Jon Ureña's Blog, page 11
January 18, 2025
Life update (01/18/2025)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
Well, what do you know. In a week, I’ve translated a whole novella I wrote about ten years ago, mostly thanks to OpenAI’s Orion 1 model, although I’ve needed to edit plenty of parts; regarding some, the original Spanish version wasn’t worded ideally, which becomes obvious when translating. Why would a Spanish old boy like me be writing in English anyway? Well, I’ve never gotten used to reading nor writing in Spanish. It always felt off, unnatural. If you knew I’m also Basque, you could think that I’d rather write in Basque instead. Nope, I can’t stand that language and can’t speak it either. But English has always been my private language; when my mother, who didn’t believe in privacy, read my hidden notebooks every chance she got, I started writing in English, or what passed for English at that age, to keep my intimate thoughts to myself. My mother complained that she could no longer understand them. I don’t want to say any more about my parents at the moment, although there’s plenty to say.
My old tale Smile was cooler than I remembered. Revisiting stuff you wrote many years ago is shocking, because the self that created it no longer exists. These days, I wouldn’t have written that story the same way. Likely I wouldn’t have written it at all, as my subconscious worries about other matters. In my impression, the unnamed narrator comes out very strongly; a solid, memorable character. I was surprised also by how much I liked that vagrant girl who shows up and disappears forever, as well as Cassie, despite only showing up at the tail ends of the story. These people were born from me and were forgotten along the way. It’s strange how that goes. I never quite got rid of the narrator, though; as I mentioned in other posts, he shows up in my daydreams whenever someone from the past needs saving. I also wrote a novel protagonized by him back in 2011, but I doubt it’s good enough to translate. Two of the people who read it shook their heads, and one told me that it was way too violent. Bunch of pussies.
Anyway, tomorrow I’ll start writing a new novel. Its backstory is quite interesting (for me at least). From about 2010 to 2012, I was utterly obsessed, autistically so, with a US-based songwriter. I have never in my life been that obsessed with anyone again, thankfully. Along the way, I don’t recall the exact timeline, I wrote a whole novel that was thinly-veiled fanfiction of that songwriter. The impact such an obsession had on me felt interesting to circle upon, so in 2015 I planned a whole novel about an autistic person writing the novel I had written about that songwriter. Very meta, I suppose. Although I planned every single scene of that novel painstakingly, I only ended up writing half of it. By then, my subconscious felt like I had gotten it out of my system. In retrospect, the structure had fatal flaws that couldn’t be solved without a full redo. So I abandoned it. A few years later I produced the six novellas in Spanish contained in my books Los reinos de brea and Los dominios del emperador búho. If you’ve followed Smile, you’ve already read one of those novellas.
Anyway, it seems my basement girl needs to delve into the notion of being haunted by someone, of secluding oneself and working in such a labor of love/deranged obsession. I’ve gathered about 125000 words of notes. I’ve figured out the proper narrative tone for such a strange piece, as well as how to handle the many, many scenes of the book-within-the-book. This will be such a personal story that I’m not sure if anyone else is going to enjoy it, but for me it’s always about pleasing my subconscious; if anyone else enjoys my work, even better.
So, for those interested, in hopefully a few days I’ll post the first part of my novel The Scrap Colossus, introducing the autistic, reclusive, obsessive, unique protagonist who’s trying her best to honor her muse.
I’ve checked my site visits; in the last hour alone, a single person from Spain has hit every single part of Smile. That kind of shit makes me nervous.
Well, what do you know. In a week, I’ve translated a whole novella I wrote about ten years ago, mostly thanks to OpenAI’s Orion 1 model, although I’ve needed to edit plenty of parts; regarding some, the original Spanish version wasn’t worded ideally, which becomes obvious when translating. Why would a Spanish old boy like me be writing in English anyway? Well, I’ve never gotten used to reading nor writing in Spanish. It always felt off, unnatural. If you knew I’m also Basque, you could think that I’d rather write in Basque instead. Nope, I can’t stand that language and can’t speak it either. But English has always been my private language; when my mother, who didn’t believe in privacy, read my hidden notebooks every chance she got, I started writing in English, or what passed for English at that age, to keep my intimate thoughts to myself. My mother complained that she could no longer understand them. I don’t want to say any more about my parents at the moment, although there’s plenty to say.
My old tale Smile was cooler than I remembered. Revisiting stuff you wrote many years ago is shocking, because the self that created it no longer exists. These days, I wouldn’t have written that story the same way. Likely I wouldn’t have written it at all, as my subconscious worries about other matters. In my impression, the unnamed narrator comes out very strongly; a solid, memorable character. I was surprised also by how much I liked that vagrant girl who shows up and disappears forever, as well as Cassie, despite only showing up at the tail ends of the story. These people were born from me and were forgotten along the way. It’s strange how that goes. I never quite got rid of the narrator, though; as I mentioned in other posts, he shows up in my daydreams whenever someone from the past needs saving. I also wrote a novel protagonized by him back in 2011, but I doubt it’s good enough to translate. Two of the people who read it shook their heads, and one told me that it was way too violent. Bunch of pussies.
Anyway, tomorrow I’ll start writing a new novel. Its backstory is quite interesting (for me at least). From about 2010 to 2012, I was utterly obsessed, autistically so, with a US-based songwriter. I have never in my life been that obsessed with anyone again, thankfully. Along the way, I don’t recall the exact timeline, I wrote a whole novel that was thinly-veiled fanfiction of that songwriter. The impact such an obsession had on me felt interesting to circle upon, so in 2015 I planned a whole novel about an autistic person writing the novel I had written about that songwriter. Very meta, I suppose. Although I planned every single scene of that novel painstakingly, I only ended up writing half of it. By then, my subconscious felt like I had gotten it out of my system. In retrospect, the structure had fatal flaws that couldn’t be solved without a full redo. So I abandoned it. A few years later I produced the six novellas in Spanish contained in my books Los reinos de brea and Los dominios del emperador búho. If you’ve followed Smile, you’ve already read one of those novellas.
Anyway, it seems my basement girl needs to delve into the notion of being haunted by someone, of secluding oneself and working in such a labor of love/deranged obsession. I’ve gathered about 125000 words of notes. I’ve figured out the proper narrative tone for such a strange piece, as well as how to handle the many, many scenes of the book-within-the-book. This will be such a personal story that I’m not sure if anyone else is going to enjoy it, but for me it’s always about pleasing my subconscious; if anyone else enjoys my work, even better.
So, for those interested, in hopefully a few days I’ll post the first part of my novel The Scrap Colossus, introducing the autistic, reclusive, obsessive, unique protagonist who’s trying her best to honor her muse.
I’ve checked my site visits; in the last hour alone, a single person from Spain has hit every single part of Smile. That kind of shit makes me nervous.
Smile, Pt. 13 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
Cassie June walked into the restaurant. She must have been about one meter seventy tall. She shivered from the cold while speaking to someone out of sight. She took off her coat, letting snowflakes slip from her shoulders. Cassie’s husband came in with their two daughters—a bright-eyed twenty-one-year-old and a lanky thirteen-year-old—crowding together in the narrow entry. The twenty-one-year-old unzipped her jacket and removed it, revealing a University of Minnesota sweatshirt. The thirteen-year-old’s eye shadow ringed her eyes dramatically like she’d colored them in with charcoal. A waiter approached the family and guided them to a free table in the opposite corner of the restaurant.
While they ate, I kept glancing away from my plates on the sly. Anyone who glanced my way might have caught me studying Cassie’s face—those wide, lively eyes, that distinctive mouth set a little higher than most. As Cassie listened to her husband and daughters, she nodded and smiled, and when she laughed, her silver earrings swung gently.
When they finished eating, the family rose and drifted apart. Her husband and the twenty-one-year-old waited by the entrance. Glancing around for Cassie, I spotted her weaving between the tables in the middle of the restaurant toward the exit, followed by her thirteen-year-old. I lowered my head like a schoolboy caught staring at the pretty girl.
In my mind, an image lingered of the woman noticing me, but that vision dissolved. It was replaced by a picture of her as a child, seated in the back seat of a rental car that would have been scrapped or crushed into a cube years ago. Cassie was crying. The face that had glanced in my direction at the restaurant looked like a caricature time had drawn in mockery.
The family regrouped in the foyer. They retrieved their coats and jackets. Cassie spoke while pointing at the street, and she laughed at some joke.
I wanted to say something. Anything.
They went out into the night then walked away along the sidewalk, huddled in their coats with their hands thrust in their pockets. They passed under arcs of light flickering yellow, red, and white—bulbs glowing in the darkness like milky vapor.
At eleven, I took my laptop down to the hotel bar and searched online for albums to download. Modest Mouse had never released Good News. They put out an album in 2003 and then retired. The first album by The Restless was a hit, and the band stayed together, including their original keyboardist. Eddie Ingram’s girlfriend had avoided the accident, so he never composed his masterpiece. Thom Yorke’s Facebook profile suggested he was working as an orderly in a mental institution. The present adored a band called Beasts of Downtown, which burst onto the scene in 2002 and redefined rock. On the album Reckoning, released in 1984, R.E.M. included a track called “Girl on Skates,” alluding to how for years Cassie June had claimed that a stranger—the one appearing beside her in the famous photo—had saved her from being killed by the Southern California Prowler. A stranger whose DNA belonged to no one. Joanna Newsom’s albums were missing. I searched for an hour and a half, but any proof that she had ever been born had vanished.
