20. V.
V.
MORENA
I stepped into Carmen’s house. Lucia sat at the kitchen table with a steaming cup in her hands. That damn tea, I thought. It smelled of chamomile, but something else was in it. Carmen stood by her side, her fingers on Lucia’s shoulder.
Maybe she was dosing her, making her believe she was the same woman she had always been, the woman someone could love. That was one of the things I didn’t regret: I never loved before, never fell in love.
Maybe that’s why I became the worst story whispered about me. My heart had burned and turned to ash the night I died.
I knocked at the door and let the sound fall into the kitchen like a coin. “Oh, Dona Carmen,” I said.
She moved to Lucia as if seeking proof that this moment was real. She looked at me the way people look at accidents, trying to guess which parts they will be okay to solve.
“Morena,” she breathed. “How?”
“Surprise,” I said, and let a laugh push the edges of the word. “I am all alive.” My laugh scraped. “Well, as alive as I can be,” I added with a tilt of my head.
I crossed the kitchen and closed the distance.
“Strange thing,” I said, stepping closer, “I’ve started to remember. You are not nearly as kind as you pretend to be.”
“Morena, mi vida,” she whispered. Her voice trembled. “If you spare me and Lucia, I will tell you where Maria is.”
“You want to trade,” I said, and something like appetite quickened in my chest. I came even closer, close enough to see the inside edge of her eye. “Fine. But one condition.”
She nodded.
“I will come back,” I said. “But first I want to visit Maria.”
“She’s at your father’s place,” Carmen answered, and the words fell out with a small stumble.
It didn’t take me long to find the mirror. I touched its cold frame, and the world shifted.
One breath and I was standing in the hallway of my family’s house.
The light was the same as I remembered. Maria moved through it in scrubs, shoulders bowed with the weight of a night shift, skin pale under fluorescent bulbs.
She had made it, I told myself; she had become a nurse, the thing I had always wanted to be.
She stepped into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and steam began to climb and blur the glass. I watched from the mirror as she undressed, towel at her waist. She glanced at her reflection, rubbed at her eyes, and for a moment she looked alone and raw and entirely human.
Something shifted behind the glass, but she blamed it on the night shift and rubbed her eyes again.
The faucet hissed, water spilling steadily over the rim of the porcelain sink. Something was choking the drain. At first, she thought it was just a strand of hair, a black one. Then more appeared, twisting together into a thick braid.
She leaned closer. The smell rising from the water was sweet and rotten. The braid trembled, and she reached for it. When her fingers closed, the hair was warm. She pulled, expecting it to come loose, but the braid only kept rising from the darkness below, pulsing.
Then it pulled back.
Her face slammed into the mirror with a sharp crack. The glass rippled, and hands pushed through the surface and tangled in her scalp. They were my hands.
Her scream echoed against the tiles. Her reflection warped, and I stepped out from it, dragging my own face into the world where hers should have been.
“Hello, sister.” I pressed my mouth close to her ear. “You look so old.” I giggled. “Do you want to play a game? Hide and seek?”
Her entire body shook. When I loosened my grip, her arms fell useless at her sides, drained of color. The sink gurgled. It vomited up blood that poured over the sink and streamed across her cheeks.
She tore away from me and stumbled into the hallway. Her fists hammered every door, but each one stayed locked. The knobs did not move. I was holding them closed.
“Did you miss me?” My words followed her, floating through the walls.
I climbed from the mirror frame. My body twisted as I forced it through, bones cracking as they bent the wrong way. My ribs opened like rotten wood splitting apart. Every step broke something new, but I kept laughing, high, delighted at her terror.
The hallway lights flickered until the shadows seemed to breathe. I was at the far end, head tilted, my smile too wide, stretching the skin of my face until it threatened to tear.
She slid down the last door, her back pressed hard against it. Her sobs shook her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, as though she thought that if she could not see me, I might not exist.
I leaned close, our faces almost touching, and screamed into her. The sound was not a sound at all but a vibration that pierced her bones. Her ears split open. Blood trickled down her neck. She covered them with her hands, begging with her eyes closed.
“No more,” she gasped. “Please. No more.”
“No more?” I laughed. 1 “Qué pasa? ?Te duele mucho, hermanita?”
The laugh tunneled down her spine. I let it curl over the back of my tongue, then stopped and found her hair with my fingers. I twisted until the braid tightened around my fingers.
“Did it hurt when you stabbed me?” I asked. “Did it hurt when you burned me?” Her scream filled the kitchen. I began to drag her, my nails raking tile, and she fell against my knees as we went toward the open oven.
The oven was wide enough, already warm. I hooked the metal rail with my claws and took it out. I jammed her head down so the back of her skull met the hot metal.
“I heard you like it medium rare,” I said. “I like mine crispy to the bone.”
“No, please,” she sobbed. “I have a son.”
“I know,” I said. My words were calm. “I had taken his eyes already,”
Her whine turned to a sound that had nothing to do with language.
But I simply didn’t care. I folded her, curved her hands until knee met elbow, and her bones breaking like they were made of glass, and I shoved her in the oven until she fit. Tears carved tracks through the blood on her face.
I closed the oven door, holding it with my palm. I found a soup spoon, the cheap metal that is easily bendable, and I twisted it around the oven handle until the door wouldn’t open.
I clapped my hands once, and I set the oven to 250 degrees, and then I tapped the glass with a claw while hot metal touched her skin.
2 “Por favor,” I laughed. “No grites tan fuerte. Los vecinos pueden oírte.” I walked away and left the sound of her screams filling the house.
This, I told myself, was not what I wanted. I wanted to hurt her even more, but I was in a hurry. I wanted to find more about El Trece. So I stood in front of a mirror with my hand towards it.
I stood in front of the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman reflected back. For a moment, I considered remorse, then I did not. I stepped through the glass.
I came up to Carmen’s house, but not into her kitchen.
Matteo stood at the top of the stairs. He didn’t speak.
He simply appeared in front of me, he reached down, grabbed my hair, and shoved me back toward the mirror.
We went through together and landed in a fifth circle of hell with chains all around us.
He shoved me against the wall. My ribs found the stones, and I felt nothing. Pain shot up my arms and then left, leaving only the cold.
“I told you,” he said. “Their souls were mine to collect.”
Then he took a chain and wrapped it around my throat. My lungs punched for air and couldn’t find it. I choked out, “I regret nothing,” because that was the story that kept me afloat.
“Oh no?” He locked my wrists in metal cuffs and snapped them closed. He showed his teeth in a grin.
“You will be fucking sorry,” he said.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry, always sorry,” I said, laughing. “I feel nothing, Matteo. Can’t you see? Everyone broke me. You will have to kill me all over again if you think I will be sorry.”
He leaned close enough that I felt a shiver creeping in. “We will see,” he whispered, and the promise in his voice was worse than any threat he had made so far.
1. What's up, sister, does it hurt?
2. Please, don't shout so loud. Neighbours might hear.