by Willow Rose
“You’d think that the Florida Wildlife Federation or some of all the wildlife organizations would know if there were jaguars in the swamps, right? They should know what kind of animals was living out there,” Jim said while the rest of the group nodded. “What about the wildlife commission or the people running the parks and recreation areas? They should at least know and alert people. Now it is all over the news and in the papers that they are surprised to know that an animal like that is on the loose. I mean people go biking in those trails. What if they meet the jaguar on one of those rides and it turns out to be hungry this time?”
“That’s why they’ve put a prize on the beast’s head,” Mike said. “Anyone who shoots it gets a five thousand dollar reward.”
Jim whistled. “I’d like to shoot it just to kill it.”
“I know what you mean,” Mike said while signaling that he was shooting something imaginary in front of him. “Just put a bullet right between its eyes.” Then he pretended to fire the shot.
“What no one seems to be asking is why the beast dragged me out of the water if it didn’t intend to kill me?" I said. They all stared at me like I had gone mad. “Why help me if I wasn’t food?” I continued. They all went quiet for a while.
“Maybe it just wanted some piece of the action,” Mike said with a grin. “It saw the alligators caught something and wanted it for itself. When it got you up on shore it realized you were too big and it had just eaten a deer some time ago so it wasn’t that hungry. Maybe it even left you there so it could come back for you later and have a midnight snack.”
“Very funny,” Regina said. “Or maybe it saw all of us standing in the distance and just decided that it was outnumbered. Maybe we scared it away.”
“Why do you even care?” Heather asked me. “You’re alive and it is a miracle. It is not like the beast has feelings for you or anything or felt mercy for you. It is not like it saved your life on purpose because it felt bad for you.”
The boys laughed.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” I said.
I began to feel pain in my wounds and called for the nurse to kill it with more drugs. As my friends left I felt a sadness inside of me that soon was replaced with anger. I needed an explanation to why this had happened to me. And none of what anyone said had gotten me closer to one. I desperately needed a logical explanation, preferably a scientific one that could ease that feeling inside and remove the thought that I had had some sort of supernatural encounter out in those dark forsaken swamps.
I had prayed desperately to God for a miracle back when my mother was sick, but didn’t get it. I had then decided that there could be no God, no creator of the universe, no higher purpose to life. Because if there was a God, he would be evil. He would deliberately have overheard my pleading, have overheard the prayers of a young innocent child, and no one could be that cruel. Not even God. So therefore, he couldn’t exist. Right now I needed confirmation that I was still right in my conclusion. I needed some sort of proof, some sort of science that could explain what had happened to me. Some answers to all of my many questions. But it failed to appear. No matter how hard I tried to find it, it just wasn’t there. No one could explain this to me. Not the police who came to get my statement for their report, not the doctors who talked to me daily about how incredibly lucky I had been. And when there was no other explanation, that was usually when people started calling things miracles. But as I said, I didn’t believe in them.
Heather and her friends came to visit me every day I was in the hospital. When they finally came to take me back home to the mansion I had made up my mind. As soon as I had recovered completely I wanted to find the jaguar myself and stand face-to-face with it one last time. I wanted to look into his glowing eyes and make sure I didn’t see anything in them. And then I was going to shoot it.
Chapter 8
Standing in the mansion’s driveway again left me with a strange feeling inside. It had only been a week since I was last there, but it felt like an eternity; Like I was a completely different guy coming back. As I got out of Mike’s car, I froze and stared at the house for a long time. I took in a deep breath of the fresh air from the water behind it and felt completely renewed. For the first time, I felt like I really saw the place, saw its colors and its grandeur. Having almost died did that to me for a while. It made me look at my surroundings differently. It wasn’t until I was back from the hospital that it really hit me that I actually almost died. That me standing there looking at the enormous building in front of me was something extraordinary. It was special.
Some people say that having a near-death experience changed them, and I agree. It does change a man. It changed me. A lot. Nothing was ever completely the same again. It wasn't something that happened suddenly, but it came sort of slowly creeping in the following days and weeks of my life. It was a process that began with the accident and later developed gradually inside of me, beginning with me appreciating being alive in a completely different way.
I had one goal at that point and that was to enjoy my life from now on, enjoy all the little things. I wanted to swim in the pool and surf on the new windsurfer that Dr. Kirk bought me and that was now waiting for me at the dock as promised. Heather brought me around the house to the dock and showed it to me on the day I got back from the hospital. It was stunning, but unfortunately I also knew it had to wait. My arm and leg were still in bandages so I had to stay out of the water at least two weeks, until they removed the stitches.
Then Heather showed me something else. She brought me to the other side of the house where a car was parked. A small white Chevrolet Corvette Stingray with T-top that could be removed. It was brand new.
“That’s your new car,” she said.
“What?”
Heather smiled. “With compliments from the doctor,” she said and dangled the keys in front of my eyes.
