

What is Growing in Maria: A Game of Psychological Horror You Will Lose

Copyright © 2014 by Heidi King

Smashwords Edition

* * * * *

Prologue – Patrick (The Owner)

I remember thinking I'd be completely fucked if my cell phone battery expired. I'd be halfway up the hill, blind and alone in the jungle. The dying glow of my cell made every twisted root look like a jumping pit viper. I wiped the screen on my jeans and held the phone up again. I was in disbelief. The sign should have read The Lost and Found Cloud Forest Hostel, $12 dorm beds. The sign had been painted over in black and with dripping red lettering that read; All here is lost. But here all can be found.

I have been asked about this night so many times that I'm not sure if I am really remembering the details or just remembering telling the story. Like the dull moments that would have drifted away forever were it not for the fact that a great tragedy occurred, like how you remember where you were during 9-11. I would just as soon let these moments drift away into the gardens of forgotten memories. But sometimes they ask you to hop the fence to look into the darkest parts of this garden among the twisted roots. And sometimes they make you take a shovel.

My repainted sign told me that this would not be a homecoming. My visit was unannounced – just a quick in and out on my way to the islands to pick up a rain jacket I had left behind. I guess it didn't really matter what the new managers did, as long as they weren't late with their lease payments and Tripadvisor reviews were positive. I made my way up the trail humming Tom Waits' Gods Away on Business, and thinking about exerting at least some authority by changing the music in the bar. Maybe if Matt wasn't around I would break out the Jim Beam and offer Maria a few on the house and get the scoop on things.

When I approach the fork in the path between the forest reserve and the hostel I expected to hear music and see the lights. There was nothing but a thick blanket of fog that seemed to soak up all sound and light. I went directly to the bar and discovered it locked. I put my ear to the door and I swore I could hear whispers. If there had been anyone inside, they stopped when they heard me approach.

When I walked by Rocky's cage, our resident kinkajou jumped an inch from my head. A classic attack when he feels neglected. When I turned on the lights of the main area I saw they had completely repainted. The gold beetles, butterflies and lizards that we had painted were covered with hieroglyphs and cryptic symbols. At least the kitchen was clean.

Along the stairs leading down to the office and reception area was a small mural with one of those Egyptian all seeing eyes. I went down to check the white board where we list which rooms are occupied. I flicked on the switch and saw that the board was completely empty. They hadn't had a guest in days. I decided right then and there that when the one year lease expired I would retake my hostel. I began erasing the board with the damp cuff of my shirt. Suddenly I heard breathing behind me and I froze. From the corner of my eye I saw a dark shadow sitting at the table. I silently turned to face the solitary figure.

It was Steve, one in the group of six, who was leasing my hostel. He was just staring at his right hand. I stood there for a moment just watching. Anyone conscious would have been aware of me. But then Steve Banks was a whack job, the comic relief, caricature of himself. I assumed he was stoned on Valium or Xanax.

I stood a few feet from him and positioned myself to see what he was staring at. It appeared he had drawn a tiny snake with a black pen on the palm of his hand. His eyes were open and eerily darting back and forth, like he was sleeping with his eyes open. I reached out to touch his shoulder but out of the blue I heard an urgent whisper: "Don't touch him!" I spun around and saw the man they called Dr. Mike standing in the doorway. He frantically waved me outside.

"You must not wake him," he whispered when we were out on the main terrace "He is in a deep sleep. He is a somnambulist in the middle of a lucid dream." I remember he held my arm as he talked either as a gesture of urgency or feigned familiarity.

He slowly pulled his thin wire frames off and began cleaning them while he smiled at me. "You are the famous Patrick," he said. "It's so nice to speak with you finally. You must be proud. This is a wonderful place." He sat down and rested his John Lennon rip off glasses on his large stomach and ran both hands through his graying hair. This was the first time I met the supposed psychologist and it's hard to remember now if I really distrusted him on our first meeting or if events since have distorted my memory. The truth is, I don't remember what we talked about. I can only guess, or would like to think, that even on my first meeting with him I detected condescension in his voice as he explained to me the process of lucid dreaming and how taking control of your unconscious allows you take control of your reality. I think I was just worried about my hostel. That and I wanted to see Maria.

During a pause in his soliloquy I went to the laundry room and dug through a box. Dr. Mike only raised his voice and followed. I pulled out my red rain jacket and put it on. I was trying to shake him by going into the kitchen and grabbing a beer. I asked if there was a list to mark the beer I was about to drink and he gave me a look like he was confounded that I would talk about something in the middle of a lecture about Carl Jung and unlocking the collective unconscious. I tried to escape to the far side to the terrace where guests usually sat and absorbed the views of Volcan Baru, Panama's highest point. Tonight you couldn't see more than twenty or thirty feet through the fog and it was rolling in thicker and thicker. You could, however, see the main dorm building below that I had once planned to be nothing but a big second terrace. At the last minute I decided it would be better to build more dorm space so the stairs that were to lead down to the terrace led to the outer wall of the main dorm.

But this night the steps did not lead down to the wall. They led to an elevator; an old fashioned elevator with an iron-gate door. A rush of the surreal came over me. It was like that dream; a mundane dream where everything is normal except in this dream your bedroom has a new door. A door at the back of the closet you never knew was there and it seemed to be calling you. Here was one in front of me and oddly I found myself wishing I could enter.

Mike followed me as I went right up to elevator to reassure myself that it was indeed a well painted mural and not a hallucination. On closer inspection I could see that a panel of buttons had been painted with three floors, The Lost and Found, The Valley, and The Lost Mine. Mike must have sensed my discomfort with the changes and started a lecture about the local mythology of the nearest town, Valle de la Mina. "The town was named after a mine, that may or may not exist," he said. "The fabled mine may have actually been classic misdirection. A man who had discovered the gold planted the idea that there was a mine and locals wanted to believe it. In fact, the gold the man was extracting may have actually come from the graves of pre-Columbian Indians."

I used the bathroom as an excuse and finally got rid of Dr. Mike. On my way to the toilets I saw that a tree that I had never really noticed until now had a light switch on it. I flipped the switch and immediately beams of green light shot up at the trees in the distance, eradiating the heavy fog slowly drifting past. The cable that was connected to the switch led up into the tress and down to a vast area I had never been – a neglected area where large patches of beautiful heliconia flowers grew wild. I tried to follow the cable that zigzagged between trees but after several meters I was stopped by a dense wall of plants. When I tried to crawl through, I discovered that there was also chicken wire strung up to block anyone from entering whatever area was behind the wall. I followed this wall of plants a few dozen meters, almost to the opposite side until I saw a sign with a single word and an arrow pointing to an opening in the wall of plants. Labyrinth, it read. Like the dream with the new door, this labyrinth somehow called me in. But this time I really could enter.

Immediately I got turned around. I hit a dead end, and then the maze spat me out again. I don't remember why I felt compelled to solve the riddle of the labyrinth when my hostel seemed to be transforming into a dark, parallel version of itself, but I think my intuition told me I would find answers at the end. It seemed as though I had walked down the same row for the tenth time and I stopped in frustration. But then I looked up and noticed and noticed something that told me I was actually on a new passageway. There, above me, words had been engraved into a tree.

_All great things must_ first _wear terrifying and monstrous masks_ , in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

It was at that instant that I heard it. At first I thought it was a wild animal. But I listened intently and could hear it was methodic. After a moment I was sure is was the sound of digging. "Hello," I called out a couple of times but there was no answer but the sound continued – – a dull repetitive slicing of shovel into moist earth.

The twists and turns of the maze were exasperating but I was determined to reach the source of the noise. Then all at once I turned into a small clearing and saw Maria, completely naked. Her skin was ghostly white in the green lights that lit the labyrinth. Even then she was beautiful. She kept digging a small hole, oblivious to my presence. I walked up to her and said,

"Maria," and gently touched her elbow. I startled her. She jerked forward, towards me and tripped backwards into the hole she had been digging. I felt a deep chill and dark sense that I broken something I wasn't supposed to touch. She squinted at me.

"Matt?" she murmured.

"No," I said slowly.

She looked disappointed. "Why are you digging?" I asked.

She hesitated and looked around. "I don't know," she whispered. "Where am I?"

Suddenly she stood straight up in the shallow hole and began frantically wiping the palm of her hand as though she were looking for some kind of answer there. She stopped just as quickly and raised her hand slowly to allow the light to catch some kind of symbol drawn on the palm of her hand. I saw her eyes widen in abject terror as if she was watching her own shocking death on the palm of her hand. I think she stopped breathing. Her mouth was wide open like she wanted to scream. She looked down at her body. She began running her hands up her bare thighs to her vagina. I saw something odd there and Maria's expression changed from horror to disgust, like she was about to vomit.

I tried to grasp what could possibly be protruding from between her legs. It slowly started oozing out covered in blood. It dropped to the ground. It was a bulbous vial full of what must have only been blood.

Her eyes looked like they would bulge out of the sockets. She collapsed in a hysterical fit and began to scream. I reached down to comfort her but she only screamed louder, transgressing into semi-coherent ranting in English and Spanish. "Rip the zipper, separate my flesh, fuck me, she won't be born... yellow, yellow, yellow fucking teeth!" Over and over again convulsing wildly until all at once she passed out. I wrapped her in the red rain jacket I had come to The Lost and Found for. Suddenly Mike appeared out of the dark gloom and in a flurry of movement he scooped Maria up and whisked her into the passages of the labyrinth. A bizarre satyr carrying a limp maiden into the night best describes the unreal image etched into my eyes.

"Did Dr. Mike try to draw a symbol on your hand? Where was Matt? Was it a syringe?" Over and over I would be asked these same questions by my friends, the families, the Panamanian police, but most of all I questioned myself. Over and over again, while I tried to forget, while I literally washed the splattered blood to remove all signs of the sick horror at The Lost and Found. I want to put this to rest and move on with my life even if I can never return to a completely normal life. So once and for all I am going to plunge into the dark corners of the garden of my memories. In the following pages I use the words of those involved; the blogs, the emails and personal diaries and when I have to; my words. With these pages I take the shovel and I will bury this tragedy forever. This is what happened.

Get Out If You Can!

By Dr. Michael Anderson

My hotel concierge warned me not to look for her. She was in what he described as a somewhat sordid area of Panama City. I did my best to take his advice. But I couldn't get my needs satisfied through traditional means. I was desperate. I was told I could find her in Chinatown.

The actual street is called Salsipuedes. Seventeenth Century maps of Old Panama show that this street bore the same name then as it does now. But it is not so much a name as a warning: Salsipuedes literally means Get Out If You Can. And 'street' is a bit of a misnomer... Salsipuedes is more of a labyrinth of contradiction. There are wooden kiosks selling almost everything \- from hand woven textiles and cheap leather to electronics and decades old romance novels. National Geographic magazines from the 50's sit beside porn from the 80's. It was on Salsipuedes, I was certain, that I would find her – the Voodoo priestess of former dictator/CIA informant turned drug kingpin, General Manuel Noriega.

It is easy to miss the dark and narrow opening of the street. You are likely to continue along Avenida Central to Parque Santa Ana, one of Panama's more colorful areas and overlooked attractions. Here you can see Kuna Indians in their colorful traditional dress feeding squadrons of hungry pigeons as diablos rojos roar by. If you have a seat near the gazebo facing the landmark Café Coca-Cola you will see old rail tracks that lead down to the colonial white-washed neighborhood of Casco Viejo. But if you hang a right by mistake, you enter the real area of danger \-- the poverty stricken, violent neighborhood of Chorillo. But past the dangerous barrio, only a few hundred meters further and over a barbed wired fence, there is a pleasant green neighborhood that looks like small town America. In fact, until very recently, it was American territory - the Panama Canal Zone.

The U.S. invasion of Panama was less of an invasion than an expensive manhunt with heavy firepower. Bullet holes scar the dark, ominous high-rises of Chorillo -- vestiges from when the US came to look for Noriega at the Comandancia, his fortified headquarters. But he was already on the run.

Uncle Sam's boys continued their search at his officer's club, beach home and luxury houses. Each place they destroyed when they discovered he was not there. Panama has left them in ruins as a kind of way to flip him the bird. The officers' club in Casco Viejo, however, was temporarily used as a location for a party hosted by a Bond villain in the movie Quantum of Solace.

At one of his luxury homes they found some peculiar items. According to U.S. military reports, Noriega left behind porn, a portrait of Hitler, an assortment of books, beads, stones, cocaine, a Rosicrucian portrait of Jesus, plaster statues, dried food "offerings" and an altar made by his Brazilian Voodoo priestess. They also found a freezer full of voodoo candles. Each bundle of candles was wrapped in a piece of paper with one of his enemy's names on it. His enemies included Dick Cheney, then the US Secretary of Defense, and the President, George Bush Sr., with whom Noriega was connected through the C.I.A (Noriega was a paid informant when Bush was the Director of the C.I.A.) If the candles were meant to somehow bring these adversaries down, they failed, as most of these politicians or their sons made great comebacks. Many of Noriega's items can still be purchased today, a short distance from his headquarters -- in that esoteric maze of 'Salsipuedes'.

Noriega left behind his voodoo and his voodoo priestess in his time of trouble and literally turned to the Church. He had been hiding at the Vatican Embassy when American G.I.s set up across the street where Multi Centro, a huge Colombian owned shopping mall, now sits. The Americans didn't fire guns at the Embassy of the Holy See but rather blasted Guns and Roses´. Noriega eventually had enough of Welcome to the Jungle, and surrendered.

With Noriega behind bars in Florida, the Americans had no interest in his Brazilian "mama," or priestess. But I had to find her.

My desperation came three days after island hopping in Bocas Del Toro. An excruciating rash had turned up on my calves and ankles. I went to three pharmacies. Usually, even if they don't know what you have, the pharmacists sell you some kind of mysterious drug. One pharmacist swore that my rash was actually the result of insect bites, but still, none of the pharmacists offered any kind of remedy. After a week, I was starting to lose my mind. A friend suggested that I go to 'Salsipuedes,' so I left my watch at home, took only a copy of my passport, mustered up some courage, and ventured into the crowded alleyway.

Before I arrived at La Tienda Esoterica, I could smell the incense drifting down the street. Inside my eyes took time to adjust to the darkness, but they finally wrapped around angelic statues of The Virgin Mary sitting next to dark clay skulls. Penthouse magazines next to Good Housekeeping.

I understood that Salsipuedes is not a large scale voodoo shop. There isn't any one dogma unifying things – there is as much Catholic as there is Santería. And the list doesn't end there: experts say that many of Noriega's possessions were not Voodoo or Santería, but a product of Mexican black folk art called Brujería – Witchcraft.

And then I saw her. Her black face remained hidden among the hundreds of smoke-stained, angry-faced idols. Only its size announced that it was human. The lines around her eyes and deep jowls told me she was old enough to be Noriega's priestess. I imagined on my way over that I might ask about the former general but now I dared not. Like many of the Afro-Antilleans in Panama, the woman spoke English. I told her I had a rash, and without telling her more she asked me to lift up my pant legs. Her eyes widened at the sight and she gasped. "Do you have money?" she asked. I showed her.

"I have just what you need," she said with a thick Caribbean accent. Without expression she forcefully took my arm and pulled me into a dusty, damp side room filled with oils and dried herbs. She transformed from ominous sentinel of occult idols to eager servant. She stepped onto a ladder and started pulling things frantically from high off the shelf. Soon, she was crushing seeds and plants in a ceramic bowl, using a crucible. I sat in silence as she boiled tea, added the leaves to the tincture, and mixed in various other oils.

When her elixir was finished, she had me place my feet in a large metal bowl. Then she lit a bundle of wild grass and blew the sweet smelling smoke at my ankles, feet and legs. She got down on her hands and knees, prostrated herself in front of me and began chanting in a language I couldn't recognize. I closed my eyes. I respected the seriousness by which the shaman did her work. She massaged the natural medicine everywhere below my knees- even through my toes. It brought instant relief.

I lost track of time... I started to doze but she woke me with the sharp chime of a small cymbal. I put my shoes and socks on. She gave me a bottle of what she had created and told me to rub it on my legs four times a day and leave it on. "Must not wash!"

Despite the street name's warning, I escaped Salsipuedes without incident and returned home cautiously optimistic. Three days later my legs were silky smooth. The medicine woman succeeded where the pharmacists failed. A few weeks later, when I ran into my friend that recommended that I go to Salsipuedes, I thanked her.

"I'm glad the oil helped with the bites," she said.

"Bites? No, not bites. That's what the pharmacist thought too, but this was some kind of mysterious rash."

"What? No, no, no. You were bitten by chitras, sand flies. They hang out on tropical islands and get you when your legs are under the shade of the table. They are so small you never see them... they're sometimes called no-see-ums. You don't feel them for a few days, but if they get you badly, they burrow under the skin, pop out later and bite again. There is no way to get rid of them except coconut oil... it drowns them when they pop out."

"But the shaman cast out the evil... she put a lot more in than just coconut oil - I saw her..."

"Oh. Hmm. How much did you pay for the shamanic healing?"

"Oh. Ahhhhh. Twenty dollars or something like. Something like that.... Sixty-two ninety-five!"

O.K. I must confess- I am not so naïve. I am what many consider a kind of voodoo priest, one of the few remaining Jungian psychoanalysts. My real fault is one I make often in Panama – I forget to negotiate the price first. But, in the end, I paid to experience a dying art that maybe should live on: the combination of faith and medicine. Shamans play a significant role in societies because of their ability to elicit hope using both religion and medicine.

And so, for me 'Get out if you can,' has taken a new meaning. Every time I return to Salsipuedes, I see something new. I can't seem to ever really get out, I guess. Maybe that is the real meaning behind the street's name.

Perhaps Noriega's flight from the American military manhunt was telling... when on the run he left the paraphernalia from the black arts behind, ran into the Embassy of the Holy-See and surrendered. The flight to Christ continued. In the Metropolitan Correctional Center of Dade County, Florida, Manuel Noriega has surrendered again – this time he surrendered his soul to Jesus Christ. He has been baptized as a born again Christian. He is still awaiting a hearing in France to decide what will happen to his living mortal coil. Perhaps his conversion is in earnest. But if not, Get Out If You Can, Manuel. And if you do, I will see you on Salsipuedes. Please introduce me to your Voodoo priestess.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

By Steve Banks

I can't tell you about banana republics like Panama... about the joy of little freedoms... about cigars, Cuban – go ahead light them in public. About discos, on Calle Uruguay – open 'til the sun starts shining. About beer tunnels, my favorite – models ask you how many they can open for you before you drive off. About hookers, Colombian – 18 years old (más o menos) that you willingly ignore are pros until your buddy tells you the taxi money home was enough keep them in blow for a month. About Christmas, just another excuse for a party – where pasty white skin like mine is actually checked out by women hotter than the girls that threw beer in my face at college. Fucking enjoy them, because these freedoms come from a lack of due process... enjoy them, because whether you do or not one day this lack of due process will come sneaking up behind you and bite you in the ass. Remembering these freedoms can keep you from losing your shit in a Panamanian jail. I know.

Maybe I should begin at the beginning. If you want to know the truth, it has a lot to do with Paul. Paul Newman.

Anna Nicole Smith, Oh My God! Is the surge working? Mortgage meltdown, arctic meltdown, how is your iPhone? Did you hear Angelina has new babies? This was the dorky banter I participated in, which made me a big fat dork. I paid my mortgage, I was going to vote for Obama, and I never cheated on my wife. Then Paul Newman died.

When I first heard, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," in the Guns and Roses song, I ran down to the Blockbuster and got all Paul's movies. Cool Hand Luke from the aforementioned song was my favorite. He got the shit kicked out of him in jail and when no human could take more, and all he had to do was lay down, he got up to get the shit kicked out of him again. I never understood the movie or why he did that but for some reason I loved to see him get the shit kicked out of him. Like, fuck you, hit me again.

Two things sucked that day. For one, Paul died. It wasn't so much that he died as it was that he got old and then died. Eighty three... when did that happen? The second thing that sucked always sucked - my boss, the man who perpetually looks like he took a dump in his pants. Tom (my boss), if for some reason you are reading my blog – YOU SHIT YOUR PANTS DIDN'T YOU – EVERYDAY!

"So," he said. "Paul Newman."

Hmmm, maybe Mr. Poopy Pants is not such a douchebag after all, I thought.

"No, Steve. I don't care one way or another that a Hollywood actor died. I mean Paul Newman is too bad. 'Don't tease me bro'' is too bad, and all the Rihanna videos are too bad. And Facebook is really too bad. Too bad for you."

He slowly pushed a piece of paper in front of me that I had signed a few months earlier. I thought it was companywide policy that everyone had signed about internet use. I never really read the thing.

"That was your second warning," he said.

I know now why Biff stole the pen in Death of a Salesman. I left my boss's office imagining the pen from his desk sticking out of his bleeding eye. I didn't want to work there anymore. I didn't want to work, to pay my mortgage or be a husband. Fuck it. I didn't need to do the right thing anymore. Fuck it... I would leave and not vote for Obama.

They tried to get me to stay and finish a project I was already six months behind on. I had been working on my own project instead – a Facebook project called 'Latina 'Ginas'-- a competition to see which country could be best represented on three different Facebook profiles of me. In the end Panama won. Not because I had more hot girls added from Panama, but because of Estrella. A super-hot girl from the country's third largest city, David, with whom I decided I had to study horizontal salsa. Also, my buddy Matt was teaching English in Panama City. Two weeks after I quit my job I left a note on the bed for the wife to not wait up for me. I was in Panama. More than she deserved.

They say that Panama City is like Miami, except that they speak English in Panama. This is not true. One night at the casino I tried to ask for a michelada, which is beer, lime and salt. I didn't get the 'lada' part, so what I had actually asked for was micha, a very bad word for vagina. Like 'cunt'. I asked for a cunt while I was playing Texas Hold'em. The best I got all night were rude looks and pair of deuces. The next day I was supposed to head to the San Blas islands with my buddy Matt but I couldn't take it anymore. I had to see if the winner of the Facebook 'Latina 'Gina' challenge was as hot as her profile picture.

I checked into Hostel Bambú, a cool little place with a pool and a one eyed dog aptly named Stinky. I was supposed to meet Estrella a few hours after checking in, so I proceeded to drink coffee and a distilled sugar cane alcohol called seco. One moment I was sitting around the pool while the owner of the hostel played Leonard Cohen on the guitar, and the next I was waking up in my underwear in a strange apartment. There was a note on the table in Spanish from some guy named Sergio. I had no idea what it said. I imagined he was some gay guy that found me face down in a puddle in front of a gay bar.

In my pocket was a piece of paper with a drawing of two stick people sitting on a bed with tape over their mouths. And a phone number. I called and to my delight it was Estrella, not Sergio, at the other end of the line. She said something about going to the bush.

Again I must emphasize that there really is more English in Miami. Language is an issue. A gringo I met here said he never took his girls to his apartment-- only to the bush. I thought this was okay for him, but I could be a bit classier.

So eventually, Estrella and I get into a taxi, and I am looking around to see which bush we are going to when we arrive at a push. 'Push' is actually an English word that American G.I.'s popularized when they ventured out of the Canal Zone with their girls to go to love motels. You drive into a little garage and push a button that closes the garage door. Then you push another button that opens the bedroom door. Lots of pushing, hence the name.

Panamanian men do not have their own house until they are fifty because they spend all their money on spoilers, fins, duel exhaust, etc. for their 1985 Lada, and when they finally do have their own pad they have already had numerous girlfriends on the side and illegitimate children. So when the Americans left, the push stayed. People often party in the push, and sometimes they die in some crazy car explosion. Often Colombian drug runners die in a push after stealing coke bound for Mexico. Live hard, have sex, die – the push is like the Disney circle of life, Panama Style.

Estrella and I took a taxi to a push called Beverly Hills. In our room I discovered even more buttons to push -- a vending machine of sex toys. After 25 minutes at Beverly Hills I fell in love with both Estrella and La Serpiente Mágica.

There were pros and cons for both Estrella and La Serpiente Mágica, but the sex snake did not have replaceable batteries, so I decided to focus on Estrella. She, however, had Sergio. Does 'novio' mean gay buddy or boyfriend? Again my Spanish was an obstacle so I just chose it to mean the former. But one day after I called her and she spoke nothing but high speed Spanish and hung up, I decided to release my stress on a couple of Swedish backpackers back at the Bambú. I was helping them with their bags behind a locked door when Estrella decided to show up out of the blue and knock. Funny, my holy-shit-what-are-you-doing-here look was not enough to get her to leave. The girls in my room were topless from the pool, so I pushed Estrella out and locked the door. Estrella banged on the door shouting something about mothers, vaginas, sharp objects and juice in Spanish. I am not 100% about the juice part-- I am still learning. Just don't order a 'chucha' if you want juice.

So Estrella took a break from tearfully pounding on the door to grab a knife from the kitchen. She tried to jimmy the door open, but fortunately the hostel owner heard all the talk of juice and whatnot, and because he thought she was trying to kill me, he called the cops. They threw her kicking and screaming into the back of the cop car and asked us to come along. Stupidly, we followed in a taxi. Well, during the drive I guess she convinced the cops that I was trying to rape her and she drew her knife in self-defense.

No due process. I was handcuffed and sat down next to ugly hookers in paint to my right and hairy hookers with dicks to my left -- both eyeing me like the last M&M at a party for fat kids. Their boozy sweat and cheap perfume could not overpower the stank that flew out of the holding cell and introduced itself to the back of my mouth.

