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.