Cuento de Mi Id

“The Dark Angels”

He was an old man, far too old to be a hero. He wore bifocals and a hearing aid to supplement his failing senses; he used a cane to get around and wore a long coat on the sunniest of days. His diet consisted mainly of old cigars and assorted medicines, and a well-worn fedora hid his vanishing gray hair from the noonday sun. All in all, he was a pathetic specimen of aged manhood, shrunk to almost half his natural size and more wrinkled than a bagful of raisins. But, in the end, all that mattered not.

The day he eventually saved began like any normal day. Distressed by his daughter-in-law’s fruitless efforts to quiet his restless grandchildren, Juan Rodriguez had embarked on his daily pilgrimage to the local drugstore, in search of peace and quiet and, hopefully, a few fresh cigars. The trip there was uneventful -- the neighborhood kids did not stop and jeer at his awkward gait and the store clerks proved quite nice by gringo standards. It was on the way back that the trouble began.

He had just stopped to light a fresh cigar when he happened to look over his left shoulder and notice two dark figures following him. They were not dark in the same sense that Negroes were dark, but there was an aura about them made them appear to be dark. Juan had never experienced it before, and was at a loss to explain this phenomenon until he noticed that both figures cast no shadows Now he was really frightened.

Instinctively, he headed for home. The dark figures followed. When Juan noticed this, he began to panic. Suppose they followed him into the house?

As it turned out, he had more to worry about than just that. As he approached his house, he noticed a crowd gathered in the street in front of it. An ambulance was parked nearby, and judging from the excited murmur of the crowd, it was apparent that a serious accident had taken place.

Madre de Dios, he thought, I hope one of the kids is not hurt.

As he pushed his way through the crowd, he learned that the accident in question did indeed involve a child. She had been playing in the street when she was hit by a careless driver. When Juan got close enough to see the body, it was all too familiar.

Oh no, he cried. Not Josefina. She had been his favorite.

“The child needn’t die,” said a voice behind him.

Juan turned to see one of the dark figures smiling at him. Even up close, his face still looked shadowed, and no one else in the crowd seemed to notice him.

“What do you want?” asked Juan.

“Simply a sacrifice,” said the dark man.

“Why?”

“Really, Señor Rodriguez. Now is not the time to question why. After all, your granddaughter’s life is the most important thing here.”

Juan did not question how the dark man knew his name, and how he spoke such fluent Spanish. He simply nodded and said, “Then take your sacrifice.”

“Muchas gracias,” said the dark man. “Your sacrifice will be appreciated.”

There was a pain in his chest, and then the old man collapsed. As darkness descended, he heard someone in the crowd exclaim that the little girl who had been given up for dead had had a miraculous recovery.

It occurred to him as he sank into darkness that in a strange way he was a hero. Only one question bothered him. If the dark men represented what he thought they represented, why were there two?

Cuento de Mi Id

“To Taste the Flesh Not Yet Deceased”

(I normally don't comment on the stories I post here because I prefer any comments made about them to come from the people who read this blog. But this story is one of the first ones I ever showed to other people and I wrote it for a college creative writing course. Hopefully it should be apparent that my writing skills have improved since then -- even if it is not by much.)

They say there are no more demons, yet I know better. I sit here with my AK-47 and my batch of silver bullets awaiting the biggest demon of them all. The Trinity protects me; the black-and-yellow symbols of Saints Albert, Robert, and Enrico have been hung at every entrance. Yet I know he’ll get in. He always does.

They have made it unlawful for civilians to possess the only substance that will stop him; they even say it does not exist. However, it does not matter.

My wife looks at me as if I’m crazy.

“John,” she says. “No such thing exists.”

I know better, of course. God help me, I know better.

***********************************************************

Demons did not always stalk our world. They first came out after the bombs fell. The government did not want to acknowledge this. When a little girl was saved from a food riot, when a notorious black marketer was found bound and gagged by unknown assailants, they blamed it on coincidence. The clerics wished to credit it to divine intervention, but the Old God was not popular anymore since they bombed the Vatican, so they didn’t. A few spoke of making a pilgrimage to Paris, to pay a visit to the shrine of Saint Marie, who still lay unburied in a lead-lined chamber after two centuries. But the government discouraged such visits. Travel was not considered a good idea for anyone not under armed escort, and there were not enough soldiers to go around, so guess who stayed home.

Rumors arose, however. Hades was sighted, thundering across the now empty highways in a black horseless chariot. Hera appeared, too, now attired in a costume apparently fashioned from a flag of the old Republic. Satan finally appeared, as the pessimists among us had guessed he would. There was no doubt he was Satan for he wore a big red “S” on his chest and everyone knew that letter could only stand for “Satan.” He wore a blue suit, a red cape and had the Aryan features of a German warlord. He also had a pearly grin which could only be borne by a man to whom radiation and fallout meant nothing.

My wife and children insisted upon joining the cult of this new-found deity while I still clung to the old faith.

“Father,” my daughter Lois would say, “don’t you realize the Old God doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Of course, He does,” I answered. “There is only one God and I am His Prophet.”

My words were in vain though for my wife and children continued to attend prayer meetings dedicated to the new God and pore over copies of the ancient chronicles of his life and works. I once confiscated one of these sacred scrolls and tossed it upon the fire, only to find another one in its place the next day.

Then one day I looked up in the sky and I saw Him -- Satan -- as big as life. At first, I thought it was an illusion, yet after I had blinked, He was still there.

It was then that I realized that I was in the grip of forces much greater than myself. The citizens of the post-war U.S.S.A. (United Socialist States of America) had hungered for a miracle worker so badly that they had created one out of their own minds. It was too late to fight this creature with mere disbelief; the gestalt forces which had given it life were much too strong now. The only way to deal with it was on its own terms.

So I studied the ancient scrolls and I devised a way to lure it to its doom. I have already set out a sacrificial victim -- a virgin, I hope -- and now I merely await the arrival of the Grand Adversary Himself. I have heard him referred to as the Man of Steel, but the bullets in my gun are Teflon-coated and can pierce three feet of steel. It will be a grand contest I think -- as grand as the one that is said to occur when the Great King Jayefkay rises from his tomb to do battle once more with the Demon-King Kastrow.

My daughter says I’m foolish and I think she hates the ropes, but after all, I’m doing this merely for her sake but for the sake of all humanity.

There is only one God that I worship; one who has risen from the dead and promises eternal life to all His followers.

I speak, of course, of the one true Lord -- Dracula.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Balcony Scene”

It was Saturday night at the local movie theatre and Cinnamon Rivers was dancing across the silver screen with Alfredo Aster while dozens of pure-bread couples looked on in envy.

In the audience, Rubia Keeler looked up at Cinnamon and tried to imagine herself in the same role. Just suppose I was a dancer, she thought. Just suppose I was a movie star and all those people in the audience were staring up at me.

Stop having such silly dreams, her conscience told her. Be grateful that you were lucky enough to get that job at the shop around the corner. Mr. Matuschek may not the best of bosses but he's sure better than that factory foreman who tried to peer down your dress or that guy at the warehouse who was always trying to get you to climb a ladder just so that he could try to look up your skirt.

But I don’t want to work in that shop, she thought. I get tired of having to be nice to all the angry customers and the lecherous co-workers. And I just know the new salesgirl is dating the owner’s assistant. No wonder she gets so many privileges.

If only I could be a star, she thought. Then I could rise above all that and I wouldn’t have to worry about where to go or what to do or how I was going to pay my rent. At long last I could just be me.

Just then the lights came up. Rubia realized that the movie was over. She took care to sneak out the side door so that no one would see her in the lobby, praying against hope that no one she actually knew would see her.

She had just gotten to the street outside when she heard someone call out, “Hey, Rube!”

She turned. Coming down the street was Marta, one of her cousins from across town. She seemed to be smiling and beneath the radiance of the nearby street lamp, her bronze cheekbones made her look like one of those Mexican movie stars that her late father used to like. She appeared to be in a good mood but you could never really tell with Marta.

