A Man A Plan A Canal Panama

It was raining again and I was having a bad day in a filthy bar downtown. The bartender was a girl in her 20s. I didn't know her name and I didn't ask. Maybe in my younger days I would have fucked her on the bar top with a mouth full of whiskey and a vas deferens full of lust. These days, though, I just wanted another drink.

I was rattling the ice in my empty glass when he stopped me. It was Juan Carlos. He was a slight man with dark hair and an ugly face. I had first met him in Panama on business. Being that we were thousands of miles from Panama, this seemed like too much to be a coincidence.

I told Juan Carlos that I was leaving and that I would see him around. He didn't say anything and his eyes returned to the cup of blended fruit swill that he was drinking. He had a sweet tooth. I hurriedly walked home while the raindrops soaked the city. The newly re-hydrated city streets reeked of shit and garbage and the scum you'd scrape out from under your fingernails after a long night at a whorehouse.

As I got home I unlocked my door, sat in my velvet-upholstered recliner and smoked a blend of treebark and pulverized wood beetles. After a few puffs, I dozed off.

A loud and distinctive pounding on the door roused me from my slumber. The oaken door shook from the force. I had heard that knock before. It was the knock of the Panamanian. I opened the door to see Juan Carlos standing there, soaking wet. There were red lipstick prints on his clothes and he had bite marks all over his face. His skin was hanging off in some spots and I could see the scaly coating underneath.

I invited him in and I reached for the satchel I kept hanging on the back of the door. In the satchel was a bull whip that I had bought from slavers in Bangalore. As Juan Carlos came in, I shut the door and lashed him with the whip, again and again. The heavy, braided leather tore his clothes. Juan Carlos hit me with a powerful hay-maker. The force of the blow made me vomit beer and liquor onto my carpet. I ran after Juan Carlos, lashing him with the whip.

Juan Carlos fled to the bathroom and locked himself in. My blood boiled with rage. I thought of Panama and how we got to these circumstances in the first place. I kicked the door down and grappled with the Panamanian. The smell of him was worse than I remembered. He was slicked with sweat and blood, but my grip was strong. I plunged his head into the commode, banging his skull against the porcelain. After the repeated blows against the hard, ceramic toilet his reptilian brain gave out on him. He slipped into unconsciousness. Juan Carlos began to look more like a lizard by the moment, and he made terrible gurgling sounds while I held his head under the water for what seemed like hours.

The Panama Canal had been completed only 66 years earlier. Most of it was built by reptiles.