The Abundance of the Infinite by Christopher Canniff

leaving the door open behind me. Spraying on some insect repellent as I run, then producing my flashlight, I stop just long enough to put on my heaviest clothes. In the darkness, I walk near a lit area with loud, fast merengue music and take a long drink of chicha , my head suddenly cloudy with the alcohol, two additional bottles of which clink together in my backpack. Slinking off to the side to avoid a couple exiting the restaurant, where there is dancing taking place on a dirt floor, I sit down on the large rocks on the shore, in a darkened area where I cannot be seen. Stepping down further, closer to the water, I sit there and smoke one cigarette, then another, and another, while quickly and with great difficulty draining my bottle of harsh-tasting, warm chicha .
    I sit for an hour, maybe more, watching the grey water barely visible under the moonless sky. I smoke another cigarette and descend to the level of the water. I imagine that there are piranhas here. Attacks on humans are most frequent in areas where fish are normally discarded. This is what the owner of the restaurant told me, giving me a perplexed look, when I asked.
    But instead of my feet slipping beneath the surface of the river, I find they have landed on wood. I step again, and my feet both descend onto a timber surface that sloshes back and forth under my weight. A step to the left would have immersed me in water, but instead, I have landed on a boat.
    I crawl into the craft and quickly discern that this was the same long, motorized canoe in which Karen and I went to Amazoonica , but now, the motor has been removed.
    Without a thought, I retrieve a paddle left in the boat and untie the ropes that lash the vessel to shore. I begin to drift slowly into the river, contorting my body as I methodically rotate the paddle, gradually at first, and then with a more hurried, almost frantic pace into the darkness illuminated only by phosphorescent insects. With the exception of the music, I can hear only the sound of bugs buzzing around my head. I light a cigarette and they dissipate. I can feel myself sliding along the river’s surface, my head murky, bewildered, my thoughts muddled, drifting with the current. Hours seem to pass, the water sloshing against the boat, the current swaying and carrying me haphazardly, the stillness accompanied by muffled music lingering like the long, drawn-out wailing of my father’s bagpipes. In a moment I fall into a trance in the hurried rhythm of the merengue and that of the waves splashing, lapping against the shore and against the face of my impotent paddle.
    As I drift further, the music begins to resonate into subdued bass tones, and as the noise fades into the distance a different music prominently emerges, one dense and replete with a thousand voices, chirrups, trills and songs, bird and animal warbles, insect calls, the Spanish voices and music now speaking indistinguishably and far off into the void as the sound of my paddle-stroking repeats. Surrounding me is an array of sounds unlike any I’ve ever heard, and with my flashlight I can see dense swarms of insects, thick pockets of leafy plants, a peach-coloured tree snake sitting among the branches and leaves, and I paddle farther and farther into the dense overgrowth, land and cliffs nearly indistinguishable except by the outlines on each side, my reflection in the water invisible, and darkness all around.
    After an hour I remove my sweater and blanket myself with it, allowing the boat to flow with the current, trying desperately to fall into sleep; and soon, after bathing myself in bug repellant, I succumb to my exhaustion....
    I dream of an empty village and huts devoid of people, and I feel that there is nothing but myself and wild beasts surrounding me. I run to find the huts are overgrown with foliage and all empty, their floors made of mud and dirt and the rocks and the forests surrounding them are devoid of life, all of the homes and the forest