It was another steamy and stagnant evening when they approached. Millions of them surrounded me, and demanded, in plain English, that I provide them with cooked leaves again.
“Fuck off!” I mumbled, and my cigarette dropped from my mouth into my Rondon stew. I was furious. These fucking sloths have ruined another night for me.
“You creepy lazy fucks can take your moldy asses and cook for yourselves!”
I can’t remember how I ended up in this forsaken paradise, but I do remember my countless nights in the dank kitchen. I felt weak. Millions of fucking sloths holding me captive. How was I to escape? They’ve provided me with everything but my freedom.
“You know what we want” they said in unison. And so I figured what’s so bad about slaving away in a kitchen for ten hours when I have everything I could want but my will itself.
A single fluorescent bulb hung above my head, providing a home for my hairnet of insects. I knew them by name now. Juan was a fucking dick, always biting me behind my earlobe. Or maybe it was Rita. Regardless, my nightly sweats formed a layer of protective slime that kept them from biting, for the most part. This wasn’t the most intolerable of jobs. I’ve had worse, like when I used to have to paint the same wall white over and over every day. Now I just cook the same leaves every night.
Fucking right, I need to escape. But their beady eyes just glow at me all night. Their low grumbles remind me of my own hunger. My hunger for life.
This is it. I will escape. Tonight’s the fucking night.
For a moment, I hear silence. Not even my cigarette burning as I inhale. Not even Juan nor Rita.
I snatch two machetes off the wall and run for the beach – the closer to which I can get, the better my chances. Sloth after sloth loses his head as a rumble of high-pitched groaning nears. The danger is not in the individuals, but in the power of the herd. Claws, very slowly, reach my back. And I chop harder and faster.
After an endless struggle of continuous thrashing and bloody fur and moans and agony, my arms weaken, but I can see the waves crashing under the moon. I’m so close.
In the sand, the sloths are slower. My bleeding back finally stings in the salty air, but there are no beasts ahead of me. The machetes drop with a thud and sink into the sand, and my burning feet clench in the cool water of the ocean. All I see is black ripples, divided by a moonlit lane to the horizon. The rumble behind me is now a muffled blend of screams and groans. And in the water, I finally feel safe. My back is numb, and I light one more cigarette. No looking back, and the waves roll over my head.
