The novel so far...

INTRODUCTION

The feel of water dripping cools his dry lips as he slowly awakens from what feels like a bad hangover. His eyes still feel too heavy to open but the sounds are getting very clear. Slow rhythmic screeches of rusty metal and the random eerie buzzing of fluorescent lamps almost cover the distant desperate screams of a woman. He still can't tell if she's crying or shouting out of fear, though it doesn't seem like she's in any immediate danger. She justs keeps screaming. It sounds like the word 'baby', but he can't be sure.

He opens his eyes to see the ceiling of a dark hospital room. The broken fluorescent lamp occasionally flashes to reveal a broken intravenous bottle dripping on top of his face. He yet has to regroup his thoughts and figure out how he got there.

Then it all comes like a punch in the head. Sudden depression, what happens every time he wakes up to remember who he is and what kind of life he wakes up to again. His name is Mat. A nobody. A loser, professionally, socially and in any aspect conceivable. Lives alone in a wreck of a studio, no friends, no future. He's having trouble piecing the puzzle together. How did he end up in a hospital? What's going on? What was his last memory? He's sure he could think clearer if it wasn't for that splitting headache.

He tries to sit up. Damn! What pain! Is he hurt? Was he in an accident? Right now the only thing he can focus on is the distant screaming of a woman he probably doesn't even know. Come on, stand up! He makes it, with a lot of effort, with his face tightened, suppressing the pain. Intravenous lines inside his left arm cause even more pain as he moves without considering them. Slowly, he takes the intravenous bottle off the stand. The letters are too small to read in the near darkness of small empty hospital room. Besides, his vision is still very blurry. What the hell happened last night?

He slowly pulls the lines out of his vanes and exits the room into a narrow hallway to find the same kind of darkness. Lights off except for a couple of flashing and buzzing fluorescent lamps. The screeching noise is from the chains holding the lamps which swing in a pendulum motion. He can't tell from which direction the screams are coming from.

"Hello?", he faintly asks.

Is there no one here? What kind of hospital is this? He gradually navigates through the narrow corridors, the halls, passing by empty rooms and administration desks that seem recently used. The screams of the mysterious woman continue but not as frequent as before.

"Hello?!", he says, this time louder.

Then is comes to him. What if he shouldn't be shouting? What if he is in danger and should keep his position hidden? He freezes as he makes this realization and feels the reality around him. Signs of probable struggle or disaster. People missing, someone's obviously in trouble. What the hell is going on, Mat?

A noise in the shadows takes his breath, yet he cannot move or say anything. He feels trapped, doomed. He's starting to panic, his heartbeat climbs. Small unidentified sounds complete a setting of absolute suspense and terror. Are those whispers? Is he getting crazy as he always suspected he would get? This is obviously a madhouse, like the ones in the movies, the ones they make an effort to constitute as terrifying as possible. And the sounds are illusions, probably from the medication or from his demented state. He doesn't believe that. Who believes they are psychotic? He takes a deep breath, as if to gather courage to prove himself not crazy, and moves into the darkness. The buzzing screeching lamps randomly flash as they slowly swing here and there, whispers follow him and a woman screams every now and then from no apparent direction. And the dark swallows him.

POST 1 - WHO IS MAT JACOBSON?

Mat loses himself in the hypnotic swirl of water going down the blue bathroom sink, endlessly spinning and spinning, endlessly as it seems. A drop of blood disrupts the tranquility of the clear water vortex which felt like pulling his soul down the drain swirl by swirl. He looks up into the cracked mirror. Another nosebleed.

He hates his face. A skinny face, not particularly good looking, although he could look better, if he cared enough to try. He always looks tired and definitely older than he is. Permanently unshaved and with two-colored eyes, yellow and grey, his long unattended black hair would look cool if he were this super famous rock star with an attitude and tons of money. But he's not. He's just another guy, named Mat Jacobson.

H feels so trapped in the one by two old bathroom, a "luxurious"extension to his microscopic studio flat. The walls have extensive damage from moisture, the dealing of which he's been putting off for months. He hastily wipes his nosebleed and exits.

