21 Jan 2009, Posted by Cat in News, 5 Comments. Tagged writing

the tourist

Last night I dreamt I was travelling through a bustling tropical city, staying in dilapidated, formally grand hotels; all crumbling porticoes and vine entangled cherubs, faded Victorian splendor crawling with backpackers and middle-aged women in search of deeper meaning. I’d witnessed something I wasn’t supposed to see: an exorcism performed by a con artist. A Colonel Sanders-Baron Samedi hybrid with a cane and genuine supernatural powers, he moved amongst the travelling clique, impressing, then killing tourists and getting away with it.

I’d seen you a couple of times along the trail but you were always with people and I was running for my life, trying to warn others of the danger but no one was listening. Cane man had caught me up and I was marked for death. The hotel was no longer safe.

I found you sitting alone wearing a dark fedora hat, sipping coffee. I sat opposite, asked you how you were. You told me you didn’t always take good care of yourself. You’d shagged some woman and now you were sick and had to have expensive injections for the rest of your life. You seemed so world weary, so tired, but I had to go because cane man was hot on my heels. Later, I looked for you again but you’d vanished, swallowed by the sweltering tropical night.