Hell is not partial

Becky couldn't catch her breath. The air was so muggy. Her skin felt sticky. It was dark and hot and close under the trees, and the roots perplexed her feet. It was the jungle. She was on a path in the dark, or in just enough light to see the path... the moon was up there, somewhere, tonight... and she wasn't lost. She knew where she was. She just didn't know where she was going. The path was growing fainter and fainter, becoming just a harder patch among softer soils.

Then she saw something and then a split second later a wave of fear washed through her. Her tongue tasted electric. She was shaking. There was a snake... a large snake... on the path. She stood and saw it. It seemed like a dream snake, lying there across the path in the dark, and she didn't know what it was doing. That was the most dreamlike thing, the not knowing. It was an alien. It was unknown.

Becky stood for a minute and the dream feeling buzzed over her. She was scared because of the snake, but she was also scared because she suddenly didn't know who she was. In a jungle? Trying to escape? She was afraid it wasn't real, that she was going crazy. She was afraid it was real. Her heart was in her throat. Her breath was in her throat. Her tongue hurt and she was dizzy.

It was so dark. Things would look different in the light, but it might be 3 AM and it might as well never get light. It was the tropics... wasn't it? The sun might not come up until six... three more hours of walking... but there was this snake.

She felt she ought to go forth, let it bite her, strangle her, constrict her... she was already constricted... she couldn't breathe. She turned around and went back.

***

The next night, there was no more light, but she left again. After the sun went down and she tossed and turned in fear, she went out and slipped out to the path, and began to walk. Her thoughts were so loud in her ears she was afraid she was walking to her death--that she wouldn't hear the panther, or the boar, or a river before she tumbled down its banks into her drowning. It would be the river, her stomach told her. You will fall down a ravine into a river, it will be freezing cold, wet, it will fill your nose and stop your mouth and you'll be terrified for the eternity of drowning. You will be terrified.

It had been like this forever. Fear forever. She hated herself all the time for not being able to stop it and for not being able to go with it. She didn't dream anymore, but when she dreamed she dreamed once of wriggling, under a rock, wriggling like a spider and not going anywhere. Now she slept blackly and when she woke up she had a second or two of being Becky, and then she remembered she was in a nightmare and her chest felt tight as a fist again. It was like waking up and remembering your legs were gone, and would be gone every day for the rest of your life... it was like looking up from a book and remembering your lover has died and you're still grieving, and it all comes down like a ton of bricks.

So here she was in fear on the path. She was trying to get out. She felt she didn't have the strength, the smarts or the willpower to get out, but what else was there to do? It was not going to get better. She was a wreck. She shook all the time. She was covered in insect bites and she still couldn't stop swatting at the mosquitoes... her teeth throbbed from clenching her jaw and from not seeing a dentist in a year. She wasn't afraid for her teeth anymore. That was months ago. But she was afraid of--

The snake. Still there! The alienness of it gripped her. What was it doing? And in the split second between recognizing the snake and feeling the wash of fear, this time, she saw it, saw what lay across the path. It was a rope, a rope. Round and thick and careless, lying on the ground. Her nerves clashed with the afteraffect of terror, jangling like a tambourine. The night was a night of sirens. It was a rope. The snake was forgotten. There was no snake. She stepped over the rope and thumped down the path in the dark, swatting the mosquitos with shuddering hands.

Now she was on new ground. The moon was hidden, far away. The night grew full of sounds, droning sounds of insects and sharp unknown sounds, each of which pierced Becky through with a fear she couldn't defend against. It was like being six years old and sitting on the padded bed and having the doctor hit your knee with the little triangular hammer, and watching astounded as your leg leaped up. She heard the noises and she felt herself jolt with adrenaline and dismay after each one. She groaned aloud with exhaustion and hate. And she walked.

She had been nervous when she came to the Amazon. She had come to try to escape her nervousness. Worrying about her job, about the car, about her parents, worrying about making rent payments, worrying about her heart, about not being able to get into grad school, about being in grad school, about having enough time to volunteer, about not being nice enough, about not walking the dog enough, about her life slipping past and her not enjoying it. She needed help and she grabbed at this, at the opportunity to get away from it all.

She was thinking about these things when she realized she wasn't on the path.

She was so exhausted when the resultant wave of terror hit her that she barely noticed it. She looked up. She looked around. There was no light of dawn and she felt it must be about three or four o'clock. The moon was still up somewhere, but she couldn't see it, only the faintest glow on the ground, her night vision grainy and staticky like a very old TV. She could see things, rocks, if she moved around, if she didn't look directly at them. She turned and tried to go back in the direction she'd come. The soil was soft and spongy under her feet. She groaned again.

