A.D. 1995, THE TRUE MILLENNIUM — BAJA CALIFORNIA

MALICE BUZZED, RATTLING in the air as if a lake-sized nest of hot diamondbacks were riled, glass-marble eyes blinkless, their scales gathered like coils of rope to strike.  This atmosphere clung to vegetation, a blight of transparent malignancy, and fevered the soil with an army of infection.  Sand stirred, composed of decay and pulgas, rambunctious ranks of blood-starved popcorn fleas springing from billennial-layered putrefaction — for what do we walk upon but the bones and flesh of History, the seasons of yesteryear?

A farm truck jounced over a pitted lane segregating snaggles of scrub oaks, brush, and cacti that foliated the valleys and lomas between Tijuana and Tecate.  It was an irregular playing field of magnetic geothermal activity where superior forces met to compete in the endless skirmish, Good versus Evil.  Where basic laws of and discovered by Man no longer applied, and possibilities were infinite.

The exclusive radius could not be located on maps except those sketched by harbingers of doom and minds of the demented, or brains of fluid fantasy.  It was neither consistent nor concrete but a limber ductile amplitude that arose and diminished, swelled and receded, that dissembled and reconstructured hourly.

The province existed when and where it chose, unless answering to a stronger will or wilder nature than its own.  Beyond Tecate the hyperbolent-baric humus flowed.  Gorgefully mawdacious.  Gruffish, gurgent, griddily sequestering perditious bluffiant dunes.  Flambeyantly gobbling easterly breadth toward La Rumorosa, The Whispering One, and a gamut of alpen crags.  Providing relief from antagonism below by resorting to superficial mayhem.

Harrowing these hills across centuries of todays, a forlorn caterwaul warped out of macrospatial fabric — implied implorings of a tormented woman whose sharpest fears were nigh:  “Nopilhuane . . .  Nopilhuane . . .  Tlazohtin Nihhuihuane, can anyazqueh?”  Oh, my children . . .  Oh, my children . . .  My Precious Feathers, where will you go?

A solitary plume adrift, shed from wings of antiquity, fragile as a memory, substantial as a heartbeat, settled betwixt the tines of a nopal.  Iridescent, ruffled by breeze, the blue-green quill wafted earthward.

Tempestuous, an avian deluge of quetzal feathers carpeted la tierra.  Coruscations of emerald, sapphire, amethyst hues glimmered.  And as swiftly were gone.

Within a linger of gloss was mirrored a vision of hale brotherly heroes in jade-green leather trekking the desert . . . till arid sands absorbed the pool.

Ochre dust suffused the air.  Tires bumped through rain-engraved ruts.  Cannisters slid and clanked amid bales of barbed wire and sacks of chemical fertilizer on an enclosed flatbed.

The sun’s rays reflected off a window with a starburst of light behind the laboring farm vehicle’s cab.

Above this lonely stretch of chaparral, patrolling his domain, an eagle peered out of azure sky and shivered — attention drawn to the stellar glint, perceiving an absence of light as it cruised the ground.  He was king of the sky, haughty and bold, yet an uncertain cry rent his beak.

Sly and discreet, a Halloween cookie cutter of shade followed the truck’s wake, gliding smoothly over the corrugated surface of unpaved road.  Swimming, swirling, shaped like a bat, the bottomless puddle moved independent from any physical matter.  The black hellhole, which seemed to float in antispace, was the earthly presence of an underworld demon.

Mayan god Camazotz’s creepuscular powers and desire for human blood were whetted by alliance with The Feathered Serpent.  His glum outline, smoldering beneath el sol, eclipsed the truck.

In an explosive dazzle a brilliant electric bolt, emblem of the snake in Mesolore, streaked to the vehicle and zapped a metal container.  The tank slammed a wooden tailgate and was catapulted from the truck’s bed.

Grasses whispered with a thousand voices.  Darkmeister Camazotz divvied into a multitude of tiny bat blotches that fluttered in all directions.

Bouncing stone to stone, a red label flashing, the cylinder flipped and tumbled toward the edge of a cliff.

This airborne container caught the interest of a gecko idly sunning himself on a rock.  The lizard gave the intrusive missile a curious glance, then licked his left eyeball with a moist slurp.

Gaining speed the silver can plummeted to a ravine, where it cracked upon an unyielding boulder and hurtled through a nillity of noneness.

Afternoon shadows lengthened.  A fiery ball sank below the horizon’s rim as sunset faded to twilight.  A mountain lion appeared, silhouetted against evening sky.  Panting and pregnant, the cougar stood on an escarpment above the creek, sagging with the weight of a bloated womb.  She surveyed the stream, thirsty yet cautious, alert for danger.

The puma’s face evinced signs of discomfort as she slowly prowled a ridge down to the brook and warily approached to drink.

Water burbled invitingly.  The big cat hesitated, listening.

A short distance upstream the cannister rested, pirate-flag warning glyph plain though esoteric, a lethal dose of human progress polluting nature.  With inauspicious foreboding, the can leaked synthetic compounds from a submerged gash.

Instinct triggered an uneasy aversion.  The lioness, who did not feel herself these days, vomiting what food she could scavenge, sniffed the creek and snorted but droughtfully ignored the inner alarm and lapped water, filling her stomach.

Unsatisfied, the cat disappeared among sombral tones of sable.

Quetzalcoatl’s earthly apparition coiled on a mineral shelf near the tainted stream, a luminescent serpent with green quetzal plumage, whose heart — beating outside his body — formed the crimson fruit of a nopal cactus on which an eagle perched weeping.

The snake hissed loudly, mastering his element.  Upon command a bloodless moon slid from platinum wisps and revealed the dismal composition of another.  Every great personality should have a sidekick.

Even this crass henchman-dunce of a nincompoop? rhetoricked the serpent, maracan tail agitating.  Snakes traditionally held low opinions of bats — as uppity, noctious, bird-fangled rodents.