Chapter 7: Part 5: Brother and sister

PART 5

Brother and sister

Pediluvium

BARRY: Where am I?

UNKNOWN: Oh hello, Papoose.

BARRY: Hello? Who is that? Where am i? Are you a Mrai Moumou??

UNKNOWN: The aliens from the United States? No, I am not a Mrai Moumou. Calm down, Papoose.

BARRY: Oh shit, oh shit, am I dead?

UNKNOWN: You sincerely believe that in the kingdom of Death, the United States are referred to as the United States?

BARRY: What should they be referred to?

UNKNOWN: Turtle land. Only a part of it.

BARRY: I am not scared of you.

UNKNOWN: I know that. That’s a good thing because I present no danger to you.

BARRY: You… must be Eugenie’s sleep paralysis monster.

UNKNOWN: I’ve been called many things, but never a sleep paralysis monster.

BARRY: Then why can’t I see anything? Why can’t I move?

UNKNOWN: Boy, I had to restrain you because you were thrashing in your slumber, and moving is not good for you at the moment. I will release you if you promise to be still.

BARRY: I promise.

UNKNOWN: You’ll have to calm down first. Your heart is on fire. Your skin is on fire.

BARRY: It’s not, bu bu but I believe you, you are no danger and I am already very calm. Now, release me.

UNKNOWN; You’re just going to run out and hurt yourself more than you already have.

BARRY: I promise that I won’t.

UNKNOWN: Let me give you some water. We’ll see after that.

BARRY: Don’t come near—

UNKNOWN: Just drink.

BARRY: Thank you. It tastes good actually.

UNKNOWN: You should have more faith in the voice you hear in the dark.

BARRY: Why can’t I see anything?

UNKNOWN: You were stung by a swarm of bees, on your face. They really did a number on your eyes, but you will heal nicely, don’t worry.

BARRY: Oh my God, I remember those bees.

UNKNOWN: Stop pulling on your ropes, little Papoose.

BARRY: What’s on my eyes? It’s wet.

UNKNOWN: A headband with some mud and some maple syrup. Don’t concern yourself, you will shortly recover your sight.

BARRY: It’s wet and cold and it’s—

UNKNOWN: You have a very strong fever at the moment. This is meant to relieve your eyes and also cool your burning head.

BARRY: It feels heavy.

UNKNOWN: Some people come to our lodges for that kind of ointment, like a spa, they actually pay some money for that. 

BARRY: Your lodges…. You’re a human?

UNKNOWN: Definitely a better guess than sleep paralysis monster, although I used to have sleep paralysis myself as a papoose.

BARRY: You’re not with the Mrai Moumous?

UNKNOWN: I didn’t know that humans associated with Mrai Moumous. Damn Americans, they are so easy to corrupt.

BARRY: I don’t know I’m just—Sorry… Sir.

UNKNOWN: My name is Claudios Ventura Vent Sauvage.

BARRY: Okay. Mr Ventura.

UNKNOWN: Claudios.

BARRY: Claudios.

CLAUDIOS: Don’t look so weirded out, young man. What’s your name?

BARRY: And for what absurd reason would I share my name with a total stranger that I cannot even see?

CLAUDIOS: Because I have already had a look at your identity papers.

BARRY: How—

CLAUDIOS: They were on you when you were found, almost dead from being stung by bees.

BARRY: Jesus.

CLAUDIOS: So?

BARRY: I am Barry. Barry Masquevert.

CLAUDIOS: You also have a French name, that’s peculiar.

BARRY: Yes, the roots of my family are…

CLAUDIOS: Speak without fear! Stories are meant to be exchanged.

BARRY: They’re from Quebec, my old relatives. My father is the one who revived our name to Masquevert, because in Ind— in America, it had become Meskegeen.

CLAUDIOS: That’s an interesting tale. So you have come home, in a way, haven’t you?

BARRY: Am I in Quebec?

CLAUDIOS: You’re not far. Some three hours of driving, and there, you can visit your ancestors.

BARRY: So we are in Ontario, right?

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: Right?

CLAUDIOS: Sorry! I was nodding my head, I forgot that you cannot use your eyes.

BARRY: Jesus Christ.

CLAUDIOS: How many men wore the name Meskegeen before your father changed it back to its original form?

BARRY: I think it was just my great-great-grandfather, my great-grandfather and my grandfather.

CLAUDIOS: So your father is a seventh-generation man.

BARRY: My father is a Millennial, wait—I think he’s Gen X. Can you untie me, please?

CLAUDIOS: Barry Masquevert.

BARRY: Yes?

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: Sir?

CLAUDIOS: I want you to listen carefully. Even if you remove your mud mask from your eyes, you will not be able to open them, they are very swollen, your eyelids look like some blown up truffles. You can also try to run but you won’t get very far, your body is not well, you have some various infections and inflammations, and your fever is… elevated.  

BARRY: I promise that I won’t run.

CLAUDIOS: I need you to give me your word.

BARRY: I do feel like shit. I do feel sick. I won’t run, you have my word.

CLAUDIOS: So Barry. I’m not talking about Generation X, Y, Z or Millennial or whatever tidies your world into groups with cute names every thirteen years or so. Here you go—

BARRY: Thank you, for untying me.

CLAUDIOS: Don’t— don’t move!

BARRY: I just want to sit up a little higher.

CLAUDIOS: I’ll wait.

BARRY: Aiille, fuck.

CLAUDIOS: I’m just saying, if your father is the fourth after the three who wore the name Meskegeen. He emptied his bucket and changed things up. When his time on Earth is over, you will become that seventh generation man.

BARRY: Aiile, I’m not following at all. I told you that there were only three men before my father, and you’re saying… seventh generation? And what is that kind of talk anyw—

CLAUDIOS: Why don’t you sit up, as you endeavored, and then go on sitting, but motionless. And why don’t you listen?

BARRY: I’m trying to grab that drink of water but I can’t see.

CLAUDIOS; I recommend.. slow movements, careful movements, heere you go Barry.

BARRY: Jesus, I was thirsty.

CLAUDIOS: Do you agree to listen, now? There is not much more than you are able to do, in any case, in your current state.

BARRY: I’d like to know where my camper is.

CLAUDIOS: You are inside your camper right now.

BARRY: WHAT? And you are too?

CLAUDIOS: Yes, we located the keys in the pocket of your pants.

BARRY: You are intruding inside my camper!

CLAUDIOS: I can go away, if you prefer.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Barry, calm your heart. Calm your burned head.

BARRY: Don’t come close, please.

CLAUDIOS: I want you to take my hand, here, and feel it for a second. I was almost going to say, ‘close your eyes’

BARRY: I’m glad one of us is amused.

CLAUDIOS: Do you feel my hand? Focus on it, on the feeling of the skin.

BARRY: Rough skin.

CLAUDIOS: And your hand feels like the hand of a child. I’m guessing you don’t… use them for hard labor.

BARRY: For hard lab— Sir, Claudios. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me and my… labors.

CLAUDIOS: True. Now, what do you feel when you are holding my hand?

BARRY: I feel nothing.

CLAUDIOS: Concentrate more. Close your mind’s eye, rely on your senses.

BARRY: I feel.. you have warm hands.

CLAUDIOS: Barry Masquevert. I can leave you alone in your camper if you prefer. But I have chosen to stay for now and watch over you, because you are ill. However, it is your camper and you are free to ask me to retire from it.

BARRY: You said ‘we located your key’… Who’s we?

CLAUDIOS: My wife and I found you at the tree after the bees left you there. You are… in a weird shape. I want you to feel my hand, the warmth of it, and the weight of it, and calm the fuck down.

BARRY: Your wife?

CLAUDIOS: My spouse.

BARRY: Your spouse?

CLAUDIOS: The woman I married.

BARRY: Where is your wife now?

CLAUDIOS: She is at my house, but she will be back later, to have a look at you and make your acquaintance, if you accept it. I’m the idle one of my marriage. She had to go back and run a lot of errands, because she is a very hyperactive girl. Usually, women are water and men are fire but, in the case of my relationship with my wife, she is carrying all the fire.

BARRY: And you are more… like water?

CLAUDIOS: I am more like a smaller fire.

BARRY: What is your wife’s name?

CLAUDIOS: Lourdes.

BARRY: What time is it?

CLAUDIOS: Four o’clock in the afternoon.

BARRY: Is it cold here, or is it just me?

CLAUDIOS: No, it’s cold.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Do you have more questions?

BARRY: No, I guess that’s— Oh my God, where is Terence?

CLAUDIOS: A friend of yours?

BARRY: My… cat.

CLAUDIOS: Ah, your cat! Terence is a nice name! I didn’t know his official name, he doesn’t have a tag or anything on his collar, so I called him Kijik. He’s here now, sleeping like a little baby. 

BARRY: Kijik?

CLAUDIOS: It means cat.

BARRY: Very imaginative.

CLAUDIOS: He’s a deaf and half blind boy, but he has a gift, your old orange cat. Muchly. He can see things in the invisible world.

BARRY: People made fun of me because I once had a pet lizard and named him Barry. My friends said that I really didn’t have any imagination.

CLAUDIOS: Is imagination a must-have?

BARRY: I… don’t know.

CLAUDIOS: Is coming up with creative names the only way to show imagination?

BARRY: You are one of those guys who answers questions with questions.

CLAUDIOS: No. I’m just a teacher. I like to ask questions to provoke thoughts in my students.

BARRY: A teacher, oh hell.

CLAUDIOS: You don’t like teachers? 

BARRY: I am not your student, sir. Claudios. I’m not. 

CLAUDIOS: Well noted. Doesn’t like teachers.

BARRY: And Terence is safe?

CLAUDIOS: He’s doing much better than you. But don’t worry, you and your four-legged brother will soon be equally healthy.

BARRY: I was trying to find some wood to cook his fish when those bees assaulted me.

CLAUDIOS: Oh, I know that.

BARRY: Where is my fish?

CLAUDIOS: Some animal from the forest must have found it and stolen it away, because Lourdes and I didn’t see any fish around you. Just the fishing line.

BARRY: You know how long it took me to catch that fish?

CLAUDIOS: I’m guessing, with your apparent knowledge of nature and how you designed your fishing gear… a while. But I think  it’s better that the animal who stumbled upon you while you were unconscious at the foot of the tree ate your fish, and didn’t eat you. We have bears here, you know? Wolves, bobcats.

BARRY: I’m just trying to feed my cat.

CLAUDIOS: Lourdes and I gave him some cat food.

BARRY: Some cat food?

CLAUDIOS: You know, the kind from the supermarket. Have you ever heard of those? You don’t need to hunt everything you eat anymore, if you are in a hurry and your pet is hungry. Although it’s better to hunt or gather just the food you need, and to not purchase anything that has caused major suffering in some terrible factory farms where animals never see the sky and never feel grass under their feet, sometimes, grocery shopping is more convenient.

BARRY: I just… didn’t know where to find a supermarket. I’m not familiar with the area.

CLAUDIOS: Yes, I noticed that you don’t have Internet here. Or even a phone.

BARRY: Yes it’s just… me and Terence.

CLAUDIOS: But you have a map and a compass.

BARRY: I was in the process to learn how to use my compass, and my map too, but then, I was interrupted by those fu— Those bees!

CLAUDIOS: Those bees defended their tree. You should have checked for them before you threatened their home.

BARRY: I only wanted a few branches.

CLAUDIOS: Bees are known to bite.

BARRY: All of a sudden they were like… everywhere!

CLAUDIOS: Trees are sacred within the creation, they are your sacred brothers. Bees are your sacred sisters. You are expected to communicate with them to find out if what you are doing is right.

BARRY: You sound like one of those tree-huggers.

CLAUDIOS: I have hugged quite a number of trees in my life, I can’t deny it.

BARRY: Actually me too. When I got lost in the woods a couple days ago, I hugged a tree. It was honestly more helpful than I thought.

CLAUDIOS: You see?

BARRY: I must be crazy to be telling you all those things.

CLAUDIOS: You have a very acute fever. In any case, Lourdes and I stocked your cupboards with human food and cat food, from Walmart. 

BARRY: Thank you, that’s very generous.

CLAUDIOS: If you are hungry, I can make you something.

BARRY: N… not now, thank you. That’s very kind.  

CLAUDIOS: You’re going to have to eat, at some point, regain your strength.

BARRY: My stomach feels like it’s in a knot.

CLAUDIOS: I’m pretty sure that you’ve had some stressful days. Let me make you some tea, I will drop some sugar in it, at least, it’ll be better than nothing.

BARRY: O… kay.

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: You didn’t bring me to a doctor?

CLAUDIOS: No, Papoose.

BARRY: Why not?

CLAUDIOS: Do you prefer red fruit or ginger?

BARRY: Ginger. I guess.

CLAUDIOS: I am a doctor myself, you know.

BARRY: I thought you were a teacher.

CLAUDIOS: And according to you, a teacher cannot be a doctor too?

BARRY: That’s… funny I… tried to explain something similar to someone else in the past.

CLAUDIOS: I can’t hear you over the kettle, give me a second.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Here. Your tea. There’s some honey in it, too, to fight the bitterness. I’ll put it on your left side, you can reach for it in about five minutes, so you don’t burn your tongue on top of your other… health issues.

BARRY: You didn’t bring me to a hospital, you decided to take care of me, by yourself with your wife…

CLAUDIOS: You have a question in mind?

BARRY: Yes. I’m… intrigued.

CLAUDIOS: First of all, as I mentioned, I am a doctor, and my wife, my dear Lourdes, is well educated in medicine too. Second of all, Barry, driving around without phone and Internet, avoiding supermarkets, your camper parked behind a bunch of rocks, it doesn’t look like you are someone who is asking to be dropped off at some clinic.

BARRY: I… appreciate that.

CLAUDIOS: There isn’t a single weapon in your vehicle, not even a hammer. All your knives are dull-bladed. The sharpest thing you own is your fish hook.

BARRY: Yeah I guess I’m not… used to having to defend myself with weapons. Yet, I mean.

CLAUDIOS: What are you used to defending yourself with, if not weapons?

BARRY: Nothing I— it’s irrelevant.

CLAUDIOS: Anyway, seeing that, meaning you traveling alone and completely unarmed, trying to remain unnoticed, fucking with some trees like you have never been in a forest before, I didn’t feel like I needed to involve any authorities for my security.

BARRY: But you tied me to the bed.

CLAUDIOS: Because you were extremely jumpy in your sleep. I mean, people who catch a fever usually are a bit agitated but, in your case, you are a next-level dream explorer. And that’s some impressive stitching work that you have on your chest and back.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Barry, don’t trouble yourself. Lourdes and I won’t tell anyone. You can stay here in our care until you feel better. I had to close some of your wounds again, though, with some fresh threads, because they are all infected.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Imagine my astonishment, discovering that you don’t have any weapons in your motor-home. I would have thought you wished to protect yourself against some serious enemies, judging by your… state.

BARRY: Not really enemies. I was just in the… line of fire.

CLAUDIOS: More than once, based on some other… scarring on your abdomen.

BARRY: Are you from the police?

CLAUDIOS: I am not a police officer.

BARRY: How can I be sure?

CLAUDIOS: You can hold my hand again, listen to your heart.

BARRY: I don’t want to hold your hand, I would like to see your face! I’d like to see some ID!

CLAUDIOS: You can’t for now but, one day, if we become friends, you will see my face.

BARRY: Friends?

CLAUDIOS: Barry, control your breathing, you are throwing a fit for nothing. You are getting all worked up for nothing. I am not from law enforcement, and no one knows that you are here.

BARRY: WHAT IS THAT?

CLAUDIOS: It’s just Kijik, I mean… Terence. He wants to sit with you.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Breathe, Barry, breathe.

BARRY: Terence. I’m sorry my little friend. I’m here aaiille—

CLAUDIOS: Don’t let him climb on your chest!

BARRY: Fuuck. We are… v very close. We are all that’s left to each other.

CLAUDIOS: Is that so?

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: If you feel like crying, I would recommend letting it happen. It will help with your fever and the overall burden of your heart.

BARRY: I don’t feel like crying.

CLAUDIOS: It might sting your eyes though, but it’s worth it.

BARRY; I really don’t—

CLAUDIOS: I can give you a moment if you prefer—

BARRY: I said I don’t feel like crying. Terence, settle down, here, here. Anyway, Claudios. I really want to thank you for not alerting the police. And for taking care of me and making me some tea and giving me some supplied of food. I’m sorry I have trust issues, it’s just, without my power, I feel— I mean without my eyes, I feel so exposed and helpless.

CLAUDIOS: I understand.

BARRY: What’s that smell of mint or… I don’t know, grass?

CLAUDIOS: It’s not mint, it’s yarrow. We used yarrow leaves to make a poultice.

BARRY: A poulwhat?

CLAUDIOS: Like, a balm. That’s good for bleeding injuries and infections. Also for pain. A poultice, you’ve never heard that word?

