Taboo Descendants and the Multi-Dimensional War

My name is Dr. Kaya Lena Jerito. I am a mother, daughter, and neurologist, three identities that I have always been proud to represent. I am also a Black Latina, which makes me both diligent and resilient as I navigate through a world that constantly underestimates me.

I work hard for everything I have or wish to possess. Nothing in my life is freely given to me. I once sacrificed my being to improve the lives of others, but all of that changed today.

Today, I became a murderer.

Instead of healing afflictions of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system, I took a life—of a minor, no less—via blunt force trauma. I am now faced with the truth that there is a monster inside of me. The fact that this monster saved my life provides me with little solace. I would never consciously trade the remainder of my lifespan for that of a child’s.

I look in the mirror and no longer like what I see. My brown skin is drawn and lusterless and my brown eyes are saggy, bloodshot and dull. How could they shine after what they have witnessed? My thick curls do not bounce when I walk and the edges of my full lips have not curled for a week.

I am alive though I feel like dying.

I can explain everything, but I must take you back one month to a winter night in Miami, Florida where I tossed and turned in my bed.

I blinked but saw only darkness. The space before my eyes was so opaque that I felt blinded. Fear mounted inside my chest to smother my heart in the face of the unknown.

It’s only a dream. I realized. I’m safe.

Just as I regained my composure, the strong stench of rot and decay reached my nostrils. I stumbled away from it and felt a hard, gritty surface beneath the soles of my shoes.

Where am I?

My eyes registered a flicker of light like a candle dancing in the wind. I squinted into the obscure abyss at the fleeting illumination, and my pupils slowly adjusted. Finally—I could see.

I stood on a narrow sidewalk in a dank, urban alley that I had never seen before. In one direction, a rusty dumpster sat next to a failing street light. In the other, posed the figure of a man. He stood on a curb twenty feet away from me. I could just make out his general features from the shadowy fringes.

The somewhat tall and slightly brawny man had a thick beard and long, neat dreadlocks. His stance exuded the air of someone who had once been great: head held high, chin up, and chest out. His shoulders were broad, but his stomach hung unflatteringly over the waistband of his pants. His glory days had long since ended.

His eyes panned up and down the alley as if he waited for someone to arrive or something to happen. He observed every inch of his surroundings with careful precision and he checked his cell phone often. The phone illuminated his face and upper torso with an eerie, pale white glow.

He wore a Miami Dolphins jersey over a black, long-sleeved shirt. The logo on the neck of the jersey twinkled in the radiance of the small device. His dark pants draped loosely over his long legs. His shoes stood out, pristine and white.

The dead of winter in South Florida could be considered warm to some, but the chilly air caressed my neck like cold, unwanted fingers. I shuddered.

The male stranger looked towards me. For a moment, I thought I recognized him. An old acquaintance, maybe? I could not be sure, though something about this man made my heart ache.

He kind of looks like my ex—but, no, that’s impossible!

I inched ever closer, careful not to walk into the cone of artificial light between us. I think I know that face. I sped up. If I can just get a little—

I lost my footing as I stepped off the curb. I felt pain in my right ankle and yelped. He looked up suddenly as if someone had shouted his name.

“Who’s there?” he growled.

It’s just a dream.

I froze where I stood, sure that he had spotted me. His head turned back and forth in my direction. Only ten feet away from him now, I dared not move.

Logically, he should not have missed me, even in that dimly lit area inside my mind.

In a desperate attempt to save face, I waved at him. At first, it was a timid motion. After that received no response, I waved more. Nothing. I lifted both hands over my head and flailed them around as if hailing a taxi. He did not respond.

I’m invisible to him.

Even so, I did not step any closer. Whatever had caught his attention must have been a dreadful figment of his imagination. Undoubtedly, waiting restlessly in a dimly-lit, foul-smelling alley on a cool winter night is rocket fuel for the imagination.

He relaxed and checked his cell phone again, momentarily illuminated. I noticed a dark metallic object clutched in the hand closest to me. A black handgun.

Though it seemed an appropriate tool for his current situation, I both feared and hated guns. I recoiled as I took a big step back.

I realized I was not breathing when I gasped for air. I covered my mouth roughly, my hands slick with sweat. An armed civilian in a dark, dank alley seemed dangerous to me.

