16. Fidelity #3
His hands roamed—over her body, down her arms, over her cheeks—her blouse tugging. Time was moving forward. She could feel herself moving in unison with him. She was kissing him back now. Her hand was at the nape of his neck. Her mouth was opening. Her hand was on his hip.
Susana was doing something now.
She was doing something wrong.
All the shame flooded into her. This was bad. How could she? What would they thi—?
She shoved the thoughts away. Fuck them.
But her thoughts were replaced by a whistling sound that seemed to come out of nowhere, then disappeared, making her doubt its existence. It was there. Wasn’t it?
“Yes,” he mumbled under his breath, hastily, between kisses, his fingers darting over her blouse, unbuttoning it quickly, expertly. “God, I’ve wanted this so badly—”
She’d wanted it, too. She knew this. From the moment she’d seen him on the field, as he ushered that child—not his son—toward the coaches.
From the moment they’d exchanged a warm smile and sidled up next to each other.
She’d let the fantasy progress. Let the narrative of this pretend reality unfurl.
It helped pass the time, she thought then.
Something to think about. Something to pine over.
While everything else felt staid and stiff and boring.
But this was something else.
And she was prepared.
She watched his eyes—watched them shift from blue-green to something red, something…
inhuman. Felt his fingers grow sharper. Felt them slice into her bare arms. Lightly at first. Not drawing blood.
Her yelp of pain sudden but also pleasant.
Her tongue ran over his teeth—the incisors sharper now, pointed and hungry.
And the whistling. She could track it. It was coming from him.
“I’m so glad you came inside,” he said. That powerful, hoarse voice was gone now, replaced by something lighter, desperate, and ethereal, unlike anything Susana had ever heard. “I’m so glad…”
But she’d anticipated this.
She pulled the blade out. Short, stout, silver—like the one in the story.
The one about the girl, tracked by the ghost. El Silbón.
The Whistling Man. A selfish prick who’d killed his own father because he didn’t do as he’d asked.
A self-centered man in a world full of self-centered men.
Just another dude desperate to get what he wanted, no matter the cost.
Did it matter that at some point, she’d wanted this, too? Susana thought. The taste of something—someone—different? The excitement of the chase? The spark of flirting and talking and breathing in someone else? Of a fantasy inching toward reality?
The whistling was interrupted by the schlorp sound as the blade slid into Joe’s midsection. His red eyes widened in shock. The whites were gone, replaced by a gray that felt unnerving to Susana, even now, weeks later. His ivory-white teeth bared in anger.
She twisted the blade, just like the book had said.
The whistling grew louder—shaky, though, afraid.
The book said this would happen, too. She thought back to the dusty volume—Hechizos Imortales—she’d found in the box in the garage from Mami’s house.
The box she hadn’t opened in years. The one she’d avoided.
The book she remembered—buried in the back of Mami’s closet, under the coats and dresses and shoes, a sheen of dust covering it.
Susana remembered pulling it out, blowing the coat of dust away, her tiny fingers turning the aging pages.
She didn’t understand it then. She didn’t really understand it now.
But she knew enough. Her mind raced back to that night—the wine coursing through her.
The bracelet tinkling in her fingertips.
The picture on the Image Search. The flash of memory.
The click of the garage lightbulb. The dust and sweat as she moved boxes, making her way toward the back wall.
The last box. The rough marker across the top: LIbrOS IMPORTANTES.
Susana leaned forward, feeling Joe—or the creature that was Joe—wince at the motion.
The blade was so deep in him that she could feel his blood caking on her hand, her fingers pushing into the wound.
She could feel inside him—his skin torn open and squishing around her fingertips as the blade turned.
She thought she could hear his insides tearing, the blade spinning inside him like some kind of torturous fan, gutting him while he watched.
He was crying. The tears red, black almost, streaming down his sharper features, over his gray, ashen skin.
The cologne was gone—the smell replaced by something coppery and toxic.
She placed her lips on his and felt it—an energy, like a gust of wind—blowing through him and into her.
She let it fill her body, felt the energy crackle and simmer across her skin.
Then his limp frame hit the ground with a low thud.
Susana wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, blood smearing over her face.
She looked down at it. More red than skin.
She smiled and instinctively licked her lips.
She then watched as Joe’s body seemed to recede, folding in on itself, his form fading into the cheap carpet of his pathetic little bachelor pad—growing smaller, as if melting or turning to dust. He didn’t matter anymore. Not much did, really.
Susana felt different. Her vision sharper. She couldn’t hear the whistling anymore, but she could hear so much more: the rustling of branches in a squirrel’s nest. The cursing of a driver two blocks away. A child screaming in a car seat down on Bird Road.
Her skin tingled. She looked down at her hands—saw the tiny bracelet, sunlight glinting off it from the bay windows in the main room.
She tightened her fingers around the bracelet, making a fist. She felt the metal bend and pull. She opened her hand. The bracelet was gone, replaced by a gold dusty paste. She let it drop to the floor. Joe was gone, too. A smear of red and black the only sign that something happened here.
“Yo soy la próxima,” she said, loud enough for only her to hear.
Susana Martinez smiled. She straightened her blouse and turned around. She opened the flimsy door and walked out.
As she made her way to her car, parked behind Joe’s forgettable Hyundai, she started to whistle.