At three in the morning, I went to the hotel gym. The echo of my footsteps spread as though I were entering an abandoned building where the lights had been left on. I worked my back and chest; the pain of my tearing fibers anchored me. I ran for half an hour in front of the glass wall, where my doubled reflection overlapped a sea of ink lit only by a streetlamp at the end of the road.
The next afternoon, the snow had stopped, and I strolled beneath a leaden sky. I browsed the shop windows. I bought whatever I fancied and piled the shopping bags in my hotel room.
I had dinner at the restaurant. Every five minutes, I looked toward the foyer, imagining Cassie would walk in. Why would she come?
That night, I sat on the edge of the bathtub with my laptop and read the news. In Sweden, a jihadist had boarded a train with an AK-47 and mowed down eleven people. My body froze; my numb fingers lost feeling on the keys. I closed the laptop.
I swallowed four sleeping pills and got into bed. The black tide rose. I grabbed my portable music player, played Roy Harper’s “The Same Old Rock,” and jammed the earbuds into my ears. I pulled the covers up to my forehead and curled into a ball. As my consciousness faded to the sound of the guitars, images appeared in the darkness of my mind as if carved from obsidian. Scenes trapped inside. The family who visited me every night when loneliness overwhelmed me, and who would always be there.
A girl was skating toward her home when a serial killer convinced her to get into his car and took her to a dark place, where he raped and sodomized her, then strangled her and crushed her skull with hammer blows. A group of unkempt, bearded men, armed with hammers and machetes, ambushed a tennis player and dragged her toward a van, which minutes later, out of control, ran over one of the men, whose chest imploded. Two men broke into a villa in the early hours of the morning, went up to the bedroom of the elderly couple sleeping, and beat them to death. A naked woman climbed onto the railing of her balcony on the tenth floor, and while humming a tune, she opened her arms in a cross and let herself fall forward. A girl with a bruised face lay half on a filthy floor and a mattress dotted with stains, and her arms were covered with the black marks of needle marks. A woman was walking down a busy street when the man who was stalking her grabbed the woman’s hair and plunged the blade of a dagger into her chest and side again and again, while the rips in the woman’s blouse soaked with blood and her screams escaped along with the air through the slits in her lungs. A drunken woman drove her car across the median line of the road and crashed into another car, whose occupant, a twenty-something girl, was thrown through the windshield, which tore her face apart, and when she hit the asphalt, her head exploded. A woman lay among some rocks, half-buried under rotten leaves, genitals exposed, her legs twisted as if her bones had been broken. A group of teenagers dragged a child into a forest, where they beat him and raped him while recording it on their cell phones. A woman crouched by a bathtub was holding a child’s head under the foam, while the child’s arms flailed and his hands groped the woman’s rolled-up forearm, until the last of the bubbles that clustered on the surface of the water burst. Inside the charred shell of a car, the driver’s seat had melted and fused with the legs of a man whose torso had been charred to a crusty black shell, torn open in breaches that revealed flesh red as a coal, and from the open guts the intestines had spilled like charred sausages. A woman was distracted browsing the frozen foods in a supermarket while a man dragged the woman’s daughter to a car; the man locked the girl in the trunk, drove her to a vacant lot, raped her, and smashed her head with a rock. A five-year-old girl was playing in front of her apartment building when the leader of a group of prepubescent children pressed a knife to the girl’s throat and dragged her to a laundry room, where they stripped her, groped her, and urinated in her mouth while laughing. A woman was hugging her decapitated daughter. A teenager hunched under the crumpled hood of a car was feeling the ruin of her face, which when it had hit the front seat had torn apart like a half-peeled rubber mask, and the globe of her left eye hung loose from its socket. In a forest at the foot of a volcano hung the desiccated corpses of hundreds of suicides. Some men lured a teenager by offering her alcohol to pass her around among themselves and their friends as a prostitute, kept her quiet with threats, and when they got tired, they killed her, dismembered her, and served her flesh as kebabs. On a plastic sheet lay the naked bodies of half a dozen boys and girls, and on their torsos, from the junction of the collarbones to the navel, tortuous sutures closed with staples showed that they had been gutted to sell their organs. A man disguised as a police officer gathered dozens of teenagers and climbed onto a platform to pretend he needed to inform them of some news, but he sprayed them with an assault rifle. Some men burst into a concert hall and machine-gunned the crowd while praising an imaginary character, and the wounded, and those who pretended to be dead, they disfigured, stabbed their eyes, castrated them and stuffed their genitals into their mouths, and ripped the fetuses from the pregnant women. A lion ripped open the belly of a gazelle, tore the fetus from the womb, and devoured it. A cat crossing a highway was sprinting, stopping, and jumping to the side against the hulks of cars, vans, and trucks that charged. In row after row of metal crates two meters by ninety centimeters, hundreds of pigs grew so one day they would be taken to the slaughterhouse. A parrot forgotten in the sun suffered a heat stroke and dehydrated to death. A hamster locked in a forgotten cage ate the plastic from the walls to escape, and the plastic tore the walls of its stomach. A fish caught lay on the grass gasping. A mouse chewed in half dragged its entrails. A fly got tangled in a spider’s web, and the spider injected it with a paralyzing agent and sucked it into a husk. A spider was weaving its web in the corner of a ceiling when a hand crushed it with a napkin. An army of ants scurried around a caterpillar, which wriggled as if dreaming while the ants dragged it toward their colony, pinching it with their tiny jaws. In a drop of water, thousands of microscopic organisms hunted each other or escaped, suffering an endless war.
In the symphony of organic life, each member of every species contributed its note of pain.
I stopped feeling like I was lying in bed, or even inhabiting a body. I shrank to a grain of lead plunging into a swarm of nightmares.
The following afternoon, I wandered through the city in a snowstorm that turned my hair white and covered half my coat. My atoms interacted with dark matter, weighing me down as though I were wading through a swamp. Pedestrians passed by, hunched under their umbrellas. If they weren’t careful, they would walk right through me. A few passersby peered at me from the hollow sockets of their rubber masks.
That night, I went back to the restaurant. They served me my lamb stew. Three spoonfuls into the broth, potatoes, and meat, a hand with rings on two fingers and veins standing out slid a newspaper clipping under my face.
In the center of the yellowed paper was a black-and-white photo. Two paramedics carried a stretcher beneath a plastic cover that outlined a human figure. Behind them, ten-year-old Cassie June watched, eyes wide, her fists pressed to her thighs. Next to her, I had placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, staring at the stretcher with a calm I had never actually felt. It reminded me of certain Victorian photographs in which families posed with relaxed faces alongside their dead children.
I lifted my eyes to Cassie’s face—her lined forehead, the creases at the corners of her mouth and eyes.
Time had infected every human cell to break them down into dust, and I couldn’t stop it.
Five meters away, her daughters and husband looked on, astonished. Cassie’s irises and her hand trembled like a schoolgirl handing over a poem.
I wanted to burst into tears.
“Come over for a while,” Cassie said. “We live nearby. We’ll have tea, we’ll talk.”
I swallowed hard.
“Tea sounds good.”
THE END
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in my collection titled Los reinos de brea, about ten years ago.
Today’s songs are “The Same Old Rock” by Roy Harper, and “Esme” by Joanna Newsom.
Cassie June walked into the restaurant. She must have been about one meter seventy tall. She shivered from the cold while speaking to someone out of sight. She took off her coat, letting snowflakes slip from her shoulders. Cassie’s husband came in with their two daughters—a bright-eyed twenty-one-year-old and a lanky thirteen-year-old—crowding together in the narrow entry. The twenty-one-year-old unzipped her jacket and removed it, revealing a University of Minnesota sweatshirt. The thirteen-year-old’s eye shadow ringed her eyes dramatically like she’d colored them in with charcoal. A waiter approached the family and guided them to a free table in the opposite corner of the restaurant.
While they ate, I kept glancing away from my plates on the sly. Anyone who glanced my way might have caught me studying Cassie’s face—those wide, lively eyes, that distinctive mouth set a little higher than most. As Cassie listened to her husband and daughters, she nodded and smiled, and when she laughed, her silver earrings swung gently.
When they finished eating, the family rose and drifted apart. Her husband and the twenty-one-year-old waited by the entrance. Glancing around for Cassie, I spotted her weaving between the tables in the middle of the restaurant toward the exit, followed by her thirteen-year-old. I lowered my head like a schoolboy caught staring at the pretty girl.
In my mind, an image lingered of the woman noticing me, but that vision dissolved. It was replaced by a picture of her as a child, seated in the back seat of a rental car that would have been scrapped or crushed into a cube years ago. Cassie was crying. The face that had glanced in my direction at the restaurant looked like a caricature time had drawn in mockery.
