Silent Island

by Pablo Poveda

  12

  I got off the bus when I reached downtown. I knew the area, the route, and even had the feeling of having spent the night at one of the neighboring apartments. I could not be sure, though; I had had many sprees over the years.

  During the trip, I called Blanca several times, but the damn voicemail kept popping up. I wondered what had happened during the time I was away. Thinking of her made me feel responsible for everything, but the guilt did not last much. She was an adult; she could take care of herself. Blanca reminded me of my past self. I used to have a similar drive, but it faded little by little with the harsh truths the profession revealed to me. I realized that it would not do any good to take one’s job too seriously, whether it was writing or cleaning tables at a bar. We had been taught since childhood that a job was a blessing. Over time, I realized that that was not the truth. I realized that there hardly ever was there any consequence if people skipped the rules. I lived in permanent stress, self-medicating against gastritis, tired and yet rushed by my profession — one that brought many problems and few satisfactions.

  Journalism was a profession for which I had not been born. I wanted to be a writer, just like so many other colleagues. And that was the underlying reason for us to be there; we knew that studying philology would be a far more ungrateful profession. Reporting on the news was the closest thing to writing stories there was, much like those football players who never give up and end up kicking a ball among plumbers, students, and doctors on Saturdays. However, with time, we will eventually throw the towel. That was me, a nearly thirty-something-year-old bent on writing stories for others to read, even if it were in a newspaper. The pride of seeing your name as the author of a column only lasts one day. Then, your name becomes a mere part of the layout, much like a white margin, a black line, or bold letters. Gabriel Caballero was but a group of letters that could have easily been any other. I remember my grandfather’s words when he asked me about my work for the first time.

  “When are you going to be on the television?” he asked.

  “When I kill someone, Grandpa,” I replied.

  He never asked again. Not him, nor anybody else. In their eyes, I had failed and would never wield a microphone nor have admirers asking for pictures in the street. The truth is that I preferred it that way. I refused to be known for the atrocities that I wrote, most of them forgotten from one day to the other, and many invisible to the eyes of the readers. The newspaper had become a glorified element of decor at bars and libraries, a complement for writers, snobs, and youngsters who discover Kerouac when they turn twenty and stay stunned for the rest of their lives. Newspapers were a prop to include in photographs, to stock the waiting rooms at restaurants and doctor practices. It was nothing more than a must-have when one finds themselves in need to say that there is nothing like having coffee at the terrace of a small-town café. Nonsense. Of course, there are better things. There have always been.

  My conflict was of a different kind — not paper versus paperless, nor that of postmodernist symbolism. I was about to lose the first and only formal job I had ever held, and somehow, I felt relieved yet scared shitless of the idea of starving. I had neglected my work completely, and everything else happening in my life was not helping my case to prevent Ortiz from getting fed up with me and signing my severance pay. I felt worried, sitting on the bus plastic seat. The driver gave sudden braking. I considered changing careers, but it was nothing more than gratuitous fantasies. I had an unfinished novel. And giving up was no option either. I had no external moral support whatsoever, I had not managed to win any contest, and publishers had gone the extra mile to send me rejection letters. I was in a big dilemma. Actually, killing someone might not be that dangerous if I knew how to watch my back, right? In prison, at least, I would have something to eat.

  There were few people left on the bus. An elderly woman looked me in the eye while she held a phone next to her ear. I could not hold her gaze and started to write a text message. Blanca was in danger. That is all I knew, and not because that lunatic had told me, but because Cornelius never instilled trust in me.

  The bus had gotten to my stop, I stopped and headed to the door. The woman looked at me from top to bottom.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, holding my gaze. Her legs were shaking. She seemed to have noticed my belt.

  “You should mind your business,” I told her. “This is a wild world.”

  The doors opened; I got off of the bus and walked on the sidewalk. As the bus drove away, I followed it with the eyes; the lady kept with her eyes fixed on me. Damn it, that woman gave me the creeps. I walked and took a deep breath. I approached the place. I waited several minutes. As soon as the last people entered, I walked covertly toward the entrance and crossed the threshold.

  * * *

  Darkness invaded the corridor in which I was. The lights were out, and flipping the switch made no difference. It was odd. The little light that entered from the street lampposts helped me guide myself in the dressing rooms. According to Violeta, that night, the Silent Brotherhood was not meeting for a worldly therapy session. A metallic sound echoed within the facilities; someone had pulled down the metal shutter at the entrance. There was a noise of keys and finally, a lock.

  I hid behind a column at the sight of human silhouettes approaching. Using my telephone’s screen to guide myself in the darkness was too risky. A lighter would not help either. Several people walked in the same direction, holding candles that they used to light up candelabra that hung from the walls. I took a look around the dressing room. The first thing that came to my mind was what that room was doing at a praying center, but I recalled it must have been a dojo in the past and deduced it was part of the facilities. It was a small room, like the fitting rooms of a department store, and comprised stalls with their respective fabric curtains.

