Stephen Randel - Trail of the Chupacabra

“Two louse?” a confused Ziggy mumbled as he immediately swatted away some imaginary lice crawling up the back of his neck. While he danced and spun in the middle of the street, a passing tourist threw some spare change at his feet. Positive reinforcement always motivated the drugged-out hippy. Ziggy kept up his twirling and contorting as a small crowd began to gather. He spun and twisted to the sounds of loud music pouring out of a nearby club. The LSD was really rolling now. Ziggy began to blurt out nonsense. He couldn’t control himself.

“Vegan pancakes!” he cried out as he threw his arms over his head and ran in place, his skinny legs pumping up and down as fast as they could go. “Weasels, man! No, don’t tell them!” he cried as he clamped his hands over his mouth. People in the crowd began to throw more money at his feet. Soon, Ziggy was pirouetting around a small pile of bills and coins like some kind of skinny, tie-dyed shaman with a neck like a loose stack of dimes and buggy whips for arms. “Moon fever, man. Get it, get it, get it.” Ziggy suddenly froze in place. “Hovercraft!” he screamed as he extended his arms above his head before returning to bouncing around the money again. The crowd was clapping and cheering him on. Women threw strands of colored beads at him. He batted them out of the air like they were rainbow-colored flying serpents. After what seemed like hours of ranting and spinning to Ziggy, he realized he was exhausted. Suddenly, he collapsed to the street, panting and drooling. Sensing the show was over, the crowd began to disperse. Ziggy lay in the middle of the street for few minutes before he got his wind back. On his hands and knees, Ziggy scraped up his earnings and put on the beads.

“Jewels!” Ziggy said as he admired his new possessions. Lights from the neon signs and nearby street lamps glittered off the purple, green, and gold strands. “My jewels!” Ziggy clutched them tightly to his chest. He noticed some abandoned beads in the gutter. He crawled over to examine them closer. Peering from side to side to make sure no one was watching, he quickly snatched them up from the muck and cradled them in his arms. Looking around again to make sure the coast was clear, he slipped them around his neck. “Mine!” he said as his teeth began to involuntarily chatter. “Leave now!” he yelled as he began to crawl down the street, dodging the numerous partiers. Left, right, and left again, he wove through the crowd of people, who were yelling and laughing as he shuffled on all fours. Trying to avoid the fray, Ziggy splayed himself on the ground and attempted to breaststroke Bourbon Street. From past experience, he knew that in treacherous times like these it was best to stay low, very low. Low enough that one had to look up to see a worm shit. “Mother of, like, God!” Ziggy screamed as he looked over his shoulder and saw a giant purple, gold, and green flying worm preparing to crap on him.

“Drowned rat,” a passerby yelled as he poured the bright red backwash of his hurricane cocktail on the slithering hippy. Ziggy rolled onto his back and flashed his fangs at the man.

“Squeak!” he screamed in an ear-splitting screech as the bully walked away with his girl in his arms. Quickly rolling back on his stomach, Ziggy spied another abandoned string of beads in the muck of the street. Glorious beads! Gleaming beads. Beads of beauty, of wonder, beads that no one possessed. “Mine, me, mine!” He grabbed them and put them on, licking them furiously to be certain they were clean. Ziggy crawled for a block and a half, ignoring the catcalls and jeers of revelers making fun of the tie-dyed, rodent-like man sniffing his way along the gutters of the French Quarter. By now, Ziggy was really starting to freak out. Like, seriously in the weeds, man. The frenetic flashing lights of the clubs and bars refracted like maniacal kaleidoscopes to the poor man. Loud, pounding music thumped in his head like a kettledrum from hell, making his eyeballs spasm. Screaming people passed him, roaring at the top of their lungs like bloodthirsty tigers as their faces melted away to reveal horrific laughing skulls. This was no place for amateurs, especially on hallucinogenics. Luckily, Ziggy wasn’t a greenhorn when it came to these sorts of matters. Somewhere, down deep, really deep, he knew what he needed to do. He needed to cool off. Lie low. Let the heat blow over. The only problem was, at the moment he really couldn’t speak. But he could crawl. So he did.

There were numerous highly regarded and extremely reputable companies that provided tours of historic New Orleans and the French Quarter. Some by bus, some by car, others on bicycle. Very few offered tours via crawling. More should. It really highlights the foundation of the city, or at least, that’s what Ziggy thought as he crawled along the dirty black pavement of Bourbon Street. You can really tell a lot about the soul of a city by what it keeps in its gutters. Ziggy examined all of it and kept most of it. Coins, stray beads, red-stained drinking straws, and old soggy Band-Aids — Ziggy sifted through them all. He hoarded away the best, but only after licking them clean, just to be safe. Ahead, spinning colors grabbed his attention. They whirled like multihued ballerinas viewed from overhead. It was a wall of spinning rainbows. Ziggy needed them. Ziggy must possess them.

“Squeak!” Ziggy blurted as he stumbled into the daiquiri shop. “Squeak, squeak!” The walls were lined with horizontal canisters of spinning colors. Ziggy grabbed the bar to keep from falling over. It didn’t work. He pulled himself up from the floor. The bar was empty, with the exception of two girls behind the counter. In most bars in America, Ziggy’s condition called for either a bouncer or the police, but this was New Orleans.

“What you having?” the pretty redhead behind the bar asked.

“Squeak!” Ziggy replied as he rubbed his balled-up fists quickly against his nose and flashed his teeth before ducking underneath the counter.

“Huh?”

A voice came from below the counter. “Squeak! Squeak!”

“J.J., this guy is crazy,” the redhead said to the tall blonde wearing low-slung jeans and a tight-fitting top, wiping off the spigots of the daiquiri machines behind her.

“Oh, don’t worry, I speak ferret,” J.J. said as she looked over the bar at the twitching man on the floor. “No biggie, it’s just a thing with me and my sister. Long story.”

“Squeak!” Ziggy scratched at his eyes.

“Squeak, squeak…squeak, squeak,” J.J. replied.

“Squeak!”

“He wants an extra-large pina colada.” J.J. grabbed an enormous sixty-four-ounce plastic cup and filled it with frozen white liquid from the spinning tap before handing it to Ziggy, who had pulled himself to his feet.

“Squeak!”

“Seven dollars,” J.J. replied.

“Squeak… squeak.” Ziggy pulled the street money from his pockets and dumped it on the counter. J.J. sorted out seven dollars in bills and coins, and pushed the rest back to Ziggy.

“Squeak, squeak,” Ziggy said as he pushed two dollars back to J.J. before hunching over and scampering out the door. The two girls behind the bar looked at each other, shook their heads, and laughed. It wasn’t easy to surprise a bartender on Bourbon Street.

Ziggy scurried down the street with his frozen tub clutched tightly to his chest with both arms in a bear hug, furiously sucking away at the freezing, suntan lotion–smelling concoction. Brain freeze set in immediately. His skinny body seized up like an engine with no oil. The upper half of his torso was immediately immobilized, but his legs kicked like live wires as he sat on the sidewalk. Huffing frantically, he tried to breathe the warm, humid Louisiana air deep into his lungs. Funny thing, it actually worked. In a minute, he felt fine. Of course, he was still tripping like a madman, but feeling pretty good, all things considered. A staccato thumping noise from the end of the block drew his attention.