Cool Specs (Part 1)

Los Cabos grew a flourishing tourism industry and a range of luxury hotels on the rise. Rocas del Cabo, located on the rocky edges by the seaside run by an American expat who happened to be a renowned gun dealer. This resort added another ten bungalows in ten days. Ibañez worked at the front desk as a receptionist-cashier for the last four years. She joined as a twenty year old girl with short-cut hair and in the photograph on her application form she was wearing a pair of full-rim, rectangular eyeglasses.

The manager was screwing in a window panel to the mounting frame when she arrived to fetch him for a telephone call at the reception. He grabbed her arm and she flipped off reluctantly. He grabbed again and pulled her to his bungalow across the swimming pool with some resistance. The work force watched with enthusiasm. He locked her in, stripped her, her pink shorts with brass buttons already gashed in the holes. He had sex with her just like yesterday and every other morning. That done, she came out buttoning her shirt, passing by the pool usually raided by scorpions.

Ibañez Trevizo was born in the small village of Miraflores and her ancestors believed to have links with some English settlers. She attended a school in San Jose Viejo. She recently told her mother that she’d soon be going to Texas to find job and education. Ibañez biked few kilometres to her lodge at Cabo San Lucas.

 

As the sun dropped in her eyes where she was seated behind the counter in the front office bungalow, the sky turned red down to the rocks. Her skin toned. The endless noises of the clashing waves caught in her ears and in bed. Quite a number of tourists were getting ready to leave. They’d travel a long way by bus to catch a flight from Los Cabos International. On her second attempt, she suspended another customer copy of the sales slip after running the payment on the American Express card machine. In fact it was a gold card. The tourist in his rush never returned to obtain it. One did. She freaked out an act, hastily running her fingers on the pile and produced the customer copy still attached to the sales slips, apologetically.

She altered one of those slips written for $1193 to $4193 and picked three thousand US dollars from the cash collection, tucked in her panties with the customer copy and wrapped the banking that she would post in the following day. And she was off on a four-day leave by the end of the month.

Ibañez visited her mother and her six year old daughter to say goodbye. That night she left the house in Miraflores, wind blowing her long black hair that she never trimmed for years. The breeze filled her nostrils with the scent of floras. She walked down the dark alley in a red-orange poncho and an emerald green pair of jeans. Those eyeglasses often made her look older. She carried a shoulder bag with few clothes and a handbag. She loved carrying large bags; a messy woman. That was the last time her mother and daughter saw her go.

Not far out she caught a red pickup car with a black bumper. A thickset guy at the wheels asked her, “Where are you running?”

“I’m not running. I’m going to El Paso. Drop me at San Bernabé,” she told him.

He passed a bottle of Tequila, “Have sum.”

She threw a pint down her throat and instantly caught a ripping pain, “What’s in this?”

“Poison, I guess,” said the driver.

“Where are you heading?”

“To Mexicali…it’s a long way.”

“Then take me to Mexicali,” she said and took another shot that pinched her brains. She passed out. The driver grabbed the bottle before it hit the bottom.

 

She was creased in the middle of a huge crowd. The band got interrupted somehow as a portion of the stage buckled. In a moment the band regained playing ‘Como La Flor’ and she knew the recent tejano number one hit. It was Selena singing on stage making her debut in Mexico.

Ibañez couldn’t move an inch back or forth and in the sweat of an afternoon sun. Close to the end of the concert there happened to be a stampede she caught in that knocked her out unconscious. She was taken to a hospital nearby.

She recovered as she was wheeled on stretcher down a hallway. Her buttons undone, her bra loose, in order to ease her breathing. Some blood showed on her face. Soon she was connected to glucose drips and she dozed off.

A moment later, she woke to find a stocky man in a tarnished apron standing beside her bed. “How are you feeling?”

She glanced drowsily, “Where am I?”

“At the Gleco Plus, you fainted.”

“Mexicali?”

“Mexicali! No, no,” uttered the doctor, “You are in Monterrey. Where are you from?”

“Baja…”

“Baja! What brings you here?”

“I don’t know.” Ibañez couldn’t remember what happened after climbing the red pickup car. “Where is my bag?”

