Tortillas and the Trafficker's Tears

“I’ll take two,” I said to the vendor. He gave me a blank stare. “Two tacos,” I added. Still nothing. I took a step closer and leaned in conspiratorially, lowering my voice to a hushed whisper. “Chupacabra tacos.”

The look of sudden understanding that washed over his face was priceless. The man nodded enthusiastically, then spoke quickly in Spanish to behind the counter before turning back to me with a wide grin on his face. “You wait here, señor. One moment.” He disappeared into the back of his taco stand and returned holding a metal tin. He popped it open and revealed the contents: four tiny baby heads staring up at me with black eyeballs and large red holes where their mouths used to be. The vendor lifted one out of the can by its tuft of jet-black hair and plopped it onto a hot griddle, where it sizzled and spat as he turned it over with a pair of tongs so that both sides were evenly cooked. I watched him flip another two babies and breathe deeply on them to speed up the cooking process.

I had been hungry for weeks now, but these tacos looked like they could be just what the doctor ordered. I rummaged through my pockets for some money to pay for them when the vendor gestured for me to wait. Before I could protest he had already wrapped my tacos in tinfoil, handed them to me, and moved down the line to serve another customer who had just walked up to his stand on the sidewalk outside an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. His accent was thick, but he spoke perfect English: “Two chupacabras?”

“Absolutely! Two chupacabras! My favorite! Here you go! Enjoy your lunch!” The vendor pulled out two more tiny heads from his canister and placed them on his griddle, smiling broadly as he turned around and began speaking rapidly in Spanish again. I figured he must have recently learned English or else he was just glad to speak it again after not having any customers for so long; this was an isolated area after all that most people didn’t even know existed anymore because they couldn’t pronounce its name properly (it was called Elkhart).

I walked back towards my car while eating my first taco, which was surprisingly good considering how long it had been since I last ate anything besides candy bars and trail mix during my travels across Europe all those months ago. The second one was only half gone by the time I reached my car, so I decided to eat it right away instead of saving it for later; if there wasn’t going to be anywhere else around where I could find food soon enough then there wouldn’t be much point in saving anything anyway.

As soon as I took my first bite into the second taco though I immediately wished that I hadn’t eaten it so fast after all; something about it tasted very strange indeed: very bitter and salty at once, but somehow also sweet at the same time; like meat flavored with far too many spices all at once, but also like honey that had gone bad from sitting out in the sun too long in a hot place—but still sort of good despite all of that because you needed some honey on your toast sometimes even if you knew it wasn't quite right anymore… You know what? Never mind trying to explain what this thing tasted like; even saying “It smelled bad too” doesn't do this foul confectionary justice; let's just say that whatever went into making these tacos no longer resembled food fit for human consumption by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet... And yet... It tasted good enough that I polished off every last bit of what remained inside the wrapper without stopping until absolutely nothing was left other than a few crumbs of tortilla shell left clinging desperately onto each other like drowning sailors clinging onto life preservers before being pulled under by a merciless ocean current… It weighed heavily in my stomach like a lead weight… But oh well! A man's gotta eat something once in awhile if he wants to keep going… Right? Surely this taste would pass eventually… Or perhaps not… Perhaps this feeling would stay with me forever…