The family regrouped in the foyer. They retrieved their coats and jackets. Cassie spoke while pointing at the street, and she laughed at some joke.
I wanted to say something. Anything.
They went out into the night then walked away along the sidewalk, huddled in their coats with their hands thrust in their pockets. They passed under arcs of light flickering yellow, red, and white—bulbs glowing in the darkness like milky vapor.
At eleven, I took my laptop down to the hotel bar and searched online for albums to download. Modest Mouse had never released Good News. They put out an album in 2003 and then retired. The first album by The Restless was a hit, and the band stayed together, including their original keyboardist. Eddie Ingram’s girlfriend had avoided the accident, so he never composed his masterpiece. Thom Yorke’s Facebook profile suggested he was working as an orderly in a mental institution. The present adored a band called Beasts of Downtown, which burst onto the scene in 2002 and redefined rock. On the album Reckoning, released in 1984, R.E.M. included a track called “Girl on Skates,” alluding to how for years Cassie June had claimed that a stranger—the one appearing beside her in the famous photo—had saved her from being killed by the Southern California Prowler. A stranger whose DNA belonged to no one. Joanna Newsom’s albums were missing. I searched for an hour and a half, but any proof that she had ever been born had vanished.
At three in the morning, I went to the hotel gym. The echo of my footsteps spread as though I were entering an abandoned building where the lights had been left on. I worked my back and chest; the pain of my tearing fibers anchored me. I ran for half an hour in front of the glass wall, where my doubled reflection overlapped a sea of ink lit only by a streetlamp at the end of the road.
The next afternoon, the snow had stopped, and I strolled beneath a leaden sky. I browsed the shop windows. I bought whatever I fancied and piled the shopping bags in my hotel room.
I had dinner at the restaurant. Every five minutes, I looked toward the foyer, imagining Cassie would walk in. Why would she come?
That night, I sat on the edge of the bathtub with my laptop and read the news. In Sweden, a jihadist had boarded a train with an AK-47 and mowed down eleven people. My body froze; my numb fingers lost feeling on the keys. I closed the laptop.
I swallowed four sleeping pills and got into bed. The black tide rose. I grabbed my portable music player, played Roy Harper’s “The Same Old Rock,” and jammed the earbuds into my ears. I pulled the covers up to my forehead and curled into a ball. As my consciousness faded to the sound of the guitars, images appeared in the darkness of my mind as if carved from obsidian. Scenes trapped inside. The family who visited me every night when loneliness overwhelmed me, and who would always be there.
A girl was skating toward her home when a serial killer convinced her to get into his car and took her to a dark place, where he raped and sodomized her, then strangled her and crushed her skull with hammer blows. A group of unkempt, bearded men, armed with hammers and machetes, ambushed a tennis player and dragged her toward a van, which minutes later, out of control, ran over one of the men, whose chest imploded. Two men broke into a villa in the early hours of the morning, went up to the bedroom of the elderly couple sleeping, and beat them to death. A naked woman climbed onto the railing of her balcony on the tenth floor, and while humming a tune, she opened her arms in a cross and let herself fall forward. A girl with a bruised face lay half on a filthy floor and a mattress dotted with stains, and her arms were covered with the black marks of needle marks. A woman was walking down a busy street when the man who was stalking her grabbed the woman’s hair and plunged the blade of a dagger into her chest and side again and again, while the rips in the woman’s blouse soaked with blood and her screams escaped along with the air through the slits in her lungs. A drunken woman drove her car across the median line of the road and crashed into another car, whose occupant, a twenty-something girl, was thrown through the windshield, which tore her face apart, and when she hit the asphalt, her head exploded. A woman lay among some rocks, half-buried under rotten leaves, genitals exposed, her legs twisted as if her bones had been broken. A group of teenagers dragged a child into a forest, where they beat him and raped him while recording it on their cell phones. A woman crouched by a bathtub was holding a child’s head under the foam, while the child’s arms flailed and his hands groped the woman’s rolled-up forearm, until the last of the bubbles that clustered on the surface of the water burst. Inside the charred shell of a car, the driver’s seat had melted and fused with the legs of a man whose torso had been charred to a crusty black shell, torn open in breaches that revealed flesh red as a coal, and from the open guts the intestines had spilled like charred sausages. A woman was distracted browsing the frozen foods in a supermarket while a man dragged the woman’s daughter to a car; the man locked the girl in the trunk, drove her to a vacant lot, raped her, and smashed her head with a rock. A five-year-old girl was playing in front of her apartment building when the leader of a group of prepubescent children pressed a knife to the girl’s throat and dragged her to a laundry room, where they stripped her, groped her, and urinated in her mouth while laughing. A woman was hugging her decapitated daughter. A teenager hunched under the crumpled hood of a car was feeling the ruin of her face, which when it had hit the front seat had torn apart like a half-peeled rubber mask, and the globe of her left eye hung loose from its socket. In a forest at the foot of a volcano hung the desiccated corpses of hundreds of suicides. Some men lured a teenager by offering her alcohol to pass her around among themselves and their friends as a prostitute, kept her quiet with threats, and when they got tired, they killed her, dismembered her, and served her flesh as kebabs. On a plastic sheet lay the naked bodies of half a dozen boys and girls, and on their torsos, from the junction of the collarbones to the navel, tortuous sutures closed with staples showed that they had been gutted to sell their organs. A man disguised as a police officer gathered dozens of teenagers and climbed onto a platform to pretend he needed to inform them of some news, but he sprayed them with an assault rifle. Some men burst into a concert hall and machine-gunned the crowd while praising an imaginary character, and the wounded, and those who pretended to be dead, they disfigured, stabbed their eyes, castrated them and stuffed their genitals into their mouths, and ripped the fetuses from the pregnant women. A lion ripped open the belly of a gazelle, tore the fetus from the womb, and devoured it. A cat crossing a highway was sprinting, stopping, and jumping to the side against the hulks of cars, vans, and trucks that charged. In row after row of metal crates two meters by ninety centimeters, hundreds of pigs grew so one day they would be taken to the slaughterhouse. A parrot forgotten in the sun suffered a heat stroke and dehydrated to death. A hamster locked in a forgotten cage ate the plastic from the walls to escape, and the plastic tore the walls of its stomach. A fish caught lay on the grass gasping. A mouse chewed in half dragged its entrails. A fly got tangled in a spider’s web, and the spider injected it with a paralyzing agent and sucked it into a husk. A spider was weaving its web in the corner of a ceiling when a hand crushed it with a napkin. An army of ants scurried around a caterpillar, which wriggled as if dreaming while the ants dragged it toward their colony, pinching it with their tiny jaws. In a drop of water, thousands of microscopic organisms hunted each other or escaped, suffering an endless war.
In the symphony of organic life, each member of every species contributed its note of pain.
I stopped feeling like I was lying in bed, or even inhabiting a body. I shrank to a grain of lead plunging into a swarm of nightmares.
The following afternoon, I wandered through the city in a snowstorm that turned my hair white and covered half my coat. My atoms interacted with dark matter, weighing me down as though I were wading through a swamp. Pedestrians passed by, hunched under their umbrellas. If they weren’t careful, they would walk right through me. A few passersby peered at me from the hollow sockets of their rubber masks.
That night, I went back to the restaurant. They served me my lamb stew. Three spoonfuls into the broth, potatoes, and meat, a hand with rings on two fingers and veins standing out slid a newspaper clipping under my face.
In the center of the yellowed paper was a black-and-white photo. Two paramedics carried a stretcher beneath a plastic cover that outlined a human figure. Behind them, ten-year-old Cassie June watched, eyes wide, her fists pressed to her thighs. Next to her, I had placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, staring at the stretcher with a calm I had never actually felt. It reminded me of certain Victorian photographs in which families posed with relaxed faces alongside their dead children.
I lifted my eyes to Cassie’s face—her lined forehead, the creases at the corners of her mouth and eyes.
Time had infected every human cell to break them down into dust, and I couldn’t stop it.
Five meters away, her daughters and husband looked on, astonished. Cassie’s irises and her hand trembled like a schoolgirl handing over a poem.
I wanted to burst into tears.
“Come over for a while,” Cassie said. “We live nearby. We’ll have tea, we’ll talk.”
I swallowed hard.
“Tea sounds good.”
THE END
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in my collection titled Los reinos de brea, about ten years ago.
Today’s songs are “The Same Old Rock” by Roy Harper, and “Esme” by Joanna Newsom.
Smile, Pt. 12 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
I drove along a grassy track worn bare by years of footsteps, until a stand of fir and maple trees blocked the way. I switched off the radio and the engine. Figures showed up in the windows of the neighboring houses. A woman hunched over a kitchen sink was scrubbing a plate.
I got out of the Chevy Caprice. My soles flattened the grass. The breeze carried dog barks and the murmuring of televisions. Birds fluttered and chirped. The air, growing cooler as the sun slipped behind the horizon, felt worlds apart from the polluted coastal atmosphere, as if I had crossed into another country.
