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.
September 1983
Outside the radio station, a warped sign hung over the entrance, its faded letters—KIXL—barely clinging to the metal.
Beneath it, the old speaker crackled to life, sharp and sudden. George jumped, every time. He told himself it shouldn’t scare him—students had blown it long ago turning the sidewalk into a dance floor, but still, it got him.
Tonight, as he listened to the incoherent noise spilling from it, he caught a pattern. Yeah, he knew it. He also knew exactly who was behind the microphone. And that rhythmic buzzing—the kind that made the speaker rattle just so—could only be Bonzo.
Kathryn opened the door, holding George back as a waft of smoke came tumbling out. Inside, the waiting area George’s father called Charon’s Stop was plastered with musical detritus: concert posters and music zines taped, tacked, and glued to the walls; a dozen records, cracked and nailed to the wall with a duct tape sign that read “Disco Sucks.” Anyone who had spent time at the college station had offered some kind of knick-knack to the altar of the waiting room.
Buried somewhere on the wall was Hendrix with his Hindu-inspired multiple heads, eyes peeking out from between a leaflet that promised “Weight Loss Now, Ask Me How!” and a grease-penciled endowed pinup of Burt Reynolds. He wasn’t sure why but it made him blush.
The welcoming but ratty couch was always occupied, night or day, by whoever was next to take over the station.
Immediately, George's eyes caught sight of six stark-white sneakers on the floor. A black guy, who looked as dark as midnight to George, smiled at the sight of a kid entering such a disheveled place. Maybe he looked darker, George wondered, because of the two pale, white guys on either side. George regarded them for a moment, noticing that all three were wearing identical striped tracksuits. To him, they looked kind of silly—like maybe they were heading to a sleepover or something.
As George and Kathryn wound through the narrow halls of the studio, the music from the main control room grew louder. The ear-splitting sound of John Bonham’s drums banged off the walls, along with the galloping thunder of John Paul Jones, the frenetic wails of Jimmy Page, and, of course, the screaming voice of Robert Plant who sings…
Oh, the mighty arms of Atlas
Hold the heavens from the Earth
Behind a sound console, the technician’s head throbs back and forth in time with the music, trance-like, hair hanging long over his bearded face. A few others are crowded into the small room, oblivious to the entrance of George and Kathryn.
The last triplets of the song ring out and the technician comes to, pointing to the glass on the other side of the console as the music fades. Inside we hear a voice, equally booming as Bonham’s drums: George’s father.
In his element behind a microphone, he leans in and says, “Did you hear that?
Oh, the fun to have, to live the dreams we always had
The mighty Zep isn’t just playing—they’re poking you in the chest, telling you to get out there. The punished Atlas is holding up the heavens, keeping them from crashing down on your head. They’re saying the road ahead is yours—treacherous and full of pitfalls, but yours!”
He flips his pages of notes in the air, letting them flutter this way and that, laughing, and shouted, “Holy moley!”
It was as if the heavens have just passed down the great word from on high, to Led Zeppelin and through him.
George smiles at this, his father so animated. He likes this version. It’s an act, of course, but not a far step from the man who wakes up, groggy-eyed looking for his coffee mug, doing his Igor impression from Young Frankenstein, “Walk this way.” George would step in behind him pretending to hold a cane.
Leaning to the mic, his father continues with a steady intensity, “That bell is ringing for you. Why? We are the queens and the kings—not because we wear crowns, but because something ancient still moves in us. Mythology isn’t dead—it’s a rhyme that still echoes today. The old stories keep speaking, because the spirits in them haven’t departed.”
He pauses, ensuring his words sink in, “As we’re pouring over the myths, our history, searching out for the truth of what lies beyond, we’re also shaping it.”
His voice lowers, his tone conspiratorial, “Remember, we’re not meant to hunt for immortal treasures from behind a desk, but to touch the land and ask it what it remembers. We should be out there—yes, to steal fire, but also to listen for its crackle and to stoke that flame for others. To go down into the mines and face the Balrog—not for glory, but as keepers of a legacy that’s never really left us, to carry on what was started.”
From the back of a classroom or here in the sound booth, George sees a familiar spark in his father’s eyes as he spins in the DJ chair. It reminds George of his Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt, the one with the stretched-out neck and sleeves, broken in just right. His father wears this presence as naturally as that shirt, like it’s part of him.
George wonders if he has that in him, to be this vivid, to have a classroom—or a whole town full of people—leaning in, listening, like his father does. Could he step forward and command that kind of attention, or would he fade into the background? His father makes it look effortless, but would anyone listen to George the same way?
George waves into the window as Kathryn steps closer, smiling—a small, knowing smile, like she’s seen this performance a hundred times. His father catches sight of them and smiles through the glass of the recording booth. He lets the silence hang, drawing in his audience, then gives George a slow, deliberate wink before continuing.
“It’s your turn to wield the hammers and the axes, to write the next sagas, and take the world in your hands. But don’t forget—some of the gods are still out there. Still watching. Still fighting for us. Like the Hero Twins, who never stopped tricking the lords of the underworld. Their story didn’t end. And even with their help, it’s we mortals who must rise—our actions bold enough to echo forward through time. You better believe it.”
The sound engineer pops a tape cart into the machine and begins the opening organ and drums of Pink Floyd’s Eclipse:
All that you touch, all that you see…
“So, who among you will bring new adventures—those vast tales that will be written in books or retold as bawdy barroom legends, passed from voice to voice, long after we’re gone? I hope you’re listening, because the world needs your adventure. Needs your spirit.”