He walks outside. The sun burns, yet he wears a long dark coat and a pair of old jeans. He never really got rid of that cough. He's in the slums of Tihuana. Not particularly safe for an American citizen with Cherokee ancestry, however, his slim weakly look and poor apparel make him less of a target for abductors. Besides, he's supposed to be protected by the gangs, at least that's what he's been told. He's not proud of what he's doing, but he had no choice. He had to adapt to survive. All those hours wasted at the unemployment office, all those stupid jobs he had to do, with no reward or future. It wasn't his fault he entered the world like this, no friends, no support, diagnosed with severe manic depression. He's had to sleep out in the streets for days at a time. Until Marty approached him. Marty, a funny name for a West Coast Latino gang member, but the word is that it comes from 'Martinez', probably another fake name.

As of late, Mat Jacobson has become part of the steroid smuggling business. A new method developed by Cuban doctors allows specific substances to be injected in a body, in an inert state, and then harvested using specific hi-tech equipment. At least that's what he was told. Mat's never been good at science, or anything else for that matter. He just goes along, passing the border twice a week, carrying the merchandise inside his own body, then undergoing a blood filtration procedure at an underground lab in East Los Angeles. He only gets a tenth of his pay in cash, the rest in a Panama bank account, which he can't touch yet. A sort of insurance for his employers. It sounds like a bad deal, but Mat had no alternatives at the time when he accepted and he had nothing to lose anyway.

The sun is high up, burning his forehead as sweat runs down his eye-brows. He's going to work now, getting ready for another injection. This one is not merchandise but something to keep his system accustomed to the whole process of transferring lethal quantities of extremely dangerous substances in his body. Although inert, the steroids still strain his body and furthermore he only has fourteen hours to cross the border and be processed after one injection session. The nosebleeds, the coughs, the nightmares and the insomnia are all side-effects of this unnatural procedure, but this doesn't scare him at all, not because he considers himself bold, but because he keeps reminding himself he has nothing to lose.

He keeps coughing. He feels dizzy and the hot sun is not helping. What is it? June? July? What kind of loser doesn't even know what month it is? He keeps battering himself like that, it's easier, more convenient to hate oneself. He walks slowly, towards the direction of the sun, not paying any attention to the poor neighborhood surrounding him, hungry, dizzy, obviously sick, and weak. Another day at work. It feels like a bad dream. It might be. The thought shapes a silly grin on his face.

POST 2 - THE INJECTION AND THE VOODOO DOLL

He's never been afraid of needles, even ones pouring slow poison in his veins.

"And that's is!", said the young doctor whose name keeps eluding Mat's memory.

In a hall of a community pediatric clinic filled with noisy kids and their indifferent mothers sits Mat, attended by his doctor, a geeky-looking Mexican wearing round glasses and a white robe.

"Have the nosebleeds stopped?" asks the doctor.

"We'll find out after this new treatment kick in, right?", Mat replies.

A woman holding a baby complains to the doctor, something in Spanish, but Mat never got to learn the language. The doctor then gets close to him so as to whisper.

"People don't like seeing you here, this is a pediatric clinic. I will talk to Marty to arrange another time for your appointments".

"Yeah, whatever, man. I've got to go anyway, this woman looks like she's going to kill us or something", he says and grins, feeling good that he made a joke.

The doctor looks at the poor-looking woman, her bare feet and her unattended hair, and he laughs.

"She's probably a whore or something", the doctor say. "And don't worry, she can't speak English."

The woman turns to Mat and stares at him, as if a witch from a fairytale, putting a hex on him with her evil gaze.

"Man, I'm off, call me for the next shot", he says as he pats the doctor on the shoulder and exits.

Outside the sun burns. The slums of Tihuana are busy, full of walking here and there, some selling stuff in the streets, some talking, some sitting pointlessly under the sun. He does the same. He finds a broken bench and sits and lights his last Mexican cigarette.

"Mister?". The call startles him.

Behind him, motionless, stands the strange woman from the hospital, this time without the baby.

"I have something for you, mister", she says.

