Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 13:39:55 -0600 (CST) From: Horacio Quiroga Subject: Mexican History/chapter 1 Disclaimer/introduction: The first chapter (since the one before this was intended to be sort of a prologue) of a story I hope will be quite enjoyable as a whole. The story takes place in Mexico during the first quarter of the 20th century, and of course was written in Spanish and later translated to English (I barely can write original stuff in Spanish, I wouldn't try it in English), hopefully you'll like it despite the offences it might have to this language. By the way, what does the title Mexican-History have to do with any of what's written here?, you might ask, well absolutely nothing. The thing is: History and Story are the same word in Spanish and I didn't realize I had made a mistake on the title until it was already uploaded to the archive, so, I guess it'll stay that way. Thanks to those few who reviewed the intro and took time to write their comments at horaacioquiroga@yahoo.com (NOT HoracioQ@yahoo.com, since I don't know whose e-mail might that be and was briefly published as mine by mistake). They are the only reason I'm publishing this story and hopefully, not quite certainly, I won't let them down with this chapter, intended to be the most nifty-like of the series. I've tried to keep the story short so it will be readable even if its not one of your favorites. Enjoy, but first: Do not read this story if you're under 18 since it contains a lot of stuff not suitable for almost any audience (like underage sexual intercourse and very poor literature) and you'll probably be sickened by it. Use your common sense and stick to the laws of wherever you are concerning this kind of material. If you still want to read this, be my guest but don't blame me or anyone else since its your decision. Thanks for reading the disclaimer and go ahead: ___________________________________________________ "If you ever say anything, I'll kill you", he'd say holding my hair. And I'd stay silent, still sweating, or covered with his salty sweat, covered with his scent of man which he already had although he was only a boy, fifteen or sixteen the first time he came to my room. Tough and skinny, he could have killed me back then when I said to my aunt that in the middle of the night the shadows in my room had the shape of animals fighting each other, and that Miguel had seen them that other night he was in my room.-And what was Miguel room doing in your room?, and Miguel saw me from across the table we used to have breakfast on with no expression on his face, because he really had the conviction to kill me, but he saved it for later, when we were alone. He hit me with a log that was half my own size the next day, when we were driving the cattle, he hit me in the back of the head and I was blown to the ravine leaving a trial of blood that stayed on the air as if it was made of smoke. When I reached the bottom my face was sunk in the brook and it wasn't bleeding anymore. He could've killed me if he had just came down and cracked my head open, because that would have killed me: spilling my brains out of my skull, but he got scared and went back home to let know I'd fallen and was in the bottom of the ravine. When Don Cristobal started looking for me, I looked for him as well because he was rich and owned all the region of Vizcaya, and he knew me, I don't know where from, but when we first met he called me by my first name and was kind and respectful.-He'd better be, I would think to myself, because I had became pedantic and wouldn't recognize important things has they happened, like starting to work for Don Cristobal was. I want you to take care of business with I-don't-know-who that owes me money, with I-don't-know-who that owes my brother money, with I-don't-know-who because I don't trust him, I- don't-know-who because he's rising people against me, I-don't- know-who that has raised people against me. And then I killed the people of La Pena and they were the most I had killed in a single strike until then. The same way I became pedantic I became stupid, and I would live my days drunk, never asking nothing from Don Cristobal even though he would've given me anything to keep me working for him, I would only ask him more work. But we became friends, or so I thought, although I was too young, too much of a drunk and too much of a stupid to be friends with Don Cristobal. He'd treat me as his family. We'd used to go hunting together and had dinner together a few times a week, he'd let me get drunk at his house were I was attended by his employees until I passed out , and they 'd take me to my little house at the edge of town, that which was comfortable and pretty the goddamn thing. Juan and Ana had Miguel when they were very young, and so when they took me in Miguel was around fifteen, Juan was a few years over thirty and Ana was thirty at most. I've never known how old am I, but I'm almost certain they took me in when I was seven. And I loved both of them, not Miguel. At night in my room I would have the same nightmares I've always had since I remember, and for my disgrace I have a pretty good memory when I'm sober. One night the shadows in my room went straight past the wall. And it was a dog, a wild cat and other bigger ones I had never seen before, all of them in my bed, all on top of me an I wasn't able to move