BARRY: No, I’m sorry, I was never very good at school.

CLAUDIOS: it’s like… like some yogurt.

BARRY: So you spread some yogurt on me.

CLAUDIOS: Some yarrow yogurt, yes.

BARRY: Is that a drug?

CLAUDIOS: Yarrow? No, yarrow is a plant.

BARRY: You are an Ind— You are Native American!

CLAUDIOS: It took you long enough.

BARRY: When you say that you are a doctor, you mean—

CLAUDIOS: I am a medicine man. My wife is also a medicine woman but strongly on the healer side.

BARRY: That’s… actually very cool.

CLAUDIOS: You are not the only one with the trust issues towards the people who staff the institutions around here.

BARRY: That’s why you called me… Papoose.

CLAUDIOS: Your Papoose legs will be tired after trying to run after your brain and your brain is faster.

BARRY: Are we on a… reservation?

CLAUDIOS: Your camper is presently hiding in Caldwell First Nation Sacred Grounds. I am a shaman for the Uskansi Clan, a branch of the Objiwe Tribe, itself part of the Chippewa.

BARRY: I thought there were only Chippewa people in the United States.

CLAUDIOS: Oh, you’re going to be whitesplaining now?

BARRY: NO sir! I would.. I would never!

CLAUDIOS: Relax, Barry, I’m joking! But, to answer your question, actually, some borders, from colonizers, have separated at random the parts of what is simply Turtle Island.

BARRY: Turtle Island?

CLAUDIOS: North America.

BARRY: How do you say thank you in your language?

CLAUDIOS: Miigwesh.

BARRY: Miigwesh, then. A thousand times miigwesh. You know I have a little bit of pain, but not a lot. It’s really unusual. Its really wild!

CLAUDIOS: It’s the secret of the yarrow, especially when it comes to inflamed tissues.

BARRY: It’s amazing.

CLAUDIOS: So what happened to you?

BARRY: Am I obligated to tell you?

CLAUDIOS: You are not. I’m just curious, in case we do become friends. And since you have nowhere else to go, I have a feeling that we will. I’m just making conversation until my wife returns to us.

BARRY: And then what will happen?

CLAUDIOS: She will bring some vitamin C, just to give you a boost. It’s winter right now, we don’t have a lot of vitamin C available so she had to go to the pharma— Ah, you mean, what will happen eventually? It’s up to you Barry. Lourdes is driving her own camper. We could sleep here, stationed next to you, to guard you, or we could leave you alone.

BARRY: I… I don’t know. How far do you guys live?

CLAUDIOS: Some twenty minutes away. I had to find a good hiding spot for you. Spoiler alert this forest is not very big, it’s not like you’ve dropped yourself in the Apalachians or anything. There are a lot of runways and flyways through those woods. And swimways, too.

BARRY: Thanks a million.

CLAUDIOS: You seem well accustomed to thanksgiving.

BARRY: Sure. I think I’ll be alright, on my own.

CLAUDIOS: Ha! I doubt that but okay. So, are you keen to tell me how you ended up here with some bullet wounds?

BARRY: I was uh… shot multiple times, a month ago.

CLAUDIOS: Wow. I thought you were going to say, lawn-mowing freak accident.

BARRY: Don’t make fun of me, please, it’s been… difficult and frustrating and depressing and horrible.

CLAUDIOS: And prior to that, you were shot in the stomach, too.

BARRY: You don’t have to say it like that like I keep get—

CLAUDIOS: And some less expert hands treated you, then, seeing that the scar above your belly button looks like a scalpel was given to a five-year old in a candy rush.

BARRY: I don’t think I want to talk about this with you. 

CLAUDIOS: Are you a criminal?

BARRY: No!

CLAUDIOS: It’s my turn asking you some questions, now, Barry. You understand, I need to make sure I am confident about the person I’m harboring.

BARRY: I get that.

CLAUDIOS: Are you in trouble right now?

BARRY: Not anymore, thanks to you.

CLAUDIOS: With the law?

BARRY: Not… not in Canada. I suppose if I stay under the radar.

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: Are you nodding again?

CLAUDIOS: Yes! I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.. You made the crossing to Odawa with a pet, that’s not easy.

BARRY: Well, he has all the documentation, his rabies vaccinations, all that, and he is micro-chipped.

CLAUDIOS: Good for you. I have a good first impression about you, Barry, and so does Lourdes. You seem harmless and very isolated.

BARRY: Uugh, harmless and isolated.

CLAUDIOS: You are fleeing something from across the border, am I rigth?

BARRY: Flagrantly, yes.

CLAUDIOS: As a matter of fact, you are fleeing something that doesn’t have anything to do with your injuries, am I mistaken?

BARRY: You are not mistaken. I was just minding my own business, recovering nicely from this uh… incident, I mean, shooting and… something happened, I had to act fast and then… I had to run. I was still in the process of getting better.

CLAUDIOS: Like a clusterfuck.

BARRY: Yiiyes?

CLAUDIOS: Oh, you’re laughing too now! Good! We are switching the mood here, a little bit.  

BARRY: It’s just… I was searching for a word to describe all this and… you nailed it. Clusterfuck. Hey, I’ve never met a shaman before.

CLAUDIOS: I’ve never met someone who got shot before, especially so many times.

BARRY: I’m really trying not to get offended, right now.

CLAUDIOS: All my apologies, I have a bit of a dry humor. I aspire to brigthen your spirits and give you hope again, nothing more.

BARRY: Who said that I have lost hope?

CLAUDIOS: You haven’t found yourself in a state of hopelessness?

BARRY: I’m really doing my best to avoid it. If…

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: I mean if…

CLAUDIOS: …

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Why don’t you say what you wish to say, Papoose?

BARRY: If you so kindly offer your help, I will get better here, very quickly, and then, when the time is right, in the near future, I’ll be on my way.

CLAUDIOS: You mean to tell me that you have a plan?

BARRY: I have to go back to the St— Other side of that border that arbitrary cuts through the turtle world.

CLAUDIOS: It’s Turtle Island.

BARRY: Right, Turtle Island.

CLAUDIOS: Is your heart infused with some projects of revenge?

BARRY: Revenge! Hell no. Revenge is not my thing. No I… have to retrieve something there, when the time is right.

CLAUDIOS: The near future that you are talking about?

BARRY: I don’t know exactly when the time will be right.

CLAUDIOS: It could be weeks.

BARRY: It could actually be… even longer. But it doesn’t matter, I’m keeping my hopes up.

CLAUDIOS: That something you need to go back to the States to retrieve. Is that a woman?

BARRY: Claudios, I mean no disrespect, but I just met you, and I can’t even see your face right now. I can’t just… go ahead and divulge all my plan to you. It’s too important for me.

CLAUDIOS: Totally fair. But you should stay with us, at First Nation. Our people will teach you how to live in nature, avoid detection, stay cozy with your cat. We could teach you a thing or two in addition to that.

BARRY: Wow, just like that?

CLAUDIOS: If I had found you just passed out from the bees, I would have deemed you any typical specimen of the dumb American tourist crowd, and you’d be at a doctor’s office right now and I would have already forgotten about you. But seeing the rest of you and the state that you are in and… your empty camper, I think that it is compelling that I should be of assistance to you.

BARRY: So you are saying… Because I have been shot like a rabbit, like—

CLAUDIOS: Consider this your blessing in disguise.

BARRY: I’m speechless. It’s not the first time that this happens to me.

CLAUDIOS: The Papoose has stories!

BARRY: What are you expecting in return?

CLAUDIOS: I expect that you don’t burn my trees or chase the bees of my forest away from their hive.

BARRY: I didn’t chase them away, they att—

CLAUDIOS: You freaked the bees out.

BARRY: You sound just like Neyti— I mean, alright, alright, no more freaking bees out. I will never hurt any of your trees, I swear.

CLAUDIOS: I expect another thing, Barry.

BARRY: I’m listening.

CLAUDIOS: Before I announce that thing, you should have a sip of your tea. You are becoming very pale and tired.

BARRY: I don’t feel tired. And it’s not polite to comment on my whiteness.

CLAUDIOS: Papoose has humor too, I knew it.

BARRY: That tea is good. Thank you. Miguelesh.

CLAUDIOS: We will also teach you our tongue, but there is no rush. Anyway Barry, you should know something about me. You don’t become the shaman of a clan in our world just because you sit on the grass and study some herbs and you do an internship. I see things.

BARRY: And you see… me?

CLAUDIOS: What’s so funny? Why are you giggling?

BARRY: Nothing I’m— Oh my God, I’m so sorry. It just reminds me of a mov— You remind me of someone. Someone I love.

CLAUDIOS: Drink more tea, you need sugar in your system!

BARRY: Someone I love dearly.

CLAUDIOS: I know.

BARRY: You do?

CLAUDIOS: When I mentioned that I had a good feeling about you, it’s not just a gut feeling, it’s not just my intuition. Everything is connected, everywhere you look, I mean— Everywhere you will look when you recover your normal eyesight, everywhere you listen, everywhere you walk. Maybe, one day, you will see those connections for yourself. We have ways to educate you to see the invisible, the web under your feet, the network in the sky, the big strong and pumping heart of mother Earth. You can feel all this, if you open to it. It can heal you.

BARRY: You mean like magic mushrooms?

CLAUDIOS: I will ignore that comment for now. When I see you, I see the color blue, I see it all over you, dancing like the flames of a fire. I see some feeble strings of blue light or, at least, a residue of them. There used to be this light, in you, but now, it’s gone. However it’s still inhabiting you, the ghost of it.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: Have you ever heard of the Gitchi Manitou?

BARRY: The murders that happened in Iowa?

CLAUDIOS: Holl‘ly. Which murders are you alluding to? I’m not familiar.

BARRY: Hm. There were five teenagers playing the guitar at a campfire who were slaughtered by three killers, kids themselves, you’ve never heard of them?

CLAUDIOS: When did it take place?

BARRY: I think in the 70’s.

CLAUDIOS: I don’t recall. 

BARRY: I mean, one of the teenagers was spared, a girl, and the youngest of the gathering. The murderers even dropped that girl home that night so, of course, she told on them and they got arrested and are now spending the rest of their lives in prison. I have never understood the whys and hows of this case and its randomness.

CLAUDIOS: It’s scarier without a motive.

BARRY: I… remember that quote.

CLAUDIOS: Yes, my wife’s favorite film genre is horror.

BARRY: Regardless, this Gitchi Manitou This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and it fascinated me. And now, the site where those murders happened is now one of the most haunted places in Iowa.

CLAUDIOS: Confused spirits.

BARRY: Or they are pissed off.

CLAUDIOS: Enthralling. You don’t strike me as a true crime nut.

BARRY: Aha! There are things that your shamanic third eye doesn’t see!

CLAUDIOS: Whatever, boy. Anyway, Gitchi Manitou is our creator. The last thing he created is a man whose name is Nanabozo. After a great flood, he found himself drifting on the back of a massive turtle and he’s actually the guy who hired a bunch of animals to dive as deep as they could and reach the bottom of the sea to fetch some dirt, thinking that spreading the dirt on the shell of the turtle will create a new land on which to live and feed, and rebuild.

BARRY: A flood?

CLAUDIOS: Yes, cleansing floods show up here and there in all stories of how everything came to be, not just ours. Whatever the case, in the floating and barely-hanging-on situation and following the idea from Nanabozo, a walrus and a beaver made the brave descent to get to the bottom and rake up that dirt but it was too deep and they couldn’t hold their breaths long enough for that. Thirdly, a muskrat tried and drowned for it, but as he died, he brought the tiniest pinch of soil from the sea floor back to the surface, and that’s how the Americas were born.

BARRY: What a lazy ass bum, that Nanaz, Nabaz—

CLAUDIOS: Nanabozo.

BARRY: Yeah, why doesn’t he dive and get his own dirt?

CLAUDIOS: Within the creation, humans haven’t been equipped with enough lung capacity, nor webbed feet, nor the talent at swimming that walruses and beavers possess.

BARRY: Ah, of course, sorry.

CLAUDIOS: Everyone has their strengths and uses, in this world, and diving deep into the water isn’t a human one.

BARRY: I know he’s deaf and he can’t hear you but I’m pretty sure that Terence is purring right now.

CLAUDIOS: As I said, there is more than just what you can hear with your ears and see with your open eyes and smell with your nose.

BARRY: A secret web.

CLAUDIOS: It’s not secret. We have attempted to share this information with the White man before, but the White man has always refused to believe it. It’s the White man’s loss. He prefers all things scientific and Cartesian.

BARRY: And all things lucrative.

CLAUDIOS: Listen to yourself, already speaking like a real forest Papoose. Is your father alive?

BARRY: Alive? Yes.

CLAUDIOS: He should be proud of you.

BARRY: But we are estranged.

CLAUDIOS: And your mother?

BARRY: I’ve never met my mother, she left me and my father when I was born, but she was the one who named me Barry, before she bailed out.

CLAUDIOS: You know that Barack Obama’s nickname when he was a groovy universitarian was Barry?

BARRY: BARACK OBAMA?

CLAUDIOS: Yes, you don’t like him?

BARRY: I don’t hate him.

CLAUDIOS: So your mother gave you your first name and your father restored your last name. Fantastic!

BARRY: I’ll grant you that your enthusiasm about things is contagious.

CLAUDIOS: When I was talking about your father earlier, Barry Masquevert, being a seventh generation man, it has nothing to do with time periods or culture. It means that three men before your father had their way and he put an end to it. This novel way, you and the two following generations, your children to come and their children, will have a bucket that’s empty of the poisoned things that the three generations before your father carried with them. And when he leaves this Earth to merge with Gitchi Manitou again, your father will concede his seventh generation spot to you, to continue making space in that bucket, for better things.

BARRY: What if I don’t have children?

CLAUDIOS: You’re not grasping the crux, it’s an image. You think Jesus really did all those things with the wine and the water?

BARRY: You don’t believe in your own stories of creation?

CLAUDIOS: No I do. But you shouldn’t approach them with a lingering on the details, like the question of your own parenthood. Consider it a metaphor.

BARRY: So you do think that Jesus is the son of God and he walked on water?

CLAUDIOS: I don’t know, the story exists, so— I’m shrugging, for your information.

BARRY: Thank you for the didascalie.

CLAUDIOS: The point it, it means whatever estranged you from your father, or him from you, doesn’t have to end up in blame. To each man his bucket to empty. We are all doing our best on this planet, Barry.

BARRY: Don’t point your finger at me like a teacher, I wasn’t going to criticize my father! He did a pretty good job raising me, actually.

CLAUDIOS: You can see without your eyes as well!

BARRY: I’m hearing it in the tone of your voice, that you are pointing your finger at me.

CLAUDIOS: Your father is a teacher too?

BARRY: No.

CLAUDIOS: You are quite familiar with the ways of teachers. So much that you can assume my moves from my intonations.

BARRY: I’ve had a lot of teachers in my life.

CLAUDIOS: And I have had a lot of mailmen.

BARRY: I’m very… observant of teachers.

CLAUDIOS: And yet you don’t cherish them.

BARRY: It’s not important right now.

CLAUDIOS: I am pleased to hear that you don’t resent your father for whatever pushed you apart from each other.

BARRY: Still, I don’t follow your Nana... your narration.

CLAUDIOS: Ah, yes, I was almost going to forget that part! My old brain. It’s the best part, Barry. You remind me of Nanabozo. He has the reputation to be a trickster, always starving, always thirsty, always bouncing around, always getting in trouble. I don’t think you are comprehending when I say he was the last thing the creator sent down to Earth and he was a man, I don’t mean it in a bad way. He’s— how do you young people say it, nowadays? He’s just iconic.

BARRY: So not a bad man, but a troublemaker.

CLAUDIOS: Nanabozo is an individual with a lot of curiosity—

BARRY: And curiosity killed the cat, I get it, I get it.

CLAUDIOS: Not yet, Papoose. –a curious man, and a lot of people are fatigued by his constant high level of energy and his thirst for adventure, but he is also the most courageous of all. He’s the one who went to the Thunders to inform them that they were storming too hard and drenching the land excessively, and the Thunders listened to him. Everyone else was too scared to go to them just to have this nice discussion, but he had the cojones—Sorry, my wife is a Latina. I mean he had the courage that no one had.

BARRY: The thunders.

CLAUDIOS: Does that… resonate with you?

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: I’m still convinced that you should cry a good cry, mourn your mournings, grieve your grief.

BARRY: It’s not necessary.

CLAUDIOS: The reason why Nanabozo’s figure is so quintessential is because he just… he simply accomplished some great things. Valuable for the balance of life.

BARRY: What a pep talk.

CLAUDIOS: I think you and I are going to be friends. Not teacher and pupil, no, don’t be frightened, but friends. Because I am sure that you will also teach me many things. And I will help you with your mysterious plans, and you don’t even have to reveal them to me.