I walked towards it and stroked it on the side. It was truly a beauty. And had I received it before the accident I would definitely have been thrilled. But somehow it didn’t give me the joy that it was supposed to. Somehow looking at it made me feel empty inside, like it didn’t really matter, like materialistic things didn’t matter. Not the car, not even the surfer.
“Nice right?” Heather asked.
I forced a smile while nodding. Then I exhaled. I didn’t really care for this car. It meant nothing to me. To be polite, I checked it out and tried to sit in it. As I did something caught my attention. A sound in the air that grabbed me by the heart. It was laughter. It sounded like a child, like several children playing. The sound made me get out of the car and look in direction of the neighbor’s house, the big house next door. The house that seemed to be constantly humming or singing with a deep voice as if it was sad. In the yard I saw three girls running. They were wearing light summer dresses with skirts that fluttered in the wind. They all shared the same dark chestnut hair with untamable curls and perfectly sculptured faces. Even the oldest of the three, who seemed to be about my age, was playing and laughing, rolling in the grass letting her younger sisters jump on her like they hadn’t a single care in the world. It was so refreshing, haunting even, that it made me smile just watching them and hearing that childlike laughter, which sounded as clear as a bell.
“Aren’t you going to take it for a spin?” Heather asked.
“Not yet,” I said, still staring at the three girls whose wonderful simplicity drew me to them. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. The oldest girl was wearing a red fluttering dress that enhanced her tanned skin. She was jumping and throwing her younger sisters up in the air and catching them again as if they were light as air. Her long brown hair was moving in the wind like waves in the ocean. It was untamed and unpredictable. It had to be the most beautiful sight in the world.
“Don’t let them see that you are staring at them,” Heather corrected me. But I didn’t listen. At that same instant, my eyes met the eyes of the oldest of them and she smiled the most enchanting and charming smile
I had ever seen in my life. It was both innocent and so incredibly pure. Her beauty was spellbinding. Inside of me rose a feeling, a desire I had never felt before. I wanted that girl. I wanted to have her. More than that. I wanted to own her.
“I think they look like gypsies, don’t you? Rumors around town have it that they made a pact with the devil, that he is living with them and that is why strange things happen in that house. People who have been in there tell stories of them practicing dark magic. You know, fortunetelling, casting spells and curses on people and so on. Don’t stare, I said! Heaven knows, they might cast a spell on you or something," Heather continued. “I tell you, Chris, they are strange people. You definitely don’t want anything to do with them.”
“A spell?” I asked with laughter while Maria called us from the house, telling us it was time to come in and eat. We started walking towards the front door. I opened the door for Heather as she walked inside. “For someone who has grown up in a scientific doctor’s home you sure believe in many superstitious things.”
“Maybe. But I do believe one thing. Those women in there are bad news for this neighborhood,” she said as we went into the kitchen where Maria had placed a plate of food for each of us on the counter. Each of them made to our own liking. With me she just guessed what I liked and she hit it right on the spot - a big homemade American cheeseburger with bacon. Just like I had dreamed off when I was still back in my country.
On the news that same night, they were still talking about the youngsters that had been attacked by wild animals in the swamps at night a week ago. They talked about earlier rare alligator attacks that happened mostly on people’s pets but never on human beings. They also discussed the big wild cat that the youngsters were certain was a jaguar, and had to still be there somewhere, even though nobody had seen any trace of it since that night. Hunters had been trying to track it for days but with no result. I thought of Jim. Heather had told me that he had been one of those who tirelessly had walked the area surrounding the swamps looking for the beast every night since the accident, but every morning had to return without having fired one single shot. The fact was, no one could find the animal. It was like it had vanished into thin air. If it hadn’t been for my friends, I would have begun thinking it had just been a product of my vivid imagination. But they were there. And they saw what I saw. Some people came forward on the screen saying they had seen the jaguar before in a neighborhood near the swamps stalking their children as if they were to be the beast’s next meal, but they couldn’t prove it was the same animal. Their description didn’t match mine. It could just as well have been a smaller cat like a bobcat or a cheetah, they experts said. Then they started arguing whether it had been a jaguar that had attacked the young man that night. Some said jaguars didn’t live in that part of the country others said they might, that there were stories and legends of jaguars in the area all the way back to when the Spanish came. But that was many years ago, another said. Jaguars had been extinct in these areas since the beginning of the twentieth century. But then there was the story of the big black jaguar that had been killed six years ago, shot dead in someone’s yard at night. But that had been a black panther some said and others said that it was in fact a black jaguar and then an expert said that it was the same animal. That a black panther was in fact just a melanistic color variant of any of several species of larger cat, and in these parts it could be a jaguar or a puma or a mountain lion that was black. But whoever had shot it had never found the body so no one knew if it had ever really been there or it was just another story.
Some neighbors then claimed they had heard it howl at night, but jaguars didn’t howl, the expert said. They roared.