until I realized those weren't beasts, but the almost black man that Miguel was, unclothed as an animal , and his penis wasn't a long black snake, it was soft and hot. Very tall and very skinny, the light let me guess the shape of his muscles stuck to his bones, he looked like he had a very long abdomen, filled with squared flat muscles. And I felt them in my back when he laid on top of me, quickly getting rid of my clothes and I'd heard him breathing over my ear. He took my hand with his rough dirty hand, the outline of his nails was black even when the nail met the flesh of his fingers, and when he tried to penetrate me I heard what he was thinking and got frightened to know that people could think like beasts, with no words and no time. And that night, from his adolescent pubis a worm beast emerged, so big it seemed like it could burst trough its skin. And it got inside me. I was so small that every time he pushed forward, with his long and violent movements, he would drag me along with him, rather that getting his penis inside me, so he'd hug me tight under my arms. It didn't hurt much, at the beginning because I was almost asleep, later because h would lubricate me with his pre-seminal fluids. He was sweating and panting in top of me. Feeling him pressing my guts from the inside distracted me from my nightmares. That night I had the first erection I recall as he caressed me, always laying on top of me, he got his hand under my body and looked for my small circumcised penis, he was so skinny that I was able to feel the muscles of his forearm against my belly when he was stroking my penis hardly, from its basis. When he was over, he laid by my side facing up with his forearm over his eyes, breathing quickly, I turned over and looked at him, his semen was flowing out of me.-Look, and in the roof the dog had the wild cat grabbed by its neck, and ran with him out of the window, but he didn't looked. He got up as he didn't hear me. When he was about to leave he regret and came back to the side of my bed, as I was lying his flaccid penis hung in front of my face for a few seconds before he bent down, grabbed me by the hair and say "If you ever say anything, I'll kill you." I worked driving the cattle, I would get up early in the morning, fix my room and have breakfast with the family. The morning after that night nothing changed, Miguel was always distant with me and he kept that way, excepting a few nights. He kept coming to my room, at least once a month for over a year, and I never said anything, I would shut up and let things happen as if they were happening for the first time, not thinking about it, as if it was all part of a dream. -Look, I dared to say again one night like I did the first, an he looked and saw the black bear in the wall, holding the cougar. He got out of bed in one movement and made an expression like he was screaming, but didn't make a sound. That's why I got the courage to say anything to my aunt Ana a few days later, because I was as happy as a child can be. Because it wasn't a dream. Miguel saw the beasts too and was even more scared of them than I was. I set my birthday to be October 22nd the evening of October 22nd when I was with the troops and they asked me why did I drink so much, and it was my 20th birthday, I told them. I had been working for Don Cristobal for almost a two years and the incident in La Pena had just happened. The revolts end up almost immediately all over Vizcaya, everyone was scared that was good. I wasn't friends with anyone and no one was friends with me. Thanks to Don Cristobal no one knew about me, all they knew is that I was new and I was good, so no one was really afraid of me. Vibora knew about me, but he didn't fear me, and whenever I was drunk he would have one of his guys picking a fight on me, just to see me doing something, and so I killed a few of his guys but not the way he would have wanted me to do it, but using my knife. He was smart, Vibora, and I never knew what he was up to. He disappeared by December and by next year's summer he started a revolt, and it was the biggest and bloodiest rising of people there ever was in Vizcaya. Juan did care about me, not the way he cared about his son, but he really cared about me. By the side of the brook he held me in his arms for a long time, so log I was able to see the sun moving from side to side trough the branches of the trees, trough my eye lashes sticky with water and blood. Because I was no longer breathing and he thought I was dead, and would look with his hand the wound in my head.-Juan, I'm all right, I said when I realized with joy that I was still able to talk. He carried me on his arms all the way to the house and had me laying on his bed, that of him and Ana. Ana washed my head and cut my hair to find and heal the wound. It was already closed but it was still there, pulsating along with my heart. It's still there, covered with my hair and Angel used to play with it sometimes as he caressed my head, I didn't lie to him when he find it because I never lied to him.