The Spirit of Quetzalsinsina

Professor Randy Redaris earned dueling degrees in sociology and anthropology from Southwest North Dakota State, earned a third online in amateur archaeology from the Community College of Mainland Maine, and downloaded a Certificate in Conjuration from a school in Kazbekistan, an oft-overlooked former Soviet state, after answering 15 of 20 correctly on an online quiz. With credentials tucked under arm, he boarded a boat in New Iberia bound for Belize.

Redaris wished to summon the spirit of Quetzalsinsina, goddess of mint tea and superfluous nipples, whose glistening tears could increase male virility tenfold. Redaris learned of the goddess through an ex-lover who was one-third Belizean and two-thirds bipolar, a woman he colonized with the best of intentions, but it ended all badly when she broke his Burmese bassoon after he failed to properly cover her couscous before reheating. Redaris successfully expunged her name from his brain, but how could he forget Quetzalsinsina?

Deep in the jungle near Benque Viejo, Redaris drew a chalk circle on the forest floor then stood in its center, and began with his chanting, enjoining the spirit to flow forth so she might cry in his phial, to bawl in his bottle. His plan? To package her plight in pill form to sell on poorly produced infomercials on late night TV.

Poor Redaris. Perhaps he misspoke the words of the witchery, or his fractional Belizean deliberately deceived him with syntax most suspect, for Quetzalsinsina never materialized; he did, however, unintentionally invoke Ixtab, the prestigious psychopomp from the Mayan pantheon. Seeing that her summoning singer was not yet dead (a prerequisite for their postmortem pilgrimage) Ixtab lent him a hand by splitting his skull in twain.

The moral, you ask? Remember, dear reader, that although you may possess twice the knowledge of the stooge sitting beside you, it may be half what you need in times of crises; that, and beware of partial Belizeans who are adroit in the bedroom but loath to take lithium.

Fruit, then Death

Cantaloupes are lovely orbs of pleasure and death, holding on to gilded softness until they are hurled at someone’s orbiting skull in the middle of a fight late at night in their apartment when the only thing in reach is the semi-softening fruit kept on the counter. (The knife block is several steps away, and something is needed more for the dramatic effect rather than a puncture wound in the pancreas). Listen to the thup that it makes as it hits the head right on the head; instead of cantaloupe bits spraying this way and that, it falls to the floor in perfect symmetry, simple halves flashing their orange flesh, dotted with mold. Their head will be fine; the cantaloupe, on the other hand, looks past its prime.