Title: The Jungle Has No Mercy
Author: Kassfinol
All rights reserved
Genre: Contemporary fiction – Raw realism
The Darién is not a road, it’s a judgment: the jungle tests every gram of strength, luck, and humanity left in whoever dares to cross it.
Yes, the jungle has no mercy. She understood it from the first step she took in the Darién, when her feet sank into the mud up to her ankles and the dampness soaked into her bones. She was twenty-five years old and had a clear goal: to get to the other side, no matter the hell she had to cross.
The sound of the jungle never stopped. Invisible insects buzzed near her face, shadows crawled among the trees, and every creak forced her to turn her head. She wasn’t alone. Nobody in that jungle was.
She soon understood that nature wasn’t her only enemy. As she advanced, the group she started the walk with began to break apart. Some fell behind, exhausted or sick. Others disappeared without a trace.
She witnessed things no one should see. Armed men burst into her camp one night, taking two women without anyone being able to do anything. The muffled crying of the children was the only sound left after the attack. She felt her stomach knot when she saw bodies abandoned beside the trail, some covered with leaves, others devoured by the jungle itself.
Every river was a new obstacle. The murky waters hid natural traps: slippery stones, branches that caught ankles, and treacherous currents. She needed strangers’ help to cross. In the jungle, trust was given blindly, but it was also paid for with betrayal. On one of those crossings, someone pushed her into the water to steal her backpack. She never saw her money or her documents again.
Hunger became a constant shadow. She rationed the little food she had left until it was reduced to nothing. Her body weakened, but her instinct kept her standing. The rain fell without warning, soaking her to the bone, and the nights were torture of cold and fear.
After what felt like centuries, she reached the end of the journey. But she was no longer the same. She had left something in the jungle: her naivety, her faith in humanity, her ability to feel sorry for those left behind. She moved forward and didn’t turn to look. She couldn’t do it.
Her future was ahead. And the past didn’t deserve a single second more of her attention. Or at least that’s what she believed. Because, although her feet now stepped on paved streets and her body took refuge in a tiny room in the middle of an unknown city, the jungle didn’t leave her. It followed her in every dream, in every shadow that crossed her path, in every strange face that looked at her with distrust.
She entered that jungle thinking she would only need strength to endure the hardships and dangers, but she couldn’t help it… she died miles back. Not physically, but in that part of her being that believed in goodness, in justice, in the value of the struggle. Now, in the middle of the great concrete jungle, alone and exhausted by the day to day, she accepted that the most important thing had always been to live and be close to her family. But that truth arrived late, like a distant echo of something she could no longer recover.
There was only one great truth… no jungle has mercy. Not the one of trees and mud, nor the one of asphalt and cold. Both devour, both leave scars. And she, now she knew it, would carry hers forever.
The End.
I’m so sorry for what thousands have had to go through to have a better future.