Headhunter

tops of the trees. Then there was silence. Again nothing stirred in the brazen sunlight. Not a cloud flecked the hard blue of the sky. And with the silence came a thought. Selena looked at Sparky.

'Are you finished your work?' she asked, digging into the breast pocket of her shirt and removing a small glass vial.

'Uh huh,' Sparky said.

'Then we got some time to relax?'

'Sure. I don't see any hurry.'

'Good,' Selena said grinning, and removing the lid from the vial.

'Why?' Sparky asked. 'What have you got in mind?'

'This,' Selena said, and she tapped the contents of the container into the palm of her hand.

'What's that?'

'Just heaven,babe, that's all. Wanta do some acid?'

'I don't feel so good.'

'It'll p a s s.'

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

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

'It's not my gut I'm talking about. It's my h e a d!'

'Shush. Just listen to the sounds.'

It was forty minutes since they had dropped the acid, and now it seemed to Sparky as though the slow moving river had become a great sound conductor, an evil whispering gallery that gathered the noise of an entire continent and delivered it in distorted form to this very spot. It was as if the world had gone electric, each tiny movement adding to an increasingly tinny hum that rose eventually into a nerve-shredding, brain-vibrating crescendo of metallic abuse. This jungle was altering in its very form, transmogrifying into something evil, miasmic, swampy — like a warm festering wound. Sparky was afraid.

Soon loosely associated thoughts were slipping through Sparky's mind…nothing to fear but fear itself… fear itself afraid of fear… nothing but fear… fear… fear… help! I've got to get out of here…

Abruptly Sparky stood up, almost stumbling in the effort.

Before the rush hit, they had broken camp and moved their supplies down to the bank of the river; they had then sat down by the water and waited for the effect of the drug. But whatever Sparky had expected, it certainly wasn't this.

Oh God! What's happening to me?

Unchecked and coming in sporadic flashes, refusing to fall into any scheme of order, sharp barbs of unwanted thought now pierced the flesh and hooked themselves inside Sparky's brain. With each tug on a fishing line, fear moved up a notch.

Nausea! Weakness! Tremors! Distortion! My body is out of control!

Sparky's heart had lost its rhythm and begun a crooked beat. Lungs now choking, unable to squeeze oxygen out of this atmosphere of decay. Throat dry, very dry, tasting the color gray. Each sound, each slight insignificant noise, had now begun to form its own geometric pattern before Sparky's eyes — weird objects in a phantasmagoria of kaleidoscopic colors seemed to change in size and shape, to fuse with the background until the very boundaries of life, the body, the self were fluid and disintegrating. Sparky had become a part of this vast, foul-smelling, oozy stretch of bog that undulated with the motion of an unsqueezed sponge. Oh God! Now my brain is out of c o n t r o l!

Then Selena started to go.

At first it was gradual, like the rot that comes with death. Her skin began to fluctuate between pallor and flush. Her pupils dilated, her eyes beginning to bulge like a fish. And then rapidly her body took on a terrifying pulse, each throbbing vein and artery visible just beneath the surface of her skin. The skin itself was changing, half flesh, half metallic blue, and the muscles below the outside shell seemed to give off a succession of silent cues. Her face distorted into a frightening caricature, a perversion of woman incarnate, lips, eyes, nostrils flaring and dripping with sex…sex… sex! Oh no! Let me out of here!

Then something broke inside Sparky's head. It was like a total letting go, an overload, a chemical psychosis that fractured Sparky's id.

Reality broke away.

The real world had become as elusive as the fragments of a dream. Vision after vision began to waver in the flicker of afterimage. Details — unnoticed before — now seized and demanded attention.

All that was left of Sparky's life was creeping paranoia. Danger was everywhere. Inside and out.

Then Selena stood up and took off her shirt.

It was not a fluid motion, for the young woman seemed to disintegrate as she moved, recovering her image just in time to disintegrate again. Transfixed, frozen, mesmerized, Sparky watched this slow strip that seemed as if it had been planned a century in advance. For Selena uncoiled from the ground like a waking cat, standing, stretching her arms skyward as though in worship of the sun. Then with button after button, she released the flaps of her blouse.

Sparky could see the deep valley that ran between her breasts.

A tiny white tick called a garapate du chao had adhered itself to one milky mound and now grew pink as the woman's blood filled its transparent body.

Then the cloth fell away and Sparky shivered as Selena's breasts burst forth in nakedness, exposing every little pocket of fat, every vein, every highlighted blemish. One breast now grew larger than the other, then smaller, then bloated larger again. The nipples were dry and cracked like a sunbaked riverbed.

'God!' Selena shouted, shaking loose her wild mane of black hair. 'It's positively primal. This place is f u c k i n alive!'

Rocking her body and rolling her shoulders and moving to some hidden rhythm, she stepped toward the lagoon.

Don't,Sparky's mind screamed. Watch out for the leeches! But the thought never found words; it just fell unspoken like a bird shot bleeding from the sky.

Selena had reached the mudbank and was now buried knee-deep in ooze. The mud seemed to suck at each sinking foot as the woman threw back her head and laughed wickedly out loud: 'Eat me, Mother Nature! Suck your daughter dry!'

To Sparky, the voice seemed detached, unnatural, little more than a growl that scraped from Selena's throat. Yet two of the words, echoing, hooked into Sparky's mind: Eat me… Eat me.. Eat me, Sparky! Yes, child, I've come back!

Sparky stopped dead.

Now only Selena was moving, turning, holding out her arms. And her face was aging fast.

I said, 'Eat me, Sparky!' Take your Mama away.

'But… but you're not alive! You're buried in the ground!'

Selena frowned and mouthed the words, 'Who are you talking to?' Then abruptly she laughed, reaching for the waist button to her shorts, fumbling, getting it loose, pausing for effect before she pushed them down.

Heat flamed up from the sun-drenched bank.

Small deep pools now studded the surface of the mud, each one gleaming like a crystal against the background of lacquer green.

Then the mud seemed to climb Selena's legs, reaching out for the shorts that were coming down, coming off, first one leg sucking out of the goo, then the other, then the woman standing spread-eagled and naked before Sparky's terrified eyes.

Sparky looked at the woman's crotch, and that was when the thought unwanted ripped through Sparky's mind: tzantza! Again: tzantza!Again: tzantza! It would not go away.

Suddenly the strain of gazing at the brilliant sheet of mud became too much; Sparky's eyes sought relief in other details of the scene. Like the purple wasp with dull orange wings that slipped by to the right. Like the werewolf wail of the howler monkey lost somewhere in the canopy of gloom above and behind. Like Selena's