A Year Of Sex Fantasy Tales

In a few days Carlos got burnt, peeled, burnt again but survived covered with aloe gel, changing his clothes for the same chilaba and turban that the others wore. On the way they only found another caravan travelling in the opposite direction, with the camels loaded with large plates of fossil salt. Among the caravaners they exchanged joyful conversations, laughter and believed that they used the word French several times in their conversations.

Carlos had thought that the end of the journey would be an idyllic oasis of the Thousand and One Nights, but to his disappointment the caravan stopped in a ghost town. Everything around him was part of a lunar landscape dominated by silence and emptiness. They were already in another country, in Dallol, a former mining town from which Europeans had extracted salt and potash in the past. From that past, only the remains of buildings, machinery and railway parts remained in a desert with no tracks.

Over the next few days, all the men worked hard to get as many plates as possible out of a salt lake that had run out of water. Levers, pickaxes, chisels and hammers, everything was good to get salt out of that infernal depression. There were nights when the pain and fatigue kept him awake. Then he lay looking at the brightest moon he had ever seen, while he heard the melancholic songs of the Afar men. Then he saw floating before his eyes the last look of the woman who had changed his life, the day of farewell.

The night before returning with their load, there was a party and everyone danced and sang around a fire made of wood that they had carried there. They even offered him wine, which he hadn't tasted in a while. When they least expected it, a man with black skin, black clothes, and huge eyes staring at them appeared.

- Mr Jean, Mr. Jean - they all said at once, and in a second silence reigned.

The newcomer approached Carlos and for his relief spoke perfect French.

- Are you the Frenchman?

- Yes, me. My name is Carlos.

- I am Monsieur Jean, your shaman. I come from Sudan. I must congratulate you, you have passed your first test: heat, wind, loneliness and work. Tomorrow the caravan will leave but you are staying with me. When the dragon's blood tree blooms, it will be the moment when you can meet your beloved again.

When the first rays of sunshine illuminated the dry land, the caravan returned to its destination with its load of salt, but Monsieur Jean and Carlos took a different path, mounted on small donkeys, which seemed impossible for them to carry a person with them, but theu did. Soon the smell was noticeable. It was a pungent, acidic smell, greatly annoying to the sense of smell, but Monsieur Jean, who preceded him by pointing the way, did not seem to appreciate it.

- What is this smell? Carlos asked.

- You'll soon see - was the laconic answer.

Indeed, as soon as they reached the top of the hill, Carlos could not believe what he was seeing. It was hell on earth. Bubbling lakes, yellow, red, green, red waters, with 1 acidity, where there was no life, because in them sulphuric acid reigned, preventing any cellular life. An apocalyptic yet real vision.

- What is this? - he asked him

- The entrance to hell. You were going there, but I'll save you. Your sincere love has saved you.

Enduring as he could the unbearable smell, covering his nose, coughing, he followed the shaman to the top of a mountain with trees. He recognized them. They were like the ancient dragon tree of Icod de los Vinos in the Canary Islands, where one of his French clients had taken him for a sentimental getaway as his friend Beatriz called those weekends of intense sex in a hotel.

Following a known itinerary, they finally reached the largest tree in the xerophilous forest.

- Strip naked, completely - ordered Monsieur Jean.

Charles stripped off his light desert clothes and, following the shaman's instructions, stood by the tree. Monsieur Jean pulled out a machete and slashed the tree trunk over Carlos' head. He closed his eyes, frightened, to feel immediately that his body was covered in a red milky liquid.

- May the blood of the dragon deliver you from your filthiness - said the shaman, raising a small cross made of eagle's toenails.

- May the dragon's blood cover you with goodness and human love - he continued, touching a rattle made from a small dried pumpkin.

- May the blood of the dragon open your heart to be reborn in a new reality - he said, bringing a wine pumpkin to his lips.

Carlos, after so many days of unfulfilled thirst, drank the concoction until he emptied the pumpkin. And he immediately began to feel the effects of ayahuasca.

One day passed, one night passed, the next day came and Carlos was still out of this world. His body was a realm of sweating and chills, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, peeing and diarrhea. His mind, completely dissociated from his red-tinted flesh that rolled on the ground, ascended over the trees, strongly inspired the vapours of earthly hell, and ascended with them into a sky far from the planet, overshadowed by distance. He felt the people with whom he had been related and he detected his fear of loneliness, his desire to find meaning in life, he contemplated his trembling, ecstatic, sunken eyes, anesthetized eyes and even dead eyes, to see on the other side the happy eyes of children for whom time is not a concept, eyes of joy and happiness, of acceptance, of interest and belonging. He saw himself as a child with his mother holding his hand, but the mother sank into a sewer without any complaint, as if the sinking had been part of his life forever. The boy became young and then the mouths appeared. He felt the pain of mouths ripping out his eyes, and though they came back in his eye sockets, sadder, more insecure, they ripped them out again and again, until he saw nothing. He heard only the laughter of the thugs who had found such pleasure in his blindness. But there came out a lightning sun in the shape of Aphrodite’z head, and the laughter was fulminated by the rays of lightning coming out of her eyes. From his mouth emerged a fountain of hot urine that was poured over the bodies, destroying them, turned into dust that slowly fell into Dallol's sulphur hell, blowing up millions of multicoloured fireworks that filled the night, making it day. Then he saw himself rising from the depths of the sulphur, in the form of a great transparent serpent with his human head ascending to the aphrodisiac sun, through the mouth of the Sun-woman. That's where it all ended up. A soft, warm snow covered the stars, covered the acidic lakes, covered his eyelids that covered his whole body... And then he knew the meaning of the word peace.

