Asunción

Porâsý, my grail, my prison, mi sepultura—a burned-out building on a street corner in urban Paraguay. Derelict, forgotten, reinforced, and locked up with panel upon panel of corrugated metal and scrap lumber, but still, she is beautiful.

From her roof, three stories up, I take in the night lights and the haze of the city. Traffic and sirens—sirens, how fitting—wild dog howls of overpopulated spaces. Then a smell, just for me, with my scorched-raw senses, of death and blood, bile and stink of fresh carcasses; this smell gets wafted from the slaughterhouses upriver. A taunt and a torture, that warm balmy stench, reminding me constantly, I’ll never kill again. I’ll never again scrub any of it from the cracks in my knuckles, from the smile-lines on my grimy face.

To say she found me is an adequate assessment.

Years back, when wandering the States, I ducked into a restaurant to ditch a university cop. I had seen recognition in his beady, little eyes. Skipping city to city got harder and harder as tech and communications constantly improved. I’d have to call it quits, do my worst killing then bury myself, fight the urges, clean up and settle down. Or I could go somewhere else and start again? But where?

My waitress caught me staring at a cigar-box-sized photo screwed into the wall by my booth.

“That’s Porâsý, in Paraguay...Asunción,” she said. She placed napkins and silverware in front of me.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Look closer,” she pointed with her pen. “In the bottom corner, scratched light but clear. Porâsý.” She tapped her pen on the tabletop. “A professor sat here one time, in the booth. He couldn’t stop staring at it either. He showed me and asked if I knew who Porâsý was. I told him if it wasn’t on the menu then I didn’t really give two flips.” She smirked and tapped her watch. “And so. Break time’s coming up and I need a ciggy real bad. Whatcha want?”

I ordered an open-faced turkey melt, top of the menu, asterisks around it. That made it special, I supposed. “Thank you, Marissa,” I smiled a well-practiced, curlicue smile. Had we made a connection?

She seemed confused at me knowing her name until I reminded her she wore a name badge like most waitresses do. I locked my eyes on her, studying her face, neck, and movements all the way to the swinging kitchen doors. I hope she enjoyed her “ciggaroo” or whatever stupid thing she called it. Four days later, I stalked and cornered her in a library basement. I dropped a small book about Guaraní mythology in the blood by her side. That was the menu now. She could read it in hell for all I cared.

Hell, underworld, mythology, religion, it all blurs depending on who you are and where you’re from. Sometimes your origin and your birthplace differ.

This photo in the restaurant, you see, was a building...no...the building, Porâsý, erect and pristine, crisp black and white on glossy paper. Large windows, open eyes, reflecting bright skies. Birds lined up on the eaves and abutments. The walls, they breathed, taking full, contrabajo breaths of South American sunshine. People peeked out, waving to a crowd below, like a cruise ship leaving port for the first time. Porâsý, she was a building as much as a celebration, like a birthday or wedding, hidden meaning etched deep in the architecture—serpents and owls, jungle cats and hybrid creatures. Devils maybe. My people, at last.

I’d been there before, despite my humble, mid-western birth and landlocked childhood in dusty places with nothing to do but find dead rodents, bury them, then come back later to dig them up for inspection. Sometimes they met me, little ghosts, on the mounds at the site of their interment. I had heard that seeing a white, headless dog’s ghost indicated buried treasure underneath. I decided to give it a try after finding one roadside, bloating in the sun, tire marks across its hind legs. Imagine my anger, a budding monster’s anger, at finding no treasure—only a headless dog’s skeleton. I cracked it to pieces and scattered it to the demon winds. The ghosts showed less frequently after that, then stopped altogether when I started offing people while living the hobo lifestyle I picked up from reading Beatnik books. But never had my travels reached Asunción.

So, curious, it was, my stone-ground familiarity with a place several thousand miles away. Another country. Another culture. Another hunting ground.

Six months and many falsified documents later, I put my foot on the tarmac at Silvio Pettirossi International Airport, Asunción. The FBI lost my trail back in Los Angeles where I left a chest-high stack of bodies to mulch in an old lady’s garden shed. 

I acquired a cuidacoche named Len who swore he had the knowledge, the back-of-hand familiarity with downtown streets and alleys. He could get me drugs, and he did. He showed me prostitutes, vagrants, and those who probably wouldn’t be missed, so he said. He promised more drugs and more money, anything, just stay away from Porâsý—that place eats monsters like you, amigo. 

He didn’t understand. I had no choice. I searched for recognition in his dimming eyes while I choked him to the floor. He died not understanding. Like most victims do.

It took three more weeks to find her on my own.

Tonight, I remember his warning, and my obsession. This pride and arrogance that made me follow the ghost of another headless white dog into squalid streets where I finally found my Porâsý waiting on its corner facing southwest, en fuego. On fire, cracking and burning, she moaned as inner timbers gave way to char and ash. The stone walls stood firm, a purifying oven for misery, mystery, and decadence captured within.

Double doors opened in a blast of scathing air, and a bride appeared wearing her long dress laced with flame. I approached slowly, wedding steps. She took me in her arms and we fell backwards into the grand entrance of the building. Trapped inside. Tricked. Kept. Forever.

I awoke, non-corporeal, a long time later on a night like tonight. I share this space—this scorched, empty tomb—with at least six others like me, yet we can’t talk or touch. The bride, after collecting us, ascended to celestial rewards. From the roof I look south. I ache to see Patagonia and the aurora beyond, she’s there every night, a pinprick of purity, a star in iridescent skies. Out of sight to me. Out of reach. As most are.

©2022 J. Brian Reed