Alter

by Jeremy Robinson

  We run.

  Like the thing rushing up behind us, our sprint is loud and tumultuous, the jungle’s version of a screeching car chase. Ashan takes the lead, weaving a path through the maze of trees. I’m faster than her, but I’m not about to leave her behind, so I match her pace and put a portion of my mind on coming up with a backup plan. I can have the machete drawn in a second. The gun, now held in my satchel with thirteen rounds remaining, will take longer to retrieve, but will kill anything in the jungle, animal, human, or monster.

  If my aim is good.

  I’ve been lucky in the past, firing point blank or into a group. On the surface, my hit-to-miss ratio is probably better than average, but it’s easy to hit a target that’s close, standing still, and has no idea what a gun can do. To use the gun, I’ll have to stop running and hope the thing behind us does, too.

  Better to go with the machete, I decide.

  Find my inner savage animal again.

  That’s hard to do while running away. Body and brain are locked in flight mode. Fight acts as a backseat driver, shouting at me to stop and stand my ground, but my allegiance to Ashan is stronger than either instinct. I go where she goes.

  I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been. My body is lean and muscular. I can hike all day and wake the next morning ready to do it again. But long-distance running has always been a challenge for me, even as a kid. I could sprint faster than most, but I dropped out of most endurance races long before the finish line. Lungs tighten. Legs burn. The first aches of a cramp worm into my side. It won’t be long before I’m forced to catch my breath.

  “Ashan,” I say, breathless.

  My pained face and hand on my side says all that needs saying. I feel like I’ve failed her, that her personal Mapinguari has revealed himself to be fallible, but she already knows that. Still, I want to be superhuman for her. I want to stand and fight, even now. But I’m more likely to keel over and put up a fight comparable to a stuffed unicorn—mythical and then torn apart.

  A roar spurs me past the pain. Thumping feet and crashing brush grow louder.

  Where I had been slowing myself to maintain Ashan’s pace, she’s now slowing to match my dwindling stride. And the thing behind us is gaining.

  “We have to fight,” I say, hand on my satchel. She knows what I have. Understands the gun’s power. But it’s not enough to overcome her fear of the unknown.

  She sniffs the air and says, “Not much further. This way!”

  We course-correct to the right. I take a deep breath as I wince in pain, the cramp nearly crippling me. And that’s when I smell it, too.

  Water.

  Is Mapinguari afraid of water? Is that part of the legend? Being a creature of the Amazon rainforest, that seems like the shittiest weakness imaginable. Whoever conjured the legend probably needed a way to control their children’s fear of the monster. But water? Then it hits me. Mapinguari must be attracted to the stench of filth. Parents used the creature to con their children into staying clean.

  Classic parenting from the stone age to the modern age.

  Is that why we’re headed to water? Does Ashan think washing will prevent the creature from attacking?

  I hope not.

  My breaths transform to wheezing as we start up a steady grade.

  “Almost there!” Ashan grasps my arm, yanking me up the rise.

  Ahead of us, the jungle thins. I can see the blue sky that signifies a clearing. It stretches far to the left and right. Whatever we’re headed toward, it’s larger than a stream.

  I drop to my hands and knees. “I just…need a minute…to—”

  My breathy pleading is cut short by the screaming of monkeys overhead. It’s not the cry of fright, or even of warning. Whatever Mapinguari is, they’re not afraid. This is the cry monkeys make when something else is about to meet its end. They’re like spectators at a Roman coliseum, calling for blood, excited by the action. In the past, we’ve used the sound to avoid predators, and on one occasion, stole a python’s kill. Today, it is a harbinger of my own demise.

  The huff, huff, huff, of something approaching is coupled with the thumping of feet and the slap of leaves. It’s nearly here.

  Ashan slaps me in the face, hard.

  “Leave!” I shout. “Go!”

  She slaps me again, but her eyes are on the jungle behind me, wide with fright. She can see it.

  “We will run together or die together,” Ashan says.