In the nearby houses, behind walls and drawn curtains, a baby would be nursing at its mother’s breast, with her warm smile in return. A couple would be making love. A girl, lying on her stomach in bed, would be reading a novel. A teenager holed up in the attic would be learning a guitar solo, all the while dreaming that someday another teenager might imitate his riffs. They were sustained by dreams unlike those that drive someone to lock a serial killer in a car trunk. I disparaged those people because I had never belonged among them. A searing anger coursed through my veins, burning them, tainting everything I experienced, rotting me like a heroin addict. And for whatever years remained, fueled by this boiling rage inside, I would hunt down those who deserved punishment. I would find my rewards in the crunch of my knuckles meeting another jaw, in the shot that punched through another terrorist’s skull. I would save someone today, and tomorrow I’d save the next. Even if my anger melted my organs and cracked my skin until it vented scorching steam. No one would take my place, but I would bear it.
I took out the scissors and gripped them in my left hand. With my other hand, I slid the key into the trunk’s lock. When I opened the lid, I was hit by a reek of hot brass and urine. I stepped back on guard against what was inside.
Richard Alcala’s scalp had gone as white as plaster. A gash glimmered across his right eyebrow. The lower half of his face, including the duct tape covering his mouth, was stained with dried blood. The killer’s cheeks were swollen, and as he breathed, little blood-bubbles popped in one nostril. He gawked at me in terror.
I cut through his duct-tape handcuffs with the scissors. Richard Alcala wobbled his trembling arms, trying to find something to hold onto. When I tugged his forearms to haul him out of the trunk, he dropped onto the grass like a sack. As the gag stifled his cough, the killer’s cheeks quivered, and his nose blew blood as if he had just sneezed.
I slipped one tip of the scissors under the duct tape stuck to his cheek and cut carelessly, slicing the skin. Richard Alcala’s whimper died in his throat. I pinned his shoulder to the grass and peeled away the layers of tape until they came off his face, leaving a purplish stripe.
He rolled onto his side and vomited blood, scraping his throat as he coughed. The lower half of his face had become so mangled that, between all the blood, you could barely make out a mouth—like a tiny cannonball had burst out of his throat destroying everything in its path. In the puddle of blood soaking the grass, the white fragments of molars, incisors, and canines glinted.
Richard Alcala stood up, but his legs wavered. He lurched unsteadily, coughing and whimpering. When I shoved him toward the grove, he toppled forward. Crawling away on all fours until he reached the first maple, he pulled himself upright, clutching the bent trunk, which quivered under his weight. The killer mumbled some sort of litany. Letting go of the maple, he edged from tree to tree as if trying to lose me in a maze.
Shifting shadows from the canopy glided over us. A breeze rustled the leaves, an unseen bird flapped its wings.
Richard Alcala veered to the right. I drew my Smith & Wesson and took off the safety. I aimed at the trunk of a maple two meters ahead of the killer, who was stretching out his arms to stay upright. I fired. The blast sent birds clattering from the branches where they’d been perched, and their silhouettes streaked across the grass, tracing shadow puppets on the trunks. Richard Alcala staggered back and fell onto his backside. Once he got up, he bolted deeper among the maples and firs toward the edge of the grove. Ten meters on, he turned left. I fired at the trunk inches from him, spraying splinters into his face. While muttering, he shook his features as if he’d disturbed a beehive. He changed direction. He shoved one leg in front of the other postponing his collapse, and leaned against each trunk as he passed.
When the echo of the shot faded, I called out to the killer.
“Do you think someone’s going to save you?”
Richard Alcala peeled himself off the trunk he was clutching, lurched forward, and laughed like he’d been holding it in for years.
“Nobody gets saved.”
He stumbled out of the grove into a blaze of sunlight. He lowered his head, dazzled. Ahead lay a broad yard dotted with a trampoline, a swing set, and a few raised garden beds. Beyond that rose the back wall of a single-story house. At one of its windows, a hand pulled the curtain shut.
Richard Alcala ran across the yard on a diagonal, heading for the path between the side of the house and the hedgerow marking the property line. I aimed just shy of the corner of the house. While the killer wavered and stumbled in a drunken arc, I pulled the trigger. With the shot’s crack, Richard Alcala screamed and fell on his backside, clutching his calf.
He pushed himself upright. Dragging his left leg, he made his way along the side of the house toward the back door. He kept muttering like a radio jammed between two stations. He hurled himself at the door, and on his third shove, it gave way. As he slammed it shut, he glanced over his shoulder—a clown with bulging eyes in that stark white upper half of his face, the lower half smeared in red.
A woman screamed. I heard blows, glass shattering. Someone growled. A shot whipped through a curtain and punched a hole in the window, cracks spidering around the bullet’s entry point like tiny veins.
I sprinted over to the path running alongside the house toward the front door, crouching as I went, keeping the wall between myself and the inside. I hurried under a window in a single stride.
Two more shots. A woman’s screams, then running footsteps.
In front of the house’s facade, I stood up next to a rhododendron bush that reached my neck. I thumbed the safety on my Smith & Wesson and tucked the gun behind my belt. Approaching the front door, I drew a deep breath and glanced at myself. My jacket was spattered with blood droplets. I wet my thumb with saliva and scrubbed at the stains, but they barely lightened.
I rang the doorbell. I realized that a woman’s panicked voice had been filling the silence only when she suddenly fell quiet. On the other side of the door, footsteps approached, then stopped about five feet away. She held her breath, trying to make it seem like I had rung the bell of an empty house.
I rang again.
“Neighborhood watch. I heard gunshots. Are you okay?”
The door opened a crack. Through it peered Cassie’s mother, her face flecked with blood. Her lips trembled. For a few seconds, her turquoise irises wavered while her tight throat suppressed any words.
“You.”
“They told us a fugitive had been spotted in the area. I can help you.”
Cassie’s mother opened the door. As I stepped through, she shoved it shut with a bang. A bullet hole had scarred the doorframe. Several gleaming bloodstains marred the pattern of the woman’s apple-green cashmere dress. In her right hand she clutched a Colt Python double-action revolver. She had lowered the hammer. Light slid along the eight-inch chrome barrel.
Cassie’s mother lifted the revolver as though to aim at me, but gave up halfway. She spoke in a strained voice.
“I shot someone. He broke in through the back door. I’d heard gunshots in the yard, so I grabbed the gun. This man ran in here, and I have my daughter… so I fired. The radio said something about a serial killer. He was hurt, but I don’t know… I don’t…”
She shook her head and looked toward the living room.
I had worried that when the front door opened, I’d find Richard Alcala holding the revolver he’d wrested from her, ready to blow my head apart as I rightly deserved. I stifled a smile. Relief flooded me, the kind you feel after emptying your bladder when you’ve been holding it for hours.
I placed a hand on Cassie’s mother’s shoulder, and for a moment her gaze pleaded.
“You did what you had to,” I said. “Let’s see what’s left.”
I guided her into the living room, where a wet gurgling sound arose. I caught the scent of gunpowder. Richard Alcala lay on his back, sprawled on a shaggy rug whose ash-gray fibers were darkening with blood. In the lower half of his face, a gaping hole bubbled with tarry phlegm between ragged breaths. His eyes roamed void of humanity, like a fish gasping in a fisherman’s hand. Two bullet wounds—one between his fifth and sixth ribs on the right side, the other in his throat—were leaking ribbons of blood.
Cassie’s mother covered her mouth, shook her head, and wept.
“You got him,” I said.
She slid the hand lower, stretching her bottom lip.
When I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket to pull out a folded paper, she noticed the bloodstained bandage wrapped around my palm, then she lifted her gaze to study my expression. I spread out the wanted poster.
“You stopped the Southern California Prowler—killer of at least twenty-six women and girls.”
Cassie’s mother snatched the paper from me and skimmed it. She examined Richard Alcala’s pale face; his pupils had shifted toward her, his chest shaking in time with the blood gargling in his throat. She let her muscles loosen, her brow lowered, and her features hardened.
“Oh.”
She wiped her tears with her forearm. Reaching out blindly with her right hand, she set the revolver on the hallway table, nudging aside two picture frames. She gave the dying man a look you’d offer a spider swirling down a drain. Then she moved to the phone mounted on the wall, lifted the receiver, and turned the dial for a nine. I thumbed the Colt Python’s hammer back with a soft click.
I found Cassie huddled by the sofa, facing the egg-yellow wallpaper. She wore a T-shirt printed with a whip-poor-will. Her index fingers were jammed in her ears, her eyelids clenched so tightly that the skin at their corners wrinkled. She was trembling like a tower on the verge of collapse.
I placed a hand on her hair.
“Cassie.”
She stopped trembling and lifted her face to me, her eyes shining with tears.
I helped her to her feet. I pointed at her mother, who was in profile, murmuring into the phone receiver. I guided Cassie to the shag rug in the middle of the living room, beside Richard Alcala, whose wounds kept spreading bloodstains like overflowing lakes. Cassie shuddered and let out a whimper. She turned away and covered her eyes.
