Cuento de Mi Id
“The Tocayo”
“Mar-teen!”
Martin turned to look behind him but there was no one there. Nothing behind or in front of him but shadows.
Must have been my imagination, he thought.
He continued onward.
“Mar-teen!”
Martin turned again. Again there was no one behind him.
My imagination again, he thought.
He started walking faster.
“Mar-teen!”
This time he almost jumped out of his skin. The voice sounded very close that time. Yet he could not tell where it was coming from.
One of the surrounding apartments maybe?
Perhaps but they all looked dark. It was unlikely that anyone was even in one of them. And even if there were, they were probably asleep.
Then who--
“Mar-teen!”
Martin started walking faster. He had no idea who was calling him, but they obviously meant no good if they kept ducking out of sight. Besides he didn’t even know this neighborhood. He normally rode the bus home at this hour. Just his luck that tonight he had stayed after class just a little too long and ended up having to walk home instead.
Still his home couldn’t be too far away. He just wished he knew the neighborhood better.
“Mar-teen!”
Martin circled around, hoping to see someone shouting at him from upon a fire escape or from behind a garbage can. But there was no one in sight. No one at all. Except himself.
“Mar-teen!”
It’s a gang, he thought. They spotted my umbrella and briefcase, and they assumed I was easy pickings. Never mind that I’m probably poorer than they are. They’d probably just make up the difference with bruises.
“Mar-teen!”
If it was a gang, he thought, it was a pretty strange one. And how did they know his name anyway?
“Mar-teen!”
They picked a name at random, he thought. The minute I reacted to it, they knew they had the right one.
He frowned. The thought of having been fooled so easily made him angry. He felt like throwing down his briefcase and umbrella and challenging the mysterious name callers to a fight. He would never do that though. He knew better.
“Mar-teen Gar-see-ah! Doan-dey ess-staas?”
The voice sounded strangely familiar. As if it were someone he knew.
That’s crazy, he thought. He didn’t know anyone in this neighborhood.
So how come they knew his complete name?
Coincidence, he thought. Just coincidence.
“Mar-teen Gar-see-ah! Doan-dey ess-stass?”
The buildings were starting to look more familiar now. He recognized the corner street light ahead and sighed with relief.
He suddenly realized that for the last few feet he had been brandishing his umbrella like a sword and his briefcase like a shield. Pretty foolish of him, he thought. He wasn’t the type to start a fight, and you could fill a thimble with everything he knew about self-defense. Still if he had discouraged someone from messing with him, it was worth it. Even cowards could fight when cornered.
“Mar-teen!”
There he went again. He was beginning to sound nearer. Much nearer. Yet Martin still couldn’t see who was calling that name.
There went the voice again, calling for Martin Garcia. By now he was sure it was a coincidence. After all, he was in plain sight. Why keep asking where he was?
Whoever the caller was, he was obviously after another Martin Garcia. Which was just fine with Martin. He had no intention of getting involved in another man’s business.
Then he rounded the corner and ran into a dark-clad figure. He stopped and dropped his jaw in amazement.
The stranger before him was just a few years younger than he was. Young enough to be a possible gang member.
His hands were empty but there was no telling what he had beneath that black windbreaker. And that face. If it had not been so pale and free of chickenpox scars, it would have almost an exact duplicate of Martin’s own face. A coincidence, perhaps, one worthy of all those dumb TV shows his cousins watched, but it was unsettling all the same.
“Who are you?” Martin asked.
The stranger before him answered, “Martin Garcia.”
Martin scowled. His hands curled into fists. He was tempted to deck the stranger, but he noticed by the boy’s trembling that he was more scared of Martin than vice versa.
Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he too was named Martin Garcia. It was not all that unlikely in this neighborhood.
“You’re kidding, right?” Martin asked, just to make sure.
The boy looked at him as if he was going to throw up.
“No, I’m not,” he said with an effort. “I really am Martin Garcia. Who are you?”
The unknown caller interrupted. “Mar-teen!”
Martin noticed that the boy paled as soon as he heard the voice.
“Who is that?” Martin asked.
The boy replied, “My father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “I ran away from home and now he wants me to go back.”
He looked Martin straight in the eye. “But I don’t want to go back. My father did mean things to me when I lived with him. He used to beat me and -- and --” his face blushed. “--treat me like a man treats a woman.”
Martin did not know what to say.
“That’s why I ran away,” said the stranger. “I -- I just couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to fight back but I couldn’t. He was too strong. Besides he’s my own father. So I ran away.”
“I see,” said Martin. Actually he did not see anything, but it seemed the right thing to say. The real scary part was how frightened the boy looked. Nobody deserved to be that scared of his own father.
He’s just a few years younger than me, Martin realized. He even has the same name. A tocayo, he thought. A namesake. There but for the grace of God...
“Mar-teen!”
The voice was louder this time -- and even closer than before. The boy grew paler.
“He’s coming,” the boy said.
Martin looked around. “Where is he?”
“Close,” said the boy. “Too close. He’s been following me ever since I ran away, and he doesn’t ever stop.”
Martin stared at the boy. “Why don’t you go to the police?”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” said the boy. “He’d just get me there. You see, just before I left home, I hit him on the head with a frying pan. I hit him real hard -- and it didn’t do any good. He still follows me.”
“But surely--”
“I hit him so hard his skull broke. I’m sure of it. And still he follows me.”
“Mar-teen!”
The voice sounded like it was just a few inches away now and still Martin could not see a thing. The boy’s eyes, however, were as wide as they could be.
He seemed to be staring at something just behind Martin’s shoulder -- something only he could see.
Then he screamed and ran off in the opposite direction. Martin started to run after him, then stopped and wondered what he was doing. It was then that he heard it. A second set of footsteps running right by him in the boy’s direction. And not a soul in sight.
There but for the grace of God, he thought. He walked hurriedly in the opposite direction.
*************************************************************************************************************
He did not bother to tell his parents about what he had seen that night. He did not tell anyone. He just went straight to his room and buried himself in his homework.
Martin was never so grateful for night school as he was that night. At least it gave something to think about apart from what he had seen. When at last he was through and he retired for the night, he wondered what had happened to the boy. None of his business, he decided. It wasn’t his problem.
Nevertheless, it was a sad case. And lying there in the darkness, Martin could almost hear the same voice he had heard before.
“Mar-teen...”
It must be his imagination, he decided. Or a dream.
Even the sound of pebbles being thrown at his window was just his subconscious’s interpretation of a more mundane sound.
“Mar-teen...”
The voice sounded louder now. The pebbles being thrown against the window sounded louder too. Almost any minute he would see his namesake before him...
Klunk!
Martin sat up in bed. For a minute there, it sounded as if someone had thrown a huge rock at the windowpane. He turned on the lamp on his nightstand and saw that the windowpane was still intact, the street below still empty.
It was just a dream, he decided.
He reached for the lamp switch and brushed against something. It was a human hand.
Before he could scream, another hand clamped itself over his mouth. Then the lamp went out and things got really interesting.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Mission”
From a distance, the mission thrust up against the sky as if it was part of the natural landscape. There were hundreds of ruins like this in the American Southwest, Taylor realized, scattered throughout the land like broken teeth. An empire had died here -- a far-flung empire which had conquered the great cities of the Aztecs and the wily Moors but had proved powerless against the onslaught of red-skinned barbarians.
The barbarians always win in the end, thought Taylor. They had defeated the Spanish dandies at Goliad and Veracruz and now were in the process of taking over the Great Plains from other barbarians. It was not civilization which counted in the end; it was strength. As soon as a nation forgot that, it was doomed, but Taylor’s nation was still young and prided itself on its barbarism. It had been built up not by silver-haired dandies in Boston and Richmond but by frontiersmen like himself, who were socially just a step above the Indians as far as their so-called “betters” were concerned.
Taylor took pride in that fact, and also in the fact that for seven weeks, he had avoided a posse of Tucson’s finest. If they ever caught him, it was back to Tucson for an appointment with a rope, but in the meantime, he had led them a merry chase through territory no white man in his right mind would dare to enter. Now he was exhausted, and his canteen was nearly empty. The mission looked deserted but a nearby aqueduct promised water and there was sure to be a well.
Taylor staggered forward, too tired to run although part of him yearned for shelter from the blazing desert sun. The mission would be a good place to rest before he went over the mountains. A good place to hide, too, in case any of his pursuers showed up over the horizon.
With those thoughts in mind, he staggered inside the open gate, taking note of his surroundings until he reached the well in the main plaza. The well was sealed by a metal lid chained down and engraved with words which Taylor recognized as part of the Spanish language. From what he read, the well appeared to be cursed, perhaps poisoned by rebellious Indians.
No matter. There was still the aqueduct. But first, rest. The chapel was deserted; a broken communion chalice lay broken on the ground before the altar. On the back wall, a gold cross covered with light brown stains dimly reflected the desert sun. This should have rang a warning bell in Taylor’s normally suspicious mind, but he was too tired to think about it.
He sat down in a heap behind the back pew. Exhausted from days of travel, he soon fell asleep. In his mind, he seemed to hear the posse behind him. A rampaging mob out to lynch him from the highest tree. He awoke once or twice and looked out upon the horizon but no one was there.
At last his stomach awoke and he nibbled on his last piece of jerky. Not much else to eat out here and he wasn’t sure where he was going to find another supply. Perhaps in the mountains, he could find something. In that case, he’d better conserve his bullets.
He went looking for water and found the aqueduct totally inadequate for his purpose. With the departure of the Spaniards, the structure had gone downhill, its water now blocked by masses of fallen stone. Perhaps the original source had dried up and the Indians had simply lacked the knowledge to find another one, much less build another aqueduct. Whatever the reason, its channels were now as dry as dust, evoking a strangely powerful thirst in Taylor’s parched throat.
But there was still the well. The chains clung tightly and Taylor was forced to search for a tool to pry them loose. In one of the outbuildings, he found some digging tools, put there, no doubt, for use on the once fertile fields. He found a pickaxe and hauled that over to the well. A few strikes with it upon the massive padlock and the hasp broke. The chains came off. The well was open.
Taylor had just pulled off the massive lid when he realized that there was no rope or bucket. The brackish water appeared to be about a half-mile down and there was no way to haul it up. With a curse, Taylor stalked off to search through the outbuildings again. He finally came up with a rusty metal bucket and a length of old rope. He attached one end of the rope to the bucket, and let it down into the well very slowly. But the rope wasn’t quite long enough. So he had to search for another length of rope.
A scurrying noise sounded behind him, but when he looked, no one was there. Perhaps it had been a rat. Perhaps not. He drew out his revolver and searched the grounds, but he couldn’t find a trace of any living creature besides himself. Yet the peculiar feeling of having missed something persisted.
Where else could he have looked? The well? He found his piece of rope and went back to the well. Knotting the two lengths together, he formed a strand long enough to reach down into the well water. He let the bucket down easily and hauled it up half-full. The water tasted brackish, but it was still water. It had an odd, fishy taste to it, but it beat dying of thirst.
Night would soon be upon him now. No time to make it to the mountains. Shame. He would have to sleep here at the mission.
He walked back to the church, slightly surprised that the water that had looked so brackish wasn’t affecting his stomach in any manner. A man’s body will accept anything if he’s thirsty enough, he thought, and with that, he entered the church.
He heard another scurrying noise behind him. He turned and saw nothing.
Then he turned back toward the altar and saw something step toward him out of the darkness. He suddenly dived behind the back pew, drew out his revolver, and without looking, fired four shots in the direction of the altar. Then he looked up.
A woman in a nun’s habit and a black veil was standing there, smiling.
“Ten cuidado,” she said with a Castilian lilt to her voice. “You could have hurt someone with that thing.”
Taylor just looked at her. “How come you ain’t dead?”
“You weren’t exactly aiming too carefully now, were you?” She said with a smile. “Perhaps you missed.”
Her teeth seemed awfully white for a woman who had been alone in this mission for so long. Or did she come from the mission? Could she have traveled across the desert like himself? And if so, where had she been all this time? Taylor would have seen anyone coming from miles around. And he was sure he had searched every hiding place before. Everywhere that is except the well. But surely...
“You really should be careful with that thing,” she said, indicating his gun. “You could have hurt someone.”
“Who are you?” said Taylor. “And how did you get here?”
“My,” she said. “How impolite.”
He cocked his gun and aimed it in her direction. “Well?”
“You really shouldn’t be so rude,” she said. “After all, it was not I who trespassed upon your domain, but you who trespassed upon mine.”
“Never mind that,” Taylor said. “Just answer my question or in five minutes, your gray matter is going to be spread out all over them church tiles.”
“You don’t really want to do that,” said the woman. “The posse you’re worried about could be coming within earshot of this place any time now and all it would take to bring them here in a hurry would be one more gunshot.”
“How did you know about the posse?”
“How can I not know about the posse? Dios knows you’ve been thinking about it often enough. Besides, shouldn‘t you be saving your bullets for hunting?”
Taylor fired.
The woman’s skull exploded and she went down. Whatever she had been, she was certainly susceptible to cold lead as much as the next person.
Then he turned. And saw a man in a priest’s outfit blocking his way. He too seemed Spanish. And his clothes, hair and skin were all wet. Almost as if he had been hiding in the w--
He hastily aimed his revolver but the pseudo-priest just knocked it out of his hand as easily as it had been candy.
“You shouldn’t have done that to my wife, señor. It was not very polite.”
Taylor reached for the Bowie knife in his boot, only to find the stranger clutching his two hands and dragging him out into the sunlight.
Behind him, from the direction of the altar, he heard a gurgling noise. Almost as if something was trying to revive itself from a severe injury.
But no. That couldn’t be.
As the man dragged Taylor out into the sunlight, he noticed to his horror that he was being dragged toward the well.
“My wife was hiding in the hills when the Spaniards came and trapped me,” said the man. “Had she been stronger, she would have set me free herself. But she wasn’t strong enough…and of course, there was that whole holy water thing. But she got her vengeance upon the Spaniards eventually. And now that you have freed me, I am quite sure that she would have paid you back for that favor -- had you not been so impolite.”
Taylor tried to say something. “Creatures like you... you can’t exist.”
“But we do exist,” said the man. “And for the record, we’ve lived in this area far, far longer than you.” He smiled. “Or the Spaniards.”
He came to the wall and grabbed a length of rope. With one hand he held Taylor down while with the other he tied his hands and feet.
“You can’t be meaning to do what I think you’re meaning to do,” said Taylor. “It wouldn’t be civilized.”
“You did say much earlier that the barbarians always win,” said the man. “Just think of this as yet another inevitable victory.”
He tied the other length of rope to Taylor’s feet and started lowering him into the well. From the direction of the church, Taylor thought he heard something heavy bump against something. Almost as if it was stumbling against a door or something.
“Please,” said Taylor. “You can’t do this.”
The man stopped and looked at him. “And how many of your victims did you spare when they cried for mercy?”
“Well, that was different,” said Taylor. “I couldn’t have let them live. They would have fingered me at the next trial and then they would have hung me.”
The pseudo-priest smiled. “And yet you ended up fleeing to escape a death sentence anyway. You humans and your ludicrous morality.”
He dropped the rope and Taylor fell the rest of the way into the well. He should have drowned... but he didn’t. The water was just deep enough to break his fall and shallow enough for him to stand up and keep his mouth out of the water. Now if he could only find a way to cut the rope and then climb up.
The pseudo-priest looked down at him again and smiled. “Lucky for you that my wife and I aren’t hungry yet. But I suspect that we both will be... later on.”
He put the lid back on the well and left Taylor in darkness.
Too late Taylor reached his Bowie knife but the way his limbs were tied, he couldn’t quite reach it. If he could get out of here in time, he’d make them two sorry they had ever treated him like this.
Perhaps if he could reach a jagged rock or broken brick.
Then he heard the sound of metal moving. Someone was removing the well lid.
The posse, perhaps? Or some kindly passerby?
Instead, he just saw the man again and the thing he called his spouse. In one hand he was holding Taylor’s revolver.
The man grinned. “My dear wife just reminded me that you had left this behind up here and that it would not be very polite of us to keep it. Indeed, one might say that it would not be civilized. And you so much wanted me to be civilized when we had spoken before.”
Taylor shrugged. Perhaps his luck was changing.
If the two were dumb enough to give him back his gun while the two were still within shooting range...
The gun fired. Just one time.
Afterwards, the pseudo-priest tossed the now-empty gun into the well and replaced the lid.
But Taylor didn’t even try to grab for it.
He wasn’t ever likely to grab for anything ever again. And he did not even feel it when his body fell over and the brackish water started entering his mouth.
“The Mission”
From a distance, the mission thrust up against the sky as if it was part of the natural landscape. There were hundreds of ruins like this in the American Southwest, Taylor realized, scattered throughout the land like broken teeth. An empire had died here -- a far-flung empire which had conquered the great cities of the Aztecs and the wily Moors but had proved powerless against the onslaught of red-skinned barbarians.
The barbarians always win in the end, thought Taylor. They had defeated the Spanish dandies at Goliad and Veracruz and now were in the process of taking over the Great Plains from other barbarians. It was not civilization which counted in the end; it was strength. As soon as a nation forgot that, it was doomed, but Taylor’s nation was still young and prided itself on its barbarism. It had been built up not by silver-haired dandies in Boston and Richmond but by frontiersmen like himself, who were socially just a step above the Indians as far as their so-called “betters” were concerned.
Taylor took pride in that fact, and also in the fact that for seven weeks, he had avoided a posse of Tucson’s finest. If they ever caught him, it was back to Tucson for an appointment with a rope, but in the meantime, he had led them a merry chase through territory no white man in his right mind would dare to enter. Now he was exhausted, and his canteen was nearly empty. The mission looked deserted but a nearby aqueduct promised water and there was sure to be a well.
