Indonesia: Getting Back

Instructions for the use of this short story: 1. Start at the beginning: Indonesia: Getting Answers. 2. Start the music. 3. Read. 4. If you like what you've read, help spread the word!

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     The edge of the jungle came to me while I rested immobile at the base of the temple. I glided along like a boat on the water, unseen forces pushing irresistibly. In the thick of it once more, the sky above me flirted from behind towering palm tree fans. She blushed fuchsia whenever my eyes connected with her otherwise violet skin.

     The forest sucked me along and drew all the curtains so there was no longer any seeing out, or in. Each movement left me invisible to the place I’d inhabited only a moment ago. My existence was erased and rewritten every moment.

     Only trees and butterflies and thick-lipped amphibians with glass black eyes had ever seen this virgin forest. I floated along like a ghost in a museum; an uninvited and inconsequential tourist.

     The flavor of the insistently earthy tea repeated once more against the back of my tongue and I tried to swallow it again. On its way down, it had tasted like earth; on its way back up, it was all fire. I hiccupped searing flames.

     All around me, trees reached out to slide long, emaciated fingers against my skin, leaving a goose bump freeze in their wake. But there was no hostility in the grasp of the branches. The jungle just wanted to caress me as I glided through it. It couldn’t keep its fronds off me.

   
    I knelt in front of a snake. Turning her empty eyes to face me directly, she stopped and waited. There was no way to read her. The eyes are not the windows to the snake’s soul; they are only mirrors that you fall into in one last mistake.

     My throat burned and my skin itched.

     “You know where I need to go,” I accused her and she stuck out her tongue. I knew, even as she slipped once more beneath the undergrowth that the words that were babbling out of my mouth had been confused by more than just foul tasting tea. I was stoned out of my mind on mushrooms. I recognized the symptoms now.

     
     There had been something familiar in that flavor, indeed something dangerous: a cytotoxic undertone in the bouquet of rotting forest and earthworm medicine.

     My stomach rushed up against my throat without warning but there would be no relief from the journey now. I had no choice but to see it through to the end. When I recovered at last, I found myself moving again. How far had I come? How long until night? My feet did not belong to me.

     Everything went dim as I walked for what might have been many hours. My mind didn’t drift as it usually does, telling me stories about my journey; about where I might be going and what I might find when I got there. No, things got quiet inside me. Hushed like dying.

     A scream brought me back. My eyes swiveled up to the source of the noise: a tiny man with a nose like a water balloon and rainbow painted genitals. He pulled his lips back at me so I could get a better look at his teeth and rocked back and forth, tiny cherry red penis proudly displayed before me.

     Not a man, mushroom-self, a monkey.

     If he’s a monkey, why is he talking?

     “If you know you’re on drugs, why do you think this is real?”

     “Stop talking.”

      I did, I froze, mouth open in a perfect circle. My tongue scrapped against the roof of my mouth and crumbled away like sand in the wind. Holes in me.

     Shit.

     Monkey.

     “Your dick is red.”

     He grinned, canines long like swords.

     “You have blue balls.”

     He squatted down to hide them.

     “Get back in the fucking trees. You don’t belong here on the ground," I shouted with more anger than I knew I had. But it was more for myself, for telling this monkey how to live his life. “Swarthy man monkey.”

     He stepped aside at last, but there was nothing behind him except impenetrable forest. I could not move forward.

     Above me, the palms began to fold in on themselves like feathers, one by one tucked back neat in place along bent wings. But this wasn’t forest; these were wings and he was reaching out for me with them, to tuck me in safe against his cold body. Cold-blooded bird. He rested his spear-straight beak against my neck, to hug me tighter.

     The last thing I remember was the eye of the pterodactyl, black like a hole in my childhood.

     When I woke up in my hotel room Wednesday morning, Tuesday had never happened, as far as I could tell. I’d lost the day, somewhere out there in the forest of Indonesia, somewhere in the arms of a dream.

Photos courtesy of Connie Freeland

Indonesia: Getting Wasted

Instructions for the use of this short story: This story can be read alone but is better if read as a part of a series. 1. Read Indonesia: Getting Answers, Indonesia: Getting Closer and Indonesia: Getting Through It. 2. Play the Music. 3. Read the latest installment. 4. Tell an unsuspecting friend to come visit. 5. Come back soon for more.

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     The other side of the mountain was shrouded in clouds that hugged the earth as close as they could, mist kissing ground. On the other side of the cave, I found myself somewhere else; somewhere otherworldly. Kickstand opening automatically, the bike parked itself below the last lip of rock because it could not follow me here. Our journeys were no longer intertwined.

     I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I seated myself on the temple steps. Mysterious forces had pulled me along at an unreasonable pace all morning and now that my adventure was on a break, exhaustion smothered every muscle. I wobbled over to the old man, who waited with infinite patience.