Then they went on and showed pictures of a jaguar that was supposed to be one of the world’s biggest living in a Brazilian zoo and as I studied the fierce yet elegant creature walking along the glass wall in the zoo I was more certain than ever that my attacker—or savior—had definitely been a jaguar. Up until now I’d had my doubts, but seeing this beautiful animal, the way it moved, the way it behaved with pride and grace even in captivity, I had no doubt in my mind anymore. It had been a jaguar.
On TV they started talking about how the animal was similar to the other big cats, the tiger, the lion and the leopard. Those four were the only ones that roared. They were big. A male jaguar could weigh up to two hundred pounds while the female was smaller.
“The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus,” the expert said while they showed more pictures of the jaguar from Brazil. “And is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. While dense rainforest is its preferred habitat, the jaguar will live in many other places as well -across a variety of forested and open terrains. It is strongly associated with the presence of water and is notable, along with the tiger, as a feline that enjoys swimming. So it would do well in the swamps of Florida," he concluded and continued. " The jaguar is an isolated animal, it likes to hunt alone. I like to call it an unscrupulous stalk-and-ambush predator at the top of the food chain - also known as an Apex predator. When it hunts it can go almost anywhere -which is one of the more fascinating thing about the jaguar. Whether it has to climb a three, crawl on the ground without making a sound or even dive under water to get its prey it is unstoppable. It has a short and stocky limb structure that makes it adapt for all of those things. It will hunt mostly at night but it may as well hunt during the day if necessary. The big cat will walk slowly down forest paths, listening for and stalking prey over far distances before ambushing. I also like to call it a cunning predator. It will attack from a cover and usually from the target's blind spot. Out of the blue and the prey will never know what hit it. It is something that has been fascinating to field researchers to study for years and years. It is considered peerless in the animal kingdom. There is simply no animal like this. The jaguar is one of a kind in so many interesting ways. But for me the most fascinating thing has always been its powerful bite. The jaguar has a robust head and an extremely powerful jaw. Actually it has the strongest bite of all the big cats. It is capable of biting down with two thousand pounds of force. That is a lot of power. Nothing you would like to try bite into your arm or your leg. It is twice the strength of a lion. It is a bite that allows the jaguar to pierce through something even as hard as turtle shells. It can drag an eight hundred pounds bull twenty-five feet in its jaws and it can pulverize bones with its bite. It is quite remarkable indeed."
"We have seen all these pictures of jaguars," the journalist interrupted. "But they can vary a lot in appearance I have been told. Could you elaborate a little on that subject?"
The expert leaned forward and cleared his throat. "Of course. The jaguar is a compact and well-muscled animal. The coat is generally tawny yellow, but can also range to reddish-brown and even black. It is covered in rosettes for camouflage but shape and size of the dots can vary as well."
“Is it possible that a jaguar would drag a man out of the water and leave him wounded on the ground and not kill him?” the reporter asked the expert, who claimed he had worked with big cats and especially jaguars for more than twenty-five years.
I leaned over on the couch to hear the answer.
“Absolutely not. The jaguar is a predator and a wounded man is the easiest prey. Anyone injured would either be eaten right on the spot or hidden in a bush to become food later on. Normally on killing prey the jaguar will drag the carcass to a thicket or other secluded spot. It first eats the neck and chest, then moves on to the heart and lungs. I have to say that it is rare, though, that jaguars attack humans, mainly because it is too much work, I think. Sometimes, if scared or threatened, jaguars in captivity may lash out at zookeepers. But in a situation like this where the man wasn’t able to fight for his life it would surely eat him. It is in its nature.”
“So what’s your explanation to why it would leave this young man on the ground?”
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The expert shrugged. “What can I say? Sometimes nature surprises us."
"So you don't have an explanation for it?"
"Well, it might have been scared away by something. That is my only explanation. Either that or it was a completely different kind of animal that the youngsters saw. As I have been told they had been drinking and smoking marijuana.”
Heather turned off the TV while my heart was pounding in my chest. To believe I had faced an animal like that, one that could drag an eight hundred-pound bull and could pulverize the heaviest bones with its bite, that was the strongest among the big cats, and lived to tell about it was beyond my comprehension. It was simply unbelievable, as Danielle had put it.
The next couple of days are really a blur to me. All I remember is I was a mess. I was tortured, I was in pain and agony. The voices in my head hadn't stopped and I was still seeing pictures before my eyes constantly. Pictures that made absolutely no sense to me. Images of people that I didn't know in places I had never been. Voices whispering or talking, telling me stuff I didn't know what to do with or even decipher. It all became one big mess in my head and I had no idea how to stop it again. At first I blamed it on the painkillers that I was still taking. People would say behind my back that I was depressed, that these feelings were normal when you had a trauma like that. It was expected. I just needed time.
Inside of me it was like being on an emotional rollercoaster. I slept in until after noon, I lay in bed all day indifferently watching shows on TV. One moment I would cry thinking about my mother and seeing her and wanting desperately to hear her voice again, wishing that I had died and could be with her, even sometimes wanting to die and go back to that peaceful place where I had seen her again.