I stepped behind the girl and turned her toward the killer.
“Cassie.”
She lowered her hands and opened her eyes. She looked down at the dying man the way someone would stare into an abyss.
Richard Alcala’s pupils flicked across the ceiling. With every convulsion, his mouth spewed bloody gobs like a broken faucet. Lying on the rug was a tar-molded mannequin foaming and steaming as its human features—face, torso, arms, and legs—melted into a puddle of black muck.
I pressed a hand on Cassie’s shoulder.
“Don’t look away.”
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally published in Spanish about a decade ago, in a collection titled Los reinos de brea.
I drove along a grassy track worn bare by years of footsteps, until a stand of fir and maple trees blocked the way. I switched off the radio and the engine. Figures showed up in the windows of the neighboring houses. A woman hunched over a kitchen sink was scrubbing a plate.
I got out of the Chevy Caprice. My soles flattened the grass. The breeze carried dog barks and the murmuring of televisions. Birds fluttered and chirped. The air, growing cooler as the sun slipped behind the horizon, felt worlds apart from the polluted coastal atmosphere, as if I had crossed into another country.
In the nearby houses, behind walls and drawn curtains, a baby would be nursing at its mother’s breast, with her warm smile in return. A couple would be making love. A girl, lying on her stomach in bed, would be reading a novel. A teenager holed up in the attic would be learning a guitar solo, all the while dreaming that someday another teenager might imitate his riffs. They were sustained by dreams unlike those that drive someone to lock a serial killer in a car trunk. I disparaged those people because I had never belonged among them. A searing anger coursed through my veins, burning them, tainting everything I experienced, rotting me like a heroin addict. And for whatever years remained, fueled by this boiling rage inside, I would hunt down those who deserved punishment. I would find my rewards in the crunch of my knuckles meeting another jaw, in the shot that punched through another terrorist’s skull. I would save someone today, and tomorrow I’d save the next. Even if my anger melted my organs and cracked my skin until it vented scorching steam. No one would take my place, but I would bear it.
I took out the scissors and gripped them in my left hand. With my other hand, I slid the key into the trunk’s lock. When I opened the lid, I was hit by a reek of hot brass and urine. I stepped back on guard against what was inside.
Richard Alcala’s scalp had gone as white as plaster. A gash glimmered across his right eyebrow. The lower half of his face, including the duct tape covering his mouth, was stained with dried blood. The killer’s cheeks were swollen, and as he breathed, little blood-bubbles popped in one nostril. He gawked at me in terror.
I cut through his duct-tape handcuffs with the scissors. Richard Alcala wobbled his trembling arms, trying to find something to hold onto. When I tugged his forearms to haul him out of the trunk, he dropped onto the grass like a sack. As the gag stifled his cough, the killer’s cheeks quivered, and his nose blew blood as if he had just sneezed.
I slipped one tip of the scissors under the duct tape stuck to his cheek and cut carelessly, slicing the skin. Richard Alcala’s whimper died in his throat. I pinned his shoulder to the grass and peeled away the layers of tape until they came off his face, leaving a purplish stripe.
He rolled onto his side and vomited blood, scraping his throat as he coughed. The lower half of his face had become so mangled that, between all the blood, you could barely make out a mouth—like a tiny cannonball had burst out of his throat destroying everything in its path. In the puddle of blood soaking the grass, the white fragments of molars, incisors, and canines glinted.
Richard Alcala stood up, but his legs wavered. He lurched unsteadily, coughing and whimpering. When I shoved him toward the grove, he toppled forward. Crawling away on all fours until he reached the first maple, he pulled himself upright, clutching the bent trunk, which quivered under his weight. The killer mumbled some sort of litany. Letting go of the maple, he edged from tree to tree as if trying to lose me in a maze.
Shifting shadows from the canopy glided over us. A breeze rustled the leaves, an unseen bird flapped its wings.
Richard Alcala veered to the right. I drew my Smith & Wesson and took off the safety. I aimed at the trunk of a maple two meters ahead of the killer, who was stretching out his arms to stay upright. I fired. The blast sent birds clattering from the branches where they’d been perched, and their silhouettes streaked across the grass, tracing shadow puppets on the trunks. Richard Alcala staggered back and fell onto his backside. Once he got up, he bolted deeper among the maples and firs toward the edge of the grove. Ten meters on, he turned left. I fired at the trunk inches from him, spraying splinters into his face. While muttering, he shook his features as if he’d disturbed a beehive. He changed direction. He shoved one leg in front of the other postponing his collapse, and leaned against each trunk as he passed.
When the echo of the shot faded, I called out to the killer.
“Do you think someone’s going to save you?”
Richard Alcala peeled himself off the trunk he was clutching, lurched forward, and laughed like he’d been holding it in for years.
“Nobody gets saved.”
He stumbled out of the grove into a blaze of sunlight. He lowered his head, dazzled. Ahead lay a broad yard dotted with a trampoline, a swing set, and a few raised garden beds. Beyond that rose the back wall of a single-story house. At one of its windows, a hand pulled the curtain shut.
Richard Alcala ran across the yard on a diagonal, heading for the path between the side of the house and the hedgerow marking the property line. I aimed just shy of the corner of the house. While the killer wavered and stumbled in a drunken arc, I pulled the trigger. With the shot’s crack, Richard Alcala screamed and fell on his backside, clutching his calf.
He pushed himself upright. Dragging his left leg, he made his way along the side of the house toward the back door. He kept muttering like a radio jammed between two stations. He hurled himself at the door, and on his third shove, it gave way. As he slammed it shut, he glanced over his shoulder—a clown with bulging eyes in that stark white upper half of his face, the lower half smeared in red.
A woman screamed. I heard blows, glass shattering. Someone growled. A shot whipped through a curtain and punched a hole in the window, cracks spidering around the bullet’s entry point like tiny veins.
I sprinted over to the path running alongside the house toward the front door, crouching as I went, keeping the wall between myself and the inside. I hurried under a window in a single stride.
Two more shots. A woman’s screams, then running footsteps.
In front of the house’s facade, I stood up next to a rhododendron bush that reached my neck. I thumbed the safety on my Smith & Wesson and tucked the gun behind my belt. Approaching the front door, I drew a deep breath and glanced at myself. My jacket was spattered with blood droplets. I wet my thumb with saliva and scrubbed at the stains, but they barely lightened.
I rang the doorbell. I realized that a woman’s panicked voice had been filling the silence only when she suddenly fell quiet. On the other side of the door, footsteps approached, then stopped about five feet away. She held her breath, trying to make it seem like I had rung the bell of an empty house.
I rang again.
“Neighborhood watch. I heard gunshots. Are you okay?”
The door opened a crack. Through it peered Cassie’s mother, her face flecked with blood. Her lips trembled. For a few seconds, her turquoise irises wavered while her tight throat suppressed any words.
“You.”
“They told us a fugitive had been spotted in the area. I can help you.”
Cassie’s mother opened the door. As I stepped through, she shoved it shut with a bang. A bullet hole had scarred the doorframe. Several gleaming bloodstains marred the pattern of the woman’s apple-green cashmere dress. In her right hand she clutched a Colt Python double-action revolver. She had lowered the hammer. Light slid along the eight-inch chrome barrel.
Cassie’s mother lifted the revolver as though to aim at me, but gave up halfway. She spoke in a strained voice.
“I shot someone. He broke in through the back door. I’d heard gunshots in the yard, so I grabbed the gun. This man ran in here, and I have my daughter… so I fired. The radio said something about a serial killer. He was hurt, but I don’t know… I don’t…”
She shook her head and looked toward the living room.
I had worried that when the front door opened, I’d find Richard Alcala holding the revolver he’d wrested from her, ready to blow my head apart as I rightly deserved. I stifled a smile. Relief flooded me, the kind you feel after emptying your bladder when you’ve been holding it for hours.
I placed a hand on Cassie’s mother’s shoulder, and for a moment her gaze pleaded.
“You did what you had to,” I said. “Let’s see what’s left.”
I guided her into the living room, where a wet gurgling sound arose. I caught the scent of gunpowder. Richard Alcala lay on his back, sprawled on a shaggy rug whose ash-gray fibers were darkening with blood. In the lower half of his face, a gaping hole bubbled with tarry phlegm between ragged breaths. His eyes roamed void of humanity, like a fish gasping in a fisherman’s hand. Two bullet wounds—one between his fifth and sixth ribs on the right side, the other in his throat—were leaking ribbons of blood.
Cassie’s mother covered her mouth, shook her head, and wept.
“You got him,” I said.
She slid the hand lower, stretching her bottom lip.
When I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket to pull out a folded paper, she noticed the bloodstained bandage wrapped around my palm, then she lifted her gaze to study my expression. I spread out the wanted poster.
“You stopped the Southern California Prowler—killer of at least twenty-six women and girls.”
Cassie’s mother snatched the paper from me and skimmed it. She examined Richard Alcala’s pale face; his pupils had shifted toward her, his chest shaking in time with the blood gargling in his throat. She let her muscles loosen, her brow lowered, and her features hardened.