“What’s the matter, Rube?” she said. “You too good to sit with us in the balcony tonight?”

“Er, I didn’t realize you’d be going to see this particular movie,” she said. “Besides, I -- er -- just didn’t feel like sitting in the balcony tonight.” She started edging her way down the street.

Marta grinned. “It must be nice to have a choice about that, Rube. I wasn’t aware that it was possible for a girl like you to have a choice. But then I guess that’s why you don’t hang out with me and my sisters like you used to. So you could have a choice.”

“Oh, please, Marta. Not here.“

“Why? You think those people up the street actually care what we say? That our opinions matter to them? What type of booze have you been drinking?“

“I just wanted to sit on the ground floor for a change,” said Rubia. “I get tired of always having to sit in the balcony whenever I go to the movies.”

Marta frowned. “I get tired of sitting up there, too. How come you didn’t think to invite me to sit with you? Or to invite my sisters and my mom to sit with you? Is there something you’re trying to tell us, Rube?“

“Er, you know why,” Rubia said.

“Yes, I do,” said Marta. Her smile was no longer so beautiful and the nearby street lamp no longer seemed so bright. “I know why. I know exactly why.”

Marta walked off into the darkness.

If only I was a star, Rubia thought, that wouldn’t happen to me. I wouldn’t have to worry about what section of the movie section I had to sit in or what restaurant I could go eat at. Even Marta and her snotty sisters would have to look up to me then. If only.

Rubia walked off in a different direction than Marta, hurrying past the signs that said “No Mexicans allowed” and past the department store where her mother had said a young Mexican woman had been once forced to stand in a store window with a sign around her neck that said “Shoplifter.”

That will never be me, she thought as she remembered that. I do not intend to end up that way. I am an honest person.

And she kept telling herself that all the way home.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Does the Word Morlock Mean Anything to You?”

September 21. It’s raining again today. I like it when it rains.

Sister Natalie once asked me why I like to see rain, and I told her about how it drowns the ants. She said that it was a bad thing to like things like that. Ants have the same right to live that we do, she told me, and it is not right to wish bad things about them.

I tried to tell her about how the ants came into my old house one time, but she wouldn’t listen. She said the only reason the ants would have come into my old house would have been because they’re hungry, and it’s not right to wish bad things about a living thing just because it’s hungry.

I wish I could make her understand just how icky ants really are, but it’s hard work making the Sisters understand anything.

Sometimes I wish my parents would come back from camp so I wouldn’t have to stay with the Sisters. We could go back to our old house and stay there and live like we used to live before the War. I wouldn’t mind living that way for a while -- even if my house did have ants. I wouldn’t even mind if we had to live in an attic again.

My friend Bobby says the Sisters aren’t really sisters. They just call themselves that because they want to look nice.

I told Bobby I already know that, but he never listens.

He’s always reading stuff the Sisters tell us not to read. Then he tries to tell me about it and get me in trouble.

I don’t know where he finds this stuff because the Sisters are supposed to have thrown all the bad stuff away.

But he does.

He’s always reading these old books full of bad words and pictures of people with no clothes on. He tried to tell me how grown-ups make babies, but I refused to listen because the Sisters say we should not talk about that kind of stuff.

Lately he’s been telling me about this book he read called “The Time Machine.” It’s a book the Sisters specially don’t want us to read because it was written by a bad man and it tells a lot of lies about history and stuff.

Bobby says that’s not so. He says that the guy who wrote it was a good man and that “The Time Machine” was a good book. He says it’s all about the future and how this man from the past goes there in a special machine. In this future, he says, there are no Sisters or camps or houses or anything. Just two tribes -- the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are the good people. The Morlocks are the bad. The Morlocks are always killing the Eloi, but the man from the past doesn’t like this, and he helps the Eloi defeat the Morlocks.

I told Bobby this was a strange story and I couldn’t understand why the Sisters objected to it.

Because they’re Morlocks, he told me.

I told him he must be joking.

Bobby insisted he wasn’t. The Sisters were Morlocks, he said, and they considered us all Eloi. And in the book, they ate Eloi.

I told Bobby he was just trying to scare me like he did that time he put that spider down my back.

But again he insisted he wasn’t.

I don’t know what to believe.

***********************************************************

September 22. Bobby showed me his “Time Machine” book during recess today. He said it proved the Sisters really were Morlocks.

I told him he was dumb. The Morlocks shown in the book looked nothing like the Sisters. They were all short and squat and ugly and stuff, and the Sisters don’t look anything like that.

Of course, they don’t, said Bobby. The Morlocks had a chance to read the book.

I told him he was stupid, and I threatened to tell Sister Natalie on him.

He asked me not to. He said what he told me was a secret and that I shouldn’t go blabbing about it to the Sisters.

Suppose I’m right, he said. Then we’d both be in big trouble.

I think Bobby’s just trying to scare me again.

***********************************************************

September 23. I asked Sister Natalie what a Morlock was but I didn’t mention Bobby’s name. She got very angry with me. She told me that Morlock was a bad word, and little girls like me should not be using words like that.

“Suppose someone called you a Spic,” she said. “Or your friend Bobby a nigger. Would you like that?”

“I don’t know what those words mean,” I told her.

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “Because me and the other Sisters have taken great pains to stop our students from using bad language like that. The word Morlock is just the same. It’s a bad word that only bad people use, and I don’t want to hear a student of mine using it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

I was afraid to ask her another question after that.

***********************************************************

September 24. Bobby called me an idiot today after I found out what happened between me and Sister Natalie.

“You dummy,” he said. “Now the Morlocks are going to go after you for sure.”

“Go after me for what?” I said.

“For guessing their true identities, stupid,” Bobby answered.

“So what?” I said. “Morlocks are just make-believe. They don’t exist in real life. And even if they did, your book says they lived in the future.”

“My book was written a long time ago,” said Bobby. “For all we know, this could be the future the writer was talking about.”

“You’re an idiot, Bobby,” I said.

“Look who’s talking,” he said.

I ignored him for the rest of the day.

***********************************************************

September 25. It stopped raining today. Today was the first day all week I could see the sun. But it doesn’t seem the same without Bobby.

I asked Sister Natalie about him and she said he must have run away in the middle of the night. He used to talk to me a lot about running away to camp to join his parents. So I suppose that is where he went.

We finally had fresh meat in the cafeteria today. But it doesn’t seem the same without Bobby there to make yukky comments about it.

My friend Indira thinks I’m being silly. She believes Bobby will come back just as soon as he realizes how rough it is on the outside. But somehow I don’t think so.

Sister Natalie kept urging me to eat during mealtime, but I just couldn’t finish a bite. I wish I could eat as much as her and the other Sisters do, but I’m just not in the mood.

Sister Barbara came by during lunch today and said she understood how I felt. She said that Bobby and I will probably be together quite soon and that I shouldn’t worry. I wonder what she meant by that and why she had that strange look on her face when she said that.

Sometimes I get the feeling that she and the other Sisters know just exactly where Bobby went.

But that would be stupid.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Ultimate Monster”

I met an old man in the marketplace. He promised to show me the ultimate monster. But all he had to show me was a piece of silvered glass.

I feared he would laugh at me so I beat him to death with my fists and buried him beneath the floor of his own shop.

Much later, it occurred to me that he might have given me a magic mirror. But the only image I ever could see in the glass was my own face.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Mariana: Warrior Film Critic”

(Not to be confused with a certain female blogger whose persona seems to share certain physical attributes with this story's title character. Funny how stuff like that happens.)

It was a red-letter day and she was a red-headed woman, making her way through the snowy streets of Nuevayor in hopes of catching the eight o’clock show for the new art flick Marlowe in Love.

