Psychofauna

Week 4: Open Up

Previously: The Heathens are on a rampage to re-enchant the world.

○ The Great Opening: Week Four, Caracas

"Mauricio, wake up," whispered his mother in Spanish. "There are men at the door."

Mauricio's eyes sprung open. He threw off the blanket and dashed past his mother, snatching a white tank top off the dresser. He crawled into the living room on all fours so no one could see him through windows. Then he made it to the back of the room.

There was a loud thumping sound on the door followed by a muffled voice: "Open up!"

"Mama, tell them I slept at a friend's house," he said, stretching his arms through the tank top. He unbarred the shutters to the back window. "Mama, no matter what happens, I––."

"I know. Go!" she coughed.

Mauricio jumped out the window into the alleyway.

Distantly, he heard his mother open the door, and a man saying, "Ma'am, we have undeniable evidence that your son broke lockdown and organized an illegal protes...." The voice faded away as Mauricio climbed over bags of trash, using an electrical pole as leverage to vault to the corrugated steel roof.

"Hey!" The men had heard him.

But Mauricio was already leaping from roof to roof down toward the bottom of the barrio. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Terraced ranchos built with cinderblocks and cardboard sloped upwards, downwards, and to both sides as far as the eye could see.

Sparing a glance behind, Mauricio saw that the men were jumping down toward him. One pointed and lifted a walkie-talkie. He was reporting Mauricio's location.

When Mauricio turned back around, a man leapt down in front of him, sprinting to cut him off.

He dodged left. Straight into the elbow of a man in a bulletproof vest.

Mauricio stumbled backward, holding his nose.

The man took out a pistol and aimed it. "Let me see your hands!"

Mauricio removed his hands from his nose and held them to the sun. Blood dripped down his white tank top.

The other men caught up. They surrounded him on all sides as Mauricio's neighbors gathered above and below to watch the unfolding scene.

"On the ground! On the ground, now!" yelled the man with the gun.

Slowly Mauricio lowered himself to his knees. "Where are your badges?"

A man with a mustache walked forth and showed him: Sergeant Perez, it read. Policía Nacional Bolivariana – Venezuelan National Police.

"You're fucked," barked his comrade with the bulletproof vest, still aiming his gun at Mauricio's head.

He was right. Mauricio was fucked.

"How can you support him?" Mauricio shouted at the ground. "When the people I know need to sell neighbors their toothpaste by the squeeze. When my grandma can't afford her medicine! How can you support a dictator?"

No one spoke. Yet immediately, Mauricio had an answer: ...They didn't. They didn't support their dictator. Mauricio didn't know how he knew. He just knew.

He looked up at the cop with the mustache, the one who'd identified himself as Sergeant Perez. "Being a Chavista does not mean being the president's lapdog."

Sergeant Perez glanced at the other cops. How can you support a dictator? None of them did. Now, somehow, they all knew: They each hated the president.