She hands him a creepy rag doll. Without even thinking about it, he takes it and is amazed at the level of detail the voodoo doll was made, with elaborate Mayan drawings, countless stitches, multicolored pins on its head and a scary smiley face that will definitely be a part of tonights nightmares. His momentary gaze allows the woman to disappear unnoticed. He looks here and there but she's nowhere to be found. There's no way she could run this fast. Or was she a ghost? An illusion from all the drugs? Or was he somehow hypnotized by the voodoo doll and was lost in its snare for longer than he thought? His cigarette has already burned out.

POST 3 - A GOLD TOOTH

The sun has already set by the time Mat makes it to the 'Carolina' gentlemen's club, a small establishment in a dark poor corner of a dark poor highway. Street lamps are either burnt or they flicker and buzz randomly. A heap of trash bags lies accumulated almost in front of the neon-baring red brick old club.

Inside the dark moist venue lies the perfect lowlife habitat. Rough-looking gangsters play poker or talk to hookers at around ten small round tables or the three-footer corner old-school bar, tended by a yet another bum. Chicano rap music in the background and lung-filling cigar smoke complete a picture of complete decadence and deviation.

"What the hell am I doing here?", Mat thinks to himself as he looks around to find something or someone.

Suddenly he feels alone, trapped in a situation that he cannot control or affect. His heart starts pumping as he realizes that following up on an unknown gang courier's call for a business meeting at that venue might not have been his brightest decision yet. Yet he feels exhilarated. It's been so long since he feared death. Adrenaline pumps burning adrenaline through his veins, faster and faster, his pupils dilate, his breathing heightens. He feels so alive! With an improved sense of the environment, he spots the table with the four meanest-looking gangsters who just happen to stare at him. One of them waves a gesture of invitation. Mat walks with a sense of audacity towards them.

They say something in Spanish and they laugh, probably at him. He doesn't like it, more so that he never got to learn the language. The 'alpha male' of the bunch is a slim dark serious-looking Mexican with a goatee and a weird hieroglyphic tattoo under his right eye. His designer boots and jeans combined with an ironed white shirt seemed somewhat out of context with the rest of the common-looking flock. The other three stand up and leave while eye-balling Mat.

"Sit, brother!", kindly instructs the well-groomed gang member. That accent is strange, he can't place it.

Mat plays it cool. He sits opposite his host and grabs one of the beers the others left behind on the table. He sips while thinking of any disease he should be worrying about. Too late.

"I am Hector and I called you here because I have a way out for you."

"A way out of what?", asks Mat with a fake mask of indifference. He feels dizzy, that was no ordinary beer.

"I know you work for Marty and his gang", Hector states. "And I know Marty. He's gona get you killed, brother."

An uncomfortable pause.

"I am not a man of many words so I will simply ask", Mat mumbles, the effect of the poorly brewed beer evident on his drowsy eyes. "What do you want?"

The polite gangster replies in momentary silence before answering. "I will tell you all about yourself and then you will see how serious I am about doing business with you. And then I'll offer a deal which you will find very, very beneficial, brother."

Hector smiles to reveal a gold front tooth.

POST 4 - ACQUAINTANCES 

Hector and Mat lock engaged in a stare-down, right there in that dark and degenerate gentlemen's club, in their own little battlefield amongst drunken lowlifes and dirty whores of all kinds.

"I should tell you what I know, brother, but not how I know it", Hector suggests. "Let's face it, you're a loser! You don't have a father and your half-Cherokee mother was committed when you were still very young. The homes you grew up in didn't help you much, did they? What was it your high school bullies used to call you? Cursed by God? You're thirty-three and you haven't achieved anything in life, since you keep a destructive misanthropist view, as your antidepressant-prescribing psychiatrist put it. Got to be hell hating what you are, brother. You don't use drugs because you fear the aftereffects of depression. Now you work as a 'high tech' smuggling mule for Marty and you don't know much about who he works for and what you're really transporting. No future, no dreams. You're better off dead, brother. Did I leave anything behind?" 

A brief uncomfortable silence follows.

"Oh yeah, and you had a sweetheart", Hector adds. "You sent her a letter once but she never got to read it. The poem's name was 'Love and defiance', if I'm not mistaken."

Mat frowns as his new 'brother' exposes him in a demeaning manner, yet he grins in indifference.