BARRY: And your people will agree that I stay with them, on their territory?

CLAUDIOS: Of course they will!

BARRY: That’s crazy.

CLAUDIOS: We are a very chill group of people.

BARRY: What if I end up not teaching you anything?

CLAUDIOS: It’s not a condition to my hospitality. I’ve listed what I expect from you before and there is nothing else. One dish, one spoon.

BARRY: One dish, one spoon?

CLAUDIOS: Or, like modern Americans say in their stup— I mean in their Kindergarten schools, ‘Sharing is Caring’

BARRY: I know someone who used to say those cringy things.

CLAUDIOS: I think you have lost your blue light and you have been separated from that someone you keep bringing up. And I’m pretty sure that, occasionally, the things I am telling you remind you of the movie Avatar, but you are too politically correct to say it.

BARRY: Oh Lord! I would NEVER—

CLAUDIOS: Don’t waste your breath, Barry, it’s no problem. It’s not a bad movie, I mean, neither is the Disney version of Pocahontas.

BARRY: They have a sequel too.

CLAUDIOS: I still need to watch that one, but alas, as I said, my wife is more into horror.  

BARRY: Man.

CLAUDIOS: I see that you are sad and that you are angry. I see a hole inside of you that hurts deeper than any bullet slicing through you. One thing about sadness, or anger, or anything negative really, is that they crash your home without your permission or even warning. They change your clothes, replace them with other clothes, they switch the food you eat, the colors you used to like, they tell you how to live your life, and they always come knocking on your door unannounced and, when you open the door, they don’t even have a little Hello to you, no greetings, no goodbye when they depart.

BARRY: Yikes.

CLAUDIOS: It’s terrible, it’s the condition of man. But if you are brave enough to engage with them, next time, and to tell them that they are welcome to visit anytime but that they have to follow your rules, they will respect you, because you stood up to them. And in turn, you will tell those negative emotions of the heart that you respect them, because you see how powerful they are.

BARRY: …

CLAUDIOS: You can have these dark things ring your bell and share a good hangout and a good cup of coffee, and then, remind them that it is time to leave.

BARRY: I feel dizzy.

CLAUDIOS: I’m horrified, I have been talking your ear out. You must be exhausted. Please, tell me a story of yours.

BARRY: A story?

CLAUDIOS: That doesn’t involve shootings and other dramatic events, something cheerful.

BARRY: Something cheerful like, on the top of my head?

CLAUDIOS: Tell me the story of how you got this cat.

BARRY: Terence? He’s not my cat, actually, I rescued him from someone who… couldn’t take care of him anymore.

CLAUDIOS: All the same.

BARRY: If I understand well, his previous adopter picked him when he was already an adult cat, at the Humane Society. She— I mean this person said that the shelter put him in an adoption box, charged ninety dollars and they were on their way. It was my friend’s first time having a pet of their own. They didn’t dare opening the box during the car ride but, once they freed the kitty at home, he had been so scared that he had pooped in the box.

CLAUDIOS: Can you imagine, being dropped inside a box, deposited on a car seat and drive for an undetermined amount of time, not knowing what’s next?

BARRY: My point exactly.

CLAUDIOS: So what happened next?

BARRY: The first thing Terence did when he entered his new place was hide under the bed so my friend let him do that, didn’t force him to come out, just prepared his food and water, left a trail of treats. After an hour or so he finally emerged and started watching some birds through the window. At the beginning, my friend could only approach him if he was sitting on a specific bean bag of the living room, that’s the place where Terence felt safe. I couldn’t take the bean bag with me in our escape but I cut a piece of the fabric of it, and it’s inside one of the closets.

CLAUDIOS: I saw it, it really stinks.

BARRY: I… didn’t have time to put it in the wash.

CLAUDIOS: But you did well. 

BARRY: Yeah.

CLAUDIOS: Was Terence already deaf when your friend adopted him?

BARRY: No, he just lost his sense of hearing with age but, wouldn’t you know it, his life seems more tranquil now that he doesn’t jump at the first bang in the street, and he even lets us vacuum around him now that he cannot hear that scary sound anymore.

CLAUDIOS: Us?

BARRY: I mean people.

CLAUDIOS: I feel like he is also a clairvoyant cat.

BARRY: Do you talk to animals?

CLAUDIOS: Of course I do.

BARRY: Right, right.

CLAUDIOS: You should sleep, Barry, you should get some rest and visit the land of dreams. And then when you wake up, I will be here.

BARRY: That’s creepy.

CLAUDIOS: Fine, I will go outside during your nap. But when you wake up, you will see. All the things we said to each other on this first encounter of ours, they will have entered into you. You will feel refreshed, you will feel more inspired. Maybe your fever will have evaporated. Maybe you will even let me or Lourdes fix you a snack, provide some sustenance to you.

BARRY: Or perhaps I’m dreaming you now, and you are not real.

CLAUDIOS: That’s always a possibility.

The truth about Eugenie

EUGENIE: Where am I?

UNKNOWN: You know I had some thoughts before, that the opposite thing would happen.

EUGENIE: Oh my god, am I fucking dead?

UNKNOWN: Sometimes I’m just doing my thing and then I have the feeling that I might open my eyes and

wake up from a coma in a strange bed, and that all my life was it, an oniric coma. People in the room are like ‘heey, welcome back!’ and I actually know all of them. They have names and everything, and I know their names.

EUGENIE: Is this a radio station? Can you hear me?

UNKNOWN: Yes, I can hear you, I just wanted to mess with you.

EUGENIE: First of all, what the fuck are you talking about and who are you? Second of all, is this Mauna Kea?

UNKNOWN: You are a good Geography teacher.

EUGENIE: I must be dead. I mean just the name Mauna Kea, ‘White Mountain’ I must be dead. Oh shit, shit, shit!

UNKNOWN: Speaking of white mountain, have you ever had that sensation, that you could blink and

emerge from a drug-induced state, a bong in your hand and like, your friends are all around you and they’re asking you, ‘how was it?’

EUGENIE: I am in Hawaii.

UNKNOWN: Yes you are in Hawaii and you are not dead. You are not alive either.

EUGENIE: I am in a coma.

UNKNOWN: Wrong, too, sorry. Again, how surprising, if I had had to bet, I would have said I had would have made the journey to you and not you to me.

EUGENIE: You live in Hawaii, and yet I cannot see you, it’s like you are speaking inside my head like Morm—

UNKNOWN: I don’t live in Hawaii, it’s just a magical place. I thought it would be appropriate.

EUGENIE: I mean it is breathtaking, especially with the observatory domes all scattered around here at the top of the volcano.

UNKNOWN: Are you afraid?

EUGENIE: No. Not yet.

UNKNOWN: The air you can breathe from up here, it’s unreal. So pure. So clean.

EUGENIE: Yes.

UNKNOWN: You can breathe?

EUGENIE: Of course I can breathe, what kind of a question is that?

UNKNOWN: I am asking you that out of honest interest, because you are not real.

EUGENIE: I knew you would say something like that. Are you my sleep paralysis monster?

UNKNOWN: I am n— you’re not supposed to have a sleep paralysis monster! You’re not supposed to have things that I didn’t give you.

EUGENIE: I was sure you’d say that too. What things?

UNKNOWN: Like memories of your own.

EUGENIE: First of all, why Mauna Kea, why Hawaii? Second of all, who are you? And thirdly, lady, I have many memories.

UNKNOWN: Ah yes?

EUGENIE: I have childhood memories.

UNKNOWN: Like what?

EUGENIE: I can’t… retrieve them right now, it must be the coma, everything is a blur. But i have memories of my marriage.

UNKNOWN: I really doubt that.

EUGENIE: It makes you giggle, to see me struggle?

UNKNOWN: NO! I apologize if I seem amused. I’m not that kind of person who laughs at others in distress.

EUGENIE: I just have to take your word for it.

UNKNOWN: Taking my word for it is going to have to be a pattern in this conversation.

EUGENIE: Because you are certain that there is going to be a conversation?

UNKNOWN: I mean, what will you do? Walk off?

EUGENIE: Yes, get down this volcano, reach a village, tell people, borrow a phone.

UNKNOWN: Eugenie this is my world. There are no people here.

EUGENIE: Unsurprisingly.

UNKNOWN: I just want to talk.

EUGENIE: I have… wait, I have a memory of sitting in a field and seeing this giant bull, he was two meters high.

UNKNOWN: That’s huge.

EUGENIE: As massive as a small basketball player. We made eye contact and he walked to me in the grass, slowly, calmly. I was a little afraid of his size, but he was kind, he nudged me with his wet nose, bumped against my face, he smelled earthy and of hay and pasture and Spring.

UNKNOWN: So beautiful.

EUGENIE: Are you yawning?

UNKNOWN: No! Are you trying to say, that you have memory of that cow?

EUGENIE: No, it was a bull. That’s an important distinction to make, because people are not—

UNKNOWN: … are not used to seeing male cows—

EUGENIE: … having reached their full height because—

UNKNOWN: … usually in the dairy industry, they are killed for veal before adulthood.

EUGENIE: Usually, yes. Sinister.

UNKNOWN: Still, you never wonder why you still eat meat and drink coffee with cream after having met Tim?

EUGENIE: Who’s Tim?

UNKNOWN: Tim is that bull you encountered in your field.

EUGENIE: You’ve been there too? You know him personally??

UNKNOWN: Tim’s passed now. He died at twelve years old of a genetic condition caused by the merciless machine of milk-making for human milk consumption. His best friend Abby and some caretakers watched him one last night before he expired.

EUGENIE: That bull is dead? Hold on, that bull that I saw in the field is dead?

UNKNOWN: At least he had known only peace and respect all his life.

EUGENIE: The bull is dead but I am not.

UNKNOWN: He lives on as a symbol.

EUGENIE: Of what?

UNKNOWN: A symbol of why you never questioned how that memory of yours is so pleasant but it didn’t stop you from eating Tim’s parents and brothers and sisters and—

EUGENIE: Ugh, you’re one of those preaching vegans.

UNKNOWN: Preaching compassion.

EUGENIE: What is your name?

UNKNOWN: My name is Rider.

EUGENIE: Like a bicycle rider.

RIDER: Except it’s spelled Rider with a Y.

EUGENIE: And you are female.

RYDER: I don’t think Ryder is a name that’s been assigned a gender. I am a woman yes. My pronouns are she, her.

EUGENIE: I have memories of the whales.

RYDER: I gave you that memory because I had watched The Big Blue when it was remastered and showed at the cinema, and I was thinking about the ending a lot. I thought it was a pretty nice way to die, to follow some dolphins when everything had been said and done, to go into the darkness of the water.

EUGENIE: I have never heard of this movie. You are Ryder with a Y and with obscure movie tastes.

RYDER: I don’t think so, you see, that movie is pretty well-known where I come from.

EUGENIE: Europe?

RYDER: I’m certainly not from Hawaii.

EUGENIE: Why Mauna Kea?

RYDER: You pointed out the telescopes here. And the enchanting name of the place. I had some dreams of where the land meets the sky, where things become a bog, a goo, I dreamed of the dreamlike state of this location in particular. When I was younger, my biggest wish used to be to go to space. I meant to pass this one on to you but never managed to squeeze it in your char—your self. Are you yawning?

EUGENIE: Yes ‘cause I’m bored ‘cause it’s like, everyone’s biggest wish, to go to space.

RYDER: I don’t care if that’s everyone’s biggest wish, why wouldn’t it be? It’s an awesome wish, isn't it?

EUGENIE: I’ve never had that fascination myself.

RYDER: Indeed.

EUGENIE: You don’t have it anymore?

RYDER: Why are you asking that?

EUGENIE: You just said ‘I used to dream to go to space’

RYDER: Well, I’m too old now, and I’m out of shape. I smoke too much, no one will send me to space, I think.

EUGENIE: Good thinking.

RYDER: But back when I was a child, I dreamed it with such excitement I thought, even if I qualify far enough to be seated inside the rocket ship and it explodes at takeoff like the Challenger shuttle, I’ll be happy, I’ll be in the place of my dream, I’ll die happy.

EUGENIE: You are Ryder with a Y and with a death wish. The dolphins sucking you in at the bottom of the sea… now this.

RYDER: And you… you should hold your horses, you don’t know me.

EUGENIE: Ryder, or whoever you are, that makes no sense. On one end you have the option to die of old age in space, having fulfilled your dream, and on the other end, the alternative of dying at the birth of it, at the opening credits of it, at some what-the-fuck prologue that’s not your dream, and you’d pick the latter? I am asking you again, am I dead?

RYDER: Eugenie you are not dead, you don’t exist. Sorry to be blunt, but I made you up just because I needed a sidekick for Barry, that’s the only reason.

EUGENIE: You are my sleep paralysis monster.

RYDER: And you are not listening.

EUGENIE: My sleep paralysis monster visited me.

RYDER: If it is important to you to try to convince me that I am your sleep paralysis monster, go ahead.

EUGENIE: He was skinny, skeletal even, crawled on the floor of the bedroom like a giant grass hopper, stared at me, you know, how sleep paralysis creatures are.

RYDER: I genuinely don’t.

EUGENIE: They are reported all over the world and pretty much fit the same description: as tall as a wall, looking extremely thin and bony, having to bend at the ceiling, walking a choppy walk. They resemble a black stick with no discernible face, elongated limbs, fingers like knives. They wear their hair chest-length and sometimes, if they climb on top of you while you are lying on your back, you can feel their damp and sticky hair brushing against your cheeks.

RYDER: Christ.

EUGENIE: My monster was that frightening, especially when I felt the bed caving in behind me the first time he came over. I couldn’t move a muscle and I was shitting my pants. And especially when he would crouch at the foot of the bed and watch me. It’s not like he had eyes, no, he had the faintest, shakiest little white dots in the middle of all the blackness.

RYDER: I would shit my pants too.

EUGENIE: But the last time he came to me, the vibe was different. He spoke to me in a scary way just like you are speaking right now, however, he meant well, he gave me a friendly warning.

RYDER: When you think about it, Tim the Bull could have killed you, trampled you, with his strength, his size. But you forced yourself to hide your fear from him and just faced him like three meters away from him opening your arms in a hug invitation and he stared back at you, almost like he nodded, and walked to you and into the hug with no after thought, because since he was rescued at such a young age as a Holstein calf, and had known nothing else but kindness and respect in his sanctuary, he couldn’t take you for a foe, ever. And he gifted you a connection of the instant that was so simple but so deep, with his big wet nose and, so pure that, sometimes, when you go through some shit, you conjure that memory back to your heart, to comfort yourself.

EUGENIE: You saw it too.

RYDER: Eugenie, I was there.

EUGENIE: We have the same memory.

RYDER: Fast computation doesn’t seem to be your forte! Or you indulge in denial, that’s also possible.

EUGENIE: Hold on, all… all I hear from you is death death death.

RYDER: Sorry, you were correct after all. I do have this tendency.

EUGENIE: You’d have this tendency enough to actually place a time bomb inside the rocket that’s supposed to take you to the space of your biggest wishes, perhaps.

RYDER: Oh my god, sh— I would not. But in a way… what would I do after I achieve my space endeavor? Chase another one?

EUGENIE: What did you say about Barry?

RYDER: I made him up. I made you up.

EUGENIE: When?

RYDER: Twenty years ago, a long time ago. Barry was younger then, I mean… he stayed younger. He was fashioned after the impression left on me by a boy I met on a roller coaster in Florida. That boy, I don’t even recall his name, had some crazy energy, he was all over the place. I didn’t speak very good English back then.

EUGENIE: English is not your native language.

RYDER: No, you should have heard me, when I learned English, I sounded terrible. I mean my accent was enough to make your ears bleed. But after Florida, when I went back home, I missed him. I dreamed of seeing that boy again, with all that wacky energy, he was magnetic. He had kind of inspired me.

EUGENIE: You dream of going to space and seeing a Florida boy again.

RYDER: Why wouldn’t dreams be ‘a mix between extraordinary and ordinary’? I saw that sentence in the underground tunnels of my town, it was the line on a poster for a Magritte art exhibit.

EUGENIE: Magritte just… give me a second. Magritte. So you are… Belgian.

RYDER: I’m certainly not from Scandinavia.

EUGENIE: Is Ryder your real name?

RYDER: Real, not real… We are passed that, now, I think.

EUGENIE: You just said that I wasn’t real.

RYDER: That’s been my opinion but.. who knows, presently.

EUGENIE: Ryder isn’t your real name.

RYDER: You don’t want to know who I truly am.

EUGENIE: I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t know, I’d like to leave.

RYDER: Are you getting scared?

EUGENIE: A little bit.

RYDER: Eugenie, since you told me that you are able to breathe, breathe. In aborigine folklore, people think the real world is the one in the dreams, and the delulu one is the one you live when you are awake.

EUGENIE: Yeah yeah yeah I know. Wow so profound.

