Girl with all the Pain

by Michael Herman

  Just as they arrive at the end of the alley, they catch Isabel exiting the building and heading in the opposite direction.

  “They let her go first. Let’s wait a minute and see if there’s police,” Carlos says.

  “Forget her. Maybe she leave and never return and no one else has to go through the count.”

  They wait until she disappears from view around the building corner, and then they run down the alley to the doorway, where they stop and listen for voices and sounds. All Pablo hears is his heart beating loud in his ears. After a long moment, they cautiously enter the building. They slowly climb the stairs, listening for noise above them. When they arrive on the roof, they are stopped by what they see.

  Pablo murmurs an expletive and then says, “Where are they? What happened?”

  He looks around at the scarred and burnt roof and says, “It was just like I saw. Something blew up. What did they find? How did the little puta not get hurt?”

  “She did this. She led them here,” Carlos says.

  “What? Are you crazy? She’s just a little kid. This is bomb stuff.”

  “She didn’t get hurt. We saw her leave.”

  “She must have hid behind something when it went off. But where is everyone? There’s no police and no bodies.”

  “No. No bomb,” Carlos says. “When it happened, in my mind I saw them. They were gone, just like that.”

  “Where? I didn’t see them. Where you see them?”

  Carlos turns and points to the mountains. “There. They went there.”

  “You crazy,” Pablo asserts.

  Carlos turns back to Pablo with frightened eyes. “No. I saw them. They went there. Deep. Very deep. They are never coming back.”

  “How you see that? I didn’t see anything like that.”

  “You didn’t hear them scream?”

  That stopped Pablo. He did hear screaming, but for him, it was like being back in his nightmares. It wasn’t them. It was his dreamed people. Or was it? “You heard them scream?” he asks.

  “Yeah. And I see them in the mountains, gone from here, not on the roof anymore. Gone. All gone.”

  “The little chica,” Pablo says half convinced.

  “The little puta Mapuche witch,” Carlos says, sure of himself and starting to feel anger. “She killed them, killed them all.”

  “It had to be a bomb she found.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “Gone. Like a cherry bomb makes a coffee can disappear. Gone.” He spreads his arm and waves it towards the surrounding area. “Gone in pieces.”

  “No. You’d see parts of them. You’d see a hole in the roof. Look around you. It was the witch. She bites you. She makes you have bad dreams. Now she makes people disappear. She is bad voodoo.”

  Pablo sees the logic in it. The bite that feels like an electric shock when she’s scared. The dreams that he can’t escape. It all makes sense. “What do we do? No one will believe us.”

  “Roberto’s brother will. He always said she was bad stuff, warned us away from her a bunch of times. Warned Roberto to leave her alone, don’t touch her. Said the initiation was stupid. He’ll believe us.”

  “We tell him that the witch killed his brother?”

  “Killed all of them.”

  “No. No one would believe a tiny girl killed all of them.”

  “I’m going to follow her. When we find out where she sleeps, we get Roberto’s brother. Let him make her tell us what happened up here.”

  He pulls out his cellphone, snaps several pictures of the rooftop and then sends them off.

  “Who you send those to?” Pablo asks.

  “Roberto’s brother.” Then, without waiting for Pablo, he turns and runs across the roof to the metal stairs and disappears down them. Pablo runs after him, worried and confused.

  Chapter 5

  Day 1

  Santiago, Chile

  Isabel occupies very little space in the world. Hiding in plain sight, she travels along edges; where a building meets the pavement, or at the margins of piled trash, or even along the fringes of sanity. She is unobtrusive as a shadow as she glides across sidewalks crowded with people. Moving past all-seeing windows and doorways, she is low to the ground, traveling at the periphery of vision. When she stops to observe something of interest, she is a fallen leaf; inconspicuous and still. At the slightest sign of attention, she becomes a skittish yellow-eyed black cat who has lost the lead of a more adventurous sibling, racing away to safety.

