Opening chapter of manuscript: ©Blindman blue 2011 ©Justin Hilbert 2011
It didn’t strike me as odd seeing three guys beating a clawing and salivating man into the pavement as I left my work at the bar at 3am. Neither did it strike me as odd, (at that moment) that one of the members of the group of head bashers was shrieking in Spanish, “That fucking freak fucking bit me.” Nope. Didn’t think any of this was too far out of the norm for this town, where drug dealers, hookers and rock heads run wild. You see this kind of shit all the time. Much of the time, you see a lot worse.
The alarm on my cell phone goes off at noon the next day. Well….. I guess it’s still actually the same day, but, I track my days and nights from when I have slept. Doing the night shift for a long time tends to do this to you. For me it’s early. Normally I’ll roll out of bed at one or two o-clock in the afternoon.
My vision is still all blurry, and I don’t really know what is going on just yet. Just standing there naked, changing my glance from my bookshelf to the window where the noonday light is seeping through the curtains. After about a minute or so of this awkward trance, I stumble out into the kitchen to put on some coffee, throw on some shorts and in turn, stumble over to the little corner pulperia, (general store). Where, I buy my usual breakfast, a loaf of fresh baked bread and sour cream, (sometimes I augment it with avocados or tomatoes and onions).
While purchasing my goods, the counter man tells me of an abnormally high amount of violence that happened in the wee hours of the night, and that I’m only the third person he’s seen all morning. The guy who bakes the bread came in at 6:30am, and he had one other customer at 7am when he opened. I’m not really listening though; I am still pretty much fully spaced out. I don’t wake up well, I never have. It always takes me quite a while to get my head together (which will soon change).
Then he says something about how when he got up four am, he saw the next door neighbor woman bite her man’s ear off, and then sprint away down the street. This catches my attention.
“Que la verga!” I say.
“No se.”Es una vara rara eh? Muchas malas cosas pasando.” He shrugs and says. (I don’t know. It’s weird shit huh? Lots of bad things happening.)
I purchase the morning paper and step outside. On the cover, the head line reads: UN MONTON DE VIOLENCIA ANOCHE (mass violence last night). I skim it. All over San Jose, (Costa Rica’s capitol city), were reports of individuals going Homicidal and Psychotic. Injuries and deaths estimated in the thousands. This includes many of the Psychotic individuals who were put down by citizens and police. Reports of, People eating each-other.
I notice now that the street is empty. I then see someone I recognize. It’s a prostitute named Marcela. ©Blindman blue 2011 ©Justin Hilbert 2011