I’m not really in danger, I reminded myself, I’m at home in bed, safe and sound. I could feel my heart beating wildly, thumping against the enlarged knot in my throat. With my teeth clenched and my lips pursed, I wrapped my arms around my torso.

A howling wind swept through the alley, chilling the ambient air and rattling a nearby metal shutter. My heart pounded louder and louder in my ears until I could hear nothing else.

He is sure to hear it too and shoot me just to make it stop. He cannot see me, but maybe he can hear me, I reasoned.

I flattened myself against the brick wall abutting the sidewalk and hoped to disappear within its cracks.

Wake up, Kaya, wake up! I screamed internally, staring straight ahead.

The corner of my right eye registered a flash of white. In the general obscurity of my surroundings, the white flicker had been like a pebble thrown into a serene lake.

I turned my head towards the source of the disturbance, but there was nothing there besides the rusty, grease-stained, fly-infested dumpster. Beyond its putrid stench, I knew that it had been there all along, undisturbed.

I looked back at the unidentified, armed man. Though he seemed anxious until that moment, he now stood poised and alert. He too had noticed the glint of white. His gaze and his gun had fixed upon the dumpster.

I returned my attention to the garbage bin, a nervous twitch irritating my eye as my stomach turned over with fear.

For what seemed like five whole minutes, he and I stared at the green hunk of metal labeled, Miami Waste Management. He did not lower his gun, nor did he utter a single word.

This is what he’s been waiting for, I suspected. But for what? And why?

Neither of us dared to do more than breathe as we watched and waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

I began to wonder if it had all been an illusion. A piece of paper afloat in the breeze.

He must have thought the same thing because he slowly lowered his arms. About halfway down they fell limp at his sides in a gesture of defeat. He dropped his head to the ground as if questioning himself.

At that moment, she struck.

A slender woman in all-white emerged from behind the dumpster like a bolt of lightning. Her long, jet black hair whipped behind her like a pirate flag. Her yellow-toned skin was eerily incandescent, brighter than the few stars visible above. Even as a blur, she was both terrifying and beautiful. Her face adorned with a demented smile, she exuded all the qualities of one plucked from someone’s dark, twisted fantasy.

She took no notice of me as she bolted towards her unsuspecting quarry, too fast to be real.

His gaze was still fixed on the pavement below and it seemed that he had closed his eyes as well. I hoped that he was praying because he would soon need all the help he could summon.

Look out! I screamed within my head. I did not dare say it aloud.

His head popped up as if he had actually heard me, but it was too late. Before he could do anything more than freeze in alarm, she leaped towards him. I remained frozen and silent.

I was not sure if I should do anything. Who was the real victim here?

In retrospect, it was clear that the woman hunted the man. Their bodies melded together upon impact with a deafening pop. Even as she mounted his torso, neither of us knew to what end. The man’s spine cracked as her swift advancement took him into a deep backbend. Man and attacker fell onto the ground as one, the victor abundantly clear.

An alloy of predator and prey, they had collapsed in a heap upon the pavement. Though the woman could not have been much heavier than a fully grown greyhound, the man seemed quite unable to pry her off of him. She was like a tsunami, unshakable and engulfing.

The abandoned smartphone lay face-up on the ground near the man’s head, its glow cast on the ghastly scene. She grabbed the sides of his face and pulled his lips squarely to hers, their mouths now seamless.

I watched in horror as the man kicked and writhed, silent but in pain. A passerby may have mistaken them for lovers, but I knew better.

The black handgun had fallen just next to the struggling pair, close to where I stood motionless. Ten seconds or so into the battle, though truthfully it was more of a slaughter, I could see the man reach in vain desperation for the weapon. It was his last hope.

I had the urge to go over and kick it to him, to help him in any way that I could, but I was transfixed by the terror I witnessed. I knew that if I moved, I would be killed.

My dream had morphed into a nightmare.

I could hear the scraping of metal on concrete as the man groped the ground in an attempt to coax the weapon towards him. The gun did not seem to get any closer to his hand nor his hand to the gun.

The alley became quiet again. His entire body ceased to move. I did not need to check his pulse to know that he was dead. Death was in the air, as distinctive as the breath of winter.

The assailant, in her spotless white jumpsuit, looked down at the man she had just murdered, almost as if seeing him for the first time. She tilted her head sideways, observing his face. She picked up his head with one hand as she ran her other hand over his chest. She held him tenderly for a moment.