  I push myself with a growl, angry at her for not standing our ground when we had the chance, for using her life as a bargaining chip, and a little bit for slapping me in the face.

  But it gets me moving.

  She helps me along, shoving hard, pinching my skin so hard that it hurts more than the cramp, defeating pain with worse pain.

  “Faster!” Ashan shouts, the alarm punctuated by a rising growl from behind us. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before, both deep and high-pitched, rumbling from the creature’s chest to mine.

  My foot snags and I topple forward, arms outstretched. I’m sorry, I think to Ashan. I’ve failed you.

  And then my hands strike…nothing.

  My torso folds forward as my gut takes the brunt of my fall. A wall of brown soil slaps against my hands, and then my face, transferring momentum from the top of my body to the bottom, curling me into a flip.

  Ashan shouts as her legs tangle with mine. I can’t see her, but I feel her topple over and past, landing with a splash.

  My legs go vertical as I slide down a steep rise, face dragging through the dirt, neck bent at a dangerous angle. When my downward progress stops, my legs move forward again, sending me sprawling onto my back. My fall becomes a roll. Spirals of dirt fling up around me as I tumble over a drop and splash down.

  Water envelops me. My feet search for a bottom, but I find nothing. With a few kicks of my feet, I breach the surface. Surrounded by smooth, flowing brown water, I turn my gaze upward. A twenty-foot earthy cliff topped with jungle and blue sky greets me. Up in the trees, monkeys squeal with delight, shaking branches and bouncing about.

  Are they cheering for me? Or are they disappointed? It’s hard to tell with monkeys.

  I flinch when an explosion of dirt announces the arrival of the thing chasing us. While I’m expecting the thing to go airborne, diving into the river before dragging me under, it skids to a stop. I catch a glimpse of black on black-spotted skin, like a black panther’s, and a tan mane of hair…or brush.

  It roars in frustration, scrambling back and forth. I can see its mane bouncing with frantic agitation, but little else comes into view. And it doesn’t attack. Doesn’t enter the water. Not because it’s confounded by cleanliness, but because it can’t swim.

  I extend my middle finger, treading water with ease as the cramp fades. I’ve always been a good swimmer. Lessons at the YMCA. Summer camps. I attended one particularly brutal camp where to prove you could swim in the pool’s deep end, you had to tread water while holding a brick in both hands. I managed it at age eight. Staying afloat in the river is the exact kind of respite I needed. “Fuck you, asshole.”

  The thing stops, turning its head in my direction, staring me down. At least, I think it is. The mane has flopped in front of it, concealing both body and face.

  “That’s right,” I say, hoping the creature I’m pretty sure is a man in disguise understands the defiant tone of my voice, if not the English curse words. “Fuck. You.”

  When the thing turns away and bounds into the jungle, I laugh.

  “It can’t swim,” I say to Ashan, but I get no reply. “Can you believe it? What kind of thing lives in the Amazon and can’t swim?”

  When I spin around to look Ashan in the face and share in the relief of our brush with Mapinguari, she’s nowhere in sight.

  “Ashan?”

  I haven’t seen her since falling on the ridge. I heard her hit the water, but…

  “Oh shit. Ashan!” Mapinguari isn’t the only denizen of the Amazon that can�
�t swim. As I suck in three deep breaths, the sound of maniacal laughter filters out of the jungle, pursuing me deep into the muddy waters, where real monsters reside, and my only friend in the world might already be dead.

  23

  The hot chocolate water is impossible to see in. I keep my eyes open despite the grit, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ashan, but all I can see are shades of brown, lighter near the surface and almost black just a few feet down. I’ll never find her with my eyes, so I probe the depths as I swim, hoping to feel her.

  It’s an impossible task, I know. The river is a good twenty feet across, who knows how deep, and is flowing.

  My only real clue about her location is that she hit the water before me. Every time I surface for a breath, I turn and glance downstream, hoping to see her hand reaching out, her open mouth gasping for air—any indication of where she might be.

  I dive deep, flailing about.

