The Andes were an awesome sight as the earth spun on its axis bring the current location away from the sun.
Darius rested on the balcony overlooking a dense copse of forest. The colored yellows, pinks and purples as the wavelengths of light had to stretch farther to greet this particular patch of earth were intense. It all looked rather like an oil painting masterpiece that the ‘happy trees’ guy with the big Afro had done. He tried to burn it into his memory as he felt that snapping a picture, even with billions of pixels, would somehow taint and pervert the picture and not capture the real essence of the scene. The birds were silent as dusk fell but there was unseen but heard movement in or under the brush. He rested his feet on the rail of the balcony and tipped his cowboy hat - not that he was in any sense of the word a ‘cowboy’, albeit the ruggedness and elevation of endurance the journey he is currently on had brought him, he just found it the most practical, being a full brim, source of covering for his bald head and rather weak constitution in the face of unadulterated sun, not to mention the all sorts of creepy crawlies he suspected were everywhere in these climes - forward over his eyes and rested. And listened until the dregs of sleep were upon him and taking him, distorting that thin barrier between waking and sleep. Between consciousness and that magical place where all dreams are nascent and half formed silhouettes of what reality could and perhaps should be; what will be if of course you’re not harangued, belittled and made to feel guilty about your existence and consequently unable to have the time and to be sure what you want to do; who you really want to be. And usually no matter how vivid the dream; its real meaning is lost behind thick layers of veils.
Just as he was getting to the real deep part of sleep, Darius was awakened by what he thought was a tiger’s loud roar. He opened his eyes, sat up and looked around the dark, starlit night. His eyes scanning left, right and down. All was still except for the wind rustling the leaves through the trees. He saw the Sherpas resting down below on their makeshift cots; off the ground, of course. Anybody with any shred of intelligence knows that sleeping on the ground in such places is anathema to health and longevity. It was a good rule to go by but it was a must in places like these. Why they hadn’t gotten a room like Darius, he didn’t know. Perhaps $700 a night was out of their economic means but he sure wasn’t going to pay for it for them.
Darius got up, and realizing there were no wild tigers indigenous to this part of the world and he hadn’t heard about any escaping from any zoos and even if he had they were too far away to have any tigers around here anyway, and wondered at what the noise might have been that disturbed only him.
He looked up at the sky for the first time since arriving in Peru. All the stars looked more luminous than he ever remembered seeing them before. Darius attributed this to there being virtually no light pollution. The stars also looked odd and foreign, like nothing he had ever seen before. He stood looking at them and pondered. Did he somehow slip into another dimension or universe? Was he hallucinating? Was he even awake? He was pretty sure he was but still the sky, though brilliant and mesmerizing, just didn’t look the same.
Just to prove he was awake, Darius rolled a nice fat, dank duBois. He had never smoked in a dream. Lighting it and inhaling deeply, he held the smoke in his lungs for a long time. He sat back on the reclined seat and exhaled and looked up. It hit him then, the differences he noticed in the stars. This was the southern hemisphere and so off course there’s a whole different night sky than he’d ever seen before. Crazy. ‘Darius the dumb ass,” he half thought and half mumbled out loud.
Satisfied that he had figured it out, he was getting up again. As he set his feet on the ground he became light-headed. What a lightweight. After only one draw on the good ol’ Hope he was pretty near wasted. He attributed it to its high quality and the fact that it was his first draw since the day before he found the tape and realized Pox had somehow got herself stuck in it 10 days ago. So 11 whole days without Hope. The frantic pace of everything from the time he found the tape lying in Pox’s empty living room, realizing poor missing Pox had somehow gotten herself stuck in it, researching via internet , telephone and previous investigations, setting up travel arrangements, to flying here and then making the sojourn through the Andes to here he hadn’t really had time to think about Mr. Hope at all. Then, of course, there was the inherent paranoia and unsureness of any and all substantial trips that everyone has after reaching a certain age.
He had watched IJ 8 a couple months before that and hadn’t told Pox about it. He wasn’t quite sure why, them being pretty much inseparable partners and all but he didn’t.
The tape didn’t have anything but the slightest draw on him, despite the rumors. Seven hadn’t either. It was weird. Darius would’ve liked to think it was his strong mental capacity but as with everything else he could never be 100% sure. Whether it was his youth with no reinforcement that contributed to anything even close to what would be called self-esteem, or the fact that in some circles he was known as Special K (not ketamine thank you very much) or the Crip (no gang affiliation intended), he couldn’t tell. He was just glad that something that would so heavily influence and control others had no effect on him.
So finally understanding that it wasn’t striped uber cats that had awakened him from his slumber and realizing that the night sky he was looking at was the southern hemisphere’s heaven, he was ready to turn in. He looked down and there was the tape on the ground. He picked it up and looked at it. How did it get on the ground? He was sure he had placed it right next to him when he sat down earlier. Was it Pox’s voice that had aroused him? Darius wasn’t sure, but what else could it be? He thought he heard a muffled voice coming from it but really couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his own sleep and MJ addled brain messing with him. He started flipping the tape over and over in his hands. Pox was silent.
‘Don’t worry Pox. It’s 2am local time and we won’t get on the road until about 8am but you’ve been next to me this whole time. I promise I won’t leave you until I get you out, even if I have to come in there myself and rip you out. Now I need to get some sleep. We still have a long way to go. Good night, Pox.’
Darius opened the French-style doors, glided out of all his clothes in the dark and slipped under the covers of the ultra comfortable king-sized bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.
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