Up ahead she saw a billboard for the new Gaderan Schwein epic. It seemed like the same old militaristic flagboy fantasy film she had been seeing advertised hourly since the start of the Djinnistani War. Maybe not as bad as Yankee Doodle Baby Daddy or My Country, Right! but definitely close to that territory. It was called The Crusader, a take-off, no doubt, on the old Raymond A. Harold character Harridan Bourne. Judging from the billboard, it was all about a religiously motivated vigilante dressed in black who was all eager to fight for truth, justice and the American Way. Though the character was supposed to be a dedicated Christian with a cross around his neck that would be the envy of most Papists, he also managed to sport a hot babe on his arm, lest someone question his heterosexuality.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, she thought.

And then, all of a sudden, she stopped.

Between her and the movie theatre, three shadowy figures were waiting. Even though the street lights were shining fully upon them, she could not see their faces. Nor was she sure that she wanted to.

Draculaters, she thought. Worshippers of the vampiric self-proclaimed deity Vlad Christofor Tepes or as his followers preferred to call him, the Vampire Christ. Normally such people made a point of sparing any Nuevayorer who wore any ornament resembling the letter “T”. But unfortunately, Mariana rarely wore any such ornaments. Indeed, since the end of the Belief Wars of the 1990s, she rarely wore any ornaments at all. Indeed, every summer it was only mere modesty -- and the lack of sufficient sunblock -- that prevented her from violating the local nudity taboos.

The Draculaters were turning in her direction, their dark faces showing their canines as they looked upon her. They had had it in for her ever since she panned the movie Red Dusk which had been produced by a major sponsor of the local Church of the Vampire Christ. Not only had she given the movie a bad review but she questioned the sanity of a so-called religious person who poured millions into the production of a mediocre pot-boiler while doing nothing to help the local homeless. Not that the Draculaters lacked dealings with the poor but there were rarely the type of dealings in which anyone save the most desperate would care to participate.

But wait! They were coming her way.

And her movie started in ten minutes. She looked for an alternative route to the ticket counter but judging from the way the Draculaters were spreading out, there was none. She would have to fight her way through.

She opened up her massive Guess purse and pulled out her mace, her taser and her pepper spray. Just for fun, she also pulled out a jar of garlic powder. After all, she once had been a Girl Scout.

The Draculaters came closer. They started to surround her.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said.

They smiled. The theatre security guard showed no signs of acknowledging their existence and there was no way the local cops would show up in time to prevent anything even if they wanted to.

They closed in.

She smiled. Beckoned them to come closer.

Then hit them with the mace and the pepper spray.

While the Draculaters pawed at their eyes, she spread out the garlic powder on the sidewalk around her. One of the fiends dared to cross it, only to collapse when his garlic allergy kicked in. As his companions hastily checked their pockets to see which of them carried an epi-pen, Mariana boldly walked up to the ticket counter and bought one ticket for Marlowe in Love.

“Isn’t that that movie about the English pervert?” said the ticket seller, smacking her gum so loudly it could be heard halfway across the Rio Hudson.

“No,” said Mariana. “It’s about a great playwright.”

“I heard it was about perverts.”

“Well, you heard wrong,” she said. And ignored the great big silver “T” that the ticket seller wore around her neck.

************************************************************

The movie was great. But it was way too short.

By the time she got out, the Draculaters were gone and she had just enough time to hit the subway for a ten-thirty train. With luck, she would get home in time to write a quick review and post it on the web before she had to go rest up for her day job.

She should have brought her laptop but she really did not like bringing it out in this weather. Besides, with the trouble she got into, it was usually a good idea to keep her hands as free as possible.

As she entered the subway, she was still congratulating herself on not having had to use her taser when she noticed the sound of footsteps echoing behind her.

She looked behind her.

A white-clad woman with snowlike skin and coal-black hair was following her. She noticed Mariana looking and smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.

“You saw the new Kit Marlowe movie at the Alhambra, right?” she said in a brisk yet unrecognizable accent.

“Yes.”

“It was a horrible movie, wasn’t it?”

“No,” said Mariana. “Actually I liked it.”

“No, it was horrible. The writers of today -- they just don’t understand.”

“Understand what?” said Mariana, trying to edge her way toward the turnstile.

“How hard it is to raise a kid with filth like that being shown.”

“Actually, I found it to be a beautiful movie. And I’m not sure why you’re bringing kids into this. Not every movie has to be made for kids, you know.”

Mariana backed away and went through the turnstile.

She was just about to board her train when she suddenly felt someone grab her in a bear-hug and steer her toward the front of the train.

She tried to fight her way free but whoever was holding her was just too strong. She tried to scream but someone just covered her mouth. And no one was paying attention, anyway.

Save for a trio of Draculaters who were coming closer to her...

“No,” she thought. And with that thought, she kicked the nearest would-be assailant in his generative organs and bit the hand that covered her mouth.

She heard a woman scream from behind her. It sounded like the Woman in White. She felt a strong force drive her off the subway platform and onto the tracks in front of the nearest train. And the train was preparing to depart.

She started to get up. But two Draculaters leaped down to hold her in place. She whipped out her taser and used it on one. The other stumbled out of her way and onto the third rail. Two down, one really down.

She climbed back onto the subway platform as the train started to move. She heard a scream from behind. And a scream from in front as the Woman in White muttered something about the Curse of Lesbos and how all those people stick together.

Mariana did not bother recharging the taser. She was not a short woman and she normally towered over most of her would-be adversaries. But the Woman in White was half a head taller than her and she was holding her clenched fists as if she had been a professional fighter.

A lesser woman would have given up then and reconciled herself to a beating. But then Mariana thought of her cousin Anton who had succumbed to the SIDA demon five years ago and how little help he had received from doctors because of people like the Woman in White. Then she clenched her own fists. The rest was easy.

************************************************************

Her roommate Bonita was waiting up for her when she got home.

“I swear, girl,” she said. “It seems like it takes longer and longer for you to see those silly art flicks of yours. Please don’t tell me you were woolgathering again?”

“That’s right,” said Mariana. “I was woolgathering. Silly me.”

And with that, she collapsed upon her bed.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Chamber”

“You know, I really don’t belong here,” said the prisoner.

“Oh really?” asked the attendant.

“Yes. There’s been some mistake.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course, it is!”

“You don’t have to shout.”

I’m sorry. I...I just get carried away at times. Especially when I see you’re about to punish an innocent man.”

“Oh, really? What innocent man?”

“Why, me, of course. I don’t deserve this.”

“You are Mark Johnson, aren’t you, of 1705 Walnut Hill Lane, Dallas, Texas?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s no mistake. You are the person scheduled for punishment.”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant…I don’t deserve this punishment. I’ve already paid for my crime.”

“I hardly consider what you went through to be an adequate recompense for your crime, Mr. Johnson. Even if I did, I don’t make the rules here. My superiors do. They have passed judgment upon you, and it is my job to carry out their sentence. I’m only following orders.”

“Sure, just like Adolf Eichmann.”

“That’s not fair, Mr. Johnson.”

“Of course, it’s not fair,” said Mr. Johnson. “Condemned men are never fair.”

“Just step this way, Mr. Johnson.”

They entered a stone chamber. Inside was a rack.

“You’re not going to chain me to that thing, are you?” said Mr. Johnson, pointing to the rack.

“Only for a little while,” said the attendant. “Your sentence will be over sooner than you think.“

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Please lie down, Mr. Johnson.”

Mr. Johnson did so. As the attendant began to attach chains to his hands and feet, he heard a flapping sound from above.

“You don’t have birds in here, do you?” he asked.

“You’ll soon find out,” said the attendant. “Just like Prometheus.”

“Who?”

“No one important.”

The attendant surveyed his handiwork. “Very well. Goodbye, Mr. Johnson.”

“Wait! Don’t go yet. Tell me please...What did I do to deserve this?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“You ran over a young girl.”

“Oh, that. I can explain. That was an accident.”

“So you said at your trial. Goodbye, Mr. Johnson.”

“Wait. You don’t understand. I was acquitted. By a jury of my peers.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see.”

The flapping sound grew louder.

“It was dark,” said Mr. Johnson. “Late at night. The girl had no business crossing in the middle of the street in the first place.”