 

     He smiled and indicated that I sit beside him and drink. Steam poured out of the cup he placed before me but it was unable to add heat or humidity to the already torpid atmosphere.

 

     It was too hot out here. My skin had been leaking a constant stream of sweat since I’d  arrived in this country and I glistened, almost salamander-like. Nothing was ever dry here. Between the water that poured out of me and that which had been deposited by the breath of the jungle I was swimming my way through Indonesia.

     I gazed into the tea cup but my will did not make it lemonade. It’s hard to imagine enjoying a steamy cup of tea in such a climate. It seems that tea is better enjoyed in cool, foggy regions where the chill from the air creeps all the way into the center of your bones. Nevertheless, I lifted my tea cup (so hot it left a red ring between my hands) and drank.

     Though the temperature of the beverage was surprisingly agreeable, the medicinal flavor nearly forced me to spit it all over my host. Out! shouted my brain and tongue in unison, but I kept my teeth firmly clenched around the offensively bitter drink and forced it down. There was something chemical about the flavor; something dangerous.

     I sipped while the old man and I did not speak to one another. In the West, we were having what would have been called a long and very awkward silence, but here I was learning to let the quiet happen. The spaces between words are not danger zones where accidents happen. There was no need to rush words out; they would come when they were necessary and important.

     While I sat sipping quietly on my horrid drink I tried to guess what might be in it. Lemongrass? Citronelle? Tree bark? Dirt?

     Once, a boyfriend brought home a white paper bag filled with tea he’d received from the acupuncturist. It was medicinal, he’d told me and so I dumped the contents out on the counter to see what it was made of. There were chunks of mushrooms, sticks, spongy flowers, small stones and curly bits of bark that had been stripped off tropical trees. I also found inch long pieces of something familiar that I couldn’t identify. The pieces were round, like a long, thin cylinder, and were covered with circular ridges that were spaced equally apart. I slid these pieces out of the pile of forest tea and put together the puzzle. When it was complete, I could see that these sections had once been an earthworm.

     On the temple steps, I tried to forget this story as I gagged, but you try not thinking about earthworm tea while you’re drinking tea that tastes like dirt. I forced myself to swallow.

     When I finished my cup, the old man did not pour me another. It was the first time I’d ever seen a cup run dry in this part of the world.

     “You are looking for something; that’s why you have come to me.”

     I wished that he knew because of some mystical force. I wanted him to have heard of my arrival from the gods; I wanted him to have had a vision of me riding up to his temple while he was lost in meditation. Nowadays, I knew, even mystics carried cell phones. The concierge at my hotel was likely the one who had notified him that I was coming, not, alas, a messenger from the spirit world.

     “I am looking for something.”

     “A pterodactyl.”

     Definitely the concierge.

     It sounded so ridiculous now that he said it. I laughed but nodded, “Yes.”

     “When you are ready, continue down the path.”

     He disappeared back into the temple, leaving me alone on the steps. The water from the air pooled into drops that slid down my skin. Watching it, I couldn’t help but feel like I was raining.

     When I finally pulled my attention away from my newfound cloudlike superpowers, the sky had shifted into indigo twilight: bottomless and bright.

     But that wasn’t right. I’d left early in the morning. It couldn’t have been much later than two in the afternoon. My gaze sunk onto the dirt path in front of me, where the colors of evening had also spilled. The ground rolled in purples and deep reds, like the sea when it robs the sunset out of the sky. It moved like the sea, too, in shallow waves that undulated in rhythm with my breath. Or had I adjusted my breathing to match the spacing between the waves of blue soil?

     It occurred to me, for a moment, that I ought to panic, but I’d used up my adrenaline in the cave and though the frightened thoughts were there, the chemicals had run dry. I thought of fear and did not feel it. This was probably a good thing; there was no way to rid myself of what I’d taken. What’s done is done.

     So, I let go. I let the fear slip beneath my conscious thought; I let the expectation evaporate into the clouds. I released my close association with my own body, and allowed the line between me and the world to blur. I let the magic back in; I forgot about cell phones and the loss of mysticism.

     And then I walked further into the jungle.

Read the last installment of the Indonesia series: Indonesia: Getting Back

Photos courtesy of Connie Freeland

Indonesia: Getting Through It

Instructions for the use of this short story: 1. Read Indonesia: Getting Answers and Indonesia: Getting Closer 2. Turn off the lights. 3. Play music. 4. Read, enjoy, comment, repeat.

     It was all downhill from here. No need to press against the pedals with burning calves; no need to work up a sweat under the heavy tropical sun. All I had to do was sit back and let the mountain pull me in.

     I had no poet Virgil to guide me safely through the descending levels of madness. It was just me, a 5-speed Huffy and the shadow of a dinosaur beckoning us on. The gears had been stripped off the bike and the front brake line hung loose off the handlebars, feeding into nothing.