Is she just realizing what she’s done? How could she not have known she was killing him?

Finally, she rose to her feet, her deed done. Upon release, the man’s head hit the ground with a dull thud, cushioned by his hair. His cheek hit the pavement. The devilish woman in white sauntered away towards the main street, disappearing around the corner of the building I still clung to desperately.

The man’s face was turned in my direction.

By the light of the phone, I could see that some of his dreadlocks lay across his face, shielding his eyes from the world he could no longer see. I turned away from him, unable to accept his fate and unwilling to see the look of horror that was now permanently etched on his face.

The sound of footsteps filled the alley.

I spun around to see a handsome man with dark skin run towards collapsed victim. The man dropped to his knees and cupped the victim’s head in his hands. I walked closer to the pair, interested in the intentions of this new stranger.

With the victim’s head tilted backward, the stranger blew into his mouth twice. He placed both hands on the victim’s chest and pumped in rhythmic succession. I walked closer to the man trying to revive the fallen.

Hot tears ran down my cheeks. It all seemed so real.

The stranger stopped pumping. He lowered his head down to the victim’s chest and listened. Hearing nothing, he rose to his feet, defeated.

I walked closer still.

The man looked up at me, his brown eyes clearly seeing my own.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

I looked around puzzled. There was no one else there. “You can see me?” I responded.

“Yes, Kaya. I can see you. I am always watching you.”

The back-light of the cell phone finally timed out and darkness ruled once again.

The sky shown in an amalgamation of hues. The sun had not yet risen from the East. From zenith to horizon, it transitioned from indigo to purple to pink then orange, a watercolor made in heaven for the world to witness as a testament to the beauty of Earth.

The ambient air began to warm and thicken as the sunlight pushed the chill of the night away with ease.

On my porch, bundled in a blanket around my flannel pajamas, I listened to the sounds of the early morning symphony as it rose in succession with the sun. Though my ears were full of various noises, my mind was consumed with images from last night’s bizarre nightmare.

Who could the victim have been? I don’t personally know any men with dreadlocks, I thought, still preoccupied with the identity of the man whom I felt I knew even now that I was awake. And what of the man who could see me? Who had he been?

The images would not leave my head even as I urged myself to forget them.

To the west, traffic roared like an assembly of mistuned and off-beat instruments. In my mind, I saw the stately man as he stood on the corner, soon to be attacked by the inhumanly strong woman.

To the east, a train progressed on its tracks with scraps and squeaks as if dissatisfied with its duties. Mentally, I pictured the female assailant as she stood behind the dumpster, prepared to pounce.

Directly to the south, my neighbor’s rooster crowed in protest of all the noise. In thought, I re-imagined the beautiful blur streak past me, a savage grin on her face.

Just behind me, my son’s neglected alarm clock repeated its despondent whine from his bedside table. JJ was always slow to rise on school days. In the forefront of my subconscious, the man’s body lay limp on the concrete void of life.

I blinked away tears as I turned my face back to the east and watched the sun begin its majestic ascension into the heavens. I welcomed each progressive beam of sunlight that crept upon my porch, bathing my numb face in warmth and comfort.

This is the real world, I assured myself. The nightmare was over. I had nothing to fear now.

“Fear nothing, question everything.”

These words were written to me in a letter from my late father, Diego Quentin Jerito. The letter and the memories of others comprised all I had left of him.

I gazed down at the empty chair on my left and smiled serenely. As my mother described, that had been my father’s favorite seat where he had watched the world unfold before him for hours at a time. Whenever I lounged on the porch in the early morning, I could not help but think of my father and his infinite wisdom.

Most of the memories I had of my father had been preserved and passed on to me by my mother. Others came from neighbors, family, friends, strangers, and professional acquaintances. Diego Jerito had been kind, generous, humble, and wise. He had come to the United States from Southern Mexico alone at the tender age of seventeen, searching for a place to call his own and start anew.

“The American Dream is the infamous and incessant journey for the pursuit of happiness,” he so endearingly explained to my mother when they first met. She always smiled when she told that story even though his pursuit had been more difficult than he had expected.

As an Afro-Mexican immigrant, he had been subject to ridicule, racism, and prejudice from potential employers, other workers, strangers, and officers of the law both in his native country and in the United States.