  My leg strikes something solid, but pliable. I spin around in the water, still seeing nothing, and reach. There’s nothing there. I try to swim against the river, but exhaustion is taking its toll. While swimming is less taxing for me than running, my anxiety and the extra effort hasten the cramp’s return.

  A second thump against my leg spins me around again, reaching, searching, finding nothing.

  Burning lungs command me to surface, but I resist. She’s down here. I’m sure of it.

  A warning sounds from deep within, the small voice breaking through my panic for just a moment.

  Something is down here.

  That’s when I feel them. Little things. Fish. Aquatic bugs. Baby turtles. Who’s to say? They peck at my body, tickling my skin, picking off chunks of mud, caked with insects.

  There’s a simple rule of the jungle: where there are little animals, there are bigger animals who eat them.

  I stop flailing. Stop searching for Ashan, in part because I know it’s hopeless, but also because my frantic search could be interpreted as death throes, and nothing attracts predators more than an easy kill.

  I swim to the surface, doing my best to not gasp for air, but I fail. With each throaty breath, the cramp flares. Even without the possibility of a predator sharing the water with me, I’m in real trouble. I’m fifteen feet from shore in moving water that’s over my head. Then there’s the shore itself. Right now, it’s lumps of tall grass—the kind that capybara like to munch on and caiman like to hide in. Further ahead, the river is framed by tangles of roots ten feet tall. I might be able to catch myself on them, but climbing the slick limbs with weary muscles might be impossible.

  And then there is Ashan, somewhere under the water, no doubt dead.

  Maybe I’ll just stay in the river. Let it have its way with me.

  A thump against my foot tears me from my malaise, the danger reminding me that I want to live, even if it hurts.

  I’m about to strike out toward the shore, when a pair of eyes slips up out of the water, staring at me. For a moment, I think it’s a turtle. The casual nature of its arrival is non-threatening.

  Then I feel another bump, this time against my waist.

  Only one creature in the Amazon river can be both here and there. The forked tongue tasting me in the air confirms it.

  This is why Mapinguari laughed.

  That man-thing knows the jungle. Knows the river. Knows whose territory we leapt into.

  I side-stroke toward the shore, eyes locked on the snake’s head. For a moment, it appears I’m not moving at all, but the serpent is just matching my movement, locked in position. But why hasn’t it struck? Is it going to attack, or does it realize I’m too big and is just escorting me from its territory?

  Five feet from shore, I kick river bottom. Realizing I can stand, I plant my feet and rise a foot higher in the water.

  The response is instant.

  The snake’s jaws snap open, revealing four rows of sharp, hooked teeth designed to latch onto prey and not let go. Once those teeth find flesh, there’s no prying them off.

  I manage to catch the snake just below its head, the open jaws just inches from my face. But the anaconda doesn’t need to bite me to kill me. It just needs a brace while it wraps itself around me and squeezes. Holding it in my hand does the same job.

  Its long body coils around me, slipping over my right arm, each leg, and my torso.

  “Fuck!” I growl, losing my footing as my legs are pried apart. My head dips toward the water. I’m going to be suffocated and drowned.

  Standing on one foot, my chin just above water, the snake glares down at me, still fighting my arm for the privilege of biting my face. I let out a roar, the animal in me taking control once more. “No!”

  The snake surges, pushing closer to my face. I resist with everything I have. “Fuck you!”

  Pressure builds as the snake squeezes.

  The machete’s handle rests against my fingers. I had hoped to draw the blade, slicing the snake in the process, but my arm is immobilized.

  A groan is forced from my compressing lungs. With its next big squeeze, my ribs will break. When that happens, I won’t be able to fill my lungs.

  A kind of raw hatred fills me, smothering my humanity, and spurring me into the only action of which I’m currently capable.

  Instead of pushing the open jaws away, I pull.

  As the snake rushes in, caught off guard by the sudden lack of resistance, I lean to the side.

  Before the serpent can reel back, I turn and bite, applying all 150 psi of pressure available to me.

  The snake doesn’t flinch.

