Story Notes: Well Marbled

A few notes on writing Well Marbled.

The first time I took a cable car on Mi Teleférico was in September 2015. It was a year after it had opened and it was my first time in Bolivia. I’d travelled to the country from the UK to meet the family of my girlfriend, who I’d marry in 2018, and get to know a country that I knew very little about.

La Paz is an incredible city. Second to none. It sits an impenetrable 3,600m above sea level, its airport at 4,000m. The airport is embedded in El Alto, an overflow for La Paz’s growing population that has become a city in its own right. At this altitude the air is thin. I remember getting off the plane and immediately feeling a little drunk, the feeling only easing as we drove down from El Alto into the city.

Mi Teleférico is the largest urban cable car network in the world. It was built to provide the city with a mass transit system that didn’t need to go underground. The surrounding mountains make a metro almost impossible to construct. The first line to open was the Red Line, bringing passengers from the affluent centre up to the much poorer suburbs of El Alto. Now it has ten coloured lines stretching across the city, and forms part of many residents’ commute to work.

When I arrived in Bolivia I made a terrible mistake. I took the cable car from the lowest station in La Paz back up to El Alto. Travelling from 4,000m down to well below 3,600m and back up to 4,000m in a single day triggered terrible altitude sickness. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be trapped in a slowly moving glass box, suspended over the mountains, with a splitting headache. For the next ten days I barely slept.

Now imagine you’re trapped in that same glass box, on the coldest night of the year, the city spread out below you, with someone — something — that doesn’t quite belong. That’s the image that stuck in my mind when I first conceived of Well Marbled.

A shared fear across the Andes is the kharisiri — the pishtaco, or ñakaq, in Quechua Peru. This creature appears to strangers on the road disguised as a figure of authority. It would look like a Franciscan monk, then a government official, and more recently a foreign businessman. It lulls you to sleep, often through a potion or powder, and once you’re asleep it sucks from you “untu”, or human fat. Amongst Andean people untu isn’t simply fat, it’s your vitality. In the folklore, the traveller wakes up feeling drained and a few days later passes away, never knowing what cost them their life.

The creature can be found in many different traditions, and as such, can vary quite a lot. Sometimes it’s more human, working as an intermediary for more powerful people, using a needle to steal the fat and render it into church candles. Other times it’s more horrific and otherworldly, its bite sucking the life from you for no other reason than its own hunger.

What is so interesting about the creature is how it reflects the fears of the local people at the time. Catholic priests taking fat to use in church candles. Corrupt government officials using it in machine grease. Predatory foreigners exporting it to use in medicine in the USA. The creature represents the exploitation of the most recent generation.

This is the first of a series of 10-12 short horror stories set in Bolivia. Coming soon you’ll hear about one of the highest lakes in the world and why it remains blood red, a reservoir that supplies poisoned water to the city of El Alto, and what was buried beneath the Devil’s Molar.

A new story published at the end of each month.

Thanks for reading.

Alex.