RYDER: You become a bit of a bully when you are spooked.

EUGENIE: No, it’s just, cliché, to say something like that.

RYDER: A cliché thing doesn’t mean that the thing is complete nonsense.

EUGENIE: Right. You sound just like Barry.

RYDER: Gee, I wonder why. Anywho, the universe either doesn’t differentiate between what you desire and what you are scared of, it’s just the energy you’re putting out there that matters.

EUGENIE: The univ— yadda yadda, yeah, worshiping the problem, I’ve heard of that too.

RYDER: And visions you have during sleep paralysis are just due to the uh… fact that your brain is aware that it is dreaming while you are in a… wait, a waking state—

EUGENIE: Are you reading from Google or something??

RYDER: Yes, I’m on Wikipedia. Therefore, out of concern, during sleep paralysis, your brain works hard to uh… to block your body from—

EUGNIE: Wikipedia! You know anyone can post information to that website, don’t you? You know how unreliable it—

RYDER: It’s an overview, nothing more, take it easy. Soo, out of blabla concern blabla your brain works hard to block your body from moving because the brain doesn’t want the body to act out of following the actions you’re dreaming of. Here. Pretty well explained.

EUGENIE: Something that Barry doesn’t have.

RYDER: Doesn’t have what?

EUGENIE: He doesn’t feel the presence of danger, his brain doesn’t go into paralysis when there is danger around. If you made him, why did you make him this way?

RYDER: He has always been this way but he… let’s say you weren’t always like this and Barry was always like this.

EUGENIE: You are talking about arcs.

RYDER: No I’m talking about writing you first, in a different way. Barry was a bit different too back then, but his core was the same. You didn’t have that much of an age gap with him though, in those early days. You and Barry… I don’t want to tell you about my first versions of you.

EUGENIE: Let me guess, you were going to say that initially, Barry and I used to be wizards in a wizard school.

RYDER: Funny.

EUGENIE: Or that he was a vampire and I was a vampire slayer in California.

RYDER: LOL

EUGENIE: Or that we were from District Twelve or something and had to participate in some… annual games.

RYDER: I get it, you work with teenagers.

EUGENIE: And you don’t?

RYDER: I am not a high school teacher, no, only you are.

EUGENIE: Alright, alright, don’t say a word about your profession.

RYDER: When I began writing, you and Barry… were siblings.

EUGENIE: Are you fucking serious?

RYDER: I don’t think I can explain to you.

EUGENIE: Siblings from the same parents?

RYDER: No. Adopted.

EUGENIE: I’m curious as to why.

RYDER: Because, I don’t know if you have perceived it sometimes when you meditate about things or when grace miraculously touches you, but i want Barry and you to be each other’s everything.

EUGENIE: I’m going to try to forget that I heard that.

RYDER: Good idea.

EUGENIE: Regardless, I know what I remember and those are not hallucinations. My sleep paralysis monster gave me a warning. It was the last of his visits, after which he disappeared forever. He sat next to me and gripped me rigidly, didn’t let me move, didn’t let me turn my head. I was accustomed to the stiffness but not to his actual cold hard hands imprisoning me against movement. His face split up next to my cheek and the heat coming out of this black hole, I was seeing it at the corner of my eye— HEY are you listening?

RYDER: Actually yes.

EUGENIE: The breath from his mouth made the air shimmer. The sounds coming out of there were like muffled screams and white noise, like when you open the window of a car on a fast highway.

RYDER: And what did he say to you?

EUGENIE: He said ‘watch out’

RYDER: ‘Watch out’

EUGENIE: I gathered all my courage to ask him what he wanted, and that’s what he replied: ‘Bad, very bad’ And the number four.

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: The number four or, wait, the color yellow, I’m not sure. Man, I used to have pristine memories, be a memory freak! Now it’s all mixed up. But my monster said something was coming.

RYDER: A lot of people think that.

EUGENIE: You think that.

RYDER: I hoped and dreamed something was coming, yes, I prayed that the world would end, that Mauna Kea’s crater would open like the mouth of your night monster, and explode, yes.

EUGENIE: Well, Mauna Kea is an active volcano.

RYDER: High school second year of Geography. K?lauea volcano is the one who woke up, though, in my time period. Sadly, K?lauea is a tiny player.

EUGENIE: The Yellowstone super volcano would be a better choice, when it comes to sizes of players, to fit your fantasy.

RYDER: Don’t say that word, fantasy.

EUGENIE: Our time periods… Our time periods are not the same?

RYDER: I don’t know Eugenie, at this point I don’t know.

EUGENIE: Why did you name this… character, Eugenie?

RYDER: You mean you?

EUGENIE: I don’t want it to mean me. I don’t think you are more or less real than any sleep paralysis monster of mine, I don’t think my memories have been planted in my head either. I’m assuming you are something people see in between life and the afterlife, when they’re in a coma, and that’s why my brain feels like fried eggs.

RYDER: Are you aware that to produce eggs, male chicks born out of eggs laid by chicken are ground alive on the first day of their existence? Discarded like a byproduct by the egg industry? Like literally dropped into a mixer. If people had to push the button to activate the blender to obtain eggs in real life, I’m sure a very small portion of them would actually do it.

EUGENIE: I don’t want to hear your vegan propaganda.

RYDER: Compassion, as propaganda, sounds very easy defendable to me.

EUGENIE: I think you are my consciousness or something, trying to frighten me.

RYDER: Wouldn’t you listen to your consciousness?

EUGENIE: Not to everything it’s telling me! I’d have to prioritize.

RYDER: Cram what you can into a twenty-four-hour-day.

EUGENIE: Yes.

RYDER: Or maybe I’m God

EUGENIE: …

RYDER: What?

EUGENIE: Sorry I’m trying not to laugh. You are not a god, you are—

RYDER: What am I?

EUGENIE: You are not well in the head, you’re working hard to scare me. I think I must face my fear to see what’s behind it and like… what’s next like… like a rite of passage. I think you are part of the… portal or something.

RYDER: Eugenie, don’t panic. I could also not be real, just as not-real as you are, I could also be something made up from the mind of someone else. Imagine, you are so small that you fit inside a bubble of water, your whole world fits there, and that bubble of water is sitting on my cotton trousers while, in the meantime, the bubble of water in which I live is sitting on another person’s pants, someone bigger than my own bubble-of-water world.

EUGENIE: True, but tell me why the name Eugenie. My mother and father passed away when I was a baby, they could never tell me the reason why they picked the name Eugenie.

RYDER: Spoiler alert your parents are not real either.

EUGENIE: They are real to me, and my aunt, who is my mother’s sister, doesn’t know the story, and neither does her husband, my uncle.

RYDER: What’s your aunt’s name?

EUGENIE: I… can’t remember.

RYDER: What was your fictitious mother’s name?

EUGENIE: My fict— Dammit, I don’t remember, okay??

RYDER: Your name comes from a book titled Eugenie Grandet, in which—

EUGENIE: Are you French?

RYDER: I’m certainly not from Sweden. Listen, in that book, the character of Eugenie waits forever for her big crush Charles. He’s just some dude gone to some faraway land and he’s into her money, ‘cause she’s loaded. She waits for him endlessly behind the curtain at the window of her big house.

EUGENIE: Her… window.

RYDER: I know, I know.

EUGENIE: Are you rich?

RYDER: In a way yes, but not with money.

EUGENIE: You are a rich bitch.

RYDER: I’m rich with fortune. I have some good stars watching over me. I am very fortunate and yet I have never been happy, and that’s why I chose the name Eugenie.

EUGENIE: Because you’ve never been happy?

RYDER: Don’t say it like that, like I have done something wrong. It’s not my fault. If you could feel the void I felt, the void that’s waiting for me on the other side, you’d understand. It’s swallowing you, it walks behind you when you get off work, when you’re commuting back home, when you do your laundry, when you’re having a nice time drinking a smoothie, when you— You see, Eugenie Grandet, the girl in the book, she doesn’t live in the present, she doesn’t spend her money into some fun activities, she doesn’t hang out, she waits and she waits, you understand? I hoped that if I based you on her, you would turn out happier than her in the end.

EUGENIE: The end. That’s ominous.

RYDER: Don’t be scared.

EUGENIE: You hoped… by some miracle?

RYDER: By some miracle.

EUGENIE: So you named me after some dumb alienated chick?

RYDER: I could have named you Stevie, from Stevens in the Remains of the Day, you know, another—

EUGENIE: Oh God, that’s horrifying! Another freak!

RYDER: Harsh.

EUGENIE: That kind of suffocating fable makes my skin crawl.

RYDER: The name comes from a character who is frozen in love or, perhaps more accurately, her conception of love. I didn’t mean to build you as clueless and nonreactive, on the contrary, I meant to use that perdition to give you a boost. And I like the image of the curtain, I imagined it, in the warm season, blowing nicely in a soft wind, swell into the room.

EUGENIE: Not hammered by a violent rain?

RYDER: Only for fiction.

EUGENIE: …

RYDER: You keep shivering. I thought this place of reunion wouldn’t be too cold not too hot.

EUGENIE: Just a bit creeped out, forget it. Why haven’t you ever been happy?

RYDER: Well, I have been very bored, and very lonely.

EUGENIE: Oh my Gosh, I have been lonely too.

RYDER: I know. I have become a lot like you, after I made you up. Not right after but, once many years passed. Like an orange that’s slowly peeling off.

EUGENIE: How much of me have you become? I would have thought people who made up characters would shape them after their own personality and not the contrary.

RYDER: Me too, so, imagine my shock! I didn’t behave like you when I started writing. I was much younger, much much younger.

EUGENIE: Where was that?

RYDER: I wrote in many countries, I wrote in Ukraine, in Mexico, I wrote in Qatar and the Netherlands and North Africa.

EUGENIE: But you are not from any of those places.

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: So you are not a teacher.

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: You are not a nurse.

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: You are not an astronaut.

RYDER: N-ho.

EUGENIE: But you have been around the world.

RYDER: I’m telling you, I’ve always been fortunate.

EUGENIE: But not wealthy.

RYDER: Just enough for the plane tickets I suppose.

EUGENIE: Aand you don’t work at the post office.

RYDER: I don’t. I am none of those jobs. I am a writer.

EUGENIE: You write for a living.

RYDER: I don’t know what to tell you.

EUGENIE: You write and you make a living by writing.

RYDER: You are talking about money again, Eugenie, aren’t you?

EUGENIE: Yes.

RYDER: I am not making any money with my writing, but I’m making a living. Some crazy living.

EUGENIE: You seem disinterested in money.

RYDER: I am, and you? Are you not bored out of your mind by money?

EUGENIE: Because you’ve never had money troubles.

RYDER: I have been favored, I have never known poverty, you are right about that.

EUGENIE: I’m realizing that I’ve rarely thought about money. It must be a part of my character that you never developed. Hey that makes me think of that podcast where people discover they have been Artificial Intelligence bots the whole time they thought they were alive and real humans.

RYDER: Or the Matrix.

EUGENIE: Or the Matrix. We must be from the same generation.

RYDER: We might have been for a minute, but we will never be from the same generation forever.

EUGENIE: Why not?

RYDER: Because it matters a lot that Barry remains the same age. That’s why there can only be one direction: I have caught up with you, years after years, and I will turn older than you.

EUGENIE: Oh lord, I forgot about Barry again. I’m forty now, and you are…?

RYDER: Forty plus, forty and some more dusty years.

EUGENIE: I don’t know where to begin in all of my f—

RYDER: I know.

EUGENIE: If you’re going to tell me that life begins at forty, I’m gonna—

RYDER: It can, though. In my youth I was obsessed with the Prophet Muhammad.

EUGENIE: From Islam?

RYDER: Peace Be Upon Him.

EUGENIE: Are you a theologian?

RYDER: Not either. I’m a writer.

EUGENIE: Why would you be obsessed with Muhammad?

RYDER: Not for that reason but because Muhammad is cute. He is the blatant example that none of us adults have to have accomplished anything before we reached forty years old. Do you know he was a hot shot in Mecca and a flirt and a remorseless businessman before he obtained the revelations inside his cave, and he was just freshly forty?

EUGENIE: No, I don’t know much about Muhammad.

RYDER: Peace Be Upon Him.

EUGENIE: You’re a muslim.

RYDER: I’m certainly not an atheist or even one of those spineless Pikachu agnostics, thank you.

EUGENIE: Look who’s harsh now!

RYDER: I meant to provide you with a vibe of Arabia and I failed at that too. Just too many beautiful things to compress into one humble story.

EUGENIE: The… oriental octave.

RYDER: That’s all I managed, you know.

EUGENIE Yes so, hum… So Barry, he’s made up too?

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Ryder with a Y? Hello?

RYDER: YES I mean no, he didn’t stay made up all the time.

EUGENIE: Why are you whispering?

RYDER: I am afraid if I talk about this too loud, it will—

EUGENIE: What?

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Speak!!

RYDER: Nevermind. Anyway I met Barry once.

EUGENIE: You are saying you met him like you and I are meeting right now?

RYDER: No. Barry appeared to me in real life, but I let him go.

EUGENIE: How is that possible?

RYDER: I have some theories, some of them supernatural, and some of them… No, scratch that. All of my theories are supernatural.

EUGENIE: Tell me one of your theories, it’s alright, I won’t tell anyone.

RYDER: One of my theories is that I needed Barry so much that after years of writing him, he finally came to me.

EUGENIE: Was this man’s name Barry?

RYDER: It was not Barry.

EUGENIE: But did you name him Barry by accident, sometimes?

RYDER: Unfortunately, I did.

EUGENIE: He popped up on your balcony?

RYDER: Don’t laugh, it was almost the case! No, Eugenie, I’m serious, I was as stunned as you are right now. He was there at a moment where I needed him more than just his character that I made up, and he saved me from despair.

EUGENIE: You are fucking with me.

RYDER: Relax, Eugenie. We are not fighting over Barry, you and I. I don’t want Barry, I let him go.

EUGENIE: After he saved you from death—

RYDER: I didn’t say death, I said despair.

EUGENIE: I heard death.

RYDER: Despair can lead to death.

EUGENIE: Hope can do that too.

RYDER: Let’s stop snowballing for a second.

EUGENIE: So, after Barry saved you, you let him go. Like, away.

RYDER: Yes, he did his magic and left. I want you to have Barry, not me.

EUGENIE: You think that I have Barry?

RYDER: Do I think that? I’m trying to make your relationship with Barry chaotic enough so no one knows, actually.

EUGENIE: Will I have Barry?

RYDER: If I write enough, yes. Because happy endings are my thing.

EUGENIE: Spoken like someone who enjoys a movie where someone dies at the end following some dolphins into the abyss. Or some dolphins being angels of death.

RYDER: Yeah well. Just trust me on this.

EUGENIE: How can I trust you? You sound completely insane.

RYDER: Yeah well. Again, you don’t have any choice.

EUGENIE: And if you don’t want Barry, then, why did you make him?

RYDER: I should explain to you like you do to your slowest students.

EUGENIE: You say that, it’s an odd thing to say. Are you sure that you’re not a teacher? It sounds like… from experience.

RYDER: I promise you that I am not a teacher.

EUGENIE: Who gives a damn anyway. Just tell me—

RYDER: Barry came into my life, my real life, not some empty island in the Pacific, alright? He came to my real home. He was even wearing a green mask when he appeared.

EUGENIE: I’m sorry, I don’t follow. A green mask?

RYDER: The reason it happened is because if you dream something hard enough, it can sometimes come true. It’s called writing magic. There is also sigil magic, I mean, don’t quote me on this, I’m actually just reporting what a scientist guy said at a conference that I attended.

EUGENIE: Dream enough like, dreams and nightmares? Like lucid dreaming?  

RYDER: No, not those, dreams and nightmares that you have when you sleep are something else. They’re like your black monster, they could be a lot of things, things, buried as shallow as your done day, or as interred as the lowest strata of your subconscious. And lucid dreaming is another different practice altogether. No, I’m talking about daydream.

EUGENIE: Fantasizing?

RYDER: I don’t like that word, for some reason. I mean daydreaming, conscious dreaming. Playing with your dreams. Play is a revolutionary force, you know. It’s the energy you put out there in the reception of the universe, as I said, it’s more

powerful if it is from play.

EUGENIE: Daydreaming.

RYDER: Daydreaming.

EUGENIE: Does that include masturbating?

RYDER: Sexual energy is also quite a strong way to send something out into the universe. Anything that is mindful, honestly, present in the moment.

EUGENIE: So your stories come true, sometimes?

The gift of choice

UNKNOWN: Wake up Barry

BARRY: What is that?

UNKNOWN: Wake up Barry

BARRY: Oh my God, what is that? What are those things?

UNKNOWN: You still have the mud eyemask on your face, what you are seeing is not here, it’s inside your head.

BARRY: But WHAT IS IT?

