I can’t remember why I left camp in the first place. I think I’ve been walking for a really long time because my legs hurt. I thought about stopping for a second to gather my thoughts, but I wasn’t tired so I didn’t, I just kept walking. I could hear the crunching of the dry leaves beneath my feet, the branches snapping as I went by. I could feel the cold of my gun on my back. A small pistol I had tucked under my belt. At least I was smart enough to bring that. My mouth felt really dry, so I swallowed. I need to find water. I tried to listen for the river or a waterfall but the leaves were so loud. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a bulky, green watch I stole from a group of soldiers we ran into at the edge of the jungle. We got a bunch of supplies from them like clothes and weapons. When we tried them on to see if they fit, it reminded me of the time I spent in the military. I was scrawny back then, so the uniform never looked as good as it did now. Now I filled it, but I hated wearing it. The stupid watch was good for nothing, it had stopped ticking at 8:00am. Is that the time I left camp? I think so. How long has it been since then? I took out my compass, but the fucking needle had become sluggish. How did it even break? Puta vida.
I dug under my shirt and pulled out my Rosary. I looked at the necklace in my hand. I'd been given this Rosary as a child by my grandmother. She taught me how to pray with it; she said I’d need it one day to ask God for forgiveness. En nombre del padre, del hijo y del espíritu santo. Amen. We would pray together. She would walk around the house holding her rosary, counting the beads, muttering to herself. I’d trail behind her. I’d lose count of the beads, get bored from the prayers. I couldn’t interrupt her though, that would get me bruises. That’s why she prayed. To feel better about herself. It was the only consolation she had, the only hope that she wouldn’t go to hell. That’s really the only reason anyone prays in this country. A country plagued with murderers who need a Virgin of their own to try and save them from damnation. I heard a screech and looked up to find a harpy eagle sitting on the branch of a tree. It looked directly at me. I held the rosary by the cross, and I began to pray.
Bead One: Padre Nuestro.
«Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día; perdona nuestras ofensas, como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden; no nos dejes caer en tentación y líbranos del mal. Amén.»
The trees were stealing the light away from me, I was only getting it in fragments. Assholes. Crowding this godforsaken jungle. The things we could do with this land if only they weren’t here. We have plans for it. Mi Jefe wants to build a town. The soil is fertile. The resources are plenty. But for that to succeed we had to empty the land, cleanse it. Mi jefe is a gringo. He sees potential in this space that we never saw. If it weren’t for people like him, we would remain primitive beings.
I could feel drops of sweat trailing down the side of my face going into my beard. We had been so busy these past few days clearing up the space, setting up camp, transporting the weapons. I hadn’t had any time to shave. It was so humid and the sun was so strong. I got a bit dizzy for a second, from the heat and the tiredness and the confusion. When I looked forward, my eyes unfocused, and the rays of sun that were being broken down by the trees started to look a bit… a bit like a maze. The space that the light occupied was green and crisp. It looked like blessings coming down from heaven. The divide between what the light touched and what it didn’t was sharp. There was no mistaking what got blessed and what didn’t. Everything the light touched looked warm, and everything that it didn’t, well everything that the light didn’t touch was sinister. The shadows cast from the trees reminded me of prison bars, I thought the intense darkness in these shadows might consume me. I looked at the watch. Still 8:00am. Stupid fucking watch.
Beads two, three and four: Ave Maria.
«Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén.»
I'd been living in the wilderness for a while now. We tend to stay away from cities and keep to the mountains majority of the time. Mountains are colder. This was my first time being in the Amazon rainforest. I didn’t feel comfortable here. The deeper in we went, the easier it was to forget that anything else exists. I tried telling this to one of my compañeros. “No sea guevon” he said. He insisted that everything would be easier the farther away we were from the centers of government control in Colombia and the closer we were to Peru and Brazil. He was right. I still hated being in this fucking jungle. I’ve always been afraid of the Dark, which this place seems to amplify. Things happen under its protection that go unnoticed, unpunished. I should know. I thought the Darkness would protect me when I did it, not that we always did it at night. But the fire had kept the darkness away. The fire had seen me.
The very first day we arrived at the forest I heard about the Currupira. I don’t know how we first found out about it, but the myth spread around our unit like a virus. She’s supposed to be this spirit or something that wears the faces of the people you know to lure you deeper into the jungle at night. No one knows what she does with her victims. Supposedly, her and Darkness have a deal. It’s ridiculous. Where was she when they needed her? If this currupira bitch is real, why didn’t she do anything when we burned their villages to the ground? It doesn’t matter. Were it a sin, God would have punished us.
Bead five: Gloria.
«Gloria al Padre, al Hijo, y al Espíritu Santo. Como era en el principio, ahora y siempre, y por los siglos de los siglos. Amén».