Taylor staggered forward, too tired to run although part of him yearned for shelter from the blazing desert sun. The mission would be a good place to rest before he went over the mountains. A good place to hide, too, in case any of his pursuers showed up over the horizon.
With those thoughts in mind, he staggered inside the open gate, taking note of his surroundings until he reached the well in the main plaza. The well was sealed by a metal lid chained down and engraved with words which Taylor recognized as part of the Spanish language. From what he read, the well appeared to be cursed, perhaps poisoned by rebellious Indians.
No matter. There was still the aqueduct. But first, rest. The chapel was deserted; a broken communion chalice lay broken on the ground before the altar. On the back wall, a gold cross covered with light brown stains dimly reflected the desert sun. This should have rang a warning bell in Taylor’s normally suspicious mind, but he was too tired to think about it.
He sat down in a heap behind the back pew. Exhausted from days of travel, he soon fell asleep. In his mind, he seemed to hear the posse behind him. A rampaging mob out to lynch him from the highest tree. He awoke once or twice and looked out upon the horizon but no one was there.
At last his stomach awoke and he nibbled on his last piece of jerky. Not much else to eat out here and he wasn’t sure where he was going to find another supply. Perhaps in the mountains, he could find something. In that case, he’d better conserve his bullets.
He went looking for water and found the aqueduct totally inadequate for his purpose. With the departure of the Spaniards, the structure had gone downhill, its water now blocked by masses of fallen stone. Perhaps the original source had dried up and the Indians had simply lacked the knowledge to find another one, much less build another aqueduct. Whatever the reason, its channels were now as dry as dust, evoking a strangely powerful thirst in Taylor’s parched throat.
But there was still the well. The chains clung tightly and Taylor was forced to search for a tool to pry them loose. In one of the outbuildings, he found some digging tools, put there, no doubt, for use on the once fertile fields. He found a pickaxe and hauled that over to the well. A few strikes with it upon the massive padlock and the hasp broke. The chains came off. The well was open.
Taylor had just pulled off the massive lid when he realized that there was no rope or bucket. The brackish water appeared to be about a half-mile down and there was no way to haul it up. With a curse, Taylor stalked off to search through the outbuildings again. He finally came up with a rusty metal bucket and a length of old rope. He attached one end of the rope to the bucket, and let it down into the well very slowly. But the rope wasn’t quite long enough. So he had to search for another length of rope.
A scurrying noise sounded behind him, but when he looked, no one was there. Perhaps it had been a rat. Perhaps not. He drew out his revolver and searched the grounds, but he couldn’t find a trace of any living creature besides himself. Yet the peculiar feeling of having missed something persisted.
Where else could he have looked? The well? He found his piece of rope and went back to the well. Knotting the two lengths together, he formed a strand long enough to reach down into the well water. He let the bucket down easily and hauled it up half-full. The water tasted brackish, but it was still water. It had an odd, fishy taste to it, but it beat dying of thirst.
Night would soon be upon him now. No time to make it to the mountains. Shame. He would have to sleep here at the mission.
He walked back to the church, slightly surprised that the water that had looked so brackish wasn’t affecting his stomach in any manner. A man’s body will accept anything if he’s thirsty enough, he thought, and with that, he entered the church.
He heard another scurrying noise behind him. He turned and saw nothing.
Then he turned back toward the altar and saw something step toward him out of the darkness. He suddenly dived behind the back pew, drew out his revolver, and without looking, fired four shots in the direction of the altar. Then he looked up.
A woman in a nun’s habit and a black veil was standing there, smiling.
“Ten cuidado,” she said with a Castilian lilt to her voice. “You could have hurt someone with that thing.”
Taylor just looked at her. “How come you ain’t dead?”
“You weren’t exactly aiming too carefully now, were you?” She said with a smile. “Perhaps you missed.”
Her teeth seemed awfully white for a woman who had been alone in this mission for so long. Or did she come from the mission? Could she have traveled across the desert like himself? And if so, where had she been all this time? Taylor would have seen anyone coming from miles around. And he was sure he had searched every hiding place before. Everywhere that is except the well. But surely...
“You really should be careful with that thing,” she said, indicating his gun. “You could have hurt someone.”
“Who are you?” said Taylor. “And how did you get here?”
“My,” she said. “How impolite.”
He cocked his gun and aimed it in her direction. “Well?”
“You really shouldn’t be so rude,” she said. “After all, it was not I who trespassed upon your domain, but you who trespassed upon mine.”
“Never mind that,” Taylor said. “Just answer my question or in five minutes, your gray matter is going to be spread out all over them church tiles.”
“You don’t really want to do that,” said the woman. “The posse you’re worried about could be coming within earshot of this place any time now and all it would take to bring them here in a hurry would be one more gunshot.”
“How did you know about the posse?”
“How can I not know about the posse? Dios knows you’ve been thinking about it often enough. Besides, shouldn‘t you be saving your bullets for hunting?”
Taylor fired.
The woman’s skull exploded and she went down. Whatever she had been, she was certainly susceptible to cold lead as much as the next person.
Then he turned. And saw a man in a priest’s outfit blocking his way. He too seemed Spanish. And his clothes, hair and skin were all wet. Almost as if he had been hiding in the w--
He hastily aimed his revolver but the pseudo-priest just knocked it out of his hand as easily as it had been candy.
“You shouldn’t have done that to my wife, señor. It was not very polite.”
Taylor reached for the Bowie knife in his boot, only to find the stranger clutching his two hands and dragging him out into the sunlight.
Behind him, from the direction of the altar, he heard a gurgling noise. Almost as if something was trying to revive itself from a severe injury.
But no. That couldn’t be.
As the man dragged Taylor out into the sunlight, he noticed to his horror that he was being dragged toward the well.
“My wife was hiding in the hills when the Spaniards came and trapped me,” said the man. “Had she been stronger, she would have set me free herself. But she wasn’t strong enough…and of course, there was that whole holy water thing. But she got her vengeance upon the Spaniards eventually. And now that you have freed me, I am quite sure that she would have paid you back for that favor -- had you not been so impolite.”
Taylor tried to say something. “Creatures like you... you can’t exist.”
“But we do exist,” said the man. “And for the record, we’ve lived in this area far, far longer than you.” He smiled. “Or the Spaniards.”
He came to the wall and grabbed a length of rope. With one hand he held Taylor down while with the other he tied his hands and feet.
“You can’t be meaning to do what I think you’re meaning to do,” said Taylor. “It wouldn’t be civilized.”
“You did say much earlier that the barbarians always win,” said the man. “Just think of this as yet another inevitable victory.”
He tied the other length of rope to Taylor’s feet and started lowering him into the well. From the direction of the church, Taylor thought he heard something heavy bump against something. Almost as if it was stumbling against a door or something.
“Please,” said Taylor. “You can’t do this.”
The man stopped and looked at him. “And how many of your victims did you spare when they cried for mercy?”
“Well, that was different,” said Taylor. “I couldn’t have let them live. They would have fingered me at the next trial and then they would have hung me.”
The pseudo-priest smiled. “And yet you ended up fleeing to escape a death sentence anyway. You humans and your ludicrous morality.”
He dropped the rope and Taylor fell the rest of the way into the well. He should have drowned... but he didn’t. The water was just deep enough to break his fall and shallow enough for him to stand up and keep his mouth out of the water. Now if he could only find a way to cut the rope and then climb up.
The pseudo-priest looked down at him again and smiled. “Lucky for you that my wife and I aren’t hungry yet. But I suspect that we both will be... later on.”
He put the lid back on the well and left Taylor in darkness.
Too late Taylor reached his Bowie knife but the way his limbs were tied, he couldn’t quite reach it. If he could get out of here in time, he’d make them two sorry they had ever treated him like this.
Perhaps if he could reach a jagged rock or broken brick.
Then he heard the sound of metal moving. Someone was removing the well lid.
The posse, perhaps? Or some kindly passerby?
Instead, he just saw the man again and the thing he called his spouse. In one hand he was holding Taylor’s revolver.
The man grinned. “My dear wife just reminded me that you had left this behind up here and that it would not be very polite of us to keep it. Indeed, one might say that it would not be civilized. And you so much wanted me to be civilized when we had spoken before.”
Taylor shrugged. Perhaps his luck was changing.
If the two were dumb enough to give him back his gun while the two were still within shooting range...
The gun fired. Just one time.
Afterwards, the pseudo-priest tossed the now-empty gun into the well and replaced the lid.
But Taylor didn’t even try to grab for it.
He wasn’t ever likely to grab for anything ever again. And he did not even feel it when his body fell over and the brackish water started entering his mouth.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Werewives of London”
I was awakened by my wife one night when there was a full moon. I felt her move against me as she got up and I opened my eyes in time to see her walking out the bedroom door.
I followed her as she sleepwalked through the house and the backyard. I saw her walk down to the old pond and then strip off her lily-white nightgown. By the time I caught up with her, she had already dived into the pond and little pieces of feminine underwear were scattered about the mud like pieces of a torn snakeskin.
I waited for her to rise out of the water. But the only thing that came out was a naked man who emerged on the opposite side of the pond and then disappeared into the woods beyond.
That was three days ago.
I'm still waiting for my wife.
“Werewives of London”
I was awakened by my wife one night when there was a full moon. I felt her move against me as she got up and I opened my eyes in time to see her walking out the bedroom door.
I followed her as she sleepwalked through the house and the backyard. I saw her walk down to the old pond and then strip off her lily-white nightgown. By the time I caught up with her, she had already dived into the pond and little pieces of feminine underwear were scattered about the mud like pieces of a torn snakeskin.
I waited for her to rise out of the water. But the only thing that came out was a naked man who emerged on the opposite side of the pond and then disappeared into the woods beyond.
That was three days ago.
I'm still waiting for my wife.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Bloodwaters”
It was a hot summer day and the sky was raining blood. Lots of it. A regular gullywasher. I ran inside as soon as it started and stared defiantly at the dark clouds from the safety of my bedroom window. But the blood did not cease falling.
In panic, I watched as the rain continued on and on, creating puddles out of dry patches and ponds out of puddles. The storm drains were regurgitating their unabsorbed contents into the city streets, transforming them into crimson canals... The front lawn became a scarlet lake and as the rising fluid began to pour over the curbs, I suddenly thought about Mom and Dad and how they were supposed to be coming home from work soon.
I ran for the kitchen phone and dialed my Dad’s work number. A busy signal answered so I tried Mom. Halfway through dialing, the phone went dead. So did the lights.
I ran out to the living room to examine the neighbors’ lights, but their houses were just as dark as mine. A part of me wondered idly about the conductibility of plasma and then I remembered the flood outside and how close it had been to my house.
By then, the red rain had reached the front hall. I had never seen rain flow uphill before but then this was not normal rain. I tried pushing it away with a mop but that only seemed to encourage it. So I ran.
I ran to my sanctuary of sanctuaries -- my bedroom. I huddled there on the bed in a panic. I thought idly of climbing out the window and escaping through the back yard but one glance outside showed me that the blood was just as deep out there as it was up front. So, like a dummy, I just sat there and prayed that God would make it go away. But He didn’t.
By then, the rain had begun to seep into my bedroom from beneath the door. I watched in horror as it darkened the nice clean white carpet and in desperation, I took my shoes off and climbed upon the bed, hoping upon hope that I had chosen the highest point in the room. The rain continued to flow in. The carpet by then was saturated with pink fluid and had begun to resemble a small pond. I thought about making a break for it across the squishy carpet but somehow the thought of touching it with my bare feet just seemed too much.
Then the bloodwaters rose higher and the room was covered with rich, flowing blood. I looked around in vain for a dry spot, certain now that I must escape that room or drown. But there was no place to go that was not already shin-deep in blood.
Eventually the fluid reached as high as the top of the bed. I drew back, climbing upon the pillows as if their combined height would save me from the rising tide.
By now it was so high that it was breaking out the window in my bedroom. Some of the fluid flowed out but much more flowed in. So I climbed atop my headboard and made a grab for the overhead light.
My fingers slipped. I lost my balance and fell. The plasma poured over me as I fell into it and when I tried to scream, it filled my mouth.
What will my parents think, I thought as I lost consciousness. What will my parents thin --
*************************************************************************************************************
At that point, the alarm clock rang. I awoke and noticed that there was no blood in my room. The window was still intact and there was no blood anywhere on my person.
I smiled, got up and went across the hall to the children’s bathroom to pee.
The door was open. Something inside smelled. One of my sisters had left her clothes all over the floor and it smelled as if she had forgotten to drain the bathtub after her morning shower.
I smelled something too. Like blood. And pee. And some other odors I wasn’t sure I wanted to identify.
I remembered my dream and shook my head. That had been just my imagination.
Perhaps my older sister Lupe was playing a trick on me -- though how she could have possibly known about my dream, I did not stop to ponder. Instead I turned and opened the shower curtain on the bathtub.
Someone had indeed forgotten to drain the bathtub and it didn’t just hold water. Instead it held Lupe’s naked body, her bloody wrists still staining the water a color that resembled the fluid I had seen in my dreams.
At that point, I opened my mouth to scream. But then I slipped and fell into the bathtub, at which point my sister’s blood started to pour into my mouth.
“Bloodwaters”
It was a hot summer day and the sky was raining blood. Lots of it. A regular gullywasher. I ran inside as soon as it started and stared defiantly at the dark clouds from the safety of my bedroom window. But the blood did not cease falling.
In panic, I watched as the rain continued on and on, creating puddles out of dry patches and ponds out of puddles. The storm drains were regurgitating their unabsorbed contents into the city streets, transforming them into crimson canals... The front lawn became a scarlet lake and as the rising fluid began to pour over the curbs, I suddenly thought about Mom and Dad and how they were supposed to be coming home from work soon.
I ran for the kitchen phone and dialed my Dad’s work number. A busy signal answered so I tried Mom. Halfway through dialing, the phone went dead. So did the lights.
I ran out to the living room to examine the neighbors’ lights, but their houses were just as dark as mine. A part of me wondered idly about the conductibility of plasma and then I remembered the flood outside and how close it had been to my house.
By then, the red rain had reached the front hall. I had never seen rain flow uphill before but then this was not normal rain. I tried pushing it away with a mop but that only seemed to encourage it. So I ran.
I ran to my sanctuary of sanctuaries -- my bedroom. I huddled there on the bed in a panic. I thought idly of climbing out the window and escaping through the back yard but one glance outside showed me that the blood was just as deep out there as it was up front. So, like a dummy, I just sat there and prayed that God would make it go away. But He didn’t.
By then, the rain had begun to seep into my bedroom from beneath the door. I watched in horror as it darkened the nice clean white carpet and in desperation, I took my shoes off and climbed upon the bed, hoping upon hope that I had chosen the highest point in the room. The rain continued to flow in. The carpet by then was saturated with pink fluid and had begun to resemble a small pond. I thought about making a break for it across the squishy carpet but somehow the thought of touching it with my bare feet just seemed too much.
Then the bloodwaters rose higher and the room was covered with rich, flowing blood. I looked around in vain for a dry spot, certain now that I must escape that room or drown. But there was no place to go that was not already shin-deep in blood.
Eventually the fluid reached as high as the top of the bed. I drew back, climbing upon the pillows as if their combined height would save me from the rising tide.
By now it was so high that it was breaking out the window in my bedroom. Some of the fluid flowed out but much more flowed in. So I climbed atop my headboard and made a grab for the overhead light.
My fingers slipped. I lost my balance and fell. The plasma poured over me as I fell into it and when I tried to scream, it filled my mouth.
What will my parents think, I thought as I lost consciousness. What will my parents thin --
*************************************************************************************************************
At that point, the alarm clock rang. I awoke and noticed that there was no blood in my room. The window was still intact and there was no blood anywhere on my person.
I smiled, got up and went across the hall to the children’s bathroom to pee.
The door was open. Something inside smelled. One of my sisters had left her clothes all over the floor and it smelled as if she had forgotten to drain the bathtub after her morning shower.
I smelled something too. Like blood. And pee. And some other odors I wasn’t sure I wanted to identify.
I remembered my dream and shook my head. That had been just my imagination.
Perhaps my older sister Lupe was playing a trick on me -- though how she could have possibly known about my dream, I did not stop to ponder. Instead I turned and opened the shower curtain on the bathtub.
Someone had indeed forgotten to drain the bathtub and it didn’t just hold water. Instead it held Lupe’s naked body, her bloody wrists still staining the water a color that resembled the fluid I had seen in my dreams.
At that point, I opened my mouth to scream. But then I slipped and fell into the bathtub, at which point my sister’s blood started to pour into my mouth.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Second Time”
“I’m sorry to do this,” I said, “but the moment can’t be put off any longer.”
The old man looked at me from the depths of his cell. “They asked for me?”
“No, but the State can’t be put off any longer. I have orders to carry out the sentence immediately and -- well -- orders are orders.”
I unlocked the cell door and led the old man out. He went along slowly but uncomplainingly. As we got to the courtyard, he looked around in puzzlement.
“Last time there was a crowd,” he said. “A big crowd.”
“My superiors want you to be executed in private,” I said. “They do not want another martyr to the cause.”
“In that case,” he said, “you should let me go.”
“I’m sorry. I can not. You’re much too dangerous for us to keep alive.”
“Too dangerous, huh?” The old man smiled.
“Of course. The world is very unstable nowadays. All it needs is one more fanatic to send it over the edge and plunge it into World War III. We can’t have that.”
“Have you no tolerance for a man with strong beliefs?”
“Sure, if he keeps them to himself. But when he starts gathering crowds around him and trying to convert others to his viewpoint... he’s a troublemaker.”
“Your world doesn’t seem to have much room for strong personalities.”
“Of course it does. We just can’t afford chaos.”
