Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:00:41 -0600 (CST) From: Horacio Quiroga Subject: Mexican History/chapter 4: Finale Last chapter. Enjoy. Write to horaacioquiroga@yahoo.com, tell me what you think, the characters, the style, flatter me, insult me. Look forward to more stories. I like this. ___________________________________________________ There must be another way to say it but I'm still afraid there isn't: I think I'm happy now. When they were both dead I dug two graves, one for Vibora and another big enough for me and Angel. I was breathing like there was no more air in the world, my chest was hurting, and the loud sound in my lungs was loosing its humanity. I knew pain wasn't going to last, neither thinking, so I hurried up. Threw Vibora into his grave and came back to the cabin to pick up Angel's body from the bed, I tossed him quickly into the hole with no reverence. His head I treated more carefully, laid next to him hugging it. The beasts buried us whining, came slowly from the shadows and slowly covered our bodies with earth. My mouth, my nose and my eyes were filled with soil, hugged Angel's tighter and then it was done. "Do you know why you're not crying?" was the first thing he said. Angel's head was in the table. "Do you?", I had no expression on my face, neither had I any feeling in my heart. "I'll tell you why", he was sitting across the table, like if Angel's head was his dish and he was making conversation before engulfing it. "Do you know why did you loose your strength?, why are you just a guy, so fragile here, in front of my gun? I shot you in the head once, do you remember?" Angel's left eye was still open. "When I first met you I knew I had to kill you, but of course, I knew I couldn't. Do you remember I broke your neck? I felt my fingers closing together, but you're still here now, you're breathing. Kind of quiet, but you're alive for sure" He pointed his gun to Angel's body, on the bed just to direct my attention to it for a second. "This isn't personal: me killing you, you know that anyone knowing half of what I know would try to kill you. But him was personal. You killed my son. Him I would've done for nothing. What brings us back. Do you know why you're not crying?" I didn't. "That's because you can't love him. You're a beast. You don't love anyone. Nothing would make you cry. Do you know why did you loose your strength?, why a bullet would now easily get through you and finish your life?" And I thought for a second and responded. "Because I pray", very quietly. "No, its because for a second, you did love him. See, you're not like the rest of us mortals, there's a reason things react to you. Don't you notice everything around you is dark?, don't you notice the silence now, right now, this night?, I saw your face once in the distance, at the outsides of la Pena, riding your black horse, and it wasn't a human face. I've seen your face many times from then, and I know it's not human, I know it because you can make things darken just by looking at them. Human hearts and veins cut open at your command. You do as you wish and the earth follows you, the shadows follow you. But don't you wonder why?, do you really think things follow you blindly? You did love him, and the shadows gathered around your heart noticed it. They stepped back so I could kill him. And then kill you, because they're not here to serve you. Think for a second, because it would be nice if you realized what I say before dying. Come on, think, and then I'll press the trigger and you would never have to think again" Vibora's words were easy to get, but not then. He pressed the trigger and the bullet slowly made its way across the table, to were I was standing. By the time it was at the reach of my hand I just moved, walked my way around the room and got my hand inside Vibora, I opened his back with my hand, cracked his spine and took his heart in my hand. The bullet reached the wall. I pressed Vibora's heart with all my strength and pulled it away. Vibora's heart didn't close it self back, but to be sure it wouldn't I took a piece of it and swallowed it. Now I could be sure Vibora was dead. His words were not entirely right. I then changed again. The first thing I felt was Vibora's thoughts as he was dying. It was a dream about his childhood, lost in the woods at night. Then I felt everything else, felt the night, felt things I had never felt before. The stars are huge. I sat with Vibora as he was crying alone it the woods, tired, falling asleep terrified. I hugged him, hugged him for real, making sure he wasn't cold, and just before falling asleep I knew he was calm. I don't know the reasons of my fate. Buried here, with the head of Angel resting on my chest I don't think about it. I think my fate is complete, buried with me. We're all dead. I think I'm happy now. ___________________________________________________ The end, beautiful friends, the end. Write to horaacioquiroga@yahoo.com, lend me your thoughts, there's no other reason for me to write. By the way. Take a look at "The blue horse", right here at Nifty's Gay male/adult-youth