Ramon and the Psychedelic Riverway

“Cruzando de muerte a vida en el río de oro,
buscando la luz que me pueda ayudar…”

"Crossing from death to life in the river of gold,
searching for the light that can help me"

The words slipped out of me without permission half prayer, half melody as we drifted through the canal. The sun was lowering itself behind the trees, turning the water into something that looked deeper than it was, something that felt older than it should.

We had just left Isla de las Muñecas, the infamous haunted doll island, they say, ever since a little girl drowned nearby. The man who lived there claimed her doll floated to the island the next day, pulled by her spirit. So he hung it on a tree. Then he added others. And others. A forest of plastic eyes and weathered limbs watching the water for a girl who never returned.

I was still carrying that unease when a canoe scraped softly against the side of my boat with a man holding a paddle made out of a tree branch and lid from a 5-gallon bucket.

“¡Amigo!” the man called, smiling like he knew something I didn’t.
“¿Le puedo ofrecer un trago mágico? Mire, le hago un trato… lo prueba, y si no le gusta, me voy. Pero si sí le gusta, me compra un vaso por sesenta pesos.”

"Friend! Can I offer you a magical drink? I'll make you a deal. Try it and if you don't like it, I'll be on my way. But if you like it, you'll buy a cup of it from me for 60 pesos"

I looked at him and at the canoe tied off to my boat, at his bright shirt, at the empty bottles rattling at his feet and shrugged.

“¿Sabes qué? ¿Por qué no?”

"You know what? Why not?"

He lit up, revealing a gap where a tooth should’ve been.

“Aquí está, señor. Mire qué rico quedó, un poco dulce, un poco agrio… pero muy delicioso.”

"Here it is mister! Check how great it turned out. A little sweet, a little sour, but very delicious."

He handed me a large styrofoam cup filled with an almost milky white drink. It smelled faintly sweet, faintly fermented, faintly dangerous. Maybe it was the beer and tequila I’d had before doll island, but it wasn’t half bad.

I took a long sip.
“Llénalo.”

"Fill it up."

He laughed a warm, from-the-belly, sound.

“¡Por supuesto, señor! Muy amable. ¿Sabe qué? Un poco extra pa’ usted…”

"Of course! You know what? Here's a little extra just for you."

His canoe creaked as he leaned forward. The blue paint was chipped and sun-beaten, the kind of weathering that felt earned. As he refilled the cup, he reached into a hidden pocket and pulled out a small, dirt-stained clear bottle about half the size of a flask.

“Y un poco más… por ser mi amigo.”

"and a little more for being my friend."

He tipped a few drops of the mysterious liquid into my drink, winked with that one-toothed grin, and handed it back.

“Buen viaje, señor.”

"safe travels mister."

I passed him sixty pesos, and just like that he pushed off, drifting past us with the fading light behind him.

I took another sip and leaned back into the boat, feeling the world shift, gently at first, then with intention.

The sky was darkening.
The water was thickening.
And somewhere between those two changes, something inside me loosened.

“¿Y qué pasa con una luz que encuentra lo que nunca llega… el final de la historia?”

"And what happens to a light that finds that which never comes... the ending of the story?"

The words weren’t mine.
Or maybe they were.
It was getting hard to tell.

The guide behind me kept pushing us forward through the water, steady, patient, unaware that the edges of the world had begun bending. Colors deepened. Shadows stretched. The trees along the shore leaned in, like they were curious about the shape of my thoughts.

I felt the river start to inhale.

And in that slow, impossible breath, something on the shore started moving.

At first it was only sound, the rapid padding of paws against wet earth. Then the shape sharpened. My dog. Long gone in the real world, but here she was now, sprinting alongside the boat as if no time had passed at all. Barking that same excited bark she used to make when she wanted me to chase her. Tail whipping like it was stirring the wind itself.

I reached out a hand, knowing full well I couldn't touch her.
But she was close enough that I felt the memory of her warmth.

Fireworks burst overhead. Not Mexican fireworks, but the ones from my childhood Fourth of July. The big chaotic blooms that shook the night air and lit up the faces of my family in red and gold flashes. I could smell the faint smoke drifting through summer evenings, feel the grass beneath my bare feet, hear my cousins shouting as they ran around with sparklers.

A moment later, the scene shifted again.

On the left bank of the canal, my grandfather appeared, not the older man I knew, but a younger version, the one from the stories he had told me. Skinny. Determined. Desperate. Kneeling by a river in Mexico, scooping up a handful of silt. Bringing it to his mouth. Tasting it, searching for anything, minerals, nutrients, survival. His jaw tightened with resignation, then resolve.

He looked up at me through the dark, as if he could see straight through the years between us.

