The Elephant Keyhole

By Alexander Mori

Thailand. An elephant sanctuary. Greta was going on her dream vacation with her family and her best friend. She’d get to rescue elephants! This would be the best two weeks of her life...
Sylvia. His sister’s best friend. The girl of Evan’s dreams. He was going on vacation with Sylvia, and he’d see her in a bikini! This would be the best two weeks of his life...
They went to Thailand searching for adventure. And love. Deep within the jungle, far from anything they'd ever known, they just might’ve found what they were looking for...until a strange sound emanated from somewhere within the trees. A foreign sound. They once ventured into the jungle for fun. But now they sought its shadowy recesses and hidden coves for protection from something, or someone, lurking in the dark.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Mori
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311257468

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The Elephant Keyhole

By Alexander Mori

Copyright March 2015 Alexander Mori

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

The Elephant Keyhole was edited by Christina Masso

([e-mail]).

Cover art designed by Brooke Davis.

Dedicated to my mother, who taught me how to love.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

-Samuel Richardson

Table of Contents

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9 to Present

Acknowledgements

The Elephant Keyhole

The first time I kissed a girl, I was thirteen. We sat in a dark theater, waiting for Avatar to play in all its three-dimensional glory. During the previews, while wearing clunky 3-D glasses that didn’t fit right over my ears, I sheepishly extended my lips toward the girl sitting next to me. I felt the supple flesh of her lips against mine, and that was it for me. I was hooked. I spent the next couple of years inviting girls to movies so that we’d be alone in the dark.

But that was lust. Not love. I’d not felt love before, and for a time I might have thought both feelings to be the same, or near enough the same. Sometimes when things are similar, it’s hard to tell one from the other. Who can say when the distinction between lust and love takes place? I imagine it occurs at a different age for everyone. For me, I was sixteen years old, and it was the summer we went to Thailand.

Dad planned the trip as a graduation present for my sister, Greta. She’d always wanted to go because she wanted to rescue elephants. My sister had the biggest heart in the whole world, and it nearly burst the day she learned she’d be going to Thailand. She jumped up and down, flapped her arms, and ran into Dad’s arms screaming, Is it true? Are we really going to an elephant sanctuary?

Yup, Dad said. And you get to bring a friend, too.

Greta smiled from ear to ear and kissed Dad on the cheek. I’m gonna call Sylvia, she said, running into her bedroom to get away from the rest of us.

Sylvia. Gorgeous Sylvia. When I heard her name, my ears automatically perked up. She’d been Greta’s best friend since junior high, and I always looked forward to nights when she’d stay over at our house. I was thinking about the last time Sylvia and a bunch of Greta’s friends had a slumber party—it was the Saturday night after prom and the girls were gushing over thousands of photos they’d taken with their phones—when Dad tapped me on the shoulder.

Hey there, he said. You awake?

Yeah, I said.

You wanna go to Thailand with us?

What? I said. Really?

Yeah, really, he said smiling. Then he jabbed my arm and said, I don’t wanna be the only man on the trip.

And six weeks later, our car was packed and we were ready to go.

We pulled into Sylvia’s driveway, and my dad honked the horn two times in quick succession, sounding like the Road Runner. Meep meep. The front door opened, and Sylvia stepped into the morning light. She wore tight jean shorts with a smiley-face tee tucked haphazardly in front. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her dark, luscious hair sat on top of her head like she didn’t care. She pulled a bright green rolling suitcase with vibrant pink flowers all over it. Somewhere in that suitcase was a bikini. Sylvia in a bikini! Just the thought made my heart stammer. My dad loaded the suitcase into the back of the truck, and Sylvia climbed into the backseat next to me. Our shoulders touched. Looking back, I think that was the moment lust started turning to love.

Good morning, Mr. T, she said to my dad. She turned to face me with a bright smile across her face. Hello, Evan. I’m so excited!

Me, too, Dad said. Everyone buckled in? We’ve got a flight to catch.

