I just told ‘em I was taking my little gringo friend to offer up as a sacrifice to the beach gods.

A girl like that don’t belong to anyone—not even herself. She’s probably gettin’ stuffed like a piñata right now.”

A SACRIFICE TO THE GOD OF THE BLUES BY JONATHAN LAPOMA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 28

We’d only been on the road for about an hour before the first prophecy rang true.

“That smells delicious,” I took a deep breath and winced. I craved food, yet my stomach was in a constant, dull pain.

“What’d I tell ya? It’s like this every afternoon.” Herb continued driving through the small town.

Both sides of that narrow Mexican road were lined with grills and chicken rotisseries and kids in dirty clothes waving us over.

“Think we should stop?” I gulped my warming caguama.

“Forward’s the way, my boy.”

We’d left Lila later than we’d wanted to that day—a little after 1:00. We were both hung over from the previous night, but the headaches were cured when the dirty, old man showed up at my dead-end house with a couple of forty-ounce caguamas. “For the road,” he said. We popped the tops with Herb’…