Am I going to be a ghost possessing a dead body?
“Something like that.”
A dead body? My body is dead and rotting around me and you want me to find men to have sex with me? This situation is going from nightmare to torure, and I’m desperate to understand and even more so to have this over with. I don’t want to be alive but dead. I don’t want to be a zombie.
“As long as you regularly feed, your body will live. Your wounds will heal. You will never fall ill. But you must feed.”
A vigilante sexual vampire. I’d shake my head if I could move. Fine. Just get me out of this!
My body jerks again, and it’s like I’ve been struck by lightning. Every part of me feels like it’s on fire, but I can move again. In point of fact, I’m writhing from the pain, but it’s movement. The door square door at my head opens with a yank, and I haul myself out. My legs and abdominal muscles are shaking so hard I feel like I’m coming undone. The angle and my lack of coordination conspire against me, and I fall out of the cooler. I land flat on my back, and the impact is like the feeling when the bullets hit me. I’m overcome by everything that’s happened and start screaming my head off until I can get a grip.
Nobody comes. I expect a morgue attendant or a nurse or a security guard or something to run into the room, but I’m all alone here with the enormity of dying and being brought back to kind-of life. I can’t hear my abuela and I can’t hear Santa Muerte. I’m on my own, lying on the floor of a Mexican morgue, dressed in the bloody clothes that I died in. I’m just glad they got to me before an autopsy was done.
The screaming is over, but the crying is just getting started. It’s strange, though, because there are no tears. I’m sobbing, and my heart feels torn in two by the unfairness and horror of what I’ve been through, but my eyes are dry. I put my hands over my face, and my skin feels different. Tight, maybe. Have I already started to decompose? The idea that I’ll be some hideous monster for all time is appalling to me.
“You will be beautiful,” Santa Muerte says.
I see her standing in the corner of the room, draped in a bridal gown with flowers and a veil on her head. She’s a skeleton one moment, then a woman in sugar skull makeup the next. She shifts back and forth until I’m dizzy from looking at her and I close my eyes.
“Nieta,” my grandmother says softly. She appears standing next to her saint, and I know what that means. My heart starts to break all over again.
“Abuela,” I sob. “Are you dead, too?”
“She traded her life for yours,” Santa Muerte tells me. I can’t read her tone, and it’s impossible to read the expression on a skull. “Don’t waste her gift.”
My stomach twists, and I realize that I’m hungry. So damned hungry.
“I will guide you. Obey the voice in your head and do as it tells you. It knows best.”
She glides toward me, sliding over the floor without taking a step, and puts her skeletal hand on my face.
“You will be my justice in an unjust world,” she tells me. “My Catrina. My active arm in this evil world.”
“I thought you were neutral,” I whisper. Her touch is like ice.
“There is only so much even a saint can bear.”
She pulls back and gestures toward one of the silver autopsy tables. Folded black clothes and black thigh-high boots appear there, along with three silver knives.
“Leave the blood of your former life behind,” Santa Muerte tells me. “This is your new life.”
She vanishes, and I’m left standing in the darkness, trembling. My stomach pangs are nearly unbearable.
A voice whispers in my head, and it’s not Santa Muerte’s, and it sure as hell isn’t mine. ~You need to feed.~
You mean I need to find someone to fuck.
~Yessss.~
I don’t like the hiss. There’s something malevolent in it, and I wonder what’s speaking to me.
Who are you?
The voice laughs. ~You may call me whatever you like. My true name is not yours to know.~
I run my hands through my hair, frustrated. “Santa Muerte, please. What is this thing? Who is in my head?”
~Think of me as a symbiote. We are united, and we will help one another.~
A symbiote? Like a parasite?
The voice laughs. ~But a beneficial one. I have the power of foresight, and I can guide your steps. What I lack is a physical body. I will help direct you to the guilty who need to be punished, and when you punish them, or when you feed from them, I will benefit.~
How?
