Some beliefs can free the mind, opening it wide to endless possibilities, while others can build a rigid cage that can ensnare an unsuspecting psyche. It is these close-minded beliefs that become the bars and jailers of a young impressionable intellect.

If you believe something is true… It is.

At least for you… and are we not the authors of our own reality?

Be careful of what you believe…

Currently, Damian Vaughn believed, with utmost certainty, that his Tea was too damn hot. It was an exotic blend that he had picked up on his last trip through Southeast Asia. It tasted exactly like Starbucks Chia Tea, but still it was foreign and had an interesting back-story. So, it was inevitably better.

It seemed to him everything was Foreign lately. He never really knew where he was anymore, except when the customs agents began to swear at him.

He was curled into a large awkward ball of hooded black sweats, staring out of a tiny airplane window. The Tea in his thermos fogged the windows as he watched yet another exotic locale fade into the distance. This locale was San Pedro Sula, One of the more modern cities in the Central American country of Hundorous. Modern, in that there was one airport and the armed guards politely motioned with their semi-automatic weapons as opposed to using them.

Another fruitless trip.

He sighed.

Well not exactly fruitless, he had eaten his weight in mango and Plantains. But still he had not found what he was looking for.

He had gone all the way to the Nicaraguan border. He had climbed high into the mountain villages in search of his quarry. Well not so much climbed as hired someone with a rather formidable SUV. Deep in the thick jungles that doted the flat crests of the indigenous mountains, Damien had sought help from an elderly Bruja who was reputed to be able to heal ANY thing.

After two day’s travel through an oxymoron, (a rain forest where it NEVER rained. The jungles were so high into the atmosphere that they didn’t require any tangible precipitation, they were literally in the clouds.) Damien had arrived at what his guide called “her Heathen retreat”. After coaxing the poor little woman out of the nearest tree he had found her to be anything but heathen. Damien suspected that, this label was given to her by condescending people who simply wore more clothes then she did.

The poor little thing took one look at him, said a charm for protection and directly ferreted up the nearest vine. It was quite a thing to see an 80-year-old peasant woman scale 50 feet in nothing but a sarong.

The mystically inclined often reacted to Damien that way. It was like opening your door to find a Unicorn …or the Gestapo.

Even after he had made quick friends with her, she was unable to give him the aid he sought. She gave him a Quetzal’s feather and wished him luck, with a sad withered smile that made him decidedly uneasy.

Ahhh well back to the drawing board…

At least he had a warm cup of tea and the silence of his thoughts…

“FUCK NO DUDE YOU GOTTA TRY IT!!! NO DUDE! THE DIVING DOWN HERE IS SICK!!!” The young man next to him barked into his Cell Phone.

His name Was Lee Rizen. He was just getting back from a long fall break Deep sea Diving off the northern keys.

“NO DUDE, I’D LOVE TOO BUT I’M MEETING UP WITH MY BUDDY FROM HIGHSCHOOL THE SECOND I GET BACK!!!”

Damien groaned and tried to retreat further into the baggy folds of his dark hood.

“YEAH MAN! HE WORKS AT THIS STRIP CLUB AND HE’s GONNA HOOK ME UP WITH THIS BIG TITTIED BLONDE!” The eager youth yelled.

“OF COURSE BRO! YOU KNOW HOW BLONDES ARE MAN! THEY CAN’T HELP BUT SUCK COCK, AND STRIPPERS MAN ! THEY CRAVE THE SKIN BEAST!!! YOU KNOW THAT’S TRUE!!!”

Damien inwardly groaned.

“NO MAN I’LL HOLA AT YA AFTA I GET BACK! PEACE MAN!” Lee hung up the phone and put it into his pocket.

Damien looked at him for a moment and then ventured a statement. “You should be more careful of what you say.”

Lee turned to the stranger startled. “What?”

The man in black turned to him and fixed him with a blue-eyed stare, “It is ill advised to believe such vulgar things, much less announce them.”

“Yo man… sorry.” Lee said dismissively, swiveling to find an empty seat far away from his nosey neighbor.

Damien plowed on, his moral indignation a powerful engine driving him forward. “Strippers… Blondes… I doubt highly these are indicative of sexual deviance … no matter what your immature ideas would have you believe.”

Lee was now pissed. This dude had no right to listen in on HIS phone call. This dude had no right to tell him what to believe. “Look Mr. you don’t even know me.” He spat.

Damien considered the statement, “You know I once thought that all people were different, but the older I get, I realize that that is a fallacy.” He plucked irritably at his sleeve. “I really do think that somewhere in the universe is a poly-morphic field devoted solely to the replication and production of hormone driven quasi-adolescences with testosterone dependant purposes.”

“Huh?”

Damien sized the young man up with a neglectful glare, “Well, from the way you are dressed head to toe in the colors and paraphernalia of your indistinct little college, I’d venture to say you’re on some sort of sports scholarship.”

Lee considered his tight T-shirt emblazoned with Wrainright College, and his loose soccer shorts, “yeah…”

“Judging from your lithe shape and thick legs…and lack of any text book…I’d say Soccer?”

“Yeah…and proud of it.”

“And that’s basically all you really are deep down… just another preppy, little, broad generalization, defined by your attitude and attire. So I do know you …or enough about you. At any rate.” He looked at the window and said more to himself, “It seems that being unique is the ecclesiastical burden of a select few.”

“You think just cause I’m eager to pimp it with some titty bar sluts and I’m a jock that I’m some fucking meat head?” Lee asked incredulous.

“You don’t weigh enough to be a meat head.” Damien observed. “Your just a man.” He made the statement seem like a terrible insult.

“Yeah well dude, I’m an engineering major.” He announced proudly. “So I’m way more then a jersey and a dick, asshole.”

“I’m just saying be careful what you believe in. If you believe to hard it can trap you…”

Lee was pretty pissed off and was still awkwardly looking for some seat to move to. “Guess you don’t believe in anything then huh?”

Damien smiled, “Not really.”

Lee rolled his eyes, “So you don’t believe in God?”

“Gods.” Damien corrected.

“Whatever dude.” Lee said closing his eyes and hoping the freak would shuddup.

In fact, Damien didn’t believe in Gods. Of course he knew they existed. But that didn’t give him any cause to go around believing in them. He thought it was best that they keep to their busy schedules and leave him to his own. They had jobs to do that certainly had nothing to do with him. To Damien’s Practical and Arcane mind, Believing in Gods was like Believing in the Dentist or the Mailman.

As a pre-dream after thought Lee murmured, “I just wish all the big tittied blondes of the world believed the way I do.”

Damien dropped his head into his hands exasperatedly. “Don’t you know anything Frat boy?”

“Huh?” Lee grunted, shaken awake by the urgency in the stranger’s voice.

“You should NEVER make a wish in front of a Stranger!”

Lee laughed at the total nonsense of the whole conversation, “Yeah and why’s that Dali Llama?”

There was a long silence and Lee looked up into the icy blue glint of the Man’s eyes, which seemed to have become impossibly colder, “Because you never know how Strange they really are…” •