“I understand, Mr. Johnson.”

“No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn't be doing this.”

The attendant started to leave.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“I must leave now, Mr. Johnson,” said the attendant. “I have other people I must attend to.”

“No. Wait!”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Rules are rules.”

“I stepped on the brakes as hard as I could. The car just wouldn’t stop in time.”

“Goodbye.”

“For Chrissakes, the girl wasn’t even in this country legally.”

“I know.”

The attendant left the room, but not before hearing one final scream behind him.

“For the love of God!”

The attendant stood in the hallway outside the torture chamber, pale and shaken.

“Yes, Mr. Johnson,” he said, for the benefit of no one but himself. “For the love of God.”

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Meeting”

The six of them were running down the street and as usual, the kids were way ahead, chasing an old rubber ball which seemed cursed with perpetual motion.

Bob stopped to catch his breath -- his job had left him unused to such exertion -- and finally caught up with the kids halfway down the hill. As was the manner of kids everywhere, the children had stumbled upon another group of children playing in the street and now both were trying to reorganize a game of basketball the former had interrupted with their impromptu arrival. Bob’s golden-haired companion promptly waded into the mess in an effort to sort it out. Tiffany -- the only girl, of course -- as usual wanted to play center and the two oldest boys -- David and Tony -- of course wanted no girls on their team. The other side did not want any new players and the youngest boy -- little Emilio -- stood in the center of the street, slightly dazed by the hubbub of events.

Bob smiled and rocked back on his heels, enjoying the sudden respite from the days’ activities. Then he glanced to the side and saw her.

She was standing in the small front yard of an apartment house, separated from the street by a black steel fence. The gate in this fence was open and nearby was a table and chairs. The woman had cinnamon-colored hair and her casual wear was quite a contrast to Bob’s suit and tie. Only a white sweater would have separated her from the older kids on the street yet there were signs in her face and hands which indicated she was way past the age of high school. In fact, she was about Bob’s age.

He was still trying to suppress a double take when the woman glanced in his direction.

“Your kids?” she asked, nodding towards the street.

“At least four of them are,” he said.

“Oh.” The woman looked distracted for a moment, and then she said, “Your wife seems quite capable.”

“No, that’s my sister,” he replied. “My wife is out on a shopping expedition.”

“Ah, the old house husband routine,” said the woman.

“Not really,” he said. “I just volunteered to watch the kids for a while, and she took advantage of the opportunity.” He smiled hesitantly. “It doesn’t happen all that often, I assure you.”

“I see,” said the woman.

By now, his sister had separated the mass of children into two teams and was making a mock gesture of exhaustion when she noticed the two sets of eyes upon her.

“Well, you were certainly a big help, Bob,” she said, coming in off the street.

“Couldn’t help it, Evelyn,” he replied. “You were doing such a wonderful job. I just had to stand back and watch.”

Evelyn just shrugged and turned to the other woman. “My brother the helpful observer,” she said.

The woman nodded and then Evelyn blinked. “That’s funny,” she said. “You look awfully familiar. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

The woman glanced at Bob. “Why, yes, you did. You used to see me at the store where Bob and I worked together. My name is Miriam.”

“No shit?” asked Evelyn. “You two really did work together?”

“Yes, we did,” said Miriam.

“For seven years,” Bob added.

He and the woman glanced at one another. Then the glances broke.

“Who would have believed it?” asked Evelyn. “I know I wouldn’t. Will wonders never cease. I‘m sorry I forgot meeting you but you know how life can be sometimes...”

She drifted into silence and, nodding her head absentmindedly, walked off to supervise the basketball game.

“She’s right, you know,” Bob added as Evelyn walked out of hearing range. “It does seem like quite a coincidence.”

“It certainly does,” said Miriam. “But is it my fault if your sister doesn’t remember me?”

“A lot has certainly happened since then,” said Bob. He glanced at the children. “I suppose you’re married now?”

“Actually, I’m common-law.”

Bob raised an eyebrow.

Miriam smiled. “Mark and I couldn’t afford a conventional wedding or anything fancy like that so we settled for common-law. It wasn’t exactly the thing my parents approved of but it was better than nothing. And at least there’s no doubt whom the kids belong to.”

She glanced at the pavement. “How about you?”

“Oh, nothing much. I left town for a while.” He paused, bit his lip and then continued. “I went down south for a while, then came back and finished school -- actually, continued school -- and then I got my master’s and finally got that big computer programming job I always used to talk about.” He glanced in her direction. “And of course, I met my wife Sylvia and had four kids. How about you?”

Miriam broke out in a smile. “Well, it’s sort of obvious what I’ve been doing.” She glanced toward the children again.

“Mark doesn’t let you work?” Bob asked.

“He doesn’t believe in it,” said Miriam. “If we can’t afford to make it on one paycheck, we simply do without.” She nodded absently. “It’s something we’ve had plenty of practice in. Plus I kinda liked staying home for a change.”

“What if you two need extra money?”

“Oh, Mark can always work extra hours at the plant and I, of course, can always babysit. It’s not exactly an easy life, but we get by.” She smiled. “Mark has too much pride in himself to put up with a working wife so I guess we just have to learn to live with it.”

“That’s good,” said Bob.

He paused a moment, then continued. “Of course, our old friend Teri used to be a working wife too.”

“Yeah, look what happened to her?” Miriam said.

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

The two of them fell into a long silence, their eyes blank as they relived mutual memories.

Then Evelyn walked up. “I hate to break up old times but it’s time we get this bunch back home for lunch.”

“Oh, right,” said Bob absentmindedly. “Sylvia will be coming back home soon, anyway.”

“Right.” Miriam glanced at Evelyn. “It’s been good seeing you again. I hope I have the opportunity to see you again sometime.”

“Perhaps we will,” Evelyn replied absentmindedly.

Bob fidgeted. “Well, I’ll see you around sometime, I guess. If I ever come by this way. I don’t exactly live in the same neighborhood anymore.”

For a moment, he stared into the distance. His mouth seemed to open and close involuntarily. Then he turned and said, ”It’s been nice seeing you again.”

“It’s been nice seeing you again too,” said Miriam.

“Yeah,” said Bob.

He turned and ran to catch up with Evelyn and the kids. They were halfway up the street by the time he caught up with them and for a few minutes, he walked besides them in silence. It took a long while but he finally gave in to the impulse to turn around and look at the apartment house with the iron gate. Miriam’s kids were still playing out in front but there was no adult watching them from the front yard.

She must have gone inside, he thought.

He walked on in silence.

He was halfway home when he thought once more of Miriam and realized he was still in love with her.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Eating Disorders”

“Dammit,” Callie said. “I keep buzzing and buzzing and no one ever comes.”

“They never come,” said Debbie from the next bed over. “Not when you want them to. I should know. I’ve been in this hospital for a long, long time and they never come when I push that buzzer.”

“But this is a hospital,” said Callie. “They’re supposed to come when they hear the buzzer. Suppose someone is having a heart attack or something?”

“They wouldn’t care,” said Debbie. “They’re a pretty heartless bunch around here.”

“I don’t believe that, “ said Callie. “The nurse who attended me in the room I was in last night seemed pretty nice.”

Debbie showed her a closed-lip smile. “Take it from me. The nice ones never stay here long. It’s only the nasty evil ones who hang around here in the long run. So what are you in for?”

“An eating disorder. And you?”

“I guess you might say I have a slight drinking problem.”

“And they put you in the hospital for that?”

“Well, I do tend to go over my limit…”

“But still...Aren’t there private clinics and stuff like that for that?”

“Not for what I’ve got,” Debbie said. “The doctors say I‘m quite an unique case.”

“Well, I’m getting hungry.”

“I thought you had an eating disorder.”

“Well, I do. But if I don’t eat on a regular basis, well, it gets worse.”

“I know the feeling.”

“For years they’ve been telling me to eat more, eat more. Now I’m finally at the point that I’m willing to eat more and now they’re starving me to death.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Debbie. “You won’t starve to death. I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t allow it? Since when do you have any say-so?”