The cop called my name. Finally he's gonna let me take a piss, I thought. But when he took my belt and shoe laces I knew I was going into that holding cell.

"No soy criminal," I protested.

He muttered something in Spanish and pushed me into the holding cell.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw faces around me on the floor. They were all shirtless and sweaty and lying in about a quarter inch of what smelled like piss.

"He said I know you are not a criminal," a dark figure in the cell said in English.

"What?"

"The guard. What he said was that he knows you are not a criminal. If he thought you were guilty he would have beaten you already."

I was hit with a sudden rush of fear. Her Facebook said she was nineteen. She looked nineteen. But it was hard to tell with these Latinas.

In jail I committed my first voluntary crime. Full time inmates in the cell above us used string to lower weed rolled with pages of the Bible. The weed was just to get you in the mood for the Oreos that came next. I made friends with the half inch of piss and sweat and the juvenile delinquents that were there for the night. In the morning I was handcuffed and taken down to the fiscalía, sort of the Panamanian version of the D.A's office. I sat there until a man told me I could go home. Charges dropped, I guess. That's due process.

I didn't go back to the hostel. I didn't call her. One day I stopped into an internet café and checked my Facebook. "I want seeing you," was all she wrote. But she had written it twice each day for the ten days I hadn't checked my Facebook.

A couple of days later I checked my Facebook again. There were two notifications.

One was a 'friend request' from my wife.

I clicked 'IGNORE'.

The other was another message from Estrella. "I want seeing you at new," it said.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

What would he do if he could do it all over again? What would Cool Hand Luke do? Would he keep taking a beating? Maybe he took all those beatings and kept asking for more because he knew one day he would be eighty three...

Cool Hand Luke... if you are up there... give me a sign... What would you do?

The Trail of the Black Christ

By Mathew Hope

There's this Panamanian windshield wiper finger wag I picked up that is actually pretty effective. It came in handy the night I had to venture into Cinco de Mayo and turn away transvestite prostitutes and street children that growled when I refused to buy their stickers. This is not my Panama. My Panama is the other way... it is in the money laundering banking district where I teach ESL in a tower by day and party in the discos below by night. Cinco de Mayo is the hot, greasy transportation throat of Panama City. The tourist police are the gag reflex that spits anyone with a camera and shorts out and onto the white-washed cobblestones of Casco Viejo. In Spanish I told the cops that I knew where I was going – to El Cristo Negro, The Pilgrimage of the Black Christ.

Only this was not true. My buddy Steve and I were booked on a sailing trip that departed just past the pilgrimage site to the San Blas islands. Only he decided that it would be way cooler to ditch me at the last minute to chase a girl half his age that he friended on Facebook. Even worse, I was supposed to meet the boat captain in Portobello, and the line at the main bus terminal was out of control with swarming Christian pilgrims off to see this black wooden Jesus idol. It didn't matter – in Cinco de Mayo I decided to catch a diablo rojo to take me to the coast solo.

A diablo rojo was once a shiny new school bus cast out of the Promised Land by the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicles Standards Commission and then retrofitted with duel chrome exhaust and wild graffiti. They roar and spit like demons – hence the name, Red Devil. I boarded my hell on wheels and came face to face to face with wide eyed Evangelicals expecting to join the pilgrimage. Aha, the bowels of Satan are filled with conservative Christians.

Her face appeared when I needed it most. In this sea of penitent alien eyes she locked onto me. The first thing anyone would say about her is how cute she looks- in her photos she wears a smiling mask of innocence that makes you feel guilty for admiring her beauty. But by the way she held my eyes without smiling I had a hunch she was not penitent. Without intimidating obviousness, she slid over just enough to invite me to sit. Her head was not buried in her cell phone, so I knew she wasn't Panamanian, but I knew she wasn't a gringa either. She was dark, olive skinned and beautiful. Plus, she had a backpack with baby blue flippers sticking out the back. When I sat next to her, she didn't drop her gaze. She just silently chewed on the side of her thumbnail. Finally, as if she found what she was looking for in my petrified silence, she smiled slightly and held out her palm. There were two red pills.

"Tómala," she offered after she popped one of them into her mouth.

I smiled and of course refused. She buried the pill in her jeans pocket. The bus did not move for more than an hour, and during the time we were sitting there in virtual silence, an obedient looking schoolboy sandwiched me closer to her. Now we were ass to ass in silence. She broke a long period of window staring by spitting out in perfect English, 'Holy fuck, when is this bus going to move!'

The pill was a valium you can buy at most pharmacies in Panama, and this one, I guess, was particularly strong. She told me you could bounce on a bus with no shocks and wake up feeling like you had a great eight hours of sleep.

If the Devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.

I popped the pill in my mouth. She offered me a swig of her water and I accepted. But the pill sat at the back right hand side of my mouth between my teeth and cheek. As far as I could tell she wasn't watching to see if I swallowed. I could feel it dissolving in my mouth and was starting to taste the chemicals. But I managed to spit most of it out and onto the floor. Finally the bus started to move. Packed, sweaty pilgrims started to sing gospel songs.

To get to the San Blas islands, you have to take the boat from Portobello, not far from Panama City. But traffic was a nightmare of stale, stinking moments of gridlock followed by sudden, seizure-like fits of jerking and weaving. At times I wished I had trusted her and swallowed the pill. She was out cold before the bus hit the main highway -- her head resting, sometimes bouncing, on the lip of the open window. When we finally made it to the highway, even more people crammed onto the bus and every last bit of space was filled with one fluid mass of human flesh. The last of the oxygen was consumed. The singing stopped. The honking and roaring of engines in the traffic jam took over, and everyone was silent and devoid of expression again. They looked as though they were hoping elevator doors would open soon so they could become reanimated. But we held like this for hours. So long, in fact, that the old man in the seat in front of us who had to urinate took the matter into his own hands -- he had a plastic Pepsi bottle that he pissed into. Aside from me, this drew no attention.

Then the spindly old man held the bottle out the window and began dumping it out. It would have been fine if the bus hadn't suddenly jerked forward causing the piss to spill down the man's arm and through the window back at us.

The bus suddenly roared forward again, and although there was only a ten meter stretch in the road, the bus driver mashed the pedal down, and the piss splashed back right into the face of the Latina Lolita next to me. She was too stoned on valium to even feel it. I tapped on the pisser's shoulder, and he made one feeble attempt to turn back, but the lack of space and his old joints wouldn't permit turning and facing his mess.

I took her pack and did my best to use her flippers to shield her face. I have never been so attracted to a piss soaked girl.

Then the bus driver shouted a jaw dropping string of offensive words in Spanish at the traffic. He stopped the bus and pulled up the emergency brake in defeat. The bus reluctantly unloaded. When the kid to my right got up, I moved over slightly and the girl's head flopped onto my lap, still completely unconscious. Her long black hair fell into my hands and I shivered at the sudden thought of running my hands through it. Her thin frame was light, but it was hard to juggle her and our bags off the bus.

That I had an unconscious girl draped over my shoulder fireman style should have attracted attention, had I not entered a carnival of the absurd. Every other pilgrim had a purple robe and they walked like tired automatons three steps forward, two steps back. The way was lit by candles and glow-in-the dark rosaries sold alongside the road. The closer we got to the church, the more people in the procession dropped to their hands and knees and crawled on the asphalt.

With a girl over my left shoulder, a pack on my right and another in my right hand, I couldn't get far. Where was I going anyway? I was walking toward the church and never thought to think about the way to the boat taxi.

Then I saw it. The Black Christ, carried by men with shaved heads and purple robes, was slowly coming up behind us. They walked the same as the pilgrims, three steps forward and two steps back -- except they had rhythm. They were grooving. They were dancing. And beside them people praying. And beside them people singing. And beside them people crying.

I gave up my pixie cross to bear and sat down about thirty meters from the church, on a little patch of grass next to a table selling figurines of the Black Christ. What the hell were these people thinking? Why did they need redemption so bad? Were these the corrupt cops, drug lords and prostitutes crawling in front of me in a bizarre parade of atonement?

Legend says the Black Christ came to Portobello on a stopover in the 15th Century, on its way to Cartagena. By that time Portobello had already become a fortified port for the Spanish to load their plundered Incan gold onto ships protected by cannons from the likes of Henry Morgan and Sir Francis Drake. Henry Morgan sacked Panama City and Sir Francis Drake died while laying siege on the other coast. The ship carrying the Black Christ attempted to leave Panama five times, but each time the winds refused to carry the boat. Fearing the life sized black idol was a bad omen, the sailors pitched it overboard. It washed up onto shore and has been venerated ever since. The idol, they say, did not want to leave Panama.

It was like the Black Christ charged the air as it drew near. Singing and chanting gave way to wailing as the idol passed. People dripped burning candle wax onto their arms. The Black Christ was within feet of us when the sleeping beauty at my side suddenly sat up. She stood and slowly followed the crowd toward the church.

I decided to watch from where I sat. I had to. I couldn't leave the bags. My seated vantage point prohibited me from spotting her in the crowd. I had no idea what to do except wait.

Then I saw her again. People parted to let her walk up the steps to the Church and toward the Black Christ, now at the entrance. One of the bald men that had carried the Christ put his hand out to stop her from entering the church. When she turned I could see her face, blood running from her forehead and hands. She stretched out her arms and fainted. I saw her collapse at the top of the stairs when suddenly I felt a sharp pain, like someone kneed me in the groin. Something happened to me. I can't explain, except I imagine it had to be a panic attack. Everything grew black around the edges and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with people gathered around me.

I got to my feet and looked frantically for her. For some reason I drastically wanted to find her. But she was gone. I never learned her name. I didn't get to say goodbye.

Paint it Black

By María Concepción

I can make you scared if you want me to

I'm not prepared but if I have to

I can make you scared, and you pay me to

If that's the deal then here's what I can do for you

You're in the church

And more than a million works of art

Are whisked into the woods

When the pirates find the whole place dark

They think that God's left the city for good

At the Church of San José in Casco Viejo, there is a gold altar that the faithful painted black when the English pirates came to Panamá El Viejo. They saw it and passed over it, thinking it useless. In Portobello there is Christ made Black carrying the sins of criminals. Tomorrow I will see.

So You Want to be an Expat in Panama?

By Steven Banks

My buddy Matt needs to pull out the stick he shoved up his own ass while teaching ESL to sheep in cubicles. He needs to rediscover what it really means to be an expat in Panama. On my trip to David I found an awesome hostel we could lease in the cloud forest called The Lost and Found. I am ready to be an expat.

So you want to be an expat like me? If your reasons are any of these two, then STAY HOME!

1. I hate what's happening in: America, Canada, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Barbados.

Granted there is probably nothing terrible happening in Barbados, but the point is that if you disagree with the current political or economic situation in your home country, you probably don't have a good reason to leave. You cannot escape the effects of American politics nor its shit-storm up and down economy. Internet access is available from Rio Douche, Panama, to Werthefucktenango, Guatemala. Unfortunately, so are CNN and even Fox News.

2. I hate my job, my girlfriend/boyfriend, my drinking problem, black presidents, and / or the fact that I'm a giant douchebag.

The problem is that a douchebag in Panama smells much the same as a douchebag back home (unless you are French). If you don't fit in where you live now, you won't fit in here either. You'll be the raving lunatic that everyone calls "Gringo Loco." Trust me. I am still trying to shrug this off. Your drinking problem? Booze is considerably cheaper here.

Ok, so maybe neither of those applies to you, or you're willing to overlook them, or that last line made up your mind to come to the land of cheap booze, or you have delusions of being a pirate, or you just want to see some funky Latina 'gina. Read on.

I wanna be an expat and I'm willing to overlook the following in order to get to the funky Latina 'ginas.

• Crazy ass drivers. Anyone outside of USA/Canada is a crazy ass driver who uses the car horn like my 5 year old nephew honks his wee wee, and some of these drivers are honking their wee wees and their horns at the same time. The car horn is used to communicate any of the following, not in any particular order and sometimes all at the same time: you're a hot chick, you're in my way, I'm coming through the middle of your car, do you need a ride, my taxi is empty, my taxi is full, you're not moving, you are moving, how are you, fuck you, you're a fat chick, you're a fat chick but if you get in my car I'll sympathy hump you.

• Crazy ass Latina 'ginas. If you have blue eyes, they're easier to pick up here than taking money from the cup of a one eyed legless beggar. I know-- I bought colored contacts. But I also got me a jealous lunatic that is harder to shake than a pubic hair stuck to a bar of Ivory soap.

• The combined smell of piss and campfire. This has apparently been bottled and is one hell of a hot seller, especially for public transport.

• Lazy bastards. There is a reason bribery is popular in developing countries. If you ever try to wade through ridiculous bureaucracy, then you will wish that bribery was popular in the good ol' USA. But corruption is not only part and parcel of bureaucracy, it happens on all levels. Corruption is a general air of undeserved entitlement, and in Panama you sorta feel like you're living in a country full of Kevin Federlines. As one Panamanian told me while we were looking out at the canal, his ancestors worked so hard on the canal that he was born tired. You will run into this manaña attitude everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

• Personal space. It no longer exists. I cannot explain this thoroughly enough. Whether it's the stank-ass armpit shoved in your face on the bus, or the stank-ass ass shoved in your face on the bus, something stank-ass will be shoved in your face... every day.

• Cops and the disappearance of your "rights." Whereas in Britain cops will say "Stop, stop, dammit, or I will have to say stop again," here they point an AK-47 at your head while you cash a check. If you call a cop and they can't find someone to arrest, they will arrest you. And while, "Hey, I got rights, and I'll upchuck on your shoes if I wanna," might gain you a pity smile and a hardy chuckle, and possibly even a phone call in the USA, here it will probably gain you a pistol whippin' and laughter from the other 10 dudes loosening their belts in your 4ft by 4ft cell. I speak from experience: Although I wasn't pistol whipped, I spent a night in a holding cell with a half an inch of piss on the floor because I was around when someone thought cops actually did their jobs here.

Still ready to come? Sell all of your worldly possessions, which probably won't net you as much as it would in a bright shiny economy, but remember that you won't need much because you won't be spending much. After all, loss of personal hygiene, cup 'o noodles, and sleeping on the beach doesn't cost that much and you will be rich with experiences and confident because you are a pioneer who will return home one day and write a best seller filled with spiritual insights about your fellow man and with stories about a girl with hairy armpits that dumped you when you no longer had cash for 50 cent beers and had to sell your hemp necklaces and hardened Playdoh "water-pipes" to unsuspecting tourists. Wait! What are all of these other trust fund hippies doing selling their "jewelry" (crap) on your street in paradise?

Still want to come? Good... I haven't regretted a single day.

The Gods Dance on the Kuna Islands

By Dr. Michael Anderson

Most people know Panama for the canal that unites oceans. But it is also a bridge that unites continents. Whether it be conquistadors moving gold, or Americans moving ships, those that settled here were moving something to somewhere. But for seven indigenous tribes the isthmus was not a bridge or a canal – it was home. Through revolutions and missionary zeal they have managed to preserve some of the same religious customs they had as the day Columbus arrived.

Of the seven tribes, one of the most successful at preserving their autonomy is the Kuna. Driven to the brink of extinction in the Darien jungles by the Spanish, they fled to an archipelago of 365 islands. They chose the islands of San Blas not for the pristine white sand beaches but because there was no potable water. The Spanish would leave them alone that way.

The Kuna are especially noted for the women who exhibit their traditional culture by wearing brightly colored fabrics sewn together to create designs, usually birds or fish. They cover their legs and arms with beaded jewelry, pierce their noses with small golden plates, and mark their foreheads to the tips of their noses with thin black lines. This, however, is a tradition somewhat imposed upon them by missionaries and facilitated by the arrival of cotton. Originally they were naked and the Church encouraged them to transform their decorative tattoos into clothing.

At a hostel in Panama City I was lucky enough to meet the captain of a catamaran. He was quite close to the Kuna, despite the fact he was Swedish. One particular community befriended him, most likely because they fell in love with his blond five year old son. When he had enough tourists to make the trip worthwhile, he offered to take me to a village where I hoped to meet the village shaman. As a student of Jungian archetypes, for me it would be a real treat to study the Kuna religious traditions and participate in one of their rituals.

Our boat had three Australian backpackers and a Colombian girl we picked up in Portobello. As we approached this island I was awestruck by its pristine beauty -- lazy palms drooping over turquoise water and blinding white sand. A group of Kuna men stopped playing basketball to watch us approach. Unlike the women, the men were not a picture from National Geographic. They wore modern clothes and drank Balboa beer.

The Colombian girl on our boat started shouting out to someone she recognized at the dock. "Matt! Matt!" she shouted as she peeled off her jeans down to her thong. To the protests of the captain, she slipped off her tank top, fully exposing her breasts to the Kuna men, and dove into the clear water. The Kuna have learned modesty from Christian missionaries all too well. By the time the boat was moored all the men playing basketball were gawking at the near naked girl.

As the Colombian girl emerged from the water a group of twelve men surrounded her. The commotion brought forth an old man, a village elder, and he did not look pleased. As he approached the Kuna men looked nervous and quickly went back to their basketball game. The old man shouted toward one of the long houses and an attractive girl with long hair appeared squinting in the doorway.

I was confused because when a Kuna girl reaches womanhood, as pronounced by her first menstruation, she cuts her hair short in addition to shedding the nickname she carried in childhood. But she was clearly a woman and she had long beautiful black hair. She looked Latina. She walked down to the beach to the side of the village elder, who stared out to sea with an angry expression. He spoke softly in his indigenous language to the girl and walked away.

"You do not have a permission to dock here," the girl said.

Our captain offered his apologies and shouted, "Everyone back on the boat!" He was clearly angry.

I spoke to the girl directly. She was pleasant and smiled. "Excuse me," I said. "I have come to see the shaman. Would it be possible for me to stay? I will find another way back."

The girl's expression immediately changed. "The shaman is not here today," she said abruptly.

"Get on the boat," the captain barked at me.

As we dejectedly walked back to the dock, the captain's son popped his head up from a nap. "Ooznahvi!" he shouted. The Kuna girl responded immediately and ran to the boat to greet him. She jumped on deck and cradled the boy, rocking him back and forth and rubbing his blond hair. He giggled uncontrollably.

Apparently our captain knew this girl well. He departed with her still in the boat, without asking at all whether she wanted to join us or not.

Suffice it to say, I was not happy. The other passengers, Matt from Boston and his reacquainted friend María, the Colombian with a penchant for getting inappropriately naked, were fine with canceling the island visit in exchange for snorkeling around a nearby coral reef.

"Look," I said, "seeing how my only interest was to visit the island, I think it might be appropriate that some of my money be refunded."

"Your money is in the gas tank," the captain said. "Besides.... You asked me to bring you to the shaman. The village shaman is not on the island right now."

Ritual in the Bayano Caves

By Mathew Hope

"The only thing to fear is fear itself."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt – U.S. president and moron.

Okay, FDR wasn't a moron. Steve was. We were standing at a National Police check point on the highway to the infamous Darien Gap, a lawless land of drug runners and Colombian leftist rebels, when Steve decided it would be cute to stick his finger into the barrel of a loaded AK-47.

The police guard flipped – angry and scared he pointed the automatic weapon at Steve's head. Steve smiled and raised his hands. Guards from inside ran out and there was a whole lot of commotion and guns. Steve was wearing shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt that said Yo estoy a favor de la ampliación de todos los canales with a picture of ship entering a girl's metaphorical canal. Since the vote for expanding the canal was only a week away, the police captain found it amusing enough to disarm the situation. Nothing like sexism for macho bonding which infuriated Steve's new girlfriend, Estrella. We all filed in to register our entry into the Darien, which I guess is something you have to do so that they know what to write on the toe tags when you show up dead. It was touch and go there for a while if they were going to let us pass or not.

The leader of our adventure was a psychologist everyone called Dr. Mike. He was kind of a short wiry haired version of Robin Williams. He kept trying to name drop important Panamanians he knew which amused the guards but didn't seem to help. I think he did it more to impress us or at least Usnavy the half Kuna half gringa he had a hard time hiding his interest in. It wasn't until María calmly explained with a disarming smile where we were going that guards seemed ready to let us pass.

Our destination was not Colombia or the dense jungle, but a cave recently made accessible when Lake Bayano was flooded to build a dam. It is in on the highway to the Darien, inside the independent comarca, or reservation, of Kuna Yala where Usnavy is from. María and I met Usnavy and Dr. Mike on a boat on the San Blas islands. Because Usnavy felt bad we missed a visit to her island village she persuaded us to let her take us here instead. Her name really is Usnavy, a name not uncommon among the Kuna. Her father disappeared before she was born, and the only thing they know about him was that he was in the U.S. Navy, so that became her name.

In a small Kuna village, we got out of our rented bus and onto a 15 horse power dugout canoe. The Kuna women there had heavy metal jewelry hanging from their noses, and bright red circles colored their cheeks. They sold spicy dried plantains and bright embroideries called molas. Kids ran around in their underwear playing guns with sticks and cardboard.

We motored past the tops of trees that were once rooted on the forest floor, now at the bottom of a lake. The cave was at one time high on a hill, but now we could motor right up to it.

I don't think this is the kind of place I would have approached on my own. We drifted under reeds and mangrove and kept our hands in the boat, worried about the caimans said to infest the cave. Once in the dank cavern, we got an idea of how many bats there were – tens of thousands that came within centimeters of our heads. The nervous banter stopped when the sandy bottom of the cave creek dropped below foot range and we had to swim with flashlights in our mouths.

The cave is a kilometer of cave, canyon, cave, canyon. It ends with a nice sunny spot with smooth limestone walls, perfect for relaxing and swimming. After we got to the end I floated for a while, just staring up at the cliffs and the birds circling above. I emerged into a discussion about phobias. Claustrophobics, hydrophobics and especially chiroptophobics (bats) would not have survived this trip. Dr. Mike, among some of his many talents of which he constantly reminds us, was an expert at treating phobias, and María admitted to a fear of falling. It was a reoccurring nightmare of hers.

Dr. Mike is a Freemason. He often drops this casually into conversations. At first he did this I think just to inform us-- like it might mean something to us or maybe so we would ask him what the hell he was talking about. On our four hour cave journey he captivated Steve with mysterious talk of rituals, and even I actually found it kind of interesting.

The cave, Dr. Mike told us, is death. It is fear. It is the underworld. It is the primitive symbol of the unconscious. And if we confront our fears on this perilous journey to the underworld we can learn to tap into the secrets of the unconscious. A ritual is nothing more than a journey to the underworld to learn control and to learn from our unconscious.

We decided to do a ritual at the sunny, open pool at the back of the cave. It was like the classic trust exercise where the person falls back with their eyes closed. Except María wasn't just going to fall back, she was going to fly. We all held our hands high, supporting her as you would a crowd surfer in a mosh pit. But instead of just easing her down, we eased her onto Steve's back. He was crouched down over the pool, and the curve of his spine perfectly supported Maria. Maria stared up at the clouds and each of us, Usnavy, Dr. Mike, Estrella and I, held a limb and moved them in a random swimming motion.

Dr. Mike soothed her by saying "Rays of sunshine rain down on you as you float. You are floating. And slowly you gain control. You can fly."

As I moved her right arm she began to tense up. "No," she murmured, and she stiffened. The edges of her mouth tightened into a frown. She pulled her arms in and Estrella and I lost our grip. She slid off of Steve's wet back, into the water. I didn't see it, but she must have hit her head on the edge of a rock because the wound she got on her head at the pilgrimage of the Black Christ reopened. She was bleeding from her forehead.

María stood up in the shallow water and tripped over the rocks as she waded into deeper water, where she swam to the opposite end of the pool. We were silent -- shocked actually-- that this little ritual triggered the phobia in María. She sat at the opposite end with her back to us. I think she was crying. Blood flowed down the side of her cheek.

The mood soured and the sun was getting lower. On our way back, the narrow slit at the top of the canyon let in scant light, and there seemed to be even more bats swarming around us. It was a wonder they didn't hit us. María walked ahead, ducking the flying rats. I wondered if the bats would be attracted to her blood.

If I had been alone down there, I would have been downright petrified. I was petrified. I just did my best to hide it. I pretended I was in an Indiana Jones movie. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Sometimes the only thing to fear is fearlessness. We are built for fight or flight. As evolved as we are, I'm not sure we always know what the right response is. I saw everyone react to fear today. Estrella got angry, Steve became a moron, Dr. Mike dropped big words and names, Usnavy became silent and María broke down.

There was a moment in the cave on our quiet walk back to the boat when we passed through a cathedral-like cavern. I stopped and shut my eyes and just listened to the voices echo. María startled me. I thought I was alone in the darkness but she was so close she could just whisper to me -- "I want to show you my tattoo tonight." She is the type of girl I know could be bad... she would take me on a rollercoaster. She scares me. I don't know what will have the greatest rewards -- running from the fear or fighting it.

We started talking again in the van during the ride home. During a lull in the conversation, María said, "Let's try again. I want to try again." And we decided that these caves in Panama would not be our last adventure together.

Casco Viejo Under Siege

By Dr. Michael Anderson

One of my favorite things to do is sit and read today's paper, drinking years old wine, listening to decades old music, in a centuries old citadel, in the shadow of a millennia old symbol.

