous singing and then FLASH, I
was blinded and I heard a BOOM so loud it knocked me down. When I
stood I saw their wet bodies with smoke rising from their heads.
Their joined hands provided a circuit for the electricity. They
were lying there with their hands still tightly clasped. They were
not the chosen ones. That day God destroyed the
righteous.

I walked over to the bodies. But I saw
that they were no longer children. It was Dr. Mike with smoke
rising from his head, with Estrella and Steve. And then I looked
into another face and suddenly became breathless when I discovered
that it was me.

I opened my mouth but no words came
out. I looked at my hand to gain control, but I couldn’t find the
lucid dream symbol I drew there. Something hit me on the back of
the head. I swung around, but I couldn’t see anything. The fog
rolled in and all I saw was a white screen. I was stricken again
and fell to one knee. A third blow exploded against my head, and
everything went black. Then I heard that I can only imagine were
the children singing and a bus engine. Their blue school bus and I
felt like there was a seat at the back for me.

I awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for
air. I searched my hand for my lucid dream symbol and with a sigh
of relief I saw that the crown I had drawn on my palm was still
there.

Sucking up Life in Bocas
Del Toro

By Mathew Hope

The tourist is busy telling you where
he is from, where he has been, and only listens when planning where
to go.

“
What about deer?” the
American residential tourist (retiree) at the table behind us asked
the young Israeli backpacker. “You ever eat deer?”

I pointed to the school of fish
attracted by the lights illuminating the sunken ship beneath our
dangling, feet trying to steer María from the generic
banter.

“
No, no, that’s not kosher
either.”

“
Water looks nice,” I said
downing the rest of my rum and coke.

“
Dude, I can’t for the life
of me remember what the theme song for
Family Ties
is,” said the nerd to his
girlfriend.

What was the song
from
Family Ties
?
I usually do O.K. at useless trivia and I knew the answer was
sitting in the back of my constipated mind.

“
You paid what to go get to
Dolphin Bay?” the bearded hippy said to the dread-lock hippy
sitting along the dock to my left.

I shook my head. “María, are you ready
for another Vaca Loca?” I asked. (Distilled sugar cane juice and
milk.)

“
You haven’t been to The
Lost and Found yet?” The granola hipster asked the overdressed
hipster.

Remembering that stupid song
distracted me from getting María’s attention. “There’s a full moon
party tonight,” I said, tapping her leg.

“
Why do you wear shoes,
man?” the older tattooed surfer dude said to the young blond surfer
dude next to María.

Or was María distracting me
from remembering that
Family Ties
song. “The party is at a new bar on Bastimentos,”
I said, looking for her eyes while seeing Michael J. Fox flying
across my mind on a rolling chair.

“
Oh, and I like to hunt
moose. You can make great jerky from moose. You ever had moose
jerky?”

“
Mmmm, no. Again, I think
moose have cloven hooves. So again, I don’t eat moose, deer, pig,
goats or beef,” the polite Israeli replied, waiting patiently for
the next entrée suggestion.

I was at The Lost and Found before it
was in the guide books. So what about elk meat? I saw more dolphins
on Polo Beach. Me too – every time I try to think of the theme song
I get the song for Cheers in my head. No man, not even with sandals
-- you are not grounded, you know man, in tune with the
earth.

“
Don’t you ever step on
glass?” María asked.

Damn, I lost her to the
surfer dudes on her right while I was trying to think of the theme
song to
Family Ties
. The surfers were sitting on the dock with their feet in the
water, just like us. They had classic six pack surfer dude bodies,
both of them.

“
You build callouses. We
weren’t born with shoes.”

I had suggested wine and lobster, my
treat. I wanted to get to know her better – what we were to each
other. Instead we got quick mystery street meat in front of our bar
for the night, The Wreck Deck -- a rancho covered dance bar with
docks built over the sunken ship. Tonight it was filled with rum
infused tourists and horny, aggressive locals.

After telling travel stories that made
them feel superior to their fellow backpackers and exchanging
compliments on their tats, they started to ask María questions.
Since they are used to comparing notes on how cheap their tickets
to Panama City were, they were captivated to hear how she crossed
overland from Colombia, through the Darien jungle.

“
There was this one day I
had to take a shit,” María said. The hipster and nerd pricked up
their ears too now. “The Embera Indians pointed to this wooden
structure at the far end of the village, near forest. It was a high
wooden platform, something like a water tower except there was no
water tank – just a hole in the floor. I hate heights, they freak
me out but I had to go real bad so climbed this creaky old tower
and I just squatted over the hole. Looking down between my legs, I
am confused. Nobody else’s pooh is on the ground below. Then there
is a rustling in the trees behind me. Before my pooh hits the
ground, a group of crazy black pigs run from the forest, and then
they just suck it right up. Before I even pull up my panties they
have disappeared again. I wonder if I dreamed the whole
thing.”

I can’t help but look at the open
mouthed surfer dudes and think they are like the wild boars eating
up her shit. I am jealous, I know. I have always wanted a six pack.
María is beautiful even when she stands and mimics taking a
shit.

I have learned a few more things about
María since the day she took the valium on the bus and ended up
covered in urine. María never learned shame. She is not afraid to
be the center of attention and is not afraid to cross dangerous
jungle alone. (But the fear of falling will bring her to tears.)
She unapologetically sucks up life. She pees by the side of the
road in full view of traffic. She steals restaurant tablecloths and
sleeps on dangerous beaches. If you believe her stories, she fights
back when she’s being robbed to the point that either she or the
mugger ends up battered and bruised. She accepts foot rubs from
horny strangers with fetishes. She jumps off of cruise ships she’s
worked on because the water looked nice. Her motto is, strangers
have the best candy. She smokes weed in front of Panamanian cops.
She hops the kiosk counter to demonstrate how to make real fried
plantains. She searches deserted beaches for quiet locations to
masturbate. She adopts strays. She learned English at a posh
boarding school but never speaks about her parents. She is a stray
that accepts adoption.