Welcome to Tiny Worlds!
We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.
For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.
The dream yanked him awake.
George reached for his sketchpad before the images could scatter.
The shape had been there again: the woman, a star in her palm. But this time, it wasn’t painted like in his father’s story—it was carved. He could almost feel the flecks of stone, the edges worn down by time. The shape was part of a column, one among many, but the rest faded before he could make them out, vanishing as he woke more fully.
Then he remembered the island. He’d seen it last night—hadn’t he? Yes, the shape of it had been there, blocking the stars at the horizon.
He quickly slipped off the plinth and padded to the rooftop wall. The concrete was cool and wet beneath his feet.
Fog, thick as any Berkeley morning that ended in Y blanketed the coast. Below, the streetlights along the paseo barely made a dent in the murk. Beyond that, the beach—and whatever he thought he saw—was gone. A wall of white stretched in every direction, swallowing the sea.
Nertz.
A gurgling yowl came from George’s stomach. Had he been so wrapped up in being here that he forgot to eat? Probably. Kathryn hadn’t noticed either.
“I’m so incredibly exhausted,” she’d said last night, adding before falling asleep, “…down in my bones.”
George believed her, even if he didn’t totally get what she meant. It wasn’t like he could climb into her head and see things the way she did. But he’d seen it from the outside—more than once—the way her fingers combed through her hair, again and again, like she was trying to pull a knot loose.
She was still sleeping, heavy and deep. She always did, after. George never said the borrowed name aloud, but in his head he’d called it: the Swamp of Sadness. It wasn’t a place like in The NeverEnding Story but a murky stretch of days right before, and worse, after a fella was gone. And Kathryn—she was Artax. Sinking, slow and quiet, her hope depleted.
George pulled on his jacket, shouldered his backpack and slipped a couple of dollars from Kathryn’s purse—he hoped she wouldn’t notice. He glanced back once. In the haze, the shelter sagged and bristled, the broken palm fronds shaped like gargoyles crouched at every corner. Her faint snoring, like a chainsaw somewhere off in the distance, made him smile because she always came back. Eventually. And until then, she slept.
George found a bodega near the shore where he sat on the stoop and tore into a fresh concha, licking sugar from his fingers. The warmth of the bread spread through his chest like a spell. The fog stopped feeling heavy to him, instead, it shimmered. Like the world was waiting for something to emerge.
Then he heard it—voices, boisterous and strange from the fog.
A small group of fishing boats appeared, each motor revving for a few seconds before sliding their shallow, flat bellies to the edge of the shoreline. Their occupants disembarked and pulled the boat the remainder of the way then walked up past George, voices loud, heading somewhere along the paseo. He sketched the tableau of boat shapes—faded outlines against the fog. Last night he mistook them for marooned, now they just looked ghostly after the men were gone.
One last boat made a daring maneuver, sliding far up the sand and resting apart from the others. George didn’t know anything about the mechanics of such a thing, but this captain looked capable: wiry, with long hair, maybe streaks of a lighter color. A retired stuntman maybe, lured here by the fishing. George's hand flew across the page, capturing an outline of the man at the tiller. Just a shape, an imitation to give scale, but he was compelling. The man jumped down from the boat–a graceful move, reinforcing George’s theory about this unlikely stuntman living at the edge of the jungle. The man followed the same path as the others. George saw his tattered chambray shirt, sun-darkened skin around the man's eyes. Yes, George was right about the wild hair, streaked with grey–the mane of a lion. “The old pride leader,” George thought, narrating in a way that would have made Marlon Perkins proud.
The sound of the voices still echoed in his mind as he sketched, just mindless strokes on the white paper. The motors, too, had made an interesting sound as they pulled in, a slow, throbbing pulse, a warbling guitar note just under the water. George tilted his head, remembering, hearing it again as it changed into something else.
He could almost hear the words rising with the fog:
I am the son and the heir
Of nothing in particular
Of course he knew the song. It felt like being underwater in a dream.
That reverb of loneliness, though, there was something to that. Maybe he felt it more sitting here with a drape of white that moved but never revealed the world farther than a few steps away. Would seeing the beach in full color feel less… foreign? Yes, that was the right word. George wondered why all of this felt so foreign. Maybe not the place, exactly, but that too. More, the people. The language. The way the fishermen moved, grounded in something he couldn’t name.