Mat calmly replies: "What you don't know about me is my ability to accurately profile people. From what you tell me about me, in reality you reveal things about you. You are definitely not a low-level gangster and you make no effort in hiding it. You're not cartel either. Cartel's rarely invest in such detailed background checks just to sell something, as you clearly are. You don't use cocaine or any other hard drugs, and your boys are mercenaries, probably too used to wearing army boots to a gentlemen's club. That Mayan glyph tattoo on your face is either there to impress South American cartel guerrillas, from whom you maintain interests, or are there to testify to your Native-American ancestry, your loyalties therefore being in question. What you don't know about me is the information not accessible to any experienced private investigator and the government combined. I'd say you're either an undercover cop with dirt on him or a rogue secret service agent with a personal agenda."

Hector seems disturbed. He probably didn't expect such intelligence from a total loser, as he was told Mat was. "Take this envelope" he says as he presents Mat with a small sealed envelope, the number 19 written on it. "Open it when you feel you need a chance to escape this shit. I can help make you become the man you always wanted. Money is not everything, but it will allow you to re-invent yourself, give yourself a break, get out of that shit vortex of dispair and maybe live your life. And I pay well, brother."

Mat's mind attempts to create an image of greatness, dreams and aspirations and drive! He quickly seizes the process of hope being created and Pandora's box of hope and disappointment from being opened! He hates hope so much... Yet he loves it!

He takes the envelope.

POST 5 - PLASTIC SURGEON

'6:14 a.m.' states the cheap electronic watch. The bus is late again. The western part of the Tihuana slums seems peaceful when the day is young. The tranquil view of empty decadent streets and the dim promise of a better day force a smile on Mat's melancholic face. He keeps on touching the envelope Hector gave him in the inner pocket of his coat. 

He sees the old bus in the distance on his right hand side, a cloud of dust behind it, out of which a sports car rushes out, its engine roaring. The gorgeous white Nissan GTR with its pricey modifications makes a statement about its owner in this part of the world. He is not to be trifled with. 

The Nissan aggressively parks in front of Mat. Its dark window slides down and to reveal Marty's bold head and sly smile. 

"What's up!", the gangster shouts!

"Hey, man", Mat replies, trying to hide his fatigue. 

"Get in the car, I'll take you to the L.A. today."

"You don't have to, Marty. I'm taking the bus."

"Man, fuck that bus. Get in the fucking car, there's a lot of heat on our ass lately and be need to talk too."

The bus stops behind the sports car and horns. It's in the bus stop space. Is the driver crazy? Doesn't he know better than to horn at gangsters?

Marty almost climbs out of the car window. "Fuck you! I'll kill you and your family and your pet goldfish, you fucking dead man!" The rest is in Spanish, Mat can't figure it out. He should learn the damn language already.

The startled bus driver hastily drives off without even allowing his passengers to step down.

"Now you leave me no choice, man", says Mat, obviously irritated.

Marty laughs hysterically. "Come on dude, you're gonna be late for your doctor's appointment!"

On the way to the border there's absolute silence. The border control is uncommonly tight this time but after a half-hour of checking the car and interrogating the two, they are allowed to move on.

On the way to Los Angeles Marty shows off his extensive collection of Latino hip-hop and his knowledge of the lyrics too. All Mat does is try to refuse offers of cocaine by Marty who sniffs it frequently off the dashboard and howls like a maniac. What a headache!

Just before entering the city, the music stops.

"Mat, I need you to be extra careful today. You're my boy, I trust you and that's why you gotta know that the cartel is in a war right now and sooner or later, you and me, we're getting involved."

"War? Isn't that a constant thing?"

"This time it's different, dude. Wake up, it's a new world out there. It's all high-tech shit out there. Cartels are not about land and plantations anymore. It's about having the technology and the right people for the job. There's this other faction that's moving in on all the cartels. They've been hitting strategic targets and buying or scaring off even the most loyal members of the cartel families. Something big's coming, I can feel it."

"Man, I just work for you guys, I'm not part of you, I'll never be part of your gang or cartel or whatever you want to call it", Mat declares. "I mean no disrespect to you, I thank you for giving me this job and all, but I can't be doing this much longer, you know it's going to kill me soon, right? Whatever comes this way, just try and keep me out of it."

