Double or Nothing: One in a Million

A Photographer's Dreams

For as long as Emilio had been a young child, exploring the ruins of Latin America and finding his love for the beautiful otherworldly place of Peru, he had always been lfascinated by his heritage and his family's old treasures. Emilio was now sitting on an airplane from Georgia to New Mexico to travel to Peru for a week away from the office. Emilio worked at a magazine called Global Home, a stack of papers that brought the outside in and took you through a wonderful journey of mystique and wonder.

Emilio muttered that jingle to himself as he drummed his fingers on the edge of the armrest, tapping his foot to the beat of an ancient tarp he had found while digging through old archives. The tape was a recording of an ancient manuscript from Latin American history, performed on a traditional flute by one of Emilio's friends in the storage spaces. The notes rang in a tune that could be deceptively translated into an ancient proverb, one that, through Morse Code, could be read very roughly by the average archaeologist.

But Emilio was no archaeologist with four or eight years of college beneath his belt. All he had was a packet of trail mix from the flight attendant, a water bottle and some brochure of New Mexico, not even his final flight. As Emilio tilted his eyes to hover across the window, high above the clouds in an ocean of blues and whites, he was stunned to see that someone new had taken a seat next to him. She was fairly taller, with long, bronze hair and a jawline so sharp it could brush paper and tear it into ribbons.

She wore dark sunglasses and had a strangely familiar aura about her while she rummaged through a leather satchel filled with old papers and lipsticks. Emilio noticed, then, that one of the lipsticks had fallen to the floor, just beneath the woman's foot by her left. Wishing to be helpful, the photographer offered his help in reaching for the lipstick, handing it to a very grateful woman who expressed her gratitude with a handshake and a warm, ivory smile.

The woman explained how that particular stick was her grandmother's, which she would use whenever she went dancing on Friday nights with her husband. Emilio was touched by the story; he himself had a family who would do the same. The two shared many stories as the plane landed in New Mexico, and Emilio was even amazed to learn that the woman he had been speaking with was also traveling to Peru for a photo shoot at a friend's wedding.

Emilio excitedly brought up his career as a photographer and agreed to take some pictures for the woman before he left for the ruins in the mountains. The woman was overjoyed, and the two spent some time at the airport that evening to wait for the flight to Peru. During this time, the photographer and the woman grew quite close, sharing stories and their travels and slowly becoming deeply entranced in one another. It was only a matter of time before they rented a hotel room for two that night.

Emilio learned then that his guest was not whom she told herself to be. A strange and terrifying nightmare unfolded itself from the alluring form of the woman, revealing the beast inside. Although flustered and a bit stunned, Emilio was amazed by the abstract beauty of the creature more so than their physical beauty. He offered to take photos and return them to the Demon when he had finished. The uncloaked and revealing Demon, gushing with joy when they had learned the mortal cared little for their physical appearance, agreed to let the man take some photos.

In exchange for his honesty and his true self, Emilio was rewarded with a simple charm and the greatest, wildest night of his life, one of many strange dreams and vivid hallucinations. When he awoke the next morning, however, tossing and turning over in his bedsheets, Emilio was surprised to discover that the Demon had disappeared, leaving a stack of photographs and a small trinket sitting beside the pictures. Upon inspecting the trinket, Emilio found a small wood carving depicting a winged Demon with a necklace of teeth draped over open breasts.

Its eyes lingered in rings of delicately shaped hoops while a long tongue wrapped around its gaping stomach. A note was attached to the small trinket. Emilio flipped the note over, reading this note: "You are a rarity of honesty and curiosity among mortals. For your courage and integrity, this charm will protect you when the time comes." Emilio pocketed the charm, unsure of what the message meant. However, the dialogue implied to the photographer the existence of some ancient god, perhaps an ancient Mayan or Aztec from his quest for the ruins of Peru.

So Emilio held onto the bauble, and when he had reached his final breath, gently cradling the charm in his withered and ancient palm, he was surprised to find the very same Demon before him, as shimmering and angelic as the first time he had met them. They spoke as faint and as well as they could before the Demon gave Emilio one final gift, a soft, warm embrace as the photographer drifted into the afterlife, in a world where the Demon could never go. Emilio was ninety seven when he passed away. Throughout his life he had documented over seventy unique structures and historical monuments of the Latin American world.

Jack's eyes fluttered in the dark, his body outlined in a pale gold glimmer in the darkness of the void. Faint gray particles wavered in the air, rising from the floor and dissipating as they passed through the air. Jack climbed to his feet, shaking his head with a weary hand. "Ugh...what a wreck," he mumbled, dragging his hand down through his facial features. As his eyes adjusted to the absence of light and the sounds echoing around the infinite abyss, his eyes rested on something on the dark horizon.

Amazingly, Jack wasn't as alone in this void as he had thought. There was another person trapped here. They were a bit shorter than Jack, and their hair was tied back into a bun to compliment a disheveled suit and a pair of glasses. Something snapped and twitched in Jack's stomach, although he had a faint feeling that he knew why. Jack broke into a sprint now, his boots echoing with large white ripples across the surface of deep black abyss, his arms swinging back and forth while his trench coat billowed out behind him.

Jack's eyes stung with the edges of tears and his throat ached with a wild and uncontrollable cocktail of shock and joy. He had found the one he loved so dearly, the same lady he had been searching for this whole time. But as Jack grew closer, he felt his grip slackening, his boots treading thick, oozing void as he struggled to wade closer to the outline of his love. And in a flash, the entirety of the floor gave away beneath him, sucking Jack down into the abyss as the lady turned around, her eyes scanning the blank and motionless horizon.

"What was that?" She asked, calling into the abyss. But nobody responded.