     Speed is not something I usually lust after. I ride the brakes and I ski in the shape of a slice of pizza. The thinning brake pad on the rear tire needed to be preserved-for emergencies-so I let the acceleration take me. 

Ever-increasing speed has an almost animal sexuality. I might die soon so I’d better breed now, my womb whispered.

     Hush, I told it back.

     The path swerved along through thickening jungle, blotting out the rest of the sun. There were whole worlds up there in the canopy that I would never know. There could be a dog party going on, just twenty meters away, invisible beyond the leaves. Do you like my hat?

     This is the part of the movie where the heroine stupidly rides off on some frivolous quest, away from the protection of men, who know how to squeeze their hands into fists. No, no don’t go off alone, you think, safe in the darkness of the theatre, but there she goes, all wheels and hope, seeing life through the lens of a happy childhood. But there is a danger here on the fringe, as there is in all borderlands. The places of transition are home to the most monsters.

     I ignored all that. I was looking for monsters and trying my hardest to bring myself face to face with the impossible. My descent into my childhood subconscious was purposeful and systematic. Red riding hood to the wind.

     Eventually, the sky vanished completely and the world was made of me and trees. The road diminished until it was no more than a hazy line pressed down by a thousand years of infrequent feet.

     Unruly branches stretched down to scratch at my face and pull on my hair. Roots and stones jumped into my spokes. I did not slow for the jungle. I kept my mind on the sharp sword bill and the featherless paper wings I was after.

     My long coast came to an abrupt end when the path wound its way into the heart of the mountain. The one brake was not enough to stop the bike and so I bailed, leaping from the doomed device just in the nick of time. I landed in a springy pile of undergrowth which slithered and hopped away in a poisonous procession. 

Momentum pulled the bike along until it crashed against one wall of the cave, disturbing a swarm of sleeping bats just as I had disturbed the gaboon viper beside me.

     “Mind the bats,” the boy had said to me, but I didn’t mind the bats. I minded the cave.

     Rising from the jungle floor, I took a few shaky steps towards the cave and placed my toes up against the exact invisible line where the outside ended and it began. I stood like that on the edge of the choice for what seemed like hours. Inside the hole in the world, the back wheel of the bicycle spun around. It wanted to get going again. Through the darkness, the rest of the bike could not be seen. I hoped this wasn’t the reason I had packed a flashlight in my emergency kit, but damn it, I had.

     I wanted to spit at always be prepared. Would have been a great excuse to turn around right now. It was all just a dream. I had a lovely bike ride through the forest. I fought a monkey and the monkey won. I’ll have the nasi goreng and the gado gado. Extra peanut sauce, please.

     But I dug the stupid flashlight out of my day pack, swearing pretty much non-stop. LEDs do not do enough damage on darkness, but it really wasn’t the darkness of caves that bothered me, either.

     Eyes on the bike, I took one shaky step into the cave. And another. And one more.

     I used the same trick I do when I’m swimming by myself in deep water. I pick a point: a buoy, a kayak, a piece of coral breaking the surface or a tourist bobbing along on a pretty pink pool noodle in front of the Body Glove. If I can just swim to that point, then I’ll be fine. Nothing will eat me between here and there. I can’t consider the real size of the monster. I have to watch him only one scale at a time.

     Before I realized what was happening, I had the bike by the handlebars and was rolling it deeper into the earth.

     Just to that shiny bit there, the one sparkling like a frosted cake.

     Just to that collection of stalactites.

     Just to that pile of guano over there. (The bats were a welcome distraction. I stopped and watched them for a moment but then felt the dizziness all the way into my knees and I had to press on, tilting dangerously far head-over-heels.)

     Just to that terrifying giant cave spider.

     Just to the light. Just to the forest on the other side with the upside-down bowl of sky above me.

     And like that, I was on the other side of the mountain.

     A few hundred meters away, the wise old man sat on the edge of the temple, tea already poured for two. 

Photos by Connie Freeland, Ryan Marsh, Donna Newton and Crystal Beran.



Read the next part of the story: Indonesia: Getting Wasted

Indonesia: Getting Answers

Instructions: 1. Play video (which is just music). 2. Read story. 3. Enjoy.

It started with a nightmare and the way that the only answer was yes.

It was one of those dreams that just kept going. The moment of realization; the moment I knew this was a dream had come a long time before, but I kept digging up the bodies anyway. Dream or not, I needed to lay the bones out straight: heads to the north, face holes to the sky. That was the only way to quiet them down.

Hard at work in the backyard, surrounded by a fence of the dead, a shadow passed over me. I tipped my head up to the sky but by the time my eyes arched high enough, the bird was gone.