The paper is from Miami, a little conservative perhaps, but the only English daily in Panama. The wine is a Merlot from Chile, very good value. The music is Latin Jazz played in the restaurant where I come to sit and relax every Saturday. It is called Las Bóvedas, which literally means 'the vaults' or 'the crypts'. The crypts are part of a citadel that was built in 1688 when the infamous pirate Henry Morgan destroyed the former Spanish settlement at Panamá el Viejo, established for the plundering of Incan gold. Centuries later Las Bóvedas was used as a military prison. In the early 1900s, prisoners were chained to the outer wall to be swallowed by the rising tides.

The ancient symbol I mentioned before sits as the focal point of the citadel, and for that matter the entire colonial neighborhood of Casco Viejo. But to understand why, and to understand why it holds so much power, you have to know something about the Egyptian goddess Isis and her lover, the god Osiris.

Osiris had a brother, Set, who coveted both his brother's throne and wife. So Set tricked Osiris into climbing into a golden chest which was buried in a distant land under a sprig of acacia. Isis searched the lands in vain until resting against a tree. She used the sprig of acacia to help herself up and pulled the bush right from its roots. She correctly deduced that something had recently been interred and so began to dig. She found Osiris and, using what we Freemasons call the Lion's Grip, raised him from the dead.

This was not the end. Osiris' brother was infuriated and when Osiris returned for his throne, he brutally cut him into 14 pieces so Isis could not resurrect him again. But Isis, ever devoted, recovered all body parts save one – the penis – which had been cast into the Nile and devoured by a crocodile. Isis would not give up. She assembled all 13 body parts and crafted an artificial phallus and used it for copulation. She could not raise Osiris as she had before, so instead she conceived their son, Horus, who was actually the reincarnation of Osiris. Osiris' soul entered the womb of Isis at death and conception.

This is why Osiris is known at once as the god of death and the underworld and the god of rebirth. This archetypal ritual of death and rebirth spans primordial cultures to modern secret societies and it is personified in the greatest of phallic symbols. And that is the millennium old symbol I gaze up at while drinking my wine near the crypts of Panama City – the obelisk – a giant penis. But it is more than a phallic symbol. It marks not death but the hope for rebirth. The obelisk here was raised for the noble French canal workers that died in their failed attempt to build a sea level canal. The French cock sits atop the obelisk. And just meters away is the former French embassy.

That is why Casco Viejo so richly deserves its World Heritage status. Underprivileged neighborhood kids kick soccer balls on cobblestones in front of decaying French colonial apartments as Jazz floats from restaurants in preserved Spanish Colonial architecture. But Casco Viejo and its status is again under siege. Not from English pirates this time but urban development. From Casco Viejo you can see the ships lining up to enter the expanding canal, and high rises across the bay will soon be home to the highest apartments in the world. A new highway is proposed to encircle the fortress walls. Now I feel that it is I and others like me chained to the outer wall – not to be swallowed by the rising tides, but by the rising cars. If only we could reload the cannons.

Where to Disappear

By Mathew Hope

María and I both knew the tattoo was only the pretense behind going to her hotel. She was staying at the Hotel Ideal, located in an area filled with pawn shops and cheap strip joints. The hotel was what Walt Disney would have built if he lost all his money on cheap acid and hookers. There was a lot of kitsch, from the red plastic lights near the 60's vending machines to the mermaid guarding a quarter¬-filled swimming pool now flush with fat goldfish. The receptionist sat behind grated metal and a row of old telephones that María told me could not be traced. I have been told that as the money laundering capital of the Americas, Panama has long been the place to disappear, for everyone from the Shah of Iran to Patty Hearst.

She led me by the hand to her room. Before the door to her room swung shut she jumped onto the bed. She stared at me without saying anything and peeled off her pants and underwear. They were still wet from the cave. In one go, she kicked them to the side. Then she motioned me closer. Well below her navel, in the area where there would be hair, I saw a small tattoo of the moon eclipsing the sun.

"The moon is a mirror," she whispered. "It holds the sun."

I don't get girls this beautiful... I should say I have never had a girl like María show interest in me. It was so otherworldly for me that the rest of my memories are faded untrustworthy and surreal:

There was a painting of scene from the States -- you know two mountains, water in the middle. What was home peeking out to tell me in such tactless way? What do you want?

The smoothness of her skin.

And the air conditioner sputtering off instantly sending in the hot humid night.

And the sudden momentum crash just after her orgasm.

And the smell of old smoke and fresh sex.

And listening to the heavy breathing of deep sleep and the screeching and wailing of Panama City's pawn shop/sex district. Then the sound of heavy rain as I drifted into semi-consciousness.

Unwrapping the paper from around a glass in the bathroom.

Feeding from the tap.

The moon pouring in through a window and seeing María, naked, in the mirror.

Her finger over her lips and then her arms suddenly around me. She sat on the sink and used her toes to slide off my boxers.

And her index fingers sliding between her legs and separating her lips.

She told me we weren't done.

"The moon holds the sun," she said again.

And then waking near dawn with the sounds of car horns and buses.

I slowly opened the bedside table and tore out a page of a bible. I moved to the desk and quickly wrote my e-mail address on the limp paper trying not to poke holes in it. And then getting down on all fours and edging toward' María s jeans that were half under the bed. I pulled at her jeans until they were stretched out and I slowly slid the paper into her back pocket. There was something else there. Another paper. I pulled it out. It was a photograph.

I looked at it in the dim light. At the time I was sure. I stopped breathing and stared and the photo, squinting my eyes. It was a Facebook photo. My Facebook photo.

When I woke next, María wasn't there and her stuff was gone. I waited a painfully long time. Finally I paid the bill and entered hot steaming day wondering if that really was my photo and why. Or was I going nuts?

Coiba – La Isla Del Diablo

By Steven Banks

So I decide to show Estrella her own country and teach her to scuba dive. In the surfer paradise of Santa Catalina, we found a great dive master and the oldest Rasta wannabe I have ever seen. We get on the boat and right off he says, "Oh, please don't you rock my boat," when the rust heap didn't even move, "'Cause I don't want my boat to be rockin'." He had graying dreads hanging past his waist and his face looked like the back of my elbow.

My dive master is friends with this dried raisin, and between the two of them they know every diving and fishing spot in the waters off the protected marine park of Coiba. National Geographic editors have collectively jizzed more over photos of this place than their March 1976 topless pigmy special. The dolphins that jump and swim off our bow are barely noticed until the captain points and murmurs something like, "These are the big fish, who always try to eat down the small fish. Just the small fish." There was a certain lyrical bounce to his speech that seemed familiar to me.

After experiencing one of the best dives of my life, I learned the history of the island, which now makes me even smarter than I was. Let's see if you are smart like me. Pencils ready?

The region has had the most attacks from one of the following: a) Sharks, b) Monkeys, c) Chuckys.

If you guessed c then remove some ribs and start sucking yourself off now because you are right -- Chucky, or, more accurately, Los Chuckys along with their rivals, The Children of the Cold Tomb (my favorite) and the Sons of God. All are street gangs.

Los Chuckys took their name from the movie Child's Play, and they were sent to a deserted island where they were forced to sit through such cinema gold as Child's Play 3, The Bride of Chucky, and The Seed of Chucky, as punishment for taking such a lame name. For that and for killing people.

Back in '03 there were a couple of ways to get to Coiba -- take a boat or kill someone. Aside from every taxi driver in Panama, there has only ever been one Panamanian I ever wanted to kill, but instead we had angry sex, and I still haven't been able to shake her. But anyway, the boat is the only way to go now, since the prison was closed in 2004. That's right -- Coiba Island was one big ass prison.

At night, the guards would lock themselves in their towers and let prisoners out of their cells. I have no idea why they would do this. The guards must have thought it was good fun. Imagine The Most Dangerous Game in teams. Or Survivor Panama with a twist. The bets would be somewhere along the lines of "I give you three to one the rapist gets castrated tonight... or lucky." One night escapees floated on a raft to the rival gang's area and were greeted by having their heads removed. But they weren't really using them properly anyway—who would think they could navigate through foaming, shark-infested waters patrolled by boats carrying men toting machine guns?

The late afternoon sun came up, and a flock of bright red scarlet macaws passed overhead on their way to the island. The Rasta took his shirt off... he was not really black, but he tans to reach that nice dark blend of Jamaican and dark roasted Panamanian. He lights his joint, lays back, and then sings, "Sun is shining, the weather is sweet now, make you wanna move your dancing feet, yeah."

We drift past a wall of the former compound and I see the words, "Penitenciaría." The dive master sees my face light up. He drops me and the Rasta man off there, but Estrella won't set foot on the island. I think she knew.

The faux Rasta led the way on foot, chopping away at the undergrowth as we moved along. I saw rusting gates and crumpling concrete and wondered what horrors had occurred here. When I ask what happened to all the people, the machete wielding boat captain understands and smiles. "Exodus, all right! Movement of jah people."

I stop with a sudden realization. I confront the Rasta Man.

"What is your name?"

He has a big shit eatin' grin.

"What... is... your... name?"

And he has an even bigger shit eatin' grin. The guy can understand but he doesn't really speak. "Can he speak Spanish?" I ask the dive master when I return to the boat.

"He understands English and Spanish but he only speaks... he only speaks Marleynese."

"Freedom came my way one day," Rasta Man said, "and I started out of town, yeah!" He pointed at a cell with a caved in ceiling and dead palm leaves on its floor.

"He was a prisoner?"

"This was his home for twenty years."

I got a chill standing in front of this smiling man with the big knife. I thought about headless ghosts roaming the cells and wondered if Rasta Man was a Chucky. Seeing him with a knife and a smile, I wouldn't be surprised.

The sun began to set as we motored past the final leaning palm of the island. I stared into dark, forbidding jungle.

"La Isla Del Diablo," the captain said. I wondered if there were lost prisoners in the thick of the island that didn't know the prison had closed, just like the pockets of Japanese on Pacific islands that still think the war is on.

Evil is a dark cloud roaming the earth. It drifts over places like the World Trade Center and Iraq, but when nobody is looking it usually comes to rest in remote places like this -- places of natural beauty lie next to the evils of humankind.

I asked my dive master what the Rasta Man did to do time. The Rasta Man turned to me.

"No woman no cry," he said. But this time he wasn't smiling.

Climbing Volcán Barú

By Mathew Hope

Steve has had many dumb ideas, but this one was in a class of its own. We met up with him and Estrella in a charming mountain coffee growing region in the town of Boquete. Steve said it should be on everyone's bucket list -- the only place on Earth where you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean at the same time – the summit of Volcán Barú. The dumb part was deciding to go at one in the morning and learning that we had to leave in an hour to get to the top to catch the sunrise. But Pablo, the guide that Steve had met over some tequila in a popular bar called Zanzibar, assured us that the trip was amazing. We would jump up and down on the top of the world, where few white men ever tread. When Estrella and María were persuaded to come, I was not allowed to say no.

We decided to catch an hour or so of sleep, and I was happily thinking this was the end to Steve's stupidity. But Pablo showed up, blaring the horn of El Toro Rojo, a red Ford Bronco from the 70's. I envied Dr. Mike and Usnavy, snoring away somewhere in a tent on Isla Iguana. It was four hours past our departure time – the one we had to meet to make it to the summit for sunrise.

We started our climb from a ranger station at the base of the volcano, and it immediately became clear that Pablo was no mountain man. He constantly had a cigarette hanging from his mouth, and Steve and I were the only ones who had thought to bring water (which María and Estrella were happy to drink most of). I didn't have a day pack, only my big backpack which Pablo eventually used to house a bottle of cheap Panamanian rum called Panama Jack (which is actually pretty good). We learned that Pablo had not been to the top since he was a kid, and even then, that was by horse. María and Estrella looked as though they were ready to quit, but I wanted to make them pay... I wanted to reach the top... I wanted to see both oceans and reach a place where few dare to go.

The sun came up and humidity came with it. I regretted my heroism. We were exhausted and unanimously voted to rest. Pablo smoked and Steve cracked the rum and we got dangerously close to the bottom third of my water. The girls were chomping at the bit, eager to prove themselves.

I heard them first and told the others to sit quiet. They were coming up the steep path behind us.

"We are one in the spirit; we are one in the Lord.

We are one in the spirit; we are one in the Lord.

And pray that all unity will one day be restored!"

A group of about 10 people, mostly children, marched right by, smiling and putting us to shame, singing gospel songs as they went. They were followed shortly thereafter by a woman in her fifties on an ATV.

She stopped and glanced quickly at our bottle of booze. "Want me to take your bags to the top?" she said with a thick southern US drawl. As I said no, Steve said yes. I shot him a look, and we agreed in an instant that surrendering our packs to strangers, whether they be religious nuts or thieves, would be a bad idea.

The rest of the hike was even more grueling. The signs taunted us. I thought, '4 km to the top...okay, almost there, almost there,' and when I thought the next steep hill would bring us to our final destination, I would see another sign... 2km... And then the clouds joined in on humiliating us by spitting rain.

We reached the top! Amazing.

We had clear views of the fog in front and behind us. The only bodies of water that were apparent were stinking under my armpits.

But then the fog cleared!

And we could see... buildings. Tiny ugly shacks sprouting radio antennas; gray concrete and graffiti. Where few white men have trodden?

But Pablo seemed triumphant. His spirits suddenly picked up and he headed to one of the concrete slabs and knocked on a door. We were making a house call. This was not an empty untouched oasis... it was a communications outpost! But we were happy to get out of the cold, and Pablo and our host were happy to see each other -- they were brothers actually. When they offered us water and coffee, I understood that this is what Pablo had promised -- not his mountaineer expertise.

We were cramped in a tiny room with bunk beds and rolls of copper wire. We had too many coffees and rums and lost track of time. There was a short break when the TV (with surprisingly bad reception for the amount of antennas here) cut out. In the silence we heard gospel singing. We poked our heads out of the antenna shack and saw the Christians that had passed us on the path. They were far in the distance on the other side of the volcano's crater. They were holding hands and must have been singing very loudly for us to have heard the music from where we were.

Pablo's brother pointed at them and muttered something to Pablo. Pablo translated. Those people belong to their own church... the local Panamanians believe they came to escape something in the US... taxes, the law... they believe that the Earth's days are numbered and that God will return with a great flood on a full moon in 2009. Every full moon they come here, waiting for God to destroy the sinners below. And every full moon, Pablo's brother says, they return from the volcano disappointed that the earth has not been destroyed.

We retreated to our bunker. Rain started pouring heavily now, eliminating all TV reception, so we played Texas Holdem' with coffee stir straws and finished off the rest of the rum. I managed to grab a top bunk and I wandered out to take a leak. The rain had stopped and I felt dawn coming. Instead of crawling over the bodies and copper wire in the bunker I stayed outside, shivering. The fog cleared. I have no words to describe what I saw at sunrise.

But after seeing this I believed that Pablo's brother probably had it wrong. I don't think they were waiting for the flood -- they came here to be closer to God.

The Power of Your Dreams

By Dr. Mike Anderson

You are thirty something years old. At ten in the evening, for some unexplained reason, your old middle school friend pops into your head. You wonder what they have been up to and you feel the urge to look them up in the phonebook. You find them. You feel kind of reckless... what the hell, you call them. You pick up the phone. There is no dial tone. Hello? Hello... Oh, someone is on the line. You picked up the phone just as someone dialed you. Who is calling? !!! It is your old middle school friend calling you!

If you were to say this is one in million I would agree with you. If you were to say that this is a kind of psychic connection I would also agree with you. But you cannot say this was a supernatural event. It is really quite natural.

Getting struck by lighting is unlikely but natural. Winning the lottery is unlikely but natural. It is human nature to ignore all of the daily uneventful situations. You don't talk about all the days you walked home and didn't get struck by lightning. You don't read so much about all the UFO sightings that are explained. We focus only on what cannot be explained and then fixate on it.

Let me give you more details for the above scenario.

Imagine again that you are that thirty something. The city you are in has a population of about one hundred thousand. Enough, say, for about fifteen radio stations. You are in your thirties, about the time in your life when you reminisce about the eighties and about the time eighties retro radio stations come about. Now that morning you were driving to work, busy concentrating on traffic, when one of yours and your old friend's favorite song was played. It triggered something in your unconscious, a memory of your friend, but being busy it was filed away in some recess of the brain. Like so many others, you spent your day at work, battled traffic home, had dinner and watched CSI at prime time, and then when you switched off the TV, you had time to let your unconscious drift to your conscious. Without knowing that the song on the eighties station had triggered a memory, you thought it was some supernatural vibration that drew you to call your friend.

Still it is one in a million. But there are millions of people and millions of chances. We forget the explained and focus on what seems unexplainable.

I don't mean to belittle this experience. Far from that -- I wish to marvel at the power our unconscious has in our lives. My only point is that to dismiss this only as supernatural is a disservice to yourself and the wonder of your second self. Dive into it! Find out what it is all about. And the gateway to your unconscious is your dreams. Pick up the remote control to your dreams and discover lucid dreaming.

Try This at Home

By Steven Banks

Two nights ago my shrink friend taught me and my friends the art of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is like porn, chocolate ice cream and magic mushrooms rolled into one.

Pick a day when you are not stressed and draw a symbol on your hand, any kind of symbol. Then keep looking at it as you fall asleep. Eventually you will start dreaming, but you'll still be looking at your hands. You will notice that the symbol has changed. This clues you in that you are dreaming. Dr. Mike says finding your hands in your dream is the key to controlling your dreams. When you control your dreams you remember them better. They are more lucid. And you can have sex with Jessica Alba. (Tell her Mr. Spanky says hi)

My new favorite place is Isla Coiba. It was the destination of my lucid dream. The prison was full with shouting inmates banging machetes on the iron bars. Rasta Man was there wearing his smile.

"I'm the ghost-catcher! Take your chance! Prove yourself! Oh, yeah!" he said. I was in his former cell but there was a metal plaque in front of me. "Push on through," he said and so I put my hands on the plaque and this seemed to give me control. I pushed and the plaque swung open.

To give you an idea of the power of lucid dreams, get this: When I googled what he said to me, "I am the ghost catcher," I found out that it is a Marley song. But I had never heard it before. How did I dream it?

Isla Iguana and the Bomb Craters of Panama

By Usnavy Márquez

The United States of America's navy made holes in Panama.

I found one on Isla Iguana.

Two bombs missed and went under the sea to the coral. Then they explode the bombs and kill the coral.

Before we go to Isla Iguana, sit or lie and do this dream with me. This was my very real dream but you can follow it in your mind and make your decisions for you. I did this as a lucid dream with a psychologist, a really dream, but you have to practice to learn lucid dream. Now just imagine...

You walk in the forest. There is no cloud in the sky and it is a perfect day. You are not hot and not cold. There are nice breezes in your back.

Close your eyes. Relax. Put your imagine here.

Look at your feet. Tell me what are you see. A path? Tell me.

You are now in the trees. Smell. Touch the air on your skin. Tell me, how are the trees? What type of tree? How tall?

Continue walking. You see something on the earth. You take it. It is a key. Tell me. Is it old or new? The size? Touch? What you do?

You walk again. Walk and walk. Now you see something after the trees. It is reflection of the sun. It is a pond. Look into the water. What do you see? How is the water? It is a warm day. What do you do? Swim? Sit? Tell me.

Walk again. There are less trees, and you see something ahead. It is a house. Tell me, how is the house? Do you see inside? Is the house old or new? What you going to do?

After you see, something comes to you. It is an animal. What animal it is for you?

After the house you continue. Then you see something. You cannot see around it. You cannot go under. It is a wall. Tell me about the wall.

Stop reading. I do not want you to read if you not do the dream.

Finished? True? Can you learn what about you? Then now it is possible for you to read what Dr. Mike Anderson, a psychologist, says are keys to understand your dream. He wrote in my email...

THE PATH is the course of your life. Is it winding or straight? The less it winds, the further ahead you feel you can see. Is it paved? Rocky? How hard is your life right now?

THE FOREST represents your friends. Are there a lot of them packed tightly? Is the forest deep and mysterious, or light and airy? How sturdy are the trees? In other words, how much can/do you depend upon your friends?

THE POND is your sexuality. What you see reflects your desires and what you do reflects your curiosity.

THE HOUSE is you. The amount of interior you can see is how open you are with others. Its sturdiness is a measure of security. A house is a common dream symbol for the self.

THE ANIMAL is your ideal life partner.

THE KEY is your father. What you do with it is your relationship.

THE WALL is death. How the wall looks and what you do when you reach it describes your attitude about death.

The man that wrote that above here is a psychologist, Mike, and he is my boyfriend. But when I meet him he was not my boyfriend and I smoked a lot of cigarettes. When he tries to hypnotize me for to quit smoking I only sleep. But I wake up and have this dream. It was my first lucid dream. Together we have a group of friends and we try to lucid dream more and more so I was happy to lucid dream.

But I don't remember my dream when I woke up. I don't remember until two weeks later I went to Isla Iguana.

Do you know sometimes you can remember your dream when something you see or smell helps you? I didn't remembered my dream but then I went with my friends to Isla Iguana.

Isla Iguana is a protection park in Panama. I was there with my new friends I met when I was their tour guide, and now I travel all of Panama with them. So when the boat goes near the island right away I knew I see this before in my dream. This is a déjà vu. Everything was the same as my dream.... The way I feel and what I smell is the same, and it was at that time I remembered my lucid dream. In my dream the trees were palm trees... okay I am Kuna so I always see the coconut palm tree... but everything was the same. It was amazing when I go to the island and I thought this is not new for me. In my dream there are not too many trees but not only one or two. And there I was on the island with 5 friends, Mike, (was not my boyfriend at that moment) María, Matt, Steve and Estrella.

The path in my dream was like the path in the Isla Iguana. It was direct, but the mangrove trees made darkness, so I didn't know where the path goes.

My house was small with not many of the things inside. Maybe it says that I am young.

The wall is not on Isla Iguana because really the wall is death. But the wall did not scare me. Over the wall there is night but I see the stars.

The animal I see are the animals that are too many on Isla Iguana... iguanas! There are too many iguanas there really. When you walk they go away quickly but we went to snorkel in the water to see turtles and when you swim close to the beach you do not scare them and you can count too many... 10, 15, 20. In my dream there was one iguana... this means my partner... maybe is older than me and wise.

I don't remembered all the dream at one time. But we walked and I saw where the North Americans hit with the bomb. The hole now has water. In my dream I looked into this water and I saw Mike and I remembered this when I saw this. The bomb hole now has water and this is the pond. In my dream I looked into the pond and I saw Mike. The water was warm and perfect and I went swimming in the water in my dream. The water is sexuality.

That night when Mike explain to me all the significance I understand a lot and Mike and I decide to be a boyfriend and a girlfriend.

There was a part of the dream that was not happy. The key. It was old and broken. When Mike help me to know all this... to know what the key is I really understood. I take the key but when I look very close I see something and I want to vomit. It was a symbol that I not understand and Mike was very surprised when I said I saw this symbol in my dream. It was the same I saw over a door at a museum in Panama City. I am sick but I put the key in my pocket.

The United States America's Navy made holes in Panama.

I found one on Isla Iguana.

But when you can find the hole and understand you can put something else in the hole and then it isn't a hole.

The First Apparition

By María Concepción

I return to the church of gold. I light a candle in front of a woman cradling a tiny church of people, and I can't help thinking that whoever made this got the priestess right. Exhausted from the heat of Casco Viejo, I sit down in and rest in the pew in front of the shrine of women. Above the shrine is the Last Supper, with the Magdalene sitting to the right of the Christ... the Isis and Osiris of their time. I feel safe here with Santa Rita, with her head bloodied like me. The church is cool and empty. I stretch out in the pew and I look over at The Christ on the cross. He stares at me. I want to touch him. I decide to try to lucid dream.

I look at the sphere on my hand. I slip seamlessly now into my dreams...

Ahhhhhh . . .

... I no longer need to find my hands. It's like shooting up. The eyes of stained glass saints light up to acknowledge my presence. I walk up to them and then stand on the gold altar in front of a full but silent congregation. I remove my white shoes, my blue summer dress, my brassiere and my panties with the pink flowers. I kick them onto the dusty Church floor. I do not feel out of control or in control... I am an automaton.

I move my hands over my body and begin to fiddle around between my legs. Eventually I find what I think I am looking for, something wet, cold and metallic. Very slowly I begin to unzip my body, working a straight line up my stomach between my breasts, up my neck, taking it right on through the center of my face to my forehead. It is a freakish release, like ripping a long dry strip of flesh from the base of my thumb nail.

My fingers probe up and down, the resulting slit finally coming to rest on either side of my navel. I pause for a moment, before meticulously working the flesh apart. Slipping my right hand into the open gash, I push up through my throat, latching on to something buried solid at the top of my spine. With tremendous effort, I loosen it and pull out a hard, blood-slick chain. I yank on the chain and it pulls on the back of my skull. Something lights up. I release my grip and my crumbled body, neatly sliced, slithers around the liquid surface of the chain to the floor.

Splat!

Now I watch from the eyes of a new stained glass saint. The golden orb hovers with the dangling chain and the congregation rises.

Then the gold, the colors of the stained glass, turn black.

I could smell him. His mustache. His cracked yellow teeth and his fucking fedora. He walks from the back of the church to the front row with his stupid fuckin' grin. Now I try to wake up. I look at the palm of my hand. I am lucid dreaming but I can't make him go away.

Then the congregation stands up and shouts.

Shekinah! Shekinah!