Mexico, he always thought, would somehow feel like home when he arrived. As if the people here would just know, would welcome him because of his lineage. But Perez was just a name and he was clearly only a tourist. He didn’t speak the language much, just a few choice words. And he could barely read it.
Somewhere on the far side of his family orchard, were these people. Whatever bloodline he could trace felt more theoretical than lived. He thought about how, if they saw him in Chicago snow or that St. Louis summer, he’d seem even more out of place.
His heritage was a paragraph in a book. Theirs was a library of encyclopedias, a lifetime of the local dirt under their fingernails. George was just a looky-loo staring into the fog, hoping for a connection to… to what, he still didn’t know.
The gulls squawked, this time not diving to take his concha but out near the water. George watched as a man waved them off, their swoops close as he moved between the beached boats. Though the sun wasn’t anywhere to be seen the man wore a wide straw hat and sunglasses. George watched as he stepped, pigeon-toed, stopping at each boat, looking over the side, that’s when the gulls would swoop in. George sketched his shape, the awkward shuffle as he swung his arms to push back the gulls as he hoisted a bag on his shoulder.
It was comical: swoop, wave, squawk, wave.
When he got to the last boat, the one set apart from the others, he stopped, looking around. George watched as the man reared back and spat onto the side of the boat. Pulling his hat firmly on his head, the man shuffled to the paseo, his steps more purposeful, indignant.
Shaking his head, George flicked his pencil, shading in details of the man: glasses, hat, heavy bag over his shoulder.
The beach was silent again, even the gulls seemed to disappear, or George didn’t notice them, lost in his own head, until the group of voices returned, fishermen making their way back to the boats. George listened as their words spilled over each other, tumbling. That foreign feeling hit him again. He wondered if his father had felt like that? Would he, could he, the man who could draw a crowd with a whisper ever feel like a stranger?
And then, shouting. One of the men, standing in his boat looking down at something, was yelling to another. One by one they hopped into their own boats or leaned over the side, searching. George thought he heard rocks… no, ice. They all must have an ice chest on their boat, George thought, wedged between gear and nets, to keep what they caught cold.
They called out to each other, voices tense and angry. It dawned on George, the man — the one comically swooping his arms at the gulls, had been stealing the day’s catch from the boats. Of course.
Not so loud but just as brazen as he’d seen in Chicago, men–really just boys– prying open a car door, rifling through the center console, maybe yanking out the stereo, before moving on to the next in the line. From a bus stop George had gawked at one such scene but only watched, never saying a word. “Don’t get involved,” George had thought then.
The last fisherman arrived—the Lion—his boat separated from theirs. George watched as he kept to himself, head slightly cocked, listening. He leaned into his boat, rolled up his sleeves, and opened his own ice chest. His movements were slow, deliberate, unbothered.He didn’t say a word. But something in the way he moved—how he didn’t search long, only confirmed—told the others what they needed to know: nothing had been taken from his boat.
Across the sand, voices snapped back and forth—first confusion, then blame.
The shouting grew louder. Fingers jabbed at the air, lids slammed. George caught a few words—pinche jale, ratero—sharp and bitter in the fog. Heads turned—not just in frustration now, but with purpose.Toward the Lion.
He didn’t need a dictionary to know something was about to snap.
He flipped through his sketchpad, his thumb frantic. There it was: the straw hat, the slouching walk, the bag slung low over one shoulder.
Sheeeit.
A shout tore the fog.
They stormed toward him in a ragged wave. The biggest one, leading the pack, carried what looked like a small baseball bat.
George’s heart rattled against his ribs. He sat frozen on the stoop, unsure what to do. This wasn’t Chicago—there were no police coming, certainly no crowd for the Lion to escape into. It was just the beach, the fog, and this gathering storm.
He shouldn’t get involved. Then, his brain screamed it, just to make sure his legs had heard: stay out. This wasn’t his fight.
He gripped the sketchpad tighter, the cardboard buckling under his fingers, watching the Lion—turning to face the men as they closed in on him. The Lion wasn’t running. He wasn’t shouting. He just watched them coming, the way a mountain watches a storm roll in. He just shifted his weight, almost absent—like he knew how the wave would crash.
George could see it happening—the bat swinging, fists flying—and for a second it wasn’t the beach anymore. It was that scene from The Outsiders, the rumble in the rain, bodies crashing into each other, fists slipping, nobody really winning. He didn’t know exactly how it would happen here, only that once it started, there’d be no fixing it.