It laughs again. ~You are not the only one who lives on the life force of others.~
Santa Muerte had said, “the demon is shackled to your will.” I’d thought she was being mysterious and metaphorical, but now I’m not so sure.
Are you a demon?
~My darling… we both are.~
I shudder. The voice in my head is sibilant and makes me feel cold and wet. If a sound could be clammy, this one is. My hunger seems to bring a coldness of its own with it, and I want to get out of my blood-soaked clothes. I don’t know if there’s anywhere to get clean or not.
~There’s a locker room. I’ll lead you.~
I’ve obviously never been here before, but I suddenly know exactly where to go, as familiar with the layout of this morgue as I am with my apartment. I find the locker room, and there’s a shower with a few thin towels, generic two-in-one shampoo and some sort of aloe-scented shower gel. I pull off my bloody clothes and stare at the massive holes, bigger on the front than in the back. I’ve heard the bullet exit wounds are larger than entrance wounds; I guess the bullets ripped all the way through me. Maybe that’s how they killed the other girl, too. She was between me and Steven. Thank God he’s okay.
At least I hope he’s okay.
I step into the shower and wash the blood away. It’s everywhere, even in my hair, probably from the way I was lying in a pool of it on the street. There’s gravel and sand stuck to the gore, and it takes forever to get clean. When I finally feel like I’ve washed away the evidence of my death, I step out and towel off.
There’s a mirror over the sink, and it’s foggy. I wipe the condensation away and hesitate before I look at my reflection, afraid to look in case I see a monster. Slowly, nervously, I raise my eyes.
My face is still my own, but it’s covered with the sort of makeup that’s worn during the Day of the Dead celebration. Black background with a white skull painted over it, colorful flowers across my forehead and around my eyes, whose lids are painted black. My lips are scarlet red.
This makeup shouldn’t still be on. I was in the shower forever, and I scrubbed my face repeatedly. I lean closer and touch my skin, and I realize that it’s not makeup at all.
This… this is my face. I expected to see Marisol, but instead La Catrina is staring back at me.
How am I going to go out in public like this? Sure, I can go more or less unnoticed during the holiday, but what about after it? What am I going to do then?
~What makes you think you’re meant to survive past All Soul’s Day? You have that much time to find the men who killed you and get your revenge.~
I heard what Santa Muerte said, so I know this quasi-life is only temporary. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I want to get the men who did this to me, yes, desperately so. But I don’t want to just drop dead on November 2nd. That’s prolonging my death until the same rotten ending. I don’t want to die.
The voice chuckles. ~Too late.~
I leave my bloody clothes in the bathroom trash and go back to the morgue to dress in what Santa Muerte gave me. I find a black minidress with a plunging neckline and criss-cross detail around the neck. The high-heeled boots reach up to mid-thigh, and there are chains around the ankles that look like they should ring like jingle bells but are completely silent. Each boot has a hidden sheath for the silver daggers. There’s another sheath inside the dress, right against my ribs. I don’t know what else to do, so I get dressed and put the knive
s into their little homes. There’s no underwear, but I guess as a sex vampire, that would just get in the way.
Jesus Christ. Give me strength.
Where do I go now? I ask the symbiotic demon. I can feel it now, coiled up like a snake in the pit of my stomach, but also stretched out along the length of my spine. I get the impression that if I could pull it out, it would be longer than I am tall. How can something with no body feel so corporeal? I’m confused and dismayed.
~I will take you to a man who needs to make amends.~
I walk out of the morgue like I own the place, following the map in my head. It’s as if I’ve worked here for years. The feeling of being deeply familiar with strange places will take some getting used to, but I have to admit that it’s a handy little skill. As I walk, I put my hand against my chest.
No heartbeat.
~Your pulse and breathing will return once you feed. You are depleted now, but when you’ve fed, you’ll seem as normal as any other woman.~
Give or take the makeup, right?
~You assume that everyone sees as you do.~
So nobody else will see this Catrina face?