  Entering the open doorway to the small corner market on Antonia Lopez de Bella, the service woman at the cash register, busy with four young female customers chatting and laughing at some joke, does not notice her. Noiselessly, Isabel slips along an aisle, secrets a small orange soda within the folds of her dress and disappears back out onto a street fronted by bare-bones shops on both sides. She heads down towards the line of idle produce delivery trucks parked end to end, uncaps the cold bottle and then drinks, savoring its fizziness. Finished, she discreetly drops the empty bottle onto a pile of trash, careful to make it appear that it has been there for days.

  She crosses the street to the other side, which is a maze of freestanding chalkboards advertising goods and specials of the day for the adjacent market. The second-story balcony doors over the shop entry below are open and a quiet man leans on the handrail, smoking and looking off into the distance. Below his line of sight, she is unnoticed and not consequential.

  She continues past street vendors with cheap goods hanging from a chain link fence behind them while they busy themselves, hawking their wares to clients more likely than her. A man with a white beard, wrinkled skin, clean sports jacket, cigarette in mouth and a shopping cart, stares right through her as she passes in front of him.

  Stopping at the first opening to the long two-story Mercado Vega Chica, she contemplates entering the cool shadows within. The hot sidewalk, cooking beneath her feet, is as harsh as the baking sun above. When her growling empty stomach decides for her, she enters. Inside, the working woman who has always been kind to her (giving her food and letting her use the bathroom) is busy stocking boxes on a high shelf. Isabel navigates around a shopper to a place directly behind the woman and stops, waiting and silent, watching the woman work. The woman, in her fifties, is workforce laborer wide, dressed in a familiar and faded floral patterned skirt over a dark blouse. Her long dark hair is swept back over her shoulders and cinched with a colorful hair clamp.

  When the woman finishes and turns to start up the aisle, she is startled by Isabel’s presence, running into her and almost tripping over her.

  “Oh, my love. I didn’t hear you there. Did I hurt you?” the woman says in Spanish.

  Isabel just shakes her head.

  The woman looks her up and down and then says, “Do you need the bathroom, honey? You look like you could use some soap and water. Why don’t you clean up and I’ll get you some empanadas I brought to work today.”

  Without waiting for a response, she takes Isabel by the hand, leads her to the restroom, opens a cabinet, pulls a fresh face cloth from inside and hands it to Isabel. She adds a towel and a fresh bar of soap. “Here, use these. Lock the bathroom until you finish and then come see me about...”

  Isabel lifts her dress to show her stained underwear.

  “Oh, little chica!” The woman’s first thought is rape. “Did someone hurt you there?”

  Isabel shakes her head “no.”

  Relieved, the woman says, “We need to do something about that. You are so young. Wait here. I’ll get you clean clothes and something to take care of the flow.”

  A few minutes later, the woman returns with a towel, clean dress, clean panties and clean socks, and a sanitary napkin. “I’ve been waiting for you to come around again. These are my daughter’s that she grew out of. Clean up and throw your dirty clothes in the corner. I’ll take care of them later.”

  Isabel takes them and glances down at the sanitary napkin on top of the clothes. “You kn
ow where to put that, child?” the woman asks.

  Isabel nods “yes.”

  The woman gives her a doubtful look. “Are you sure? I can help you if need be.”

  Alarmed by the prospect of such an intimate invasion, Isabel’s eyes go wide; she takes a step away from the woman and prepares to dart around her and out of the bathroom. Seeing Isabel’s trepidation, the woman turns and exits, saying, “Make sure you lock the door until you are through, my heaven. Then come see me for food.”

  As soon as the door closes, Isabel is quick to latch it. She leans against it facing the restroom interior. The stained dismal green walls rise to a faded beige ceiling illuminated by a bare yellow lightbulb. The dark concrete floor hosts a metal bucket in the corner with a wooden mop handle sticking out of it. The odor of disinfectant and urine mask the subtle smell of age and mold.

  She buries her face in the soft clothes and inhales the sweet fragrance of clean. The wonderfulness of it brings a smile to her face. Setting the clothes on top of the commode lid, she strips out of her soiled clothes, turns the faucet in the sink on and soaks the fresh washcloth. Quickly, she goes through the routine of soaping, washing, and rinsing her skin. When she’s finished, she drops her head into the sink, splashes water onto her hair and soaps it, scrubbing like the nuns showed her when she was smaller, and then rinsing. Finished, she towel dries, and then tries on the clean clothes. They are heavenly, enough to make her dance right there in the grungy bathroom to the strains of music seeping in from the main store.