She appears instead of the orb. He walks toward her, stroking his cock. She lets out a whimper but will not cry. And then I fall... tumbling down the stairs. I try to stop, try to hold onto something and make my way back but I know I lost control and will not wake until I hit the bottom.

Volcano Nightmare

By Mathew Hope

My first attempt at lucid dreaming was really surreal. I did fall asleep finding the symbol on the palm of my hand, like Dr. Mike suggested. I guess because he had just told us the story of Isis and Osiris, the first thing I saw was a huge Egyptian obelisk. But unlike any obelisk I've ever seen, this one had a small door at the base. I crawled inside and found a narrow winding staircase. I climbed slowly, and at the top it opened up and I found myself at the top of Volcán Barú. There were children singing gospel songs in a circle --

"... we will walk with each other, we will walk side by side..."

They were expecting the big floods to come. The clouds rolled in quickly. The children were chanting now, with growing excitement. When it began to rain they became ecstatic. God sends the great floods to wipe out evil and save the children who believe. God will save only them, the righteous.

They smiled when I walked over to them. A little girl took my hand, inviting me in.

"No," I shouted. I tried to take control of my dream. It was a lucid dream, but I couldn't seem to stop the children. I needed to stop them but I didn't really know why.

They were soaking wet in the rain. They formed a connected circle of joyous singing and then FLASH, I was blinded and I heard a BOOM so loud it knocked me down. When I stood I saw their wet bodies with smoke rising from their heads. Their joined hands provided a circuit for the electricity. They were lying there with their hands still tightly clasped. They were not the chosen ones. That day God destroyed the righteous.

I walked over to the bodies. But I saw that they were no longer children. It was Dr. Mike with smoke rising from his head, with Estrella and Steve. And then I looked into another face and suddenly became breathless when I discovered that it was me.

I opened my mouth but no words came out. I looked at my hand to gain control, but I couldn't find the lucid dream symbol I drew there. Something hit me on the back of the head. I swung around, but I couldn't see anything. The fog rolled in and all I saw was a white screen. I was stricken again and fell to one knee. A third blow exploded against my head, and everything went black. Then I heard that I can only imagine were the children singing and a bus engine. Their blue school bus and I felt like there was a seat at the back for me.

I awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for air. I searched my hand for my lucid dream symbol and with a sigh of relief I saw that the crown I had drawn on my palm was still there.

Sucking up Life in Bocas Del Toro

By Mathew Hope

The tourist is busy telling you where he is from, where he has been, and only listens when planning where to go.

"What about deer?" the American residential tourist (retiree) at the table behind us asked the young Israeli backpacker. "You ever eat deer?"

I pointed to the school of fish attracted by the lights illuminating the sunken ship beneath our dangling, feet trying to steer María from the generic banter.

"No, no, that's not kosher either."

"Water looks nice," I said downing the rest of my rum and coke.

"Dude, I can't for the life of me remember what the theme song for Family Ties is," said the nerd to his girlfriend.

What was the song from Family Ties? I usually do O.K. at useless trivia and I knew the answer was sitting in the back of my constipated mind.

"You paid what to go get to Dolphin Bay?" the bearded hippy said to the dread-lock hippy sitting along the dock to my left.

I shook my head. "María, are you ready for another Vaca Loca?" I asked. (Distilled sugar cane juice and milk.)

"You haven't been to The Lost and Found yet?" The granola hipster asked the overdressed hipster.

Remembering that stupid song distracted me from getting María's attention. "There's a full moon party tonight," I said, tapping her leg.

"Why do you wear shoes, man?" the older tattooed surfer dude said to the young blond surfer dude next to María.

Or was María distracting me from remembering that Family Ties song. "The party is at a new bar on Bastimentos," I said, looking for her eyes while seeing Michael J. Fox flying across my mind on a rolling chair.

"Oh, and I like to hunt moose. You can make great jerky from moose. You ever had moose jerky?"

"Mmmm, no. Again, I think moose have cloven hooves. So again, I don't eat moose, deer, pig, goats or beef," the polite Israeli replied, waiting patiently for the next entrée suggestion.

I was at The Lost and Found before it was in the guide books. So what about elk meat? I saw more dolphins on Polo Beach. Me too – every time I try to think of the theme song I get the song for Cheers in my head. No man, not even with sandals \-- you are not grounded, you know man, in tune with the earth.

"Don't you ever step on glass?" María asked.

Damn, I lost her to the surfer dudes on her right while I was trying to think of the theme song to Family Ties. The surfers were sitting on the dock with their feet in the water, just like us. They had classic six pack surfer dude bodies, both of them.

"You build callouses. We weren't born with shoes."

I had suggested wine and lobster, my treat. I wanted to get to know her better – what we were to each other. Instead we got quick mystery street meat in front of our bar for the night, The Wreck Deck -- a rancho covered dance bar with docks built over the sunken ship. Tonight it was filled with rum infused tourists and horny, aggressive locals.

After telling travel stories that made them feel superior to their fellow backpackers and exchanging compliments on their tats, they started to ask María questions. Since they are used to comparing notes on how cheap their tickets to Panama City were, they were captivated to hear how she crossed overland from Colombia, through the Darien jungle.

"There was this one day I had to take a shit," María said. The hipster and nerd pricked up their ears too now. "The Embera Indians pointed to this wooden structure at the far end of the village, near forest. It was a high wooden platform, something like a water tower except there was no water tank – just a hole in the floor. I hate heights, they freak me out but I had to go real bad so climbed this creaky old tower and I just squatted over the hole. Looking down between my legs, I am confused. Nobody else's pooh is on the ground below. Then there is a rustling in the trees behind me. Before my pooh hits the ground, a group of crazy black pigs run from the forest, and then they just suck it right up. Before I even pull up my panties they have disappeared again. I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing."

I can't help but look at the open mouthed surfer dudes and think they are like the wild boars eating up her shit. I am jealous, I know. I have always wanted a six pack. María is beautiful even when she stands and mimics taking a shit.

I have learned a few more things about María since the day she took the valium on the bus and ended up covered in urine. María never learned shame. She is not afraid to be the center of attention and is not afraid to cross dangerous jungle alone. (But the fear of falling will bring her to tears.) She unapologetically sucks up life. She pees by the side of the road in full view of traffic. She steals restaurant tablecloths and sleeps on dangerous beaches. If you believe her stories, she fights back when she's being robbed to the point that either she or the mugger ends up battered and bruised. She accepts foot rubs from horny strangers with fetishes. She jumps off of cruise ships she's worked on because the water looked nice. Her motto is, strangers have the best candy. She smokes weed in front of Panamanian cops. She hops the kiosk counter to demonstrate how to make real fried plantains. She searches deserted beaches for quiet locations to masturbate. She adopts strays. She learned English at a posh boarding school but never speaks about her parents. She is a stray that accepts adoption.

I realize that I am only one fifth of a family that has adopted María. It is because of this that I stole her away with me to Bocas Del Toro. Travel is life on speed.

I dragged María onto a boat taking partiers across to the next island for the full moon party. We were early – the moon hadn't yet risen. Low tide stretched the beach out more than 50 meters so we walked to a normally submerged sandpit in water only a few inches deep. We lay together in the wet sand looking up at the stars. Except for heavy bass thumping from a bar far in the distance, everything was silent.

While waiting for falling stars, something dark flashed in my peripheral vision. Then we notice dark things flying over us. At first I thought they were bats. Bats often come out in Panama at night and flash by so quickly that your eyes never quite catch them. But these were not bats- they were fish. And they were jumping over us from the small pools on either side of us that the tide had left. We just laid there together counting flying fish. I drifted, trying to remember the theme song to Family Ties but getting the Cheers song instead. I don't even remember that time of my life. Suddenly, like magic, it became brighter. The full moon was rising.

We didn't speak. She reached up with her hand and she held it until the moon rose over the water.

"How many times have you seen the full moon rise?" Maria whispered to me.

"I don't know."

"Right now there are people working jobs they hate. When they die, even if they are old, they will realize that they have not spent enough time watching the moon rise like this."

Sometimes I thought Maria was immature and I lamented our age difference. But when she says things like this I think she is wise and all other conversations inane. I mean I can't even remember the theme song for Family Ties. How many actual important moments in my childhood, moments so important they shaped who I am, that I will only remember a few more times in my life. How many more times will I lie on the ocean floor and see the full moon rise?

I knew this was one of those travel moments... life moments... a moment that tourists miss because their itineraries are filled with sightseeing.

Tourists often brag about where they have been. Travelers don't know where the hell they are going. I brought María here to Bocas to find out what we were to each other. We were travelers.

The Red Jacket

Editor's Notes from Patrick McGreer

I have spent so many hours poring over their blogs, diaries and personal letters to arrange what you are now reading that I no longer remember my first impressions of them. Except María, of course. Women as beautiful as her are not forgotten easily.

The Lost and Found is a hike-in lodge seven miles east of Fortuna Lake – now a reservoir to a huge dam. It requires a fifteen minute walk up from the David to Bocas highway. Like a lot of my guests María was out of breath from the hike up. I smiled and joked that she should have taken the elevator. She didn't smile back. At first glance she was so cute that I immediately assumed she would be innocuous and amused by my joke. But she remained vacant and when she held my gaze I felt a kind of chill I cannot explain. "Tengo alas," she said. I have wings. "I just need to learn to use them."

They arrived at the top. Gabriel, our handyman and part-time night safari guide, was helping Dr. Mike with his luggage. I am sure I shook everyone's hands and answered their questions: Why don't you guys build a zip-line for people's bags? Did you carry everything up yourselves? Why did you come to Panama? The introduction speech I give is always new for the guests, but for me it is a routine that has become one big blur. It was this monotony that convinced my business partner Andrew and myself that we needed to take a break. So we decided to lease out the hostel for a year.

We didn't build a zip line because, well, we need money, and that will come after the new private cabins, the sauna, new shower change rooms, a bigger cage for Rocky, our pet kinkajou, and composting toilets. I didn't carry everything up by hand, but yes, I paid people to carry everything up by hand. Gabriel made a buck per hundred pound bag of cement he carried up for our builder. I carried one and vomited on arrival, so I gave Gabriel a job after we fired our builder.

How I decided to come to Panama is a much more involved question with several answers, depending on who asks. The financial answer is the short one. While most of our peers were getting married, buying real estate and unknowingly heading into the subprime mortgage crisis, Andrew and I taught ESL. Although we are both Canadian, we met in Korea and bonded over basketball and websites for people who don't want to go home, like the Escape Artist and International Living.

Andrew saved his money with the goal of buying a little plot of land in Costa Rica. The idea was to teach a little and then build a beach shack, teach a little more and build something more. I was looking at offshore stock brokers, and Panama, with all its banks, came up frequently. Somehow, we met in the middle. I decided land was a better investment, and I sold Andrew on teaming up and investing ahead of the curve in Panama. Land values were set to rise with the increasing arrival of retiring Americans who like that Panama uses the US dollar, is cheap and is close to home. We made a loose plan to meet up in Panama, not really believing the other would actually show up.

In fact, I myself didn't know if I would turn up or not until a couple of months after I left Korea. What helped me make up my mind had been following me for years until it sat neatly in a chest of drawers near the beer fridge at The Lost and Found. It was a red rain jacket that my girlfriend gave to me when we said goodbye at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. I left the girl that might have been 'the one' for the security of a high paying job in Korea and the freedom money could give. I promised to return one day with the jacket. What I really wanted to do was return to her once I had banked money. But she met another teacher like me, and although they broke up for a time when he was faced with my very same dilemma, they reunited again. They now have a lovely family. I have the red jacket.

The red jacket stayed with me in Korea. I led an uneventful life, teaching every over time hour and dreaming about sitting in front of the 7-11 on Khao San Road in Bangkok with a cold Singa beer. After nearly four years of teaching, I gave away most of my belongings and brought my jacket to Koh Lanta, in Thailand. On December 26th, 2004, I got up unusually early to buy shaving cream. I noticed a big commotion down by the beach, so I walked down and saw Thai kids running down to the receding shoreline to throw flapping fish back into ocean. Scuba divers shouted frantically, dropping their weight belts and flippers and running in the opposite direction.

The Asian Tsunami of 2004 didn't kill so many on my island, but it did destroy my bungalow. The few things I did salvage were stolen the next morning from a garbage bag I had with me when I passed out on the side of a rock quarry, drinking with a biker gang from Germany. But I had my passport and my bank cards with the money I saved in Korea. And the red jacket.

I made it to Khao San Road in Bangkok and finally did what I had day dreamed about all those hours teaching Korean kids... drinking Singa and doing nothing. There was nothing on my 'to do' list. Freedom.... Just another word for nothing left to lose. Now what?

I thought back a few days to a moment on the side of the rock quarry on KohLanta. I was with about eighty other tourists who fled from the waves. From where I was standing, I saw no death or serious injury. So I was talking cheerfully with other tourists, exchanging stories and emails for photos. But then one lone tourist drove up to us on a mini-bike and shut his engine off. He searched our faces and shouted, "Veronica! Veronica!" The tourists looked at one another but no one named Veronica called out. And he drove off.

Freedom, standard of living, security. Choose two.

I had all the freedom in the world but no one looking for me. No hockey trophies sitting under a bed somewhere. A bank account, a few Myspace friends and the jacket. I wanted to go somewhere for a change, someplace where the faces of the people I met would not be all just one big blur after I said goodbye. I didn't want to choose a country just for the money. I wanted a place of my own, a place to set up and call home. I wanted more than just the jacket. The list of places where you can buy land and own a business is a short one. But in Canada I am just like all the rest – I'm Canadian. So I decided to build the Lost and Found. The red jacket followed me to Panama.

The building of our eco-hostel was impeded by the owners of La Fortuna Dam, the huge hydroelectric plant ten kilometers up the road from our location. The dam is a classic example of the behavior of a multinational corporation that grossly exaggerates economic benefits to local communities and bribes governments to allow megaprojects that suck capital from the developing world. Built with foreign expertise and financed by predatory loans, the dam does not contribute a penny to the local economy.

The dam's turbines are housed in soccer field-sized chambers deep underground. Tunnels large enough to park a chain of jetliners burrow through mountains of the Fortuna Forest Reserve. The water generates electricity by tumbling through the tunnels. La Fortuna Dam generates 40% of Panama's electricity, and its owners make multiple millions of dollars selling power to Costa Rica. The watershed is protected by law, a law the owners wrote themselves and presented to the General Assembly for rubber-stamping. They created the vast Fortuna Forest Reserve, prohibiting all those living within its boundaries from ever titling their property and effectively squashing economic development in the region. But they missed a little piece of land that was titled before the reserve was created. We bought those eleven hectares; eleven hectares of paradise, a garden of amazing organic coffee planted among alluring orange and lemon groves.

The company's reasons for objecting to our presence in the reserve remain a mystery to this day. They wrote a threatening letter of objection to the Minister of the Environment and an email to us demanding we leave. Our environmental impact assessment was rejected even after local officials had told us to build. We were shut down and fined. Our life savings were in jeopardy.

Our fortunes began to turn after a chance encounter, what I would call destiny if I were a superstitious man. About a twenty minute walk from the lodge is the little town of Valle de la Mina. Andrew was there getting some local food at a small restaurant when a grandfatherly man dumped out Andrew's glass of water, filled it with a strange red liquid and said, "Dale pues". I never really got a handle on what that means. Could be, 'Okay then,' or 'Do it.'

Andrew did it. It had bite. It tasted tart and almost effervescent.

They finished the bottle and the man pulled Andrew down to his farm to show him how his organic fruit wine was made. His name was Félix González Córtez, but the village knew him as Don Cune. As a small boy he loved to eat an animal known in these parts as a conejo pintado. As a five year old, he could never get whole word out of his mouth. All he could say was something like 'cune' (koo nay). So when he asked for his favorite food, he would say "Quiero cune, quiero cune!" When his parents wanted to get him home quick, they shouted Cune. It became his name.

"Más orgánico," he would say with a smile that ran ear to ear, beaming underneath his signature weathered straw hat, the brim upturned in the style of the Panamanian peasant.

Turned out Cune had a passion for all things organic. Why kill your customers? was his line of thinking. But Cune had some problems of his own. His coffee yield was down 80% due to coffee rust, a crippling fungus brought on by increasing rainfall. It was a temptation on a farm just to spray chemicals, but Cune had worked more than ten years to obtain organic certification and was just one year away. Because of the rules governing the reserve, however, he was ineligible for any type of loan to improve his farm because he had no deed to his home, no collateral to offer. Although he had lived there for decades, he was, in the words of the CEO of the hydroelectric company, "a squatter that we tolerate." Andrew had a cup of coffee -- world class. Then he had some more wine -- wild blackberry, cashew fruit, pineapple... a little sour, with bite reminiscent of Don Cune's wit, wry but merry.

The two of them became fast friends. And it occurred to Andrew that perhaps the best way to help our business was by finding a way to help Don Cune.

Later, over a couple of beers back at the Lost and Found, Andrew and I decided, screw it! Screw the dam, screw the government. Dale pues, we defied the law and opened. Immediately we started to run tours to Cune's farm, adding a farm to table lunch, fresh sugar cane juice, coffee and wine with a bite. Neighbors partnered with us to run horseback tours, jungle treks, birding and hot springs tours. Defying all expectations, the Ministry of Environment left as alone. The mayor of the district noticed what we were doing and supported us, even if it was mainly because he wanted to tax us. The Ministry of Tourism got on board. Despite countless hours of headaches, the legal fees and even more impact studies, we opened and take pride when we extend our middle finger toward the dam, knowing we employ three times as many locals as they do. Great rewards come from great challenges.

There is still unfinished work. The community needs more English to participate more fully with opportunities our tourists bring. But now I have a To Do list and I have a place to be. I am part of the community.

A part of me wasn't sure, after all this work, that I was really ready to lease it out to Steve. Meeting him didn't help. Steve was a crass sexist who made jokes at the expense of others. I had two days to make up my mind before they took over. I had a two day window to veto the whole operation.

In a way it was María who helped me make up my mind. Later in the evening, I was paired with her for our nightly foosball tournament, and she warmed up to me despite my dumb elevator joke. I thought we were getting on well, but I think she just has that way with guys -- she makes you feel like she is interested in your stories. When she hangs off the loft in the bar, showing you her tattoos, you think that this is for you and you alone.

But it wasn't. I had a feeling she was with Matt, and I saw him from the corner of my eye almost every time I gave María a high-five after a goal and every time I gave her a hug after a win. It wasn't that he shot me dirty jealous looks or that he was insecure. It was that I saw a little of him in me, following this girl.

Later that same night, Greg from the Bambu hostel brought out his guitar and we sat around the campfire as he played. I sat next to Matt. It turned out we had a lot in common. He was an ESL teacher like I had been. He admitted that Steve wanted him to quit his job in Panama City, but it was really because of María that he was considering quitting and helping to manage The Lost and Found.

I saw him at the same crossroads where I found myself many years before at the airport in Istanbul, wondering if following the girl was the right thing to do. Wondering which path might lead to regret. I saw him wanting community and wanting family. Matt and I walked back to the main area to grab some beers for our friends by the fire. I took the moment to tell him the truth. "Steve is a funny guy," I said. "But I don't know if I want to leave my hostel with him. I need to know if you are in too." Matt paused and looked back toward the fire. "Fuck it," he said. "I'm in." Dale pues.

When we went down to the beer fridge, I opened the dresser next to the window. "María looks cold," I said. I tossed it to him – the red jacket.

I shook everyone's hands goodbye the next day. I saw the reflection in Matt's eyes, and I saw me. I saw María, mesmerizingly beautiful; wearing the jacket I hoped might one day make it to Turkey.

Very little is actually written about me in their blogs, diaries and letters home. But had I decided not to lease out The Lost and Found, so much pain, so much horror may never have occurred. And I would still have the red jacket.

Rocky is Fine

By Steve Banks

Dear Patrick,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to manage The Lost and Found. I promise to keep it in great shape.

Guess I missed your call the other day. Try not to call during happy hour in the bar.

I decided to plant a garden so we could have more organic, raw, fresh alternatives for the guests. Also thinking of building a zip line if we can save up the cash.

Luz came back from vacation and introduced herself.

Did you ever notice that there are more male backpackers than female? We are thinking of ways to even out the ratio, like having ladies night in the bar or something. But not Monday... that is reserved in your honor for trivia night, a huge hit.

Gabriel is carrying rocks up the hill.

Your buddy,

Steve

P.S. Rocky is fine.

Ladies' Night

By Steve Banks

Hey Andrew,

Things are great here at The Lost and Found. You really made a nice place. Maria and Estrella are painting. They are working with a kind of Egyptian theme, symbol of Isis, story of Osiris, that kind of thing. Maria wants to build a labyrinth and is talking about adding more fun things to do like a treasure hunt.

Bought a Panama Hat... looks cool.

Told Patrick that Monday was trivia night in his honor. Do you think he bought it? Actually every Monday the girls drink free if they flash their tits.

P.S. Would you fuck Jessica Alba but only if I fucked her first?

Response:

Hey Steve,

Good to hear about the improvements to The Lost and Found. Keep up the good work. What is the treasure hunt about? Is Matt helping out Maria? Are they hooking up?

Andrew

Imagine

By Dr. Mike Anderson

Imagine: You are alone in the jungle. Suddenly you are surprised by a coiled pit viper. There are two more behind you. What do you do?

To help Ooznahvi answer this question, I decided to take her with me for an afternoon stroll. We set out down Arco Iris, a scenic, looping road in the hills outside of Boquete where I rent a luxurious house that literally looks like a castle. It was a beautiful December day late in coffee season, but we could still see the Indians in traditional dress hauling bags of freshly picked coffee berries. The brugmansia, the white trumpet-shaped flowers that hang their heads along the side of the road, were still in bloom. We continued our walk, turning onto Bajo Mono, another country road that traces the tumbling headwaters of the Caldera River, passing cascading waterfalls and charming bridges until it finally reaches the trailhead for the famous Quetzal Trail. We were on our way to confront fear at the Skeleton Temple.

Some of our fears are primordial -- they are part of our hard wiring, our collective unconscious. In many ways they unite us and help us survive. But some of our fears we learn as individuals, and they become obstacles to the achievement of our personal goals. The single most important step to overcoming these fears is to simply identify them and discover where we learned them. The dark halls and vacant rooms of the Skeleton Temple are like the caverns of our unconscious. They wait for us to shine a light and see that there is nothing to be afraid of. The temple was the perfect place for Ooznahvi's first shamanic journey to the underworld.

The Skeleton Temple, as I call it, is an ominous, unfinished mansion guarded by barb wire and imposing eucalyptus trees. It looks like an ashen palace, noble, yet completely unloved. The local legend says that a wealthy Arab built it for his fiancé, who later killed herself after he was gone on work for an unusually long while. They say she plunged herself in the rapids of the river that runs along the edge of the property. After learning of her death, the wealthy owner didn't have the heart either to finish the construction or to sell it.

I threw my jacket onto the barbed wire to help Ooznahvi over. She protested – this was illegal, she said, there could be dangerous homeless people inside. This, of course, was all possible, but this was merely her fear of the unknown searching for a rationale in logic. As we approached the house, she convinced herself that no one else was nearby and began laughing nervously. I helped her through a ground floor window and we waited inside for the sun to set behind the volcano.

When it was dark, Ooznahvi laid flat on the floor, and I put my jacket over her to keep away the chill. I arranged several candles around her. When I lit them, they cast dancing, fleeting shadows against the wall. I lit a stick of sandalwood incense and began tapping on a shamanic drum given to me by a Haida Indian Chief in British Columbia.

To call this initiation ritual a form of guided psychoanalysis would not be incorrect. But this definition implies nothing more than projected imagination on behalf of the initiate, when often there is quite a profound discovery – a bridging of the conscious and unconscious that can be quite traumatic.

We synchronized our breathing and I brought Ooznahvi to a deep level of meditative relaxation. There we journeyed through a forest to a cave, the metaphorical entrance to the underworld – the unconscious. I suggested steps inside the cave and she saw a massive spiral staircase – atypical for a girl her age.

Inside the Skeleton Temple, water dripped down from a hole in the roof, forming a puddle in the adjacent room. Guided by the steady metronome of the dripping water, we slowly made our way down the staircase, each step groaning beneath our weight. I told her to stop when she found a door. After fifteen steps down, she paused before her bedroom door in the apartment she shared with her mother and younger brother. When she opened the door, the candles in the Skeleton Temple flickered and the shadows on the wall jumped.

Now to all of my readers with a healthy sense of scientific skepticism: I didn't lead her on or suggest that each step represented a year of her life. Ooznahvi is twenty three years old, and she climbed down fifteen steps. In our journey we traveled to a time when she was eight years old, exactly fifteen years ago. We know this because we went to the apartment where she lived when she was eight, and there on the bed in her room was a third grade mathematics textbook. This is the power of the unconscious.

In addition to the school books on the bed, there were scattered pieces of a puzzle. At first they confused her. But then she realized this was Christmas Day, and the puzzle was a gift she had bought for her younger brother. She wandered out of her room. In the Skeleton Temple we lost our synchronized breathing. Something was urgent. She was looking for something.

While each step represents a year in a life, the door represents that year when a fear was learned. It is an opportunity to go back and identify the cause and change one thing, anything, so that you can confront the event without fear.

She found her mother sitting on a chair, smiling. She had a small wrapped package, evidently a CD. Ooznahvi was excited. She was expecting this. She asked for it. She told her mom that she wanted the Backstreet Boys latest album and she knew her mother had told her father in the States to get it for her. She reached out to take the present and tear off the wrapping paper. Her mother clapped her hands together in anticipation.