~Not unless you choose to show them.~
How do I do that?
~You just decide. I’ll explain more later. For now… I will do it for you.~
My face tingles for a moment, and I find a window where I can see myself reflected. The night outside helps make the glass into an impromptu mirror, and I see my face - my Marisol face - looking back at me. I concentrate, my face tingles again, and La Catrina is staring out of the glass, looking even more spectral than before.
My last thought before I died goes through my mind again. This cannot be happening.
~Stop resisting,~ the voice scolds. ~You have been given a great gift. Try to be grateful.~
I feel another painful twist in my stomach, and I put my hands over the aching, gnawing emptiness in my gut. It’s as if that emptiness is in my soul.
~It is. You need to feed.~
I get a clear understanding of where I need to go and the path I need to take to get there. I walk out of the little hospital I’ve been in and start walking west, toward town. I can see the buildings of Sabinas hunkered down in the darkness, the lights in the windows twinkling like stars. It’s beautiful in a way that I’ve never thought that cityscapes could be. I’ve always preferred the natural world, but where there are lights, there are people, and my hunger and my demon are leading me in that direction.
I walk for a few miles, but my feet never get sore and I never get tired. If anything, I’m feeling driven to push forward, led by the burning ache in my belly. I can smell something sweet and rich on the wind, and I follow the scent.
~Yessss,~ the voice hisses.
I need to call it something, this passenger in my soul. I don’t want to give it a name, though, because that would make it all too real.
I end up walking through a dark side of town, a place where the street lights have been shot out and where there’s garbage and mangy stray dogs roaming around. The houses are little more than shacks, and this is obviously not where Sabinas’s money comes to live. Like all cities, I suppose, Sabinas has its bad neighborhoods to counterbalance the bright and shiny tourist areas.
There was a time that I would be afraid to walk through a place like this, especially dressed as provocatively as I am. Now it seems like there’s nothing worse that can happen to me, so I’m completely cavalier about my own safety. Something tells me that my passenger would find a way to get me out of any scrape I happen to get myself into. I’d rather not test that theory.
My mental map takes me around the corner to a little apartment block. A man is sitting on the concrete stoop, smoking a joint. Around him, displayed almost like movies projected onto clouds, I can see images of the things he’s done in his life.
He’s vile.
“Hey, baby. Nice tits,” he says.
His leer makes my stomach growl, and he laughs and grabs his cock.
“You hungry, baby? I could feed you.”
~His name is Luis Salvador, and he sells drugs for the Rojas Cartel,~ my demon tells me. ~Go ahead. Eat him.~
What? No! He’s disgusting.
~Exactly why he needs to die… are you Santa Muerte’s arm of justice or not?~
I pause, and then I’m not in control any longer. Under my parasite’s control, I sashay toward him.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty hungry. Would you feed me a big meal, Papi?”
“Too big for you,” he grins. “You’ll have to take it in pieces.”
~Sounds like a plan,~ it purrs.
My body walks forward, the sway of my hips exaggerated, until I’m standing over him, straddling his feet on the stoop. He tosses the joint aside and runs a hand up the inside of my leg, up to the spot where the boot meets my skin. He dips a finger inside, just barely missing the knife sheath, and tries to tickle me. My body doesn’t respond, but my face smiles.
It’s unnerving to be a passenger in my own body while the demon drives.
~Watch and learn,~ it tells me. ~You have to be able to feed on your own.~
The man tracks his fingers up farther, and my legs are spread enough that he can feel that I’m not wearing any panties. He gently rubs his finger against the crease between my lower lips.
“Come on, baby. You want it.”
“Pull it out. Show me what you got.”
He’s still grinning, but he takes a moment to look around, like he’s waiting for a camera crew or some of his friends to show up. He’s not being punked, though. He’s about to be killed.
I realize that I can’t wait to taste him, and it makes me sick.
