Fistful of Reefer

Fistful of Reefer: scene 42 & 43

Chancho and the others followed the glittering, faintly luminescent hides through winding crawlspaces for half an hour until they stood inside a much larger subterranean room.

Without a sound the leader left to spread advance word of their arrival. Chancho’s jaw dropped as he gazed around the room. For a hundred feet the walls of the cave were lined with tiny, twinkling lights—nothing like open flames or oil lamps. His hosts paid no attention as he stepped toward the nearest ones. Upon touching the gently buzzing light, he suddenly realized it was electric.

The whole length of the room buzzed with electric lights, frustrating every potential shadow. The glorious effect drove away every ounce of foreboding he had felt about being underground. Any sense of claustrophobia disappeared. “Electric lights.” He whispered to himself. “Increíble.”

 Stalactites hung from the ceiling while helictites decorated the walls. One wall contained dozens of large crystals, glowing with luminescence. Chancho inched away from the entrance as the cave dwellers who had accompanied them began to spread out and find places to rest. Only one of them remained behind to guard the entrance. It appeared they were indeed guests.

Curiosity overwhelming his fear, Chancho discovered the narrow cavern to be more of a passage. Generally oblong in shape, over a hundred feet long and twenty feet across at its widest point, narrower necks broke the space up into a series of chambers sometimes connected with multiple windows and passageways.

As Chancho advanced along the main path it became clear others were in the cavern as well, many others. Almost every new chamber held either an individual or a family, each of them staring intently at him. Self-conscious, he looked down at himself. Bedraggled and dirty, he had gone from flood to cave, and his arm was dripping blood onto the rock floor.

Without noise an elderly woman approached him, giving him a slight start. She nodded, indicating his wound, and beckoned him to follow. He looked back the way he had come. Muddy sat near the enterance, his hulking presence a smudge against the glowing rock wall of the cave. No harm in seeking medical attention, I suppose.

Taking a wooden box from a shelf carved in the rock, the woman nodded for him to sit. She studied his arm, clucking softly to herself, before removing a small tin can from the box. She unscrewed the top to reveal a brush dripping with black ooze. Gently scraping off the excess, she scooted closer to Chancho.

He held out his arm. With toothless grin she snatched his arm out of mid air lightning quick and lavished the medicinal ooze on the wound. Chancho clutched his arm, gritting his teeth. He squeezed his eyes tight, the flesh of his arm boiling.

Then a subtle pinching nipped the edge of his wound. Opening his eyes, he saw a huge, black beetle gnawing at his arm. He barked while fumbling backwards off his perch. Before he could get to his feet another sound swelled within the cavern like owl’s wings beating the air. He stood, trying to identify the source, but it surrounded him, echoing off every wall.

Finally he looked back at the old woman. She was laughing, quaking almost silently, creating only a small guttural sound in the back of her throat. All around him, everyone was laughing—at him. Their laughter filled the space with a pulse, creating the sensation of being a baby in a womb. The sound, the light, the presence of so many others, it warmed him. Retaking his seat in front of the old woman, he did his best to mimic their laughter.

She steadied herself and took the beetle between her finger and thumb. She held it close to a sticky gauze which it seized hungrily in its pincers. After a few seconds the beetle, encrusted with strands of gauze, ate at the skin around the rough edges of his wound. As it did so the sticky strands wove in and out, back and forth, across the wound with the movement of the beetle’s pincers. Chancho gripped his elbow, holding his arm still. Amazingly, the blood that had been seeping from the wound clung to the clot forming between the black ooze and the strands of gauze.