  I snooped in the stalls and found women’s clothes, lingerie, and stockings; they were still warm and slightly moist from perspiration. I deduced that their owners had just taken them off. I spotted a chest of drawers next to a mirror and opened one. I could barely see anything because of the darkness. I forced my eyes to see something in that pitch darkness to no avail. I had to grope my way in the drawer. I touched something long, flexible, and made of rubber. It was cylindrical and slippery to the touch. It could not be alive, so I had nothing to fear. I pulled it out of the drawer and raised it high to see it under the scant light that bled in through the window. Then I saw it. It was huge, oily, and animal, black and imposing. That was the first time that I held one in my hands. A damn rubber dildo. A giant black silicone phallus that wriggled like an animal trying to release itself from its captor’s grip. I was holding a fucking jumping penis in my hand.

  I was taken by surprise by the sight of it and unintentionally dropped it to the floor. Immediately, I hid in a changing stall when two people entered with a candle.

  Luckily, they missed me; that was a close call.

  “Take it easy, just relax,” said one girl. For her voice, I deduced she must be about thirty. “The first time is always the most difficult.”

  “I know,” the other girl replied. Her voice sounded younger, possibly a college student. “I just have never done it... that way. I’ve heard it hurts a lot.”

  “Pain only lasts so long,” said the older one. “It isn’t that big of a deal. Aren’t you excited?”

  “I guess,” the younger one replied. I was making my best effort not to snort and give myself away. “Have you done it all?”

  “I have,” she replied. “As long as it is not too kinky, of course.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I object to... you know...”

  “What?”

  “Being shat on,” the older one answered embarrassedly. “I never thought I’d say it out loud.”

  Someone took a step in my direction. I could not see anything from my position. I thought I had been discovered.

  “What is this?” the
younger girl said and knelt to pick up the dildo from the floor. “Somebody must have forgotten it. Do you think we’ll need it?”

  “We might,” said the older woman jokingly. From down the corridor, some music started playing. “Come! It’s about to start.”

  Both women disappeared. I did not understand anything. I walked out of the dressing room and looked around in complete darkness again.

  Fumbling my way around, I came across some robes, but they were not white nor black like the ones I had seen before. The darkness prevented me from seeing the color clearly, and the light from the street did not help much. I pulled out my phone, and the glow of the screen illuminated a small area around me.

  On a table, there were red and blue robes. Damn it, I did not know what to choose, but it was clear that I could not join the ceremony in the clothes I was wearing. It was not difficult to understand that each color robe was meant for a specific gender. What color was more feminine? And which one more masculine? A big problem. What if I got it wrong? I would not make it out of there alive, or at least intact.

  Next to the robes there were white masks. They were cheap plastic masks. I did not understand what they represented but knew I had to wear one.

  Suddenly, I thought of something. It did not make sense, but in and of itself, it was the most logical thing that came to my mind. I had to take the risk. At our encounter, Violeta wore a black dress. A dark color. The first time I was there, in the session, Cornelius was the only wearing a black robe. Violeta imitated Cornelius as his antithesis. It could not be more obvious that Violeta would tell women to wear blue, a color that represented temperance, leaving passion, lust, and submission to men. That was her revenge.

  I was not convinced by that theory, but I decided not to ponder too much about it and grabbed a red robe. Naked from head to toe, I got into the robe, placed a white mask on my face, and pulled the hood over my head. I left the dressing room, holding the dagger under my garment.

  As I walked along the candle trail in the hallway, I felt the fresh perfume of the women who were about to surrender to the lustful instincts of their male counterparts. Brute savages who were going to use them to fulfill their most basic needs. It smelled of intoxicating perfumes that spoke volumes about their personalities. Then, out of nowhere, I froze when I sensed Blanca Desastres’s perfume in the air. That smell, that for days, impregnated every room in her apartment, especially the one where she slept. Everything smelled like her. It was impossible to forget. Knowing that she was there reassured me, and seeing a girl dressed in blue helped me relax.

  The candles lead to the big room, the gymnasium where we had attended the session days before. Although I knew the place, in the dark, it was a real maze.

  I wondered where Clara, Violeta, and Cornelius were. My mind started rambling about when the music ended, and I hid in a nook.

  The room was illuminated by the light that a circle of candles around a paschal candle radiated. The attendees conformed a circle divided into two colors. On one side of the circle were the men; on the other, the women. The circle of people was a representation of the disk of power, the symbol of God, silence, all and nothing. Looking at each one of the attendees, I recognized one of them. Her tanned skin, her height, the thinness of her fingers, and a red nail polish — that she must have forgotten to remove — could only belong to one person: Violeta. She was at one side of the room and seemed to be looking for someone with the gaze. The rest of the girls looked identical under the robes. I could not tell who Blanca was.

  In a situation like this, one cannot help wondering how they ended up like this. But one will not do it while they are in ecstasy, experiencing absolute euphoria. So, there I was — hidden behind the curtain, aware of the cold dagger against my skin and my heart racing — ready to protect a woman who was about to partake in a ceremonial orgy. I was spellbound and I had no remedy.