We arrived at the airport several hours early. Dad unloaded our bags from the back of the car and stacked them on the sidewalk next to the girls. Mom moved to the driver’s seat and motioned for me to come over. She’d decided to stay home because she didn’t want to kennel our miniature dachshund, Moose. It’s just as well she didn’t go. She didn’t like sleeping in strange places, and she didn’t like eating food she didn’t recognize. She told us to be careful and to watch out for tsunamis, which was just silly. What could we possibly do to watch out for a tsunami?

She pulled me aside and wrapped her arms around me. Evan, she said, since I’m not going, can you do me a favor? Can you make a list of all the unique things you did in Thailand? Like a journal. That way, it’s like I went with you.

Mom, I whined with my face squinted. A journal? I don’t write in a journal. Greta keeps a journal.

You don’t have to keep a journal, my mom said defensively. I just meant you could keep track of everything you did. You know, write it down.

Like a travelogue?

Sure, she said. Like a travelogue. Would you do that for me?

Okay, I said. I guess I can keep a travelogue. I don’t know what it is about moms, but they love their lists.

Dad, Greta, Sylvia, and I took a long flight that landed in Tokyo, Japan, and then we took another long flight to Bangkok. We had three seats next to each other on one row and a fourth seat across the aisle by itself. I asked if I could sit next to Greta and Sylvia because I didn’t want to sit next to a stranger. The truth was, I wanted to sit next to Sylvia because she’s super hot. C’mon, Dad, Greta said. You know he just wants to annoy us.

It’s okay, Sylvia said. I’ll sit in the middle and make sure he doesn’t annoy us too much. She winked and smiled. Dad said I could sit with them as long as I didn’t annoy them.

If I hear one complaint from the girls, he said, you and I are switching places.

I chewed so much gum. Airplane food was no good on my breath, and the seats were close enough together for me to spread rank breath all over Sylvia. On the second flight, they served Japanese food in little square boxes. They looked like tic-tac-toe of terrible food. I tried the center square and gagged on the mound of tiny red balls plopped onto a bit of rice wrapped in seaweed. It tasted awful. After that, I couldn’t force myself to eat anymore. The girls didn’t touch theirs either. Instead, we ate granola bars and fruit snacks that we brought from home, which was just fine with me.

A large screen at the front of the plane projected a map of the world with a tiny plane crossing a dotted line. Our route took us over parts of the North Pole, which surprised me. We flew up the planet and then back down on the other side. This didn’t make sense. How could that be faster when we’d be flying much farther? I asked my dad and he said it was because of the winds. The winds looped back and forth like a coiling snake, and we needed to follow the pattern as best we could.

I don’t really understand wind. Where does it start? Where does it end? You know, sandstorms aren’t really sandstorms at all. They’re actually windstorms that just happen to occur in sandy places. So weird.

Travelogue:

- The long flight was uncomfortable, but completely necessary since we were visiting a country on the other side of the planet. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable. A few times I leaned against Sylvia’s shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind. She leaned against Greta. We were like a fallen stack of dominoes.

- When we landed in Japan we ate at a McDonald’s in the airport. The burgers were much better than the McDonald’s back home, which I thought was strange. Shouldn’t we be better at making burgers since we invented them? During the two-hour layover in Japan, the TV in the airport aired sumo wrestling. The men were so big, and I didn’t understand why they wore diapers that went up their butts. But I guess WWF wrestlers wear some pretty strange outfits too.

- The second flight was just as long and boring as the first. I tried to figure out the time difference between Thailand and America, but the concept hurt my head. Bangkok is thirteen hours ahead, which meant we literally flew into tomorrow. But since the two flights took almost twenty-two hours, we landed only seven hours after we left. Or something like that…

Day 1

Dad scheduled so many activities on our first day. Too many. He bought a book and read about the temples and street markets positioned within a section of the city known as Old Town. Modern day Thailand rose around Old Town like weeds in an overgrown garden. Dad wanted to see everything. He wanted to see the old and the new. You might not ever come back to Thailand, he said, so we gots to see ‘em all.

Our guide suggested we see The Temple of the Dawn first. He did this because of its name. I mean, really, how could we see The Temple of the Dawn at sunset? That wouldn’t make any sense. Anyway, it was epic. Well, it was not epic like Call of Duty or anything, but it was much better than I thought it would be. Just like when Dad made me watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie looked old, but it was pretty good. Much better than what I expected, even though it’s like my dad’s all-time favorite movie. I told him if he wanted to see an epic movie, he should check out The Lord of Rings Trilogy. Those movies are epic.