  Almost there, she rips open the napkin package, yanks the pad out and stuffs it down her underpants. Just as she finishes, a fist, the size of a mountain, bangs on the bathroom door, startling her. A gravelly baritone calls out, “Hey! Get a move on. There’s a line out here.”

  Like a trap that has snapped, Isabel slides the lock back, yanks the door open and bolts around the two waiting men blocking her way. Running towards the exit, she almost makes it out of the shop when, out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of the woman with her hand out, offering Isabel a plate of hot food. Screeching to a halt, she changes direction and then slowly approaches the friendly woman, who silently directs her to a counter to sit with the woman and eat.

  As Isabel launches into the food, with fork in hand, the woman coos, “Oh my treasure, let me untangle that beautiful head of hair you have.”

  Isabel, engrossed with eating, doesn’t jerk away when the woman pulls a brush from her skirt pocket and starts dragging it through her wet hair. In fact, the longer the woman spends on her hair, the more Isabel likes it. The brush strokes, smooth and kind, are like warm gentle caresses to her inner yellow-eyed black cat.

  If she could purr, she would.

  Purrrrrrr.

  Chapter 6

  Day 1

  Santiago, Chile

  “The scream?” Rafa asks Zed.

  “Rafa, if we all heard it, it means there are Bangala Elongó here. And what we heard is someone of exceeding ability. You know anything about that?” Zed asks.

  The corner of the Bull’s mouth pulls up ever so slightly and his eyes crinkle with a suppressed smile. “I might.”

  “So, you going to tell me about it?”

  “If you want me to explain the scream, I can’t. Your experience outweighs mine by years. If you want me to explain the presence of the Bangala Elongó here in Chile, that’s for Twizzle.”

  “Twizzle,” Zed repeats and scowls at Rafa in impatience. “Whatever,” he mutters in resignation, turns to his truck and just as he reaches for the door handle, turns back to Rafa with a sly smile and jokes, “You get busted for speeding, don’t look to me to bail you out of jail.”

  Rafa is about to retort when his cell phone rings. He pulls it from his pocket, answers it, listens for a few moments then places it back.

  “Twizzle finished with the Breakthrough Starshot people early and says there’s a tour set up for us at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility right now, says she wants us both there.”

  The smile disappears from Zed’s face. He shakes his head, looks at the ground and grumbles, “Like I need to know about that stuff.” Then he looks up at Rafa, “Ignorance is bliss sometimes.”

  “You’re not the least bit interested?”

  “I’m just a simple country backwoods boy from the Congo. This stuff is over my head.”

  “You’re just morally conflicted.”

  “Rafa, the idea that we are speeding up evolution by subjecting fetuses to radiation, the kind of radiation that humans will experience outside the protection of the Earth’s magnetosphere, to create humans that will be better adapted to the perils of traveling from the Earth to the outer edges of the solar system...seems wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Zed’s claim seems hypocritical coming from someone who is the source of all those chosen who call themselves Bangala Elongó, which means “people of the river together”; together in the psychic link they share with each other. It was only due to physical contact with him that they became chosen. “Any more wrong than you being one of the Bangala Elongó?”

  “I was born that way.”

  “And others weren’t. It’s all natural selection.”

  “Natural being the operative word here,” Zed counters.

  “There is nothing natural about your being Bangala Elongó.”

  Zed sighs in acquiescence, not wanting to argue such a personal point. The source of his ability comes from the Global Intelligence alien they serve, the alien presence they call Gi.

  Gi has been on Earth for over one million years. As humanity evolved, Gi evolved in parallel, watching and working with them. The Homo sapiens species that appeared approximately 200,000 years ago are currently Gi’s main focus. Their technological evolution and advancement are constantly furthered by Gi with the help of a natural internet of connectivity that Gi seeded on Earth. They have the ability, Gi crowdsources the inspiration and information. Presently, their advances are building at an exponential rate.

