Story #40

Dear Readers,

Here is weekly very short story number forty in a series of fifty-two. Thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #40

One day Derek was walking in the Amazon jungle and got lost. He was scared, and something bit him on the thigh, an insect, yellow and red, with wings as wide as Derek’s hand and a mouth big enough that you could see it open and close. He sat down on a log. He and his dad were unusually close for a father and son. They’d taken this South America trip together and his father had had a series of mini-strokes the previous night. He was resting in their cabin and being cared for by a local shaman while Derek made today’s hike alone. The insect’s venom merged with Derek’s blood. Derek saw the inside of the cabin where his father reclined on a straw pallet. He saw his father’s face moving up and down and side to side, and realized that it was not his father’s face moving but Derek himself, or rather, the shaman’s hand, which now held him. And he wasn’t “him,” wasn’t Derek. He was the venom of the insect that had bitten him, mixed with water and several plants, a concoction that his father now drank. Derek was absorbed into his father’s blood stream. On a red log flume ride minus the log, he entered and was expelled from his father’s heart. He was in his father’s mind, thinking about Derek, wishing his son would come back to the cabin, wondering why his damn fool son had to take that hike in the jungle today, sticking to the itinerary even though I had a stroke last night. Oh, son, there you are, I’m so relieved you’re back, please don’t ever leave me again, I’m in my declining years and I need you. Well, Dad, I also need to live my life, you shouldn’t have come on this trip with me, I told you not to. Derek, please don’t be angry with me, I feel so bad, I think I’m going to die. It’s okay, Dad, I’m here, I’m here.