When Carlos became conscious, recognizing the environment in which he was, Monsieur Jean was quietly having tea.

And so many days passed. Charles became immersed in the very broad culture that emanated from the wise shaman, and in turn he told him about his European life, which the master did not know.

When summer came, the dracaena ombet flourished. Bunches of white flowers opened up and beautified such a harsh environment, making people love life of a planet that produces eternal life, season after season.

- The day has come, Carlos. Let's go back to the salt mine.

The journey back in search of his beloved was a constant obsession for him. He had to keep the inflorescence in water so that the sun would not wither its beauty and would devalue the gift so hard to win for her.

He came back excited about his story with a happy ending, but it couldn't be. A bomb on the ground destroyed his illusion, blowing up the camel, the pitcher and the flower. Assaulted by a guerrilla group, in a few minutes the catastrophe flooded the desert and silence saw the lamentations through the smoke. Camel drivers killed, camels and cargo stolen. When the police arrived, they could only count the dead. Carlos wasn't there. His track was gone.

Two years later, Aphrodite was among her usual group of French tourists, telling them the history of her country while accompanying them on the monumental circuit of Asmara. It was a very hot day, so at noon they stopped at an open-air bar under a plastic roof that provided shade and partially mitigated the heat. On national television, the news was on. A flashing Latest News sign appeared on the screen, and then a hooded man chained a bearded white prisoner to the camera. It was Carlos.

- Read - said the hooded man urgently.

Carlos obeyed immediately.

- The African Revolutionary Movement, in the face of France's imperialist attack on our Muslim brothers and sisters, and after refusing to withdraw its crusaders from the Middle East despite successive threats that such an expansionist policy would cause the suffering of its population, and refusing to negotiate the release of its people by an exchange of prisoners, has tried and sentenced to death the French citizen Carlos, born in La Ciotat, as a representative of the attacking power. May Allah take him to His bosom.

A tense silence followed the statement. The hooded man put a curved knife in front of the camera and grabbed the hostage by the hair.

- Aphrodite, I love you! - was heard rumbling before the desperate gaze of the guide, expanding the image in a few hours to the whole world.

The blood spurted out under a head where only the image of Aphrodite bathed in purifying dragon blood, attached to his own, remained momentarily.

The following week, the front page theme of the beheading, present in all media, provoked a national crowd in the cemetery of La Ciotat. The heartbroken mother, overwhelmed by the media event, accompanied by Aphrodite in all black, could do little more than insistently repeat:

- Thank you, thank you very much.

And life continued on the planet, as the contradictions of an unjust system made standard are repeated and even extended.

TALE OF THE MOTHER OF THE 7 DWARFS

Sant’Alfio, Sicily (Italy)

DECEMBER 1995

It all started on Black Friday. Alessia and her husband, Massimo, went down to the shopping centre near Catania, where the announcement of the pre-Christmas sales deeply attired the compulsive cravings of her husband, hardly contained after a period of summer tourist boom. In their village, there were more and more people who sooner or later would ascend Etna from their village, after having a soda or a cup of coffee, buying the appetizing sweets that the husband made and were sold by Alessia with her usual spontaneity and joy.

After taking one of the trolley and, in imitation of so many other consumers, pushing or rather leaning on it, they entered the overheated hall. Before entering the larger stores, several people offered accessories at stalls along the corridors, hoping to take a few crumbs of the wallets filled already for a short time in the pockets of the mass arrivals of mountain people that Friday.

Alessia was particularly impressed by a mushroom stand. They were not the typical seasonal mushrooms that attracted Sicilians, more and more gourmets, more and more eager to try new flavours. It was a botanical stand, an extension of the usual florist's shop, perhaps the idea of the florist after having made a big profit in All Saints' Day. In there different types of mushrooms with pleasant colours were offered, as if they were flowers, the flowers of the forest in autumn, each with explanatory info. Although Massimo didn't seem to pay any attention, the usual outing for the marriage meant that everything had to be done together, so if one stopped, the partner had to also stop and wait until the object was left or bought, in order to continue together to the next point of interest, because that was a couple who get along fine. In that place, a dwarf with oriental features passionately explained the virtues of each specimen, as if it were a treasure.

- Black truffle and white truffle / aroma for the throat.

Alessia sniffed like a dog, trying to catch something of the scent of that exquisite mushroom.

- Russula white foot, purple foot / the first is good, the second is bad.

People smiled at the occurrences of the simple couplets that the charlatan shaman hawked.

- Amanita caesarean, amanita muscaria / one delicious, the other devilish....

- Look, Massimo. That's the dwarf mushroom. How pretty! It sounds like a fairy tale.

- But I don't think it's edible, is it?

- I'm going to ask. Excuse me, excuse me! Can that red and white mushroom be eaten?

- This one? The amanita muscaria?

- The one with dwarfs in fairy tales.

- It has been consumed for thousands of years. It has been the inspiration for religions and literature. You can travel and dream with it. It's the mushroom of the gods.

- It's poisonous, isn't it?

- It is not food for the stomach, but it is for the mind.

- And can be found somewhere?

- In the pine forests under the volcano.

- What's the matter, Alessia? You're not going to go and pick non-edible mushrooms, are you? - her husband scolded her.

- Wait, Massimo. It's funny, really.

- No. Let's go now. This is not for us.

As they moved away, Alessia heard the salesman say something about a well-known tree, the oldest chestnut tree in the world.

- The Chestnut of the 100 Horses? It is close to our village - she said to herself, given her husband's scant attention, more concerned about the gifts she wanted to buy for the family.

- Let's see what gifts we buy, which today are discounted.

- And extra food for these days too?

- No, it's too soon. We have our refrigerator jammed up.

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