UNKNOWN: I need to clarify, those things are not inside your head, they are projected on the blackness that you see with your eyes closed, as they would on a screen. You know, a lot of people—

BARRY: Answer me!!

UNKNOWN: Sweetie pie, I cannot answer you, I cannot see the things that you are seeing right now! They are yours, not mine!

BARRY: Did you drug me?

UNKNOWN: Incidentally, maybe. You know a lot of people are convinced that when you lose an eye, in the event that the eyeball falls off, you still see blackness. Nonsense, when you think about it, isn’t? Without an eye and an eye system, a person is not able to see blackness. There is just nothing!

BARRY: WHAT THE— What the fuck are you talking about?

UNKNOWN: Would you be in the capacity to see from your elbow? Would you ever ask your elbow to see?

BARRY: My el— Ma’am, did you drug me?

UNKNOWN: You have been absorbing something from your tea earlier.

BARRY: That tea! With sugar and honey!

UNKNOWN: Spoiler alert that was sugar and something else that was not honey. But since then, I upped your dosage, because I was concerned!

BARRY: Concerned about what?

UNKNOWN: Overall, your state. Your body is not well and your mind is shrunk. Your heart is fragile. Life is fragile.

BARRY: I am really this close to lose it at everyone telling me that I AM FRAGILE AND HARMLESS AND—

UNKNOWN: Don’t yell! Don’t exhaust yourself! I urge you to cool down and stop swimming with your feet. Otherwise, I will restrain you again.

BARRY: I’d like to see you try that.

UNKNOWN: Oh believe me, I will. I lift weights.

BARRY: I wasn’t always so weak and so frag—

UNKNOWN: You are still strong, Barry, but as anyone does every once in a while, you need a little push. You need to be guided back to your strength.

BARRY: You must be Lourdes.

LOURDES: In the flesh!

BARRY: Where is Claudios?

LOURDES: I sent him away for a couple of hours, because he was too unquestioning of you, already looking at you with tender eyes.

BARRY: Is Claudios… creepy, like, dangerous?

LOURDES: Madre de dios, no! I mean he was already becoming too charmed by you, you know, you are a charming person.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: Too trusting of you and too fond of you. That must be his heart, it’s too big for his own good. Also he has three daughters and no son, which be blames on me, for some reason.

BARRY: He told me you and he shared a good first impression of me.

LOURDES: That man, always speaking for the both of us! He extrapolated. Tell me… What are you seeing with your eyes closed?

BARRY: I can’t describe it, there are no… words for that. Is it hot here?

LOURDES: Very.

BARRY: I don’t know how to tell you what I am seeing. It’s kind of black on black, so—

LOURDES: Like black oil. You should still have a try at describing to me what you are seeing.

BARRY: Some circles, some bubbles… Some beetles.

LOURDES: Goood, beautiful. Beautiful!

BARRY: What is this… tea?

LOURDES: We meant to maximize the resting hours that you need in order to be well again, and initiate you.

BARRY: To what?

LOURDES: To nebo alia. Claudios stirred some for you in an earlier beverage, but I brought my XXL baggie.

BARRY: Maximize sounds like a capitalist concept.

LOURDES: We are influenced by society from all sides, from inti, wasi, kuska and q’osqo.

BARRY: Who?

LOURDES: They’re cardinal points, from which the wind blows. Sometimes a whistle, sometimes a hurricane.

BARRY: Claudios told me you would come over and give me Vitamin C and make my acquaintance—

LOURDES: I didn’t see his text about the Vitamin C. I picked the nebo alia.

BARRY: Is it a magic mushroom?

LOURDES: It’s a vine, it’s a medicine plant. It’s a teacher plant.

BARRY: A teacher

LOURDES: You do have opposition for the concept of teachers, that’s strange! But yes, people ingest the nebo alia every day, a little bit, to prepare to meet nebo alia’s madre.

BARRY: Is it LSD?

LOURDES: You are more receptive to that tea than I would have thought but, again, your stomach is empty, your heart is in shambles, y—

BARRY: Heey, my heart is fine!

LOURDES: You haven’t had any good sleep, you are feverish, so… maybe I went a bit too far, but it’s all the same, it will be very beneficial to you.

BARRY: I see some mandalas.

LOURDES: Just admire them. Don’t fight anything, Barry, just admire them! Now is your time to be contemplative.

BARRY: I’m seeing some… crazy shit.

LOURDES: Just admire it. Did Claudios tell you about the gift of choice?

BARRY: He told me about Nanabozo and hanging out with depression at home but showing depression who’s the boss.

LOURDES: And what did you tell him?

BARRY: I told him I would attempt to do that.

LOURDES: The gift of choice is received by everyone at the start of existence on Earth. This life is a walking life. The way you walk determines the way you live.

BARRY: Similar to Dune. Walking without rhythm.

LOURDES: It is whatever floats your boat. Personally I like to imagine a fashion catwalk, but that’s just me. Is is what you’re saying! All the same, we can embrace this gift of choice and walk forward, signifying that you walk towards the light and the blossoming of your soul, or walk backwards, towards darkness and decline.

BARRY: Do you guys always speak like that?

LOURDES: Like what?

BARRY: In lessons.

LOURDES: Baby boy, your aversion for teachers is something in the backwards way. You need to get rid of it. Some of them at school, did they bully you?

BARRY: I bullied them.

LOURDES: Oh Gosh! Look at that! We have a firecracker here. So why do you think with such animosity of those teachers, while you are the one who mistreated them?

BARRY: It’s not that, it’s a long story.

LOURDES: I meant to ask you, are you a Colts fan?

BARRY: You saw my driving license and saw that I’m from Indiana. That’s unfair, that’s… taking advantage of—

LOURDES: I enjoy American football. I personally support the New Orleans Saints.

BARRY: Okay, well, they have had a pretty good year. Have you ever been to Louisiana?

LOURDES: Yes, one time, I went there. I was secretly hoping to feel an Ann Rice vibe there, but… those long-ass huge-ass dragonflies though, in the plantations? Ho-rri-fy-ing!

BARRY: I would have said alligators but okay.

LOURDES: Not a fan of the dragonflies.  

BARRY: But they… they’re your sacred sisters.

LOURDES: And entomophobia is real! Have you ever heard a bayou dragonfly hit a car? It sounds like someone threw a rock at it! It sounds like the car will have to go to the repair shop after that! Bees don’t scare me, though, they are fluffy enough.

BARRY: Uugh, bees.

LOURDES: So? Colts fan?

BARRY: I was more a fan before Peyton Manning moved to the Broncos. What a terrible thing it was.

LOURDES: Do you think Peyton Manning used the gift of choice to walk the walk forward or backward, in this situation?

BARRY: I would say definitely backwards.

LOURDES: What a quick and wrapped-up assessment! You should picture yourself walking in someone else’s moccasins before you rush to such conclusions.

BARRY: Ma’am, where is my cat?

LOURDES: El abuelo? I moved him to the other camper next door. Animals are too much of a sponge to the spirits we have summoned in the room with the help of the nebo alia. Especially your cat.

BARRY: You guys keep saying it like, he’s magical or something.

LOURDES: Just prescient.

BARRY: Terence? I mean Kijik?

LOURDES: El gatito, yes. Also, you were vomiting a lot, and he was clinging to you. Not so recommendable, with his long fur.

BARRY: That explains the smell.

LOURDES: Nothing a good laundromat can’t fix! What are you seeing right now?

BARRY: Just some mandalas. Some triangles. What did you say this dr— vine is?

LOURDES: Her name is nebo alia. She’s not always so… psychoactive.

BARRY: Some Native American plant?

LOURDES: Plants belong to everyone.

BARRY: I mean, some Native American recipe?

LOURDES: As a matter of fact, no. I am from South America, not from here, and this specific growth of nebo alia is from my personal stash.

BARRY: South America… In my sleep I kept hearing some singing, with a bit of Spanish, and some other languages.

LOURDES: I was chanting, mostly in Qechua, but I like to mix Spanish with it indeed, because it’s smoother and cuter, all those Os and As everywhere.

BARRY: You were singing while I was asleep?

LOURDES: Solely White people insist for being waken up in the morning by some horrific alarm ringtones. In all seriousness, I know some of our tribesmen and women who put themselves through that strident ordeal too, not just White people. But I thought the melodies would carry you from siesta to awake more gently. Plus, it’s a way to connect with the nebo alia spirit as in, you know, vibing on her frequency. Like saying om, the sacred syllable. You should try it sometimes!

BARRY: Chanting?

LOURDES: Singing, dancing, crying.

BARRY: You guys are obsessed with crying, I see. You seem big on… crying.

LOURDES: Liberation!

BARRY: Liberation.

LOURDES: You are an intelligent boy. Liberation of the mind and the heart and the soul. Nebo alia can accompany you through that, as can listening to my song.

BARRY: I don’t like singing, nor crying.

LOURDES: You were crying in your sleep, which, under the spell of the nebo alia, is perfectly normal. In fact, I would worry if you didn’t cry. Don’t resist, chiquito, mix your tears with the poultice on your eyes.

BARRY: The yogurt.

LOURDES: The what?

BARRY: Nothing. I’m seeing those letters again, but very small, almost… almost not really there, because they are so little. They flash but, wait, not very strong. I used to see them in my dreams and Rob— a friend of mine and I were trying to figure out what they are. He’s into some Freudian things.

LOURDES: Let it come to you and slide on the sides of you, as if you are a big stone sticking out in a stream of water. Don’t push anything away, let it go softly around you; you, the boulder, are grounded, and the water is passing you. Or imagine you’re in a tumbling machine like a dirty sock, and that everything you experience spins up and down, and up is good, and down is bad, then down is bad, then up is good, and then, it starts over!

BARRY: I’m trying not to throw up again, please, I’m begging you to stop this talk of up and down.

LOURDES: Of course, of course, Barry, forgive me.

BARRY: What are the songs you are singing?

LOURDES: The forest spirits and the vine spirit are singing them through me. I already forgot what exactly I sang. It’s kind of different every time.

BARRY: Like tsahaylu.

LOURDES: Like what?

BARRY: Nothing, nothing, oh Gosh, sorry I’m just thinking out loud.

LOURDES: Let it all out. Like we do with the singing. The singing establishes a connection between human and Source.

BARRY: Source?

LOURDES: The Oneness! I can tell from my sumaq, that you have felt this Oneness before, it’s related to something which happens when you change speed.

BARRY: So you are a medium like Claudios or… Terence.

LOURDES: I am very sensitive to living creatures and their energies. But also, I enjoy puzzles, and putting two and two together. You will cry and weep and throw up and purge. Barry, you have been through so much violence.

BARRY: It’s okay I—

LOURDES: No, it’s not okay!

BARRY: Thanks for… caring I guess.

LOURDES: Such an American thing to say.

BARRY: American?

LOURDES: From down south, the US.

BARRY: The other half of the turtle rock.

LOURDES: Turtle Island, yes.

BARRY: Turtle Island, yes, that’s what I meant.

LOURDES: You know I am accustomed to violence too. My country is a savage place, a beautiful land that has gorgeous trees and flowers and crystal clear rivers and luscious green mountains, but people have turned it to a shit show, ruining everything with their cartels and corruption. Their filthy actions even drive them to hide directly in nature, soiling it!

BARRY: Oof.

LOURDES: My father stood up to the narcos and their corner operations. His own father was a policeman and he always dreamed of becoming one too, but he ended up a librarian because he was skinny and sickly, and a nerd. But he held his ground, even he, and e just couldn’t accept the rule of the strongest over our town. So as a consequence, then my mother, sisters and I had to leave. However, the journey up north is extremely long and full of perils. Such thirst, such emptiness of the alma! The marching, Barry, the treacherous marching and hiking to reach North America, the brutal awakening in front of what the human species is, so not worth the trust, the optimism, and so vicious a species.

BARRY: Like… mules?

LOURDES: I would never ride a mule or a donkey or even the healthiest horse to travel north, or anywhere, for that matter! Animals are not vehicles.

BARRY: Sorry I meant… smugglers.

LOURDES: Yes, contrabandistas. Hijos de puta. No alma. Vendieron su alma.

BARRY: You fled your home country.

LOURDES: Like you, I have.

BARRY: Yes, I have fled without anything.

LOURDES: Even without any snacks, apparently.

BARRY: Without even my p—

LOURDES: Your what?

BARRY: …

LOURDES: Without your what?

BARRY: Without anything. Without nothing.

LOURDES: The nebo alia will undo your tongue, don’t fear the talking you might do while you are with her.

BARRY: I had a friend who used a lasso as a serum of truth. You are doing the same to me with that vine.

LOURDES: Barry, my husband was too excited about you, he is already seeing the Nanabuj in you, I had to take matters into my own hands! Like the scars on your chest, Claudios is imagining you will throw their crusty scabs at some trees and create a new sort of trees, growing some never-seen-before medicinal fungus on their tree bark.

BARRY: What’s that?

LOURDES: Just another story about Nanabuj.

BARRY: Nanabozo?

LOURDES: Yes, he has some variations in the name. Don’t trouble yourself with details, Barry, see the big picture!

BARRY: You believe in those things?

LOURDES: In my home country we have our own myths. I believe you remind me more of the third of the seven Ferrets, Hueron de Agilidad. It’s the speedy one of the bunch.

BARRY: And yet… I have slowed down. Considerably.

LOURDES: Not everything is to be measured in the physical world! You haven’t slowed down inside. What are you seeing right now?

BARRY: I see a lot of bubbles, and they have… They have eyes.

LOURDES: Good.

BARRY: Does your ferret coexist with the great Manitou thingy Claudios was talking about?

LOURDES: Of course. Our creation stories don’t exclude one another.

BARRY: But you are not… a creation of… Turtle Island.

LOURDES: Look at you, already so knowledgeable!

BARRY: I meant no disrespect, ma’am.

LOURDES: I know, chiquito. But this world is smaller than you think, at the same time as it is infinite. Turtle Island has her extensions. By the way, speaking about small worlds, I couldn’t help notice that… you camper had a woman’s touch.

BARRY: You don’t have to be sexist about my camper.

LOURDES: It’s not your camper, originally, it’s someone else’s, who has a component of girlie girl in her.

BARRY: Yeah it’s… hygge.

LOURDES: Hijj?

BARRY: I should give you the correct pronunciation: it’s spoken hugga, in Swedish.

LOURDES: You know Swedish?

BARRY: No, I don’t know Swedish. Just some names of bookshelves and tables and lamps.

LOURDES: I’m thinking this camper belongs to your little girlfriend!

BARRY: …

LOURDES: The real owner of the cat.

BARRY: I don’t… want to talk about that.

LOURDES: You should, while your tongue is loose. Then you can blame the nebo alia for all you have told, and feel relieved by the expunging of the tale.

BARRY: She hurt me.

LOURDES: She’s the one who shot you multiple times?

BARRY: She hurt my feelings.

LOURDES: Aaah, I see. 

BARRY: She was there at the shooting and she doesn’t even remember.

LOURDES: Oh my, good times!

BARRY: She called me a bullet blanket.

LOURDES: Young people and their concepts of romance, these days. Why isn’t she with you, at the moment, in her camper?

BARRY: She’s been poisoned. I felt.. I felt horrible, but I couldn’t stay. I left her behind, in a coma.

LOURDES: Why couldn’t you stay by her side?

BARRY: Because I killed the man who poured the poison in her drink.

LOURDES: Heere you goo.

BARRY: Yes, I did.

LOURDES; So you lied to Claudios when he asked you if you were a criminal!

BARRY: NO!

LOURDES: Calm down, Papoose. You are safe now, don’t get agitated like that, all kicking on the bed. We are just talking.

BARRY: I don’t feel like a criminal, you must understand, I usually…. regulate that sort of behaviors, on the part of people who attempt to harm other people, it’s my job!

LOURDES: Applying justice, you mean.

BARRY: Vigilanting.

LOURDES: You are the Bolt.

BARRY: WHAT NO!!

LOURDES: If you keep jumping like that I will restrain you. It’s dangerous, in your condition, you hear me?

BARRY: Why are you saying that I am the Bolt? I am not!!

LOURDES: The headband you are wearing covers the top part of your face, as does the Bolt’s mask from his superhero suit. I am very very physiognomist. Spitting images, Barry!

BARRY: …

LOURDES: What are you seeing, right now?

BARRY: Nothing I can’t… I can’t see anything anymore.

LOURDES: Take a chill pill and focus, please, it will do you good. Calm down, stop flapping your arms like there is another swarm of bees flying around you.

BARRY: People who have spent their entire lives with me or see me every day didn’t compute that I was the Bolt, never ever.

LOURDES: I am shocked by that! But it’s true that I have been known to be very observant. You know those ten-difference puzzle games? I finish them in a flash. I wanted to be a detective, just like my father dreamed to be a policeman to copy his papa.

BARRY: Well.. spot on. Is it windy now, outside?

