Welcome to Paradise

6 inches of steel. Hardened, of course. Serrated blade. Mahogany handle.

As I sat, kneeling, in coarse, biting gravel, I could feel every one of those 6 inches buried deep in my shoulder. It was bleeding, no doubt – I could feel the thick crimson elixir of life slowly trickling down my back – but I couldn’t see it. I still had the sack over my head; my own little face prison which smelled of vomit.

The taste of blood was no stranger to my mouth. It had danced around my palate before, but it wasn’t yet an acquired taste, and I spat it out with disgust.

A voice, no louder than the dropping of Autumn’s first leaf, passed through my prison and into my ears; it dripped with malice, promising pain.

Like a scab being torn from a wound, my sack was stripped from me. The ungodly flood of light drilled into the cores of my pupils; everything was a blur of vivid pinks and greens and blues, as my eyes desperately tried to acclimatise to their surroundings...

* * *

‘Hehe I love you more, silly moo’.

‘Oh baby bear, I love you the most’.

The hot summer morning sun kissed the earth with a soft warmth, preaching happiness and light upon its congregation. The clouds slowly slid over the sapphire of the sky, playfully throwing infrequent puddles of shade upon the land.

Far above, a lone buzzard elegantly soared through the thermals of air with long strokes of its deep chestnut wings.

I could barely notice anything though - I could barely notice anything but her.

'FIVE minutes until we get there, babe', she giggled as she toyed with the pocket of my jacket.

Despite seven straight hours of driving, no amount of exhaustion could stop my smile from beaming. As I turned to look at her, her deep brown eyes swallowed my every attention.

It could have been seconds. It could have been minutes. It could have been a lifetime.

I'd have gladly spent it gazing at her, but she drew me out of my trance with a gentle slap to my face.

'Keep your eyes on the road, silly', she playfully admonished me, as she began to move a worn brown paper package, and some makeup palettes, from one section of her bag to the other.

Reluctantly, I did - flicking the radio dial up to maximum as our song came on.

'Wonderwall' by Oasis. Our song. Well, definitely one of our songs. We had probably anointed FOUR thousand songs as our song over the past 10 months.

Soft droplets of summer rain began to drop from the sky and through the open roof of the convertible; the droplets were sweet on my lips. I smiled to myself. It was perfect. Everything was just so perfect.

'Are we there yet, Ricky?'

I tutted jestfully, before quipping, 'good lord, woman. THREE times you ask me this within ten minutes. Consult an oracle or something'.

She giggled, then hit me lightly on the arm.

God, I was funny.

It was probably about TWO miles until we got to Puerlo Lagoon. Give or take. From the moment I'd landed in Mexico, six months ago, and heard the tales about it in a hostel, I'd made it my mission to go there. It's a place where the waters are so crystal clear and the trees so old and beautiful, it had become legend among backpackers. I’d promised myself that once I'd finished the business I had to do, I'd make my way to the lagoon..

Then I'd met her, and we set the plan in motion.

'I need to get ONE of the waters, babe', she said, as she crawled from her seat to one in the back.

A cruel sharp shaft of light from somewhere in front of me made me turn my face from the road.

Something happened next - I know there was an ear-splitting screech of metal scraping metal, and a scream - but blackness enveloped me, like I'd been dropped into an ocean of nothingness, before my brain could interpret what had happened.

Beep...Beep...Beep.

Consciousness. It came not with a fanfare, but crept slowly, like the ascension of a thief up a garden wall.

It came with pain. Every part of my body screeched with it.

My face was pressed against dashboard of the car and my ears were filled with a deafening ringing. With a mammoth effort I pushed myself up, dazed and confused, and stumbled out of the car.

The collision had sent all of our luggage from the backseat of the convertible to all over the road; the organs of my possessions lay everywhere. There was my trainers and my bong and my jumper, with my knife on top of it - the serrated blade had cut through it, leaving a dark black hole amongst the blue that almost hid the dark wooden hilt.

A question hit me with a sudden cold bolt of terror:

Where was she?

I turned to the convertible and my breathing stopped completely. The yellow Beetle's entire front was crushed. Various bits of metal lay scattered over the dust of the road. In front of it was a lorry; it had seemingly come from behind a copse of cacti to horizontally block the whole road. A huge black monster of a Juggernaut, at least twenty times the size of our car, with smoke billowing from its engine - questions immediately began coursing through my head.

Where had it come from? Who was driving?

And, most importantly, where was she?

I couldn’t see her anywhere. My blurry eyes quickly darted around the scene of the destruction. She wasn't under either vehicle, nor lying broken on the road, not in the grass surrounding the chaos: I couldn't see her anywhere! My breathing quickened and my heart began to thud; doubt was slowly descending upon my body - could she really have left this earth without me?

With a soft creak, the doors of the lorry slowly swung open.

Four men stepped out into the hot sun.