And all you create, and all you destroy…
“That’s all for tonight. We’ve traversed the plane of the gods, stolen fire from Olympus, and come back down to Earth changed. I’m your host, Professor Perez. To my new students… Yes, tomorrow we take on the heroes—Achilles, Beowulf, Odysseus. Legends? Maybe. Flawed? Absolutely. I hope you’ve done your reading.”
He laughs, “Until we meet again, keep the legends alive and let the music guide you. Goodnight and safe travels through the ages.”
Everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon
George let his mop of hair blow in the wind as he sits in the back of the Triumph.
With the top down and his body twisted into the lunchbox-sized space behind the seats, there wasn’t much he could do about it anyway. He didn’t mind. If George wanted to, he could probably reach the steering wheel or even lean over to touch the ground—the car was that small. It wasn’t uncommon for his father to bark, “Down, Jorge!” so he could see through the rearview mirror.
Usually, after the show, his father was talkative, animated, full of lingering electricity from the station. But tonight, the air felt flat. Even on a fall night, when that charge might otherwise buoy them against the chill, something was different.
George noticed it first in his father’s shoulders—tense, arms locked stiff to the wheel. Then in the way he ground the gears, how the car’s suspension bottomed out when they left the parking lot.
“Should we be worried? I mean, if it comes down to it, I can find something more stable.” Kathryn says, pulling her hair back as the wind whips through it.
His father shrugged, unsure—a small motion, but one that felt like he was trying to shift the weight off his shoulders, even for a second. Taking a quick glance in the mirror his eyes meet George’s.
“I mean, you can pick up other classes, maybe amend your syllabus…” Kathryn suggests, letting the thought hang for him to catch.
"Sure, but that’s not the point, is it? The provost has his head so far up Naisbitt’s ass he’s taking those pop-futurist predictions as gospel. Megatrends? The Enola Gay couldn’t carry the megatons of crap that guy is selling.”
George watches the conversation volley back and forth, unsure what any of this means. In the booth, his father’s voice had filled the room, big and sure, like he knew everything. But here, in the car, he was quiet. Smaller.
“What worries me,” his father pauses, reflecting, “is that we’re trading an entire human history of literature for quick cash to bolster something as superficial as computer programming. They want me to funnel more kids into lesser classes.” He shakes his head, downshifting hard. The gears grind, and George catches the slight wince at the corners of his father’s eyes. “We're sacrificing depth for breadth. These kids don’t even realize they’re about to walk into the house of razors—not that they’ll understand that reference much longer.”
“Are you going to give me the ‘mythology is our cultural mortar’ speech?” Kathryn asks, a frown forming before she forces a small smile. “I think I already took that class.”
His father turns to her, holding her gaze just a moment too long. The Spitfire seems to steer itself as the road narrows around them. Kathryn knows she’s stepped close to a landmine. George sees his father’s jaw tighten, his tongue touching his top lip as he prepares his reaction.
“You think the future is just everyone chained to computers, like it’s inevitable?” He laughs, shaking his head. “And then what? The slope gets pretty damn slippery, Kathryn. Are we going to have kids living out their whole lives inside computer simulations? Never learning to separate fact from fiction, heroes from villains?”
“It’s not computers…” Kathryn says. “It’s progress that scares you.”
His father shrugs, as if the words don’t reach him. He checks the mirrors for nothing important. His fingers brush the radio dial, tapping it, then pulling back.
“Maybe we should take a break,” he says. “Head to Mexico or Guatemala. Lay low. I’ll finish my research. Show George the ruins.”
George hears this, his head tilting just enough between the seats to eavesdrop, avoiding the road noise, the wind.
“What? And live in the dirt for a few months? A few years?” Kathryn asks, her eyes locked on him now. George watches the way his father grips the wheel, eyes somewhere ahead, a fifty-yard stare.
As the road unwinds in front of them, Kathryn thinks of the other conversations they’ve had in this car—caught in the rain when the top wouldn’t go up, or in full sun as they crossed into the city for lunch. Of when George was small enough to lay flat in the back, happy to be anywhere—at the beach or in the mountains, swimming in the chilly summer waters of Castle Lake with Mt. Shasta just over the ridge.
And even before George, just the two of them—young and unmoored, chasing ghost towns and roadside diners, sleeping under the stars in a borrowed tent, inventing a life with no map.
She sees him now—her partner in every sense—wrestling with the compounding interest of family life, of work he enjoys but that’s starting to yield diminishing returns. She recognizes the faraway look in his eyes, not just a reflection of the road ahead, but of a man contemplating deeper crossroads. She sees him staring at the once-bright lights of youth and purpose, watching them flicker under the weight of reality.
But she doesn’t say any of this. Not out of fear, but because she knows he needs time to peel away the dried onion layers. She knows, believes, that the softer skin is beneath, and he’ll find it when he’s ready.
Kathryn reaches over and places her hand on the back of his.
George leans in, this time crossing the narrow space between the headrests, drawn into the quiet. He looks to his parents, both staring ahead, the engine sputtering beneath them.
“Are we moving?” he asks.
His father comes to, his eyes refocusing on the moment, on his son.
“No, mijo,” he says. “Times are hard out there for dreamers, Jorge.”
George studies his father in the mirror, waiting for the glance. When it comes, his father adds, “But I’ve got something good for bedtime. One from the vault.”
The Triumph slips through the city, quiet now, the engine humming low and steady all the way home.
Street lamps flicker past in blurred patterns. The wind lifts over the windshield and tumbles through George’s hair, carrying with it the coming scent of winter and something older.
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Music
Achilles Last Stand - Led Zeppelin
Eclipse - Pink Floyd
Some really nice writing here, J. You really brought George's father to life. He feels real - and restless. I like him already.
Loving the text dividers. Are those pieces of the map?
I had to listen to the whole of Axis: Bold as Love as a result of this. Happy now?