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written for the theme: to listen with one ear to each summer sound
Not far from New Orleans, somewhere in the 1920s.
Besides being ridiculously hot and sticky, summers in New Orleans are loud. Every afternoon you can hear the cacophony of falling rain pouring in waves over the cracked streets, backed up by the thunder as it tries to rip the sky apart. And every evening, after the storms have passed and all is quiet for an hour or so, the symphony begins: cicadas, crickets and frogs all vying for dominance of the air space, singing their hearts out to find their mates, or professing their love for the mates they’ve already found.
As loud as summers are in the city, it’s nothing compared how loud it is out in the bayou. That’s where all the bugs and frogs really live – they just occasionally take vacation in the Big Easy to get a break from the hum-drum swamp lifestyle and mix it up a bit.
And the swamp is where I happened to be on this particular summer’s evening in the midst of the 1920s, following behind a bald monk who, even as he guided me through the swamp on a path of rickety wooden boards, continued to hum a chant into the air while holding his holy book out in front of him. The book, as it happens, was Entomology and the Illusions of Self, and he was currently chanting a list of different known breeds of beetles. The monk was part of an order of spiritualists that closely studied the ways of insects, specifically in regards to reincarnation. I probably could have gleaned more of their theories, but I’ve never been much for spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Though these monks would not last through the Great Depression, they would still influence the future of New Orleans, getting their own statue on Decatur Street and also being the inspiration for the city’s Insectarium.
Soon the chorus of bugs and frogs was joined by the voices of other monks, all chanting breeds of different insects. We came upon dozens of them kneeling down in a half-circle around a giant tree sticking up out of the muddy ground.
The monk I was following stopped chanting. “Usually no one sees the Sacred One, the Interscapetual Nova Counterspace, unless they have been initiated,” he whispered to me. “But your employer has helped us out immensely over the years, so we have made an exception for you.”
“Much obliged,” I said, taking a swig of Chartreuse from my flask.
The monks’ chanting rose and swirled around the tree, and along with it came thousands of mosquitoes humming high-pitched into the air. “Don’t swat at them,” the monk whispered to me.
“You gonna tell them not to bite me?”
“They can’t – these are male mosquitoes. They get their nourishment from the nectar of plants. It’s the females that bite you and drink your blood.”
“So male mosquitoes are vegetarians…”
a male mosquito swigging some nectar
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“The Sacred One was human in the last life, and was killed just as he was receiving the divine enlightenment. He was a hair’s breadth from total realization. It is a shame, but at the same time a great blessing for us. For if he had completely left this reality, we would not have him here to learn from.”
“I see…”
I had to squint to see through the tornado of mosquitoes, watching as out of the hollow center of the large tree, a giant bug pulled its way out, stretching its wings into the air. It sat perched up there on a branch, looking out at the monks as they chanted up to it.
I walked towards the tree, shrugging off the monk’s hand as he tried to stop me.
“There are protocols!” he said. “You can’t just walk up there!”
“Don’t worry,” I said as I walked through the half-circle of kneeling monks. “We go way back.” I walked up to the tree, looked up at the big mosquito looking down on me like a gargoyle, and said, “Hey Scape.”
Scape tilted his head, looking at me with his many eyes. He looked kind of naked without his vest and tinted glasses. Kind of creepy, too.
“Look,” I said. “I’m here to get you to join up with me and become my partner in the city. But really this has already happened, and I’m betting that you remember the future. I’m on a mission to fix the episodes. Oh yeah, and there’s some sort of balloon-sculpting clown following me through time. I know it’s not your job, but I was wondering if you’d care to give me a hand.”
The monks grabbed my arms. “I am sorry,” one of them called out.
Scape crawled like a spider down the length of the tree, unrolled his proboscis and sunk it deep into the tree’s bark. He pulled it out, then his wings began flapping and he lifted into the air. His proboscis extended out, dripping with dark sap, and he drew a symbol onto my forehead.
The monks unhanded me. “He has been marked…” one of them whispered. I could see recognition in Scape’s many eyes – he knew who I was.
“I’m not sure how often you’ll be with me,” I said. “But what do you say?” I handed him my flask.
His “mouth” unhinged and opened incredibly wide, and he said
Everything he said ricocheted around inside my body, like meanings and prophecies to be taken in by organs I wasn’t aware that I had and molded into a new set of religions, which would of course forget everything he said and start warring with each other within a hundred years, like religions do. His “mouth” shrunk down and closed, and he took a swig of Chartreuse.
My wrist started to tingle, and I knew the episode was almost up. I touched my forehead and looked at the sap on my fingers, then tasted it. “Hey, didn’t you make some kind of mojito with this stuff once?” And then I was gone.
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mosquito photo credit: James K. Lindsey
story and first three photos Copyright 2010 by Andy Reynolds
for more stories and a menu of the episodes, visit my website: AndyReynolds.net
Scape! This is so exciting!
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