LOURDES: Very windy.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: Also, not to minimize my discerning skills, but you mentioned that you have a friend with a magic lasso. Uberwoman. Don’t worry, your tongue is less monitored by your mind’s radar, it’s completely expected, once you sit with the nebo alia.

BARRY: Fuck.

LOURDES: We are just talking right now, don’t trouble yourself. It’s an honor to meet the Bolt from Indianapolis!

BARRY: Will you turn me in to the cops?

LOURDES: Barry the Bolt, I will not!

BARRY: Really?

LOURDES: Why would I do that? Mutants in Canada are institutionalized and… medicated. It’s nasty.

BARRY: I thought you were a medicine woman.

LOURDES: We are not talking about the same kind of medicine here.

BARRY: You and your husband seem to be against… against the White man’s science and also weirdly… Kindergartens.

LOURDES: You think your science is valuable?

BARRY: I mean… science for the sake of exploration?

LOURDES: Because locking human beings up for experiments is exploration? Your own kind, on top of everything, a minority?

BARRY: I’ve always heard that those places in Canada are like Professor Xavier’s schools, trying to understand the… mutations.

LOURDES: That’s immature and idiotic. We are not in a comic book Barry. How can anyone call advancement a science that experiments on people to their detriment?

BARRY: But we do that on mice, on monkeys, to find cures to things.

LOURDES: And you believe, at the bottom of your heart, that it is a moral way to proceed towards progress? To sacrifice some innocent lives?

BARRY: I mean experimenting on bunnies helped save some lives.

LOURDES: What lives, precisely?

BARRY: Some children with cancer, for instance.

LOURDES: Oh, you mean human lives? And your newborn baby with a fatal illness, your child with leukemia here, his life is more precious than the life of the mouse or the one of the rabbit?

BARRY: Yes obviously.

LOURDES: Obviously?? Forget the seeing, please, be hearing yourself right now!

BARRY: I mean I mean I don’t know, I’v never th—

LOURDES: El cielo azul, forgive me for my temper right now, give me patience. Barry, I hear this all the time, ‘oh but science gave us space! We know more about our solar system and we are able to go to space now, thanks to science!’

BARRY: I mean… The moon. Mars. Sputnik.

LOURDES: The Russians sent a little dog to space first, before they catapulted their human! They picked her from the streets of Moscow because she was the friendliest and the most trusting, just like my Claudios is. They popped her into the atmosphere alone inside a rocket and left her there to suffocate to death, in the cold hard empty space!

BARRY: Man, that’s… true.

LOURDES: This is the White man’s bullshit here. All lives are sacred! A discovery that discards the sanctity of any life from our mother Earth is a farce.

BARRY: You survive on medicine that was crafted by that science right now, Lourdes.

LOURDES: Oh, we are on first-name basis now, aren’t we?

BARRY: You sound angry.

LOURDES: I am not. Look, I’m breathing deep. Cielo arriba, por favor. I’m acknowledging my feeling and letting it slide on me like I am a rock in a stream of water. I don’t mean to interject some furious and fiery feelings into your sitting with nebo alia.

BARRY:  Claudios said you were fiery.

LOURDES: I’m happy that it can make you laugh! Finally, some expression!

BARRY: Yes, it feels good.

LOURDES: You wanted to add something about your science, Barry?

BARRY: Well… Even if you don’t use modern medicine today, you were probably born from a woman who received treatment at the moment of giving birth, you were probably administered some vaccines, you—

LOURDES: Then I should not be alive, period! Like my father, I don’t believe in the right of the strongest to dominate. Humans behaving in this awful way will not prevail, if they keep provoking nature. It is not the viable way.

BARRY: But evolution is the survival of the st—

LOURDES: I’m not talking about evolution, of course, I believe in evolution, evolution is part of nature.

BARRY: Humans are part of nature.

LOURDES: Humans are nature doing the walk backwards, and she isn’t liking the consequences right now. She is a reactive One, that One! I’m not speaking about evolution, muchacho, I’m talking about a scientist’s lifetime of work, in the brackets between his birth, or should I say, between his schooling and his retirement, and his or her idea to test dangerous lab stuff on animals who cannot defend themselves because it’s easy. Advancement is not supposed to be easy. You should know a thing or two about it yourself, as you are advancing right now, and it is nothing but easy!

BARRY: Not easy, not easy for sure.

LOURDES: Don’t shake your head too hard, or you’ll lose the eyemask, I mean, the headband. Anyway, I cannot do anything against the fact that I am alive and I owe my life to science. In some older days, perhaps I or my mother would have died in childbirth, perhaps I would have had a flock of ten siblings in case me and half of us died at the hand of nature before we reached adulthood and could farm along our parents in the fields! But since I am here, the least I can do is live that life with real advancement.

BARRY: Alright.

LOURDES: Advancement made with respect, for the cycles of nature, for the dance of the night and the day, for the holiness of breath given to us all by the Creator!

BARRY: But you are aware that I don’t have my power anymore, aren’t you?

LOURDES: You still have power, but it is different now, it is being alchemized.

BARRY: Really?

LOURDES: How did you lose your power, exactly?

BARRY: Well…

LOURDES: Well?

BARRY: Since I’m a murderer… My… colleagues… you know.

LOURDES: Hobbes?

BARRY: You did your research!

LOURDES: Not really, you see, I have three teenage daughters, they are into this stuff.

BARRY: The famous Hobbes, yes. He and they couldn’t caution an assassination, so in exchange for my freedom and the protection of my friend who’s been poisoned, I surrendered my power to them. Uberwoman drained it from me.

LOURDES: Uberwoman. She honors the creation! She’s a real step in nature’s forward walking. All of you mutants are, in my opinion. Was it painful to have her extinct your superability?

BARRY: No, it was going through a door, from a room to another.

LOURDES: A little anti climatic.

BARRY: My Team mates really did me a favor, by letting me run. I had to react fast and… I suppose… powerless.

LOURDES: But when you had your power, Barry, you approached the Oneness, am I correct? The Source.

BARRY: I did?

LOURDES: When you were speeding, bolting, you rode on the Snake to touch the Condor, didn’t you?

BARRY: The snake and the condor?

LOURDES: It’s just an Andean legend.

BARRY: I saw a snake in the darkness when I was waking up and listening to your songs, earlier.

LOURDES: Goood. Good sign. Was the snake rolled up or moving as a straight line?

BARRY: In turn, both.

LOURDES: High level of good. Heavenly good!

BARRY: You have a strong voice, when you are chanting, compared to when you are talking.

LOURDES: It’s my own superpower.

BARRY: So when you see a snake and Claudios sees a snake, who decides what legend it matches?

LOURDES: What are you asking?

BARRY: I’m so sorry—

LOURDES: Don’t— touch the headband, don’t try to touch your eyes! I’m honestly asking, what do you mean?

BARRY: I’m sorry for being so intrusive and impolite, it’s just… this dr— this vine.

LOURDES: Freeing your tongue. Good, chiquito, good!

BARRY: Who decides what symbolism wins when you and Claudios see a snake?

LOURDES: Cupcake, you are missing the point. The stories we have received from our ancestors are not invented like modern novels or Game of Thrones. They are there to say what is true, what already exists in this world. It’s the same with all the White man’s little theories, philosophy, political science, the arts, good old history and geography, quantum physics, economy, anthropology, whatever else. They might differ but they have the same goal, to simply give form to what is and cannot be explained otherwise.

BARRY: I see.

LOURDES: No pun intended.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: Even psychology, a legit’ White man discipline! You were talking about your Freudian friend earlier, he’s—

BARRY: Robortor? I mean he’s not Freudian, he’s—

LOURDES: Robortor, mi vida. The Hybrid One. Half man, half machine.

BARRY: Yes, he’s… He was my best friend.

LOURDES: Como se llama?

BARRY: You mean what’s his name in real life?

LOURDES: You understand Spanish!

BARRY: That’s weird because I never learned it, but right now, I comprehend it, yes. So bizarre!

LOURDES: That’s the vine’s doing.

BARRY: His name is George. I must trust that you will not convey this information to anyo—

LOURDES: You amigo George sees well. Freud and his pupil, Carl Jung, they never played around with altered states of consciousness, and even they, so poorly equipped, caught a glimpse of what’s beyond the veil of the world and the connection of all things.

BARRY: Are we talking about Sigmund Freud or another Freud, one of your friends?

LOURDES: Sigmund and Carl Jung.

BARRY: I’ve never heard of that Carl guy.

LOURDES: Well they both guessed the existence of things that the restrictive broom-up-its-ass White man’s rationality would qualify as paranormal. Everything which is the subconscious, especially when it comes to psycho-genealogy, kids being born with the inexplicable knowledge of family secrets, revealing them through drawing when no one has told them about it! Wouldn’t you agree that it is quite a vaporous thing?

BARRY: I should take some notes.

LOURDES: Don’t bully me like your teachers, Barry. I’m not trying to lecture you, we are just fishbowling, right now. Carl Jung and his little buddy Aldeous Huxley—

BARRY: Another guy!

LOURDES: Nothing out of the ordinary. Freud inspired Carl, Carl hung out with Aldeous. And in their limited access to real means of venture into truth, without relying on psylocibin for their research, even they could perceive the invisible world, the thresholds of it. It’s remarkable, really, when you consider those people were never high nor enlightened, they didn’t plug into the mycellia. It’s all sober thinking, it’s miraculous! That’s the moment Western science bordered on real things, unbeknownst to even themselves. They were about to break through, but they died of advanced age too soon for that. I trust they saw everything they couldn’t envision, once dead.

BARRY: You have lost me.

LOURDES: Even religion! Take religion for example, Christianity, Islam, Jud—

BARRY: Nevermind, please, I’m FOLLOWING! No need to go through all the religions. I understand what you’re getting at, I do.

LOURDES: Just to say, no one between Canada and the Amazon is fighting for their views of life to overshadow another. Only the White man is capricious enough to impose what he’s so enamored with, when it comes to fairy tales, over the rest of his peers.

BARRY: Nice.

LOURDES: It is, isn’t it? The peace that comes with the absence of fighting.

BARRY: Yes.

LOURDES: He will not prevail in the end.

BARRY: Who?

LOURDES: The White man.

BARRY: He will not?

LOURDES: Not against the forces of nature, no. Mark my words! She will not continue to be walked backwards!

BARRY: Interesting.

LOURDES: My Snake is the physical world, and the Condor is the immaterial world. I believe deep inside of me that those two met under the super-acceleration of the Bolt.

BARRY: Ah, you are talking about time and space. Yes, I saw some messed-up time modifications when I was nearing the speed of light.

LOURDES: The speed of light.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: ..

BARRY: Lourdes? Ma’am?

LOURDES: I apologize, I was just being dreamy, thinking about it. Don’t tell Claudios that I was speechless. I must continue nourishing the feeling in everyone that I always have a comeback ready.

BARRY: You won’t bring me to the police and I will keep your secret.

LOURDES: The speed of light. It must be quite the feeling.

BARRY: I don’t want to think about it right now. I miss my power too much.

LOURDES: Let it come to you, the grief, Barry!

BARRY: I’m seeing nothing right now, just the darkness.

LOURDES: Sit there, in the darkness, Papoose. So why didn’t you use that magic to reverse time, turn back the clock and save your woman?

BARRY: You are torturing me. Do you mean to turn me into a regretful person, in addition to being weak and useless and harmless and all those pejorat—

LOURDES: This is real advancement, Barry, not some Kinder egg trinket one. It hurts, it impales you to the core, it flips over, inside out, it demands sacrifice!

BARRY: But regardless, I didn’t get the chance, the power was taken from me. I wouldn’t have known how to use it for that purpose, I had never tried that before. It’s too late now to wonder about those things.

LOURDES: Yes, indeed. The walk has been walked.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: The man who poisoned your woman, did you end his life mercifully?

BARRY: Hell no.

LOURDES: You did not?

BARRY: Physically, he did not suffer one bit. But psychologically, he saw it coming. I made sure of it.

LOURDES: Sadism.

BARRY: You are wrong.

LOURDES: Did you enjoy his fear?

BARRY: Sadly, no.

LOURDES: So just… what was it from your heart that wanted him to poop his pants as he knew death was next?

BARRY: Everything. Just everything.

LOURDES: Your pain.

BARRY: I don’t know I… didn’t pinpoint anything specific. I didn’t think, I just did it, I killed him and I wanted him to know what was going to happen to him. I didn’t think about anything at that moment.

LOURDES: You cannot take a life, there are higher things who are in charge of it.

BARRY: Oh you mean human justice?

LOURDES: Are you out of your mind? I don’t mean crooked human justice! Have you ever heard about Antigone?

BARRY: Antiwhat?

LOURDES: Forget it. I mean the order of things! Taking a life, moreover, has spiritual consequences.

BARRY: I was given the gift of choice and I exercised my right.

LOURDES: It’s not a right.

BARRY: Coming from you, obviously, you…

LOURDES: Now, you sound angry.

BARRY: I mean yes, coming from you, from Claudios, people who never hurt a tree or a bee!

LOURDES: Don’t assume I’ve never hurt anyone from creation, Barry, don’t—

BARRY: You guys are like, ‘Oh look at me, I’m so native, so righteous, oh look, I respect the trees, the bees, the river, I’m righteous, and the White man here, he’s guilty, he’s vile’

LOURDES: …

BARRY: …

LOURDES: Let it all out, your spite.

BARRY: FINE! My choice, I exercised my choice. So I walked forward and made a choice and I will face the consequences. If you are thinking about handing me to the police—

LOURDES: No police. I am worried about you, not that man who died. He sounds like an asshole. I’m not losing sleep about the justice of humans. Or the procedure people who wear a uniform do.

BARRY: I would have thought since your grandfather was a policeman, you had more consideration for law enforcement.

LOURDES: What law and what enforcement are you referring to? I’m talking about your right in the eyes of the creation! It’s not your right or your place to decide who has to die for their mistakes! And what if that man’s family had gotten all overexcited and started a blood feud with you? What if his ghost was a resentful one and said he was going to haunt you for the rest of your days? Which doesn’t appear to be the case, thankfully.

BARRY: This man’s family… doesn’t know anyone from my family.

LOURDES: In the age of Google? Of Ecosia?

BARRY: Ecosia??

LOURDES: In the age of the World Wide Web? Are you certain of this?

BARRY: Strangely your concern seems unreasonable.

LOURDES: You should not—

BARRY: It is done. I don’t wish I could go back in time and do things different. I would do them the same, over and over again.

LOURDES: I appreciate your true word, therefore it’s plain to see that you are not aware of what is occurring within you at the moment, but your body, right now, is saying the opposite. It’s leaking, atrociously, it’s rotting, from old wounds. It’s dancing a dance with death.

BARRY: I don’t think so.

LOURDES: You know that by your actions, you are no different from those mules and coyotes and human traffickers.

BARRY: Oh, come on now! Comparing me with the worst of the worst!

LOURDES: Yes, pobrecito, people who think they can go against the order of things. Sending migrants across landsliding terrain, walking in the desert with no water, crossing clandestinely in the night with a blown up plastic bag as a floater. In the end, walking forward can be measured, among other criteria, by the way people in positions of power treat the most vulnerable! And those contrabandistas come up with their reasoning for what they do, even if what they do is wrong.

BARRY: I’m sorry that I remind you of those people who traumatized you.

LOURDES: Me? Oh, don’t worry, I made everything up. In fact, I am from quite a wealthy family, from the hills, people who are super inclined to take bribes themselves and bend the law. My father didn’t handle his seventh generation status well and he melted under the pressure of the peso, he didn’t empty his bucket, but for sure, he and my mama made sure I had a golden childhood. You can’t make up for a happy and trouble-free, uncomplicated childhood if you haven’t had one.

BARRY: W… What?

LOURDES: I met Claudios at a fancy Ted Talk he did in the main town of my country. I was wearing a Chanel dress that day so of course, you guessed it: he couldn’t take his eyes off me! Nor I off him. Some staff members and security guards were generously persuaded to let me knock on his door backstage. He wooed me immediately, without even having a decent conversation. Can you imagine that? It was like Jack and Rose in Titanic, complete mayhem, no thinking it over. But it worked out!You’ll see Claudios when you recover your sight, he’s a real catch. And I married him on the spot and then he got me a green card.

BARRY: Claudios does Ted Talks?

LOURDES: Why, you think all of us indigenous are peasants? Claudios is a born spiritual leader and a gifted public speaker.

BARRY: You usurped that story of migration!

LOURDES: It’s undoubtedly someone else’s real story of hardship, Barry, again, you are missing the point.

BARRY: And you are saying that now you have children together?

LOURDES: Yes, three girls. Odette, Oscarina and Olive. We like the letter O.

BARRY: Wow, you’re that type of parents like—

LOURDES: The Kardashians, yes I know Barry! I have a TV, you know, in the motor home parked next to yours. Stop shaming me.

