Blood of the Jungle

My sightline tunnelled as I stared down in shock at a small, still body— familiar, yet foreign in its deathly silence. Clutched in its hand was a toy. Which toy, I can’t remember. The last image I had was its bright, silken surface speckled with crimson. A muted scream echoed somewhere behind rattling my skull. My eyes shot open.

The scarlet macaw's shriek from above blended into the one still ringing in my ears. Gasping for breaths, the last vestiges of the dream clung to me like the humid jungle air enveloping my skin. Looking around at the waking world, the rhythmic lapping of water along the boat soothed my frayed nerves. The dream dissolved as the tranquillity of the remote environment welcomed me back to the winding Momón River. The riverboat appeared pitifully small amidst the hostile vastness. It rolled along, nearing the shore. I must have been asleep for the 10 hours it took to arrive at the sacred rite. I was always told how ayahuasca could stimulate vivid recollections— even those unconsciously forgotten. I hoped it would help me stitch together a patchwork identity from shredded rags of memory.

When we disembarked and stepped onto the muddy riverbanks, the juxtaposition of calmness in uncorrupt nature and the hanging threat of impenetrable solitude felt sinister. I came to the jungle like a penitent making a pilgrimage; a seemingly small sacrifice for an eternity of repose; 10 days and 4 ceremonies, my own personal 40 days and 40 nights.

Minutes turned to hours hiking through the Amazon’s infinite expanse. After orienting ourselves, we began. The ayahuasca sang to me, promising to excavate the shrapnel of the past embedded in my mind and cauterise the wounds that had festered overtime. Wisps of apparitions bled into my consciousness, their murky outlines displaying moments of my childhood. I was young and joyful, but an atmosphere of dread loomed. Slowly, the day grew dimmer. Bright blues moulded over and golden sunbeams staled. Spidery hallucinations webbed. I was in my bedroom; sourceless shadows dragging themselves from the wallpaper crept across the floor. Shapes in black puddles took glowing, oil-slick forms, with glimpses of gruesome scenes: a faceless man with a handgun, a woman shrieking— held back by sympathetic hands. I felt small.

The images gurgled away as my nightmare replayed like television static. In fear I kept looking. Trust the process. I finally wrenched myself from the dreamscape wracked with regret of unknown origin. I was afraid. I knew I was adrift, lost in a hazy fog of relics. I almost did not want to continue, but we were blanketed in such isolation that I was unable to return.

The second dose transpired a day later. The shamans sang icaros into the inky night. For a moment, the chanting formed a pattern. From the foreign syllables, my own name seemed to echo back—Claude. I felt myself plunging again into the distorted landscape of memory, as if looking at my life through a funhouse mirror. I wandered down a midway lined with boarded up game stalls and food carts. Tattered posters peeled from the walls, like curling fingers beckoning customers to unavailable attractions. I entered the big top, alone beneath the looming highwire. A figure lay motionless on the platform in the spotlight above.

An adjacent hallway led me into a neglected herpetarium. Dirt-stained terrariums held only foetid water, long missing their leaping and slithering occupants, all except one. Inside was a delicate green glass frog, its translucent skin revealing a dark-red heart. As I reached towards it, the glass shattered along with the vision.

They brought me into a tambo for the third ceremony, its thatched roof slicing the starlight that flowed inside. This time, I remembered my parents— my brother. When I was young, my father was responsible for the crime that claimed my brother’s life, sentenced to death based on the testimony of the only witness— myself, at seven years old. My mother was away when it happened.

I lay in darkness for the days preceding the fourth, pain and peace playing tug-of-war in my mind. It was time for the final dose. Immediately, the jungle around me trembled. Memories came like rushing rapids, sweeping me through the tangled bramble of my history. I was bludgeoned powerless as a marionette, watching my feet move on invisible strings pulled by the jungle, a puppeteer. I was inside my dream, now palpable. I stood there, the limp figure lying beneath with the toy I couldn’t see. I stared at my little brother— motionless. I reached for it— not him, the toy. I could almost feel the soft mesh of the stuffed glass frog he carried, heart visible. But my fingertips were met with the slippery skin of a frog that jumped away at my touch. I was uncertain if I was trapped in my nightmare or awake.

I turned around and there was my father, cleaning his handgun and placing it down—a flash of white light. One shot went off, another. I saw myself— the gun in my small hands was heavy. I felt myself enjoying what I did—what I was doing, all those years ago, and again now. I yearned for the sight of his blood. My father was screaming in pain I didn’t know fathers could feel. The gun rested like the body of my brother, bent on the floor beneath my feet. My father’s swollen eyes darkened to an expression I’d never seen, betrayal. Hatred. Then helplessness clouded his face— all I saw in the years to follow as he waited on condemned row. I looked at my hands, crimson spattered like my brother’s toy, heart visible.

I remembered my mother, heartbroken, but boiling with vicious contempt from her husband's filicide, blind to the risk that lurked behind my boyish smile. My father’s sacrifice allowed her to live in ignorance. She never knew; my actions repressed since. Myself, Claudius. I killed him. I’d even forgotten that it wasn’t an accident.