“Oh.”
She wiped her tears with her forearm. Reaching out blindly with her right hand, she set the revolver on the hallway table, nudging aside two picture frames. She gave the dying man a look you’d offer a spider swirling down a drain. Then she moved to the phone mounted on the wall, lifted the receiver, and turned the dial for a nine. I thumbed the Colt Python’s hammer back with a soft click.
I found Cassie huddled by the sofa, facing the egg-yellow wallpaper. She wore a T-shirt printed with a whip-poor-will. Her index fingers were jammed in her ears, her eyelids clenched so tightly that the skin at their corners wrinkled. She was trembling like a tower on the verge of collapse.
I placed a hand on her hair.
“Cassie.”
She stopped trembling and lifted her face to me, her eyes shining with tears.
I helped her to her feet. I pointed at her mother, who was in profile, murmuring into the phone receiver. I guided Cassie to the shag rug in the middle of the living room, beside Richard Alcala, whose wounds kept spreading bloodstains like overflowing lakes. Cassie shuddered and let out a whimper. She turned away and covered her eyes.
I stepped behind the girl and turned her toward the killer.
“Cassie.”
She lowered her hands and opened her eyes. She looked down at the dying man the way someone would stare into an abyss.
Richard Alcala’s pupils flicked across the ceiling. With every convulsion, his mouth spewed bloody gobs like a broken faucet. Lying on the rug was a tar-molded mannequin foaming and steaming as its human features—face, torso, arms, and legs—melted into a puddle of black muck.
I pressed a hand on Cassie’s shoulder.
“Don’t look away.”
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally published in Spanish about a decade ago, in a collection titled Los reinos de brea.
January 17, 2025
Smile, Pt. 11 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
After four blocks, the adrenaline rush wore off, and I realized the car’s body was rattling in time to metallic thuds. Richard Alcala was thrashing around, trying to pop open the trunk lid. He moaned and cursed but didn’t quite beg for help—whoever freed him would discover his identity. On one side, death row was waiting for him. On the other side, I was.
As my stolen Chevrolet Caprice passed by, some pedestrians shot sidelong glances. Drivers in the cars ahead eyed me through their rearview mirrors. With my nerves frayed, I couldn’t tell if I was just imagining those stares, or if it was obvious I had someone locked in the trunk.
The car’s body lurched with each jolt, like the parked van where I’d kept my cargo from killing the would-be model. Richard Alcala shouted for help with a tinny voice.
I switched on the radio and turned up the volume. The news anchor was talking about the Prowler again, repeating a tip line number. I spun the dial. Stations flickered in and out between bursts of static, snatches of sound. I landed on a classical music station but found the silences between notes too hollow. The next station played Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” a few lines after it began, about four minutes before the guitars would crash in and blow the song apart.
I listened, leaning back against the upholstery like I’d wrapped up a day’s work, but within seconds, a fresh round of thrashing, pounding on metal, and shouting ruined it. I squeezed the steering wheel, cursed, and cranked the volume to drown him out. I was drawing attention like a circus promotion vehicle blasting ads through a megaphone. A group of young men and women in bell-bottoms recognized the song and hollered. One woman in the group bobbed her head in time. Another one looped an arm around her friend’s elbow and started hopping, the hand holding her cigarette high, sketching a sinuous trail of smoke.
Traffic slowed me down and kept me from taking shortcuts. I was mapping out a clear route in my head, but the pounding reverberating through the car body shattered my concentration. Was Richard Alcala still screaming for help, or was I just hearing echoes in my mind?
The singer sang the last verse, and the guitars went wild. In the rearview mirror, two cars back, a police cruiser appeared. The officer behind the wheel leaned over to look at me through his sunglasses.
I pressed my fingertips against the radio volume knob like it was a membrane of glass, and eased the sound down until the song barely overlaid the cries for help. But the car was still rocking, as if Richard Alcala were kicking at the trunk lid with both legs.
We stopped at a red light. The police cruiser lit up its overheads, and the street woke to the howl of the siren.
I gritted my teeth. My blood turned to hot coals. I floored the accelerator and jerked the wheel. The cruiser followed. I barreled down a side street, slaloming between cars. I smashed the headlight of a car coming straight at me.
The cruiser wobbled in and out of my rearview with its lights flaring off the windshield. The cops inside were moving their lips, shouting something. As I drifted around a curve, tires screeching, the smell of burning rubber filled the car through the open window. I noticed that at the sound of the siren, Richard Alcala had stopped pounding and gone quiet.
My neck was stiff and aching. My grip on the steering wheel was so tight it felt like my palms and fingers would fuse to it. I shifted gears like a madman while ducking my head between my shoulders in case one of the cops decided to shoot through my back window.
I searched for narrow passages, shortcuts, but kept finding fenced-off lanes or dead ends where the car would get stuck. I refused to turn down any alleys; I might trap myself with nowhere to go.
The cruiser’s wail faded a bit amid the traffic noise. I got distracted scanning vacant lots along the sidewalk, and a pedestrian at a crosswalk had to leap aside to avoid me mowing him down.
I spotted a gate, its door ajar, leading to a paved path flanked by garages. I jerked the wheel, careened across the oncoming lane, and crashed through the gate. The door whipped inward, screeching. I followed the asphalt between the garages, and after passing half a dozen I spotted one open and empty. I spun the car around and skidded inside at an angle. Part of the trunk stuck out, but I didn’t have time to straighten the car fully.
I turned the radio down until it would only bother the neighboring garages. Richard Alcala was hammering on the trunk door. The guitars on the radio shrieked like harpies. My heart was pumping so hard it felt close to bursting, and the rush of blood in my ears blotted out the cruiser’s siren.
Red rings throbbed around my vision. A familiar fury was boiling in my gut. I shoved my way out of the Chevy Caprice and rounded the side to the trunk, where the lid bulged from all the pounding.
Shelves packed to overflowing lined one garage wall, with junk scattered across the floor. I blinked to clear my sight. Bleach bottles, two toolboxes, a shovel, a vacuum cleaner, a pair of scissors, even a surfboard. A roll of duct tape.
I rolled it between my fingers, searching for the tape’s edge. Tried to pry it free with my ragged nails, but no luck. I bit a corner, warping several layers of the tape. I snatched up the scissors, accidentally knocking over a metal box that crashed to the floor and spilled a couple dozen tools. I wedged one scissor tip under the tape edge, but it slipped and sliced open my left palm, the sting like ice water. Even as blood trickled from the cut, I worked the blade until I could peel up the middle of the tape. Then I tugged, and the duct tape came loose with a squeal.
I held the roll in my mouth. Its dangling flap swayed as I slid the key into the trunk lock. The flurry of high guitar notes clawed at my veins.
I threw the trunk open. Richard Alcala lunged sideways, reaching his arm toward my face. I smashed a punch into his eye, sending the side of his head crashing into the trunk rim. I grabbed his neck with my left hand and hammered punches into his mouth with my right until static buzzed through my arm and my fist went numb.
When I let go, Richard Alcala collapsed inside the trunk with a string of groans. The lower half of his face was disfigured in a bright burst of blood, as if he’d vomited straight up.
I relaxed my jaw, letting the roll of duct tape drop into my hand, then stuck the tape’s end to his cheek. I wound it around his head a few times, covering his mouth. I tore the strip off with my teeth. Next, I seized his wrists, pressed them together, and cuffed them with more duct tape.
I slammed the trunk shut, staggered back. The song was fading out to silence. My right hand throbbed as if several knuckles had cracked. The skin was peeled raw, and a broken tooth dangled from one of them. I shook my hand until it fell away.
On the radio, a DJ was cheerfully chatting about the bright sun and the weeklong stretch of fair weather.
I propped myself against the trunk to catch my breath, and listened for sirens.
In a far corner of the garage, three young Hispanic men sat on the floor. One, with obsidian-colored hair and a cat-like mustache, had an acoustic guitar across his thighs. He held a G chord in his left hand, his right hand—holding the pick—resting on his knee. Another guy, his hair clipped short with shaved sides, raised both palms in a peace gesture.
I dropped the roll of duct tape. It bounced and rolled out of the garage. I slipped the scissors into my jacket pocket, and from that same pocket pulled out a few bills. I counted four fifties and folded them. I tossed the money in front of the three young men.
“Buy yourselves some better duct tape.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s song, for no reason, is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Wish I could have returned back in time and prevented you folks from getting on that plane.
As one commenter of the video put it succinctly: all crimes committed during the “Free Bird” solo are hereby forgiven.
After four blocks, the adrenaline rush wore off, and I realized the car’s body was rattling in time to metallic thuds. Richard Alcala was thrashing around, trying to pop open the trunk lid. He moaned and cursed but didn’t quite beg for help—whoever freed him would discover his identity. On one side, death row was waiting for him. On the other side, I was.
As my stolen Chevrolet Caprice passed by, some pedestrians shot sidelong glances. Drivers in the cars ahead eyed me through their rearview mirrors. With my nerves frayed, I couldn’t tell if I was just imagining those stares, or if it was obvious I had someone locked in the trunk.