  The paschal candle went out for no apparent reason in the middle of the room. Then, Cornelius made an entrance with a medallion on his chest. It was a golden circle like the one I could see everywhere. I thought the cheesy theatrical entrance deserved a round of applause. It was yet another one of the cheap tricks that he loved to perform for his adepts. He wore a robe much like the rest of the men; he even hid his face behind the same white mask, something that made me nervous. I had to act quickly and could not afford to make a mistake.

  Only God knew what was to happen.

  Cornelius ambled to the center of the room and bowed to the attendees. He pronounced no word and simply looked at each one directly in the eye. When he had made eye contact with each one of them, he zeroed on a girl. I recognized her. It was Blanca. It could only be her.

  He beckoned one of the men with a gesture. From his neck hung another medallion, different from the leader’s. He seemed to be an initiate. Cornelius earned his loyalty by inviting him to choose.

  The man signaled at Blanca.

  Cornelius gestured at her, indicating her to wait. The initiate looked at his leader, reconsidered, and proceeded to choose the next girl. She stepped forward. The rest knelt on the floor the way we had during the first session. The girl and the man got naked in the center of the circle of light next to Cornelius. The man had a hairy chest, a prominent belly, and a rough and thick member. Her body was average, not chubby nor skinny; her breasts were large and slightly saggy. We were surrounded by darkness. The rest of the attendees merged in it.

  Suddenly, they started groping and sniffing each other’s bodies like animals, mutually getting aroused in front of everybody else. Apparently, that was a test of submission, the ultimate test to become part of the brotherhood. The girl began to moan like an animal; he joined her vocalizations little after. They touched each other’s genitals and got carried away on the floor. On her knees, she performed fellatio on him while he stuck his fingers in her and massaged her clitoris. He took her by the waist and penetrated her. Their moaning got louder. Their sweaty bodies glistened under the lights and the heat from the flames of the candles around them. The girl placed her hands on the floor to endure his thrusts. She was about to orgasm when the man pulled out his member and decided to sodomize her.

  “Don’t! Not there!” the girl begged.

  I recognized that voice from the dressing room.

  Cornelius did not interfere, in fact, he seemed to find arousal at the sight of all that.

  The man pretended to listen to her but dismissed her pleads and proceeded to introduce his enormous penis into the girl’s rectum.

  “Argh! Fuck! God! Argh!” she yelled.

  Cornelius smiled.

  The man, covered in sweat, thrust several times, and then he pulled out his member and ejaculated, leaving a long trail of semen on her back.

  Despondent, she panted on the floor.

  As though they had just partaken in a boxing match, Cornelius walked to the man, who stood upright, poised, and took the girl by the arm to help her up. He hugged them both and told them to hug each other.

  The leader turned to the rest.

  “Amor vincit omnia,” he said, aloud.

  Everybody else repeated.

  My heart raced even faster.

  “Amor vincit omnia!” he repeated.

  The arteries in my body bulged. Something awoke inside me, pure rage, a visceral hatred. I did not quite understand what was happening to me. I could not stand him repeating that phrase, especially after seeing that spectacle. His smile disgusted me, and now more than ever, I found his persona appalling.

  “Amor vincit omnia!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and the rest followed as though they were giving him an ovation. Their arms aloft, voices coming out of the void, directly from Hades. Gathered there, they rose to encounter one another. Men and women ran to one another to start fornication right there. The attendees were under a trance of lust and arousal. Cornelius stood in the middle of the group with his arms in the air, smiling among the crowd. They had already forgotten the previous spectacle and unl
eashed their most primal instincts. Men and women got naked with no shyness whatsoever and began to copulate with whoever was available in front of them. One woman was being penetrated by two men. A group of five people sought shelter in the darkness.

  The murmur grew into a fog of moaning, groans, and animal bellows. Cornelius had turned those people into flesh predators, enhancing their desire to the highest. Gloating in his vainglory, he stepped toward the only girl that remained disengaged from that carnal feast — Blanca. Violeta was nowhere to be seen. Now was my time. I knew it. I did not care if they realized I was an impostor. I just wanted to stab him with all my strength, finish him, skewer him until he bled to death, turn him into a bloody mass that no one could believe was once a living being.

  I wanted him to pay for everything he had done to those people.

  I held on to the hilt of the dagger when a force hurled me against the back of the room. I fell to the floor; the knife slipped on the floor and disappeared in the dark. A man had done it, I smelled his odor of sweat. I kicked him in the leg, but he was faster and stronger than me.

  “Stop!” he said, throwing me to the floor again.

  “I’ll break your face, son of a” — I was about to pounce at him when I saw his face — “Rojo... Officer Rojo?”

  “Quiet!” The officer wore a red robe like mine. “Are you here by yourself? Let’s get out of here Gabriel. It’s for the best.”

  “No!” I replied and turned to the couple. “I can’t leave Blanca behind.”

  “Blanca?”

  “The girl.”

  The police grabbed me by the arm. I tried to resist. We struggled for several seconds until he punched me in the stomach.

  “Son of a bitch!” I gasped.

  Cornelius kissed Blanca on the lips and grabbed her hand, leading her away.

  “Gabriel,” he said, holding me by the arms. “If we get in there, we’ll spoil the investigation.”

  I tried to get away from him, no matter what he said.