“I see,” said the old man. “And a man like me... would start chaos.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“I believe what I’m told to believe.”
“Then I pity you.”
Something about the old man got to me. If I were in his place, I would be scared to death, but the old man did not flinch an eyelash. I knew he must be trembling inside at the thought of his imminent death, yet he did not show it. Perhaps he was gripped by self-doubt about the validity of the cause he espoused and he didn’t want to show it. Yes, that was it.
If so, he didn’t say so. He just stood there silently, daring me to speak.
Finally he spoke. “All the healings I did... I suppose they don’t mean anything?”
“There was no reliable witnesses to any of them, “ I said. “Therefore, there were no healings.”
“What about the patients?”
“Either con-men or fools. In either case, hardly very convincing.”
“What about the dead man I resurrected?”
“Another phony miracle. And just as well, considering the population explosion.”
“You’re quite cynical for a young man. Surely you believe such things can happen.”
“I would not know. I have never seen them happen.”
The old man sighed. “Your world sounds like a sad one, Sergeant. Surely you must believe in something.”
“Sure, I do,” I said. “I believe in God.”
The old man laughed.
I glared at him. “Did I say something funny, old man?”
The old man fell silent.
“If I did, I wish you’d say so,” I said, “so that an old soldier like me can get in on the joke.”
The old man sighed.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
He walked brusquely towards the end of the courtyard and turned towards me.
“Finish it,” he said.
I frowned. Something about the old man made me uneasy. He was not acting the way I had expected him to act.
Moreover, there was an air of familiarity about him -- as if he reminded me of an old family friend or a favorite uncle. Impossible, I thought. None of my family or friends would be caught dead associating with the type of scum the old man has associated with. Yet he talked to me as if he had known me all my life. As if I had known him long before he had been assigned to my prison.
Perhaps he was a fanatic, I thought. That would explain his reaction. In his mind, he was dying for his cause. Never mind if it was the right one. At least in his mind, he was doing something for the sake of whatever it was he believed in.
As for the air of familiarity, that could be explained too. People like him thrived on making converts wherever they went. No matter how unlikely the place or how unlikely the convert. And how better to make such converts than to feign friendship in even the most hostile environment.
I smiled when I realized this. Seen in that light, the old man no longer seemed so impressive.
“Turn around and face the wall,” I said.
He did so.
A couple of shots from my revolver and it was done.
Good, I thought, as I summoned some guards for burial detail. The old man was finished. One more would-be revolutionary had bitten the dust.
I started to turn around, then remembered to cross myself. As my fingers brushed across my crucifix, I suddenly seized it and brought it before my face.
It was at that moment that I finally realized where I had seen the old man’s face before.
“The Second Time”
“I’m sorry to do this,” I said, “but the moment can’t be put off any longer.”
The old man looked at me from the depths of his cell. “They asked for me?”
“No, but the State can’t be put off any longer. I have orders to carry out the sentence immediately and -- well -- orders are orders.”
I unlocked the cell door and led the old man out. He went along slowly but uncomplainingly. As we got to the courtyard, he looked around in puzzlement.
“Last time there was a crowd,” he said. “A big crowd.”
“My superiors want you to be executed in private,” I said. “They do not want another martyr to the cause.”
“In that case,” he said, “you should let me go.”
“I’m sorry. I can not. You’re much too dangerous for us to keep alive.”
“Too dangerous, huh?” The old man smiled.
“Of course. The world is very unstable nowadays. All it needs is one more fanatic to send it over the edge and plunge it into World War III. We can’t have that.”
“Have you no tolerance for a man with strong beliefs?”
“Sure, if he keeps them to himself. But when he starts gathering crowds around him and trying to convert others to his viewpoint... he’s a troublemaker.”
“Your world doesn’t seem to have much room for strong personalities.”
“Of course it does. We just can’t afford chaos.”
“I see,” said the old man. “And a man like me... would start chaos.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“I believe what I’m told to believe.”
“Then I pity you.”
Something about the old man got to me. If I were in his place, I would be scared to death, but the old man did not flinch an eyelash. I knew he must be trembling inside at the thought of his imminent death, yet he did not show it. Perhaps he was gripped by self-doubt about the validity of the cause he espoused and he didn’t want to show it. Yes, that was it.
If so, he didn’t say so. He just stood there silently, daring me to speak.
Finally he spoke. “All the healings I did... I suppose they don’t mean anything?”
“There was no reliable witnesses to any of them, “ I said. “Therefore, there were no healings.”
“What about the patients?”
“Either con-men or fools. In either case, hardly very convincing.”
“What about the dead man I resurrected?”
“Another phony miracle. And just as well, considering the population explosion.”
“You’re quite cynical for a young man. Surely you believe such things can happen.”
“I would not know. I have never seen them happen.”
The old man sighed. “Your world sounds like a sad one, Sergeant. Surely you must believe in something.”
“Sure, I do,” I said. “I believe in God.”
The old man laughed.
I glared at him. “Did I say something funny, old man?”
The old man fell silent.
“If I did, I wish you’d say so,” I said, “so that an old soldier like me can get in on the joke.”
The old man sighed.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
He walked brusquely towards the end of the courtyard and turned towards me.
“Finish it,” he said.
I frowned. Something about the old man made me uneasy. He was not acting the way I had expected him to act.
Moreover, there was an air of familiarity about him -- as if he reminded me of an old family friend or a favorite uncle. Impossible, I thought. None of my family or friends would be caught dead associating with the type of scum the old man has associated with. Yet he talked to me as if he had known me all my life. As if I had known him long before he had been assigned to my prison.
Perhaps he was a fanatic, I thought. That would explain his reaction. In his mind, he was dying for his cause. Never mind if it was the right one. At least in his mind, he was doing something for the sake of whatever it was he believed in.
As for the air of familiarity, that could be explained too. People like him thrived on making converts wherever they went. No matter how unlikely the place or how unlikely the convert. And how better to make such converts than to feign friendship in even the most hostile environment.
I smiled when I realized this. Seen in that light, the old man no longer seemed so impressive.
“Turn around and face the wall,” I said.
He did so.
A couple of shots from my revolver and it was done.
Good, I thought, as I summoned some guards for burial detail. The old man was finished. One more would-be revolutionary had bitten the dust.
I started to turn around, then remembered to cross myself. As my fingers brushed across my crucifix, I suddenly seized it and brought it before my face.
It was at that moment that I finally realized where I had seen the old man’s face before.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Last Day of Summer”
It was the last day of summer, and there was no one else on the beach.
Normally the beach would be quite crowded this time of year but now for some reason, it was empty. Quite empty.
Must be all the stuff that happened in Matamoros that did it, Callie thought. Stuff like that usually scares away the tourists; in fact, it always does.
But not her. She had waited too long for this break, this vacation. Waited too long for this week which was now drawing to a far too rapid end.
She had waited too long for a lot of things. Perhaps that was why she finally decided to kick off her flip-flops, strip off her bikini and plunge into the warm waters of the Gulf.
Not that it mattered. There was no one around to see. No one around for miles. And her friends back at the beach house had their own dates -- and undoubtedly they were already doing things with them that were far more daring.
But Callie did not feel sorry for herself. No, Callie was too good a person to do that. Better to hold it in. To swallow it down. To pretend it did not exist.
She did not need a date. She never did. She never will. She probably would not know what to do with a man even if she did meet one.
But she did know how to swim. She took lessons at the Y. And no matter how depressed she felt tonight, there was no way she was going to emulate that Crissie girl in the Benchley novel. She was much smarter than that.
Just swim to the buoy and back, she thought. Simple. In fact, she could do it dog-paddling. And no one on the shore could see her. No one at all.
There.
She touched it.
Now swim back, she thought.
Quick.
Before the sharks come.
Not that they will come, of course. You don't find many man-eaters in the Gulf. But then there is always a first time.
So Callie closed her eyes to protect them from the salt. And she swam back to the beach, stopping every so often to check for triangular fins.
But there were none.
Told ya, she thought.
Sharks are the world's oldest movie cliché, anyway. Stuff like that doesn't happen to people like Callie in real life. It just doesn't.
But it could.
Good thing she's not having her period.
They are attracted by blood, you know.
But the deed was done. She was through. She was finished.
She stood up and walked out of the water, feeling more than a little brazen.
Imagine me, she thought. Callie Martin, an actual skinnydipper.
She smiled and then glanced toward her clothes.
Only to notice that they weren't there.
But they were just there a few minutes ago, she thought. I know. I saw them.
Then where did they go?
Instinctively, she covered herself. Wrapped her arms around her torso as much as for warmth as for modesty.
The night wind was feeling quite chilly upon her backside and Callie was already beginning to regret her impulsive midnight swim.
Where are my clothes? she thought. Where are they?
She thought of what her friends back at the beach house would say if they saw her now. The inferences they would make and the assumptions that would not be true.
She thought about her parents and her grandparents and the kids back in high school. Kids she'd never thought she'd see again after graduation but who were bound to come into her life again once the scandal hit.
Then Callie saw a young Mexican girl up upon the dunes. She was wearing a red bikini. Her red bikini. Callie knew that much by instinct.
The girl was not facing her, choosing instead to concentrate on a pair of flip-flops she was putting on. Her flip-flops! They had to be.
In spite of her nakedness, Callie ran up to the girl and grabbed her arm.
"Those are my things!" she started to yell. But then the words died in her throat.
The face that looked back at her had once been pretty -- but no more. It was much battered and scarred. Nor did the scars stop at the girl's face. They ran all down her body as if they were seams -- invisible from a distance, of course, but all too visible up close.
If that were the worst of it, Callie might have continued. But she had already felt the girl's arm. Felt the girl's leathery arm. And she also smelled the aroma of something oozing up from the girl's body.
Then the girl grinned. Not a gold-toothed grin but it was quite obvious to Callie that the teeth did not match up with the girl's lips. Nor did the knife which the girl produced from within her bikini bottom's waistband.
Callie screamed but the girl just laughed. A harsh, masculine laugh that could not have come from such a girl under normal circumstances.
Then Callie ran. Not toward the beach house. But toward the sea.
She reached the surf before the Mexican girl did. She dived into it without a moment's hesitation and surfaced only after she had passed the shallow area. Then she swam out toward the buoy.
Only then did she turn around.
Only then did she notice that the Mexican girl was not following her into the sea. In fact, she was quite content to wait for Callie upon the shore with the knife still in her hand.
Callie let go of the buoy and dived into the sea. When she surfaced again, the girl was still waiting for her on the beach. Her arms were crossed this time, but she was still waiting. And as the girl started to sit down upon the sand, Callie suddenly realized that the girl could very well wait there all night.
That's okay, she thought.
I'll just wait her out.
I can swim. I can tread water. But apparently she can't do any of that or else she'd be out here already.
Good thing for me.
Now I just have to wait for dawn to arrive.
As soon as people start showing up on the beach, she'll have to move. Granted, the results might be a little embarrassing for me, but better that than whatever thing that girl had in mind.
Besides, she thought, I'm a lot warmer here in the ocean than I would be on the beach.
So warm, in fact, that Callie never really felt the onset of her period until the first drops of blood hit the water.
And a black triangle started zigzagging its way through the ocean behind her.
“The Last Day of Summer”
It was the last day of summer, and there was no one else on the beach.
Normally the beach would be quite crowded this time of year but now for some reason, it was empty. Quite empty.
Must be all the stuff that happened in Matamoros that did it, Callie thought. Stuff like that usually scares away the tourists; in fact, it always does.
But not her. She had waited too long for this break, this vacation. Waited too long for this week which was now drawing to a far too rapid end.
She had waited too long for a lot of things. Perhaps that was why she finally decided to kick off her flip-flops, strip off her bikini and plunge into the warm waters of the Gulf.
Not that it mattered. There was no one around to see. No one around for miles. And her friends back at the beach house had their own dates -- and undoubtedly they were already doing things with them that were far more daring.
But Callie did not feel sorry for herself. No, Callie was too good a person to do that. Better to hold it in. To swallow it down. To pretend it did not exist.
She did not need a date. She never did. She never will. She probably would not know what to do with a man even if she did meet one.
But she did know how to swim. She took lessons at the Y. And no matter how depressed she felt tonight, there was no way she was going to emulate that Crissie girl in the Benchley novel. She was much smarter than that.
Just swim to the buoy and back, she thought. Simple. In fact, she could do it dog-paddling. And no one on the shore could see her. No one at all.
There.
She touched it.
Now swim back, she thought.
Quick.
Before the sharks come.
Not that they will come, of course. You don't find many man-eaters in the Gulf. But then there is always a first time.
So Callie closed her eyes to protect them from the salt. And she swam back to the beach, stopping every so often to check for triangular fins.
But there were none.
Told ya, she thought.
Sharks are the world's oldest movie cliché, anyway. Stuff like that doesn't happen to people like Callie in real life. It just doesn't.
But it could.
Good thing she's not having her period.
They are attracted by blood, you know.
But the deed was done. She was through. She was finished.
She stood up and walked out of the water, feeling more than a little brazen.
Imagine me, she thought. Callie Martin, an actual skinnydipper.
She smiled and then glanced toward her clothes.
Only to notice that they weren't there.
But they were just there a few minutes ago, she thought. I know. I saw them.
Then where did they go?
Instinctively, she covered herself. Wrapped her arms around her torso as much as for warmth as for modesty.
The night wind was feeling quite chilly upon her backside and Callie was already beginning to regret her impulsive midnight swim.
Where are my clothes? she thought. Where are they?
She thought of what her friends back at the beach house would say if they saw her now. The inferences they would make and the assumptions that would not be true.
She thought about her parents and her grandparents and the kids back in high school. Kids she'd never thought she'd see again after graduation but who were bound to come into her life again once the scandal hit.
Then Callie saw a young Mexican girl up upon the dunes. She was wearing a red bikini. Her red bikini. Callie knew that much by instinct.
The girl was not facing her, choosing instead to concentrate on a pair of flip-flops she was putting on. Her flip-flops! They had to be.
In spite of her nakedness, Callie ran up to the girl and grabbed her arm.
"Those are my things!" she started to yell. But then the words died in her throat.
The face that looked back at her had once been pretty -- but no more. It was much battered and scarred. Nor did the scars stop at the girl's face. They ran all down her body as if they were seams -- invisible from a distance, of course, but all too visible up close.
If that were the worst of it, Callie might have continued. But she had already felt the girl's arm. Felt the girl's leathery arm. And she also smelled the aroma of something oozing up from the girl's body.
Then the girl grinned. Not a gold-toothed grin but it was quite obvious to Callie that the teeth did not match up with the girl's lips. Nor did the knife which the girl produced from within her bikini bottom's waistband.
Callie screamed but the girl just laughed. A harsh, masculine laugh that could not have come from such a girl under normal circumstances.
Then Callie ran. Not toward the beach house. But toward the sea.
She reached the surf before the Mexican girl did. She dived into it without a moment's hesitation and surfaced only after she had passed the shallow area. Then she swam out toward the buoy.
Only then did she turn around.
Only then did she notice that the Mexican girl was not following her into the sea. In fact, she was quite content to wait for Callie upon the shore with the knife still in her hand.
Callie let go of the buoy and dived into the sea. When she surfaced again, the girl was still waiting for her on the beach. Her arms were crossed this time, but she was still waiting. And as the girl started to sit down upon the sand, Callie suddenly realized that the girl could very well wait there all night.
That's okay, she thought.
I'll just wait her out.
I can swim. I can tread water. But apparently she can't do any of that or else she'd be out here already.
Good thing for me.
Now I just have to wait for dawn to arrive.
As soon as people start showing up on the beach, she'll have to move. Granted, the results might be a little embarrassing for me, but better that than whatever thing that girl had in mind.
Besides, she thought, I'm a lot warmer here in the ocean than I would be on the beach.
So warm, in fact, that Callie never really felt the onset of her period until the first drops of blood hit the water.
And a black triangle started zigzagging its way through the ocean behind her.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Caged”
As he looked out between the gray metal bars of his current residence and stared at the lady he adored, he could not help noting how much more attention she seemed to pay to the apple on her desk than she did to him.
Apparently, what the bards of old had said was true. Sometimes it was not so easy to be the teacher's pet.
“Caged”
As he looked out between the gray metal bars of his current residence and stared at the lady he adored, he could not help noting how much more attention she seemed to pay to the apple on her desk than she did to him.
Apparently, what the bards of old had said was true. Sometimes it was not so easy to be the teacher's pet.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Surprise Party”
It was a scenario that Ashley had seen in a thousand sitcoms; the hurried single woman rushes home to take a quick bath, undresses in her darkened foyer and then enters her living room just in time to be greeted by a surprise party.
And yet they never say what happens next.
Does the poor woman run back into the darkened foyer in order to hastily redress and then rejoin her guests?
Does she eventually lower the hands she raised to unsuccessfully safeguard her modesty and then pretend to be a good sport about the whole thing?
Does she choose to play the role of the modest maiden and faint, hoping against hope that her guests will be gone when she awakens?
Or does the sitcom woman do what Ashley now does -- reach behind her upper back and start tugging on the small, flesh-colored zipper which is hidden there?
Aye, there's the ticket. After all, Ashley had already revealed enough of herself to the crowd before her. Why not go ahead and reveal the whole thing?
She smiles as the zipper descends and her real self emerges from her skin-tight birthday suit. Already the smiles are fading and the laughter is becoming more and more nervous.
“What's the matter?” she wants to ask them. “Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?”
Then the last of her covering drops onto the floor and Ashley steps out of it in all her true glory.
“Surprise,” she starts to say, but her words, alas, are drowned out by screams.
“The Surprise Party”
It was a scenario that Ashley had seen in a thousand sitcoms; the hurried single woman rushes home to take a quick bath, undresses in her darkened foyer and then enters her living room just in time to be greeted by a surprise party.