The car’s body lurched with each jolt, like the parked van where I’d kept my cargo from killing the would-be model. Richard Alcala shouted for help with a tinny voice.
I switched on the radio and turned up the volume. The news anchor was talking about the Prowler again, repeating a tip line number. I spun the dial. Stations flickered in and out between bursts of static, snatches of sound. I landed on a classical music station but found the silences between notes too hollow. The next station played Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” a few lines after it began, about four minutes before the guitars would crash in and blow the song apart.
I listened, leaning back against the upholstery like I’d wrapped up a day’s work, but within seconds, a fresh round of thrashing, pounding on metal, and shouting ruined it. I squeezed the steering wheel, cursed, and cranked the volume to drown him out. I was drawing attention like a circus promotion vehicle blasting ads through a megaphone. A group of young men and women in bell-bottoms recognized the song and hollered. One woman in the group bobbed her head in time. Another one looped an arm around her friend’s elbow and started hopping, the hand holding her cigarette high, sketching a sinuous trail of smoke.
Traffic slowed me down and kept me from taking shortcuts. I was mapping out a clear route in my head, but the pounding reverberating through the car body shattered my concentration. Was Richard Alcala still screaming for help, or was I just hearing echoes in my mind?
The singer sang the last verse, and the guitars went wild. In the rearview mirror, two cars back, a police cruiser appeared. The officer behind the wheel leaned over to look at me through his sunglasses.
I pressed my fingertips against the radio volume knob like it was a membrane of glass, and eased the sound down until the song barely overlaid the cries for help. But the car was still rocking, as if Richard Alcala were kicking at the trunk lid with both legs.
We stopped at a red light. The police cruiser lit up its overheads, and the street woke to the howl of the siren.
I gritted my teeth. My blood turned to hot coals. I floored the accelerator and jerked the wheel. The cruiser followed. I barreled down a side street, slaloming between cars. I smashed the headlight of a car coming straight at me.
The cruiser wobbled in and out of my rearview with its lights flaring off the windshield. The cops inside were moving their lips, shouting something. As I drifted around a curve, tires screeching, the smell of burning rubber filled the car through the open window. I noticed that at the sound of the siren, Richard Alcala had stopped pounding and gone quiet.
My neck was stiff and aching. My grip on the steering wheel was so tight it felt like my palms and fingers would fuse to it. I shifted gears like a madman while ducking my head between my shoulders in case one of the cops decided to shoot through my back window.
I searched for narrow passages, shortcuts, but kept finding fenced-off lanes or dead ends where the car would get stuck. I refused to turn down any alleys; I might trap myself with nowhere to go.
The cruiser’s wail faded a bit amid the traffic noise. I got distracted scanning vacant lots along the sidewalk, and a pedestrian at a crosswalk had to leap aside to avoid me mowing him down.
I spotted a gate, its door ajar, leading to a paved path flanked by garages. I jerked the wheel, careened across the oncoming lane, and crashed through the gate. The door whipped inward, screeching. I followed the asphalt between the garages, and after passing half a dozen I spotted one open and empty. I spun the car around and skidded inside at an angle. Part of the trunk stuck out, but I didn’t have time to straighten the car fully.
I turned the radio down until it would only bother the neighboring garages. Richard Alcala was hammering on the trunk door. The guitars on the radio shrieked like harpies. My heart was pumping so hard it felt close to bursting, and the rush of blood in my ears blotted out the cruiser’s siren.
Red rings throbbed around my vision. A familiar fury was boiling in my gut. I shoved my way out of the Chevy Caprice and rounded the side to the trunk, where the lid bulged from all the pounding.
Shelves packed to overflowing lined one garage wall, with junk scattered across the floor. I blinked to clear my sight. Bleach bottles, two toolboxes, a shovel, a vacuum cleaner, a pair of scissors, even a surfboard. A roll of duct tape.
I rolled it between my fingers, searching for the tape’s edge. Tried to pry it free with my ragged nails, but no luck. I bit a corner, warping several layers of the tape. I snatched up the scissors, accidentally knocking over a metal box that crashed to the floor and spilled a couple dozen tools. I wedged one scissor tip under the tape edge, but it slipped and sliced open my left palm, the sting like ice water. Even as blood trickled from the cut, I worked the blade until I could peel up the middle of the tape. Then I tugged, and the duct tape came loose with a squeal.
I held the roll in my mouth. Its dangling flap swayed as I slid the key into the trunk lock. The flurry of high guitar notes clawed at my veins.
I threw the trunk open. Richard Alcala lunged sideways, reaching his arm toward my face. I smashed a punch into his eye, sending the side of his head crashing into the trunk rim. I grabbed his neck with my left hand and hammered punches into his mouth with my right until static buzzed through my arm and my fist went numb.
When I let go, Richard Alcala collapsed inside the trunk with a string of groans. The lower half of his face was disfigured in a bright burst of blood, as if he’d vomited straight up.
I relaxed my jaw, letting the roll of duct tape drop into my hand, then stuck the tape’s end to his cheek. I wound it around his head a few times, covering his mouth. I tore the strip off with my teeth. Next, I seized his wrists, pressed them together, and cuffed them with more duct tape.
I slammed the trunk shut, staggered back. The song was fading out to silence. My right hand throbbed as if several knuckles had cracked. The skin was peeled raw, and a broken tooth dangled from one of them. I shook my hand until it fell away.
On the radio, a DJ was cheerfully chatting about the bright sun and the weeklong stretch of fair weather.
I propped myself against the trunk to catch my breath, and listened for sirens.
In a far corner of the garage, three young Hispanic men sat on the floor. One, with obsidian-colored hair and a cat-like mustache, had an acoustic guitar across his thighs. He held a G chord in his left hand, his right hand—holding the pick—resting on his knee. Another guy, his hair clipped short with shaved sides, raised both palms in a peace gesture.
I dropped the roll of duct tape. It bounced and rolled out of the garage. I slipped the scissors into my jacket pocket, and from that same pocket pulled out a few bills. I counted four fifties and folded them. I tossed the money in front of the three young men.
“Buy yourselves some better duct tape.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s song, for no reason, is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Wish I could have returned back in time and prevented you folks from getting on that plane.
As one commenter of the video put it succinctly: all crimes committed during the “Free Bird” solo are hereby forgiven.
Smile, Pt. 10 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
I ran to the opposite sidewalk. Slipping among the tourists, I searched the alleys and parking lots for an out-of-the-way car. I collided with someone rooted to the spot. When I pushed that person aside with one hand, my palm sank into the supple flesh of a breast, hot under my touch. I mumbled an apology.
I came upon a parking lot wedged between two buildings, that stretched into an L-shape. Four cars and a van. I stopped by the nearest car, a cherry-red Mercury Bobcat, and tried the driver’s door handle. It held fast. I moved on to the next one, a chalk-colored Ford Pinto.
Time was speeding toward zero. I pictured the bodybuilder and the girl talking to a cop while another officer handcuffed Richard Alcala, and it felt like I was the one getting arrested. If cops were waiting for me when I got back, there’d be questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
I closed my fingers around the Pinto’s door handle. Another shadow joined mine, spilling across the Pinto’s bodywork. I turned around as if expecting someone to bury a knife in my back.
It was the aspiring model. The flare of her dress had lost its grace beneath wrinkles. Strands of blonde hair stuck out in all directions. Her eyes had grown glassy. A bruise shaped like a hand clung to her throat.
I refocused on the car. When I pulled the handle, the driver’s door opened. I bent inside and sat down.
The woman approached the gap of the open door, darkening the interior.
“Why did you call me an idiot?”
I flipped down the hinged flap of the sun visor in case the owner had stashed a key.
“That man hurt me,” the woman said, “and you insulted me. You could’ve given me a hand.”
I bent over to slide a forearm under the seat, rooting among candy wrappers and clumps of dirt. I barely diverted my gaze toward the midsection of her dress.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
“Where should I go?” she asked, sounding dazed. “Home, like you said? To hide in terror? No. I’m supposed to get my pictures taken, and I will. That nasty man won’t ruin my day.”
I slumped against the seat as if my muscles had fallen asleep. I leaned over to frame her face in the door’s opening.
“The photographer assaulted you.”
“Excuse me?”
“The photographer assaulted you after shaving his head and sticking on a fake mustache.”
“The same photographer we talked to yesterday?”
“The only one that connects us.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You ran into the Southern California Prowler.” I shook my head. “A serial killer. Besides, do you really want them photographing that hand-shaped bruise on your neck?”
When the woman traced the bruise’s outline, pain twisted her features. She let her gaze wander over the other parked cars and the sky, as if cementing the information to the slow rise of the mountains.
While I felt around the gearshift, someone rapped on the passenger-side window. A middle-aged man, hair combed like some bank employee. He eyed me, eyebrows raised. I stretched across the passenger seat and turned the crank to lower the window.
“Yes?”
The man creased his brow and tried to smile.
“You’ve mistaken this car for yours.”
“I need it. It’s vital. Can you give me the keys?”