Thankfully, none of these tribulations succeeded in his ruin because he passed away as a successful small business owner. His company, Jerito’s Jewels, restored and dealt in antiques and rare artifacts. My mother was the largest shareholder, even though she did not participate in the company’s day-to-day business.

My nostalgic trance broke as a car horn blared, followed by an ominous crash about two hundred yards away on the busy thoroughfare of Le Jeune Road.

Even my neighbor’s rooster momentarily stopped his incessant nagging. The relative silence left me feeling unsettled.

I bolted from my chair on the porch and raced south towards the sound of the crash. Upon my arrival at the scene, I saw the front end of a red sports car shoved neatly beneath a navy blue pickup. Both drivers were outside of their vehicles having a heated conversation about who was to blame, but I saw no signs of blood, physical injuries, or mental confusion.

I turned my back on them and headed home. I was a neurologist, not a lawyer.

Before my worldview changed, I had served as Chief of the Neurocritical Care Division at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida as well as Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. I specialized in neurotrauma, particularly traumatic brain injuries. These duties brought meaning into my life beyond my obvious obligations as a single mother and daughter.

I opened my front gate and followed the marble pavers up to the front door of my house. Though I was sure that the two crash victims would be fine, I knew there were others out there who were not so lucky. Work was now on the forefront of my mind as I thought about whom I needed to text, instant message, call or email once I got to the office.

Back inside the house, I could hear my mother as she hummed an improvised melody and clanked pots and pans around in the kitchen.

JJ’s alarm clock no longer whined and I was sure my mother had gotten him up. I could hear the sound of the shower running down the hall.

I put more energy in my stride. If my mother was awake and JJ in the shower, I had about twenty minutes to get ready before breakfast was served. I enjoyed living with my mother most of the time, though it could be said that she lived with me. The house was paid for and my mother did not need my financial help, but I insisted that she paid no bills. In truth, she was lonely and our company brought her joy. After all she had sacrificed for me, I was determined to give her everything she deserved. My world was hers.

“Good morning, Mamí,” I said as I walked into the living room towards the kitchen.

“Mornin’, Sweetie,” she answered with a warm smile, her Southern accent just noticeable. She held a mixing bowl and a spatula, vigorously stirring biscuit batter. “Where did you go just now?”

“I heard a crash in the direction of Le Jeune Road and went to investigate.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said nonchalantly. “Well, I called the police already and said a prayer for those involved.”

“Good —” I proceed to walk past her.

“How did you sleep?” she asked sharply, still mixing the batter.

“Fine,” I lied.

She stopped stirring. “I was born at night, Kaya Lena Jerito, but it wasn’t last night.”

“No ma’am, of course not.” I looked down with shame. I had never been successful at lying to my mother.

Her demeanor softened. “Besides, you only sit out on the porch in the early morning when something’s the matter. Tell Mamí what’s bothering you.”

She set down the mixing bowl and walked closer to where I stood, still holding the spatula.

“It was a dream I had.”

I decided to downplay the nightmare aspect. I did not want to alarm her. My mother took dreams as serious as reality. I did not wish to continue the discussion, but she broke the silence, somewhat impatient with my reluctance to expound.

“Well, what happened?”

I could feel my brow furrow as I pulled the memory of the nightmare from my subconscious where I had intended to lose it. “There was a man standing on a corner waiting for something or someone in the middle of a dark alley.”

“Darn night owls—”

“Yeah, well this ‘night owl’ was armed and taken down by a hundred-pound woman in less than five minutes.”

“Curious.” She narrowed her eyes and rubbed her chin with her free hand.

“Mamí, don’t worry about the dream. I’m sure it was nothing.” I took a few more steps towards my bedroom.

“I’ll let you tell it,” she conceded. I knew better than to believe that we would not revisit the topic at a later date. She was only hitting the pause button.

I noticed my cell phone ringing from my bedroom in the back of the house. I recognized the ringtone as the hospital’s call-in app, only to be used for emergencies. I had forgotten to take the phone outside with me.

How long has it been ringing?

“Dang it!” I hissed.

I needed to leave as soon as possible, but I still had to shower, get dressed, eat, and take JJ to school.

I cursed every step of the way as I jogged to my room, careful not let foul words escape my mouth. My mother did not condone profanity, not even from other adults.

Who knew what horrors awaited me at work.

When I finally reached my cell, I silenced the alarm and opened the app. The message read, “Please hurry! A dozen deaths and counting—Nurse James”.