Then this is it, this is it, her mind taunted. This is how you die. Lost in the jungle. You'll wander lost for days, and die of starvation, terrified the whole time. This is your fate.

And it was a few minutes and she realized with some surprise that she was on the path again, and the packed sand of it made a little noise beneath her sneakers. She blundered back to camp, tired to the bone.

***

On the third night, she set out exhausted and walked for hours, the noises and the terrors becoming so familiar to her it was like wearing a costume for the sixth week of a play, a long-running play. It was very hot and uncomfortable and it was not her, but she was so used to it. She was terrified and used to it. She hated it and was used to it. Her insect bites were miserable, and the sensation was so familiar to her she felt she could write a full-length book on bites. On itchiness. On the raw pain of too much scratching, the bleeding, the shaking of a body flooded with histamine. On finding her own blood dried under her nails days later. On looking like hell.

She was beginning to get good at being terrified.

When she saw the rope she stepped over it without hesitating, then stopped. She turned around. She was curious. It was so strange to feel something beside fear and pain that for a moment she was awed. And still curious. She followed the rope, heart pounding, and followed it up to the thick tree beside the path... followed it up the thorny bark of the tree... up to where her eyes lost it in darkness. She gripped the rope in both hands, feeling its age and fibrous strength. She could smell it. It was a hemp rope. She set one sneaker then another against the thorns of the tree, and pulled with her shaking arms, lifting one sweating hand over another, pulling herself up the tree.

When she had climbed ten or fifteen feet, she felt a wooden platform above her, and was too tired to be surprised. She grasped breathlessly for something above it, something to hold onto, found a lean weathered board and put all her strength into hauling herself onto the platform. And all her strength was not enough, and she slipped back down, her hands still adequate, cramping, leaving her dangling from wood and rope while her whole body shook.

Without thinking she tried again, trying to try harder, put even more into it, clench her whole body... and she felt herself lifting up... and took her hand off the rope to reach up and grasp, found something unknown that held her, and beached herself on the small platform.

After a minute or two she tried to sit up. It was pitch black. She couldn't lean back against the tree for the thorns, and the platform was only a couple feet wide. She felt above her. There was more rope, and wooden slats of some kind. But she was gone, empty, and wanted to rest. She would rest until it got light.

She didn't notice when the sky began to lighten. She was thinking about the people back in camp, and then she noticed she could see again, just barely. There were slender trunks all around her, giant leaves in places, and behind her the thorns on the bark were taking shape. She could see her hands. She wondered if they looked like her hands, or some stranger's hands. Everything had been so strange. She didn't even know.

She had come to the Amazon to join Right Intentions, a group of mismatched seekers trying to live harmoniously and help the natives and... she wasn't sure. She had been desperate when she saw their web site, she remembered. She had had a feeling that she had to go, had to do something like this, live more simply, reach out and help others, or she'd always be stuck in the same miserable and self-absorbed place in her life. She felt compelled and she had signed on and taken her dog to her sister's and booked the flight on the dull energy of compulsion.

Nothing had been like she'd expected. The living conditions had been not just primitive, but truly shitty, poorly looked after, falling apart. Dirty. Unsanitary, yes. Jerry, the leader of the group, was charismatic in a slightly hypnotic way... at least, his absolute confidence was attractive... but he was more of a jerk than anything else. He always worked without a shirt on, he called Becky "honey" and whenever she worried aloud about malaria, he laughed. Not a laugh that made light of her fears, but a laugh that enjoyed them. He thought she was funny. And he smoked. And then there was Matt, who was in love with Becky and who she felt she had to sleep with... his dirty hair and freckled, almost translucent skin that made her think queasily of her dog's belly... God... what did she just think? Why did she think that? Why should she have to sleep with him?

As it got lighter she realized there was indeed a ladder above her, and some kind of structure far overhead in the canopy. The birds were very active, all kinds, so loud they almost hurt her ears. There was one that made a noise like the metallic squeak her oven made when she opened the door to put a pan of brownies in at home. In a moment she would stand and climb up to the platform, to see if she could see a river or a town or farms in the distance, carved out of the jungle, places where she could make a phone call or hire a boat... She didn't speak Spanish. She was too numb to be afraid of that. She had felt desperate to get out, and now that she was out she knew the desperation was unnecessary, but here she was.