“Since my daddy owns this hospital. He’s quite a rich man. I’m sure the nurses will listen to me once I remind them of that. They’d be crazy not to.”

“Well, my father’s not a rich man.”

“I know.”

“You know? How do you know?”

“They showed me your medical records just before they brought you up here.”

“They showed you my medical records?”

“Is there an echo in here?”

“But how? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Sure, it’s illegal. But then a lot of things that go on around here are illegal. Your suicide attempt, for example.”

“That was quite a few days ago.”

“And the scars still haven’t healed, have they?”

“Well, no…”

“And you haven’t heard from your parents yet, right?”

“Well, I have been wondering about that…”

“That’s because they think you’re dead.”

“They think I’m what?”

“There goes that echo again.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m quite serious,” Debbie said.

“You must be joking,” Callie said. “So why were you looking at my medical records?”

“The same reason I glance through everybody’s medical records.”

“And what reason is that?”

“The same reason you keep glancing at that dinner menu they gave you earlier.”

At that point, Debbie reached up and unhooked her IV with the greatest of ease.

“Wait a second. You’re not really sick.”

“I never said I was.”

“But you said. . .”

“My daddy owns this hospital. I have privileges here you can’t even imagine...Besides, I really did tell the truth before.”

“About what?”

At that point, Debbie stood up and bared her teeth. Two of them were pointed. Very pointed.

“I really do have a drinking problem,” she said.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Beckoning Dark One”

If every picture tells a story, then just imagine how many a single photo album must tell.

Granted, they are not always exciting stories. Nor even interesting ones. However, you do tend to come across an odd tale or two every so often -- and in the most unexpected places.

Take my family’s photo album, for instance. One picture shows a young toddler -- myself -- laughing in the foreground while a dark, brooding figure in the background frowns at the camera. The figure is my cousin Miranda, of course, and as long as I had known her, I had never seen her take a particular dislike to being photographed. So why was she frowning in this picture? Had the picture-taker interrupted some private ritual between us? And if so, what kind? Cousin Miranda was only two years older than me so the ritual could not have been that private- - but then I was only a very young child at the time -- and I still don’t have all that many clear memories of that era. To this day, my Aunt Eulalia -- Miranda’s mother -- remembers incidents which occurred at that time about which I have absolutely no memory -- even though I was often a key participant in them. And what happened between me and Miranda when Aunt Eulalia and the other relatives were not around I have absolutely no way of knowing.

After all, my earliest memories of Miranda began when I was five years old. And I was obviously a lot younger than that in the picture. In fact, I did not even know that a picture like that had ever been taken until I had spied it in the family photo album just three years ago -- when I was twenty-seven. Which makes me wonder what else happened back then that I might have forgotten…

Ironically, it was Jane’s friend Lisa -- the most inartistic of our crowd -- who first saw it.

Everyone else at our housewarming party -- or to put it more accurately, our apartment warming party -- was too busy drinking, smoking, listening to loud music or else making dumb comments to Jane and me. My friends preferred Z.Z. Top, her friends, the Cowboy Junkies. My relatives kept voting for Aerosmith -- and being half-Mexican, easily outnumbered the opposition. However, one mischievous soul kept sneaking Amy Grant songs into the tape deck, and where the Randy Travis tapes kept coming from, I’ll never know.

Anyway, everyone at the party was engaged in various trivial pursuits -- including an actual game of Trivial Pursuit -- when Lisa happened to glance at one of Jane’s paintings on the wall and asked, “What’s that?”

“Oh, just a painting I did of some scenery I saw out at White Rock Lake a few years ago,” Jane replied. “Do you like it?”

Lisa frowned. “Not really. It looks kinda scary.”

“Scary?” Jane laughed. “What makes you say that?”

“That figure in the corner,” said Lisa. “It looks like it’s watching me.”

“I must be a better artist than I thought,” said Jane. “There is no figure in that painting. That entire area was deserted when I started my sketching.”

“Well, there must been someone there, Sis,” said Mike, my would-be brother-in-law. “I see it, too.”

“So do I,” said another guest.

And another one after that.

“This is crazy,” said Jane. “There can’t be a figure in that painting. I painted that thing myself -- surely I would have noticed a little detail like that.”

I walked over to her to reassure her. I started to put my arm around her shoulder and say something witty. Then I glanced at the painting and my voice died. There was a figure in the painting, all right; it was standing by a tree in the left hand corner. And what was even stranger than that was the fact that it was a familiar figure. But there was no way Jane could have deliberately painted that figure into her painting. Not even subconsciously. It had to be a joke. One of her artist friends playing a trick on her, perhaps. Or even --

“Wait a minute,” said my sister Claudia. “ I know that person. That’s Cousin Miranda.”

And she was right. The figure’s profile did resemble Cousin Miranda’s. But that was impossible.

Miranda had died ten years before Jane and I had ever met.

**********************************************************

I did not have the heart to mention it again until after all the guests had gone home, but I could tell Jane was disturbed.

“It has to be a trick of the light,” she kept saying. “Maybe if I hung it in another part of the room?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Perhaps you just happened to see her face in an old photo album or something and just unconsciously added it to the painting. I’m sure stuff like that happens to artists all the time.”

“Not outside of the movies, it doesn’t,” she said. “And anyway, I completed that painting three months before we even met -- so I could not have unconsciously added your cousin to my painting even if I had wanted to.”

“Perhaps someone altered it,” I suggested.

“Get real,” she said. “None of your relatives have any talent for art -- at least not enough to pull that off. And no one else that we know even knows what your cousin looked like. Besides, the painting does not look like it has been altered. It looks the same as it always did. Except for that.”

She pointed at the dark-haired figure that had looked so much like Cousin Miranda and I noticed for the first time just how much of it appeared to be in the shadows. Granted, the figure was standing in the middle of a wooded area, but it wasn’t hard to see that it was also standing on the sunny side of a tree. Moreover, the figure itself appeared to have moved. When I first saw it at the party, it was standing on the left end of the painting. Now it appeared to be much closer to the center. That was impossible, of course. But still...

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” I said. “After all, we have more important things to concern us right now -- like, say, sleeping arrangements.”

“Not tonight, honey,” she said. “I have too much to think about right now.”

And think about them, she did. Staring at that painting the whole time that she did so…

**********************************************************

The next morning, the figure was still there. It had not moved, of course. But then it did not have to. It had just gotten larger.

“Impossible,” I said to myself.

Then I ignored it.

After all, I had other things to worry about. Bills to pay and all that Harry Chapinlike stuff. So when I woke up the next morning and saw what had happened...

No, I thought. It was just my imagination. Just a trick of the light like Jane had said.

Perhaps the painting had gone moldy while in storage. Yes, that was it. The blotch on Jane’s perfect landscape which we had all thought was my Cousin Miranda was merely an odd-shaped piece of fungus.

Perhaps that’s why the figure seemed to have changed directions. After all, it’s not as if a painted figure can actually turn its head…

The next few days, everything was normal. I wrote -- or at least, I tried to write -- and Jane painted. Everything appeared to be returning to normal.

No one gave the painting a second thought. Why should we? It wasn’t as if Miranda herself was going to jump out of the painting and strangle us. And anyway, Miranda was dead. Ten years dead. And not one of those Other Side of Midnight-type deaths, either, in which the girl falls off a boat one night and ends up being magically resurrected whenever the author wants her to be. No, Miranda’s death was more definite than that.

I still remember the way my mother looked when she first got the news from my Aunt Eulalia.

“Your cousin Miranda’s dead,” she had said. “She died in a car crash. Her and some other girl. The police tried to save them but…”

Miranda was the first real loss I had ever suffered in my life. Perhaps the only one that ever really counted. All my life I had taken her for granted as my one real friend in the universe. The one girl I could turn to when no one else seemed to understand me.