And yet they never say what happens next.
Does the poor woman run back into the darkened foyer in order to hastily redress and then rejoin her guests?
Does she eventually lower the hands she raised to unsuccessfully safeguard her modesty and then pretend to be a good sport about the whole thing?
Does she choose to play the role of the modest maiden and faint, hoping against hope that her guests will be gone when she awakens?
Or does the sitcom woman do what Ashley now does -- reach behind her upper back and start tugging on the small, flesh-colored zipper which is hidden there?
Aye, there's the ticket. After all, Ashley had already revealed enough of herself to the crowd before her. Why not go ahead and reveal the whole thing?
She smiles as the zipper descends and her real self emerges from her skin-tight birthday suit. Already the smiles are fading and the laughter is becoming more and more nervous.
“What's the matter?” she wants to ask them. “Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?”
Then the last of her covering drops onto the floor and Ashley steps out of it in all her true glory.
“Surprise,” she starts to say, but her words, alas, are drowned out by screams.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Love in Bain”
The hot bath water pressed down upon Diana's less-than-flat stomach like an insistent hand. It surrounded her limbs and pubes -- even her torso -- and would have covered her neck and head if she had allowed it.
But she did not allow it. She had kept it at bay -- just as she had kept her ex-husband Dennis at bay. The water flowed into orifices of Diana's body that only Dennis had known. Flowed there because Diana allowed it to flow there. She and the water became one in a way that she and Dennis had never become. Yet she still remained Diana.
That was important to her. Dennis had never wanted her to be Diana. He had wanted her to be “Diane” -- that giggly little creature she had been in the early days of their marriage. The one who shied away from confrontation. Who depended upon Dennis to kill the mouse. Who preformed oral sex when Dennis wanted to have oral sex without ever getting so much as a back rub in return. That Diane was gone. Drowned within her flesh. Instead there was now Diana. Cool. Calm. Assertive.
Taking a hot bath in the middle of the afternoon because she wanted to take a hot bath. Not another hot shower like the ones she took before she went to work. Those were over all too quickly, and no matter how long she spent taking them, she always felt a chill when she got out. As if the water had flowed over her, not into her.
Baths were different. You could take a hot bath in the dead of winter, and if you stayed in long enough, you could get out without shivering. You just didn't soak in the water. You became the water. Your body's temperature and the bath water's temperature became one. You didn't lie there, naked, waiting for someone to hold you, waiting for an embrace that never came....
Enough fretting about the past. Almost time to get out of the tub.
Diana still had weekend errands to run today. Shops to visit. Groceries to buy. Weeds to uproot. Dry cleaning to pick up.
She glanced at her scattered clothing and imagined going to the mall to buy a whole new wardrobe. Perhaps that blue dress she had seen at Joske's. Or the red dress in the front window at Dillard's. Or perhaps she could just go there as she was now -- without a stitch on. Just walk through the mall naked and watch the customers squirm in embarrassment and avert their eyes. Converting to nudism would no doubt help her save a fortune on her clothing costs. However, her heating bills would probably go through the roof come wintertime.
And in any event, why stay here?
If one were going to be naked, why not migrate to a warmer climate?.
She imagined herself naked on a beach at Cancun. Mariachis were playing in the distance, and dark-skinned men were dragging reluctant señoritas up a nearby pyramid.
Strange. She never realized that there were pyramids in this location...
Perhaps Egypt.
Egypt where the sand invaded every orifice and the smart women learned to shave down there for sanitary reasons. A whip was cracking over a relucant work crew in the distance. A naked servant was massaging her weary back. She looked into a brass mirror -- and saw all the worries of the world reflected in her eyes...
Diana was old. And growing old. But she had not really lived yet. She had not even seen the Library of Alexandria. But no, the Christians had burned that down just last year. No, the Muslims did. Never mind. The two cults always blamed each other as cults always do. And crawling across the floor was a scarab. She looked at the scarab and remembered...
Lying outside a villa near Pompeii.
Mount Vesuvius was smoking in the distance, and one of the maids was talking about a possible eruption. Impossible, Diane said. The volcano has been quiet for years.
Besides, she added, gesturing towards her lares and penates, do you think that these would ever let any harm come to me?
Meanwhile, the outside sky began to fill with ash...
Diana was modeling for the great sculptor Praxiteles, and the studio was cold. There was a draft upon her body she did not care to think about, and she hoped that the old man's fee was worth it. To be immortalized in art, he had said. And yet her stomach rumbled.
Forget art, Diana thought. One life is enough for me. Just let me be prosperous in this one. And not end up like the aged ones who started out in the temples of Aphrodite and ended up becoming priestesses of Artemis...
The revolution was coming.
Diana's lover was upon her. He still had her cunt in his mouth when the mob burst through the bedroom door. They dragged them both out by their hair and made her kiss the severed head of her dead maid-servant. Then, of course, they threw her onto the wagon...
They wanted answers, of course. But Diana did not have anything to tell them.
That did not matter to the Inquisition. One of her neighbors had known something and now they wanted confirmation. They tested her with a pin, searching for a spot on her body where there was no pain, and instead they found that her body had an infinite number of spots that were sensitive to the touch of a pin. They stripped her naked so that their search would be more thorough and then they cursed her for her nakedness.
Then they showed Diana the tub.
They showed her the tub.
The tub. Where she lay awaiting a summons from the Grand Sultan. A black eunuch scrubbed her back and a white eunuch caressed her toes. Briefly Diana thought of another tub.
Then she forgot it...
Then she remembered it...
Then forgot it...
She had no life now that her husband had been killed in battle. Now she was the sultan's wife. One of them, at least. Or at least she was a concubine. Or a...
The tub, she thought. Something is within the tub. A dark shape. A mosaic, perhaps. It looked like...
A wasserliche. That's what they called it in German. But it was still a dead body. Diana glanced at the innocent young face and regretted having stayed so long at the factory. If only she had come home sooner, her daughter would not have died. She would have been --
But wait...
Diana had no daughter...
Yes, she did. She remembered giving birth to her. She remembered the fun she had conceiving her, and the pain she felt when her husband was killed in the war, and the misery she had felt trying to get by in the dark time afterwards...
And yet...
A bird flew overhead. It was a raven...
She pictured herself in the raven's place and seeing with a raven's eyes...
She saw a distant city ahead...
Then a distant ocean...
Then a distant harbor...
There was a lady in the harbor...
A tall, green maiden with a big torch and a spiked helmet...
And within the city, there was a skyscraper...
On the skyscraper was a balcony...
The balcony led to an apartment...
The apartment had a bathroom...
The bathroom door was only halfway open, but she could see that the room was occupied by someone taking a bath. Or at least someone who had been taking a bath but who had apparently fallen asleep while doing so...
She started to brush the curtain aside. But the curtain would not yield to her fingertips even though she was once again human...
However, she could step through the bathtub curtain and look down upon the tub's occupant...
Look down and see a middle-aged, heavyset brunette floating like Ophelia upon the waters...
Only this brunette was not quite floating...
In fact, her head was under water...
Diana gasped. That body in the water was her...
She once again reached out, this time in desperation. But her hands passed right through the body in the tub. They passed through everything, in fact. And as her hands passed through the bath water, she could tell that the water was really quite cold -- as if it had been sitting there for a long, long time...
. Now what do I do? Diana thought.
What could she do?
And yet...
No more periods, she thought.
No more weight problems.
And, of course, no more ex-husband to worry about.
Why should she complain?.
She was free now. .
Hadn't she always wanted to be free?.
Not like this, she thought.
Then she once more glanced down at her body.
Remembered the sensation of the warm bath water upon her skin and within her genitals.
Oh, well, Diana thought. Now I have all time and space before me. Come to think of it, who really needs a body anyway? Had I not just traveled quite a long way just using my mind?
Diana walked off and tried to imagine herself wrapped in silk.
But for some reason, she still felt naked.
“Love in Bain”
The hot bath water pressed down upon Diana's less-than-flat stomach like an insistent hand. It surrounded her limbs and pubes -- even her torso -- and would have covered her neck and head if she had allowed it.
But she did not allow it. She had kept it at bay -- just as she had kept her ex-husband Dennis at bay. The water flowed into orifices of Diana's body that only Dennis had known. Flowed there because Diana allowed it to flow there. She and the water became one in a way that she and Dennis had never become. Yet she still remained Diana.
That was important to her. Dennis had never wanted her to be Diana. He had wanted her to be “Diane” -- that giggly little creature she had been in the early days of their marriage. The one who shied away from confrontation. Who depended upon Dennis to kill the mouse. Who preformed oral sex when Dennis wanted to have oral sex without ever getting so much as a back rub in return. That Diane was gone. Drowned within her flesh. Instead there was now Diana. Cool. Calm. Assertive.
Taking a hot bath in the middle of the afternoon because she wanted to take a hot bath. Not another hot shower like the ones she took before she went to work. Those were over all too quickly, and no matter how long she spent taking them, she always felt a chill when she got out. As if the water had flowed over her, not into her.
Baths were different. You could take a hot bath in the dead of winter, and if you stayed in long enough, you could get out without shivering. You just didn't soak in the water. You became the water. Your body's temperature and the bath water's temperature became one. You didn't lie there, naked, waiting for someone to hold you, waiting for an embrace that never came....
Enough fretting about the past. Almost time to get out of the tub.
Diana still had weekend errands to run today. Shops to visit. Groceries to buy. Weeds to uproot. Dry cleaning to pick up.
She glanced at her scattered clothing and imagined going to the mall to buy a whole new wardrobe. Perhaps that blue dress she had seen at Joske's. Or the red dress in the front window at Dillard's. Or perhaps she could just go there as she was now -- without a stitch on. Just walk through the mall naked and watch the customers squirm in embarrassment and avert their eyes. Converting to nudism would no doubt help her save a fortune on her clothing costs. However, her heating bills would probably go through the roof come wintertime.
And in any event, why stay here?
If one were going to be naked, why not migrate to a warmer climate?.
She imagined herself naked on a beach at Cancun. Mariachis were playing in the distance, and dark-skinned men were dragging reluctant señoritas up a nearby pyramid.
Strange. She never realized that there were pyramids in this location...
Perhaps Egypt.
Egypt where the sand invaded every orifice and the smart women learned to shave down there for sanitary reasons. A whip was cracking over a relucant work crew in the distance. A naked servant was massaging her weary back. She looked into a brass mirror -- and saw all the worries of the world reflected in her eyes...
Diana was old. And growing old. But she had not really lived yet. She had not even seen the Library of Alexandria. But no, the Christians had burned that down just last year. No, the Muslims did. Never mind. The two cults always blamed each other as cults always do. And crawling across the floor was a scarab. She looked at the scarab and remembered...
Lying outside a villa near Pompeii.
Mount Vesuvius was smoking in the distance, and one of the maids was talking about a possible eruption. Impossible, Diane said. The volcano has been quiet for years.
Besides, she added, gesturing towards her lares and penates, do you think that these would ever let any harm come to me?
Meanwhile, the outside sky began to fill with ash...
Diana was modeling for the great sculptor Praxiteles, and the studio was cold. There was a draft upon her body she did not care to think about, and she hoped that the old man's fee was worth it. To be immortalized in art, he had said. And yet her stomach rumbled.
Forget art, Diana thought. One life is enough for me. Just let me be prosperous in this one. And not end up like the aged ones who started out in the temples of Aphrodite and ended up becoming priestesses of Artemis...
The revolution was coming.
Diana's lover was upon her. He still had her cunt in his mouth when the mob burst through the bedroom door. They dragged them both out by their hair and made her kiss the severed head of her dead maid-servant. Then, of course, they threw her onto the wagon...
They wanted answers, of course. But Diana did not have anything to tell them.
That did not matter to the Inquisition. One of her neighbors had known something and now they wanted confirmation. They tested her with a pin, searching for a spot on her body where there was no pain, and instead they found that her body had an infinite number of spots that were sensitive to the touch of a pin. They stripped her naked so that their search would be more thorough and then they cursed her for her nakedness.
Then they showed Diana the tub.
They showed her the tub.
The tub. Where she lay awaiting a summons from the Grand Sultan. A black eunuch scrubbed her back and a white eunuch caressed her toes. Briefly Diana thought of another tub.
Then she forgot it...
Then she remembered it...
Then forgot it...
She had no life now that her husband had been killed in battle. Now she was the sultan's wife. One of them, at least. Or at least she was a concubine. Or a...
The tub, she thought. Something is within the tub. A dark shape. A mosaic, perhaps. It looked like...
A wasserliche. That's what they called it in German. But it was still a dead body. Diana glanced at the innocent young face and regretted having stayed so long at the factory. If only she had come home sooner, her daughter would not have died. She would have been --
But wait...
Diana had no daughter...
Yes, she did. She remembered giving birth to her. She remembered the fun she had conceiving her, and the pain she felt when her husband was killed in the war, and the misery she had felt trying to get by in the dark time afterwards...
And yet...
A bird flew overhead. It was a raven...
She pictured herself in the raven's place and seeing with a raven's eyes...
She saw a distant city ahead...
Then a distant ocean...
Then a distant harbor...
There was a lady in the harbor...
A tall, green maiden with a big torch and a spiked helmet...
And within the city, there was a skyscraper...
On the skyscraper was a balcony...
The balcony led to an apartment...
The apartment had a bathroom...
The bathroom door was only halfway open, but she could see that the room was occupied by someone taking a bath. Or at least someone who had been taking a bath but who had apparently fallen asleep while doing so...
She started to brush the curtain aside. But the curtain would not yield to her fingertips even though she was once again human...
However, she could step through the bathtub curtain and look down upon the tub's occupant...
Look down and see a middle-aged, heavyset brunette floating like Ophelia upon the waters...
Only this brunette was not quite floating...
In fact, her head was under water...
Diana gasped. That body in the water was her...
She once again reached out, this time in desperation. But her hands passed right through the body in the tub. They passed through everything, in fact. And as her hands passed through the bath water, she could tell that the water was really quite cold -- as if it had been sitting there for a long, long time...
. Now what do I do? Diana thought.
What could she do?
And yet...
No more periods, she thought.
No more weight problems.
And, of course, no more ex-husband to worry about.
Why should she complain?.
She was free now. .
Hadn't she always wanted to be free?.
Not like this, she thought.
Then she once more glanced down at her body.
Remembered the sensation of the warm bath water upon her skin and within her genitals.
Oh, well, Diana thought. Now I have all time and space before me. Come to think of it, who really needs a body anyway? Had I not just traveled quite a long way just using my mind?
Diana walked off and tried to imagine herself wrapped in silk.
But for some reason, she still felt naked.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”
Never trust a revolutionary, my father used to say. You have only to look into their eyes to see what they really are. For their eyes aren't normal eyes. And they look right through you as if you weren't really human. Which readily explains the things they say. And the things they do.
I never laughed at my father when he said this. I could tell by the expression in his own eyes that he was serious about this. He would joke about a lot of things but never this subject. He never told me how he knew all this. Did he read from a book somewhere or did he learn it from someone who had lived through the last revolution in his homeland? He never said. But each time he told it to me, he had the air of someone revealing a great truth.
And, of course, he never told me in front of anyone else. Not even my mother.
*************************************************************************************************************
Five years into the War and my mother and I were staying at her mother's house. The news was always on and my mother was tired of always having to work two jobs. We had not seen my father in ages but my mother still jumped when the phone rang. Her mother always scolded us whenever we got home late but my mother ignored her. And tried to ignore the black sedan parked outside across the street...
*************************************************************************************************************
My father used to tell me about the old woman he knew back in his hometown. How contemptuous she had been of the last batch of revolutionaries to ride through that town and how much she liked to compare them to the men in uniform that she had known in her youth.
“The French, you see, now they knew something about uniforms. But today's bunch... They're little more than barbarians. How awful!”
My father was home early because the boss had decided to let him go. He had been working at the office six months -- longer than some of his Anglo co-workers -- but in the end, they let him go.
My mother asked him in whispers what he will do next.
“Don't worry, mi amor,” he said. "I'll find something.”
“But if you don't...”
“If I don't, we'll move.”
“And if you still don't find something...”
“Then we'll move again.”
Five years later, my father took us both aside and said that the two of us were going back to Detroit to live with my mother's mother. My father would follow but not for a long time. In the meantime we were not to mention his name or speculate where he might be. He made us both swear that we would never tell anyone about him.
“If anyone asks about me,” he said, “You don't know. If anyone claims to know something about me, you don't know. As far as you know, I went away one day and did not come back. Believe me, mijo, as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, it's better this way.”
He hugged both of us quite strongly and then left. I have not seen him in the flesh since then.
*************************************************************************************************************
My grandmother was talking about the news again but my mother would not listen. “Shut it off, mother,” she said. “It's almost time to eat.”
“Why do they do it?" my grandmother asked. “Why do they act like such ingrates? Don't those people understand the concept of loyalty?”
My mother seemed on the verge of saying something but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Loyalty is a two-way street, mother.” Then she fell silent as if she had accidentally confessed something.
Outside across the street, a black sedan was still waiting. Every so often, it drove off, only to be replaced almost immediately by a vehicle of a similar color. What the men in the car were waiting for, my mother would not say. As far as she was concerned, the sedan did not even exist.
*************************************************************************************************************
When my father was still living with us, he used to teach me English using flash cards. He would write down English words and sentences and then teach me to say them over and over again until l could say them in my sleep. He was never prouder till the day came when I no longer spoke with an accent.
He used to go to old book stores throughout the city and buy books about the last revolution in his homeland. He often said that he preferred the books that were written by Americans because the books written by people of his homeland tended to be more personality-oriented. Americans were not always as objective about the revolution as my father would like, but at least they tended to focus more on what actually happened as opposed to what so-and-so did or said. “Of course, the way things are going in this country,” he would sometimes joke, “American history books will someday be the same way. But hopefully neither you nor I will be around when that happens.”
