Tropical Tales of Terror

As an English professor at the University of Puerto Rico I was often faced with the challenge of finding short stories that my students could relate to, stories set in a time and place that would be more familiar to them than our usual fare. There is something special about seeing a real place in fiction; a place you know, which makes both the location and the story seem more real, more believable. As a former New Yorker I've delighted in seeing the Big Apple destroyed by giant apes, killer meteorites, post-Apocalyptic wars and, most recently, by a giant, hermaphrodite, radioactive lizard, a.k.a. Godzilla. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I wish ill on the city of my birth. It's just that I think that, somehow, you can 'connect' better with the narrative if you can say to yourself, 'Hey, I know that place. I've been there.'

Although we do have in our curriculum, here at UPR Aguadilla, courses that cover most of the American and British literary classics, I felt we were lacking in the area of lighter, short stories set in a context familiar to our student body. In this collection I strive to provide my readers, students and otherwise, contemporary fantasy/science fiction that is set in modern day Puerto Rico, fantastic tales taking place squarely in the culture and world of this Caribbean country.

The first story, 'My Name is Lilith' is the saga of an immortal woman, the biblical Adam's first wife, who is now living in Puerto Rico. She is working as a botanist at the tropical rain forest reserve known as 'El Yunque'. There, under orders of God, she is concealing and protecting a very special tree. Hot on her trail is a creature that is half angel, half-human and all evil. It too wants to gain control of that special plant, the biblical Tree of Life, but for a different reason. This being wants to feed an army of his followers with its immortality granting fruit and use it to gain control over humanity. Who will finally control the sacred tree that Lilith must guard with her life?

The second story, 'The Elderly Xeno Hawks of 'El Yunque' is a yarn that provides an alternative explanation to the local urban legend of 'El Chupacabras', a vampire-like creature that many people in Puerto Rico believe really exists. The story moves over a span of three centuries narrating the clashes between a small band of highly intelligent, nocturnal predators and a small group of human intruders. The very life of the land hawks depends on their ability to keep their existence a secret from the outside world but with so many people all around them concealment becomes more and more difficult as time goes by.

The next tale, When the Time is Right, is about Dr. Bruno Rodriguez, a Gulf War veteran who is tormented by vivid dreams. In these dreams he becomes a pre-biblical angel that is sent by an Ancient Sumerian god, Utu, to destroy humanity by sinking a cargo ship called the Atlantic Hawk. The vessel is loaded with, what is perhaps the most toxic substance known to humanity, plutonium, as it sails past the western coast of Puerto Rico. The nightmares had started years before, when Capt. Rodriguez and a few of his men were engulfed in a mysterious green gas during a chemical weapons attack, back in Iraq. When Rodriguez discovers that two other members from his Gulf War team are also having the dreams he realizes that this is more than just combat related stress. When he learns that there really is a ship with a cargo of lethal nuclear waste sailing near Puerto Rico he realizes just how high the stakes truly are.

Next comes 'The Key Chain', the strange story of jaded, urban reporter José Santiago. While searching for his next big story Santiago accidentally walks into what appears to be a carjacking gone terribly awry. However, something is not right and his reporter's instinc