I had even grown conceited about it -- never daring to date any of the Anglo or Hispanic girls in my own school because they always fared so badly in comparison with my cousin. Not that Miranda and I would have ever married. I know now that was quite unlikely. But it would have been nice to have had the opportunity.

Now we were permanently separated. Not even the most fervent letter or phone call would ever bring her back.

But I did not complain too much. Eventually I moved on and now I had Jane. Jane, the perfect opposite of the little Mexican girl I had once fallen in love with. I had never thought I could fall in love with an Anglo girl until I met Jane. After all, the one Anglo girl I had ever tried to court previous to Jane had ended up conceiving another guy’s child. And God knows I did not want to go through that again.

But Jane was different. Jane was more mature. Jane was more intelligent -- and more importantly, she did not feel it necessary to hide that intelligence the way most Anglo girls do. Jane had had her share of bad romances, too -- an unemployed boyfriend who had driven her into debt, a blowhard fiancé who had tried to pressure her into marriage -- even a would-be date rapist. And yet Jane had survived.

I admired her for that. And I admired her more for admiring me. It had not been easy for me to come out of my shell after my last girlfriend. And it was not easy for Jane to summon up the courage to entice me. But she did. And I enticed her. And now here we were -- the perfect survivors of the romance wars now living together in semi-holy pre-matrimony.

But now this thing had started with the painting.

Why now? I wondered. Why not three years ago when I was still chasing after Ms. Shotgun Wedding of 1990?

Was there something about me which attracted such weird phenomena? I doubted it. After all, the one time I ever tested for psychic ability was back in high school and back then I had flunked. So much for that theory.

Yet every morning when I looked at the painting, the figure that looked like my cousin seemed to me to be a little larger. Moreover, it seemed to be changing its shape every time I looked at it. First it would be pointing in one direction. Then the next time, it would be pointing in a different direction. And one time just before bedtime, it appeared to be pointing right at me.

I ignored it, of course. I placed my word processor in a spot where I would not have to see the painting and attempted to immerse myself in my latest work of timeless fiction. But it was no use. Thoughts of Miranda kept creeping into my head.

I kept imagining how she used to look in all her old pictures. Her dark Latin face, her bright ebony eyes, her shoulder-length raven hair, and so forth. Despite Dallas’s own reputation for beautiful women -- and the fact that I was currently living with a girl who put most Barbizon graduates to shame -- Miranda’s face still haunted my memory. Perhaps it was because she was my first real love. Perhaps not. After all, it is always easier to be hopelessly in love with a woman you can’t have. My own experience proved it. And death, after all, was the ultimate barrier. Would I have loved Miranda as much if she had never died? If I had never moved out of my native Chicago? If she and I had gotten married and settled down to raise a family? And what would I have done if I had discovered that I did not really love her? If I discovered that I loved her more as a romantic symbol than as a person? Would I then find myself attracted to someone like Jane?

Questions like that I could not answer. Questions like that I did not want to answer.

Not until the day Jane said she was meeting her friend Lisa somewhere for lunch -- and then Lisa called up thirty minutes later asking to talk to Jane.

“Isn’t she with you?” I asked, not sure what was going on.

“Isn't who with me?” she asked.

“Jane.”

“Jane?”

“Yes, she said she was meeting you for lunch.”

“That‘s funny,” she said. “She said nothing about that to me.” Then she paused for a moment. “Er -- I have to go now. Tell Jane I‘ll call her later.”

She hung up in a hurry -- and I did not blame her. Something was up. I just did not know what.

I glanced at her latest painting. Another landscape. Only this time there was a man and a woman in the background. She and I, I thought.

Then I looked closer and noticed that the man‘s hair was yellow. My own hair was brown. And the girl’s hair was yellow, too. The same color as Jane’s hair. Just a coincidence? I tried to think so.

After all, if Jane was having an affair, she would not be stupid enough to leave such a vital clue in front of me. Or would she? Perhaps this was her way of flaunting her infidelity. Perhaps -- but no. I was being stupid. Jane obviously loved me. I had seen proof of that many times. And she had gone after me. Not vice versa. So it had to be a coincidence.

Even if the figures in the paintings were holding hands, that did not mean anything. It could have been some other people she was painting.

So why did the blonde girl look so much like Jane?

I left the apartment and proceeded to get stinking drunk at the nearest bar. When I came back, Jane was still gone and the figure of my cousin had grown even larger. But I pretended not to notice and fell upon our double bed in a drunken stupor…

When I awoke, I heard Jane whispering to someone in the next room. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it was something like “te quiero, te quiero.” Now where would she have learned that? I had never told her I loved her in Spanish -- I only told her so in English -- and of course, I had never taught or encouraged her to learn Spanish. Nor did any of my relatives. And in high school, Jane had taken French, not Spanish, for her foreign language requirement.

“Honey,” I said.

The whispering immediately grew silent.

“What is it?” she said.

“Who are you talking to?”

“No one,” she replied.

I could swear I heard a giggle from the other room.

I got up and went in. No one else save Jane was there. She was standing in front of Miranda’s painting in the same blue dress she had worn to lunch, and she appeared to have a guilty expression upon her face.

“Who were you talking to in here?” I asked.

“Why, no one,” she answered.

I resisted the urge to slap her face.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

She seemed sincere. But then so had that other girl I had once dated. And the one before her. And the one before her…

I decided to go out.

“Wait,” she said.

But I did not turn around.

**********************************************************

After that, the arguments grew frequent. I’d accuse her of seeing someone else, she would accuse me of being irrational, and we’d both start throwing things at each other. And that was on a good day.

It seemed quite obvious to me that we were never going to make it to the wedding altar. Hell, we hadn’t even lasted ten weeks in the same apartment. And the worst part about it all was that she was right. I had no right to be jealous of her. It wasn’t as if we were married. Yet in a way -- in my mind -- we were. Then this had to happen.

The final straw happened on November 1. Miranda’s birthday.

Jane had gotten mad at me again and she had stormed out. Then I had started to storm out. Then I glanced at Miranda’s painting again.

I hadn’t looked at the painting for days. But there was no mistaking it now. The figure in the painting had changed -- but it was still Miranda. Only now she was almost a hand’s length in height whereas before she had only been the size of a man’s thumb. In addition, she was looking straight at me. And beckoning in my direction with her left hand.

I turned away and ran out. I knew that I needed a drink -- and bad. My own troubles with Jane were bad enough -- but when I looked at my own dead cousin’s image in a painting and saw her fingers begin to move…

Yes, I needed a drink all right. Several, in fact. So many that I was staggering by the time I decided to return to the apartment. Only Jane had gotten there before I did. And once I saw her there, I really did need a drink.

She had hung herself from a light fixture. She had made a noose from her pantyhose, tied one end of it around her neck, and then jumped off a chair. Just like that. The ultimate reprimand to a jealous lover.

But that was not the worst part. The worst part was glancing at Miranda’s painting and seeing not one but two figures standing among the trees. One was blonde, the other brunette -- and both were female.

I eventually found the other paintings Jane had done. The ones she had never shown me but instead hidden away in the hope that I would never see them. The painting I had seen with the blonde man had been a mistake. The man was obviously a woman with her hair cut short Sinead O’Connor-style. As for the other woman in the painting, her hair too was altered. Jane had changed it from yellow to black. Miranda’s hair color.

Of course, the clues had been there for me to see all along. Jane’s trouble with men. The way Jane had been so obsessed with Miranda’s image. The fact that Miranda had died in the company of another girl -- not a boy. The way Jane had said “I love you” when she was all alone with the painting, and so forth. But that did not make it any easier to take.

Worst of all was the questions that keep echoing in my head. Was it really the picture-taker Miranda had hated in that snapshot I had described earlier? Or was it me?

And if not, why take Jane away from me?

For that matter, if Miranda was going to come back from the dead for anybody, why not me? Had not Miranda and I been friends? Or was that part of my life just one big mentira?

Of course, there is only one way I will ever find out the answers to these questions. That is why I am writing this manuscript. I need to leave behind some record of what happened so that if anything goes wrong, someone will be sure to read it and take the appropriate action.