*************************************************************************************************************
Last night there was a knock on the door.
A man in a black raincoat said we would have to leave. There had been an incident at the local nuclear plant and the entire neighborhood was being evacuated.
“I just knew they should have dealt with those people while they had the chance,” said my grandmother.
My mother just held her breath and fingered her rosary.
As we packed up to leave, I noticed that the black sedan was no longer across the street. Nor was there any car in its place. I finished packing my suitcase and took it out to my grandparents' car.
My grandmother was looking worriedly toward the north -- in the direction of the fallen power plant.
My mother as always looked in all directions.
Then she got into the back seat beside me and hugged me.
She said something in Spanish but her voice was so low that I could not hear her.
The next day, after we entered the relocation camp, my grandparents bought a newspaper. On the cover was a sketch of a man who looked like my father. But it could not have been my father for my father's eyes were brown and the man in the sketch had black irises. More to the point, the eyes in the newspaper sketch seemed to look right through me. Just like the eyes that my father had once described. The eyes of a revolutionary.
“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”
Never trust a revolutionary, my father used to say. You have only to look into their eyes to see what they really are. For their eyes aren't normal eyes. And they look right through you as if you weren't really human. Which readily explains the things they say. And the things they do.
I never laughed at my father when he said this. I could tell by the expression in his own eyes that he was serious about this. He would joke about a lot of things but never this subject. He never told me how he knew all this. Did he read from a book somewhere or did he learn it from someone who had lived through the last revolution in his homeland? He never said. But each time he told it to me, he had the air of someone revealing a great truth.
And, of course, he never told me in front of anyone else. Not even my mother.
*************************************************************************************************************
Five years into the War and my mother and I were staying at her mother's house. The news was always on and my mother was tired of always having to work two jobs. We had not seen my father in ages but my mother still jumped when the phone rang. Her mother always scolded us whenever we got home late but my mother ignored her. And tried to ignore the black sedan parked outside across the street...
*************************************************************************************************************
My father used to tell me about the old woman he knew back in his hometown. How contemptuous she had been of the last batch of revolutionaries to ride through that town and how much she liked to compare them to the men in uniform that she had known in her youth.
“The French, you see, now they knew something about uniforms. But today's bunch... They're little more than barbarians. How awful!”
My father was home early because the boss had decided to let him go. He had been working at the office six months -- longer than some of his Anglo co-workers -- but in the end, they let him go.
My mother asked him in whispers what he will do next.
“Don't worry, mi amor,” he said. "I'll find something.”
“But if you don't...”
“If I don't, we'll move.”
“And if you still don't find something...”
“Then we'll move again.”
Five years later, my father took us both aside and said that the two of us were going back to Detroit to live with my mother's mother. My father would follow but not for a long time. In the meantime we were not to mention his name or speculate where he might be. He made us both swear that we would never tell anyone about him.
“If anyone asks about me,” he said, “You don't know. If anyone claims to know something about me, you don't know. As far as you know, I went away one day and did not come back. Believe me, mijo, as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, it's better this way.”
He hugged both of us quite strongly and then left. I have not seen him in the flesh since then.
*************************************************************************************************************
My grandmother was talking about the news again but my mother would not listen. “Shut it off, mother,” she said. “It's almost time to eat.”
“Why do they do it?" my grandmother asked. “Why do they act like such ingrates? Don't those people understand the concept of loyalty?”
My mother seemed on the verge of saying something but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Loyalty is a two-way street, mother.” Then she fell silent as if she had accidentally confessed something.
Outside across the street, a black sedan was still waiting. Every so often, it drove off, only to be replaced almost immediately by a vehicle of a similar color. What the men in the car were waiting for, my mother would not say. As far as she was concerned, the sedan did not even exist.
*************************************************************************************************************
When my father was still living with us, he used to teach me English using flash cards. He would write down English words and sentences and then teach me to say them over and over again until l could say them in my sleep. He was never prouder till the day came when I no longer spoke with an accent.
He used to go to old book stores throughout the city and buy books about the last revolution in his homeland. He often said that he preferred the books that were written by Americans because the books written by people of his homeland tended to be more personality-oriented. Americans were not always as objective about the revolution as my father would like, but at least they tended to focus more on what actually happened as opposed to what so-and-so did or said. “Of course, the way things are going in this country,” he would sometimes joke, “American history books will someday be the same way. But hopefully neither you nor I will be around when that happens.”
*************************************************************************************************************
Last night there was a knock on the door.
A man in a black raincoat said we would have to leave. There had been an incident at the local nuclear plant and the entire neighborhood was being evacuated.
“I just knew they should have dealt with those people while they had the chance,” said my grandmother.
My mother just held her breath and fingered her rosary.
As we packed up to leave, I noticed that the black sedan was no longer across the street. Nor was there any car in its place. I finished packing my suitcase and took it out to my grandparents' car.
My grandmother was looking worriedly toward the north -- in the direction of the fallen power plant.
My mother as always looked in all directions.
Then she got into the back seat beside me and hugged me.
She said something in Spanish but her voice was so low that I could not hear her.
The next day, after we entered the relocation camp, my grandparents bought a newspaper. On the cover was a sketch of a man who looked like my father. But it could not have been my father for my father's eyes were brown and the man in the sketch had black irises. More to the point, the eyes in the newspaper sketch seemed to look right through me. Just like the eyes that my father had once described. The eyes of a revolutionary.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Living”
They were talking again. Talking about the damned story. Morales knew he should say something, but he was tired. He had been working extra shifts at Great Lake Steel again and he really did not have the patience to sit here and listen to silly chatter while his whole body cried out for sleep. It was a quarter to nine and already he was hoping that the class would end early so that he could go home and catch a few moments of slumber before he had to start the graveyard shift. His mother would probably still be up when he got home; she usually was, no matter how late he came home. But with luck, he would be able to catch a quick nap, regardless.
And yet the voices kept yammering.
Morales felt the need to scream but he knew that if he gave in, he would never hear the end of it from his guidance counselor. Besides, if he said something, he might get into trouble, and he already had enough problems at home without seeking them here at school as well.
So instead he forced himself to listen.
“The ending,” said the blonde girl ahead of him. “It was so sad.”
“Yeah,” said a red-headed guy across from her. “Just think about it. That poor boy just singing in the snow. Just dying for want of love.”
You think that's sad, Morales thought, try listening to some of the real-life stories I could tell you. The father who died of a heart attack when his youngest son turned thirteen. The older brother who died of appendicitis because there was no money to take him to a doctor until it was too late. The other older brother whose first wife and son died of tuberculosis while he was at work.
But the people in the classroom didn't want to hear stories like that. They wanted to hear happy stories about people just like them. People who had no real problems save philosophical ones. Sad, rich people who had a hundred servants to do their bidding and yet wept quite frequently because they lived in such a sad, sad world.
He knew he was being unfair now. He knew that some of his fellow students were on scholarships too, and probably came from families just as poor as his.
But he was too tired to be fair. He just wanted to go home so that he could grab a few hours of sleep.
The teacher was talking now. Talking about the difference between dying young and not dying young. As if that issue really required a lot of thought.
To deliberately die young like the boy did in the story was stupid. A smart person avoids it if he can and he is certainly not dumb enough to go out and seek it on purpose.
Only the well-off glamorize death, he thought. Only the rich could afford to cry crocodile tears over cute young Irish lads who die way before their time because they're too stupid to come in out of the snow. Only the rich could afford to spit on those who are not dumb enough to die young and who prefer to show their love by staying healthy and sharing their good fortune with their beloved for many years instead of offering one brief and stupid romantic gesture for the sum of one night.
Such folk were never appreciated by the rich because the rich do not want to appreciate such folk. They hate being reminded of what it's like to be poor -- actually poor -- and while they will weep forever over some imaginary person's troubles, they generally could be counted on to do damned little to help out a real person.
But then they have no real idea what it is like to be not rich. To not have money. To have to work so hard and to earn so little and to never have enough of anything.
He thought of his widowed mother who was waiting at home this very moment and the many times she had reminded him and his siblings about the life she had known before she had been dispossessed by the Revolution. Whenever one of them would bring home a bottle of wine to celebrate a birthday, their mother would say, “When I was a little girl, we used to celebrate with champagne, not wine.” And then she would say nothing else.
Somehow he got the feeling that she would have liked the story the class was talking about.
But he never would.
The yammering was continuing and he tried to ignore it by telling himself that it was just a story. No more important than the stories his co-workers would tell on lunch break or even the stories his mother would tell of her own girlhood. He did not have to agree with the others about it. In fact, he was better off ignoring it.
Then he noticed the silence.
“Anything to add, Mr. Morales?” the teacher asked.
Morales blinked. The class was looking at him and the teacher kept staring at him as if expecting something. Morales knew he should say something neutral but instead he said, “This story is stupid.”
He relished the shocked look on his classmates' faces as they cried “What?” in unison and then he continued.
“The woman in the story -- she spent all those years in love with this dead guy she didn't even like at first and yet she had no love for the spouse who had worked for years to put food on her table and a roof over her head. In my mind, that's a stupid story.”
The teacher just smiled. “I'm sorry you have so little appreciation for great literature, Mr. Morales. Perhaps when you're older and you know more about life, you will appreciate it more.”
There was so much more Morales could have said at that moment yet he stayed silent. Somehow he didn't see himself having the words to make either the teacher or the class understand. Perhaps no one had such words. But especially not him.
Instead he just waited silently for the dismissal bell to ring. When it did, he quietly gathered up his books and walked out into the winter cold.
“The Living”
They were talking again. Talking about the damned story. Morales knew he should say something, but he was tired. He had been working extra shifts at Great Lake Steel again and he really did not have the patience to sit here and listen to silly chatter while his whole body cried out for sleep. It was a quarter to nine and already he was hoping that the class would end early so that he could go home and catch a few moments of slumber before he had to start the graveyard shift. His mother would probably still be up when he got home; she usually was, no matter how late he came home. But with luck, he would be able to catch a quick nap, regardless.
And yet the voices kept yammering.
Morales felt the need to scream but he knew that if he gave in, he would never hear the end of it from his guidance counselor. Besides, if he said something, he might get into trouble, and he already had enough problems at home without seeking them here at school as well.
So instead he forced himself to listen.
“The ending,” said the blonde girl ahead of him. “It was so sad.”
“Yeah,” said a red-headed guy across from her. “Just think about it. That poor boy just singing in the snow. Just dying for want of love.”
You think that's sad, Morales thought, try listening to some of the real-life stories I could tell you. The father who died of a heart attack when his youngest son turned thirteen. The older brother who died of appendicitis because there was no money to take him to a doctor until it was too late. The other older brother whose first wife and son died of tuberculosis while he was at work.
But the people in the classroom didn't want to hear stories like that. They wanted to hear happy stories about people just like them. People who had no real problems save philosophical ones. Sad, rich people who had a hundred servants to do their bidding and yet wept quite frequently because they lived in such a sad, sad world.
He knew he was being unfair now. He knew that some of his fellow students were on scholarships too, and probably came from families just as poor as his.
But he was too tired to be fair. He just wanted to go home so that he could grab a few hours of sleep.
The teacher was talking now. Talking about the difference between dying young and not dying young. As if that issue really required a lot of thought.
To deliberately die young like the boy did in the story was stupid. A smart person avoids it if he can and he is certainly not dumb enough to go out and seek it on purpose.
Only the well-off glamorize death, he thought. Only the rich could afford to cry crocodile tears over cute young Irish lads who die way before their time because they're too stupid to come in out of the snow. Only the rich could afford to spit on those who are not dumb enough to die young and who prefer to show their love by staying healthy and sharing their good fortune with their beloved for many years instead of offering one brief and stupid romantic gesture for the sum of one night.
Such folk were never appreciated by the rich because the rich do not want to appreciate such folk. They hate being reminded of what it's like to be poor -- actually poor -- and while they will weep forever over some imaginary person's troubles, they generally could be counted on to do damned little to help out a real person.
But then they have no real idea what it is like to be not rich. To not have money. To have to work so hard and to earn so little and to never have enough of anything.
He thought of his widowed mother who was waiting at home this very moment and the many times she had reminded him and his siblings about the life she had known before she had been dispossessed by the Revolution. Whenever one of them would bring home a bottle of wine to celebrate a birthday, their mother would say, “When I was a little girl, we used to celebrate with champagne, not wine.” And then she would say nothing else.
Somehow he got the feeling that she would have liked the story the class was talking about.
But he never would.
The yammering was continuing and he tried to ignore it by telling himself that it was just a story. No more important than the stories his co-workers would tell on lunch break or even the stories his mother would tell of her own girlhood. He did not have to agree with the others about it. In fact, he was better off ignoring it.
Then he noticed the silence.
“Anything to add, Mr. Morales?” the teacher asked.
Morales blinked. The class was looking at him and the teacher kept staring at him as if expecting something. Morales knew he should say something neutral but instead he said, “This story is stupid.”
He relished the shocked look on his classmates' faces as they cried “What?” in unison and then he continued.
“The woman in the story -- she spent all those years in love with this dead guy she didn't even like at first and yet she had no love for the spouse who had worked for years to put food on her table and a roof over her head. In my mind, that's a stupid story.”
The teacher just smiled. “I'm sorry you have so little appreciation for great literature, Mr. Morales. Perhaps when you're older and you know more about life, you will appreciate it more.”
There was so much more Morales could have said at that moment yet he stayed silent. Somehow he didn't see himself having the words to make either the teacher or the class understand. Perhaps no one had such words. But especially not him.
Instead he just waited silently for the dismissal bell to ring. When it did, he quietly gathered up his books and walked out into the winter cold.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Blanca”
Blanca is knitting another sweater for me tonight. She knits something new every night yet she never finishes any of them.
Sometimes I joke with her that her mother should have named her Penelope. But she just smiles and glances at me with those ebony eyes of hers.
Arabic eyes, I call them. After five centuries, the long-dead Arabs of Spain still live on in a young woman’s eyes. Blanca’s eyes. The eyes of the prettiest woman in San Narciso.
*************************************************************************************************************
How I first met Blanca, I shall not say. Suffice it to say that as it is with many men of Mexican descent, it was a female relative of mine who saw her first and eventually introduced us. No paseo scene for me. The minute I first saw her entering her mother’s pharmacy, I fell in love with her. And I like to think that eventually she will fall in love with me. In time.
Our first meetings were at best platonic. I would visit her house and say hello to her mother and her younger siblings. Her younger brother would fetch me an apple which I would not eat and a Coke which I would not drink and after a while, we would go upstairs to the living room to talk. Of course Blanca’s brother was always coming up to check on us and I would like to think that in some ways, the little twelve-year-old relished the role of chaperone he was playing. Blanca, for all her beauty, did not look like she dated much, and at her age (27), she seemed an obvious candidate for Mexican spinsterhood. After all, most Mexican women married at far younger ages than Blanca -- even in the States. To make matters worse, three of her younger sisters were already wearing engagement rings. So, needless to say, my courtship of Blanca seemed a welcome event.
Yet Blanca herself seemed strangely reluctant to talk of marriage. Of parties and weddings, yes, but only if they were someone else’s. As for herself, she seemed content to do little more than knit and make small talk.
This frustrated me. I knew by all the framed diplomas on the wall of Blanca’s room that she was not a dumb person, and indeed, she had talked many times of all the sights she had seen when she had visited a married cousin living in San Francisco. Clearly, she was not the type of woman to be content spending the rest of her life in a small town. But she acted like it. Moreover, I knew that she liked me.
However, she always changed the subject whenever I spoke of marriage.
Yes, she was willing to think of a more serious relationship, she would say, but not now.
Had I met her back home in the States, I might have suspected that there was another man involved, but in truth, I seemed to be the only male non-relative involved in her life. Which puzzled me eventually. Could it be that for all her talk of marriage and children, Blanca did not really want to get married. And if so, why not?
A number of unflattering hypotheses came into my mind, but I rejected every one of them, one by one. Blanca showed no signs of romantic interest in her own sex. Nor did she seem destined for the convent. Her mother talked long and admiringly about my computer job in the States, so there were no objections on that front. As for her father, he had passed away about three years ago. Even the novios of her younger sisters seemed to like me. So what was the problem?
I made up my mind to ask Blanca about this one night when we were walking home from a party.
Her brother had come with us as a chaperone, but like most males, he was smart enough to walk a yard or two ahead of us -- enough room to give us privacy without compromising his sister’s virtue too much.
So as we passed through the deserted streets of downtown San Narciso, I gathered the courage to ask Blanca the fatal question: Why?
She glanced at me.
Then she glanced into the windows of a jewelry store.
“What lovely rings they have,” she said in Spanish.
I glanced at her.
“Please don’t change the subject,” I said in the same language.
She glanced at me, then at her brother, still a yard or two ahead of us. “We must not talk about it.”
“We must.”
“No, we must not.” She paused to glance at me, then she continued. “I -- I like you very much, Anton, but I cannot be engaged to you.”
“But why?” The words sounded much more anguished in Spanish.
“I -- I just cannot.”
She glanced into another store window.
“Did anyone in my family ever tell you about my first boyfriend?”
“I didn’t even know you had a first boyfriend. Aside from me, of course.”
She smiled. “This was long ago. When Papa was still alive. Papa never really liked him. In fact, he nearly threw him out of the house one time. He was a real bad sort.” She did not say to whom she was referring.
“So?”
“My boyfriend wanted me to elope with him. He had friends in Guadalajara, and if that did not work, we could always stay with his relatives in Morelia or San Luis Potosí. But I did not do that, of course.”
“Why not?”
