Cuento de Mi Id

“Victor”

Victor cradled the dueling pistol he held under his cloak and prayed that his drunken informant’s information was correct. It had taken him four years to track his quarry down to this deserted Argentine back street -- years in which he had often been tempted to forcibly reunite himself with his long-lost Elizabeth by means of a single pistol shot. But such romantic gestures would not help avenge his beloved. Only bloodshed would suffice.

The creature responsible for her death should have died in the same fire Victor had set to destroy the mate the creature had forced Victor to make for him. Instead, the creature had escaped -- and so had his mate, if his informant was correct. Victor had heard talk in the cantina about a mysterious pale man who lived in town with a tall, black-haired European woman. That woman could only be the mate Victor had created for his creation -- and the mysterious pale man could only be the creature. Somehow they had survived the same fire which had claimed his beloved Elizabeth.

Victor had cursed the vagaries of fate when he first heard this. Yet he now rejoiced that the rumors he had heard in Europe had been correct. The creature was in South America. And no doubt preparing to sire that race of monsters that had rampaged through Victor’s nightmares prior to the lab fire.

Victor had paid his informant well for the address of the mysterious European. The address was a house in a bad area of town. Victor had no illusions about surviving his confrontation with the creature -- but if he could take the creature with him…

He knocked on the front door of the house mentioned by his informant. A woman answered. Victor had no time to take in more than a general impression -- black hair, smiling face, bulging belly -- when the creature appeared. He was bigger than Victor remembered. Fiercer too. Victor had just enough time to pull out his pistol and get off a single shot before the monster was upon him.

With a hamhock-sized hand, the creature forced Victor to drop his gun. With an iron-hard fist, he forced Victor to his knees. The creature was beginning to throttle him -- but it was too late. Victor’s bullet had already found its mark. The monster’s mate -- the long-lost Elizabeth -- was dead, her degradation at the creature’s hands finally avenged.

There would be no race of monsters born of his creation, Victor thought as darkness began to swim before his eyes. Then he heard an infant cry within the house. And everything grew black.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Ghost”

(Not to be confused with the Patrick Swayze movie of the same name, of course.)

There is a ghost in your attic. You know this because your older sister Lupe has told you so.

But your mother does not believe in ghosts and you‘re not sure you should, either.

But Lupe just smiles. “Go to the attic tonight,” she says, “and you’ll see a ghost, all right. I guarantee it.”

So you go.

You set your clock for midnight and wake up before anyone else in the house hears it. Then you put on your slippers and creep up the attic stairs.

Suppose there’s nothing up there, you think.

Then what?

In spite of yourself, you feel disappointed at the thought that there might not be a ghost up there.

You find yourself praying that you will find a ghost up there and yet you pray that you won’t.

As long as it doesn’t hurt me, you say to yourself, it doesn’t really matter either way. But in your heart of hearts, you know you lie.

You are almost at the attic door now.

Your hand is on the glass knob.

Still not too late to return to the safety of your bed, but you don’t.

Then you see it.

The ghost.

It lies suspended from a rope tied to a ceiling beam.

And then it turns around to greet you.

Too late you recognize its features.

Then you run downstairs and hide yourself in the safety of your bed.

The next day, of course, Lupe does not show up for breakfast.

Your mother mutters something about ungrateful children wasting food but you stay silent.

You still stay silent after your father goes upstairs to fetch something from the attic.

Once the screaming starts, you begin to wish that you really had seen a ghost.