  Capable of holding its breath for long periods of time, I won’t be suffocating it any time soon. Certainly not in the thirty seconds or so I’ve got left. Nor will I be drawing blood. I’m denting the thick, scaly skin, but not breaking through, and I probably couldn’t without thrashing, and that’s not possible.

  My foot is wrapped and tugged, pulling it from the silty bottom.

  Man and snake plunge into the moving depths together.

  Water fills my mouth as the last of my air is squeezed out of me. Holding my breath isn’t difficult—I couldn’t breathe if I wanted to—but the water in my mouth and the lack of air in my lungs is a pretty good approximation of what drowning feels like.

  But the animal in me hasn’t given up.

  The snake, sensing victory, stops fighting against the combined grasp of my hand and teeth. It knows my grip will loosen in just a few moments. When I slide my hand up to its head, it doesn’t react. It’s a patient killer.

  Fingers probe with the delicacy of a new lover, unsure of where to wander. Then I feel it, a slight bulge that shifts with pressure. Lover becomes monster as I stab my index finger into the eye as hard and fast as I can.

  There’s a moment of resistance, then a warm liquid pop.

  The river turns into a frothing apocalypse of motion. I’m freed as every part of the snake reels back, trying to escape my wrath. Despite being desperate for air, I hold on with both hands, and my jaws.

  Fully mobile again, I plant my feet and stand, pushing my head above the water and growling in the air around the snake’s body. The giant creature twists in the water, frantic. Its twenty-five-foot body slides through the river with nothing to get traction on. I struggle to hold its weight against the current. This isn’t a tug-o-war I can win.

  But that’s not the real contest.

  When the snake tried to crush and drown me, it set the terms of this encounter. Kill or be killed. The snake might be backing down, but hell if I am.

  I nearly lose the beast when I release my right hand, but it doesn’t take long to draw my machete.

  The blade rises from the water like a sinister Excalibur.

  Snake skin bends under the weapon’s tip, and then separates.

  A quiver shakes through the snake’s body, a last-ditch effort to free itself from my grasp. But too late.

  The machete punches through the anaconda’s back, slick with its blood. Severely wounded, the now terrified serpent
thrashes free and yanks itself back, finishing the job for me. The sharp blade slices through skull and brain.

  Before the river can pull the limp body downstream, I snag its neck and trudge toward shore. When I reach the clumpy grass just before the wall of tangled roots, the water is just knee deep. I climb out onto wobbly legs, dragging the anaconda behind me.

  I want to fall.

  Want to cling to solid ground.

  But I can’t.

  Mapinguari is watching. I’m sure of it.

  So I haul the snake—the Amazon’s most deadly killer—from the river and hold it up. With a quick strike, I sever the snake’s head, hold it above mine and unleash a roar toward the river’s far side. Then I throw it across the water, satisfied when it crashes through the leaves and into the darkness beyond.

  Believing that’s as clear of a ‘fuck you’ as I can manage without speaking, I take hold of the anaconda body and drag it into the jungle. When I’m sure Mapinguari can’t see me, I fall to my knees, tears in my eyes. My victory over the now one-eyed, double-mouthed monster has cost me everything.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and then collapse.

  24

  Thanksgiving.

  Growing up, it was my favorite holiday. In part, because I liked to eat. I’d load my plate with turkey, cranberry sauce—homemade, not the gelatinous canned crap—mashed potatoes, yams with marshmallow, sweet rolls, green bean casserole covered with a thick bed of crispy onions, and stuffing. Much to my mother’s dismay, I would mash it all together, experiencing the flavors all at once. But the real reason I enjoyed the day was seeing extended family.

  There’s something special about being with thirty-plus people who all, in one way or another, look, sound, and act alike. A literal kinship. That’s not to say everyone thought alike. My family’s beliefs covered the spectrum of political, religious, and economic Americana. But at the end of the day, no matter our differences, we were still family sharing a meal. In that way it was primal.

  Why am I thinking about Thanksgiving? Lost in the haze between sleep and wakefulness, I search my memories.