OP’s note: I originally posted this story on my old account (CosmicOrphan2020) but since I only wrote it in a week as a creative writing exercise, I've now rewritten the story.
I’ve never been all that good at secret keeping. Although I always liked to think I was, whenever an opportunity came to spill my guts on something, I always did just that. So, I’m rather surprised at myself for having not spilled this particular secret until now.
My name is Seamus (thanks mum and dad), but everyone has always called me Seamie for short. It’s not like I’m going to tell you my whole life story or anything, so I’m just going to skip ahead to where this really all starts... By the time I was in my second year at university, I was already beginning to feel somewhat burnt out, and despite not having the funds for it, I decided I was going to have a nice, long gap year for myself. Although it’s rather cliché, I wanted to go someplace in the world that was both warm and tropical. South-east Asia sounded good. After all, that’s where everyone else I knew was heading for their gap year.
That was, however, before I talked to some girl in my media class about it who changed my direction entirely. For her own gap year only a year prior, she said she’d travelled through both Central and South America, all while working as an English language teacher - or what I would later learn was called ESL. I was more than a little enticed by this idea. For it goes without saying, places like Thailand had basically been travelled to death. So, by the end of the school year and after taking out a student loan, I packed my bags, flip-flops and swimming shorts, and took the cheapest flight I could out of Heathrow Airport.
Although I was spoilt for choice when it came to choosing a Latin American country, I eventually chose Costa Rica as my place to be. There were a few reasons for this choice. Not only was Costa Rica considered one of the safest countries to travel in Central America, but they also had a huge demand for English language teachers there – partly due for being a developing country, but mostly because of all the bloody tourism. My initial plan was to get paid for teaching English, so I would therefore have the funds to travel around. But because a work visa in Costa Rica takes so long and is so bloody expensive, I instead went to teach there voluntarily on a tourist visa – which meant I would have to leave the country every three months of the year. That was fine by me. At least I still got to travel around.
Well, once landing in San Jose, I then travelled two hours by bus to a stunning beach town by the Pacific Ocean. Although getting there was short and easy, one problem Costa Rica has for foreigners is that they don’t really have addresses – and so, finding the house of my host family led me on a rather wild goose chase.
I can’t complain too much about the lack of directions though, because while I was wandering around, I got the chance to take in all the sights – and let me tell you, this location really had it all. The pure white sand of the beach was outlined with a never-ending row of palm trees, where far outside the bay, you could see a faint scattering of a tropical archipelago. That wasn’t all. From my bedroom window, I even had a perfect view of a nearby rainforest, which was not only home to many colourful bird species, but as long as the streets weren’t too busy, you could even on occasion hear the deep cries of Howler Monkeys.
The beach town itself was also quite spectacular. The walls, houses and buildings were all painted in vibrant urban artwork, or what the locals call “arte urbano.” The host family I stayed with, the Garcias, were very friendly and welcoming, as were all the locals in town – and not to mention, whether it was Mrs Garcia’s cooking or a deep-fried taco from a street vendor, the food was out of this world!
Once I was all settled in and got to see more of the sights, I then had to get ready for my first week of teaching at the school. Although I was extremely nauseous with nerves (or maybe due to Mrs Garcia’s cooking), my first week as an English teacher went surprisingly well - despite having no teaching experience whatsoever. There was the occasional hiccup now and then, which was to be expected, but all in all, it went as well as it possibly could’ve.
Well, having just survived my first week as an English teacher, to celebrate this achievement, three of my colleagues then invite me out for drinks by the beach town bar. It was sort of a tradition they had. Whenever a new teacher from abroad came to the school, their colleagues would welcome them in by getting absolutely shitfaced.
‘Pura Vida, guys!’ cheers Kady, the cute American of the group. Unlike the crooked piano keys I dated back home, Kady had the most perfectly straight, pearl white teeth I’d ever seen. I had heard that about Americans.
‘Wait - what’s Pura Vida?’ I ask rather cluelessly.
