I opened my eyes with the sun pounding on my face like a nagging mother. My parched mouth resembled a barren desert, and a throbbing headache sent my left eye twitching in spasmodic unease. The bedside clock taunted me with its 8:27 AM display. A stream of consciousness came upon me as I turned my head away from the blinding sunlight. The room was arctic cold, my thoughts scattered in a haze of dizziness, shock, and nausea.

In a moment, memories crept in through the sieve of anxiety and uncertainty; remnants of the enigmatic night that had unfolded mere hours ago. What happened? Was it real? Was I alive? Were the others alive? Where did they go in the end? Guilt, confusion, and doubt came crashing down on me like a piano falling from a skyscraper. It ruined what remained of my sleep. Just then, my sister barged in, a chaotic force like a kamikaze pilot crashing onto the bed, her accusatory tone announcing breakfast and my parents’ desire to speak with me. I couldn’t help but sigh, knowing I’d have to concoct tales about the night’s dark escapades, covering up the proverbial body, as I always did.

“Dude what the hell happened to your tee; it looks like you wiped the devil’s ass with it! And your shoes, what the fuck?”. My gut shrank to the size of a raisin and my heart executed a gymnastic feat within my chest, sending tremors rippling down my spine and onto my stomach. Words eluded me, like a phantom in the night, as I yearned for more precious moments of sleep. Sadly, fate didn’t give me that break. I pretended to ignore her. I feign indifference. Yet, there she stood, relentless as the ticking of a cursed clock, patiently awaiting an answer. And I knew she was not going to budge until I told her everything. After all, she was my un-twin twin sister, our souls inexplicably intertwined. We used to tread the same twisted paths, echoing the same discordant tunes, and nearly sharing each other’s darkest sentiments. Deep beneath her mischievous façade, I knew she harboured genuine concern and a worry for my well-being that clung to me like a shadow.

Flashes assailed me, with images of being surrounded by cops bombarding me with questions I couldn’t process. I was still intoxicated, caught in a limbo that obscured my ability to distinguish between reality and illusion. I stood there in the wee hours of the night, far from home, pondering how I had ended up in this situation. A flashlight suddenly beamed onto my face, snapping me out of my daze. I was repeatedly questioned about my name, address, age, and who had been driving the damaged car. “Not me,” I replied. Shortly thereafter, I was released and allowed to go. “Thank God,” I whispered in relief. However, when I attempted to walk back to my hotel, I realized I couldn’t maintain a straight line. It was embarrassing, and I knew that getting to bed would require more effort than expected, after a night of partying like there was no tomorrow. Indeed “tomorrow” seemed a distant reality in that moment…at least for me. After what seemed an eternity, I realized I was walking in the opposite direction; “fuck!” I uttered in frustration. My feet, already battered from a night of club-hopping and dancing, were now crying for mercy. I retraced my steps, adding another 3 or 4 km to my initial 5. “Here goes nothing,” I muttered, resenting my luck.

In the distance, I detected the unmistakable low hum of an approaching vehicle, gradually transitioning into a full-throated roar. It seemed aware of my presence as I trudged along the dark stretch of coastal road encircling “Swallow Island,” the English translation of Cozumel, a name with indigenous roots. The car screeched to a halt roughly 50 meters ahead. I was moving like a millipede, placing one foot in front of the other, though every step felt like a marathon in slow-motion. Exhaustion weighed me down. I was in a semi-zombified state, less inebriated but still unable to fully grasp my situation. My head was a disco ball gone wild, and all I craved was a toilet and a cozy bed.

As I drew near the open front window on the passenger side, a soft, inviting voice emanated from the car’s interior. “Do you need help, sir? Would you like a ride?” I impulsively hopped in, too tired to even offer a verbal response. I threw in a nod that served as both a wave of thanks and a silent “yes, please.” The driver must’ve assumed my Spanish was as absent as my sobriety, due to my lack of verbal engagement. Without asking about my destination, he accelerated the car and ventured, “Ah, alright, sir, you’re staying at the CCC.” “How the heck does he know?” I wondered. He must have spotted my guest bracelet. I nodded once more and flashed a weary grin.

He then inquired about my late-night, or should I say early-morning, road trek. “It’s almost 4:57 AM, you know?” he remarked. At last, I mustered the energy to respond. With unembellished candor, I explained, “I was bar-crawling in town, hopped into a car with some gringoes to return to my hotel, got into a car crash that flipped the vehicle off the road, and had to walk back to the hotel until you picked me up from the roadside.”

The driver nearly halted the car again, his eyes registering disbelief as if he’d just encountered an apparition in the passenger seat. He stammered, “Did you mean that wrecked red beach convertible back there? Were you really inside it? How fast were you going? What on earth did you do to that car to end up like that? And how did you make it out alive?” Too many questions at once, and too drained to explain. The moments leading up to the accident replayed in flashes, and a jolt of adrenaline coursed through my body, like an involuntary muscle memory. “And we weren’t even wearing seat belts,” my higher consciousness reminded me, adding a final layer of surrealism to the whole ordeal, as if to confirm that I had narrowly escaped disaster, to remind me that I was living on borrowed time.

In truth, I couldn’t fully grasp the magnitude of what had just transpired. So, I turned my gaze back to the road and remained silent as we continued our journey to the hotel, where my kind and unassuming driver would both deliver the morning paper and deliver me.