In The Skeleton Temple, Ooznahvi held her breath. A tear rolled down the corner of her eye. She knew what came next. Not The Backstreet Boys, but a decades old David Hasselhof CD obviously straight from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.

"This is your moment to change," I told Ooznahvi. "Anything." She could have changed the CD or stopped herself from crying. But the change she chose was entirely different than what I expected. She chose to cry in front of her mother instead of burying her tears in the pillows of her room. It was not the fear of abandonment that afflicted her. It was the fear of not being able to be brave enough for herself and her mother – the fear of not having the courage to be alone.

She cried, both in the temple and in her Panama City apartment. When she calmed, we synchronized our breathing once more, and together we climbed the creaking wooden stairs to the waking world. When she was back in the Skeleton Temple, she was surprised that the candles had not completely burned down. We had been down in the cave for not more than ten minutes.

Ooznahvi then told me that she understood.

Imagine: You are alone in the jungle. Suddenly you are surprised by a coiled pit viper. There are two more behind you. What do you do?

You stop... and change what you are imagining. After all, the snakes are only in your imagination.

What's the Vet Number?

By Steve Banks

Hey Dude,

How is Andrew? Still on the geriatric revival tour with the Backstreet Boys?

Everything is fine here... really enjoying it actually.

Gabriel is keeping busy carrying rocks down the hill.

Garden died though. Guess you need to water it.

Not really saving up much money to build the zip line, either. Seems to be less male backpackers these days for some unknown reason. Luz is not happy about it. Well that's not true -- she is happy one second, pissed off the next. She is going to group therapy alone.

Guess I missed your call. Best not to call before ten... I like to sleep in. Heard you do too. And you take lots of naps. I don't believe what they say though. That you sneak away with the BlackBerry to download Bestiality porn before nap time, then cry yourself to sleep over the latest sad news of Lindsay Lohan.

Email me back so I can taunt you again.

One of your few friends,

Steve

P.S. Rocky is fine. Do you have the number to his vet?

Foosball More Fun

By Steve Banks

Hey Andy,

Matt and Maria are like two nuts in a banana hammock.

To get a more optimum ration of guys to girls, girls now drink for free all night in the bar if they play foosball topless.

It's nicer talking to you than Patrick... his thought train has no caboose.

Nico does all the check-ins now. He's a little slow... takes an hour and half to watch Sixty Minutes.

I bought a wife beater. Goes well with my Panama Hat. Girls are digging me and Estrella keeps trying to get pregnant. How do you keep your sponsored child from wanting to spawn?

Your Bud,

Steve

P.S. Still warm.

Response:

Steve,

I told her if I want to hear the sound of little feet going pitter patter, I would put shoes on Rocky.

Andrew

P.S. No. Would you fuck her if you knew she had crabs?

I Am the Jaguar

By María Concepción

I am alone when I find the green rock on Río del Oro.

I take my clothes off and stretch out.

The curve is perfect for the back, sun perfect for my skin.

I play.

I sleep.

I awake. It is black. So black I wonder if I am just in my mind. But it is too cold to be a lucid dream.

I stumble on the rocks but find my shoes... put my clothes in my day pack.

I need my hands to feel ahead of me. Crawl on all fours.

Misery. Then ecstasy.

I hear the whispers of trees.

The spirits of the jungle.

I find a cave and pass out exhausted.

I awake to the sight of the jaguar's breath.

I find my power animal.

I am the jaguar.

New Pet

By Steve Banks

Hey Patti Cakes,

Not much news.

Gabriel is carrying the rocks back up the hill. I don't know what's eating him... looked kind of frustrated. Must have thought Manual Labor was the Panamanian president.

Good news about the zip-line. The male backpackers (seem to be less of them every day) are paying a not paying attention tax to help us save for the zip line. Very few guys complain.

Heard you tried to call yet again. Fuck what is it with you? Try calling Sunday.

Started the garden up again, with marijuana this time. Had a hard time buying seeds, so I gave out stacks of Lost and Found business cards. Finally got seeds and better yet, lots of customers lined up.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.

P.S. Rocky looked kind of unhappy. Don't worry, we solved the problem. We died him green with Kool Aid. This will help him stay camouflaged in the jungle so the dogs that have been coming around for scraps have a harder time catching him. Oh, also, his name now is Kermit. And now he likes Red Bull and Vodka. Can you cover his bar tab when you get back?

Foosball Not Fun

By Steve Banks

Hey Buddy,

Bought me suspenders to wear with my Panama Hat.

Dude, last night's topless ladies night was a disaster. So many double chins I thought I was staring at pancakes. We lost the foosball in one chick's belly button. Didn't really smell too bad though after... nor she. Anyway, don't want that to happen again so we built the door to the bar so no fat girls can get in.

Patrick doesn't seem to understand about this guy/girl ratio... keeps talking about stupid stuff like profit. He has a PBS brain in an MTV world.

Steve

P.S. I would fuck her under any condition you could think of and I would eat the roots of her hair until she was bald.

Response:

Hey Steve,

Don't worry about Patrick and all his MBA talk of profit. He talks too much and is possessed by a retarded ghost.

Andrew

P.S. And you know what hair follicles taste like?

Yesterdays on the Road

By Matt Hope

There are no yesterdays on the road.

When you travel you can be free to reinvent yourself. Steve tells people he is a brain surgeon and even writes this on his departure and arrival cards at airports – unless he writes 'prince.' You can take all that is you, dust it off and paint over the ugly parts.

Unless... somebody finds your diary. No one should have to face the temptation of stumbling on a diary. María and I had been sharing a room at The Lost and Found and one night, when she was out on the night safari with Gabriel, I was chasing a gecko out of the room. I was moving her bag and a book fell out. It was leather bound with no title, and when I picked it up, my picture, the Facebook picture I saw in Panama City, fell out. Stop fucking looking at me like that and just read!

I flipped through the pages trying to find where to put the photo back, and discovered an eclectic mix of English and Spanish ramblings, photos of places (not many people) and sketches of weird esoteric symbols and graphic sex. Some things kind of rang a bell for me, like a picture of a bald man that looked like one of the cross bearers at the pilgrimage of the Black Christ. The sketch looks like a self-portrait where María has her lucid dream symbol on her hands, but in the sketch they are bleeding.

Not long after Dr. Mike taught us about lucid dreaming, he led us on what he called shamanic journeys. Most recently we travelled to the "underworld" where we searched for our power animal – a kind of spiritual soul mate. When our power animal came to us, we started something Dr. Mike calls 'dynamic meditation.' For me, it was all just a kind of let's pretend playtime, but the dynamic meditation was kind of cathartic. Anyway, not the waste of time I thought it would be. Dynamic meditation is the opposite of the Buddhist meditations where you slow your mental projections. Instead you exhaust yourself until your mind is no longer cluttered. No secret really. It's like runner's high. We jumped up and down with our hands stretched up and then exhaled violently until dizzy. (Or in a state of ecstasy if you are so inclined to believe) Then we let loose, shouting. Usnavy cried and María shouted violent obscenities. Then we danced with our power animals to some tribal drumming Dr. Mike had on his iPod. I didn't take it seriously, but I pretended to find an owl as my power animal. They have been on my mind lately because of the owl at The Lost and Found that startled me. An automatic light on the back path to bathrooms clicked on and an owl turned his head. We had a solid five second moment before he swooped off.

So there in María's diary was my power animal, the owl, but beside it a threesome. I have never had a threesome. Nor has María, for that matter. There was Steve's power animal, the snake, but with someone that looked like it might be Steve tied to it.

After the dynamic meditation, when most of us were dancing with our power animals, María slipped away. She muttered something about her power animal not coming and looked upset. I am not the type to chase after girls, especially strong willed girls like María, and especially when I am not the cause of her frustration. I admit I had a sleepless night when she didn't return. I didn't know if she went to sleep in the volunteer dorm or took off to Boquete or something. She came back the next morning and shocked us all – cut up, bleeding from her forehead again and covered in bug bites. But she smiled and announced that she found her power animal. It came to her in the forest, literally. Her spiritual guide was a jaguar.

She had a sketch with the naked body of a woman and the head of jaguar, and a girl lying naked with something coming out of her vagina. Half the page was torn off. It was good work. I had no idea that María was such a talented artist.

Gabriel, the local nature expert, was surprised that she saw the jaguar and I don't really think he believed her. During all of his years living in the area, he has only seen paw prints. Maria said she fell asleep on a rock in the river they call Fornication Point, and woke up in the dark. Somehow she ended up on the other side of the river, thinking she was on the same side as the lodge. She ended up at a cave.

"The cave of the hermit woman," Gabriel said. It seems that years ago people lived deeper inside the reserve. The hydro dam displaced them and many of them moved to a spot along a new road being built to access the dam. That town is Valle de la Mina and apparently the hermit woman still lived there. Her name was Tuna. María insisted on meeting this hermit woman who had lived in the cave and begged Gabriel to take her.

I felt a little like a third wheel tagging along, but Maria did invite me. We walked down to Valle de la Mina, a cute little town that sees no tourists. Although María is Colombian, she might as well have been from Neptune - it was clear that she is not from around those parts. Children scurried behind long skirts and men stared at her.

Ten minutes down a gravel road no car could pass, was a tiny, leaning shack of a house smothered with beautiful crimson bougainvillea. María knocked on the door without hesitation. When there was no answer, she cupped her face and peered into the glass. Gabriel fidgeted with his nose, a peculiar mannerism that I had already learned meant that he was nervous. I felt like we should follow his lead to avoid trampling the local cultural norms, but María edged open the unlocked door. The little place was quiet. María slipped inside, and Gabriel waited behind for an invitation.

Gabriel and I sat on some rocks a few yards away for several minutes before María reappeared and waved us in. Tuna was seated facing the door in worn old wooden armchair surrounded by sagging, dusty furniture. She was breathing hard and sweating. I thought the poor woman was having a heart attack. Gabriel said she was in her eighties, and she looked very frail. She was hard to look at – like she was barely clinging to life, a spirit trapped in a corpse that had already begun to rot.

"Pensé que nunca vendrías," she whispered, her wide eyes fixed on María. I thought you would never come.

"Mi nombre es María pero no soy la madre de Jesús," María replied. I am not the mother of Jesus.

It seemed that Tuna had not been feeling well. As much as María tried to convince her otherwise, she thought María had come to take her to heaven. She was startled, but not afraid. She was ready. Gabriel asked if she wanted us to leave, and she protested, trying to rise from her chair. She insisted on making us coffee in a kitchen just off to the side of the living room. We urged her to sit back down, but she wouldn't calm down until Gabriel went and made the coffee himself.

María told her story about getting lost in the forest near the Río del Oro and how she had found the cave. She told her that she had spent the night in the cave and that when she had woken the next morning, she came face to face with the jaguar.

There was a long pause. The woman stared ahead as though she could see nothing but the images in her mind.

"She is old now," she said of the jaguar. "How does she look?"

"Strong," María said.

"The first time we met she was tearing apart the flesh of a sloth."

Tuna lived in that cave, that much was true, and she lived there alone for a time. But she was not a hermit and she did not live in the cave forever. She built a house nearby that has since been reclaimed by the jungle. She moved before the dam company forced people to leave the area.

"We moved because of the gold," she hissed with spite. "The cursed gold."

Her husband never told anyone, including her, where he found the gold, but everyone assumed it was not far from where they relocated and where she was living when we visited her. Her husband pulled out a nugget of gold every time he needed money it seemed, and showed it to everyone who wanted to see. Everyone assumed it came from the long lost Spanish gold mine from whence the town got its name- Valley of the Mine.

After one of her husband's unexplained departures, Tuna woke one morning and found him stretched out before her front doorstep, dead. His clothes were wet and his lungs were full of water. The police said he must have drowned, and that someone dragged his corpse there. But the mysterious second party, whether he was Tuna's husband's murderer or accomplice, was never discovered. The villagers surmised that he drowned in the very mine where he found the gold, and that whoever he was working with didn't speak up for fear of having to give up the secret of the gold's location.

"But the truth is," the old woman related to María, "There never was a mine. My husband never said so, but I knew there was never a mine." She clutched María's arm and pulled her closer. "My husband was a grave robber," she whispered.

The woman closed her eyes and began to cough quietly, but I could tell her lungs couldn't take much. She rocked back and forth, as if continuing the conversation was greatly straining her.

With my weak Spanish, I couldn't really capture much of the exchange between María and Tuna. But according to what María later summarized for me, they spoke of black deeds and ancient Indian magic. The imposing and impassive slopes of Volcán Barú dominate the Chiriquí landscape. From its base in the town of Boquete, it doesn't look much like a volcano. But take a step back and travel across the highlands to The Lost and Found, and you will see postcard perfect panoramic views of the mountain, set in breath-taking contrast to the hills and rugged mountain terrain surrounding it. The volcano now sleeps, but thousands of years ago it erupted and spat out massive boulders, scattering them for dozens of miles around the Chiriquí landscape. Hidden in the rivers and fields along the road between Boquete and The Lost and Found, and even more so on the road to Bocas, ancient symbols called petroglyphs can be found carved into the black stone of these volcanic rocks. One of the more well-known petroglyph sites is part of a tour The Lost and Found runs to hot springs near the town of Caldera. The boulder there is called The Elephant Stone, because of its resemblance to a sleeping elephant. Most archeologists believe that pre-Columbian Indians carved the symbols into the stone, and that the boulders served as kind of an ancient altar, adorned with the images of the spirits that the Indians worshipped and feared. But no one really knows their meaning.

"Or, at least..." Tuna coughed, turning to look at Gabriel. "They are forgetting their meaning."

Our expert guide Gabriel is a Ngäbe Indian, the predominate indigenous group in western Panama. But his parents were killed when he was a child, and he was raised by Latinos. The other Ngäbe, his brothers, seem completely subjugated to me. One of the volunteers at the Lost and Found, Nico, is somewhat more generous in his assessment than I and prefers to describe them as, "cautious and reserved." Of course, he worked with the Ngäbe during his time in the Peace Corps and may have gone a little native.

"The Ngäbe know," Tuna said, staring at Gabriel. "But they are either afraid or they choose to forget." Gabriel fidgeted again with his nose, although I am not really sure he knew what Tuna was talking about.

According to Tuna, below the ancient altar of symbols existed the huacas, tombs of Indian nobles accompanied by gold idols depicting their deities. The idols were buried to protect them from the invading Spaniards. But the gold was protected in other ways as well. Powerful sukias, shamans renowned for magic powers and abilities to communicate with the spirits, bewitched the tombs and burial grounds of their chiefs and kings, invoking the vengeance of the most malevolent of the spirits. The spirits enchant the huacas, and none of the Indians would dare desecrate the altar of their gods. But there would come a day, the legends say, when white foreigners who do not believe in the gods could resist their protective curse. When they shake the earth and light fires, the stones will rise, so the legend says.

"My husband tried to dig around the curse, but the spirits struck him dead." Tuna began to raise her voice and tears flowed. "He did not find a mine. There is no mine."

I have no idea if the story she told was true or if this was her first confession. But the old lady trembled and stared into María's eyes. María walked over and hugged Tuna, who began to weep to so piteously that Gabriel and I looked at each other, wondering whether we should leave. But María leaned close and whispered something into her ear. Tuna's demeanor changed dramatically. She stopped shaking and looked at María, repeating, "Gracias, gracias, Madre, gracias."

It was dark by the time we left the village of Valle de la Mina. Gabriel left us for his home, and we walked along the highway in silence. I don't know what was bothering María, but she seemed on edge. The exchange with Tuna had affected her.

We were walking in awkward silence for a while when a ragged old mutt ran from across the road toward us. María leaned down and petted him, and he trailed behind us as we walked toward The Lost and Found.

Suddenly, around a sharp bend in the highway, an eighteen-wheeler truck roared up from behind us. We turned at the same time as the dog, which stood right in the truck's path. For a moment it looked like the truck would pass right over the little creature, but then we saw him get smoked by the crankshaft or the center of the rear axle. He bounced more than four feet in the air in the wake of the huge truck. We stepped to the side of the road, and the lights of the semi temporarily blinded us. When we looked back for the dog it had vanished.

We walked to the spot in the road where it should have been -- but nothing. Then suddenly we saw him yelping at the side of the road, running around in circles. He looked at us and then just flopped over onto his side, panting.

I wanted to just move on, but María wanted to help. She cradled the dog in her arms and at first it growled, quietly but deeply. After a moment it went back to panting.

"Do you hear that?" María asked, lifting her head.

I looked around. "What?"

"Someone crying."

I listened intently. I heard nothing. Maybe the wind in the trees. Maybe some water running.

I remembered a time when I was younger. I woke up and thought I heard crying, but I wasn't sure if it was just the sound of the air coming in through my own nose. I walked down to the garage, thinking it might have come from there.

When I opened the garage door, a tom cat hissed and ran out an open door. There, in the corner, was a paper bag with kittens, their throats ripped open, bleeding, dead. For some reason I wanted to tell María about this. To share something real from my past. But I didn't.

"I wonder if it knows it will die," María said, looking into its eyes.

"It looks okay to me," I said.

"It's hemorrhaging," she said.

The dog let her stroke the back of its head and whined.

"We always feel most alive moments before death." And then, suddenly and deliberately, she put a knee on the dog's chest and snapped his neck with both hands. It made no sound. It just went limp in her arms. I lost my breath, and she could see I had trouble recovering. She caught my gaze and seemed angered at first by my shocked reaction. She let the dog fall from her lap and put her arm on my shoulders and leaned close to me. My heart was pounding. Her long dark hair fell into my face. I could smell the faint scent of lavender soap that has become her smell for me forever. But this gentle closeness, after such brutality, paralyzed me.

"All great things must first wear terrifying monstrous masks," she whispered and turned back toward The Lost and Found.

At that moment I thought that María might not be traveling. She was running – maybe hiding. There are yesterdays on the road... a little behind you around the bend. And I wanted to know every inch of the road, no matter how uncomfortable.

La, la... la, la,la

By Steve Banks

Patty Poo,

Gabriel carried a rock down the hill before lunch. After lunch his job was to bring it back up. Gabriel asked why he is only carrying rocks up and down the hill. He looked sad. We all laughed. I think on the inside he was laughing. Or maybe later he will laugh.

A thousand apologies again for missing your call. Try Sunday after one P.M. and before two P.M.

More good news about the zip-line. Two quetzals flew in today and lucky me, I had a pellet gun to protect the garden. .. pang!. Made a fucking awesome hat that sold fast on e-Bay. Gabriel will start the zip-line after a few more loads of rocks.

Garden doing great. Thinking about planting coco but not the chocolate kind. Can't tell you what I mean over email... need to be discreet, ya know. Someone named Capitan Gonzalez dropped by but was disappointed because it looked like the weed didn't yet have THC in it. He promised to come back though. Funny, I asked about his boat but he said he didn't have one. Sure would be nice if he had a boat to take this stuff back to the States.

P.S. Kermit (The kinkajou formerly known as Rocky) was biting his fur. Well, he ate a fair chunk of it off. Don't worry we fixed the problem. The thing is we didn't use sugar free Kool-Aid to die him green and we all know how much he likes sweet things. He must have been in heaven... like he was tasting cotton candy for the first time. Anyway we solved the problem and used blue sugar free Hawaiian Punch to die him this time around. The kinkajou formerly known as Rocky (whoever named him must have eaten one too many retard sandwiches) who later became Kermit will now be known as Papa Smurf and you shall refer to him as such in all future emails please.

The only one who respects you,

Steve

Bar is Messy

By Steve Banks

Andrew,

I find myself quite fetching these days when I look in the mirror. Have a pin mustache, suspenders, Panama Hat and wife beater.

Hot girls in the bar last night... right on! Bar is a mess though... cleaners can't get in.

Steve

P.S. I know what everything tastes like.

Response:

Hey Steve,

Good to hear you got skinny girls in the bar. Remember a hard on counts as personal growth. Put that on your resume.

Andrew

P.S. Why? Why on earth would you think to eat hair follicles?

Masonic Pillars in the Rosicrucian Temple

By Mathew Hope

When I arrived at Bambu Hostel in David, I asked for the discount I heard was given to volunteers at The Lost and Found. I was denied. I went back to the pool where María was lounging on a deck chair, wearing a bikini and soaking up the sun. There was a small collection of backpackers dangling around her aura. I offered her a kiss on the cheek. She looked at me as if I had been testing her. She grabbed the back of my head and gave me a kiss on the lips. I told her we had to pay the regular price for the dorm.

"Dorm?" she said, raising an eyebrow. She took off her sun glasses and sauntered up to the front desk. She came back with a private room at half price.

"I guess I don't have the face for a discount," I said. She smiled sympathetically, as if she detected resentment.

"Oh Matt," she said. "I am a woman. There's no face. It's your eyes that see what you want to see."

The first few weeks with María I was waiting... waiting with nervous anticipation to see if she felt the same as me. I was ecstatic to learn that she did, and even more so to discover we were exclusive. Now I am still on edge. The interview, where we put our best face forward, is over, and we are now making the contract. Everyone writes this differently but we sign when we are on the same page... when we both know what we would consider betrayal... when we think we know what the other is capable of.

At three a.m. that night, María woke me up.

"Did you hear that?" she said. I listened and heard the distant sound of thunder.

"A storm?" I said.

"Yeah, I have been counting. It's getting closer. We have to leave now."

She pulled a small backpack from under the bed and told me to get dressed – not like a gringo – while she looked for a taxi. We took it to a 24 hour fast food chicken place not far away and continued on foot, toward the David fairgrounds.

After a few minutes, María dropped her backpack and flopped down on a curb in an area with almost no houses. It was dark and I could really only see her in flashes of lightning. Despite the electric, metallic smell that filled the air, the rain had yet to come. María took my hand, and we sat in the blackness.

"Matt, there is something I have to do – three things actually, that Tuna asked me to do, during our last visit." There was stress in her voice.

"You don't have to believe any of this. I don't even believe it, but listen. You know she confessed that her husband was digging under the giant stones with the symbols, the petroglyphs, to find the gold of La Mina. The gold that everyone thinks came from a mine. Well, what she didn't say when you were there was that he was working for the hydro dam. He was a night watchman in a nearby town, Los Planes."

I knew Los Planes; you pass it on the way to The Lost and Found from David. It is a huge ghost town, a collection of dark wooden complexes enclosed by a dense, foreboding ring of pines. It once boasted a school and even a hospital. But now it is all shut down and boarded up. A huge barbed wire fence surrounds it. Gabriel told me the hydro dam company built Los Planes in the '70s to house the workers' families.

"Well," María continued, "Tuna told us that the Indian legend says that the rocks will rise when the outsiders shake the earth and light the fires. Who else could that be but the dam? They are moving the earth to drill tunnels and the fires are the electricity they're making."

Light rain came and I took back my hand. I was clueless as to where this was going, but I knew if the details came at three in the morning that this was all an exposition she needed to convince me of doing something stupid. I was getting a little pissed at the trap she set for me. I asked her to get to the point.

"Matt, the gold Tuna's husband stole was only part of the gold being extracted by the hydro company. It was kept in Los Planes until the American Invasion in '89. They built that..."

She grabbed my head and pointed it across a field to a large white building half illuminated by distant street lights. On the front was a large Egyptian symbol, the gold disk and colorful wings on either side.

"Orden Rosacruz," she said. "I don't know how to say it in English. When they hauled off Noriega they built that temple to move some of the gold they were taking from Los Planes. But it was a cover to hide the gold from invading American soldiers."

I thought it was a test. I know María has balls. I know she plays with people – making them guess where her childlike sense of naivety becomes pure adult recklessness. I was about to call her bluff and express some disappointment when a bright flash cut through the darkness and the following boom of thunder shook the ground. Several car alarms sounded, and the light rain became a crashing torrent all at once.

María jumped to her feet. "There's danger on the edge of town."

I sat waiting, letting myself get drenched. Fuck María. She grabbed her backpack and disappeared in the darkness. Within a few moments she reappeared under the light of the whitewashed building called the Orden Rosacruz. She rested the blade end of a tire iron between the double doors and then whacked it with a hammer, breaking the lock.

Sure enough, there was an alarm, but it was clear now that María had timed her breaking and entering with the thunder of the storm and the wailing of the car alarms. Dogs barked, but they stopped when the alarm ceased. I was still waiting for police. I thought that building security systems, even in Panama, must be connected to the police.

I got up and walked around the block to hide near the wall of the fairgrounds. My heart pounded and it seemed like forever, but nothing moved. A moment later the rain stopped and everything was once again silent and dark. I must have waited ten, fifteen minutes. Then I went to look for María.

I looked at the building and before I was consciously aware that I was contemplating entering, the hair on my arms stood up. I don't know what the hell overtook me, but before I knew it I was standing in front of the splintered doors and found myself pushing the doors open automatically, with no fear, like it was a lucid dream – a lucid dream I, like the others, was learning to control.

It smelled like my old elementary school. Where I was there was nothing unusual, just a foyer with a low porcelain water fountain and small cloak room off to the side. Swinging doors led to an empty room, much like a community hall, with stairs stacked to the side. I heard a humming sound coming from across the room and instinctually followed it. The glossy hardwood creaked under my feet as I walked toward a small kitchen at the back.