When I woke up, my skin dripped cold sweat like the last iceberg. The first glow of dawn pressed against the window and I rose to greet it, grateful not to find myself entombed in darkness after a dreamscape made of corpses. The sky had yet to receive its color; it stretched above me in depthless gray.

And the shadow, the shadow sliced it in two. The long, fiercely angular shadow of a bird, its whip-tail dragging behind two triangle wings. I watched it glide towards the forest until its outline blurred to nothing.

Funny, it seemed almost more stingray than bird, with its points and its wisp of a tail. Birds have a visible softness; you can tell that they feel light and warm and fluffy when you hold them cupped as carefully as eggshells in your hands.

This creature would have slashed your hands clean off. That is, if you had hands large enough to hold it, which you don’t.

I didn’t even consider the alternatives. The name for this bird rose up from my childhood and stuck to my brain right where it’d landed. Right in the front.

Pterodactyl.

Though it was only a quarter past five, I threw my clothes on and rushed out to the lobby. It was darker out than I thought it was, and colder too. The air had yet to fill to the brim with the soggy heat of the tropics.

I’m gonna need some coffee if I’m going dinosaur hunting this morning.

“Coffee, madam?” He came out of nowhere. Stepped out from a shadow and materialized ready to serve.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize.”

“Yes. Here. Welcome to coffee.”

I took the cup from him (it had also appeared in a puff of magic smoke) and smiled at my favorite welcome in the world.

“I saw something this morning,” I admitted to my host, sitting on the bluer of the two chairs.

“Yes?” he answered, standing near enough to seem a part of the conversation and far enough to distinguish me as an Other.

“I saw a bird. A big one.”

“I will tell the maid.”

“No. Outside. I saw a big bird outside my room.”

“Yes. It has flown away.”

I was losing him. “No. It was really big. It was a really big bird like, from here to here.” I tried to stretch out my arms to show him but quickly realized I lacked the length for that so I moved some furniture. “Here to here.”

“Oh. Yes. That big.”

“Do you know what it might have been?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

He shrugged. He didn’t know the name. Or he didn’t know what it was. Or he didn’t understand what I was saying.

“Do you know what a dinosaur is?”

“Yes.” Translation: obviously.

 “Have you ever heard of a pterodactyl?”

“Yes.” Translation: I’m not dumb.

“You know what it is? A pterodactyl?”

“Yes. It is dinosaur.”

“It looked like that.”

“Yes,” he agreed, happy to offer me the information I wanted, “That was it.”

“A pterodactyl?”

“Yes, a… what is the word?”

“Pterodactyl.”

“Pterodactyl, yes.”

“Have you seen one before?”

“Yes.” Of course I have.

“Often?”

“Yes.” Not too often, but often enough.

“Here?”

“Yes.” Well, not here exactly, but nearby. “You will go into the forest. Look for Dian. You will see him and he will show you. He knows all the forest.”

I did just that. I hopped on my bike and coasted down the hill towards the line of jungle.

After ten minutes riding, I met my first gatekeeper.

You may not know this about me, especially if you know me personally, because I used to be the queen of the animals, but I don’t really like monkeys.

I like monkeys, but only if they are in trees or on the other side of a moat. When they’re sitting in the middle of the road, blocking my path with their ridiculously large balls and dagger teeth, I don’t like them.

The feeling is mutual.

I skidded to a stop in front of the alpha male, who greeted me with a customary teeth bearing while his harem circled around. Gripping the handlebars tightly (for if I was going down in a monkey fight I was taking some of these monkeys down with the bike), I let one foot come softly to the road. My eyes stayed on the ground in front of the alpha. Okay, fine, my eyes were on his balls. How could they not be? The point being that I did not make eye-contact with the monkey. I did not look him in the face, but I said to him, in my loudest person-voice, “Move.”

He showed his teeth again. One of his women chattered.

“Move, asshole monkey.”

He stood on all fours and took a couple steps towards me.

“I hate you. Don’t you bite me.”

Getting back on the bike, I rolled slowly into the mob. The locals moved through monkeys like fish through water, but I never gained that graceful stride; I never learned the monkey-walk dance.

As I rolled through the monkeys, several of them hit me, moving in fast to take a swing and then darting away. Just like in school, I ignored the harassment. The years of practice pretending not to notice bullies were put to work here in Indonesia. Good thing for that. If my instincts had run the other way, if I’d been taught to fight back, if I’d told the monkey jerks to step up yo, you’d be reading the tooth holes in my bones instead of this story.

On the other side of the monkeys, I rewarded myself with another cup of coffee. I kept my eyes pointed up as I drank, searching for signs of forgotten reptiles.

Fortified with caffeine for the journey ahead, I got back on the bike and continued down the road towards the Great Valley.

Read the second part of the story, Indonesia: Getting Closer.