He couldn’t do anything. Should’t do anything.
Let the wave crash, man.
George’s knees bounced. His teeth ground together. The world seemed to tighten around him, fog pressing in like hands. And lyrics, shouted from the cheap seats…
Indecisión me molesta
Still—he stayed frozen.
But, there was something he could do about it, right?
Yo me enfrío o lo soplo
This standoff couldn’t last long, George knew the Lion would soon be kneeling, bloodied. Or worse.
Si me voy va a haber peligro
Si me quedo será el doble
That was it.
Before he knew it, George was on his feet, sprinting across the sand, the world narrowing to the smear of angry faces and one man standing alone.
“Alto!” he shouted, voice cracking, not quite reaching everyone.
The distance is closing but not fast enough. George’s feet stumbled in his winter boots, sketchpad raised in the air.
“Alto!” he yelled again, chest heaving.
The group hesitated. For a breath. Maybe two. Then they surged forward another step, voices louder the closer he got.
A few eyes in the group turned to see him coming—a confusion in the anger. The man with the bat pointed it at George. Stay out of it, the motion said plainly.
George sees it clearly now, it wasn’t a baseball bat, it was a club. A heavy, tapered chunk of wood with a metal band around one end made for bashing a big fish—a really big fish—that wouldn’t get into the boat.
The bat swung once at the Lion, a hard gesture in the air. The wind of the bat moved his hair but the Lion didn’t flinch.
He sees the men gathering closer to the Lion. But George has forward momentum, maybe stupidity, too.
Waving the sketchpad higher, George shouts the first word in his head: “Pilluelo!”
It cracked through the air like a whip.
The group flinched. Not much—but enough. Enough for one of them to stop, to blink, to actually see the boy as he stepped between the group and the Lion.
George held his sketchpad like a shield, his hands shaking, a finger pointing at the picture.
“Pilluelo!” he said again.
The man with the club said something George couldn’t make out through the warble in his ears as the pad was ripped from his hands. One-by-one the men looked at the picture, their eyes burning for a fight, focused on the sketch.
As they did, George felt the pressure change, a valve opening. He watched their shoulders drop, their raised arms and pointed fingers become slack.
With his meaty hand, the big man hurled the sketchbook at George’s feet.Then, without a word, the Lion reached into his pocket and handed over a wad of bills. George couldn’t see how much, and the man didn’t bother to count.
Breathing heavily now, seething, the man pointed the club squarely at the Lion.
“Tu podredumbre, viejo.”
George’s breath came deeper, a buzzing still in his ears. He’d thought—he was sure—they were going to hit someone. Maybe him. But they didn’t.
Instead, the men turned away. Like a school of fish evading something. Back to their boats, voices low, dissolving into the sound of the surf.
George stood there, chest pounding, unsure what to do now that nothing had happened. The adrenaline had nowhere to go. His legs twitched like they still expected to run.
The Lion bent to pick up the sketchbook, brushing sand from the cover, and held it out.
“Lo que cargas… también te elige,” he said softly.
George blinked. The words meant nothing, but the tone made him pause—low, calm, the mountain standing still after the storm it had watched. The Lion saw the confusion and didn’t explain.
Instead, in English, he offered: “Your book.”
The voice was raspy and more haggard than the man looked.
“You want to see it? The one who actually did it,” George said, motioning to the sketchbook.
Only a slight wave came from the Lion as he said, “I know what I didn’t do.”
George hesitated, fingers twitching. “I just—you could at least…”
The Lion turned the sketchbook in his hands, looking directly at the boy. “Shiny glasses. Straw hat. Walks like his feet aren’t on speaking terms?”
George blinked. “Yeah–”
The Lion nodded once and handed back the book and turned toward the paseo.
“Are you going after him? I mean, he stole–”
Over his shoulder the Lion didn’t stop but said, “La serpiente… still eating itself.”
George looked down at the sketchbook. He opened it to the page. The man with the mirrored glasses stared back—the drawing unfinished and rough.
For a moment longer, he stood there, the surf low and restless behind him.
George had stepped in. Stood between them. Risked something.
The Lion gave no invitation for anything further. Just the slow rhythm of his steps away and up toward town.
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Music
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? - The Clash
Great scene. The fog-covered beach - I was there, with George. And I dig our boy, Lion. Hoping to see more of him. Awesome chapter, man.
Mmmm, intriguing chapter.