They were dressed in identical black outfits, with black balaclavas cloaking their faces. Each was carrying a baseball bat, with one of them swaggering slightly ahead of the others, smashing his bat against the body of the lorry as he went, producing a rhythmic clang - the soundtrack to their approach. His self-indulgent gait betrayed a delusion of grandeur that did not look like it would be easily dispelled.

They were walking straight towards me, but I still couldn’t see her anywhere. The adrenaline of the crash had worn off, and panic was beginning to coarse through me – not for this approaching danger, but for her. I needed her. Where was she?!?

The man at the front was only metres away from me now. He yelled something at me in Spanish, brandishing his bat towards my face.

I shrugged and spat on the ground. It came out crimson.

I reached down to the ground and clasped my hand around the hilt of a tyre iron.

‘Oh hi, mate’, I greeted him, as he stepped right in front of me, 'I think you’ve got the wro-‘ and with a sickening crunch of metal kissing bone, I swung the tyre iron into his head. The unearthly crunching sound took everyone off guard.

As he folded to the ground in a limp pile of human matter, the three men behind him stopped.

'WHERE IS SHE?!'

My voice came out as a roar. It wasn't born of bravery or heroism, but desperation; I was numb to anything else but the desperation to see her again. I would have torn their eyes from their skulls if it meant seeing her. I would have ripped th-arghhhh!

It was at that point that my shoulder erupted in excruciating agony. 6 inches of steel. Hardened, of course. Serrated blade. Mahogany handle.

As I turned around to face my aggressor, a baseball bat swung into the side of my head like a shark hitting a seal.

I sank, once again, into blackness.

* * *

It wasn't easy to escape the blackness a second time. Even when I thought I'd returned to sentience, I couldn't see a thing. After 30 seconds it dawned on me that my head was covered.

In some ways it was a mercy - my skull felt like it would fall into a million pieces if there wasn't something holding it together - but it soon became apparent I had vomited in it.

I tried to sit up, but grunted in pain and fell back. I could make out voices, but no words; they were like echoes on a cold winter night.

A hard, strong pair of hands gripped my arms and pulled me to my knees. With a swift, clean motion he jerked the bag from my head, unleashing the light upon me.

'Hey babe'

Two single words had never held such power. They punched the air from my lungs, stopped my pulse dead, and squeezed the hope from my heart.

The familiar, sweet voice was poison to my ears. A viper beneath a rose.

There she was. Unharmed. Undamaged. Perfectly, beautifully whole. With a masked man beside her, arm around her waist, and a gun in her hand.

The room was small. Plastered with an ugly grey paint that time had cruelly chipped away at, leaving the walls scarred. Four people stood opposite me. Three muscle-bound, balaclava adorned men, and one former love of my life.

The man who held my former love's waist stepped forward.

‘We know why you come to Mexico. We know who you meet and we know what you buy. You're a long way from England, little boy.'

Surprise washed over me. My former girlfriend had been doing her research on me while we'd journeyed together.

'We need to know where it is, ese. The warehouse.'

'Look, pal, if you think I'm just gonna snitch, you're re-''

'He killed everyone! Everyone I ever loved', my treacherous ex passionately screamed as she stepped forwards, ‘he got his cartel to kill them because I wouldn't give him what he wanted from me.

Look, You remember this?'

She reached into her handbag and produced the brown package.

I nodded. I'd seen at various points over the last 3 months.

'This is all I have left of them', she said through tears.

I almost felt bad for her; there was a desperate grief in her voice I hadn't heard before.

With a snap, she pulled the tape from the top of the package and emptied its content into her palm.

Out fell a severed hand, in a late stage of decomposition. Brown, tattered flesh clung to the bare bones.

'This,' she coldly stated, as she pointed the once-body part towards me, 'was my sister Isobella.'

The crying were gone now, replaced with a steely determination.

I didn't know what to say. I mean, what the fuck?

What kind of freak keeps a rotting hand amongst her possessions?

Clearly, I had misjudged this girl.

With those deep brown eyes still wet from tears, she turned to the man beside her who stepped forward. He pulled the balaclava from his head and leaned down towards me, stopping centimetres from my face with his.

He wasn't an unattractive man - curly midnight-black hair, dark brown eyes and a jaw that looked strong enough to withstand an airstrike - yet his skin was pitted deeply with the craterous legacy of a pubescence spent warring with acne

‘You going to tell us everything, gringo. Quick, slow, screaming: it no matter how you do it. But you will do it'.

His hot breath stroked my face with a perverse softness.

I leaned backwards and smiled wryly at him, as it dawned on me just how hopeless my situation currently looked.

No way to move my hands or feet, barred windows, aggressors with guns, a girlfriend who only pretended to love me to avenge a rotting hand: what a morning.

I gave a long cathartic sigh, then I gave my once-lover a wink and, smiling, closed my eyes and leant back against the wall.

Song lyrics began to fill my thoughts and even the sound of power tools being turned on with malicious intent couldn't get in their way.

And after allll, you're my wonderwallll.

Yeah, love was a tricky old thing.