“Nobody brought anything, dear. Here are your glasses.”

“My money, it’s all gone?”

“I guess so,” his name tag read ‘Juan Carlos S Mireles, MD’. “Now, you don’t need to worry about that. What’s your name?”

“Ibañez Trevizo.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” she said.

“Do you live here?”

She shook her head, “No.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a hotel receptionist at Los Cabos.” She told the doctor who dropped his pad on the bed in a shrug and thumbed the nurses to leave.

He spoke softly to the patient, “I’m afraid, your tests show you carry a parasitic disease that need to be treated urgently. You can’t leave the hospital but I will fix you. Don’t worry.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s kind of thing that causes skin damage and not too good to come in contact with people. You have been infected by a scorpion.”

Ibañez dropped back on the pillow. Dr Mireles planted her with a sedative.

Hours later, she woke up in another room. She was changed into a pair of silky white pyjamas. Washed, shaved, dressed and her face touched with makeup. She had not figured out yet. The nurse passed her a taco to eat and said, “You’re in the Psychiatric Ward, Left Wing. Doctor will see you soon. Take this glass of water and stay in bed strictly. No toilet. And take off your specs.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Hush!”

“What’s the time?”

“Two-forty in the morning,” and she left.

It took another thirty minutes or so. Then she saw the faces behind the glass panel. Dr Mireles entered closing the door behind. “Well, let me check your blood pressure.” Doctor scanned her and administered a weird looking injection. Its content looked like urine or rather yellow. He snapped for a nurse. Ibañez felt the ripping effect suddenly in her brains. She remembered the red pickup car. She tried to recall what happened next.

They fastened her to the bed like a woman laid to deliver a baby. Her wrists secured to the side shafts and ankles up and wide. The door opened and a small crowd of people entered. She could tell there was an imperious man wearing a black jacket, a tall nervous guy in coat and tie and others in jacket outfits pausing behind.

Dr Mireles announced, “She’s my third patient and my first demo…”

“Cut it off and go ahead with it,” said the man wearing the black jacket.

“Well, alright,” the doctor dropped a pendulum dangling in her eyes. It was a long chain of beads with a tiny crystal skull hanging at its bottom.

The small crowd watched while standing as the doctor began to swing it gently in her eyes. “Watch,” he said, “keep your eyes focused. You’ll fall asleep…a deep sleep. You can hear the waves crushing on the rocks by the shores. A brine atmosphere in a radiant glow and the sun going down...beyond is the tranquil sea out of reach. Go there. A bottomless ocean where the galleys take you far away…to the world of pirates…dream…”

Suddenly, Ibañez felt bugs crawling under her skin, along the thighs and a shudder in her legs. She released an orgasm damping her silky pyjamas. She continued in a series of releases, climaxing involuntarily or rather it was a panic attack. Doctor Mireles’s newly discovered medicine from scorpion venom attacked her brain cells.

At that point she was in no order to stop it. She couldn’t get her hands free. She stirred in bed. And after every surge her legs contracted with sudden shocks in her body. Her hair thrown messily over shoulders, her eyes partially closed. The bed rocked and finally the girl turned dry.

The crowd observed with amazement and they dispersed to the outer hall. Dr Mireles quickly wrapped up his experiment administering an anaesthetic to the patient. “Now you rest. Sleep well…” or she’d die. Only the nurse knew of side-effects of his deathly compound.

Ibañez was aware of everything that happened even in the hypnotised state and noticed the imperative man bore a huge silver scorpion on the back of his black jacket. She dozed off.

The doctor exchanged words with the crowd outside who seemed fascinated of his demonstration. Dr Mireles expected a final word from the wealthy man in the black jacket, Tony ‘Scorpio’ Facundo. But it didn’t come. “I’m shocked,” he uttered, “Distinguished and you did a prodigious job. Perhaps, we’d like to see a more revealing exercise.” Scorpio left with his bodyguards in his bullet-proof Mercedes-Benz.

The tall nervous man asked, “What now?”

Doctor replied with much apprehension, “The effects are only transient. If she survives in twenty-four hours, my experiment is a success. I know it works. You have no clue how many times I’ve tried, Filipe. Go tell the old man I’ve done it.”