The man unzips and pulls his turgid penis out of his pants. It’s fully erect, stubby and thick, and he displays it for me like it’s his prized possession, which it probably is. My face smiles, and I put my hands on his shoulders.
“Hold still, Papi. Tonight’s your lucky night.”
I crouch, lowering myself down onto him. He slides right in and his hands grip my waist as I start riding him. He’s too short for me to really bounce up and down on him, so I just drop down and start grinding. I’m shocked by how good it feels, and how much I need this. My fingers dig into his shoulders, and he grabs my hips to hold me still so he can thrust up into me. I oblige, my breath coming out in little gasps.
He doesn’t last long. His endurance is as short as his dick. He spurts into me, and I feel my body sucking it up, pulling his semen and the life force it contains high up inside me. The physical is transformed into the spiritual, and I can feel the energy racing up into my solar plexus. It starts to fill that aching hunger, just enough to blunt it, and I know that I need more.
~So take it.~
I suddenly realize that I’m back in control, and have probably been back in control from the moment he penetrated me. I’m not done with him yet.
He grins up at me with stained teeth, and I lean down to kiss him. I don’t know how I know what to do — it’s probably unspoken instruction from my passenger — but I force his jaw open with my hand. He grunts and wraps his arms around me, and I press my open mouth to his. Deep inside me, something pulls, and then my mouth is full of something sweet and rich and delicate, like air flavored with blood and honey. I keep pulling, sucking him down, and I’m riding him again, slamming my cunt onto his little plug of a cock. I can see his soul, and it’s fucking black, stained with all the evil that he’s done.
It tastes delicious. I never want to stop eating him, stop fucking him, but when he comes again, I pull the last of his life out of him and swallow it down. The intensity of the sensation blinds me, and my body rocks into orgasm as I consume my first victim. My heart starts beating again, pounding in my brain, and he slumps onto the stoop. I stand up, my legs shaking, and look down at him. He’s shriveled like a mummy.
~Just another corpse. Just another soul we’ve claimed for Hell.~
I can feel his life force, but his soul isn’t att
ached. I never knew that people were two things: a soul and a life, connected but separate. Then I see his soul slithering down the street, a human-shaped black stain like an oil slick. Something even blacker rises out of the pavement and grabs him, pulling him back down into the earth. I can hear him screaming long after he and the thing that captured him have disappeared.
I lean against the wall for a moment, catching my breath. Between my legs, I’m dry, all of his come pulled up into the demonic pit in my stomach. The thought that I’ve eaten him at both ends of my body makes me giggle, then laugh, and I’m just about half a bubble shy of hysterical.
It takes a while, but I manage to get a grip. I know that he wasn’t the only reason I came here. Somehow I know that my real target is in this building, sitting in the apartment at the top of the stairs. He’s the one I’m here to see.
This is where my killer lives.
Marco
The TV news is obsessed with the story of this American girl who died in town. They keep showing her picture and talking about the shooting. The police detective who’s working on the case is interviewed, and he says she died as a heroine, trying to protect this girl who died with her. I guess she didn’t do such a great job.
Not like I’m a hero, myself. When the going got hard, I ran.
I saw the van, and I saw the girl jump out. I saw the American bolt from her table to help. Unlike her, I turned and headed in the opposite direction as fast as I could. I’m a coward. When the gunfire started, I hid behind a car and watched that American girl die.
I turn off the TV. I don’t need the news to tell me about something I can’t stop seeing every time I close my eyes. I wish I could go back and undo it, and I wish there was something I could do to help her, but that’s all impossible now.
I’m lying on my couch, the bed sheet that I use as a dust cover hopelessly rumpled beneath me. I’m on my fifth beer, and it’s not doing nearly enough to numb my brain. I feel so guilty for not helping, but it was all over in less than a minute. I could have called the cops, given them the license plate number. I could have done something. But I’m not fool enough to think that I could rat on the Rojas Cartel and live to tell the tale.
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