BARRY: That’s cool, though.

LOURDES: Thank you. They are lovely girls.

BARRY: And what would you do if someone poisoned your husband, like, cold-blooded?

LOURDES: I would kill that person with my bare hands.

BARRY: …

LOURDES: I am also aware of how I sound! Humans are humans. We are all doing our best here, Barry! I’m just trying to make sure I don’t introduce excessive trouble into my community.

BARRY: After the nebo alia, you mentioned that I will meet the mother of nebo alia?

LOURDES: Yes. Getting ready to meet la madre requires effort and deprivation, fasting, releasing toxins. So Claudios and I thought we might as well take advantage of the fact that you’re not eating and that you’re already under the weather.

BARRY: That sounds… improvised.

LOURDES: It’s one of the best moments of death and rebirth! Improvisation is just circumstantial.

BARRY: Is it mandatory?

LOURDES: What, improvisation?

BARRY: No… death and rebirth.

LOURDES: You feel the vibes in the place, right now, my boy?

BARRY: Heavy.

LOURDES: La madre, she’s something. Some people pay money for retreats to meet her, for trained coaches to prepare for her arrival. They ignore how worthy they have to show themselves, you know. They don’t always pass.

BARRY: They… die?

LOURDES: For the love of God, no! It’s not venomous. Only your ego has to perish, nothing else. Those people who fail don’t die they just… suck at it and never get their money back, that’s all. They resist against the journey inside or they helplessly try to save their ego from the ego-death! They cling to maintain face in front of something telling them that they have no face. But it’s no way to learn and it’s no way to advance. La madre is intransigent.

BARRY: She’s a… She’s a teacher.

LOURDES: A teacher you will like, for once. When you have been drinking the vine juice for a while, steadily, purging, touching la madre’s tea with your lips, it feels like she’s already been in you all this time. It’s like putting a key into a keyhole. And then she fills the room, she swells inside of it, you can feel her might and her push for eradication. If you are not terrified, you’re doing it wrong! Only she knows what she will do with you.

BARRY: You are talking about ayahuasca.

LOURDES: Oh mi hijo, I do mean la reina ayahuasca. My guess is that she will probably take you apart, all the pieces that you are and that you are vaguely trying to hold together and tidily. But I see potential in you, and so does Claudios!

BARRY: You probably need my consent to put me through this.

LOURDES: And you will give it to us!

BARRY: I’m starting to like that dark world with only voices and sitting on my ass.

LOURDES: Don’t you become lazy! You will have to stand up again, run again, build again.

BARRY: So you would kill the person who threatened the life of your husband, with your bare hands?

LOURDES: It’s better for my sake that I am honest with you in our conversation, in the presence of so many spirits tonight.

BARRY: I love her, that’s why.

LOURDES: That woman?

BARRY: Yes, I have loved her since the first day.

LOURDES: A thunderbolt.

BARRY: Yes. And I love her more today than I loved her yesterday, and I love her less than I will love her tomorrow.

LOURDES: Crime of passion.

BARRY: Jesus, it—

LOURDES: Alright! I accept you. You can stay, Barry.

BARRY: That easy?

LOURDES: Some things in this life have to be easy, for a change since, as I said, everything is so goddamned uneasy the rest of the time, especially transformation. Especially existence.

BARRY: Right.

LOURDES: Come around my way, around my hive.

BARRY: R r right?

LOURDES: And besides that, I’m a sucker for love. The first English language book I read was the Diary of Bridget Jones.

BARRY: I only saw the movie.

LOURDES: Listen, you took a life. You lost a life. You lost your power. You have to process those things.

BARRY: Like a rite of passage.

LOURDES: Punctual rites of passage punctuate.

BARRY: Like riding the worm— I mean the snake, to the condor.

LOURDES: To rise again. And you will cry.

BARRY: I’m not one of those people who is like.. anti-crying or anything but I just genuinely don’t express my—

LOURDES: Yesyesyes, I believe you Barry, Gen Z on board against toxic masculinity, you’re not a frat boy, I get it! But you will cry, and you will vomit, and you will sweat, and then you will live and you will heal and you will love. You will see the Oneness gives and takes, depending on the angle of time, the very time you brushed against in your bolting. You will see the Oneness is only love and that love is all that soaks everything like in a bowl of soup. You will see that Source loves you. And people come out of comas all the time.

BARRY: I know.

Don’t give up on me

EUGENIE: Your stories do come true, sometimes, then, that’s what you’re saying.

RYDER: I don’t have stories, I have just that one story, that I have been writing for ages. And in the case of Barry, I’ve written him for so long and I’ve known him so well that he did come to me, but I let him go.

EUGENIE: If you need him so much, why let him go?

RYDER: You are intrigued by this.

EUGENIE: To say the least.

RYDER: You’ve never heard that phrase: ‘Everything changes once we identify with being the witness of the story, instead of the actor in it’?

EUGENIE: It’s from Ram Dass. Is that what you are doing with your stories— story?

RYDER: I haven’t accessed the enlightenment of Ram Dass no, hey, don’t ridicule me! I’m trying to be open with you.

EUGENIE: I was not mocking you. I was laughing about the fact that you’re asking me if I have ever heard about Ram Dass while, according to you, any knowledge I possess comes from you making me up.

RYDER: You are catching on. But to be candid with you, I don’t need Barry to be real and to love me. I need him to love you.

EUGENIE: Does Barry love me?

RYDER: I’m not supposed to say anything to you, otherwise we will lose the… tension between you two but—

EUGENIE: Oh come on. We are on the deserted slope of a volcano right now, in an alternate dimension.

RYDER: … Buut it’s fine. You’ll forget everything afterwards anyway.

EUGENIE: After what?

RYDER: Focus, Eugenie. I do need Barry to love you. From day one.

EUGENIE: How did you manage that, seeing our different.. styles, birth years, I don’t know. The major differences between me and Barry?

RYDER: I made you extremely beautiful. It fixes all the problems. You don’t dress very well, but you are strikingly beautiful.

EUGENIE: Did you make me beautiful because you are ugly?

RYDER: Ah crap, I forget that you cannot see me. Yes, that’s the reason I made you beautiful. I am an ugly woman.

EUGENIE: It must not be easy to write a character who is beautiful when you are not, I mean, how are you able to adopt the perspective of a beautiful person so easily?

RYDER: Seriously? How about, writing from the point of view of a super hero? It’s called creative writing.

EUGENIE: Or writing teenagers with such confidence when you have never been a high school teacher before.

RYDER: Your memories might be scrambled, but my own, about being an adolescent, are still fresh. And as I have said before, fortune has blessed me. Some people made me feel beautiful enough, more beautiful than when I see myself with my own eyes.

EUGENIE: You have been loved.

RYDER: I am loved, right now.

EUGENIE: And yet you are bored and lonely.

RYDER: I am loved by the wrong people I think.

EUGENIE: What a mean thing to say! And an ungrateful one too.

RYDER: Forgive me! Maybe that’s not it, maybe it’s not the wrong people who love me, but people who love me the wrong way. It’s not important. What is important is that maybe Barry just showed up in my life to tell me that writing magic and sigil magic exist. That magic exists in general. That’s a possibility.

EUGENIE: It reminds me of that one time when I found an earring on the ground, outside, and it was so pretty, very minimalist, just a hoop, just the kind I like. I looked at it and kept it in my pocket because I didn’t have enough pierced holes in my ears to wear it. All my earring holes were already taken by other earrings.

RYDER: How many earring holes do you have on each ear?

EUGENIE: You don’t know that?

RYDER: I don’t know i… might have written it at some point a long time ago but… this information must not have made it to my most recent drafts.

EUGENIE: Well I thought I didn’t have enough free spots anyway, to wear that lovely earring I picked up from the ground.

RYDER: What an episode of your life it must have been.

EUGENIE: Let me tell it! Anyway, at some point I looked in the mirror and found out that the earring I thought that I had found, I had actually lost from an existing hole. It had been mine the whole time, misplaced, outside of my attention.

RYDER: Look at you coming up with a real memory.

EUGENIE: Was that a real memory?

RYDER: Who the fuck knows, Eugenie. Soo, whatever is meant for you will find you, right?

EUGENIE: Or you already have it. You already have everything.

RYDER: Or if you act like you do, already have it, it will find you. Like a magnet.

EUGENIE: OR!! You don’t really want to be in space, you just want to sit in the spaceship satisfied that you made it there and delight there, with your ass on the seat of the rocket, so you don’t risk being disappointed when you do arrive to real space and it’s not as mind-blowing as you thought.

RYDER: Who doesn’t crystallize their dreams?

EUGENIE: I don’t crystallize my dreams.

RYDER: that’s true, but if I crystallize my dreams, it’s because they are likely to become true like, decades after I dreamed them.

EUGENIE: You are saying you fed your dream-bag enough that it burst, eventually.

RYDER: There are many ways to picture what’s called writing magic.

EUGENIE: And sigil magic?

RYDER: Look, I met an exorcist once, a medium, a seer. She channeled a spirit for me into a stone carved as a skull.

EUGENIE: Excuse me, she did what?

RYDER: Excuse ME, I didn’t interrupt you during your absurd tale of the black skinny monster visiting you in the night!

EUGENIE: But I’m not sure that you believed me.

RYDER: We’re just going to have to want to believe, Eugenie. But yes, that clairvoyant lady described to me that the spirit inside the skull was a deceased person named Lily, who had been alive in the world and who had never found a romantic partner during her lifetime. Lily had, however, been an artist, she had drawn the same man for many years with pencils and charcoals on paper and, after her death, she found that man.

EUGENIE: Jesus Christ. Lily is the name of my LED ghost at home!

RYDER: Yes, a late addition.

EUGENIE: Is Lily a Black woman?

RYDER: Why are you asking that?

EUGENIE: I don’t know, I always had a feeling.

RYDER: I’m not gonna lie, when I’m high as fuck, I have the feeling that Lily is a Black woman too.

EUGENIE: Do you think Lily knew that she would meet that man she drew over and over?

RYDER: Eventually?

EUGENIE: Yes.

RYDER: I’m not the psychic here.

EUGENIE: Not a teacher, not a cosmonaut, not a nurse, not a psychic.

RYDER: I’m a writer.

EUGENIE: And you are saying that writing makes magic happen. That drawing makes magic happen.

RYDER: Images, giving outside shape to what’s inside, does. Writing and dreaming, yes. Or, from your last question about Lily and her repetitive portraits: the future has already happened and it’s communicating with us, that’s another likelihood.

EUGENIE: Is that why everyone makes fun of me and my vision of time, because you created me this way? Like, you and your bizarre notion of time?

RYDER: Sleeping, for example, is like embarking on a machine to travel through time, to breakfast.

EUGENIE: So sleeping is a way to avoid going through your feelings and fast forward to later, to a better future. Something for cowards who don’t want to face the day.

RYDER: I can’t deny it. If you could feel the void I feel sometimes, you’d be less quick to judge.

EUGENIE: Have you ever seen the future?

RYDER: Yes, of course! After Barry, I understood that the future speaks to me all the time. It’s hard to discern from normal life noise and sights, though, because the future doesn’t always speak with the aim to say some important things. Sometimes the future just wants to say, ‘I’m here, you can hear me, Listen’People tend to be spiritual and think that the invisible only drops bombs, while the truth is, most of all, invisible things just want you to trust.

EUGENIE: God almighty, you know it all, don’t you?

RYDER: No, stop that. I don’t know anything. All I’m doing is speculate.

EUGENIE: But I see you gave me your weird vision of time.

RYDER: I don’t control the way you come out of my mind. Eugenie, have you ever killed a spider?

EUGENIE: What?

RYDER: Next time you kill a spider, think about that spider. She was born, from an egg. Maybe transported on her mother’s back. She ended up in your bath tub, and you killed her, because you were too lazy to remove her inside a cup with a sheet of paper for the manoeuvre, and too lazy to release her into the wild. You just wanted to take a shower and go about your day. So now you hold in your mind her birth, through imagination, and in your hands her trespass, from your lack of oneness.

EUGENIE: It takes some skills and some time, to capture a spider for release.

RYDER: It does, I mean, it takes some motivation.

EUGENIE: Why are you telling me this?

RYDER: I want you to think about that spider. Life can stop at anytime, any literal time. I want you to think that when you take a life, you take your own.

EUGENIE: Is that from Dune? Not the book… the movie adaptation of it.

RYDER: The last occasion on which I killed a spider because I just wanted her removed from my sight, it was surely my last. I paid dear price for it. Death hunted me later on before the sun went down, told me, ‘are you inflicting death around here, little lady? Because that’s my job’

EUGENIE: Death actually called you little lady?

RYDER: I don’t know. It was powerful, though.

EUGENIE: Why are you telling me this? What does that spider have to do with anything?

RYDER: Nothing, I’m sorry. It doesn’t have to do with anything. I just can’t help it. I was only thinking, perhaps, I should try to instill some extra values to you while you are in that state, like, rewiring your brain. I care a lot about animals.

EUGENIE: And I don’t give a crap about that vegan Buddhist bullshit, I will continue to kill as many spiders as I want.

RYDER: Of course. Don’t worry about it.

EUGENIE: Very well then.

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Ryder with a Y?

RYDER: Yes?

EUGENIE: When you are quiet, I’m picturing you jotting something down for your next idea, in your book of ideas, in your notebook of brainstorming.

RYDER: I’m scribbling.

EUGENIE: When you say writing and sigil magic, do you mean manifestation.

RYDER: Yes I mean manifestation, by all means. Projection, The Secret, intention, power, life itself. Whatever we call it, it is a very dangerous magic to manipulate.

EUGENIE: Because things come true, as in the old adage, ‘be careful what you wish for’

RYDER: GIRL.

EUGENIE: You sound like—

RYDER: Girl, that’s the story of my life right there.

EUGENIE: I was going to say, you sound like my cunty inner voice, or my dead grandma.

RYDER: Listen to yourself.

EUGENIE: Alright, alright.

RYDER: Let me tell you something. The whale episode, it’s not just from that film, The Big Blue, it’s also because when I was a little girl, I had this strange tingle and impression, that I was lying motionless on a flat disk falling fast into a big cylinder, into darkness. My arms and legs were heavy and light at the same time like I was made of burning thread and ice cold iron at the same time, and the falling felt like it was going into water. That’s when I started thinking that I could wake up from a coma in a strange bed, one day, and that all would be an illusion. I was terrified of it at first but, then, after some time, I taught myself to enjoy it.

EUGENIE: Like the bull thing, like, Tom, the bull

RYDER: Tim.

EUGENIE: Tim the bull.

RYDER: Or like your sleep paralysis monster-turned-friend.

EUGENIE: That’s right.

RYDER: I have never written anything about your sleep paralysis monster.

EUGENIE: But you have written about the bull…

RYDER: Perhaps at some point, but I don’t remember for sure.

EUGENIE: How is it possible that you don’t recall even what you wrote?

RYDER: Because I have written so goddamn much. Maybe you do exist, like Barry exists. But he’s gone now.

EUGENIE: Fine. But maybe I have taken a life of my own too.  

RYDER: In a way you have, seeing how similar I have become to you, which still gives me the chills.

EUGENIE: It’s a bit harrowing.

RYDER: Maybe the same has happened to me and I’ve also taken a life of my own. Maybe from some other writer or cartoonist who made me up in my own drop of water.

EUGENIE: So if the universe doesn’t care if you’re scared to death or desperately wishing, as long as you glorify and throw your energy towards something enough, how come the universe hasn’t made anything bad occur to you, anything you worried about sufficiently?

RYDER; I am stronger than that.

EUGENIE: No, Ryder, you are not stronger than that. You are just what you said: fortunate, lucky, spoiled, with your army of good stars. Some people hold the belief that they don’t incarnate on Earth without having their life already planned and written, even discussed in details with a bunch of guardian angels and spirit guides like in a conference room.

RYDER: Here you go. It must be nice to have opinions.

EUGENIE: It must be nice to have real memories, too. That spider you regret so much killing, she had probably agreed about that death beforehand.

RYDER: That’s plausible.

EUGENIE: Which didn’t prevent the Grim Reaper from harassing you the next day.

RYDER: You mean the very day. Yes, I believe our contracts intertwined, the spider’s and mine.

EUGENIE: In order to come to life in this world, you have to sign like… a soul contract.

RYDER: Confer with your guides and angels and ghosts and sign it on a paper. Voilà.

EUGENIE: You are French.

RYDER: I’m certainly not from Indiana. 

EUGENIE: But I don’t think I have signed any kind of soul contract regarding my existence.

RYDER: Not to my knowledge, no.

EUGENIE: And Barry did?

RYDER: Barry did what?

EUGENIE: Sign a soul contract, with you involved, as his creator?

RYDER: Don’t be silly, Barry wasn’t created by me. He must have existed this whole time doing his own thing, and I must have been aligned with him on my incarnation path.