I hope Mike does it. I have always liked him and I know he can keep his mouth shut. And if not him, then Claudia.

Not that it matters to me exactly who does it. Just as long as it gets done and the painting ends up destroyed.

As for me, I do not really intend to stick around and see what happens. I already got the noose around my neck and any minute now I will be stepping off the same chair that Jane used.

And it is such a perfect day to do it, too.

November 2.

The Day of the Dead.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Casa de Cambio”

“There it is,” Rebecca pointed. “Right there on the corner.”

“C’mon, Becky,” said John. “We’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We don’t have time to stop right now.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea to cross the border at this time of year. The least we can do is take advantage of the best rates.”

“Yes, I know that. But can’t you at least wait until we cross the border before you start hitting the casas de cambios. They got them over there, too, you know.”

“Yes, I know that. But the rates are always better on the American side. Can’t I just get out here and go do my business while you go drive round the block?”

“I guess so. But they better not have a long line in there.”

“Don’t worry,” Rebecca said with a smile. “I’ll be back out as soon as possible.”

“That’s what you said the last time,” muttered John. But by that time, Rebecca had already disappeared inside the casa de cambio and there was no sight of her to be seen in the rear-view mirror.

Just as well, thought John. Rebecca always goes overboard when she goes shopping in Mexico so she might as well get the best rate for her money. Considering how bad the traffic was today, though, he hoped that her rate was a pretty darn good one.

Rebecca was already outside by the time John had made it through the maze of one-way cobblestone streets which constituted a typical Laredo “drive around the block.” She smiled and waved at him. John did not bother to wave back.

“That was fast,” he said as she got in.

“Well, they weren’t really changing dollars today,” she said. “Sorry.”

“No problem. What were they changing? Krugerrands?”

“Can’t you tell?” Rebecca pointed. “My eyes are now brown and my nose is no longer a pug. Doesn’t that give you a clue?”

John nearly broke an axle in his haste to get back to the casa de cambio. However, the person who had been his wife was no longer inside. No one was. The whole place was just an empty shell of a building with a sign on the outside.

By the time he got back to the car, the woman he had thought to be Rebecca was still patiently waiting for him.

It wasn’t until he stopped at a Chevron station on the north side of town that he finally heard the ticking noises that the Laredo traffic had drowned out before. Needless to say, they were not coming from the engine.

Or his watch.

“How do I get her back?” he asked after a long while.

“You don’t,” the thing that looked like Becky said. “Unless, of course, you have something that you wish to exchange in her place.”

Like a soul, perhaps, he thought. Or a little finger. Maybe even a foreskin. Somehow, he doubted that the people who took Becky also took checks.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Christina’s World”

In a museum near my current house, there is a copy of the famous Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s World. I look at the painting and see a young girl staring at a farmhouse. Judging from her posture, it is difficult to say whether she is attempting to crawl toward or away from it. The artist gives us no clues.

Afterward, I drive through the neighborhood where I had spent my childhood and stop by the house where I no longer live.

I gaze at my old house and note with sorrow the boarded-up windows and the recently-painted graffiti. I blame it all on the way the neighborhood has changed and I indulge myself in a spate of forbidden racism, only to start at a sudden noise. I look up to see a small dark-faced boy peering down at me through a broken window pane. But there are no windows in the house anymore. They’re all boarded up.

I describe the incident to my cousin Roberto.

“Of course, you imagined it,” he says.

“Of course,” I say. “But for a moment, I could have sworn the little boy in the window looked like you.”

We both laugh at this point. It is a joyous laughter the type shared by close friends who just happen to be related by blood or marriage.

Then my husband enters the room and the mood soon changes. Roberto’s wife enters soon after.

***********************************************************

There is an old picture in my mother’s family album. A little blonde girl is shying away from the camera and above her shoulder a dark-faced boy stares defiantly into the camera lens. The dark-faced boy is Roberto. The girl, of course, is me. But I should not speak of these things.

***********************************************************

My full name is Maria Christina Fuentes, but my Anglo friends usually call me Chris. My cousin Lupe envies me for having access to an Anglo Christian name. She also envies me my fair complexion and blonde hair.

“The girls in school always made fun of me,” she said. “One girl even said I must be part-Negro.”

In the sixth grade, she wished she had a picture of me to prove that not her relatives were dark. She did not tell me this until she was thirty.

All through school, I had the exact opposite problem. I had a Spanish surname but no apparent physical right to it. I envied my dark-haired cousin Roberto who was so sure of his identity. He carried himself with the grace of a Latin dancer. If only I looked like his sisters, I’d think to myself, I’d be perfect.

One time we were visiting Roberto’s house and I was staying in a room upstairs. One afternoon, I discovered that I felt good to touch myself in a certain way. I was taking advantage of this discovery when I heard a knock on the door. It was Roberto.

“Everyone’s ready to jump in the pool,” he said, peering around the door. “Do you want to come?”

Still ashamed of the part of me I hid with a blanket, I said no.

“Very well,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “If there’s anything else…”

He seemed reluctant to leave for some reason. I was reluctant to have him stay.

“Please leave,” I said.

There seemed to be a hurt expression in his eyes, but he left.

Three years later, he introduced me to the girl he was going to marry after graduation.

For some reason, I expected her to be blonde. She wasn’t. Roberto didn’t marry a blonde until his third marriage…

***********************************************************

Christina crawls toward the farmhouse, but she is scared to enter. It is dangerous to enter, she is told, and she must crawl away. But she does not want to.

Why is that I wonder?

If she is going toward it, why is there not more yearning in her expression? If she is leaving, why does she stare so intently in the opposite direction?

***********************************************************

I used to have a thing for dark-skinned boys. I had the strongest crush on a black Irish boy in my CCD class and another on a Puerto Rican in my high school Spanish class. I used to be flattered by the way the Arab students in college seemed so impressed by my blonde hair. I dared not tell them that I, too, was stunned by their looks.

I finally married an Anglo, but in the end, we broke up. He cheated on me, receiving calls from women who were inevitably shorter and uglier than me, proving mere looks have little to do with mere sex appeal.

I told myself that I had made a mistake marrying an Anglo and resolved to look for the exact opposite.

My Aunt Claudia tried to introduce me to a Mexican boy she knew, but I got nervous and spilled wine on my dress. Afterwards, I was too embarrassed until my cousin Roberto talked me into going out onto the dance floor. It was the loveliest moment of my life.

On the way back to the table, I was tempted to kiss him, but I knew his wife would be jealous if he did. So I kissed his older brother Martin, who promptly frowned and gave me an icy glare.

I am currently married to my second husband -- a Cuban. He is a kind and gentle man and he has given me three children. I am beginning to acknowledge the fact that I’m destined to spend the rest of my life with him, and if by some chance, Roberto and I end up simultaneously widowed or divorced, we’ll probably be too old to consummate a legal marriage. Perhaps it is just as well. Any children borne of such a marriage would undoubtedly be deformed and neither of us would want that to happen.

Yet old feelings don’t die. Roberto still brings a smile to my lips and I his when all else fails.

There is another thing to note as well. One day when I was carrying my third child, I drove by the old house and noticed that it was still boarded up. I saw someone staring down at me from an upper-story window. It was my dark-skinned friend again and this time he had a little blonde girl with him.

I was glad then that the front door had been boarded up as well or else I might have been tempted to go after them. As it was, I drove away from there as fast as I dared.

***********************************************************

The house that Christina stares at in the painting is a tempting refuge, but she dares not enter. Someday she might, but just not yet. I wish the artist had come out with a second painting which resolved the situation once and for all.

But he did not.

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.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Separation”

“I’m sure glad my parents aren’t divorced,” said Timmy.

David ignored him, intent on the toy soldiers.

In the next room, his mom cradled the phone like an expectant lover. “No, I haven’t heard from him in months. No child support, either. Just like the bum.”