I found the origin of the sound. White and red wires lead from the wall to a sink full of water that muffled the sound of an alarm. Maria must have ripped it from the wall and dropped it there. Beside the sink was a note written in English and an arrow pointing to a flight of stairs at the back: This way to the ancient gallery.

María had melted candles onto tin foil pie plates and placed them on every other stair. I picked one up to light my way. Each step groaned as I ascended to a room that had the feel of a waiting room to a university dean's office. There was a big leather sofa and locked glass book cases with large leather bound books and group portraits of older, white men, some in formal wear and others in white robes. There were mysterious framed prints on the wall. Prints that resembled old auspicious maps and puzzles filled with esoteric symbols and graphs, yet revealing no destinations or the locations of treasures. There was no sign of anything that looked as if the antechamber hid raided antiquities.

On the door to another room, María had left a small paper held by a heavy brass knocker. The paper read, "Weird scenes inside the gold mine."

I pushed open the door. It led to an elaborate ritual hall dimly lit by two candles on a marble altar in front of me. The hall stretched on to the left and the right, disappearing in shadow. Facing me on the opposite wall was a large golden fresco of Isis standing over the coffin of Osiris. The flickering battle between the gloom and the candlelight made the fresco seem larger, more alive and ominous. I suppose Isis was raising Osiris from the dead. The fresco made me think of Dr. Anderson and the art María and Estrella had been painting at the Lost and Found. Placed along the other wall to either side of me were seats covered in purple velvet, like old movie theater seats. At the far end, I could barely make out two large pillars that stood like sentinels on either side of an ornately carved throne. I walked toward the pillars and saw they had perfectly symmetrical globes resting at the top, almost touching the high ceilings. María sat on the throne a couple of steps above the black and white chessboard tiles that covered the floor. She was barefoot and wearing a white robe. Tied to each of her arms were golden cords each about a meter long. Her clothes were folded in a neat pile in the corner of the hall.

I was the first to break the silence. "María, there's nothing here that looks like the gold idols of the Ngäbe."

Without responding, María stood up and pointed to another throne in the opposite end of the room. "Sit," she commanded. I obeyed.

María stood up and slowly circled around the altar, resting on the balls of her feet with each stride. She stopped at the altar with her back to me and blew out one of the candles. There was something else there that she picked up – a digital camera. She turned and lifted the last candle to her face, casting a giant shadow of herself on a dark curtain behind the velvet seats. She approached me, turning toward an electric organ near my throne. She pranced over and turned it on. A low electrical hum resonated through the room. On top of the organ she found a cordless microphone used for addressing groups. She tied it tightly around her neck like a collar.

"Under your chair you will find a strip of cloth," she breathed. "It's your blindfold. Put it on." I did as she told, without knowing why. I felt a current of excitement run through my body. I could see nothing.

She spoke slowly, in a whisper, but when amplified through the organ speaker it sounded like she was all around me at once. "This is the story of the princess Janca, the daughter of the great warlord Chief Urracá of the ancient Ngäbe tribe. Janca fell in love with Tam Weh, a man from the next village. But she was already promised to a powerful shaman from that same village because the Chief Urracá needed the shaman's magic to protect the villagers from the invading Spanish. When the shaman learned that Janca had fallen in love with Tam Weh, he cursed her. He cast a spell to transform her into her power animal on the next full moon. The shaman did not know that she was to become a black jaguar."

I heard a soft click and the quiet hiss from speakers. She turned up the volume. Her voice and breath, even louder now, resonated throughout the room.

"Frightened at what she had become, she ran home and went to the room where she slept. When her father entered, he saw the jaguar and thought his daughter had been eaten. He ran at her, ready to tear her to pieces with his bare hands. Janca, in the form of the jaguar, fled."

I could see nothing through my blindfold but I could smell the waxy smoke and knew she blew out the last candle.

"Urracá summoned all of the best hunters in the land to hunt the jaguar. Thinking that the cat had killed his one true love, Tam Weh took up a sword he had won killing a conquistador, ready to kill the cat. He tracked her to a cave high in the mountains. Catching a glimpse of her shining eyes, he drew his sword. Janca, defeated and overcome with sadness, waited to be killed. But then a strange thing happened. Their eyes met and he saw the sadness, saw Janca behind the face. The shaman had only given her the mask of a jaguar. Tam Weh dropped his sword. When Janca rested her paw on Tam Weh, he was transformed into a jaguar too."

The room went silent. I listened carefully. María took in a sharp breath that echoed through the room.

"Matt?" She spoke softly but her amplified voice echoed in the temple hall. "Have you ever seen two cats fuck?"

"No." I kind of squeaked it out. My throat was dry. The darkness and the pulse of the organ mesmerized me. I felt like I was floating.

"The male cat seems quite uninterested even though he can smell that the female is in heat. He can smell her from yards away. Maybe the male cat knows that she's just dying to come. Cats have an uncanny ability to see in the dark. When the male of the species doesn't pay attention, the female brushes by the docile male with her tail straight and stiff in the air and lets out a low pitched growl."

Although my blindfold held tight I knew she was near me now. I could feel the air change around me.

"She'll stick her wetness right into his face. He can smell her. He wants her but still he'll wait. Just sitting there in the dark. He loves to humiliate the dripping female. He wants her to beg for it. But inside the male is an intensity he cannot suppress."

She was right in front of me now. I could feel the heat of her breath and smelled her – like lavender and sweat -- but her voice came through the speaker and echoed in all directions.

"The female turns around and swipes at the male's face. The female draws blood and quickly turns. With a ferocious hiss the male digs his claws into the female's back, sinking his nails into her flesh. His cock is hard. He thrusts into her with his claws firmly tangled in the flesh of her back. He hisses with dark intensity. The female's claws dig into the ground. She growls with such pain and ecstasy that the sound carries for miles."

She stopped and told me to take off my blindfold. The moment I pulled it off a blinding flash assaulted me from the darkness. It was her camera. For a brief moment, a stunning red glare blinded me and I felt a sharp sting across my forehead and right cheek. She whipped me with the cord that was tied around her wrists. I don't know what happened to me... I never lose my temper but that fucking hurt. I swung my arms around trying to catch what hit me.

I calmed down. It was a game. I could hear María breathing harder now. I just didn't know from where. I got down on my hands and knees and slowly crawled in a kind of twisted adult hide-and-go-seek. There were brief moments where I could make out the camera's red glare. I found her robe. She was using it to block a little sliver of light from under the door. I took off my belt, pants and underwear there. I moved her robe to let some light through so I could at least try to catch her shadow.

She taunted me. "Meow, I've been a bad cat."

I felt my way to the throne where María had been sitting and rested behind it. I closed my eyes, trying to get them to adjust to the dark. When I opened them I could make out a nebulous dark form. She was sitting on one of the velvet movie theater chairs and there was something metal catching and reflecting the scant light under the door.

"What will you do when you find me, Matt?" She had a sword. She had the point pressing into the floor and the hilt resting between her legs.

"I'm wet, Matt," she breathed. "When you catch, are you going to fuck me?"

I could see her hands moving along the sword. She moaned softly through the organ speaker.

"Osiris." She took in a sharp breath. "The little ridges along the grip..."A pause. A breath. "Good exercise for the muscles."

When I moved from my position, I lost sense of where she was. I slowly crawled down the center of the floor. All of a sudden I felt something. She heard me. She stopped breathing. It was the loose end of the cord tied to one of her wrists. Then I could see it – the red battery light for her camera. She heard me and we both lunged for it at the same time. She pulled the camera away from me, so I grasped at the cords. I got them just as she blinded me with another flash. She put her foot on my chest and forced me to the ground, but I wouldn't let go of the cords. I pulled hard and she toppled on top of me, naked.

This is all very graphic I know. I am not a porn writer but it is hard to convey just how the hell I would have done what I did – commit a serious crime that would get me time in the closest thing to hell – unless you knew how María has this ability, this ability to seduce you into turning off your rational mind. It is like she does it to herself, too.

We were set to have sex and she stopped. She killed the momentum. It was like the details of some ritual in her mind were more important than the sex. She turned on the lights and made me help her push the marble altar between the pillars, the wooden pillars with the globes. She bent over the altar, and with her cords, I tied her legs to the base and her wrists around the pillars. Once she was tied, she told me to turn out the lights.

Now most people would be pissed if they were having sex and the girl called out another guy's name. It started as a whisper but then she didn't hide it. As she climaxed her voice reached shouting level that brought me to reality. Images of a Panamanian jail almost destroyed my orgasm. She was calling out, "Osiris, Osiris!"

Then María did it again. She flashed the camera and I fell back in temporary blindness. I heard her pull off the microphone and stumble around. I groped around for a moment, looking for my clothes. Suddenly I heard a crash – breaking glass. I jumped to my feet and smashed my toe against the altar on my way over to find my underwear and pants. They weren't there. María must have tossed them aside.

Then there was the blaring of a siren \-- very loud.

"María!" I shouted. "Cops! María, cops!"

I found the light switch and then jumped into my pants that had been thrown across the floor, stuffing my underwear into my jeans pocket. If I get hauled off to jail in Panama, I thought, at least I have to go with my clothes.

I recklessly ran past broken glass at the top of the stairs and stumbled down to the kitchen where I had entered. It wasn't the cops, not yet. María had pulled the plug on the sink.

There was a happy face below the note she had written there before. And another note: I bet that's a face from the ancient gallery you never wore before... I love you.

Outside, Maria was stuffing robes into her bag. "No time to wallow in the mire," she said, "Let's run!"

Second in the Cock Fight

By Steve Banks

Poopy Pants,

Gabriel hasn't come to work in a while. Could he be sick?

Minor setback on the zip-line. Came down when we were looking for Papa Smurf and clipped a backpacker. Looked pissed. But that might have just been because of the way his face was cut. Idiot... he needed plastic surgery before the zip-line clipped him. "Hahaha," I laughed when he said he would sue. I don't even own the place. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him that.

O.K. some errors were made but if there is a law suit we can find people to blame.

P.S. what is your address there in Canada? Do you have addresses in Canada? Do igloos have house numbers?

P.P.S. Good new! We found Papa Smurf. Turns out Gabriel had taken some people to town for the cock fights. Well, they dressed Papa Smurf up as a rooster. Good news... he came in second! But, bad news too I guess... Gabriel says it is not so good to come in second in a cock fight. And here's me... I thought a cock fight was two dicks making a dive for the anus in a threesome. I learn something new every day.

P.P.P.S. Patrick I will no longer make fun of you... it is like poking a stick at a Down syndrome baby.

P.P.P.S. I fart in your general direction.

New Employee

By Steve Banks

Andrew,

You should see me now. I got the cigar and accent now with the Panama Hat and wife beater. Snap my fingers and say, "Luz, una margarita más por favor." Now all I need is the cocaine. Wait...

Luz wears a tight little French Maid's uniform now. Billed that to you.

Looking for cleaners that can fit through the door, so we started interviews. Here is the girl I interviewed at a cool little bar called La Esmeralda:

Can you speak English?

Sí.

Why is the letter C in the word yacht?

Qué?

No C, C, bitch.

How do they get the Caramilk into the Caramilk bar?

Anal es mas dinero.

How do you feel about this uniform?

Muy bueno.

If I were an animal what animal would you want me to be?

Grrrrr.

Have you met Papa Smurf yet?

I can smurf yes. I smurf real good. Grrrr.

How do you feel about reporting people who do soft drugs?

I having to go.

Can you fit through this door?

Does Patrick really need to come back?

Steve

P.S. Like you have never smelled your own dental floss. Why on earth would you eat yuka?

If I could only screw her while she is on top of me and I had to keep eating a bowl of her shit then I would. And she stops riding when I stop chewing. And I would do it with a smile... you wouldn't? I would eat her inner labia after that doctor from doctor 90210 removed. Hell, I'd eat it a week after it was removed.

Return of the Blue Bus

By Mathew Hope

Consciousness is the road lit by the waking mind. The rest is darkness. The life of the soul reaches beyond the consciousness into the night. To find the light we venture into the darkness. The shaman can guide us through the darkness in ritual, or, as Freud said, we can ride the "king's highway, the best route into the unconscious" and be our personal shaman through lucid dreaming. And when we truly understand our unconscious, when we have touched it, then we feel true freedom. Then we become a whole person.

I looked down at the palm of my right hand and saw the crown. I knew I had entered my dreams with control. It was like greeting an old friend.

María appeared in the distance in a white robe, the wind blowing through her hair and her arms spread open like she was welcoming the wind. Or maybe me. She smiled and then gestured for me to follow her up a flight of stairs. Above the stairs was a stone lintel with the words Novus Ordo Seclorum engraved upon it. I followed behind her up the stairs but after a bend in the staircase I saw that it was a little girl, not María, that I was chasing. She stopped and stared back at me with such a sad face, that of a little dark-haired girl in a tattered blue dress. Tears drove clean trails down her muddy cheeks. She ran to the top of the stairs and a vast wilderness opened up. As soon as I arrived, the trees began to wilt and die. They turned to ash and blew away. Now there was nothing but desert and two tall pillars. The little girl in the blue dress looked so sad, like she wanted me to help her. Suddenly a third pillar rose from the ground and the girl hid behind it, watching me shyly. At the top of her pillar was a crescent moon, and on top of the pillar to her left was a five pointed star. On the top of the pillar to her right was a shimmering cup. I thought it must have been the Holy Grail.

I look down at my hand to make sure the crown, my dream symbol, was there. When I looked up again I saw that the three pillars were now people – angry looking people with weapons and Roman helmets.

"Do you have the word?" one of them shouted.

I looked up and he belted me on the forehead with a kind of wooden hammer, like a gavel.

I fell to my right knee. When I regained focus I could see I was in what looked like the courtyard of a great temple with high stone walls.

I got up and saw a door to my left. I ran to it. Another man hit me on the head. I saw a door to my right and ran to it.

I saw María. She was wearing a white robe, billowing in the desert wind, and her arms were outstretched, waiting to embrace me. Then they turned to the sad eyes ... sad for me. And they were for me. A snake wound between her feet. I felt a sharp burning pain in my groin then a blunt thud on the back of my head. I tried to look at the palm of my hand but everything went black. I have never experienced going black in a dream before. Like I was dead. I was frozen, I couldn't move. Petrified in fear. At first I heard nothing. Then I heard the sound of a bus, followed by the sound of children singing, getting closer... the blue bus of children from the Volcano.

I woke up struggling to breathe. I reached beside me in the bed for María. She wasn't there.

Dream Analysis

By Dr. Mike Anderson

Dear Mathew,

Thank you for your email. I know we will see each other again next week for the next phase of our journey into the collective unconscious, but since you felt the urgency to share with me the details of your dream, I thought I would respond promptly in written form.

Mathew, please don't take this as if I am passing judgment, but my limited experience here has taught me to exercise caution before considering engaging in activities contrary to the law in countries such as this. As a Freemason, it would have been quite possible for me to arrange a visit to the Rosicrucian temple. You see, our fraternal orders, at the core, are one and the same. Rosicrucians are but Freemasons that believe our philosophies and rituals are owed to a much more distant period in antiquity – ancient Egypt. Let me start at the beginning, for the beginning is the end of your last lucid dream, the dream you have asked me to help you interpret.

If you recall, the ancient Egyptians worshipped the gods Isis and Osiris. Isis was widowed but used an artificial phallus, the obelisk, to fornicate with her husband and give birth to Horus, the reincarnation of Osiris. Horus was the son of the widow. This was depicted in the fresco at the Rosicrucian temple and the story María chose to depict with her painting on one of the walls at The Lost and Found.

What I didn't explain was that this myth, if you will, was preserved in ritual through the Cult of Isis. The reason it resonated beyond ancient Egyptian culture was because it addressed a primordial fear, death, by unlocking an archetype of the collective unconscious: the resurrecting god.

The cult traveled across many lands, but each culture adopted it with slightly different metaphors and symbols. The Greeks translated Egyptian hieroglyphs and gleamed information essential for learning the arcane practices of the cult. Dionysus, the dying and resurrecting god of ancient Greece, substituted for Osiris. The Greeks of the Dionysian cult erected theaters for the performances of the cult's mysteries. Theater, after all, is simply ritual with an audience. The members of the Dionysian/Osiris cult became the most skilled builders of the Mediterranean. But beyond that they were rumored to possess symbols with which they concealed the mysteries of the soul and the secrets of human regeneration. King Solomon needed their skills to complete his temple. But an obvious contradiction arose. Could the monotheistic Jews of the Yahweh cult and the pagan resurrection cult build a temple together?

Solomon hired Hiram Abif, who like Horus was known also as the son of the widow, to build the shrine. So charismatic was he that when he converted to the cult of Dionysus/Osiris, so too did the Jewish builders. The Cult of Osiris then became the cult of Hiram Abif. They shrouded their mysteries in the symbols of the construction of the temple so as not to upset the cult of Yahweh – the symbols of building tools like the compass and level. That's right, Mathew, the cult of Hiram Abif is the Freemasons.

Many modern Freemasons believe their institution has a direct linear link to the building of the temple and have produced volumes of documents to prove this. I believe the point is moot. It is more important that the building of the temple began the codification of philosophy, belief and ritual that was considered heresy by any religious tradition that claims its priesthood is the only road to salvation – the only conduit to God, so to speak.

According to Masonic legend, Hiram entered the temple through the twin pillars of Jachin and Boaz.

Let me pause.

Mathew, the following is what is known as a Masonic tracing board. It is used to teach the uninitiated simple Freemason allegories.

But I think you know already that there is more here than allegory. You saw these pillars in the Rosicrucian temple, did you not? More importantly, you saw them in your dream. You asked me to help you interpret the symbols of your dream. Yes, obviously you dreamed of the pillars after your experience in the temple, but you dreamed also of the obelisk. Mathew, you are tapping, more than any of us, into the collective unconscious that is shrouded in myth, Masonic myth, and its symbols. This is not typical. You are in possession of some truly remarkable gifts. But let me continue with myth.

The pillars represent the male and female – relevant to the inner secret of the inner sanctum. Inside the holy of holies was the presence of God, or more specifically the female aspect of God present on earth that the Jews called Shekinah. This inner sanctum, the holy of the holies was the site for communion with the high priest. The secret of this communion was the secret Hiram would not divulge when he was confronted by three fellow craftsmen envious of the secret or the secret word. In rage they each in turn struck him with a mason tool used in the building of the temple.

Hiram died and was buried under a sprig of acacia. Remember, so too was Osiris. And like Osiris they found the acacia and learned of his internment and raised him from the dead. Have a look at the next tracing board.

What is the secret Hiram would not divulge?

It is the secret that was destroyed when the Romans destroyed the holy of holies and the temple along with it. It is the secret pursued by arcane cabals like the Knights Templars who excavated the ruined temple and discovered the mysterious idol Baphomet. It is a secret that became known as The Holy Grail. You can only comprehend all this as an initiated Freemason.

Mathew, I am a Freemason and I took an oath not to divulge the secrets of my secret society. But my studies have led me to conclude that we are but a shell. We are just a common interest group. A group of men with silly rituals that preach rather pedestrian morality. We are merely a society with secrets, not a secret society.

I cannot initiate new members into the institution I have become disillusioned with, but I can initiate new members into the ancient order that predates the modern society. And in all my years as a Freemason and as a psychologist, I have never met someone who was more ready to be truly initiated, to truly understand the mysteries – perhaps even more than I. Your dreams are closing the gap between the divine and the mundane, the conscious and the collective unconscious. You as an initiate and me as your guide are on the verge of discovering what the institution has lost. If you let me plan your next ritual, you will be putting your dream into ritual, but you will also learn the secrets of the lost brotherhood of the Freemasonry.

Become a Freemason – you dreamed it – put dream into action... into ritual!

Your friend,

Dr. Mike Anderson

Rites at the Blue Rock

By Mathew Hope

We caught stares as the six of us filed past the coin operated video porn. "From the profane to the divine," Dr. Mike said, gesturing to the group screaming and shouting at the cock fight. We had to pass through this discothèque in the town of Caldera to arrive at the cattle pasture, our destination. We disappeared out the back, past urinating drunks, and slipped through the barbed wire to an open field in search of our next sacred temple for rituals. It seems Dr. Mike always chooses places that invoke fear. This time fear's name was a black bull staring at us silently as we marched to the far end of the field.

I kept my flashlight to the ground. Creeping vines caught my eye in the light and I constantly thought I was seeing snakes. I hadn't noticed that María was walking beside me without a flashlight. She was carrying a black garbage bag and staring at the night sky.

None of us could see the Elephant Stone engraved with pre-Columbian hieroglyphs, so we spread out like a search party and kept walking. We searched for twenty minutes before we reconvened, and Dr. Mike decided he wanted to open the sacred circle. María protested and said that the rock was essential to her ritual. We compromised by starting my ritual first. Later, we would continue the search for the Elephant Stone.

Before Dr. Mike opened the sacred circle, María said she had a surprise for us. She asked everyone to gather around her, and then she reached into the garbage bag.

"Gifts," she said, and handed a colorful robe to each of us. These were the robes she stole from the Rosicrucian Temple in David. She seemed to have chosen specific colors for us. Mine was purple. "The color of Easter," she told me. Then we formed a circle and Dr. Mike drew the sacred pentagram in the air with his hand and prayed to the five elements. "To earth," he said, "and the philosopher's stone, to sky and the crescent moon of Isis, to fire and the sword, Excalibur, to wind and the crown of the king." This was the first time I heard him cleverly combine the elements with the symbols we had chosen to draw on our hands for lucid dreaming. They seemed to fit perfectly. The coincidence, I know Dr. Mike would say, was not a coincidence, but the will of our collective unconscious.

Dr. Mike had secretly rehearsed my ritual with everyone the day before, so that everything would be a surprise for me.

"Brothers and sisters," he shouted into the air, "this sublime degree has been calculated to bind us together by mystic points of fellowship. It points to the darkness of death and to the obscurity of the grave. It is a forerunner of a more brilliant light, which shall follow at the resurrection, when these mortal bodies shall be awakened and clothed with immortality."

Usnavy stood in front of me in her yellow robe. She held up a strip of cloth and blindfolded me.

"Matthew Bernard Hope, you are Hiram. You are the Osiris in the Temple of Solomon, here to pay your respects to the Holy Goddess Isis." His volume and tone then drastically changed. He shouted ominously, "But three fellow craftsmen barred the south, west and east entrances to the holy of holies, the shrine of the Holy Grail. At the first entrance you met your first assailant."

At this point Steve put his hand on my shoulder and whispered in a poor attempt at sounding intimidating. "What is the sacred word of the resurrection?"

I stuttered a moment. In my dream I had said nothing, so now in the ritual I assumed that I should do the same.

"Hiram refused to divulge the sacred word, and his refusal was met with a sharp blow to the head with a plumb rule."

Someone tapped me in the middle of the forehead. I almost snickered. I tried to remember my dream. But standing in the middle of a cattle pasture, knowing everyone was watching me, made it hard for me to get back into the ambiance, the feeling of my dream.

It must have been Steve who pushed hard on my shoulder, and someone else who gently tapped me behind my right leg, indicating that I should go down on one knee.

"Faint and bleeding he ran to the east gate where he met his second assailant, who struck him with a level." Okay, whoever hit me next, I wish I knew who it was, because it was hard and made me snap out of any kind of vibe I was experiencing going back into my dream.

"Hiram lay lifeless on the ground." Two people now eased me onto my back. I understood now that I just had to passively allow myself to be handled like a puppet. They covered me with a sheet and pulled my right hand out from under it. Someone, a girl I think, maybe María, took my hand but then let it slide through hers and drop to the ground.

"The entered apprentice grip seems to slip," Dr. Mike shouted, sounding as though this was nearing a climax.

I was on the ground for a bit. I think I was supposed to be contemplating my afterlife. I remembered the blue bus from my dream and wondered why that was a reappearing motif. Dr. Mike mentioned nothing of this in the dream analysis he emailed me. The blue bus couldn't really be an archetype from the collective unconscious, could it?

Then María grabbed my hand again and jerked me up to my feet.

"The Lion's Grip," Dr. Mike cried, signaling my resurrection and the end of the ritual.

My blindfold was removed, and everyone around me clapped. I was grateful. It was an earnest attempt, but now it seemed like I was the only one that didn't have this kind of mystical experience where I connected with my unconscious by acting out my dream. For me, the lucid dream felt even more real, more vivid, than this rehearsed ritual.

I was a Freemason now, I guess, and I felt Dr. Mike searching my face for something. I would answer his questions later, but the truth was that I felt nothing. The mood crashed right after. Maybe because of my reaction, I don't know. Without The Elephant Stone we were left with nothing to do. Dr. Mike attempted to salvage the night.

He arranged for us to lie in a circle with each of our heads resting on the stomach of the person next to us. So each of us rested our heads on a stomach and each of us had a head on our stomach. Then we just waited for Steve to say something.

"Let's tape a piece of buttered bread to Rocky's back, butter side up. And then let's see what happens, butter down or Rocky's feet."

It started with snickers, but when you have a bobbing, snorting head on your stomach. you can't help but laugh. We all erupted. I wondered what my Roman Catholic mother would have thought, seeing me in a robe, participating in a pagan ritual and then laughing like a madman.

Steve stood up all of a sudden because he had rolled onto a cow pie. Then he made a discovery. "Mushrooms!" he shouted. "I know these. For sure they are magic mushrooms."

Despite Dr. Mike's elder voice of reason, Steve popped a little blue capped mushroom into his mouth, offering himself up as the sacrificial guinea pig. Five minutes later he assured us that he knew these mushrooms, and Dr. Mike couldn't stop the others from going to town. In the end, he ate some, too.