  Gi is tasked with preventing a mass extinction that will be caused by celestial forces. The intelligence behind Gi predicted the future extinction event, but Gi does not have the technological ability to stop it. Homo sapiens are the grand experiment. Homo sapiens, as a species, must develop their own survival technology. They have little more than 100,000 years to achieve this. If they fail, they die off like the dinosaurs.

  “Okay, okay,” he says in weary resignation. “I’ll hear the full spiel from whoever is running things there at the Center for whatever it is.”

  “I think it’s all Twizzle wants. Listen and learn.”

  “All for the advancement of the human frontier,” Zed says with a sarcasm-tinged voice.

  “Zed, Earth lives in a protected bubble. Only human variants will successfully journey beyond the bounds of the Earth. Anything else is a pipe dream. We are made for our earthly environment, not interstellar environments.”

  “Words direct from Twizzle to me, via your mouth.”

  Rafa ignores the comment and says, “Log in this address on your truck’s GPS in case we get separated.” He calls out the address as Zed plugs the info into his truck console display.

  “Plaza de Puente Alto area,” Zed says.

  “Let’s jump on the Autopista Central and swing over east from there. I want to open this thing up.”

  “I’m hip to that jive, my man.”

  Rafa frowns and says, “Where do you pick that stuff up? Hip to my jive? What? We living back in the 1930’s and 40’s?”

  “Be cool, brother,” Zed says with a toothy grin. He flips Rafa a peace sign and then climbs into his truck, lowers the driver side window and says, “See you there, Dude. Don’t wait up for me.” He burns rubber in reverse out onto the empty street, shifts gears and then burns rubber again.

  Rafa just shakes his head.

  ONE HOUR LATER, THEY are both waiting, seated on a wooden park bench of the palm-tree-lined one-block-square Plaza de Puente Alto. A tall,
ornate, metal arched pedestrian lath structure encompasses three sides of the open plaza. Two three-story entrances, in the shape of extruded triangles leading down to the subway system below ground, bookend them. Thick cobbled paving with geometric designs covers most the plaza.

  Killing time, they comment on the flowing pedestrian and vehicle traffic along Av. Concha Y Toro, watching blue buses, yellow buses and white buses stop opposite them to load and unload passengers. In front of them, a green and white police car is parked at the curb. Two policemen wearing green and grey vests converse with a driver in a grey car parked behind them. Pedestrians, many pushing baby carriages, fill the sidewalks all around them and cross at busy street intersections. Zed’s attention is on two stylish young women nearby in animated conversation.

  “Quite the hub we have here. Bus service. Taxi service. Subway service. I’m surprised this plaza is edged with just three-story buildings. You’d think it would be high-rises overlooking this,” Rafa says.

  “You have trouble parking?” Zed asks, taking note of one of the women who keeps glancing his way. It has been awhile since he’s engaged in amorous contact with a female. As he’s only recently arrived in Chile, new relationships have yet to be made.

  “No. I’m parked same lot as you. Just a block away.”

  Rafa’s phone rings, he answers it, listens and then says, “Twizzle and Forbes are in the lobby waiting for us.”

  “I thought we were supposed to meet them here and all go together.”

  Both women have begun throwing glances Zed’s way. This is encouraging behavior to Zed.

  “Chaos reigns, my young friend,” Rafa exaggerates as he stands and pats Zed on the shoulder. Zed stands, hesitates and contemplates introducing himself to the two women until Rafa, noticing the subject of Zed’s interest, pulls him by the arm and says, “Later, Zed, later.”

  As they navigate through the crowds towards the Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, a young woman appears to accidentally collide with Zed. Her boyfriend is quick to her side, bumping both Zed and the girl. In an instant, Rafa joins the mix and is holding the right wrists of both the girl and the boy up in the air. In the boy’s hand is Zed’s cell phone. In the girl’s hand is Zed’s wallet. Zed catches on instantly, snatches the wallet and phone from the couple’s hands, shoves the items into his clothing and then stands back as Rafa casually drags the couple over to the two Policemen still talking with the driver of the grey car. He bends to one of the policemen, who is almost a foot smaller than him, whispers into his ear in Spanish and then releases the couple to the Police. As he’s walking back to Zed, Zed watches the couple make animated conversation with the Police and then, moments later, walk away.