ISLA | Chapter One

Snakes, Jolt and the City

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.

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"Myths slumber until a journey whispers the echoes of old magic."
—from Shadows and Echoes a collection of interpreted Mayan legends

You remind me of the babe (what babe?)
The babe with the power (what power?)
Power of voodoo (who do?)
You do (do what?)
Remind me of the babe
—Labyrinth

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January 1986

When the hissing started, George thought of snakes—sharp and mean through the apartment walls.

Even at twelve, he knew the warning always came before the strike.

Snakes hiss, right? In Raiders they did. His mother and the fella were in the hallway outside his room. He pictured them with fingers pointed like fangs, voices coiled and tense—like the knot in his stomach.

Fella—that's what George called them, as in "her fella" or "that fella." A generic, white box way to keep his mental Rolodex from overfilling with forgettable details, forgettable people. They were never dad, daddy, or father.

No way George was going out there. “Asps, very dangerous. You go first.” Sallah told Indy. Right on. He wondered how long it would be before they’d strike.

George heard all the fights. The loud ones echoing in the lobby, riding with them up the elevator, then spilling into the apartment. The silent ones, simmering at the dinner table. And now, from his room, the voices writhed under the door, spilling onto his  abandoned homework. 

In the quiet, after an argument, his father would have raised his eyebrows, winking and said in a sing-song way:

This ain’t no party,
This ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no foolin’ around

George waited, sensing the coming crescendo, but not wishing for it. Wishing away nice things seemed rude and, well, this apartment was pretty nice. Except for the Betamax—renting a new movie sucked, there was never one he wanted and he’d take home The Last Starfighter for the hundredth time. He thought about it for a minute: he’d take an escape into space right now. He didn’t even have to be chosen to do something daring or extraordinary.

It all belonged to the fella, of course. The apartment was big enough to have a real dining room and a decent view of the city. His mom called it “yuppy modern,” with its sparse decor and chairs made out of thick plastic that looked like glass. The fella’s espresso machine was a work of art, too. He shined it every morning as it spat black sludge into tiny cups.

George detested the stuff—he was a Jolt cola drinker. “All the sugar and twice the caffeine,” the ads said. Heck yeah. Maybe it really was just carbonated coffee, but it got him from here to there—quickly—he thought. He even liked the jitter it gave him as the chemicals pushed through his veins. It got him through the Chicago snow, past the suits, onto the city bus and, at least, halfway through the day.

He liked that it made him feel wide-eyed, a rush. He’d blink, and it’d be third period already—Mrs. Romey talking while his pencil drifted into its own language. George wasn’t listening while she went on about Mesoamerican civilizations. Not really. His pencil carved spirals and half-formed shapes in the corner of his worksheet, each one hovering off the page, alive. The names blurred—Olmec, Zapotec, Maya—and in his head, Siouxsie cut through them like a blade, chanting something strange and holy:

We’re spellbound… spellbound… spellbound…

The teacher asks a question, it’s clear nobody is going to answer.

“George?”

“Toltec,” he muttered. Then he kept drawing, his hand shaping a mountain, maybe a cave.

He wasn’t even sure why he said it. It just… came out. Not exactly a memory, more like muscle memory. Maybe it didn’t matter. Most of the other kids never get called on anyway–they were continuously tuned out, or jacked up.

Some were into more harsh things than caffeine. Before the first bell he’d see them in the bathroom sniffing or puffing something–not George’s style. He preferred the minor infraction of a Jolt cola at dawn. Music playing in his headphones he’d whisper Dead Kennedys lyrics as the hot wizz of Jolt hit the urinal.

With a fountain of fads
more rock and roll ads
drug me, drug me, drug me

The bell must’ve rung. Now it was Kathryn and the fella, not teachers and kids—voices louder, closer, tumbling over his bed. How many other kids had lived in three different cities by age twelve? He had a good idea what would happen next—it was probably time for a trip to the Grand Canyon State, to the retirement villa with a movie theater and all-you-can-eat buffet. He could already picture himself, his bike pedaling faster than the golf carts now. Kathryn would want the retreat, but did he have to go?

Could he go out there right now and stop her from saying the words?

Better yet—could he stay right here and use his telepathic powers to cool her down? Or was that telekinetic? Which one made people’s heads explode? George closed his eyes and leaned his head toward the door. From the safety of his room maybe he could invent one of those powers, the right one, now?

Maybe she’d freeze mid-sentence. Circuits snapping behind her eyes. Her head slumps. Body goes slack. The fella leans in, confused. He starts to apologize. He raises his hand to pound the wall. Maybe even cry a little.

Then: whirrrr. Her eyes flick open. Glowing red.

She grabs the fella’s throat, lifts him like The Terminator, slams him against the hallway wall, feet dangling, breath wheezing out.

George sighed. 

Yeah. No stopping it. A trip to the desert was as inevitable as hot seatbelts and old lady perfume.

He looked around the room, the walls feeling closer than usual, like someone squeezing a tube of toothpaste from both ends.

As bedrooms went, it wasn’t shabby—bed, lamp, closet, the usual—but for George, bedrooms had to be more than that. They were where you retreated when the world didn’t make sense. They were escape pods. Pressure valves. Places that didn’t ask questions.