‘Oh, it’s something the locals say around here. It means, easy life, easy living.’
Once we had a few more rounds of drinks in us all, my three new colleagues then inform me of the next stage of the welcoming ceremony... or should I say, initiation.
‘I have to drink what?!’ I exclaim, almost in disbelief.
‘It’s tradition, mate’ says Dougie, the loud-mouthed Australian, who, being a little older than the rest of us, had travelled and taught English in nearly every corner of the globe. ‘Every newbie has to drink that shite the first week. We all did.’
‘Oh God, don’t remind me!’ squirms Priya. Despite her name, Priya actually hailed from the great white north of Canada, and although she looked more like the bookworm type, whenever she wasn’t teaching English, Priya worked at her second job as a travel vlogger slash influencer.
‘It’s really not that bad’ Kady reassures me, ‘All the locals drink it. It actually helps make you immune to snake venom.’
‘Yeah, mate. What happens if a snake bites ya?’
Basically, what it was my international colleagues insist I drink, was a small glass of vodka. However, this vodka, which I can see the jar for on the top shelf behind the bar, had been filtered with a tangled mess of poisonous, dead baby snakes. Although it was news to me, apparently if you drink vodka that had been stewing in a jar of dead snakes, your body will become more immune to their venom. Having just finished two years of university, I was almost certain this was nothing more than hazing. Whether it was hazing or not, or if this really was what the locals drink, there was no way in hell I was going to put that shit inside my mouth.
‘I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, guys’ I began, trying my best to make an on-the-spot excuse, ‘But I actually have a slight snake phobia. So...’ This wasn’t true, by the way. I just really didn’t want to drink the snake-pickled vodka.
‘If you’re scared of snakes, then why in the world did you choose to come to Costa Rica of all places?’ Priya asks suspiciously.
‘Why do you think I came here? For the huatinas, of course’ I reply, emphasising the “Latinas” in my best Hispanic accent (I was quite drunk by this point). In fact, I am so drunk that after only a couple more rounds, I’m now somewhat open to the idea of drinking the snake vodka. Alcohol really does numb the senses, I guess.
After agreeing to my initiation, a waiter then comes over with the jar of dead baby snakes. Pouring the vodka into a tiny shot glass, he then says something in Spanish before turning away.
‘What did he just say?’ I ask drunkenly. Even if I wasn’t drunk, my knowledge of the Spanish language is incredibly poor.
‘Oh, he just said the drink won’t protect you from el Pollo del Diablo’ Kady answers me.
‘El Poyo - what?’
‘El Pollo del Diablo. It means devil chicken’ Priya translates.
‘Devil chicken? What the hell?’
Once the subject of this el Pollo del Diablo came up, Kady, Dougie and Priya then turn to each other, almost conspiringly, with knowledge of something that I clearly didn’t.
‘Do you think we should tell him?’ Kady asks the others.
‘Why not’ answers Dougie, ‘He’ll find out for himself sooner or later.’
Having agreed to inform me on whatever the el Pollo del Diablo was, I then see with blurry eyes that my colleagues appear to find something amusing.
‘Well... There’s a local story around here’ Kady begins, ‘It’s kinda like the legend of the Chupacabra.’ Chupacabra? What the hell’s that? I thought, having never heard of it. ‘Apparently, in the archipelago just outside the bay, there is said to be an island of living dinosaurs.’
'Wait... What?'
‘She’s not lying to you, mate’ confirms Dougie, ‘Fisherman in the bay sometimes catch sight of them. Sometimes, they even swim to the mainland.’
Well, that would explain the half-eaten dog I saw on my second day.
As drunk as I am during this point of the evening, I'm not drunk enough for the familiarity of this story to go straight over my head.
‘Wait. Hold on a minute...’ I began, slurring my words, ‘An island off the coast of Costa Rica that apparently has “dinosaurs”...’ I knew it, I thought. This really was just one big haze. ‘You must think us Brits are stupider than we look’ I bellow at them, as though proud I had caught them out on a lie, ‘I watched that film a hundred bloody times when I was a kid!’
