Disbelief

Since I was little, I had earned the reputation of being a child with a big imagination thanks to the habit of telling the craziest stories that crossed my mind. One day I told my friends that my dad had fought a fifteen-meter-long anaconda. How its serpentine body coiled around his neck, and that my father, very bravely, cut off its head before it crushed his skull. That habit got me into a couple of scoldings and earned me the distrust of my teachers. My father always advised me to stop making up absurd stories, but my mother, who was my best audience, loved listening to whatever nonsense came out of my mouth.

But all that changed one day when we traveled to Espinal, a town located in Tolima. My mom was a biologist and was working on a project involving the Magdalena River. We were in a boat going upriver to reach a camp where we would spend the night; it was a family tradition to camp before returning to the city. I loved camping with my parents, listening to the sounds of wild animals and having my mom guess what animal it could be. Those were some of my favorite moments.

That night, we were sitting around the campfire, eating dinner. We planned to leave early the next morning when one of the boatmen headed downriver. We were eating peacefully when, suddenly, we heard footsteps near the camp. My parents became alert and told me not to move away from them. Out of the shadows, a tall creature appeared from nowhere, swinging sharply between the firm trees. It had long hair that reached down to its feet and was holding a large cigar between its teeth. The creature kept moving toward us at a slow pace. My father stepped in front of us, but that creature shoved him aside with a single push. That thing grabbed my beloved mother by her shirt. I held on to her as tightly as my small arms would allow, but it was in vain because it threw her over its shoulder. My mother struggled and screamed furiously, and my father unsuccessfully tried to pull the creature’s hair. My mother’s screams faded into the darkness of the jungle, lost among the sounds of the wild animals.

To this day, no one believes me when I tell this story. The only ones who believed me were the townspeople. They knew that creature. They called it the Mohan. I don’t often tell this story anymore because people tend to look at me with disdain, and it also makes my father terribly depressed. I don’t like having to put up with the rumors that my mother ran off with another man and abandoned us. I don’t like tarnishing the memory of my beloved mother. No one believes me when I say that the Mohan took my mom away.