Mom had worked hard since Dad left. First as a secretary, then as a bookkeeper. Eventually she became a C.P.A. Otherwise, she spent almost all her spare time in the garden.

“No, I don’t intend to sell the house,” she said to her friend. “Just because Doug shirked his responsibilities doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

One afternoon last week, Dad had showed up at the patio door, looking very pale. David had ran to let him in, but he was gone by the time he got there. David had then went outside, but no one was there.

Later that same day, he had told Mom. She turned pale.

“What did he say?” she had said.

“Nothing.” David had told her. “He just looked sad.”

The next time he mentioned it, Mom bawled him out for lying.

“Don’t you believe me?” said David.

“David, your father left for good,” she said. “He’s not coming back. You have to believe that.”

“Then why does he keep showing up?”

One night, Dad came to the window. He beckoned to him.

David followed him outside to the garden. Dad handed him a garden trowel and told him to start digging.

David didn’t want to. He would be destroying Mom’s favorite spot. But Dad insisted.

A few feet down, David came across a hand bearing Dad’s ring.

He looked up, but Dad was not there.

***********************************************************

“They‘re really quiet in the morning and always trying to outstare each other,” said Timmy of his parents. “But at least they‘re not talking divorce. I can‘t imagine anything worse than that.”

“I can,” said David quietly.

He said nothing more.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Really Cool Air”

(A story I wrote several Octobers ago)

The AC was up high, just like he expected. Very high. In a place like this, cold temperatures didn’t surprise him, but he did wish the management had made allowances for the occasional human visitor. As it was, he almost expected to see his breath every time he exhaled.

All the windows in the place were covered with tinted glass and every other corner was covered in shadow. The bartender gave him one of those odd looks as if he was the type of ghoulish tourist who would deliberately seek out a place like this.

He kept telling himself he had a legitimate reason to be here. Then he saw her.

“About time you showed up,” she said. She was dressed in black, of course. And seated at the bar. Even in this dim light, she seemed pale. But oddly enough, she wasn’t shivering even though her arms were bare and her silk blouse and leather skirt way too revealing.

“How about the two of us get a booth at the back?” she said.

“How about we not?”

“So it’s going to be like that.”

“Our parents want you home, Karen.”

“Of course they do. And the moon is made of green cheese.”

“No, seriously,” he said. “They told me to come get you. All is forgiven, they said. You can come home any time you want.”

She smiled. “Suppose I don’t want?”

“What do you mean?”

“I like it here. The temperature’s just right, the sun is not always shining in my face. I can virtually live here if I wanted. In a manner of speaking.”

He frowned. “The accident wasn’t your fault. They know that now.”

“Now,” she giggled. “They know that now. Of course it doesn’t help much that they know it now.”

She smiled and sipped at her drink. “Antifreeze,” she said, pointing at the clear liquid in her glass.

“Just come home, please, Karen,” he said. “I already said they forgive you. You know how rarely Mom and Dad do that.”

“Well, maybe they forgive me but I don’t necessarily forgive them.” She took another sip.

“You can’t stay away forever, you know.”

“I don’t have to,” she said. “Mom and Dad are getting old. In a couple of decades, they’ll be gone. I can wait till then. And then I’ll come home.”

“That’s pretty cold.”

“Hey, watch the puns.”

“No, seriously. It’s not just Mom and Dad who need you. I need you, too. You’re my sister. You belong at home.”

“I belong somewhere else, you mean,” she said. “Besides, I’m not your sister. You said so yourself. I look like your sister. I talk like your sister. I even think like your sister. But I’m not your sister. Not really. Not since the accident.”

“For the last time—“

She interrupted. “Your sister died in that accident. And she was glad to be dead. She hated living at home. Never having any friends. Never having any love. She had one chance at freedom and she took it. And of course, your parents had to screw even that much up.”

“But they saved you.”

“No, they did not save me. They saved something that looked like me. The me I used to be died in that accident. I’m no longer here anymore. You just think I am.”

“Please come home.”

“Someday,” she said. “When I think I’m ready.”

He could grab her, he thought. He could grab her and force her to come with him.

But then she really would hate him—-far more than she did now. And he couldn’t live with that.

Besides, he thought, as he walked away from the bar, it’s not really her. Just something that looked like her. She said so herself.

As he started toward the door, a woman came in. She was still reeling from her time in the sun and it was obvious that she craved the cold and the shadows. She smelled of the stuff he had remembered smelling at grandma’s funeral. She looked darn good and it was all he could do to look away.

He walked out into the harsh sunlight and told himself he would never come back to this place. And he wouldn’t, he promised himself.

At least, not while he was alive.

Cuentos de Mi Id I, II and III (Stories of My Id I, II and III)

“A Day in the Glamorous Life of an Entertainer”
“A Scream Within a Scream”
“A Specter Is Haunting Gotham”
“After the Apocalypse”
“Balcony Scene”
“Blanca”
“Bloodwaters”
“Caged”
“Casa de Cambio”
“Christina's World”
"Dawn at Dusk"
“Does the Word Morlock Mean Anything to You?”
“Dragon Winter”
“Eating Disorders”
“Final Vengeance”
“Ghost”
“I Don't Want to Start Any Blasphemous Rumors, But I Think That the Muse Has Got a Sick Sense of Humor”
"It's a Good Strife"
"It's a Wonderful Life: An Alternative Ending"
“King Kong: An Alternative Ending”
“Love Among the Runes”
“Love in Bain”
“Mariana: Warrior Film Critic”
“Overheard at the Door of a Cottage on the Shore of a Dark Scottish Lake”
“Really Cool Air”
“Skeleton Girl”
“Suburbia”
“The Aftermath”
“The Appointment”
“The Beckoning Dark One”
“The Chamber”
“The Dark Angels”
“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”
"The Funeral"
“The Girls of Winter”
“The Harrowing”
"The Job Interview"
“The Last Day of Summer”
“The Liar”
“The Living”
“The Meeting”
“The Mission”
“The Mourning After”
“The November Country”
“The Second Time”
“The Separation”
“The Surprise Party”
“The Tocayo”
“The Ultimate Monster”
“To Taste the Flesh Not Yet Deceased”
“Victor”
“Werewives of London”

Cuento de Mi Id

“Dragon Winter”

December. The month when faces redden and fingers bleed. It is then that the were-dragons first appear, trailing vapors from their open mouths like steam flowing from a locomotive.

All month long, they have tried to suppress the change with lotions and creams, but it is no good. The scales still appear.

On the day before Christmas, one can see them running through the snow, chasing or perhaps being chased by invisible adversaries.

When they finally reach a private spot in the wilderness, they strip off their clothing and abandon their human forms like empty egg shells.

Dragons are warm-blooded creatures; any paleontologist will tell you so. They fear not the cold for they possess a far greater heat within.

Some were-dragons sink into dormancy, choosing to hibernate till spring when they will regain their normal form. Others choose to use their talents in other ways. Darker ways. Many a tale is told in many a land and many a time about the deeds of the two-legged dragons. Some say they even challenge the sun.

It is a contest they cannot win, of course, and yet each year, the summer grows shorter and the winter grows longer.

The Norsemen believed that a wolf would someday devour the sun. They were wrong.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Suburbia”

Life in the suburbs! It was hell, I say. Sheer hell.

Ah, for the good old days of the Detroit slums where all one had to worry about street gangs and race riots. I much rather be stared at by the same Detroit cop who beat the hell out of my less law-abiding buddies than have to go through the sheer soul-crushing horror you have to go through in suburbia.

I much rather work for hours in a noisy, dirty assembly line than to actually have to work with my mind for some ad agency. At least, on the line, you're spared the chore of having to think all the time. In fact, the job goes a lot better if you don't.

And the conformity. Egad! Much better to live in the type of bad neighborhood where you get shot for wearing the wrong color jacket than to have to work in one of those offices where they have a dang dress code. Don't they realize how torturous it is to have to wear a neck tie?

But what do today's kids know? They have no idea what hell we had to go through in the days of endless prosperity. And thanks to the current administration, they never will.