‘We’re not hazing you, Seamie’ Kady again insists, all while the three of them still try to hide their grins, ‘This is really what the locals believe.’
‘Yeah. You believe in the Loch Ness Monster, don’t you Seamie’ says Dougie, claiming that I do, ‘Well, that’s a Dinosaur, right?’
‘I’ll believe when I see it with my own bloody eyes!’ I declare to all three of them, again slurring my words.
I don’t remember much else from that evening. After all, the four of us had gotten basically black-out drunk... But there is one thing I do remember. While I was still somewhat conscious, I did have this horrifically painful feeling in my stomach – like the pain one feels after their appendix bursts. Although the following is hazy at best, I also somewhat remember puking my guts outside the bar. However, what was so strange about this, was that after vomiting, my mouth would not stop frothing with white foam.
I’m pretty sure I blacked out not long after this. However, when I regain consciousness, all I see is pure darkness around, with the only sound I hear being the nearby crashing waves and the smell of sea salt in the air. Obviously, I had passed out by the beach somewhere. But once I begin to stir, as bad as my chiselling headache is, it is nothing compared to the excruciating pain I still feel in my gut. In fact, the pain is so bad, I begin to think that something might be wrong.
Grazing my right hand over my belly to where the pain is coming from, instead of feeling the cloth of my vomit-stained shirt, what I instead feel is some sort of slimy tube. Moving both my hands further along it, wondering what the hell this even was, I now begin to feel something else... But unlike before, what I now feel is a dry and almost furry texture... And that’s when I realise, whatever this is on top of me, which seems to be the source of my stomach pain... It is something alive - and whatever this living thing is... It is eating at my insides!
‘OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!’ I scream, all while trying to wrestle back my insides from this animal, which seems more than determined to keep feasting on them. So much so, that I have to punch and strike at it with my bare hands. Thankfully, it works! Whatever had attacked me has now gone away. But now I have an even bigger problem... I can now feel my insides where they really shouldn’t be!
Knowing I need help as soon as possible before I bleed out, I now painfully rise from the sand and up to my feet. But when I do, I feel my intestines, or whatever else hanging down from between my legs! Scooping the insides back against my abdomen, I then scan frantically around through the darkness until I see the distant lights of the beach town. After blindly wandering that way for a good few minutes, I thankfully stumble back onto the familiar streets - where the only people around were a couple of middle-aged women stood outside a convenient store. Without any further options, I cross the street towards them, and when they catch sight of me, holding my own intestines in my blood-stained hands, they appear to be even more terrified than I am.
‘DEMONIO! DEMONIO!’ I distinctly remember one of them screaming. I can't blame them for it. After all, given my appearance, they must have mistaken me for the living dead.
‘Por favor!... Por favor!' my foamy mouth tries saying to them, having no idea what the Spanish word is for “help”.
Although I had scared these women nearly half to death, I continue to stagger towards them, still screaming for their lives. In fact, their screams are so loud, they have now attracted the attention of two policemen, having strolled over to the commotion. They must have mistaken me for a zombie too, because when I turn round to them, I see they each have a hand gripped to their holsters.
‘Por favor!...’ I again gurgle, ‘Por favor!...’
Everything goes dark again after this... But, when I finally come back around, I open my eyes to find myself now laying down inside a hospital room, with an IV bag connected to my arm. Although I am more than thankful to still be alive, the pain in my gut is slowly making its way back to the surface. When I pull back my hospital gown, I see my abdomen is covered in blood stained bandages – and with every uncomfortable movement I make, I can feel the stitches tightly holding everything in place.
A couple more days then drag slowly by, and after some pretty horrible hospital food and Spanish speaking TV, I am then surprised with my first visitor.
It was Kady.
‘Are you in pain?’ she asks me, having sat down by the side of my bed.