I stared at the ground as I walked. The sun made everything too bright. Everything had grown quiet except for the birds. Their calls were rhythmic, constant. They went in harmony with the falling of my feet. Below me, the dirt looked soft, but the earth was unmistakably solid. It felt stubborn, annoyed that I was stepping on it. There was a trail of ground that looked like it had been walked over enough for somewhat of a path to be formed. That must mean it leads somewhere. I followed it. There’d been a path like this on the field behind the house I stayed at in our last location, as if children had played it into place, running and jumping around. Not my children (I never had those), the children of the family that occupied the house before we took it. I can still see their faces. These might have been those same leaves. My eyes wandered from the path to the grass that surrounded it. I went through every blade, each one a different shade of green. I looked at the roots of the trees, tangled with vines, fallen branches that pointed towards clusters of colorful flowers. There were orchids and passion flowers. Their smell wrapped around me and pulled me down towards them, I could see every petal, every bug that hid there. I could hear them. It was a soft, quiet hum but it came from every insect, and it formed a steady breath that reminded you it was alive. I felt my hands touching the soft earth. I turned them so my palms were facing me. They were dirty. In the space my hands had touched stood a yellow butterfly. I reached towards it, but it flew away. I grabbed a tree to pull myself back up and traced the trunk with my finger. It was being guided by the ridges in the wood. It was rough. I recognized this tree, it surrounded our camp. Strangler fig. There was a snake, high above, curling around the trunk. It looked endless. I followed the branches, how the leaves curled out. With the light hitting them from behind, some became translucent, I could almost see where life had started. There were a couple of small monkeys jumping from branch to branch. I had heard them, but I hadn’t seen them before. Tamarinos de manto dorado. They led me back to a different tree whose trunk landed in the water. Water! I was looking for water wasn’t I? Why? I can’t remember. All I could think of was the opaque green of the river. It sparkled under the sunlight. The sound carried me as the water rushed past. It was elegant. It carried me until the water ended and the sky began and what a beautiful sky it was! A bright blue that felt full, that would go on forever and ever. I was walking towards it, to that all consuming blue in the sky but then I tripped and fell, scraping my hands. I looked down at my torso, where the pain was sharp. I was covered in bandages, but I couldn’t remember if the blood that stained them was mine or theirs.
Entre Misterios, La Oracion de Fatima.
«Oh Jesús, perdónanos nuestros pecados, sálvanos del fuego del infierno y guía todas las almas al Cielo, especialmente aquellas que necesitan más de tu misericordia».
The sun started to go down. The shadows became softer, there was no longer any light that could keep them confined so they bled into the world around them. It was too late. For a moment, the hum of the forest became quiet. For a moment, for a wonderful, short moment I felt peaceful, like I’d be ok, even if I couldn’t find my way back. Then alarms began to ring from the tree tops. Where is it? Where is it coming from? A bird landed on the ground next to me. I pulled out my gun and shot it. What else was I supposed to do? That only quieted the alarms for a second, before they grew louder than before. Birds flew around my head surrounding me, pushing past me, running away from me, towards their families. I shot at them. I frantically shot even at the ones that didn’t seem to pay me any mind and I heard the thud as their bodies hit the ground and it was so heavy. It was too heavy. The gunshots resembled the crackling of a fire. I remember. I remember not being able to distinguish them. I ran trying to leave them behind me. I ought to kill every bird in this fucking jungle. How can they make such horrible noises? The falling of my feet sounded like the galloping of horses. No mas. I leaned against a tree to catch my breath but her hands made me jump back. Her fingers, the vines, seemed like they were reaching out for me, ready to wrap around me and claim ownership of me as they had of the whole jungle. I felt a cold wind rush past my neck that made me turn around. In the distance I thought I saw… No. It couldn’t be. The steady hum became a mumble. A mumble I recognized. A mumble in the shape of a prayer. She walked around weaving through the trees. Her beads in her hand. It couldn't be. I hadn’t seen her in so long. I followed her. What was the next prayer? For fuck’s sake, why couldn’t I remember? I tried to catch up to her but I couldn’t seem to grasp where she was. She was everywhere around me. The more I walked, the darker it became. Should I start a fire? No, I’ve only ever used fire for one thing, it’ll know what to do the moment I summon it. The stars are my last hope for a savior, the only thing to cut through the Darkness. But they aren’t here for me. What had resembled life on the leaves when the sun hit them during the day had morphed into something else under the moonlight. It was their faces. Their eyes shaped by terror were printed on the leaves, carved on the trees around me. I fell to my knees overwhelmed by the screams. I tried covering my ears but nothing worked, they pierced through me. I could feel her hands, she was wrapping around my legs, keeping them in place. The vines grew up towards my torso, I could feel the pressure, the strength with which she held on. No, no puede ser, malparida selva, I clawed at the wood that was trying to trap my chest. I ripped piece after piece, screaming, but it kept growing, it grew thicker. Strangler Fig. I tried moving my legs, but the effort hurt. I looked at my rosary but the growing roots pulled my hands apart, letting the necklace fall to the ground before me. A yellow butterfly landed on it. She was making fun of me. The roots stretched towards my neck, forcing me to face forward. In the darkness, a face appeared, shaped by the wind. She had the wrinkles in her forehead that I knew so well but her mouth was in the shape of the most horrible scream. I remember the mother whose scream it was. I remember the eyes too. They were the eyes of her husband, frozen in the moment his life bled out of his body by my hand. They were the eyes of their child, looking up at me as I handed him a gun. A generation of murderers had raised me and a generation of murderers was all I’d leave behind. I struggled to breathe. Over the wood an anaconda slithered over me, enjoying my new cage. My arms had become branches and leaves were starting to grow from my fingertips. I looked down, flowers had replaced the space where my bloody knees had met the ground. White flowers. My face was pushed upwards as the roots stiffened around my neck, it was crawling up my cheeks and had reached my eyes before the tears were able to fall. You’re not allowed to cry, she said. The last thing I saw were the stars. The last thing I heard was the fire. Where was my God now?
Isabella Pardo is a senior in the Film Department at the School Of Visual Arts. With a concentration in Cinematography, she is currently working on three thesis films aside from her own. Her passion for storytelling often expands to other mediums such as short stories.