EUGENIE: Listen to yourself. Barry and the spider, both part of your Earth contract.

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Why are you giggling like a child?

RYDER: Because soon after I met Barry, the real one, he caught from my bathtub the biggest spider I had ever seen outside of an exotic zoo. I couldn’t even have showered her down the drain if I had wanted to or if I had been alone in front of that issue, because she was too large for the drain.

EUGENIE: Barry lived with you like he lived with me.

RYDER: By the way, zoos are—

EUGENIE: I’m sure, bad, bad, bad. Bad zoos. Save yourself the trouble of your argument against zoos.

RYDER: Fascinating, right?

EUGENIE: Barry’s name, the Barry who came to you, his name wasn’t Barry, wasn’t it?

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: What was his name?

RYDER: I will not tell you that.

EUGENIE: And did you ever call him Barry by accident?

RYDER: One… one time. Don’t laugh!

EUGENIE: Come on! You have to laugh about this!

RYDER: Okay, maybe you’re right.

EUGENIE: Are you one of those people who ‘write drunk, edit sober’?

RYDER: Is that a quote from that shitbag Bukowski, or that childish wanker Jack Kerouac?

EUGENIE: Hemingway. I’ve never read him, but I heard that phrase before.

RYDER: In the past, i might have been writing drunk an editing less drunk, but not anymore.

EUGENIE: You are a sober writer.

RYDER: It doesn’t mean that I am rawdogging the process nor this crazy life, and neither should you.

EUGENIE: Is Barry a superhero in… real life too?

RYDER: He saved me, so he is capable, for sure, but he’s not a superhero. There are no mutants and super powers in my world.

EUGENIE: In your drop of water.

RYDER: Now you see why I have been so bored.

EUGENIE: He saved you like, from despair but also from that spider. Like in Titanic, forgive me but—

RYDER: Of course, He saved me—

EUGENIE: … ‘He saved me in any way—

RYDER: … a person can be saved. I don’t even have a picture of him. He exists now only in my memory’

EUGENIE: … Only in my memory’ But you saw Barry, and you didn’t take a photo of him?

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: So you don’t have proof of his actual materializing into your life?

RYDER: We don’t have proof of anything at all. Sometimes you see things, the truth, sometimes, you don’t.

EUGENIE: Wouldn’t you be obsessed with things that have a lot of… sea? By any chance?

RYDER: Yes, the whales, the turtle, the dolphins, the Pacific, the proteus—

EUGENIE: What’ s a proteus?

RYDER: A cave-dwelling salamander. That’s what people compare you to, because you like to live in the absence of light.

EUGENIE: That’s… charming. Hold on, what people, people who have read your story?

RYDER: No one has ever read my story.

EUGENIE: Nobody?

RYDER: Anyway, sorry for all those water creatures. A lot of my dreams need water to function, I apologize for that excess, Eugenie, I need water for things to flow from me through the invisible, to life. My main three astrological signs are all water signs. Solar, Lunar, Ascendant, all three of them.

EUGENIE: Yikes.

RYDER: I even have a stellium in one of those signs.

EUGENIE: Which one?

RYDER: … Scorpio.

EUGENIE: YIKES. Oh my God, yikes!

RYDER: There will be an albatross too, soon, you will see.

EUGENIE: You will write me more? Write Barry more?

RYDER: I will try my best, I swear. I want to, I long to, every second of the day. Initially I could only write at key moments of my schedule, like, after menstruating or if I was really sinking into hopelessness. I wrote in airports when I evacuated countries, I wrote when I fled, when I landed, all but one of my luggage missing, I wrote when I thought I would kill myself, I wrote when the ground dissolved under my feet.

EUGENIE: You wrote unhappy.

RYDER: I want to write happy, I know I can, Eugenie.

EUGENIE: So you barely even write.

RYDER: I’m not one of those people who can’t be happy or nitpick their happiness or second guess everything or are suspicious of merry moments, I soak happiness up when it comes to me, even if it lasts only half a day.

EUGENIE: So that’s how it’s taken you some twenty fucking years to figure out. Because you’re just… slow.

RYDER: Sometimes I write during retrogrades, conjunctions, moons, that used to be my routine, very sparse.

EUGENIE: I hate the moon.

RYDER: I hate the moon too.

EUGENIE: So you seldom write.

RYDER: One year ago, I started writing non-stop, it was so bananas. I guess I asked the universe to never stop writing, because I miss it when I don’t write. I asked and asked and asked. It’s the only mindful thing I can do, when I don’t operate in past or future, only present. I didn’t want to depend on celestial bodies or my hormones anymore. And the universe listened.

EUGENIE: Eywa had heard you.

RYDER: The Great Mother. Yes, all I asked was to become a real writer because writing is the only thing that makes me less bored and a little happier. Writing happens for me in the present, like vomiting.

EUGENIE: Like vomiting? Like, puking?

RYDER: Like throwing up, have you noticed? When you are throwing up, you are on a one-track-mind. In our overbooked modern days, it’s worth noting that being ill can trigger mindfulness.

EUGENIE: I’m sure that some people can throw up and multitask.

RYDER: I disagree with you. That’s why I think of writing as maïeutique.

EUGENIE: The Socratic word for midwifery of the Logos!

RYDER: Yeah, giving birth through discourse.  

EUGENIE: My goodness, is writing painful to you?

RYDER: Writing is like the present, isolated from past and future but it’s cold, suffocating, lonesome. It’s lonely and painful. It can be a torture for me, the blank page, with my idea of what I want to write and the mission in my hands to give it life on the page, just like coexisting with the void.

EUGENIE: Do you have children?

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: You only gave birth to… me and Barry. Siblings. The Great Mother.

RYDER: HEY I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER! Don’t make this awkward. I told you that you and Barry were never blood-related siblings.

EUGENIE: Blood related.

RYDER: I gave birth to this story, not to you and Barry.

EUGENIE: Do you wish for immortality?

RYDER: No I do not.

EUGENIE: Holy Molly, you are lying.

RYDER: Nevertheless, now, I write all the time, not just on moons or phases or ovulation. I have been heard. But it scares me, Eugenie.

EUGENIE: You’re saying this to me? I am in a coma, powerless, lying there like a vegetable, and some weird person is telling me that my entire life has been made up out of their sporadic writing activities, which could stop at any time, if you get sick of it, if a bird drops a heavy stone on you mid-flight and your head gets bashed, if you get murdered, if you are even just fed up and distracted—

RYDER: That’s the thing, though, I don’t get distracted anymore. First time I did write non-stop was on the big solar eclipse last year, it was a total eclipse, a ring of fire. But then, now, my wish has come true, just the way I asked for it to be, and writing has become what breathing is for me. It scares me because sometimes I feel like writing could swallow everything else around it, like the black hole on the face of your sleep paralysis visitor.

EUGENIE: Do you like your men submissive?

RYDER: What sort of a question is that?

EUGENIE: Do you or don’t you? We can talk like adults.

RYDER. Yes, and by yes I mean no. I like a bit of a foggy line

EUGENIE: A Threshold.

RYDER: A liminal space. 

EUGENIE: How did I already know the answer to this? Oh wow, that’s why you have been bored and lonely! You don’t even recognize your own love language!

RYDER: You are more clever than I would have thought.

EUGENIE: I think what you are asking the universe is more than becoming a full-time writer.

RYDER: I know what you are implying and you are wrong, sorry. I don’t want anything else from my story to become true.

EUGENIE: But look, if you are praying to keep writing, to no longer be that lazy seldom writer, and you obtain it, writing will produce magic, and things might cross over again.

RYDER: Like what? Hobbes? Aliens?

EUGENIE: You don’t have aliens in your world?

RYDER: Sadly no.

EUGENIE: Mrai Moumous popping out of your story would make you less bored for sure.

RYDER: I will continue to write that story just because it cures my loneliness. Then I will see what happens. It has always been a life force, a life juice, this thing coming out of me.

EUGENIE: I understand.

RYDER: All I want is to write and just trust the process. It must be something important in my soul contract.

EUGENIE: Yeah because I was going to ask you, why did you choose a love story?

RYDER: I didn’t choose. I’m serious, this thing is just trying to come out, to exist, and sometimes I feel like I am just a vessel for it.

EUGENIE: Possession.

RYDER: More like a haunting. It can happen that I match something I write with something personal in me, but at some other moments, I don’t know why I write what I write. I have learned to let go and accept it.

EUGENIE: Give me an example.

RYDER: Well, you and Barry, I should tell you, why things are so explosive between you. I am fascinated by loneliness, people who are eaten alive by it but would not move a finger to help themselves. I’m mesmerized by stories of people who have felt alone in the world for so long that they have given up and they forbid themselves to see the potential remedy for loneliness in others that they meet. And they fight it when it crosses their paths because they don’t want to regain hope, it’s too scary, the danger of having faith again is too risky, it could destroy them.

EUGENIE: It’s more frightening to hope than to dream in disillusion.

RYDER: For sure. But then when two people meet and they finally open up, and welcome the treasure of a real connection, then their hearts catch on fire and combust, their souls crack open and their want, their love become unstoppable.

EUGENIE: That example is weirdly specific and vague at the same time.

RYDER: It’s the plot of The Last of Us.

EUGENIE: I don’t know that movie either.

RYDER: It’s a video game.

EUGENIE: The last thing you said was rather making me think of that song from Pulp, Seductive… Seductive some name I can’t put my finger on at the moment.

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Do you know it? I’m asking just because I want to be polite.

RYDER: Y… Yes, I like that song.

EUGENIE: I hate that band and that singer’s voice who sounds like he’s drooling all over his microphone, but I’m very much fond of that song, especially the line, ‘When the unmovable object / Meets the unstoppable force / There’s nothing you can do about it’

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: You sound perturbed. I mean your silence sounds pondering.

RYDER:…

EUGENIE: Ryder??

RYDER: I completely forgot about that song. Do you remember the title now?

EUGENIE: Oh, now you’re asking me about a memory that we don’t even share, that you don’t seem to have written into me?

RYDER: Do you know the title of the song, Eugenie?

EUGENIE: No, only the first half of it. Seductive something.

RYDER: That song is called Seductive Barry.

EUGENIE: Oh.

RYDER: It’s one of my favorite songs. Do you recall that other line, ‘How many others could handle it / If all their dreams came true’?

EUGENIE: Yes, and that other one, ‘And if this is a dream / Then I’m going to sleep—

RYDER: … I’m going to sleep / For the rest of my life’

EUGENIE: I heard that song on my way to here.

RYDER: You are full of shit.

EUGENIE: Why would I lie to you? I heard that song and also a swarm of bees, a very loud one, buzzing atrociously.

RYDER: Okay, I can see that happening. I heard that song for the first time on a very special occasion too.

EUGENIE: Why do you say that becoming a full-time writer scares you?

RYDER: Why?? I mean, do you see what’s already happening, everything overlapping, like our drops of water are sitting on a sheet of blotting paper?

EUGENIE: You are more a scaredy-cat than I am, Ryder.

RYDER: Definitely. All I’ve known all my life is fear.

EUGENIE: You can’t be serious.

RYDER: You should try to picture it, sometimes, constant fear. Everyone should, so they wouldn’t grab at any fixed superficial ideas in a rush. You know, last moon, I did a ritual, I burned a laurel leaf on which I wrote I am a fearless writer. I burned it on a new moon for intention with frankincense, copal and corn silk. Because I am so terrified of my writer dream coming true and the universe taking me so literally. And I don’t want it to become literally full-time.

EUGENIE: Like you want to continue having five minutes for a meal or to pee.

RYDER: You don’t understand, the danger of manifestation. If you say to the universe, ‘I want a new car’, the universe will crash your old one. If you say to the universe, ‘I want this completely different and more attractive face’, the universe will drop a bucket of acid on your head. I don’t want to lose my job, for instance.

EUGENIE: Your mysterious job?

RYDER: Yes. My job doesn’t make me happy, but I work with good people, and it makes me content and it makes me feel safe. It pays my bills, and more importantly, what the universe perhaps is unable to, or not meant to distinguish, it allows me to write with a roof over my head and no fear of becoming homeless and no worries to distract me out of writing.

EUGENIE: Seeing the use of the monetary component.

RYDER: Yes.

EUGENIE: You used to write in turmoil, now you wish to write in peace.

RYDER: Yeah.

EUGENIE: Perhaps writing costing you everything is a lesson from your soul contract.

RYDER: I’m not ready for it.

EUGENIE: Is that why we are here, discussing it?

RYDER: I will release you soon, I’m sorry I took so much of your time, Eugenie. I just needed someone to talk to.

EUGENIE: How much time have we been here?

RYDER: For me, an hour or so. For you… I can’t say. It could be any length of time. 

EUGENIE: Jesus fucking Christ. Wait, Ryder, I have a question.

RYDER: Ask.

EUGENIE: I am… How can I put it? I am… immensely intrigued by why you keep shooting Barry.

RYDER: Oh my God.

EUGENIE: Yeah why?

RYDER: I…

EUGENIE: Don’t be shy.

RYDER: I’m not shy, I’m…

EUGENIE: Don’t  be embarrassed.

RYDER: I’m not embarrassed, I’m… drafty about it.

EUGENIE: Don’t be heavy from your draft, it’s just between us girls.

RYDER: I don’t know why I made Barry this way. I have been asking myself the same question because it’s a bizarre thing in the story. I can’t alter it.

EUGENIE: And also a random thing.

RYDER: I will give you the same answer as before: I don’t always control the way you or Barry come out of my mind.

EUGENIE: Like I have this memory of Barry, when he first stayed in my bedroom. I was so exhausted by then, but I had got my medical certificate from my ex, you know, Chedli, at least, I wasn’t pressed by working anymore. I used to spend a lot of time in the corner of the bedroom, in the dark, listening to Barry breathing, because I was so scared shitless that he would die.

RYDER: Like a mother with a newborn.

EUGENIE: You see what I’m getting at?

RYDER: A little bit.

EUGENIE: One night, he managed to roll over on his side by himself.

RYDER: Hmfhf

EUGENIE: Stop laughing! I know what I sound like! You made that happen, not anyone else.

RYDER: I know, I know, continue.

EUGENIE: The reason why he pushed himself to change position and roll over is because he was in so much pain that lying on his back wasn’t possible anymore, and there was still like forty-five minutes before I could give him another sleeping pill. So he turned on his side and curled into a bean. I sat behind him, like, in a way, my sleep paralysis monster had done on our first encounter, and I just scratched his shoulder, for comfort. I didn’t know what to do, because I didn’t know if that was, maybe, like…

RYDER: … extremely inappropriate! Wild, intrusive, violating—

EUGENIE: Creepy, too.

RYDER: Deranged.

EUGENIE: I’m glad we can laugh about this together. I was so afraid all the time, during that period. 

RYDER: Yes, go on.

EUGENIE: But in the end, that day, I was too tired to overthink it and I just listened to my gut and went for, you know, touching him, trying to accompany him. Good heavens, there is some truth in what you’re saying about realities overlapping and how nice it feels to be able to talk to you about this.

RYDER: Like a big weight lifted off your chest.

EUGENIE: I was thinking, you know, about the duties of a nurse, I tried to simplify the concept of what he needed of me. Like, okay, if Barry is hungry, I will feed him, if he is thirsty, I will give him a drink. If he is cold, I will add a blanket on the bed and crank up the radiators. If he is ill, I will take care of him. If he needs a sitter, I will be that sitter.

RYDER: Makes sense.

EUGENIE: And then, that one night, he turned his head and looked up at me. He had this messy hair on the pillow. My eyes had adjusted to the obscurity and I could see enough of his face. It was one of our first… our first—

RYDER: Eyelocks.

EUGENIE: Certainly. And I was astonished that… in a way, although I was going through a horrible time in the beginning, this moment was nice.

RYDER: Yes? Like Tim the bull. It could have been your end, now it’s your beginning.

EUGENIE: Who am I joking… You already know all this.

RYDER: No. Obviously there are some things in your heart that I don’t know.

EUGENIE: ‘The heart of a woman is an ocean of secrets’

RYDER: You sweet child of the 90’s.

EUGENIE: I thought that moment was a bit fucked up, afterwards, though. And now that you’re telling me you’re the writer of all this, I think it’s even more disturbing.

RYDER: I honestly can’t explain why I wrote Barry like this. There was never a moment, even at the very start, even twenty years ago, when he wasn’t like this.

EUGENIE: Like hurt all the time?

RYDER: Yes.

EUGENIE: So you don’t know why you make him suffer? Why you hurt him all the time?

RYDER: No.

EUGENIE: You should think about it, reflect on it. Maybe you don’t know your shadow. Maybe you are a stranger in the land of your own intimacy.

RYDER: I w—

EUGENIE: Maybe you don’t know your own love language.

RYDER: …

EUGENIE: Maybe you don’t know your own heart.

RYDER: I will think about it, Eugenie.