"But you're not out of it, dude", Marty insist. "They're coming for you. You're a special guy for us and they know it. You'll be contacted by someone soon and cause you can't be scared off, they'll try to buy you off."

Mat tries to decide if Marty knows about his contact with Hector and he is just playing with him or if he really doesn't know anything. Was it Hector he was talking about or is there something else out there ready to intrude his bad yet simple lifestyle? Is he in danger? Who to trust now that things are getting a bit more complicated with the promise of getting even more so?

Not a word crosses them until they reach the posh East L.A. clinic. In the elevator, Mat contemplates on Marty's last suggestion: "Go to the doctor now, get your blood processed. I can't take you back later, gotta stay here run some errands. Call me later for a drink." He's never asked him out to socialize before.

The elevator doors slide open to a huge marble sign in a modern-minimal hall saying "Patrick J. Schneider, Creating Beauty". Just another glorified plastic surgeon with a telent for marketing. The huge bright hall leads to a modern lounge area where numerous high class older women make small talk, probably boasting about their new silicone addition, desperately trying to cover their unjustifiably  miserable boring life. They completely ignore his presence. He doesn't look their level.

After enduring an hour of annoying blabbering and reading annoying lifestyle magazines, a hot nurse walks in.

"Next appointment, Mr Jacobson?"

POST 6 - PLASTIC SURGEON (continued)

Dr. Tod Vasiliev, as his door sign clearly states, is a successful plastic surgeon, known for his relatively fine work on celebrities and upper class housewives. He writes articles in the gutter press and maintains a high profile in high society, frequently seen flamboyantly shaking hands and making smalltalk with politicians and powerful lobbyists. What doesn't fit in the whole picture is the fact that the good doctor works for the cartels, using his legitimate operations as cover for processing Mat's blood and God knows what else.

"Mat, my friend, come in, come in", says the expressive doctor with a charming Russian accent.

He wears a dark suit and tie, and weird gold ring on his small finger, a testament to his political agenda. His bald head and round glasses make his eccentric smile rather creepy and intimidating. 

Mat enters the round office, a bright little hall, with minimal design. The metallic furniture seem rather cold to sit on so he prefers to stand.

The doctor opens up a bottle of fine malt scotch and hastily tries to poor some in a couple of shots, with clumsy shaky moves. 

"I know you're not supposed to drink alcohol in your condition, my friend, but I don't think the users of our product will mind", explains Dr. Tod.

Mat sighs. "I thought that Russians drunk vodka."

"A drink for peasants! Not for refined people like us", the doctor declares. "Cheers!"

They drink the shots. Exquisite!

"Doctor, I wanted to talk to tell you about my symptoms. I haven't seen any improvement."

"But have they become worse?"

"More or less the same", Mat states.

"Then we're fine, my friend! Yes?", says the funny doctor as he prepares his special tools and equipment.  "Please, come this way."

Mat is dragged to the back room of the office, a small examination room with extremely high-tech medical machines, monitors and computers. 

"You know the drill by now, Mat. But as a professional doctor it is my duty to explain the steps again and again, so as to avoid any future misunderstandings or, God forbid, any mistakes. You will sit here for the next three hours, your blood will run through a tube into the filtration device, which I'm not supposed to own by the way, and then it will separate the product from your blood. I will be monitoring your vitals and also take blood samples to try and find a more effective treatment for your side effects. Make no mistake, my friend, this procedure applies a great deal of stress on your body and my job is to make the necessary adjustments so it can withstand it all."

Mat frowns at the thought of being a lab rat for steroid smuggling. "So what happens to the product when you extract it from my blood?"

The doctor laughs. "A courier picks it up and I suppose it is processed at a lab elsewhere. I don't really care what they do, I just do this for the right contacts, if you know what I mean, my friend."

"I know what you mean, doctor", says Mat.

"Now, let us begin", says the doctor with an unsuitable enthusiasm for a grim procedure.

During the unpleasant three hours, Mat could swear he's had a deja vu of this day. Since he talked with Hector he hasn't been able to stop thinking about her.

TO BE CONTINUED...