text: In a town south of the border the day sun shined heavily. From a main road, I pull into a rather gracious parking lot accommodating a restaurant that seems vaguely familiar. It was as if it had taken inspiration from old American diners but still looked distinctly contemporary in its surroundings with its fading, chipped and blue paint. As I go to reverse into a space, another car pulls into it before I can. This happens another time before I resign to a tightly fitting and difficult to leave spot, snug in the corner of the packed lot. Getting out I see an older but not quite elderly man on a column or statue of some sort, along the far side of the lot. His skin looked battered by the heavy sun. I noticed he was already staring at me so I looked away. As I walked across the brittle and burning pavement and through the chipped blue doors I knew, or rather felt, his gaze follow the entire way. Walking up to the counter I ask the man across it if they have anything good for breakfast. He points to an item on the menu on the wall, tells me what its called and I agree that it seems suitable to eat for breakfast. Three vultures walked in. Their beady eyes cut and slice through my mind as mine met the one in the middle. In a getup starkly dark and purplish in hue, macabre in nature, you would expect looks to draw from the patrons of the establishment. Yet the people here have apparently decidedly settled on ignoring their offending existence. Slender and sharp, they waltz towards the opposite end of the counters. Feeling a lump in my throat and sudden curiosity in the man atop the pole I leave to the outside while my food is being made, only to find him unchanged. Staring, not at me this time, or anything I can discern, but at something. As I stare, a long white cloth falls from atop the pole. Seeing this, I decide my curiosity is too much and walk over to the odd sight, feeling drawn in from its surreal appearance. As I get close a dollar falls from the sky. I grab it, confused, and accept it. Closer again, a dollar from atop. Drawn now towards the cloth, I move toward it. Picking it up, it almost felt like silk, but rougher and somehow still impeccably white. I notice now a looking down, a path, beaten and dusty. A circle around the column, and smaller, sculpted stones around it in the ground. Holding the cloth I take a step forward, and another, and once more. As I work around the column, I peer from behind when suddenly my body petrifies under the long beady stare of three vultures. From under the shadow cast by the walls of the restaurant all three now concentrated their stare towards me. A reddish, piercing stare, seething either hatred or starved titillation... I resumed moving. Dollars fell from atop as I did, a battered hand at times flashing in sight. I took them all. Around the next bend again I met their gaze. They seem to have taken a step out. I keep walking. Again and again as I revolve around, beady eyes meet mine, moving closer and closer while my wallet grows thicker and thicker. The birds were a dozen spaces across the lot when I began to wonder, what if I run out of space in my wallet? Tears of sweat exhausted from my forehead under the blistering explosions of a celestial goliath hundreds of millions of parking lots away. The harpies were now several spaces away when I suddenly started to notice more clearly their features. Their teeth now jutted out behind their thin papyrus lips, splintered and jagged. Their feathers seemed to perk up and out like coursing adrenaline to an animal’s hairs. Their eyes did not move, nor did they twitch or stagnate, falter or break, as if a string was held taught between I and their dilated pupils. I kept moving. I stopped and wondered. Then, I wondered again. And alas, I wondered once more before I began to move again. I turned around the bend once more before realizing I couldn’t. The stench hit me first. It reeked of a millennia of decomposition and death. My nose stung and my eyes cried of pain. Gripped by an imposing and overwhelming force my chin lifted and eyes pulled toward a terrifying image branded into my mind. The vultures basked in front of me, larger now than id ever believed to be physically possible. There was no sunlight. Their grotesque and horrifying visage looked down upon me as I would imagine a hawk to a field mouse. I felt my wallet pull from my hands and held onto it as the force ripped the flesh from my already battered fingers. A vortex of sharp, violetish feathers consumed my reality and launched me into a world of disarray and darkness, consuming me until there was only nothing left. Opening my eyes I see light. In front of me is a restaurant. Three girls sit on a plume decorated bench by its side, minding their own business. A strange man sits atop a lonesome art installation, a column of some sort, yelling quasi religious and partly delirious phrases in a different language. I remember I had ordered breakfast. It should be done by now. I check my wallet, it seems okay. The sun was shining.