We lied out there in the field, and for a moment I got lost staring at the sky before I realized that María was lying beside me. I wasn't tripping yet. My stomach hurt, like the mushrooms decided to kick me in the gut before opening up out the top of my head.

"They are so amazing," she said to whoever was listening.

"What?" I asked.

"The mountains," she responded, but she said it a kind of detached melancholy. Not like the awe she expressed when we laid on the beach in Bocas and stared at the rising moon. She rolled over and turned toward the mountains. But it was too dark to actually see them -- just the jagged edges where the star lit sky ended and darkness began, as if earth's dark fangs were taking a bite out of the constellations.

"It's beautiful," Maria said. "These mountains were once one -- until great forces ripped them apart. There is great power when standing between two forces that were once one. Out here we are stone immaculate."

There seemed to be a hazy film over everything. I became acutely aware of my own face -- it felt like there were a thousand needles jutting out the pores of my skin. My face was hot, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Colored robes flashed as if we were illuminated by a great strobe light.

Dr. Mike, never missing an opportunity to lecture, broke the moment of silence. "We are opening the gates. The collective unconscious is rising uncensored. It's like our dreams. When we take psilocybin, repressed images from deep within us, images that we all share, bubble forth. And the doors of perception are cleansed as we see everything as it is -- infinite."

I was really tripping now. As I lay staring at the stars I felt as if the earth moved. Then I heard Usnavy. "Oh my god!" she shouted and pointed toward a light in the distance.

What I saw can only be described as a blue light shooting up from the ground around a massive rock. We all stood up and slowly walked toward it. When we got closer we were all struck silent in awe. It was the Elephant Stone, lit by some mysterious light emanating from underneath. The hieroglyphs on the sides were strange two dimensional carvings of the faces of the gods. A round radiating face smiled at us from one, and from another a tear dropped from a face of pure despair. The carvings were filled in with white chalk that seemed to glow under the blue light pouring from under the stone.

Suddenly María appeared, naked, on top of the rock. I felt something tugging at me in my memory. It was a strong sense of déjà vu. She stood before us and lifted her hands into the air. Then I remembered my dream... more than remembered... I was in my dream. She held out her hands like she was welcoming the wind and I couldn't breathe.

"I will drink from the cup, and find salvation in the resurrection," she said. Her eyes widened as if she was watching a train speeding toward her.

Usnavy was sitting in front of the rock, humming like child and playing with something that looked like a wooden idol with wings. She was flying it back and forth like a toy plane, seemingly unaware of anything else around her. Dr. Mike sat down beside her.

"Usnavy?" he asked. "Who is the shaman of you island?"

"Meeee!" she giggled gleefully.

The wind seemed to pick up and blow through Maria's hair. She slowly lowered herself to her knees. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and I saw the whites of her eyes like she was a feeding shark. I was paralyzed. María slowly eased back and laid flat along the curve of the Elephant Stone's spine, with her limbs dangling on either side of the stone.

I felt a sudden shock. I can't explain it. A sudden shock and then I felt week in the knees. As I fell to ground, the last thing I heard before I blacked out was María, repeating listlessly, "I'm flying, I'm flying on the blue rock, I'm flying."

The Child, Cup and Resurrection

By María Concepción

I wake up in the TV room because Rocky is batting around his metal water dish.

The TV hisses static. I feel the night breeze from an open window.

A great bird, some kind of massive eagle, swoops in and perches on the window sill. I recognize it. It is Dr. Mike's power animal, the Harpy Eagle.

I look down at my hand and see the crescent moon I drew there. I realize that, although I remain in the TV Room, I am still asleep. I am lucid dreaming. I am in control. I command the walls to disappear and they do.

I turn for the moon and, like the great goddess I lift up my arms to command it to rise. It does.

The bird glares at me... something sinister. I clap my hands and he flies away.

The full moon is rising, growing larger. I am excited.

But then in the corner... it's Shekinah standing there in silence. I feel it is her even though there are no dirty streaks of tears, no blue dress.

Something is wrong... she is standing apart from the moon. She is older now. She is a woman. Then I look again. It is all wrong. It can't be her. She must be in the moon. She is the moon. Then I see. Her eyes are vacant... white. Something is controlling her.

The imposter turns her back on me. I see the ankh of Isis on her back, and a mask around the back of her head. It is Harpy Eagle back again. Something is going wrong. I can't move. Something terrible is happening.

She holds the moon in her hands and begins to turn it. Darkness descends across it, from a full moon to half-moon, to crescent, to a sliver. She shakes the giant orb... it is a globe... the earth. The oceans spill out onto the floor and stretch across the TV room. The static from the TV hisses loudly. I am too paralyzed to even cover my ear. She reaches into the sphere, now become a giant eye, and pulls it out... a screaming, half grown, bloodied fetus. I collapse onto the floor. The bird stares with an evil smile.

She kicks the fetus across the wet floor. It whimpers before me but I am too paralyzed to do anything. "I have to go," it whispers.

I try to reach down and hold her. My arms slip through the water and ripples carry her away.

I look up and see him. His toothy yellow grin. He is shirtless, but he still wears his gray fedora. I hate that word. He never calls it a hat. "Why don't you come here," he says, his disgusting mustache rising with his grin exposing his cracked teeth even more. "You're all wet."

He comes to me, stroking his cock.

I want to curl up into a ball and shrivel up. Fly away to the wasteland. I see an elevator. I pull myself through the water. Suddenly I am near the dorms. I see the pyramid I put there – I know it is for escaping. I crawl into an elevator and reach up to press the buttons before he can follow me. I see the choices: the road, La Mina and then a third button. It must go deeper, go farther. I press it. The ground falls away from beneath me. I am falling. I want to go the depths, where there is no light, no sound... but not this way. I am falling fast. I stretch out my hands to fly. I am lucid dreaming and I want to fucking fly. I fall and fall into darkness.

I shut my eyes tight... and then I can hear her. She is like an angel... Tuna... "Drink from the cup, find salvation in the resurrection, save the child. "

I can still hear her voice as I awake. I check my dream symbol to be sure. It is there, a normal crescent moon.

I plant my heel on the floor to stand up, and my bare foot slips on something wet. I fall, face first, back onto the tiled floor of the TV room. My foot is wet and sticky. I put my hand on the floor. I look at it. It is all brownish red. I look between my legs. Blood soaks through my underwear and runs down my leg. I drag myself to the corner of the room. Blood streaks across the floor. I pull off my panties and throw them at the opposite wall. I crawl in the darkness, up the steps to the shower. I can't walk. To stand, I have to lift myself up by the concrete around the sink. I see myself in the mirror.

I take a deep breath and look at myself. The moon is the mirror... it holds the sun. The order changed. Tuna changed the order. I don't need to save the child first. . I want to crawl through... through the looking glass, and drink from the cup... I write the words -- with her blood on the mirror... The Holy Grail.

I stumble into the shower and hold onto my knees as I wash what was left of her down the drain.

Oscillate Wildly

By Mathew Hope

Travel, whether a year trek or a day trip, cannot be enjoyed if you think you can control all the variables. Women are like travel – variables. Put them together and you have constant variables.

Maria and I decided to take a bit of time for ourselves and play tourists in Boquete on our way up to visit Dr. Mike. He finally had invited Steve, Estrella, Maria and I to visit him and Usnavy. We dumped the car in the town center and walked the winding road up to his "castle," stopping first at the garden known as "El Explorador."

Imagine what Walt Disney would do if he were a gardener on acid. An antique telephone sits in a little hut in the garden. Pick it up and it's Bach. What was junk has been collected and turned into art with little philosophical inspirations written on the side. The plants were sculpted like Edward Scissor Hands went to town. It was Maria who insisted we come here. She walked around like she was looking for something in particular. The first variable we hit was rain. We found shelter under a covered swing and Maria dug out the wine and cheese for our picnic. She kept digging around in her bag and after concluding that the object of her search was not to be found, she glared at me. The second variable was enough to spoil the mood. When I packed the wine and cheese, the only other thing I saw in the bag was dirty laundry. Like really dirty -- they were panties that met the arrival of the Red Sox five day home stay.

That was enough to cancel our picnic, and we headed to Dr. Mike's house in silence. I, at least, tried to enjoy the beauty of walking among the coffee plantations and savoring the smell of burning pine coming from the fires in the small shacks of the Indian coffee pickers. The rain never really materialized. A fine mist they call bajareque drifted past Volcán Barú, leaving a dizzying double rainbow. This was appropriate for our walk – the winding road we were on was called Arco Iris, which is Spanish for 'rainbow.'

Dr. Mike's rented house really looked like a castle, complete with natural rock and turrets. Only when you get closer do you realize that the turrets were not nearly as large as a real castle, and the 'rock' was merely stylized cement. Dr. Mike, Usnavy, Steve and Estrella greeted us with hugs and handshakes.

I am sometimes reminded how little I know of Maria. I was told Colombians have a hierarchy or strata in their society that is not subjective. They actually have six levels, based on their incomes and tax bracket. Because Maria speaks impeccable English, sometimes with only a subtle accent, I always thought she was from money. Maybe a strata five at least. But her awe of this upper middle class faux house only contributed to the mystery that she was. I can recognize the self-creation of the enigmatic persona to hide a lack of depth. Anyone who has ever said 'there's so much you don't know about me,' is guilty of this. This is not Maria.

The girls eagerly jumped into the hot tub overlooking the valley of coffee farms. Dr. Mike took advantage of the moment to take Steve and I into his study. Inside, it was obvious that he had filled the book cases with books he had authored himself. The kinds of books I had only pretended to read in college.

Glenfiddich, Glenamarenge, Glenlivit, other Glens. They were all offered, and we tasted them all. When we loosened up a little, Dr. Mike asked me about Maria. I realized we had all come a long ways together. Steve, Dr. Mike and I had all begun our implausible relationships around the same time. We had that in common.

I confessed to them my frustration with Maria's sudden mood swing over what appeared to be a bag of dirty laundry. I thought Dr. Mike would have insight.

"I have no idea. As men we can't begin to guess the minds of women," he said. A defeating thing for a former therapist to say. But he did offer advice in the form of a personal story.

Dr. Mike had married young, had one daughter, and then divorced. I never knew this about him. Back in the days when Dr. Mike was happily married, his wife would make brown bag lunches. Often his daughter helped her by dropping in little notes that always ended with, "I love you."

One day Dr. Mike's daughter gave him a brown bag with some of her most precious possessions: a dinosaur eraser, a couple of pennies, and a stick of gum. She asked him to hold onto these things "for a while." The bag sat on the counter and one day, instead of grabbing his brown bag lunch, Dr. Mike took the bag his daughter had left for him.

When he went to open his lunch that day, he saw the junk, carelessly tossed it, and went to a restaurant with the other professors. But that night, when he saw his daughter's eyes, when she asked for her things back, he knew her things were not garbage but gold. They were treasure. And she had entrusted her treasure to the one she trusted the most.

He went back to the university and ended up digging through the big dumpster at the back of the psychology building with the janitor (who understood Dr. Mike's plight since he had two children of his own). Dr. Mike returned the treasure to his daughter and a few days later he was entrusted with them again. This went on for weeks. Each time he held onto her knickknacks, she asked for them back, until the day came when she did not ask.

Dr. Mike said he hid them away on the top shelf of his home office, and they were the only things he would risk his life to save in the event of a fire. After his divorce, he put them in a safety deposit box, and when his daughter, now 20, gets married, it will be part of his wedding gift to her.

We don't know what can be important to people or why. As men we just need to be the best listeners we can.

Dr. Mike continued the tour of his home and lit candles in iron-wrought candle holders -- candle holders like I had seen once at an art show, that I had imagined buying for my imaginary loft in Brooklyn.

The girls joined us, steam drifting off their bodies from the hot tub. More scotch. The candles burned brightly and melted down quickly. The soft yellow light played on Maria's face. Her red streaks flitted, intertwined and disappeared among her dark black tresses.

Miles Davis but then Tom Waits. Then the Gorrilaz. Tom Waits sort of fit. The Gorrilaz blew my mind, then cozied right in. Here we played billiards, not pool, with both kinds of balls in a separate room with the red felt, not the green.

I sensed the drifting smells of rooms in the distance, rooms that were never even hinted at except by my curiosity. Some of the distant rooms echoing at me from lonely dark corridors smelled like Christmas candles, and others had the faint tint of the chlorine from a pool. Hardwood floors. Knotted oak. The draft from a cellar – a wine cellar. Vaulted ceilings. Humidors. Fuck, like I even smoke cigars. Glowing lights under an outdoor pool. Leaves floating on the surface. Ornate Turkish tapestries. Cedar in the library. You can't even find these hardcover books in Panama. Leather. A fireplace with ages of soot.

Maria danced, first with Estrella, who bounced and gyrated, and then disappeared with Steve. And then Maria danced for herself, with her skirt floating back and forth in the wind like Stevie Nicks in a Fleetwood Mac song. Then she danced for everyone, and finally she danced for my ego-centric intuitiveness. She looked at me. And danced for me. The way she tugged at her bottom lip. The way food fell from her mouth when she laughed. I loved her. I had loved her for a while but this night I was proud that she loved me.

Close your eyes and listen. Imagine you are there and she is thinking of you as she dances. What is she telling you? Feel a little of how I felt that warm evening.

I looked out at the trees around the pool. I could hear the leaves of the banana trees rustling against the door. Plants with large white bells like hanging heads waved back and forth. "It's like they're waving to you," Dr. Mike said. "Beckoning for you to follow them into the unconscious. Like there's something there for you -- waiting."

Dr. Mike poured me more scotch and that was it. My memories of this night are like the shy glances of little girl hiding behind the doors, arches and alcoves of my brain

I woke up in the dead of night with a bad headache. I looked over and Maria was not in her bed – although this kind of thing annoyed me, it was not uncommon. There was nothing in my bathroom medicine chest, so I wandered through the house. I went upstairs. Dr. Mike's bedroom door was open, so I went in quietly. He was not there either. I found some Tylenol and took it. After putting it back, I noticed something that meant little to me at the time. A clear vial with the words 'Essence of Brugmansia.' But I was a little more concerned with Maria.

In the living room, Dr. Mike was talking quietly with Estrella. I could sense it was personal. My head still pounded, so I slipped away and passed out again. In the morning Maria still hadn't returned. No one knew where she had gone. The clothes she wore from the previous night were still there and honestly, I was worried.

I walked down the short way around the Arco Iris loop and had a strange hunch. I walked past another one of Boquete's famous gardens, Mi Jardín es su Jardín. It was early. I am not really even sure if it was open yet to the public. But I did find her there, in a tiny chapel guarded by the Virgin Mary. She was lying in a small pew. She was in a daze, staring at a picture of The Last Supper. It didn't even seem like she knew it was me when I found her there.

I sat down in the pew behind her and gave her a moment. "What happened?" I asked finally.

"I got caught masturbating with Grover," she whispered.

I realized then that she had been dreaming... she was still dreaming, and maybe sleepwalking since she left Dr. Mike's house. I decided not to wake her.

"It was Grover. My Grover puppet from Sesame Street. Grover's nose is really hard see... I didn't really know what I was doing. I'd just slip my hand inside him and he'd talk to me. He'd talk to me down here. I'd bury his nose as deep as I could get it. Sometimes it went pretty far."

"Who caught you?" I asked.

She shook her head as if clearing a thought.

"Who caught you masturbating?"

"My family's Catholic," she muttered. "My father..." she began without finishing.

"What happened?"

"Punishment," she said. She remained silent for a moment, and then changed the subject. "Never feel guilt. Never let them make you feel guilt. That is their power. If they control the right to forgive you, they have even more power."

She pointed at the painting. "Look at Mary Magdalena next to Jesus at The Last Supper. They got it wrong. Look at the deep red streaks of blood flowing from his crown of thorns. An open mouth screaming out a muted cry. For what? His eyes lost in the distance. He sees out over the hills of Golgotha, past the ruined temple and the hills of Jerusalem and into the future where maybe someone, one day, might discover and understand."

My heart was pounding. I was feeling claustrophobic in the little chapel. I picked Maria up, put my arm under her shoulder and slowly walked back to the road. We decided to walk back to Dr. Mike's house. Half way up the winding road she turned to me as if she recognized me for the first time.

"Matt," she said. "If you knew me, really knew me, you wouldn't want to fuck me anymore."

There are variables in a travel. Sometimes you have to know when to just enjoy the ride or cut your losses and plan for another day. The weather is a variable. There are people that are variables. When you have fallen in love with them, all is cloudy when they oscillate wildly.

Black Alice

By María Concepción

I grow more powerful in my lucid dreaming and in my attempt to break the paralysis he seems to have cast over me. At a certain point, I learned to fly. It allows me to completely maneuver in my physical surroundings while exploring the deep corners of my unconscious.

I stole Mat's keys to get what I need from his car and I go back to El Explorador. I have to take a chance climbing over the fence. This is the last day of the full moon. I find the swing seat and take a few of the drops. I spread my legs and insert the syringe into my vagina. I leave it there as I fall asleep, looking at my palm.

I am Black Alice and I go down the dark hole.

I walk past the rioting painters that gutted the old TV and moved in. They are incestuous exhibitionists, they multiply, and they bar people from changing the channel.

There is the sewing machine that is blackened by years of caked blood. "Soy remendidor de corazones rotos . . . Cómo está el tuyo?" it taunts. It knows there is always a hole in your heart, and that you are always dumping shit into it, trying to fill it. It offers to repair you. I dump my bloody underwear. Shekinah's last attempt to break through... there. "Fix that fucker."

I ease out the syringe in full view of the moon. Mat, we don't have full synchronicity... now we will. I bury the blood under the light of the moon.

I fall deeper into the hole-- into the cave. I see the moon on my hand ignite into the Grail. But I am still in the garden.

I go to the hanging artwork that promised God's greatest miracle. I turn to face what was on the other side. It is a mirror. I see Shekinah reflected back. I remind myself that this is a dream, and I am in control. She has a muddy face and salty white streaks under her eyes. I know then it is her.

I hear the tick tock tick tock of a metronome.

The moon burns red, glowing in the shifting bajareque. It licks everything and leaves a wet stink. Red dancing fire now and crying blood.

It is Shekinah's tears falling out of the mirror, drip, drip, drip, splattering onto the ground.

I know what will come next and I have to leave. I can fly now. Usnavy, the real shaman, gave me the wings to fly, and I fly around Arco Iris to the chapel in Mi Jardín es su Jardín, along the path of the Holy Goddesses. And I know I will see them there in the number 13, the ones who held the body of Christ. The women.

The chapel is in the likeness of a grotto, similar to the natural cave at The Lost and Found. When I arrive, they are all waiting for me. Steve is there, standing with a bloody spear. I see Estrella, with her cup blazing with light. Usnavy and her polished stone. Mat is wearing a crown and seated on a throne – he is wounded with blood between his legs. Only Dr. Mike has no symbol. He has his drum, and he bangs it like he is running the whole show. I know where I have to go. I take my clothes off and open my legs on the altar. I know that this is the wedding of Cana. I heal Mat and we fuck on the altar. Dr. Mike brought the alabaster jar and afterwards we all drink the Holy Communion. We smile. We know this is why we have me. When the lost gather... they are found.

I am ecstatic... I am almost there. Now, as Tuna says, to partake of communion, to drink from the cup in reality before the salvation... then I can save the child.

And like a sign, Mat comes in reality. There is no toothy grin. No fedora. Just Mat, and I am saved. I save myself, and I will save Shekinah.

I am not alone.

The Holy Grail

By Mathew Hope

The twilight walk back to Dr. Mike's house was surreal. María stopped at each statue of the Virgin Mary and had eyes that seemed to ask for help. At Dr. Mike's house everyone was gathered around the kitchen table, staring at us.

"Well?" Dr. Mike asked. "Tell us what you dreamed."

Maria sat down, looked briefly at her hand, and then closed her eyes. "I was in the garden of El Exlorador and saw Shekinah. But before I lost control I flew. I flew to a cave where I met all of you there. Steve, you were carrying a spear that was dripping..."

"...blood." He finished for her.

"And I was carrying a cup," Estrella shouted in Spanish. "And Matt, you were sitting on a throne."

I looked down at the symbol on my hand, and I too remembered this odd dream – so unlike any dream I had ever had. The lucid dreams made sense to me. The events at the blue rock rituals were definitely surreal but can be attributed to the mushrooms we took. But this betrayed my agnostic world view. This betrayed all logic and reason, everything I thought I knew about the world and my existence.

Dr. Mike stood up and almost shouted. "Do you see what we have done everybody? Our lucid dreaming, shared in ritual, has tapped into our collective unconscious. We have bridged the gap together. We have connected psychically!"

The others giggled over every detail, trying to see who remembered what. They called it the wedding of Cana.

I had to leave and clear my head. I apologized to Maria, and asked Steve to take her home. I don't know why, but I needed advice and I didn't know who to turn to. In the end, I dropped by an internet café and emailed Patrick, one of the owners of The Lost and Found.

When I got back to The Lost and Found that night, no one was there. On the bed I share with Maria was a note:

Dear Mat,

Maybe you are far from your unconscious today.

Maybe you see I am distant.

Mat I am afraid. I am afraid that if you knew what happened to me you wouldn't have said that you loved me. There are things in my unconscious Mat. Dark things. So dark that they have been repressed into symbols and I am too afraid to let them out alone. I need friends, Mat. I need you. I love you.

I am at Tuna's cave. Please come.

I guessed from everyone else's absence that they would be there as well. I crossed the river in the dark and already I could hear chanting coming from the cave. Although I don't know a stitch of Latin, the chanting was familiar to me. They had lit torches to light my way. As I approached I could see they were wearing their ceremonial robes from the ritual at the blue rock. I didn't want to take another step. They couldn't possibly think to reenact the dream literally?

But there she was, sitting on a rock inside the cave, naked, legs spread open.

"You have got to be fucked!" I shouted. Then I looked at each one of them in the eyes and repeated myself. "You have all got to be fucked!"

Maria stood up off the rock and walked toward me. "The Grail, the Sang Real, Royal Blood, is in the ocean of the unconscious. We seek it with the symbols we have chosen. You have the crown. In the beginning was the word. Creation begins. The ultimate secret of the Holy Grail -- the blood and the bloodline. First Communion, then salvation, and then we can save the child."

She reached down and undid the zipper of my pants and slipped her hand in. I let her do it. Nothing was moving. At that moment all my desire for her withered and died. But then I felt a horrible, sharp pain. I keeled over and almost threw up. She didn't hit me there... it was like something inside me.

"Pour the sun into the moon. Lead me into the house of Osiris and let me give in to his hand what is in my hand, to his mouth what is in my mouth, to his body what is in my body, to his wand what is in my womb."

"I'm done." I said, struggling to my feet. "Something is completely fucked here." And I turned and walked away, thinking that I would never again return to The Lost and Found.

Patrick's Letter to Matt

By Patrick McGreer

Dear Matt,

Sorry things are not going well at The Lost and Found. Where is Steve in all this? I thought you guys are all best friends.

Listen, I made some calls to some friends of mine who are very knowledgeable about the area. I also did a little research on the internet. It is not all good news. First of all, however, you are not losing your mind when it comes to the blue rock phenomenon at the petroglyphs in Caldera. All over the area the stones serve as a kind of treasure map to the locations of buried Indian gold in the area.

When Christopher Columbus visited Bocas del Toro in 1502 during his fourth and final New World voyage, he was so taken by the beauty of the area that he affixed his name to many sites, including Isla Colón (Columbus Island), Isla San Cristóbal (Saint Christopher Island) and Bahía de Almirante (Admiral's Bay). He found the Ngäbe Indians with large gold disks around their necks, and, eager not to return to Spain empty-handed, asked about the gold. But the Indians pointed towards the high mountains. They pointed to the rugged highland cloud forests, where The Lost and Found is currently located. The Indians did not use the gold as currency, but it was very valuable for ceremonial purposes.

Later, when the forces of the Spanish conquest arrived, they did everything they could to get their hands on gold, and Indians did everything to hide it. Their chiefs would burn themselves alive rather than surrender. There is an ancient lake about seven miles from The Lost and Found where it is rumored that the Ngäbe lord Urracá, the bravest and most cunning of their chieftains, flooded his own stronghold rather than give up its treasures to the invaders. An entire clan of hundreds of individuals voluntarily drowned in underground chambers they collapsed around themselves, dedicating their spirits to protect the sacred gold artifacts, made holy by their most powerful shamans and gods. Dozens of years later, the waters receded. The blue light you saw is produced by a reaction from the methane gas that still is being released, little by little, from the mass grave. It is a little known secret that grave robbers sometimes camp out in remote area and just wait for a glimpse of the phantasmal blue lights that give away the location of a secret graveyard. The blue light you saw at the petroglyphs was methane gas from graves dug during the time of the Spanish genocide, and it may have caused you to pass out.

Now a little about brugmansia, the essence of which you saw in bottled form in a vial in Dr. Mike's house. I got most of this from Wikipedia, so you can google it yourself. Brugmansia is a genus of seven species of flowering plants in the family solanaceae, native to subtropical and tropical regions of South America, along the Andes from Colombia to northern Chile and also in southeastern Brazil. They are known as Angel's Trumpets for the eye-catching large white bell-shaped flowers that hang from their branches.