My dad hates the word, epic. He says things like boss and bad ass. And when he makes a really corny joke he’ll flick his hand to the side and say, Wah-Pow. Sometimes he’ll flick his wrist two or three times and say, Wah-Pow each time, only to laugh harder. I don’t get it. He’s pretty strange sometimes.

Anyway, we decided to watch the sunrise from the top of The Temple of the Dawn. The temple stood on the edge of a river, and there were these steep steps that led to the top. Dad has bad knees and asked me to go up to the top for a photo. Greta didn’t want to go. She said, There’s no way I’m climbing all those steps! She doesn’t really like to do anything fun.

Sylvia, however, said she’d go with me. It was greatness. I told her she should go first, just in case she fell I would be there to catch her. She smiled and said, Nice try, Mr. Smartyman. You go first!

Each stone step rose two feet in the air. They were uncomfortably steep. I had to hold onto the rail and pull myself up one at a time. As we got higher, I actually felt the uncomfortable falling sensation, like I did moments before diving off the high dive at the YMCA. I gripped the rail so hard that my hands ached by the time we reached the top.

We peered over the chiseled stone railing to take in the spectacular view. I was really glad I got to share it with Sylvia. It was like we were the only two people in the world at that moment, enjoying Bangkok’s scenic beauty with the Thai wind blowing feverishly through our hair. She gave me a hug, and I could feel my heart trying to leap out of my chest. I took my picture for Dad, but truthfully I took the picture for myself. It was one of my favorite moments ever. Truly epic.

We walked along a narrow ledge, peering down below so that we could wave to Greta and my dad. The ancient stones were filled with different colored gems that sparkled in the sunlight. It was the most colorful temple I’d ever seen. Of course, it was the only temple we’d seen so far, but still, it was really freakin’ colorful.

Do you have a boyfriend? I asked Sylvia out of nowhere. I’m not sure what came over me. Well, I sort of know what came over me. Sylvia wore light blue shorts that gripped her thighs nicely and a loose-fitting tank top. We roamed around one of Bangkok’s oldest and most celebrated ancient temples, and all I could do was look at her. So I needed to make sure she didn’t have a boyfriend.

She was just as surprised by the question as I was. She curled her lip and wrinkled her forehead. Nosy, much? she asked.

If I’m gonna make you my girlfriend, I said, then I need to know about the competition.

You’re a bold one, Mr. Grinch, she sang. But if you must know, I don’t have a boyfriend. Doesn’t make sense with college starting in a couple of months.

Where are you going to college? I asked.

I’m going to Austin College. It’s in Sherman, not Austin. They have a great film studies program, and I want to be a film critic.

I’d never heard of anyone our age wanting to be a film critic. Everyone at school wanted to go pre-med or pre-law. I knew several people who wanted to be teachers, and a handful of others who wanted to be engineers. But no one said they wanted to be a film critic. See what I mean? There was something different about Sylvia.

My dad loves movies, I said. He could talk your ears off for hours, if you let him.

Sylvia laughed and then stopped abruptly in front of me. She turned and wrinkled her nose in my direction. She said, Hey! What about you, Nosy Rosie! Do you have a girlfriend?

No. Girls in my grade like to date the older boys. They won’t give guys like me a chance at all.

You know, you could ask out a freshman. To them, you are the older guy.

Nah, I said, shaking my head. They’re too immature. I like college girls.

Ha! Sylvia snorted. How many college girls do you know?

I only know one, I said confidently, but she’s pretty, freakin’ amazing. She’s gonna be a film critic.

Sylvia shook her head and rolled her eyes. I could see her cheeks threatening to blush. That’s pretty good, kid, she said. Pretty damn smooth.

Dad led us to the banks of the Chao Phraya, where we flagged down a water taxi and paid him to take us around the backwater canals from the old city. My dad researched the canals and tried to share tidbits he found especially interesting. I couldn’t hear him over the