LOUCURA A silhouette of a man is his 30’s, staggered around on a dimly lit street. The body collapsed into a drain left open by construction workers. His face was bloody. The eye sockets, untenanted, gawked at the cloudless night sky. David, a small-town botanist had recently visited the Bolivian share of the Amazon forest, for his research. He managed to get a spot on the team of researchers chosen by the state’s forestry department to study the impact of the recent bushfire. The team decided to camp close to the river away from the fire’s suspected origin. Even after a long day of standing around and making notes in the humid patch of land burnt to a crisp by the fire, David was unable to sleep. He decided to take a walk around the camp keeping in mind not to wander off too far. The moonlight was bright enough to prevent him from running into trees. As he lazily worked his way around the bushes and trees, his eye caught sight of something bright a little further away from where he was standing. It was almost shiny. Curious, he ventured closer to investigate the source of this light. He found himself in the middle of a canopy whose trees were covered by some sort of a creeper. He made a mental note to check the place out during the day. The leaves of this creeper had a reddish hue with green luminous veins. The veins shone under moon light giving the area a ‘glow’. The leaves were similar to those of a grapevine, with shallow lobes. He decided to take a cutting from the plant back home to study it better. Immediately after he returned from the site, he planted the vine in a small pot, watered it and placed it in his backyard so it to grow a bit before he could further study it. A few days passed and he eventually forgot about it. The vine had grown and spread, covering his entire backyard. It had even grown up the walls of his house. By the time David remembered about this unusual plant he had left outside, the plant had begun to flower. The flowers were small, had a pistil with a long style and a feathery stigma. Some with large amounts of spores. Male. The almost non-existent petals were pale yellow. He concluded from his brief observation that the unscented flowers were wind pollinated. Since he was engrossed in some other work, David had not paid attention to the plant and this time it had managed to cover his entire ranch-styled house. He finally made some time to study the plant as it began spreading to his neighbour’s tree close to the fence. A day passed. He studied the vine from flower to root. Nothing. Another day passed and something felt off. He was more on edge than usual. He didn’t feel like going out. Days passed and David hadn’t stepped out of his house. He had not spoken to another human and everything had started to seem unreal. The more he isolated himself, the blurrier his senses felt. He started hallucinating. Flashes of memory from his visit to the forest, memories of him as a child who loved exploring. The memories then turned into something dark, almost evil. He felt as if something sinister had taken over his body. Suddenly, he got a call from the forestry department, which snapped him back to reality. A friend said he would come pick him up for work and is waiting for him outside. As he peeked through the curtains he saw a man in a Honda Civic. Something wasn’t right. He was new to that town and did not have any friends in the department. Even if someone did come to pick him up, it was dark outside. A thought, ‘Is it the plant? Is it causing me to hallucinate?’ crosses the biologists mind. Was he allergic to the spores? The fear creeped back in. Without
realizing, he started to douse the vine and his house with kerosene from his garage. He had set his house ablaze. The episode of psychosis had died out. Everything started to become clear. He looks towards his right where his neighbour Ben lives and recalls the vine growing on the tree. Upon closer inspection, the vine had encroached Ben’s whole driveway and porch. Rushing towards the house, he notices the door wide open. Inside was a mess. There was blood splattered everywhere and Ben was nowhere to be seen. On the bloodstained mirror, a scribble reads‘don’t trust what you see’. ***End***