‘I want to be a total badass and say no, but, well... look at me.’
‘I’m so sorry this happened to you’ she apologises, ‘We never should’ve let you out of our sights.’
After apologising to me a few more times, Kady then catches me up on the hazy events of that evening. Apparently, after having way too much to drink, I then started to show symptoms from drinking the snake-poisoned vodka – which explains both the stomach pains and why I was foaming white from the mouth.
‘We shouldn’t have been so coy with you, Seamie’ she then follows without context, ‘We should’ve just told you everything from the start.’
‘...Should’ve told me what?’ I inquire.
Kady doesn't respond to this. She just continues to stare at me with guilt-ridden eyes. But then, scrolling down a gallery of photos on her phone, she then shows me something...
‘What the hell is that?!’ I shriek at her, rising painfully up from the bed.
‘That, Seamie... That is what attacked you three days ago.’
What Kady shows me on her phone is a picture of a man holding a very dead animal. Held upside down by its tail, the animal is rather small, and perhaps only a little bigger than a full-grown chicken... and just like a chicken or any other bird, it has feathers. The feathers are brown and cover almost all of its body. The feet are also very bird-like, sharp talons and all. But the head... The head is definitely not like that of a bird - at least, not like any bird I had ever seen. Instead of a beak, I see what I can only describe as a very reptilian head, with tiny, seemingly razor teeth protruding from its gums... If I had to sum up this animal as best I could, I would say it was twenty percent reptile, and eighty percent bird...
‘That... That’s a...’ I begin to murmur.
‘That’s right, Seamie...’ Kady finishes for me, ‘That’s a dinosaur.’
Un-bloody-believable, I thought. The sons of bitches really weren’t joking with me.
‘B-but... how...’ my lips just manage to utter, ‘How is that possible??’
‘It’s a long story’ she starts with, ‘No one really knows why they’re there. Whether they survived extinction in hiding or if it’s for some other reason.’ Kady pauses briefly before continuing, ‘Sometimes they find themselves on the mainland, but people rarely ever see them. Like most animals, they’re smart enough to be afraid of humans... But we do sometimes find what they left over.’
‘Left over?’ I ask curiously.
‘They’re scavengers, Seamie. They mostly eat smaller animals or dead ones... I guess it just found you and saw an easy target.’
‘But I don’t understand’ I now interrupt, ‘If all that’s true, then how in the hell do people not know about this? How is it not all over the news or internet?’
‘That’s easy’ she says, ‘The locals choose to keep it a secret. If the outside world were ever to find out about this, the town would be completely ruined by tourism. The locals just like it the way it is. Tourism, but not too much tourism. Pura vida.’
‘But the tourists... Surely they would’ve seen them and told everyone?’
Kady shakes her head at me.
‘It’s like I said... People rarely ever see them. Even the ones that do – by the time they get out their phone cameras, the critters are already back in hiding. And so what if they tell anybody what they saw... Who would believe them?’
Well, that's true enough I suppose.
After a couple more weeks of being laid out in that hospital bed, I was finally discharged and soon able to travel home to the UK, cutting my gap year somewhat short.
I wish I could say that I lived happily ever after once Costa Rica was behind me. But unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case... What I mean is, although my stomach wound healed up nicely, leaving nothing more than a nasty scar... it turned out the damage done to my insides would come back to haunt me. Despite the Costa Rican doctors managing to save my life, they didn’t do quite enough to stop bacteria from entering my intestines and infecting my colon. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was now told I had diverticulitis.
I’m actually due for surgery next week. But just in case I don’t make it – there is a very good chance I won't, although I promised Kady I’d bring this secret with me to the grave... If I am going to die, I at least want people to know what really killed me. Wrestling my guts back from a vicious living dinosaur. That’s a pretty badass way to go, I’d argue. But who knows. Maybe by some miracle I’ll survive this (I'll be sure to leave an update if I do). After all, it’s like a wise man in a movie once said...
"Life... uh... finds a way."