All parts of brugmansia are toxic – ingestion of the roots in particular is fatally poisonous. But a tea made from the flowers is sometimes ingested for recreational or shamanic intoxication, as the plant contains the tropane alkaloids scopolamine and atropine. However, because the potency of the toxic compounds in the plant is variable, the degree of intoxication is unpredictable and can lead to psychosis and even death.

Ritualized brugmansia consumption is an important aspect of the shamanic complexes noted among many indigenous peoples of western Amazonia. Likewise, it is a central component in the cosmology and shamanic practices of the Urarina peoples of Loreto, Peru.

Matt, I am glad you contacted me. It seems as if Dr. Mike may have drugged all of you with brugmansia – this would account for Maria's irrational behavior, your passing out and even the shared dream the four of you believe you experienced. I suggest you confront no one until I am there. Lay low in Boquete and I will meet you in a day or two.

Patrick McGreer

Revelations

By Patrick McGreer

The following has been written by the editor. It is his best speculation as to the events that transpired based on emails from Matt B. Hope, the crime scene, police reports, court transcripts and third person interviews.

After reading Patrick's email, Matt was out of his mind. He got into his car and drove straight back to The Lost and Found. When he got there, Gabriel and Nico told him that everyone had gone to Dr. Mike's house in Boquete for dream analysis and rituals. Matt raced back to down the hill to the car. He tried to stay calm down and focus on controlling his breathing. Be cool, stay on the road. Right around the town of La Mina, a strange hunch began to solidify in his mind. He still had missing pieces of the puzzle to put together. He swerved off the road and took the sharp dip down to the town. He drove as far as the road would take him and then walked to the house where he first met Tuna.

He knocked on the door, but no one responded. Finally, he just pushed the door open. A putrid smell suddenly rushed out at him, and he wretched. There she was, sitting in the same spot on her chair. There were old flowers and fresh flowers at her feet. But she was dead – she had been decomposing for some time. Whoever it was that was telling María about a Holy Grail cup, about finding salvation in the resurrection and saving some child, was not Tuna.

He drove fast to Dr. Mike's house. He had no plan but to confront him and expose him to the others. When he arrived, the front door was locked, so he decided to sneak around the back. The sliding pool door was open, and the house was silent. He wanted to find the incriminating vial of the essence of brugmansia before he confronted Dr. Mike. Carefully, he crept up the stairs to his bedroom. The door was slightly ajar.

What he saw was like being smoked in the chest. He couldn't breathe.

Maria and Usnavy were laying face down and naked on two double beds. Their limbs were bound and stretched with nylon cord to the bed posts, spread out like as if they were being subjected to some kind of medieval torture. They both had large new tattoos on their backs of the Masonic compass and the square. They were blindfolded. As far as Matt knew, they didn't know he was there.

He stepped out of the room and found Dr. Mike in his study. He was leaning back in his armchair behind his desk, naked, his glasses resting on his fat hairy stomach.

"Am I the only one that won't fuck in front of you like some sort of horny circus monkey?" Matt shouted.

Dr. Mike looked at Matt with a sated, lazy expression. "One day Mathew, you will erase the scars that inhibit you from seeing and realizing your dreams."

"You're fucking them both aren't you? You are playing them like cheap sex toys."

"Matt, these girls are acting of their own free will. Just as you were given the opportunity to quit, so are the girls, at any point they feel uncomfortable."

Matt leaned on Dr. Mike's desk with both hands. "It started with Usnavy didn't it?" Matt pushed. "Somehow a beautiful girl half your age finds a fat old man strangely attractive because she had a wet dream about him. Only you put the dream there."

Dr. Mike sighed and leaned back in his chair, adjusting his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. "Matt, you don't truly understand the unconscious. You're very clever but don't have the vision to see the whole picture. This grand experiment is a new theology. A religion that you wouldn't understand because you don't listen to yourself. Your inner self."

"Fuck you," Matt shouted. His face twisted crimson with rage. "You planted the dreams, didn't you?"

Dr. Mike sat up and raised his voice to meet Matt's. "Be careful Matt. Your anger is the projection of your own shadow, hidden in your unconscious. A duality you can't bridge. A part repressed in your dreams. You hide in you, your desire to succeed. But you're too afraid to let yourself succeed."

"And what is success, Doctor? Money? Power? Your fucking cigars?"

Dr. Mike settled back into his chair. "Go ahead Matt, let your anger out. It must be quite painful to lose your friends. Your best friend. Your girlfriend. Your job. Let your shadow roam. All repression is unhealthy. But remember that you envy what you hate. You're too awash in right and wrong to follow your will. To follow your destiny." Dr. Mike stood to face Matt. "But you still have an opportunity to be a part of it, Matt."

Matt walked around the desk to Dr. Mike. "A part of your lies and manipulation," he snapped. "Follow your destiny?" he continued bitterly. "Follow your dreams? The dreams are yours, not theirs. Planted to get your way. To act out your sex fantasies. A sick joke. Whose fetish was rape, Dr. Mike? Was that yours? Turning rape dreams into ritual? Is that what you told them, that this was their destiny? This was their true will that they repress?"

"Matt, there is a greater truth than that. Faith must come before truth."

"Faith in you? What did you use, Doctor? Hypnosis? Brugmansia? The lucid dream symbols triggered the dreams you planted. We never had a group dream. You hypnotized us. You told us the dreams we would have. One by one you hypnotized us and planted in our minds the dreams that you told us originated in our unconscious!"

"But look at María now. She is healing. She is overcome her fears and is flying."

"A blind whore manipulated by a sick old man playing God," Matt shouted into his face.

"Playing God?" Dr. Mike raised his voice to stop Matt from interrupting. "No Matt, it is God. Faith is all God is. What good is truth? It's as fleeting as a distant subjective memory. I mobilize faith like the mythmakers that wrote the Bible. But faith, Matt, I can use faith to heal. I heal -- God is just untrendy fiction."

"You sick twisted fuck," Matt said as he pushed Dr. Mike toppling over his chair.

"Why me!" Matt shouted. He held a tuft of Dr. Mike's beard, pulling his head from side to side. "Why did you come after me? Was it Steve? Why me?"

"No," said a voice from behind us. "I wanted you here."

Matt spun around. María was standing at the door, her hands clasped behind her back. Matt froze -- his hand still holding Dr. Mike's beard tightly.

"You?" Matt asked. He was utterly confused. "You know what's happening?"

"Of course I know what's happening here," María said. She walked around the desk and stood behind Dr. Mike's chair to face Matt. "Estrella, Usnavy and me, we all know what's happening. I can't believe you guys think we're so naive. It's the lot of you that is confused."

"María knows what the..." But Dr. Mike couldn't finish his sentence. Matt watched in horror as María, with swift and decisive motion, hit Dr. Mike hard at the base of the skull with the clock that had been sitting on his desk. His body went limp in Matt's hand. Matt let go of his beard and Dr. Mike slumped off his chair and onto the floor.

"Help me move him to the couch," Maria commanded. Unthinkingly, Matt bent down to grab Dr. Mike's arms. But he didn't finish the job. He heard a thud and felt a sharp pain at the back of his neck as the world around him darkened.

Holy Blood

By Patrick McGreer

Matt's head snapped back. He was naked, bound and gagged, shivering in a damp chill. His head throbbed and his broken nose stung. His arms were numb, tied to a long two by four nailed to a tree at The Lost and Found. His body slumped under its own weight.

Through a blur of tears he saw María holding the smelling salts that had been used to revive him. She was dressed in only knee-high black leather boots – the rest of her naked body was covered in bright swirls of paint. Only a small circle of skin surrounding the tattooed sphere above her navel was unpainted. An Egyptian ankh, the symbol of Isis, was painted in black and white on her face. Her long dark hair was slick with sweat. She pressed her nose against Matt's ear and released a high pitched, shrill, "Happy Easter!"

On either side of him the shadows of twin crucifixes crept slowly along the ground -- growing longer with the dying sun. Tied to them were Dr. Mike and Steve, unconscious and also naked. Matt was surrounded by circles of sticks and logs, the innermost of which was still a certain distance from his feet. María picked up a gas canister and began sloshing it over the firewood. She lit a match and held it up to Matt's face, her visage terrible and unforgiving. The black paint drying around her mouth was like the stitching on the mouth of a corpse. She dropped the match into the circle of sticks. It flickered for a moment and then surged, like a burst of wind into a ring of fire. She stood back and the ring of fire shot around and enclosed Matt in a circle of waist-high flames.

"Tiferet," María explained, pointing to the circle of fire. "The male part of God separated at the breaking of the vessels. And this is Shekinah," she yelled. She dropped another match, igniting the second ring of fire. "The female part of God."

"But the word is lost!" she cried. "It is the hour when the temple lay in ruin. Destroyed by the Romans. The Roman Church. The sacred Shekinah defiled in blood. The Grail is lost! The word is lost! Therefore in the name of Baphomet," she cried into the darkening sky, "I declare this chapter of the Knights Templar open!"

Matt was pushing with his toes to release the pressure of the rope on his shoulders. A small trickle of mucus and blood ran from his nose.

"Did you know that you are Baphomet?" she asked cheerfully. "Mat, Bernard, the middle initial B. And your last name, Hope -- an anagram like Mr. MoJo Risen. Scramble the letters and you have Baphomet, the Templar idol beneath the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The idol that helped Jesus to remember his past lives, and that he was the bearer of the rituals of Isis."

María looked ready to erupt into violence. "But there are those who have darkened their own eyes," she turned and yelled to Usnavy and Estrella. They were also naked and covered in body paint.

"Christians have been fooled by lies so light seems like darkness. The Roman Church claims the grail is the physical cup of the Last Supper, not the secret ritual of rebirth. The Papacy of the Roman Church fears Jesus, and they grasp at a false mandate of authority, preaching that Jesus made Peter the first of the popes. But we are his rightful heirs. We uncovered the rites in our dreams."

She picked up a small wooden crucifix and threw it on the ground before Matt's feet. Estrella stepped through the fire and smoke into the ring. She had a loose smile and staggered as though drunk. A moment later, Usnavy jumped through the flames. In turn they spat on the cross with convincing contempt. María leapt into the air and landed on the crucifix, splitting it in two with the heel of her boot. She spoke like she was spitting venom. Her temples were tight, and her jaw was sharp when she bit down on her words. "We are the Templars, through DeMolay. We preserve the secret of the Grail, though slaughtered by the Church. We discovered it in the ruined temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Thus we must walk in a cloak of darkness and preserve our knowledge under a secret society. With the ritual lost we walk in a barren land with a wounded king. Only the Holy Grail will heal him."

María motioned to Estrella, and like a faithful apprentice, she presented a black felt marker. With it she drew the symbol of the Grail in the form of a cup on one of Matt's hands and the symbol of a crown on the other.

"These symbols of ours," María said, "will guide you to the word. I am your Grail, Mat. Shekinah is there waiting. You'll recognize her. She is the child of me. You were her father twice, once when we met, and once after the Rosicrucian Temple."

María's face softened. The intense anger left her and she smiled warmly. She held her hand up to Matt's face and tenderly wiped away his tears. "I had given up on getting pregnant, Matt. I gave up until I saw you in a dream. Dr. Mike led me to you. I gave up on getting pregnant until that night, the night I became pregnant with my twin. My twin Shekinah. My twin that died before I knew her in this world. She was growing again in me. I spoke to her in my dreams. She was going to be reborn. We conceived through the ritual in the Rosicrucian Temple in David. We miscarried, Mat."

Matt hadn't known until that moment that he had gotten María pregnant. What could have changed had he known? He silently studied her face. She stared down at him in silence. A shudder and then black and white streaks -- the ankh she had painted on her face was now awash in tears. It was the first time Matt had seen her cry. A mad clown distraught with grief.

She dropped to her knees and screamed into the sky. Her biting rage returned and her screams echoed through the trees. "You will understand when you see that what happened to us is no coincidence. You will forgive me. In the exile of death, Shekinah will lead you to the receptacle of the soul, my womb, the Holy Grail. You... you will be reborn through me. Resurrection! And as Isis, your mother, I will help you remember this life. Think of the power when you keep all that you have learned into your next life. You will gain the power of generations. Knowledge will grow tenfold in you upon the body of the Great Goddess. You are the first in the creation of a new order of beings in a new world order that will be able to remember past lives. Novus Ordo Seclorum."

"Novus Ordo Seclorum," Estrella and Usnavy chanted. Estrella dutifully picked up a machete and handed it to María. María rested the blade on Matt's shoulder and spoke above the heads of the captives around her, as though she were addressing masses from the center of an immense coliseum.

"I hereby invoke upon this candidate the powers of death," she yelled. "Endow him with such fortitude that at the hour of trial he falls not."

Then she leaned in close to Matt and whispered, "I'm going to put your penis in my mouth. It's not hard now, but it will be. Your instinct will kick in. Don't worry. We can heal that wound one more time."

She got down onto her knees and lapped at his penis with the tip of her tongue. She looked into Matt's eyes as they stretched in horror. His penis became erect in spite of all of his efforts to control it. His face grew flushed with rage. He bit hard into the bandanna tied around his mouth. He wanted one kick. Just to feel the sensation of his foot slamming into her face.

Suddenly Dr. Mike began twisting and writhing in a savage spasm of anger and fear, like a caterpillar caught on the edge of a toying child's shoe. He managed to free his mouth to shout, "You fucking psychopathic whore! This is all a fucking lie, María, can't you see? Matt was right. All of them lies."

"The Bible is a lie," Maria retorted calmly. "But from great fiction comes great faith, and through great faith, truth. Only you, the male myth makers of the world, the Church, the Freemasons, fail to see truth through all the pollution you ejaculate into the world."

"Usnavy!" Dr. Mike pleaded. "Help me, please."

Usnavy walked up to Dr. Mike. "I know now," she said. "I know how you moved us. You control. I know you make the sex dreams with you. I'm not a whore. I know more than you now -- the love I have is not controlled by you. Now I am the boss."

"You're quoting fucking María, Usnavy," Dr. Mike shouted back. "She told you to say that. Look at yourself, painted up like some child at a birthday party. She's desperately trying to escape who she is, her past. Usnavy, María was my patient, a prostitute racked with guilt and depression, traumatized by -"

Usnavy kneed him swiftly in the testicles, causing his rant to end in a gurgling shriek. "You're no fucking different!" she screamed. "No different from other gringos. No different from my father! Run away and throw me like trash!" She burst into tears and collapsed on the ground. "I'm thinking I was happy," she sobbed. "So happy. It was you... I saw it in my dreams."

María walked over to Estrella, who had lied down on the grass, staring at the sky with her eyes glassed over. She lifted her hand to her face to study her lucid dream symbol. María squatted down at her side, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It will all be over soon. They will soon wake up. Why don't you sleep? Everything will be fine."

Estrella lifted her arms and Maria held her. "I am asleep," she said, "I love you so much. I want this over," she cried. "I want you, I want us."

María untied the two by four pinning Matt to the tree. His knees buckled under his weight and he fell to the ground. Usnavy and Estrella stretched him out on the moist, dark soil.

"I can conceive you," María said, towering over him. "I wouldn't do this if I thought you couldn't return. Follow your symbol, and you will be reborn in me. Death is like the sleep we have learned to control in our dreams. Shekinah is your sprig of acacia. Your soul will acquire coats of skin, in my womb, the Holy Grail. I'll be a good mother. I'll teach you to remember. This is the secret of the Grail -- the secret of eternal life."

She stared down at him, a boot on either side of his stomach. Her face was a blur through tears and smoke. The black and white ankh was now a mess of drying caked paint, peeling away to show her skin. Her face, with her mouth a portrait of twisted evil and her eyes like pearls of confused compassion, was suddenly beautiful again,

"Hiram was -- like you will be -- murdered. Sacrificed in the temple. Your ritual at the Blue Rock was your training for rebirth -- the ritual that Dr. Mike stole from the Freemasons."

María rested on top of him now, straddling him, leaning back to flex her abs. She ran circles with her index finger in the bright paint around her tattoo. Then she took his erection to make small circles around the opening of her vagina and lowered herself onto him, letting her well trained muscles do the work. He lay there, unable to speak.

Leaning forward, she purred quietly into his ear. "I like to look into guys' eyes when they cum. I can always tell by the strange contortions in their face and the slight flushing of the skin when they're about to cum. You can see the pupils dilate. If a guy's penis was severed just at the moment of orgasm, would cum still spurt from the hole where his cock was attached?" Then she stopped "You feel like you're gonna cum don't you?" she taunted. "This is the moment, Mat. Isn't it strange to know that when you cum, you're going to enter my womb and pass through this life? Still your cock is hard. Tough, no? "

She grinded her clitoris hard into his pelvic bone and reveled in the ultimate rush of sexual control. She squealed when she saw the fear in Matt's eyes -- his fear of climaxing-- mesmerized by the complete power she held over him. She felt his hatred and desire. She was sliding in excitement, close to orgasm herself.

She brought them both near a rushing climax. His hips rose up to meet hers. The pain and pleasure dissolved into a numbing need for rapture. María's eyes rolled back \-- she was lost in trance. Matt's body suddenly went rigid... And it was done. Maria opened her eyes. She could feel his warm semen spill into her.

María raised herself slightly, keeping about three quarters of Matt's penis inside her. She took the blade of the machete and slowly dragged it across the shaft of his penis. Muffled screams came from beneath the bandanna. He struggled in vain to lift his head and pull loose his hands. Despite having honed the blade sharp enough to shave with, María had difficulty cutting the penis off in one go and had to slide it back and forth several times.

Matt sank back into the caverns of his mind. His life was not nostalgically passing by. He wasn't in a warm place.

María's nose was inches from his gaping, flowing wound. "No," she said quietly to herself. "It doesn't still come out." But blood did, splattering her cheek and forehead. It ran down Matt's thighs and onto the grass. Bright red lined the inside of Maria's thighs. She rubbed some of the blood up her abdomen, mixing it with the bright body paint up to her navel and around her tattooed sphere.

Matt remembered the pain he felt in his groin at the pilgrimage of the Black Christ and in his dreams. They were prophecies. He didn't know at the time, but his unconscious knew. It told him about this moment – it warned him.

María rolled off Matt and stood up. His penis stuck inside her for brief moment and then slid out like a large, dead worm – the broken obelisk -- and hit the ground silently.

"The killer awoke before dawn," she said with a deep penetrating voice. "He put his boots on. He took a face from the ancient gallery and walked on down the hall. He went into the room where his brother lived and he..."

She stopped in front of Dr. Mike. The blood stained blade gleamed darkly and menacingly in the firelight. His frantic, darting eyes followed the shimmering streak as María drove the blade deep into his abdomen in one strong, brutal thrust. She swiftly pushed the blade up into his chest cavity and it became stuck. There was an audible crack as she snapped the blade from his chest. Dr. Mike's eyes remained open. But they stopped darting and fixed on nothing now but darkness. María untied his arms and he fell over. His intestines spilled out onto the dirt and weeds.

Estrella walked over to Steve and rested her hand on his chest. She fell to her knees, resting her head against his feet kissing them. She looked at the palm of her hand for her dream symbol. Nothing was there. She began crying.

"He's not dying," Maria said softly to Estrella. "You know that don't you? He's afraid, but he's never been more alive. Consciousness cleaves to form. He thinks he is leaving this, and he is afraid."

Matt wished he could speak to Steve; tell him that it was okay, and that he was his best friend and that they would get out of this.

María stood directly between Matt and Steve's motionless body. "The body was concealed in a grave marked with a sprig of acacia -- a shrubbery," she yelled with a fake English accent. She spun around and took huge steps toward Matt. "Then he walked on down the hall," she yelled. "And he came to a door and he looked inside. Father?" she glared. "Yes son? I want to kill you."

The white of Matt's eyes glowed in the dying red sun. He breathed furiously through his nose. Maria swung the blade through the specters inhabiting the rising smoke. The fire had died. She suddenly stopped behind Matt. The blade rested against her long painted legs. She slowly lifted her chin.

"Father... I want to... fuuuuuck you!" she screamed.

She swung the blade in front of Matt's face, cutting his chin and nicking his neck. She danced in a frenzy, a mad shaman in a frantic dance of death. She jumped into the air, digging her boots into the grass and earth when she landed. Abruptly she fell onto her knees before Matt and dropped the machete. She put her hands over her eyes, smiling to herself. She bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. She swallowed. Her painted breasts heaved up and down.

Small bursts of blood shot out of Matt's neck. The blade had nicked his jugular. He bit down hard on the saliva soaked bandanna covering his mouth. The blood hit María's face and she began laughing loudly. Then the blood poured out in a steady stream down the center of his collarbone and onto his chest.

María held her hand over Matt's spurting wound, stalling death as if she was holding her finger over a tear in a leaking life raft.

She whispered to Matt. "You will be conceived in me. You will be your own father. Father and son. Just as Osiris was conceived in Isis. I'll be the widow. Just like Jesus at the Last Supper with Mary Magdalene. You have great company. Mr. MoJo Risen. Kill the father, fuck the mother, and be born again in the Holy Goddess. Enjoy your Oedipus complex. After all, I'm gonna be your momma soon."

Matt's eyelids began to flicker.

"Once you asked if I ever cry," she said. Her hand was still on Matt's neck -- his blood was seeping through her fingers. "I cry through Shekinah. She cries for me. She is my double. I love her. My only friend dropped down the stairs." Maria put her lips to Matt's ear and whispered. "My dad used to fuck me. My real dad. Fucked me without a condom. Fucked me hard and smiled with these ugly yellow teeth. Fucked me with nothing but an ugly gray fedora that smelled like cigars. Fucked me and told me that if I had the baby, my twin Shekinah would be reborn in me and Mom would be happy again."

Matt thought about what he had seen at Dr. Mike's house. Whatever happened there had awoken the powerful and terrifying nightmares buried in her unconscious. Even now, Matt felt bad for her. He accepted death peacefully. But María, unable to confront life and unable to confront death, was striving for immortality. Reliving those nightmares tied to a bed was what allowed her to kill. She was killing to achieve immortality.

She took her bloodied hand from his neck. A pulsating stream of blood resumed its flow. She lay on top of him. The blood from Matt's neck covered Maria's thrusting, sliding body. Her voice rose again.

"My dad fucked me," she screamed, "and I'd see the orgasm in his eyes. Fucked me and I'd see his pupils dilate. I'd know the exact second when it would all be over... And then we got on our hands and knees and prayed. Prayed to God that I would be pregnant and Shekinah would come back to us."

María stopped. She sat up, straddling Matt, covered in his blood.

"You want to speak, don't you?" she whispered. "You want last words. What would your last words be while your soul slowly leaves your body and enters mine?"

Matt slowly lifted his head. María untied his gag. He coughed a few times, trying to suck in air. He stared deep into pools of black.

"Baphomet doesn't work," Matt gurgled as blood spilled out.

"What?"

"Your anagram doesn't work," he tried to whisper. "Matt is spelled with two T's." His chest rose once more and then went still.

María turned to Estrella and Usnavy. "I have drunk from the cup. We will find salvation and save Shekinah. And he's here too. I can feel him. This way to the ancient gallery, Matt. We did good."
Return to The Lost and Found

By Patrick McGreer

According to the official recorded doctrine of the Church of Christ Templar, the secret Grail rituals were first recorded with the Osiris and Isis archetypes. The Isis cult then migrated and preserved their secrets at the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The Romans feared the power of the cult and persecuted its members, a persecution the culminated with King Herod's execution of the babies of Nazareth and the beheading of John the Baptist. Forced underground, the Egyptian priest, later known as Jesus the Christ, divulged the secret rituals at the Last Supper to his disciples and directed them to be passed down secretly through each generation.

After Jesus' death, the Romans once more recoiled in fear before the new faith, which spread like wildfire all the way to Rome. So they crucified its priests, destroyed the second temple, dispersed the twelve tribes of Israel and gained doctrinal control over Christianity. The true ritual of resurrection was again lost. Through the idol, Baphomet, the rites were rediscovered in catacombs beneath the ruined temple by the Knights Templar, who were in their turn eliminated by the Roman Church. The last grand master of the Templar, DeMolay, was burned at the stake in 1307. The Templar attempted to preserve their rituals in the secret society called the Freemasons, but the rituals were again lost in a misogynistic patriarchy. The modern history of Christ Templar, they claim, began in 2008 when Mat B. Hope, through divine intervention, recovered the lost Grail rituals.

Estrella González and Usnavy Márquez became the key chroniclers of this recent history of the modern Templar and their savior, Mat B. Hope. She finished the Templar Gospels in 2008.

Mathew B. Hope, Steven Banks and Dr. Mike Anderson are lost and remain on Interpol's missing persons list. The whereabouts of María Concepción are unknown, but a series of clues in the form a treasure hunt game have been left behind that may lead to whereabouts of the missing persons. Their disappearances are regarded as highly suspicious. The church claims that they ascended into heaven. The file remains open to this day.

María Concepción gave birth to fraternal twins, one male and one female. She named her son Mat and her daughter Shekinah. The church has officially applied to the Panamanian government as a nonprofit religious group and claims dozens of new members each month.

This is Not The End !!!

The plot only thickens and the story continues but we need you. Imagine hunting for clues down cobblestone streets, chasing down leads – in Panama! An app developed by the editor and authors puts you directly hot on the trail of Maria. Visit backpackingandhackingpanama.com and check out the apps video for a live action experience that takes this story to whole new level... if you thought this story was interesting, the experience will blow your mind.