This one had a window. Not that it mattered much. The city view from this side was only a crowd of buildings leaning into each other like they were waiting in a lunch line.

But the light came in differently.

The room had felt dull until he started taping up his drawings—ripped from his sketchpad, fuzzy at the edges. He placed them without any plan, a loose constellation across the wall. A man standing outside a café, cross-hatched shadows stretched under his feet. A cactus catching morning light, spines drawn like radiating threads. A crab mid-scuttle. A wave curling.

When he stood back, the afternoon sun tilted through the glass—off, somehow, the wrong angle for the time of day. But it moved across the drawings anyway. Not just lit them–touched them.

The smoke from the café drawing bent in a breeze that didn’t exist. Sand on the beach sketch seemed to shift. The glint off the cactus looked wet.

And in the center of it all, the self-portrait.

Unfinished. Smudged from too many tries. Paper buckled where he’d erased the eyes again and again. But this version—half-done, almost accidental—was the one that looked the most like him. It followed the shape of his face. Studied him back. Its charcoal eye, dark and sharp, flickered. Just once.

He hadn’t thought much about them while he made them but now, lined up like this, they felt like coordinates. Not directions to follow but… something.

He blinked. The fight was back.

Outside his room, it was now up a notch—intense, a scrambled pay channel kids weren’t supposed to see. A death match. George’s mother, Kathryn, knew how to circle, how to set up the fatal blow. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when her laugh came easier—when she’d dance in the kitchen or sing off-key in the car just to make him laugh. That Kathryn was still in there somewhere, but she'd gotten quieter with every move, every goodbye.

He thought he could see shadows playing along the threshold of the door—two wrestlers in an epic battle. One clinging to the ropes for life. The other undefeated. She keenly hid her weapon, like a blade in a boot. Kathryn, the relationship assassin, always knew when to pull out the knife—and more importantly, where to put it.

Then he heard it. Kathryn’s preamble had started.

Kathryn—never Kate, Katie, or Kay—kept track of every transgression, every fumbled moment. She could recite, as she was doing now, the exact date and time she should have pulled the brake. Word by word, her voice gained speed, steady as the clack-clack of a runaway train. The fella might try to jump in, but she’d carry on. George had heard it enough to know the cadence, the shape of the thing. He could mouth the words as they arrived—hers at full volume, his at a whisper: “This isn’t working for anyone.”

He reached under the bed, tugging at the edge of a shoebox. Inside: rows of cassette tapes, arranged with care. Some still pristine in their jewel cases—New Order, Bad Brains, XTC, The Clash. And, of course, all four Peter Gabriel albums: Car, Scratch, Melt, Security. The rest were a rattle of loose cassettes, mixtapes featuring Siouxsie Sioux, Dead Kennedys, The Smiths—half-labeled, but unmistakable.

He grabbed one. Not an original, just a dub. Next to the Memorex logo, in blocky, robotic handwriting: REPLICAS. He slid it into the Walkman and closed the door with a satisfying schnick—the sound of an armature locking into place, the magnetic head pressing against exposed tape. That sound meant escape. His Walkman. His headphones with their soft foam covers. This was the feeling of—he searched for the word—control. There wasn’t enough of that to go around, but this… this was his.

His thumb pressed Play. A track was fading out—an undulating synth line, like a sci-fi film unspooling behind his eyelids. The next came in heavier: a computerized tuba in a marching band, sharp and synthetic. George closed his eyes, turning up the volume, drowning out the argument.

It's cold outside
And the paint's peeling off of my walls
There's a man outside
In a long coat, grey hat
smoking a cigarette
Now the light fades out
And I wonder what I'm doing in a room like this

He could see the shapes outside his door had gone still.

He finished putting the room into his mental Rolodex: textbooks on the floor. His artwork on the wall. The way streetlights sneaked in through the snow.

He slid the box of cassettes into his backpack, then his sketchbook and a box of pencils. Then he paused. There was still room. And something missing.

He pulled open the drawer of his nightstand. He hadn’t looked for it in months, but he knew exactly where it was: his father’s journal.

He brushed the dust off the cover. The leather was softer now, darker, worn smooth from being dragged across too many state lines. It still smelled like ink and old paper. Like something that didn’t quite belong anywhere, but always ended up with him.

You don’t always know why you keep something—it just stays close. Or maybe you follow it.

A folded paper slipped out of the journal and landed on the floor. A map.

He didn’t open it, but he saw his own handwriting near the edge, pointing toward an island. Just far enough inside the fold to vanish from view—but he knew it was there. He remembered the curve he’d spotted on the old xerox. The one that looked like a smudge, a printer’s mistake. Pez doblado.

He could almost hear his dad’s voice, distant but clear: “Maps don’t show the world as it is, Jorge. They show how someone imagined it might be.”

George ran a finger over the journal’s spine, then slipped it into his backpack.

Tomorrow is moving day.

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Music

Magic Dance – Labyrinth Soundtrack

Life During Wartime – The Talking Heads

Spellbound – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Drug Me – The Dead Kennedys

Are ‘Friends’ Electric – Gary Numan & Tubeway Army

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