She glanced into another store window. “I did not want to leave my family. I was the oldest, of course. And the oldest always has certain responsibilities. So he left without me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. A few months later, he tried the same thing with a girl in a nearby town. Her mother was one of those jealous sorts and had chased away one would-be novio with a gun. I hate to tell you what she did to my boyfriend.”
She smiled and then continued. “As for me, I really did not have much to say about the matter. I got very sick that year and spent much of that fall in bed. At one point, my parents even called in a priest and had him give me the last rites.”
She turned toward me with a smile and pointed to a small circular scar on her forearm.
“But I am much better now.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Don’t be. I nearly died.”
“I’m sorry. I once nearly died too.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “You have told me about the heart operation you had when you were a child. This was different. I really did almost die. Only my father saved me at the last minute.”
“He did? How?”
“With a silver coin. He heated it in an open fire and then placed it on my arm. If he had not done that, they would have buried me.”
“My God!”
“All these years, I’ve always wanted to pay him back for saving my life. But I never got the chance. And he never really forgave me for it either.”
“He never forgave you? But why? It was not your fault. You just said you were sick.”
“No, I did not.”
“But you just said -- ”
“I said I got sick. From taking too many sleeping pills from my parents’ pharmacy. Now do you understand?”
I glanced at her. Surely in this day and age, she could not be that Catholic. And yet something in the way she held her head seemed to warn me. Between her black hair and her light brown skin, she seemed to almost merge into the darkness behind her.
I suddenly realized that her brother was no longer in sight of us. I looked around for him.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “He’s gone home.”
“But why?”
“We have been courting long enough for him to trust us. And he knows that you are a most respectable man.”
“Then why did he accompany us tonight?”
“Because I asked him to. In case I was tempted.”
She walked on a bit. “I can’t ever come back to Dallas with you. And you could never be happy in San Narciso. So it would be best for you to forget me. Go home and find yourself some nice American girl. I am not worth it.”
“But you are,“ I said. “You are very beautiful.”
She laughed. “It takes more than beauty to make a marriage.”
“I know. That is why I want to marry you. Because I do not want just another mindless beauty. I want someone I could spend my entire life with. I want you.”
She looked at me again. “I do believe you are serious.”
“I am.”
She smiled.
“Blanca,” she said, as if quoting. “The woman with a name like snow.”
She smiled again. “My boyfriend made that up.”
“I see.”
“No, you do not. You do not know me that well, Anton. If you did, you would not dream of me. Must I deny you three times before the cock crows? Very well. I’ll show you why you must go back to Dallas and forget me. I will show you right here... right now.”
From out of her purse she took two knitting needles. She held them up before her so that their sharp tips gleamed in the moonlight, then plunged them into her left hand. She never so much as flinched.
“Do you understand now?”
“No. I do not.”
She drew out the needles. There was blood on their tips. Already her hand was bleeding.
I reached over to cover it with a handkerchief.
She pushed me back.
“You are a fool, Anton. A well-meaning fool, but a fool nonetheless. I can never love you. You know that as much as I do.” And with that, she wiped off the needles with a piece of old cloth she had and placed them all back in her purse. Then she drew out a multicolored handkerchief. She covered her hand with it and then disappeared into the darkness.
“You are a fool, Anton,” she kept saying as she disappeared. “You are a fool.”
*************************************************************************************************************
I wish I could say that I went back to the States right after that and forgot her. But as I have pointed out, she is with me now even as I speak.
While I could not influence her, I could influence her mother, and Blanca, as always, was the type of good Catholic girl who always obeyed her mother.
So she sits in the corner of our bedroom, knitting like she always knits, the sun illuminating the side of her face to the point that she almost looks Anglo.
I kiss her every now and then and murmur, “Te adoro.” But she never murmurs “te adoro” back. She is determined to stay with me and be a good girl, but she will not pretend she enjoys it.
If that were the worst element of our life together, I would not object. For aside from her knitting, Blanca has made remarkably great progress in her adjustment to Dallas. Too great.
Every now and then, I see her wear a short-sleeved dress and witness the nail marks on her arms. I think of how few cats I have seen in the neighborhood and of how many pet-owning families have moved out of the neighborhood in the last year or so.
She keeps swearing that she will change, but I swear that her resolutions, alas, are all too much like her sweaters -- easily begun but never quite capable of holding her interest.
This worries me.
For lately, you see, she has begun to talk about children.
She has begun to talk about children a lot.
“Blanca”
Blanca is knitting another sweater for me tonight. She knits something new every night yet she never finishes any of them.
Sometimes I joke with her that her mother should have named her Penelope. But she just smiles and glances at me with those ebony eyes of hers.
Arabic eyes, I call them. After five centuries, the long-dead Arabs of Spain still live on in a young woman’s eyes. Blanca’s eyes. The eyes of the prettiest woman in San Narciso.
*************************************************************************************************************
How I first met Blanca, I shall not say. Suffice it to say that as it is with many men of Mexican descent, it was a female relative of mine who saw her first and eventually introduced us. No paseo scene for me. The minute I first saw her entering her mother’s pharmacy, I fell in love with her. And I like to think that eventually she will fall in love with me. In time.
Our first meetings were at best platonic. I would visit her house and say hello to her mother and her younger siblings. Her younger brother would fetch me an apple which I would not eat and a Coke which I would not drink and after a while, we would go upstairs to the living room to talk. Of course Blanca’s brother was always coming up to check on us and I would like to think that in some ways, the little twelve-year-old relished the role of chaperone he was playing. Blanca, for all her beauty, did not look like she dated much, and at her age (27), she seemed an obvious candidate for Mexican spinsterhood. After all, most Mexican women married at far younger ages than Blanca -- even in the States. To make matters worse, three of her younger sisters were already wearing engagement rings. So, needless to say, my courtship of Blanca seemed a welcome event.
Yet Blanca herself seemed strangely reluctant to talk of marriage. Of parties and weddings, yes, but only if they were someone else’s. As for herself, she seemed content to do little more than knit and make small talk.
This frustrated me. I knew by all the framed diplomas on the wall of Blanca’s room that she was not a dumb person, and indeed, she had talked many times of all the sights she had seen when she had visited a married cousin living in San Francisco. Clearly, she was not the type of woman to be content spending the rest of her life in a small town. But she acted like it. Moreover, I knew that she liked me.
However, she always changed the subject whenever I spoke of marriage.
Yes, she was willing to think of a more serious relationship, she would say, but not now.
Had I met her back home in the States, I might have suspected that there was another man involved, but in truth, I seemed to be the only male non-relative involved in her life. Which puzzled me eventually. Could it be that for all her talk of marriage and children, Blanca did not really want to get married. And if so, why not?
A number of unflattering hypotheses came into my mind, but I rejected every one of them, one by one. Blanca showed no signs of romantic interest in her own sex. Nor did she seem destined for the convent. Her mother talked long and admiringly about my computer job in the States, so there were no objections on that front. As for her father, he had passed away about three years ago. Even the novios of her younger sisters seemed to like me. So what was the problem?
I made up my mind to ask Blanca about this one night when we were walking home from a party.
Her brother had come with us as a chaperone, but like most males, he was smart enough to walk a yard or two ahead of us -- enough room to give us privacy without compromising his sister’s virtue too much.
So as we passed through the deserted streets of downtown San Narciso, I gathered the courage to ask Blanca the fatal question: Why?
She glanced at me.
Then she glanced into the windows of a jewelry store.
“What lovely rings they have,” she said in Spanish.
I glanced at her.
“Please don’t change the subject,” I said in the same language.
She glanced at me, then at her brother, still a yard or two ahead of us. “We must not talk about it.”
“We must.”
“No, we must not.” She paused to glance at me, then she continued. “I -- I like you very much, Anton, but I cannot be engaged to you.”
“But why?” The words sounded much more anguished in Spanish.
“I -- I just cannot.”
She glanced into another store window.
“Did anyone in my family ever tell you about my first boyfriend?”
“I didn’t even know you had a first boyfriend. Aside from me, of course.”
She smiled. “This was long ago. When Papa was still alive. Papa never really liked him. In fact, he nearly threw him out of the house one time. He was a real bad sort.” She did not say to whom she was referring.
“So?”
“My boyfriend wanted me to elope with him. He had friends in Guadalajara, and if that did not work, we could always stay with his relatives in Morelia or San Luis Potosí. But I did not do that, of course.”
“Why not?”
She glanced into another store window. “I did not want to leave my family. I was the oldest, of course. And the oldest always has certain responsibilities. So he left without me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. A few months later, he tried the same thing with a girl in a nearby town. Her mother was one of those jealous sorts and had chased away one would-be novio with a gun. I hate to tell you what she did to my boyfriend.”
She smiled and then continued. “As for me, I really did not have much to say about the matter. I got very sick that year and spent much of that fall in bed. At one point, my parents even called in a priest and had him give me the last rites.”
She turned toward me with a smile and pointed to a small circular scar on her forearm.
“But I am much better now.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Don’t be. I nearly died.”
“I’m sorry. I once nearly died too.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “You have told me about the heart operation you had when you were a child. This was different. I really did almost die. Only my father saved me at the last minute.”
“He did? How?”
“With a silver coin. He heated it in an open fire and then placed it on my arm. If he had not done that, they would have buried me.”
“My God!”
“All these years, I’ve always wanted to pay him back for saving my life. But I never got the chance. And he never really forgave me for it either.”
“He never forgave you? But why? It was not your fault. You just said you were sick.”
“No, I did not.”
“But you just said -- ”
“I said I got sick. From taking too many sleeping pills from my parents’ pharmacy. Now do you understand?”
I glanced at her. Surely in this day and age, she could not be that Catholic. And yet something in the way she held her head seemed to warn me. Between her black hair and her light brown skin, she seemed to almost merge into the darkness behind her.
I suddenly realized that her brother was no longer in sight of us. I looked around for him.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “He’s gone home.”
“But why?”
“We have been courting long enough for him to trust us. And he knows that you are a most respectable man.”
“Then why did he accompany us tonight?”
“Because I asked him to. In case I was tempted.”
She walked on a bit. “I can’t ever come back to Dallas with you. And you could never be happy in San Narciso. So it would be best for you to forget me. Go home and find yourself some nice American girl. I am not worth it.”
“But you are,“ I said. “You are very beautiful.”
She laughed. “It takes more than beauty to make a marriage.”
“I know. That is why I want to marry you. Because I do not want just another mindless beauty. I want someone I could spend my entire life with. I want you.”
She looked at me again. “I do believe you are serious.”
“I am.”
She smiled.
“Blanca,” she said, as if quoting. “The woman with a name like snow.”
She smiled again. “My boyfriend made that up.”
“I see.”
“No, you do not. You do not know me that well, Anton. If you did, you would not dream of me. Must I deny you three times before the cock crows? Very well. I’ll show you why you must go back to Dallas and forget me. I will show you right here... right now.”
From out of her purse she took two knitting needles. She held them up before her so that their sharp tips gleamed in the moonlight, then plunged them into her left hand. She never so much as flinched.
“Do you understand now?”
“No. I do not.”
She drew out the needles. There was blood on their tips. Already her hand was bleeding.
I reached over to cover it with a handkerchief.
She pushed me back.
“You are a fool, Anton. A well-meaning fool, but a fool nonetheless. I can never love you. You know that as much as I do.” And with that, she wiped off the needles with a piece of old cloth she had and placed them all back in her purse. Then she drew out a multicolored handkerchief. She covered her hand with it and then disappeared into the darkness.
“You are a fool, Anton,” she kept saying as she disappeared. “You are a fool.”
*************************************************************************************************************
I wish I could say that I went back to the States right after that and forgot her. But as I have pointed out, she is with me now even as I speak.
While I could not influence her, I could influence her mother, and Blanca, as always, was the type of good Catholic girl who always obeyed her mother.
So she sits in the corner of our bedroom, knitting like she always knits, the sun illuminating the side of her face to the point that she almost looks Anglo.
I kiss her every now and then and murmur, “Te adoro.” But she never murmurs “te adoro” back. She is determined to stay with me and be a good girl, but she will not pretend she enjoys it.
If that were the worst element of our life together, I would not object. For aside from her knitting, Blanca has made remarkably great progress in her adjustment to Dallas. Too great.
Every now and then, I see her wear a short-sleeved dress and witness the nail marks on her arms. I think of how few cats I have seen in the neighborhood and of how many pet-owning families have moved out of the neighborhood in the last year or so.
She keeps swearing that she will change, but I swear that her resolutions, alas, are all too much like her sweaters -- easily begun but never quite capable of holding her interest.
This worries me.
For lately, you see, she has begun to talk about children.
She has begun to talk about children a lot.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“The Mourning After”
He hadn’t wanted to attend the funeral, and already he regretted the fact that he had.
His bedroom smelled like something had died there, and his skull was afire with the granddaddy of all hangovers. Evidently he had gotten drunk last night. But what happened afterward was still blank.
He remembered seeing John there at the church and blaming him silently for the miscarriage which had taken Maggie’s life. After all, it should have been him that Maggie married, not John, and if John had not gotten her pregnant, she would have eventually changed her mind.
Instead she had been stolen by the ultimate suitor, and all his years of waiting were wasted. There was no divorce from the Grim Reaper. Not even a trial separation. And it was all John’s fault.
He knew he shouldn’t think that way. After all, thoughts could be as real as bullets. His father had told him that. But then his father had also believed in the mal de ojo, the Mexican evil eye. If that was real, John would have been dead by now.
The smell grew stronger in his bedroom. Then he turned and noticed a shape beneath the sheets on the other side of the bed. Evidently, he had gotten lucky last night. How ironic.
He had started to reach for his companion when his fingers brushed against a cold, dirt-covered hand bearing a familiar ring.
It was then that he remembered what he had done last night.
He closed his eyes and screamed. He did not wish to remember any more. It was just an illusion; Maggie wasn’t really there. When he opened his eyes, she would be gone.
But when he squeezed her cold hand involuntarily, she was still there. And that was not the worst part.
The worst part came when she squeezed back.
“The Mourning After”
He hadn’t wanted to attend the funeral, and already he regretted the fact that he had.
His bedroom smelled like something had died there, and his skull was afire with the granddaddy of all hangovers. Evidently he had gotten drunk last night. But what happened afterward was still blank.
He remembered seeing John there at the church and blaming him silently for the miscarriage which had taken Maggie’s life. After all, it should have been him that Maggie married, not John, and if John had not gotten her pregnant, she would have eventually changed her mind.
Instead she had been stolen by the ultimate suitor, and all his years of waiting were wasted. There was no divorce from the Grim Reaper. Not even a trial separation. And it was all John’s fault.
He knew he shouldn’t think that way. After all, thoughts could be as real as bullets. His father had told him that. But then his father had also believed in the mal de ojo, the Mexican evil eye. If that was real, John would have been dead by now.
The smell grew stronger in his bedroom. Then he turned and noticed a shape beneath the sheets on the other side of the bed. Evidently, he had gotten lucky last night. How ironic.
He had started to reach for his companion when his fingers brushed against a cold, dirt-covered hand bearing a familiar ring.
It was then that he remembered what he had done last night.
He closed his eyes and screamed. He did not wish to remember any more. It was just an illusion; Maggie wasn’t really there. When he opened his eyes, she would be gone.
But when he squeezed her cold hand involuntarily, she was still there. And that was not the worst part.
The worst part came when she squeezed back.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“A Specter Is Haunting Gotham”
(I have written only three stories thus far that can be considered fanfic--four if you count this one. This is one of those stories. Of course, it can also be considered alternative history -- in a way.)
It moves through the urban darkness, a figure in white, so swift, so silent that any observer would think it either a hallucination or an illusion. But it is neither. You see, a specter is haunting Gotham.
A sound of movement stirs below. The figure in white pauses, crouching like a skeleton in the darkness. Then it leaps out into the night... out... and down... into the alley where three toughs in black jackets are accosting a young girl.
“Hey, baby, what are you doing out this time of night?” one of them says.
“Please,“ she says. “Please leave me alone. I’ll give you money.”
The thugs smile “Money isn’t what we want...”
“And we have no intention of leaving you alone...”
They do not notice him at first.
They have their minds set upon more important things.
Then...
“Hey, Billy,” one of them cries out. “Over there.”
The young hoods turn. Fingers snap. Three switchblades appear as if by magic.
“I don’t know what you’re doing in this neighborhood, mister, but you’d best scram.”
Beneath its white hood, the figure smiles. But from their point-of-view, it does not appear to hear. The muggers close in, expecting an easy target.
Then the figure moves. And three of Gotham City’s toughest find out what it means to be on the receiving end of a beating for a change.
When it is over, the figure in white walks over to the young woman. She stares at him, looking as terrified of him as she was of her would-be assailants.
“Who are you?” she asks.
If the figure’s features were discernible beneath its hood, one would almost detect a smile. But no reply is made. And the figure vanishes upwards into the darkness, leaving behind three battered corpses which were once men.
At dawn, the figure in white reaches a large mansion on the edge of town. Entering through the usual underground entrance, he is greeted by his faithful butler, Arthur.
“Rough night on the town, sir?” he mutters in a stiff, impeccable British manner.
He does not really expect an answer.
“Passable, Arthur,” says the figure. “Passable.”
He leaves him to enter the changing room where he doffs his nocturnal costume and prepares for the day ahead. As he showers and bathes, removing unwelcome traces of the night’s exertions, he contemplates the past which led him to his present nighttime activity. About his parents, long-dead, slain by unknown parties and how a youthful vow of vengeance against the murderers had led to a lifetime obsession with ridding the world of criminals.
It had been a long time since that night when he had first donned the white costume and gone out in search of evil-doers. And every night he feels older -- as if the cold wind of old age and its subsequent partner, death, were blowing down his spine.