-My cousin tried to kill me when I was about your age, and that's how I started to tell him about how I end up killing Miguel and Juan. I got out of bed once I was certain Miguel wasn't coming that night. I had been awake all night so I hadn't dreamed and the shadows were still, faithful to the things that produced them. I got close to the door and saw my shadow on it, there was a slight light on my back, but my chest was barely visible. I touched my shadow, at the heart's height and the beasts got near me, they gathered around my feet and climbed my legs from the dark side. They got all together in my lower abdomen and from there they stretched to reach the door ad opened it violently, with a loud sound that awakened the entire night. Once I was finished I was covered in blood, my hair was dripping and I was rubbing my eyelids to stop the blood from reaching my eyes. That was the first time I ran away, and I did it for a long time, until I was able to pretend I forgot all about it and came back to the valley to work for Don Cristobal.-Poor Juan, I used to think every morning when I was running away, because I didn't care anymore for Ana and Miguel. The beginning of the end was around the days Ana got sick and I was maybe eleven years old, Juan got another bed on his bedroom so Ana was able to rest. He would spent the nights keeping vigil over her, praying. Sometimes it looked to me like she was already dead and that only Juan knew about it, that only he would keep vigil on her, staying all night at the foot of the bed. And one night I stayed with him, keeping vigil over Ana, watching her on her sleep, and I didn't went back to my room when he told me to.-Then sleep on my bed, he said and I laid down watching him and watching Ana. He would've cried if he could do it when awake. Sitting on that little chair at the foot of the bed, slightly enlightened by the candles they always had for the Virgin on his room, but he couldn't cry like that. Much later at night he came and laid with me, hugging me from behind, and when he fell asleep he was able to cry in silence, cried over the scar on the back of my head and the tears wetting my hair made me want to cry too, but I wasn't able to cry awake either. Ana got sick on January and died on October. Juan started to drink a lot and, for a moment, I thought I was helping him, that I helped him going to his room at night, hugging him and looking for his body with my own, with my hands and my lips. -- Look, I would say pointing at the roof, where there were no beasts, and there never where when I was around him. I would stay at his bed every time I could because if I didn't Miguel would go to my room, and every time he was angrier, and every time he hurt me more and would say so, would say so with anger, that he wanted me to hurt. And would force me to suck him, he'd sit on my chest, take me by the back of my head and stick his redden penis on my mouth, as inside as it could go, until I felt like I was going to vomit, until he'd unload his sperm, every time more copious and nauseating. His semen would enter my throat in long streams and would turn my stomach. Two or three times a night he would unload his semen on me, he'd finish and left my room quickly, shaking, because he never stayed on my bed again since he saw the shadows. He'd get to me erect and naked, would take my clothes and sheets off, place himself between my legs and fuck me hard, with strength and resentment. It all end up because there was nothing left for me, I got tired and saw, as if it was a dream because it was the first glimpse of what I was turning into, that Juan was going to die soon, drunk and full of debts. I would hear him getting home in the late nigh, tripping with the door and the furniture of the house, and the next day we'd take some of the cattle to whoever had beaten him at poker. And he spent all he had drinking and gambling. It was then that he took me to the cantina. He looked for me around midnight and took me to his friend's cantina, and behind the bar, in a storage room were the tezhuino and pulque were fermented, Don Rogelio father of Julian, took off my clothes in silence while Juan waited in the outside. As young as I was, I couldn't do but what he told me to, that wasn't actually much, I urinated on a clay pot after several drinks of pulque. That was the first time I got drunk and as Don Rogelio would ask me if I liked it I answered with the truth: that I did liked it. He caressed my penis very softly and ask me to pee, holding the pot at the height of my knees and smile fascinated as I did. All he did was masturbating in front of me, staring at my naked body, he took his fat and short penis out of his pants and after a few strokes he ejaculated on the same pot I had peed. I never knew how much money did Juan lost that night, but I was kind of glad he hadn't lost any cattle, because there was no much left. Anyway, I thought later, it would have been better if there was no cattle left, since after Juan an Miguel died there was no one left to take care of it. Deciding to leave was easy. There was no life left in Juan and there was nothing left for me, not even a job. ___________________________________________________ Well, that's it for today, if u liked it (or didn't), write at horaacioquiroga@yahoo.com and let me know. As always, the response I get is the main factor on whether I will or will not continue this series of stories. Other reasons to write: you want to take a look to the original in Spanish, you think you might help me translating this stories, you think you're too clever since you recognized the name on my e-mail, or you just waked up in one of those moods when you just want to write. Anyway, thanks and have a nice day.