The lights of the distant city blurred behind him, fusing with the stars above. It became impossible to tell where civilization ended and the universe began. Sky and skyline stitched together into a single shimmering tapestry.

Then, a sudden beat of wings.

An eagle descended from somewhere far above, slow and powerful, gliding as if the air bent to carry it. It circled once, then landed on a lone cactus rising from the water’s edge. A serpent writhed in its talons and for a moment I didn’t just see the symbol of Mexico, I saw the myth behind it.

The omen.
The beginning.
The place where a wandering people decided to build a city that would one day become the sprawling pulse of Mexico City.

The eagle tore into the snake, and with each movement, the sky behind it rippled, stars scattering into new constellations that rearranged themselves in patterns I felt I should understand.

The river surged beneath me.
The boat accelerated though the guide had not moved.
Water streaked past us in liquid gold.

My dog kept pace.
My grandfather watched.
Fireworks stitched light across the sky.
The eagle clutched its serpent like it was holding the entire story of a people in its claws.

And the river, the river began pulling me forward, fast, as if it wanted to show me everything I had ever been and everything that had ever made me.

The visions clung to the shoreline like memories pinned to a clothesline, whipping in the wind as we raced by. Twigs floating atop rushing water through gutters after a spring rain towards the drain. Childhood scenes. Fears. Triumphs. Moments I’d forgotten. Moments I thought I had outgrown. All of them parading past me with astonishing clarity.

And just ahead 

the water ended.

A shimmering edge, like a waterfall made of light, ready to swallow me whole.
Ready to take me deeper.

The boat tipped forward.

Time loosened.

The plunge slowed to the pace of a held breath.
Droplets of water hovered around me suspended in the air like glass beads caught in a sunbeam.

And in the first one closest to my eye, I saw my reflection.

Not the me sitting in the boat, but another me.
A me who had chosen a quieter life.

Another droplet drifted past.
Inside that one was the scholar, surrounded by books I never read, wearing glasses I never bought, living a life defined by written worlds instead of the wandering one I’d chosen.

Another droplet spun beside it.
The painter, clothes ruined with color, hands stained with creation, breathing in turpentine and possibility.

Another bead of water rotated slowly.
The father, holding a child whose face I didn’t recognize but somehow loved instantly. A version of me who traded wandering for nurturing.

Then one darker droplet drifted by.
The vagabond, sunburnt and wandering, free and lost in the same breath.

Another flashed gold.
The wealthy version, polished, successful, and hollow behind the eyes.

Another swung wide.
The homeless version, beard long, clothes torn, but strangely at peace, like he had made amends with the world in a way the others never had.

Young me.
Old me.
Brave me.
Broken me.
The me who said yes.
The me who said no.
The me who stayed.
The me who left.

Each droplet held a different life, a different outcome, a different ripple of possibility.

And then 
I realized something.

None of them were wrong.
None of them were right.
None of them were imaginary.
They were all tributaries of the same river, one that branched a thousand ways.

The droplets began to fall faster, gathering speed, colliding mid-air. Each time they touched, the versions inside them blurred, merged, evolved. By the time they reached the bottom, they were no longer separate reflections.

The droplets hit the river below in slow-motion explosions of light, merging into one flow again.

All possibilities becoming one current.

My boat followed, finally surrendering to gravity.
The water embraced us and pulled us into the ongoing riverway, the psychedelic bloodstream of life itself, where every version of me, every decision, every echo, every ancestor, every future, all blended into the same shimmering current.

I submerged for a moment before rising again, breathless, blinking through the luminous haze.

And just as the river prepared to show me what came next...

A hand slapped my shoulder.

“Señor… ya llegamos.”

"Mister... we're here."

The river vanished.
The visions evaporated.
The world snapped back into place.

I was sitting upright in the boat, the dock ahead, the guide looking at me like I had simply drifted off.

“Es hora de bajar."

"It's time to leave."

And just like that, I was returned to myself, the infinite glimpses of my existence slowly fading away like dreams after a night of sleep.

 

*Note - I often ask myself in life, "what is the likelihood of me being okay/alive after this decision?" If the answer is that I'll survive with a potential good story then I'll just wing it and go for it. In this story I did go on a boat ride by myself and had some drinks along the way to haunted doll island. I met a rather curious individual selling pulque (the drink described in the story) which led to a rather fun state of inebriation where I imagined myself on psychedelics in a Willy Wonka tunnel like experience as I stumbled through the streets and sidewalks of Mexico City. I drafted up the story in my head then managed to find my way back to my apartment with a dead cellphone. Once back, I began writing this story to revisit it later. I finally got around to it and decided to bring in a little help from my AI to help me finish. So, in full transparency, the idea is 100% me as is a lot of the root writing and ideas in raw form. I used AI to help me finetune the writing and flow and expand it into what is now posted.