He shivers unconsciously and wishes for the umpteenth time that he could see himself in a shaving mirror...
“A Specter Is Haunting Gotham”
(I have written only three stories thus far that can be considered fanfic--four if you count this one. This is one of those stories. Of course, it can also be considered alternative history -- in a way.)
It moves through the urban darkness, a figure in white, so swift, so silent that any observer would think it either a hallucination or an illusion. But it is neither. You see, a specter is haunting Gotham.
A sound of movement stirs below. The figure in white pauses, crouching like a skeleton in the darkness. Then it leaps out into the night... out... and down... into the alley where three toughs in black jackets are accosting a young girl.
“Hey, baby, what are you doing out this time of night?” one of them says.
“Please,“ she says. “Please leave me alone. I’ll give you money.”
The thugs smile “Money isn’t what we want...”
“And we have no intention of leaving you alone...”
They do not notice him at first.
They have their minds set upon more important things.
Then...
“Hey, Billy,” one of them cries out. “Over there.”
The young hoods turn. Fingers snap. Three switchblades appear as if by magic.
“I don’t know what you’re doing in this neighborhood, mister, but you’d best scram.”
Beneath its white hood, the figure smiles. But from their point-of-view, it does not appear to hear. The muggers close in, expecting an easy target.
Then the figure moves. And three of Gotham City’s toughest find out what it means to be on the receiving end of a beating for a change.
When it is over, the figure in white walks over to the young woman. She stares at him, looking as terrified of him as she was of her would-be assailants.
“Who are you?” she asks.
If the figure’s features were discernible beneath its hood, one would almost detect a smile. But no reply is made. And the figure vanishes upwards into the darkness, leaving behind three battered corpses which were once men.
At dawn, the figure in white reaches a large mansion on the edge of town. Entering through the usual underground entrance, he is greeted by his faithful butler, Arthur.
“Rough night on the town, sir?” he mutters in a stiff, impeccable British manner.
He does not really expect an answer.
“Passable, Arthur,” says the figure. “Passable.”
He leaves him to enter the changing room where he doffs his nocturnal costume and prepares for the day ahead. As he showers and bathes, removing unwelcome traces of the night’s exertions, he contemplates the past which led him to his present nighttime activity. About his parents, long-dead, slain by unknown parties and how a youthful vow of vengeance against the murderers had led to a lifetime obsession with ridding the world of criminals.
It had been a long time since that night when he had first donned the white costume and gone out in search of evil-doers. And every night he feels older -- as if the cold wind of old age and its subsequent partner, death, were blowing down his spine.
He shivers unconsciously and wishes for the umpteenth time that he could see himself in a shaving mirror...
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“Skeleton Girl”
(Callie was one of the first female characters I invented. One of the dreams she had in this story was based on a dream I once had.)
Callie took her clothes off. Stood in front of the mirror. Her ribs looked like a xylophone. Her face like a skull. Her skin was white, too white, but there was a fever in her brain that seemed to compensate for it. Her arms looked like sticks, and she could see parts of her collarbone that she had never seen before.
But it was not enough.
She was still too fat.
*************************************************************************************************************
She got up the next morning. Ate an egg for breakfast. Only one egg, but she did it because only dumb girls starved themselves and she was not dumb. She took a quick shower. Afterward, she shivered as she put her clothes on and she never used to shiver. But she shrugged it off.
On the way to school, some radio preacher started talking about creationism and about how if evolution was in fact a reality we’d be seeing mutations all about us. She laughed and changed the station.
The radio started playing an old Robert Palmer song, and she sang along with it. Then it played a song about somebody’s imaginary lover, and then she suddenly stopped singing. Instead she changed the station.
She arrived at school, and her stomach started rumbling. She promised herself she wouldn’t break down and go to the school cafeteria. She didn’t.
Halfway through algebra class, her stomach started rumbling again. It was only ten o’clock, and lunch seemed so far away. She silently cursed the teacher for not letting her out early. Then she cursed the clock for not ticking faster. It was probably a few minutes slow, she told herself. She congratulated herself on her keen insight.
She was so hungry when lunchtime rolled around that she was tempted to buy out the whole cafeteria. But she didn’t. She brought an apple so she ate an apple. After all, if it was good enough for Eve...
She took her time eating the apple, but it still wasn’t enough. Her stomach craved something more. Down boy, she said. You’re just going to have to train yourself to do without.
School was over. Time for work. She punched in at three-thirty, and smiled at Billy. Billy didn’t smile back. Billy was talking to Karen again, and she didn’t like Karen.
She took her stand behind the cash register, and pretended to be interested in her job. She reminded herself that this job was one reason she was going to college in the first place. End up like the fifty-year-old employees you met at the store meeting a few months back? That would be a living hell. Even Billy seemed to sense it. And she was sure he would have told her so if only she had ever got up the nerve to speak to him.
But she didn’t get up the nerve. And she never will -- as long as she looked as she did. Once she lost more weight, things would be easier. Billy would be talking to her instead of Karen, and boys would be turning their heads in her direction when she walked through the mall, and girls would be envying her left and right.
But she wasn’t quite thin enough yet. Just a few more weeks...
*************************************************************************************************************
The weeks flew by. The pounds came off more slowly than they did a month ago. Perhaps it was the food she had been eating, she thought. Perhaps if she switched to a liquid diet...
She started having nightmares in which she raided the refrigerator and ended up going on a non-stop eating spree. The next morning, she woke up in a panic until she realized that it was all just a dream. She smiled with relief as she stepped on the scale and confirmed that she hadn’t gained weight. But then she hadn’t lost weight, either. This fact depressed her.
At the store, a customer asked her if she was sick, and she took it as a compliment.
She almost blacked out when she was putting up light bulbs, and she considered that a compliment as well.
Soon they would be envying her at the mall. Heads would turn as she walked by, and every guy there would be asking her for her phone number. Billy would be staring at her -- yes, her, not Karen or those other girls he used to go with before he met Karen -- and he would ask her out, and he would take her to a fine restaurant with white tablecloths and silver candlesticks, and then he would propose, and she would say yes, and then --
But then she woke up.
The dreams she had at night started to change in nature. She started dreaming about scarecrows and skeletons. She pictured a parade of ghouls in black, ragged clothing fetching something white from a river and feasting upon it. Then they tumbled the leftovers into the city reservoir. She did not know what this dream meant.
Her father confronted her one day at the breakfast table. He asked her to start eating more. You’re losing too much weight, he said. To lose so much weight so fast was bad for the heart.
She smiled and reassured him that she would eat more. Then she sneered at him behind his back, and asked why he didn’t worry so much about her when she was overweight. Could it be that her ability to lose weight so easily actually threatened him? Who could imagine a spineless wimp like her having so much willpower? Soon the heads would turn to look at her in the mall, and she would feast with Billy upon white tablecloths, and she would be able to eat anything she wanted, and Billy would look at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen...
Then one night she showed up for work, and Billy was not there. He had apparently quit, along with Karen.
The next day, Karen showed up, bragging about her engagement ring. If that was not bad enough, Callie heard rumors that Karen had already bragged about being pregnant. But that could not be, she thought. Not her and Billy. It had to be a mistake. It just had to be.
She found herself tempted to eat when she got home. She held off. No way was she going back to the days when she solved every problem by putting something in her stomach. But someone had already put something in Karen’s stomach. And now there was no going back.
The next day, Billy showed up. Karen was not with him. Callie pretended not to notice him. But she managed to be outside when he finally left, and she met him in the parking lot. She wanted to ask him if it was true. But she did not. She just stared at the concrete, and offered Billy congratulations. Then she smiled when he suggested he might come by the store again.
She knew she was not ever going to see him again. But for some reason, she thought she had scored a victory.
She drove home and thought about pigging out. Instead, she got a bottle of her mother’s sleeping pills. She took them out, one by one, Then she lined them up on the bathroom counter, one by one. Then she took them, one by one.
Thought you weren’t going to solve your problems by putting things in your stomach, she asked herself.
Shut up, she answered.
She started dreaming about white tablecloths and silver candlesticks and black, ragged clothing and heads turning at the mall and being able to eat anything she wanted...
When she woke up, the last thing she wanted to do was look at a mirror. She felt quite sure that she looked quite horrible. After all, she had come to hate that increasingly pale image she had seen in the glass for the last three months. But, in the end, she did not have to worry about it. She walked over to the bathroom to wash her face, and, lo and behold, she did not have a reflection in the mirror. Great. She was tired of looking at herself in the mirror anyway.
More importantly, she did not even feel hungry. The food in the family refrigerator no longer tempted her. Not even her mother's lasagna -- which used to be her favorite dish -- tempted her. In fact, her stomach turned just at the thought of eating such stuff. And yet she felt so thirsty.
A thought occurred to her. Something about a thing which was thin, and pale, and hated mirrors, and never ate ordinary food. But the thought did not stay with her for long.
She was already thinking about that thirst of hers. And what she could possibly find to satisfy it...
“Skeleton Girl”
(Callie was one of the first female characters I invented. One of the dreams she had in this story was based on a dream I once had.)
Callie took her clothes off. Stood in front of the mirror. Her ribs looked like a xylophone. Her face like a skull. Her skin was white, too white, but there was a fever in her brain that seemed to compensate for it. Her arms looked like sticks, and she could see parts of her collarbone that she had never seen before.
But it was not enough.
She was still too fat.
*************************************************************************************************************
She got up the next morning. Ate an egg for breakfast. Only one egg, but she did it because only dumb girls starved themselves and she was not dumb. She took a quick shower. Afterward, she shivered as she put her clothes on and she never used to shiver. But she shrugged it off.
On the way to school, some radio preacher started talking about creationism and about how if evolution was in fact a reality we’d be seeing mutations all about us. She laughed and changed the station.
The radio started playing an old Robert Palmer song, and she sang along with it. Then it played a song about somebody’s imaginary lover, and then she suddenly stopped singing. Instead she changed the station.
She arrived at school, and her stomach started rumbling. She promised herself she wouldn’t break down and go to the school cafeteria. She didn’t.
Halfway through algebra class, her stomach started rumbling again. It was only ten o’clock, and lunch seemed so far away. She silently cursed the teacher for not letting her out early. Then she cursed the clock for not ticking faster. It was probably a few minutes slow, she told herself. She congratulated herself on her keen insight.
She was so hungry when lunchtime rolled around that she was tempted to buy out the whole cafeteria. But she didn’t. She brought an apple so she ate an apple. After all, if it was good enough for Eve...
She took her time eating the apple, but it still wasn’t enough. Her stomach craved something more. Down boy, she said. You’re just going to have to train yourself to do without.
School was over. Time for work. She punched in at three-thirty, and smiled at Billy. Billy didn’t smile back. Billy was talking to Karen again, and she didn’t like Karen.
She took her stand behind the cash register, and pretended to be interested in her job. She reminded herself that this job was one reason she was going to college in the first place. End up like the fifty-year-old employees you met at the store meeting a few months back? That would be a living hell. Even Billy seemed to sense it. And she was sure he would have told her so if only she had ever got up the nerve to speak to him.
But she didn’t get up the nerve. And she never will -- as long as she looked as she did. Once she lost more weight, things would be easier. Billy would be talking to her instead of Karen, and boys would be turning their heads in her direction when she walked through the mall, and girls would be envying her left and right.
But she wasn’t quite thin enough yet. Just a few more weeks...
*************************************************************************************************************
The weeks flew by. The pounds came off more slowly than they did a month ago. Perhaps it was the food she had been eating, she thought. Perhaps if she switched to a liquid diet...
She started having nightmares in which she raided the refrigerator and ended up going on a non-stop eating spree. The next morning, she woke up in a panic until she realized that it was all just a dream. She smiled with relief as she stepped on the scale and confirmed that she hadn’t gained weight. But then she hadn’t lost weight, either. This fact depressed her.
At the store, a customer asked her if she was sick, and she took it as a compliment.
She almost blacked out when she was putting up light bulbs, and she considered that a compliment as well.
Soon they would be envying her at the mall. Heads would turn as she walked by, and every guy there would be asking her for her phone number. Billy would be staring at her -- yes, her, not Karen or those other girls he used to go with before he met Karen -- and he would ask her out, and he would take her to a fine restaurant with white tablecloths and silver candlesticks, and then he would propose, and she would say yes, and then --
But then she woke up.
The dreams she had at night started to change in nature. She started dreaming about scarecrows and skeletons. She pictured a parade of ghouls in black, ragged clothing fetching something white from a river and feasting upon it. Then they tumbled the leftovers into the city reservoir. She did not know what this dream meant.
Her father confronted her one day at the breakfast table. He asked her to start eating more. You’re losing too much weight, he said. To lose so much weight so fast was bad for the heart.
She smiled and reassured him that she would eat more. Then she sneered at him behind his back, and asked why he didn’t worry so much about her when she was overweight. Could it be that her ability to lose weight so easily actually threatened him? Who could imagine a spineless wimp like her having so much willpower? Soon the heads would turn to look at her in the mall, and she would feast with Billy upon white tablecloths, and she would be able to eat anything she wanted, and Billy would look at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen, at her, not Karen...
Then one night she showed up for work, and Billy was not there. He had apparently quit, along with Karen.
The next day, Karen showed up, bragging about her engagement ring. If that was not bad enough, Callie heard rumors that Karen had already bragged about being pregnant. But that could not be, she thought. Not her and Billy. It had to be a mistake. It just had to be.
She found herself tempted to eat when she got home. She held off. No way was she going back to the days when she solved every problem by putting something in her stomach. But someone had already put something in Karen’s stomach. And now there was no going back.
The next day, Billy showed up. Karen was not with him. Callie pretended not to notice him. But she managed to be outside when he finally left, and she met him in the parking lot. She wanted to ask him if it was true. But she did not. She just stared at the concrete, and offered Billy congratulations. Then she smiled when he suggested he might come by the store again.
She knew she was not ever going to see him again. But for some reason, she thought she had scored a victory.
She drove home and thought about pigging out. Instead, she got a bottle of her mother’s sleeping pills. She took them out, one by one, Then she lined them up on the bathroom counter, one by one. Then she took them, one by one.
Thought you weren’t going to solve your problems by putting things in your stomach, she asked herself.
Shut up, she answered.
She started dreaming about white tablecloths and silver candlesticks and black, ragged clothing and heads turning at the mall and being able to eat anything she wanted...
When she woke up, the last thing she wanted to do was look at a mirror. She felt quite sure that she looked quite horrible. After all, she had come to hate that increasingly pale image she had seen in the glass for the last three months. But, in the end, she did not have to worry about it. She walked over to the bathroom to wash her face, and, lo and behold, she did not have a reflection in the mirror. Great. She was tired of looking at herself in the mirror anyway.
More importantly, she did not even feel hungry. The food in the family refrigerator no longer tempted her. Not even her mother's lasagna -- which used to be her favorite dish -- tempted her. In fact, her stomach turned just at the thought of eating such stuff. And yet she felt so thirsty.
A thought occurred to her. Something about a thing which was thin, and pale, and hated mirrors, and never ate ordinary food. But the thought did not stay with her for long.
She was already thinking about that thirst of hers. And what she could possibly find to satisfy it...
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Cuento de Mi Id
“A Scream Within a Scream”
(It would be nice to pretend this tale was inspired by a recent Doctor Who episode but actually I wrote it back in 1991. I will admit that a certain Ray Bradbury short story inspired one part, but aside from that, I'm not saying...)
“Hey, Monica,” said Tad. “It looks just like you.”
Monica snapped out of her brief daze in time to respond to her husband. “It does not!”
“It does too," he said, pointing to the mummy. “Note the highly pronounced jaw structure. The full arch of the Castilian nose. The all-too-wide-and-yet-still-stylish hips -- ”
“That’s enough, wise guy,” she said. “I don’t go making fun of your ancestors.”
“That’s because I have no ancestors to make fun of,” he said. “I’m an orphan.”
“Gimme a break,” said Monica. She laughed. “This is supposed to be our honeymoon, remember? Not Anthropology 101.”
“I thought you wanted to see the Tombs of Guanajuato,” said Tad. “That’s why we came down here.”
“We came down here because staying at my Aunt Eva’s house was cheaper than Niagara Falls. Anyway, Guanajuato is a more romantic place any day of the week.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Tad. “Niagara Falls still has a little spice to it. And where can you find a decent waterfall in this place?”
“Gimme a break, you goofball,” Monica said.
She laughed again as the two of them left the tombs and re-entered the sunshine. Then she frowned.
“That mummy back there didn’t really look like me, did it?” she asked.
“Who ever said it was an 'it'?” said Tad. He did a quick John Hurt imitation. “I am not an animal. I…am a human being!”
“You’re something, all right,” Monica said. Tad laughed as she punched his shoulder.
“How about making for the Street of the Kiss?” she asked.
“I’ve got a better idea. How close is the nearest motel?”
*************************************************************************************************************
Monica lay back upon the bed and stared at the white ceiling. Moonlight flooded in through the tall, thin Spanish windows and she could see the pattern of their iron bars reflected upon the opposite wall.
This was much better than Niagara Falls would have been, she decided. Even if it did mean spending her honeymoon at her aunt’s house. And Tad had proved to be a more loving husband than she had ever thought he’d be.
Oh, he had been amusing enough when they were still single. But there had always been that nagging question about what their parents would think about a Mexican like her dating an Anglo like him and vice versa. Things like that were not supposed to matter anymore. But they did. And then there was that weight problem she had struggled with all through high school. God knows that did not exactly build up her self-confidence even after she got over it.
Yet, in the end, things had clicked for her and Tad. Tad Arian didn’t have to choose her -- yet he did. God knows he could have found a more attractive wife among all the women he had dated, but then maybe he had not been looking for a pretty spouse. Or maybe Monica had been just attractive enough to suit his needs.
It did not really matter, did it? Monica had won and the others had lost. Now she and Tad were here in Guanajuato, enjoying the afterglow of a beautiful session of lovemaking. Which had been another thing Monica had worried about. But why bother?
Monica had always had a bad habit of worrying too much about the wrong things. Half the disasters she had predicted never occurred. So why be so uptight?
She sighed and turned toward her sleeping husband. Funny how he always fell asleep so quickly. Must be a male trait.
She gently burrowed her way into his arms, taking care not to wake him. His bristly chest hairs felt deliciously rough against her own smooth skin. Playfully she explored them with her fingers. His skin felt so warm and smooth beneath her fingertips. Then she encountered a small, circular depression in his skin. A chest scar. A childhood reminder of chicken pox, no doubt.
Or else an early symptom of AIDS.
She froze. She felt her own face grow pale. She drew back from her husband, all the while trying to remember how many times they had made love. Many times. After all, it was the third night of their honeymoon. And they had used no protection.
Monica touched her own chest and screamed --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- only to find herself once more staring at a white ceiling.
She was in bed again in Aunt Eva‘s guest bedroom. The moon still shone in through the tall, thin Spanish windows, and she could still see the pattern of their iron bars reflected upon the opposite wall.
It had only been a dream, she realized. Yet it had seemed so real.
The oldest cliché in the world, she thought as she reached for Tad. And encountered in his place a noseless Guanajuatan mummy...
*************************************************************************************************************
She awoke with a start. The sun was shining. She and Tad were standing outside the entrance to the tombs.
“What’s the matter?” said Tad. “For a moment there, you looked kind of distant.”
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I guess I was just daydreaming.”
“About yours truly, I suppose.”
“No, actually -- er, yes, you’re right.” She clutched his arm. “Let’s go back to the house.”
“But we just got here.”
“I know,” she said, nuzzling him in the chest. “That’s why I want to go back.”
“Women,” he said.
They started to walk back.
A thought occurred to Monica. “That mummy back there. It didn’t really look like me, did it?”
She waited for his inevitable comeback, but he merely shrugged and said,” You saw it yourself.”
“I know. And it didn’t look a thing like me.”
“Then why all the curiosity?”
“I don’t know,” said Monica. “I just have this strange feeling.”
“Comes from reading too many Ray Bradbury stories.”
“No, seriously,” she said, picking at his chest hairs. To her relief, his skin was unscarred. “I’ve been having the strangest daydreams.”
“You have?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She looked him in the face. “I have.”
“Well, too bad you can’t go back there and check that mummy again. You’d have to pay all over again just to look at it again.”
“Yes, I know. But still -- you have no nose.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have no nose,” she said.
It was true. He did have no nose.
“I didn’t notice it until now but you have no nose,” she said.
“Well, you know what they say about the size of a man‘s nose, hey, querida?” he said with a leer.
He reached for her.
Monica screamed...
*************************************************************************************************************
“Never seen you that excited before,” a voice in the darkness said.
She blinked. She was naked now. So was Tad, the man above her. They were both in Aunt Eva‘s guest bedroom again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “ I must have blacked out.”
“Never had that effect on women before,” he said. “Must have been my new technique.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It won’t happen again. It’s just that everything today has been like a dream.”
“It has, hasn’t it?”
She ignored the question. “And this is real,” she said. It was more a question than a statement.
“Indubitably,” he said, caressing her breasts. “By the way, you have the cutest little scar on your right breast.”
“Oh, no,” she said. Her hand flew up to check her breasts. It was true. There was a scar on her right breast. Just like the one she had seen on Tad in one of her dreams. But how --
“Had any chicken pox lately?” Tad asked.
Monica pushed him away --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- and found herself facing an open grave. They were burying someone here; she didn‘t know who. The sun had been obscured by clouds, and there was a young man in a black suit standing by her side. It wasn‘t Tad. He was way too young to be Tad. Yet he held her hand as if he knew her.
She turned to look into his face and saw that he had no nose.
Then she screamed --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- in ecstasy as her left hand found once more the secret spot that only she knew about. She did not want to do this. After all, she was a good Catholic girl. But it was dark and she was lonely and she was all alone in the room she shared with her sister Magda. Besides, Tad was out with another girl and it was either do this or eat like a pig. She did not want to eat like a pig. She had done so all throughout high school in order to escape her problems, and it had only made her problems worse. But she could not help it. It was one of the few things besides masturbation which relieved her loneliness and made it bearable. One of the few things that made up for all the times boys like Tad Arian had walked right by her without saying a word, only to fall all over a cheerleader or somebody else right down the hall.
But it was no good. The pleasure was fading. The fear was returning. She still wanted to eat -- not just little portions but whole banquets. Her hand withdrew from her underpants and she stared up at the ceiling --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- which was now gray sky. It was a gloomy day and she was looking out the window of her little private room, waiting for company. But no one -- not even her little grandniece Letitia -- had come to visit her today. No one ever saw her here at the nursing home, it seemed, save the head nurse and the nurse’s aides, and she wished quite dearly that it did not have to be that way.
If only she had married someone like her sister Magda and her brother Narciso did. Someone like that cute Tad Arian she had known back in college and high school. Then she would not have to die alone like this.
But Tad had had to drop out of college and marry that other girl he had been seeing. Monica never did find another man as kind and gentle as Tad, and now Tad was dead and she was alone and not even her own family came to visit her.
But wait.
Someone was entering her room now.
A tall man.
With no nose...
*************************************************************************************************************
She nearly fainted into Tad’s arms in the bright sunshine outside the entrance in the tombs.
“What’s the matter, honey?” he said. This time he had a nose.
Monica did not want to answer. By now, she was wise to the tricks reality was playing upon her. The only question was: “Why?” What had she done to deserve all this?
“I’m sorry, Tad,” she said -- and she sounded just like an actress in a play, she realized. “I guess I must have just fainted.”
“That’s all right,” said Tad -- and this time she watched his nose to make sure it did not disappear again. But it was staying put this time. She smiled. Back to reality, she thought.
She leaned forward and kissed him --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- and then someone slapped her face --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- then she kissed him again --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- then someone slapped her face again.
*************************************************************************************************************
She kissed him again.
And he murmured sweet nothings in her ear.
“That mummy back there didn’t really look like me, did it?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
*************************************************************************************************************
The slap came again. This time Monica opened her eyes. Her own mother was slapping her on the face. But why?
Her father was on the phone in the other room, an empty pill bottle in his hand. He appeared to be talking frantically to someone, but she really could not tell because she was so woozy and her brother Narciso kept holding her up and dragging her around the room.
“C’mon, sis,” he kept saying. “You can make it.”
Make what? She was so tired that she just wanted to sit down and rest, but every time she did so, Narciso pulled her to her feet again and started dragging her around the room. And every time she started to close her eyes, her mother would slap her on the face again.
Then she glanced again at her father and recognized the bottle he was holding. It looked just like the one that contained her sleeping pills. The same sleeping pills she had taken when she realized that Tad Arian was going to marry another girl. A girl he had already gotten pregnant. Her best friend, in fact.
“Tell them to hurry, Papa,” said Narciso. “She’s starting to slip back.”
That’s why they were doing all this. They were trying to revive her. But she did not want to be revived. Not if it meant spending the rest of her life without Tad. Not if it meant abandoning all the hopes and dreams she had had about their future life together. Not if --
Her mother slapped her again. But it did no good. She still felt woozy. Let me sleep, she wanted to tell them. Sleeping never hurt anyone...
*************************************************************************************************************
“Hey, Monica,“ said Tad. “It looks just like you.”
*************************************************************************************************************
Her mother slapped her face again.
“A Scream Within a Scream”
(It would be nice to pretend this tale was inspired by a recent Doctor Who episode but actually I wrote it back in 1991. I will admit that a certain Ray Bradbury short story inspired one part, but aside from that, I'm not saying...)
“Hey, Monica,” said Tad. “It looks just like you.”
Monica snapped out of her brief daze in time to respond to her husband. “It does not!”
“It does too," he said, pointing to the mummy. “Note the highly pronounced jaw structure. The full arch of the Castilian nose. The all-too-wide-and-yet-still-stylish hips -- ”
“That’s enough, wise guy,” she said. “I don’t go making fun of your ancestors.”
“That’s because I have no ancestors to make fun of,” he said. “I’m an orphan.”
“Gimme a break,” said Monica. She laughed. “This is supposed to be our honeymoon, remember? Not Anthropology 101.”
“I thought you wanted to see the Tombs of Guanajuato,” said Tad. “That’s why we came down here.”
“We came down here because staying at my Aunt Eva’s house was cheaper than Niagara Falls. Anyway, Guanajuato is a more romantic place any day of the week.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Tad. “Niagara Falls still has a little spice to it. And where can you find a decent waterfall in this place?”
“Gimme a break, you goofball,” Monica said.
She laughed again as the two of them left the tombs and re-entered the sunshine. Then she frowned.
“That mummy back there didn’t really look like me, did it?” she asked.
“Who ever said it was an 'it'?” said Tad. He did a quick John Hurt imitation. “I am not an animal. I…am a human being!”
“You’re something, all right,” Monica said. Tad laughed as she punched his shoulder.
“How about making for the Street of the Kiss?” she asked.
“I’ve got a better idea. How close is the nearest motel?”
*************************************************************************************************************
Monica lay back upon the bed and stared at the white ceiling. Moonlight flooded in through the tall, thin Spanish windows and she could see the pattern of their iron bars reflected upon the opposite wall.
This was much better than Niagara Falls would have been, she decided. Even if it did mean spending her honeymoon at her aunt’s house. And Tad had proved to be a more loving husband than she had ever thought he’d be.
Oh, he had been amusing enough when they were still single. But there had always been that nagging question about what their parents would think about a Mexican like her dating an Anglo like him and vice versa. Things like that were not supposed to matter anymore. But they did. And then there was that weight problem she had struggled with all through high school. God knows that did not exactly build up her self-confidence even after she got over it.
Yet, in the end, things had clicked for her and Tad. Tad Arian didn’t have to choose her -- yet he did. God knows he could have found a more attractive wife among all the women he had dated, but then maybe he had not been looking for a pretty spouse. Or maybe Monica had been just attractive enough to suit his needs.
It did not really matter, did it? Monica had won and the others had lost. Now she and Tad were here in Guanajuato, enjoying the afterglow of a beautiful session of lovemaking. Which had been another thing Monica had worried about. But why bother?
Monica had always had a bad habit of worrying too much about the wrong things. Half the disasters she had predicted never occurred. So why be so uptight?
She sighed and turned toward her sleeping husband. Funny how he always fell asleep so quickly. Must be a male trait.
She gently burrowed her way into his arms, taking care not to wake him. His bristly chest hairs felt deliciously rough against her own smooth skin. Playfully she explored them with her fingers. His skin felt so warm and smooth beneath her fingertips. Then she encountered a small, circular depression in his skin. A chest scar. A childhood reminder of chicken pox, no doubt.
Or else an early symptom of AIDS.
She froze. She felt her own face grow pale. She drew back from her husband, all the while trying to remember how many times they had made love. Many times. After all, it was the third night of their honeymoon. And they had used no protection.
Monica touched her own chest and screamed --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- only to find herself once more staring at a white ceiling.
She was in bed again in Aunt Eva‘s guest bedroom. The moon still shone in through the tall, thin Spanish windows, and she could still see the pattern of their iron bars reflected upon the opposite wall.
It had only been a dream, she realized. Yet it had seemed so real.
The oldest cliché in the world, she thought as she reached for Tad. And encountered in his place a noseless Guanajuatan mummy...
*************************************************************************************************************
She awoke with a start. The sun was shining. She and Tad were standing outside the entrance to the tombs.
“What’s the matter?” said Tad. “For a moment there, you looked kind of distant.”
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I guess I was just daydreaming.”
“About yours truly, I suppose.”
“No, actually -- er, yes, you’re right.” She clutched his arm. “Let’s go back to the house.”
“But we just got here.”
“I know,” she said, nuzzling him in the chest. “That’s why I want to go back.”
“Women,” he said.
They started to walk back.
A thought occurred to Monica. “That mummy back there. It didn’t really look like me, did it?”
She waited for his inevitable comeback, but he merely shrugged and said,” You saw it yourself.”
“I know. And it didn’t look a thing like me.”
“Then why all the curiosity?”
“I don’t know,” said Monica. “I just have this strange feeling.”
“Comes from reading too many Ray Bradbury stories.”
“No, seriously,” she said, picking at his chest hairs. To her relief, his skin was unscarred. “I’ve been having the strangest daydreams.”
“You have?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She looked him in the face. “I have.”
“Well, too bad you can’t go back there and check that mummy again. You’d have to pay all over again just to look at it again.”
“Yes, I know. But still -- you have no nose.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have no nose,” she said.
It was true. He did have no nose.
“I didn’t notice it until now but you have no nose,” she said.
“Well, you know what they say about the size of a man‘s nose, hey, querida?” he said with a leer.
He reached for her.
Monica screamed...
*************************************************************************************************************
“Never seen you that excited before,” a voice in the darkness said.
She blinked. She was naked now. So was Tad, the man above her. They were both in Aunt Eva‘s guest bedroom again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “ I must have blacked out.”
“Never had that effect on women before,” he said. “Must have been my new technique.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It won’t happen again. It’s just that everything today has been like a dream.”
“It has, hasn’t it?”
She ignored the question. “And this is real,” she said. It was more a question than a statement.
“Indubitably,” he said, caressing her breasts. “By the way, you have the cutest little scar on your right breast.”
“Oh, no,” she said. Her hand flew up to check her breasts. It was true. There was a scar on her right breast. Just like the one she had seen on Tad in one of her dreams. But how --
“Had any chicken pox lately?” Tad asked.
Monica pushed him away --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- and found herself facing an open grave. They were burying someone here; she didn‘t know who. The sun had been obscured by clouds, and there was a young man in a black suit standing by her side. It wasn‘t Tad. He was way too young to be Tad. Yet he held her hand as if he knew her.
She turned to look into his face and saw that he had no nose.
Then she screamed --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- in ecstasy as her left hand found once more the secret spot that only she knew about. She did not want to do this. After all, she was a good Catholic girl. But it was dark and she was lonely and she was all alone in the room she shared with her sister Magda. Besides, Tad was out with another girl and it was either do this or eat like a pig. She did not want to eat like a pig. She had done so all throughout high school in order to escape her problems, and it had only made her problems worse. But she could not help it. It was one of the few things besides masturbation which relieved her loneliness and made it bearable. One of the few things that made up for all the times boys like Tad Arian had walked right by her without saying a word, only to fall all over a cheerleader or somebody else right down the hall.
But it was no good. The pleasure was fading. The fear was returning. She still wanted to eat -- not just little portions but whole banquets. Her hand withdrew from her underpants and she stared up at the ceiling --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- which was now gray sky. It was a gloomy day and she was looking out the window of her little private room, waiting for company. But no one -- not even her little grandniece Letitia -- had come to visit her today. No one ever saw her here at the nursing home, it seemed, save the head nurse and the nurse’s aides, and she wished quite dearly that it did not have to be that way.
If only she had married someone like her sister Magda and her brother Narciso did. Someone like that cute Tad Arian she had known back in college and high school. Then she would not have to die alone like this.
But Tad had had to drop out of college and marry that other girl he had been seeing. Monica never did find another man as kind and gentle as Tad, and now Tad was dead and she was alone and not even her own family came to visit her.
But wait.
Someone was entering her room now.
A tall man.
With no nose...
*************************************************************************************************************
She nearly fainted into Tad’s arms in the bright sunshine outside the entrance in the tombs.
“What’s the matter, honey?” he said. This time he had a nose.
Monica did not want to answer. By now, she was wise to the tricks reality was playing upon her. The only question was: “Why?” What had she done to deserve all this?
“I’m sorry, Tad,” she said -- and she sounded just like an actress in a play, she realized. “I guess I must have just fainted.”
“That’s all right,” said Tad -- and this time she watched his nose to make sure it did not disappear again. But it was staying put this time. She smiled. Back to reality, she thought.
She leaned forward and kissed him --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- and then someone slapped her face --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- then she kissed him again --
*************************************************************************************************************
-- then someone slapped her face again.
*************************************************************************************************************
She kissed him again.
And he murmured sweet nothings in her ear.
“That mummy back there didn’t really look like me, did it?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
*************************************************************************************************************
The slap came again. This time Monica opened her eyes. Her own mother was slapping her on the face. But why?
Her father was on the phone in the other room, an empty pill bottle in his hand. He appeared to be talking frantically to someone, but she really could not tell because she was so woozy and her brother Narciso kept holding her up and dragging her around the room.
“C’mon, sis,” he kept saying. “You can make it.”
Make what? She was so tired that she just wanted to sit down and rest, but every time she did so, Narciso pulled her to her feet again and started dragging her around the room. And every time she started to close her eyes, her mother would slap her on the face again.
Then she glanced again at her father and recognized the bottle he was holding. It looked just like the one that contained her sleeping pills. The same sleeping pills she had taken when she realized that Tad Arian was going to marry another girl. A girl he had already gotten pregnant. Her best friend, in fact.
“Tell them to hurry, Papa,” said Narciso. “She’s starting to slip back.”
That’s why they were doing all this. They were trying to revive her. But she did not want to be revived. Not if it meant spending the rest of her life without Tad. Not if it meant abandoning all the hopes and dreams she had had about their future life together. Not if --
Her mother slapped her again. But it did no good. She still felt woozy. Let me sleep, she wanted to tell them. Sleeping never hurt anyone...
*************************************************************************************************************
“Hey, Monica,“ said Tad. “It looks just like you.”
*************************************************************************************************************
Her mother slapped her face again.
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