He stared at me like I was refusing to admit that this was all a joke.
“I don’t think so.”
I got out. The man came around the car and hurried to sit behind the wheel. He shut the door while throwing me a suspicious glance. He then started the engine and pulled out of the lot.
I was heading for the third car, a cinnamon-colored Chevy Caprice, when the woman grabbed my arm.
“People like the guy who attacked me show up when everyone forgets how to be kind.”
I shook loose.
“Jesus. Go home or to a hospital. But leave me alone.”
I tugged on the Chevy’s door handle, and it opened. I slid in, fitting my legs beneath the oversized steering wheel, and rifled through the glove compartment. Under a mess of papers, I found a key ring.
The woman bent over the doorway, holding onto the frame.
“I’ll stay happy. I owe it to the world.”
I wanted to scream until she fled. I made it clear with a scowl that I was sick of nonsense.
“You owe it to the world that let you get raped? That nearly strangled you to death?”
“I knew someone would save me. And you showed up.”
My back sank against the seat. I dipped my head, filled my lungs, and exhaled for three seconds. Then I stuck the key in the ignition.
“Thanks to you, I’m still alive,” the woman said.
When I turned the key, the engine purred, making my seat vibrate. The door handle shook as well.
She was smiling, leaning in so that her breasts all but spilled from her dress like upside-down bells framed by glossy, golden strands. A pang of hunger hit me.
“I don’t need your gratitude. I stopped expecting it a while back.”
She straightened, and backed away while fumbling with her left hand. She softened her voice.
“We should spread love, you know? In the end, that’s the one thing we’ll remember.”
I closed the door and gripped the steering wheel. I sighed. I let go with my left hand to open the door again.
“Sorry I called you an idiot, even though it’s true. Enjoy the rest of your life.”
I shut the door. I jiggled the gearshift into reverse and drove out to the street. On my way back, traffic slowed me down. I should have stolen an ambulance and blasted the siren.
I hopped the curb near my comrades-in-arms. The bodybuilder was driving a knee between Richard Alcala’s shoulder blades while the vagrant girl pressed the killer’s head into the dirt. As I climbed out of the car, Alcala’s eyes went wide. He whimpered like a frightened dog.
“Oh, you parked nearby,” said the bodybuilder.
“It’s not my car. Thanks for your help. I’ll take care of the Prowler.”
Richard Alcala flailed around like a fish on the boards of a pier, but the bodybuilder dug his weight into Alcala’s back. He growled, and the girl punched him in the crown of his head.
“Shut it, bastard.”
The bodybuilder freed a hand to calm the girl.
“We’ve got him. Don’t go overboard.”
She shot him a glare.
“Are you serious? You know he raped and killed like a dozen women, right?”
I popped the trunk. It was stuffed with camping gear. I cleared it out by dumping the bags next to a parked car until a body would fit.
“What are you doing?” asked the bodybuilder.
“Taking the Prowler somewhere else.”
“The police will come.”
“He hasn’t called them,” the girl said casually.
The bodybuilder looked at us, confused.
“Isn’t it enough if the police take him?”
I stepped closer. With half his face mashed against the dirt, Alcala strained his eyes toward me.
“The cops will hand him over to the legal system,” I said. “Trials. A media circus. Years spent arguing whether keeping him locked up or executing him is humane. His victims are rotting and their families suffer. I’m ending this for good.”
“Spending the rest of his life in prison seems like punishment enough.”
“I’ll keep him from ever getting out. Decades from now, someone may set him free.” I fixed my gaze on the vagrant girl’s. “Some idiot puffed up with pride over how compassionate he is, someone who’d be outraged to learn what I’m going to do. This killer deserves a classical treatment.”
“In a few decades, we’ll have forgotten all this,” the bodybuilder argued.
“I’ll remember it like it happened yesterday.”
“You can also let me go,” Richard Alcala said, spitting dirt. “I don’t hold grudges.”
“Need any help?” asked a woman over my shoulder.
A retired couple with bronze-tanned skin had come up behind us. They wore sleeveless shirts and shorts, carrying towels and toiletries.
“Move along,” said the girl, nodding toward the beach.
“He’s a thief,” the bodybuilder said. “We’ve got it under control.”
The woman looked down at the killer.
“Have you stolen something?”
Richard Alcala flared his nostrils and scowled.
“Fuck off, old toad.”
The retirees backed off, mouths agape. They scurried toward the Venice Beach boardwalk, whispering and eyeing us nervously, as if we were hooded thugs loitering outside a bank.
The bodybuilder forced Alcala’s chest into the dirt while pinning me with his stare.
“I see your point, but turning him in spares us a lot of trouble.”
I clenched my jaw. I longed to kill from a distance, offing murderers who suspected nothing, distracted by their own schemes. How would I convince two people I’d rather not harm?
Partly due to the unrelenting sunlight, a throbbing pain in my head demanded I barricade myself in a dark room, lie down, and hope that when I woke, this week’s nightmare had passed. The clamor of tourists, beachgoers, and traffic scraped my skin like sandpaper.
I lifted the hem of my T-shirt to show off the Smith & Wesson’s grip.
“You’ve noticed the guy’s missing a few fingers—courtesy of this gun. You two are the most decent people I’ve met in a while, but you’re letting me take the Prowler.”
The bodybuilder raised a hand.
“Listen, man, neither of us wants to get shot over this.”
The vagrant girl was eyeing the gun.
“Are you an undercover cop?”
“No.”
“You’re carrying a gun for no reason?”
“No. Let me put this killer in the trunk.”
“I knocked him out by throwing my bike,” the bodybuilder said.
“I remember. That was cool.”
The bodybuilder looked down at Richard Alcala, whose frantic thoughts escaped in mutters, but the giant mushroom of a man remained indecisive.
I rubbed my eyelids and took a deep breath.
“This killer raped and murdered someone I cared about. I’m not letting him rot in a cushy cell. Richard Alcala and I are going to have some fun. Whatever’s left, I’ll send to the police in boxes.”
I crouched down and seized the killer’s wrists. The bodybuilder eased off the weight of his knee.
“Help me if you feel like it,” I said to the girl.
“Absolutely.”
We hoisted Alcala by his arms and legs while he squirmed. We wedged him on his side inside the trunk, then I slammed it shut. Alcala let out a screech.
On the boardwalk, the retired couple, far enough that they could fit between my fingers, was talking to two cops who looked our way. Electricity shot down my spine.
“How do we know you’ll do what you say?” the bodybuilder asked as he rubbed his palms on his pant legs.
“Read the papers.”
The cops were weaving through the streams of people on the boardwalk, pink faces turned toward us.
When I opened the driver’s door, the girl slid a hand inside my unzipped jacket and grabbed my shirt. Her eagle eyes a couple of inches away. The smudge of dirt on her cheek suggested she’d started putting on war paint but got sidetracked. Her open mouth shifted the chewed gum like a washing machine’s agitator. She smelled foul.
“You need a Robin?”
“I work alone.”
She pressed her lips to mine and slid her tongue into my mouth. She tasted of strawberries and neglect.
I stepped back. I groped the air before remembering I had opened the door. Sweat coated me like I’d just climbed out of hot water.
“Thanks.”
I slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Once I sped off, in the rearview mirror, the bodybuilder was scratching his neck, and the girl crossed the road while eyeing my stolen car. She was slender—her body worn thin from life on the street—and her fixed smile rarely meant joy.
I kept watching her, a pressure swelling in my chest, until her figure vanished from the mirror. Was she still alive in my present? How had she filled those decades? Found a partner, had children? Died within a few years thanks to any of the disasters that loom over those who sleep on the streets?
As I turned a corner, I let go of another person that time will ruin.
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish in a collection titled Los reinos de brea, about ten years ago. I guess back then I considered romancing a vagrant girl who doesn’t brush her teeth. I can fix you, babe.
I ran to the opposite sidewalk. Slipping among the tourists, I searched the alleys and parking lots for an out-of-the-way car. I collided with someone rooted to the spot. When I pushed that person aside with one hand, my palm sank into the supple flesh of a breast, hot under my touch. I mumbled an apology.
I came upon a parking lot wedged between two buildings, that stretched into an L-shape. Four cars and a van. I stopped by the nearest car, a cherry-red Mercury Bobcat, and tried the driver’s door handle. It held fast. I moved on to the next one, a chalk-colored Ford Pinto.
Time was speeding toward zero. I pictured the bodybuilder and the girl talking to a cop while another officer handcuffed Richard Alcala, and it felt like I was the one getting arrested. If cops were waiting for me when I got back, there’d be questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
I closed my fingers around the Pinto’s door handle. Another shadow joined mine, spilling across the Pinto’s bodywork. I turned around as if expecting someone to bury a knife in my back.
It was the aspiring model. The flare of her dress had lost its grace beneath wrinkles. Strands of blonde hair stuck out in all directions. Her eyes had grown glassy. A bruise shaped like a hand clung to her throat.
I refocused on the car. When I pulled the handle, the driver’s door opened. I bent inside and sat down.
The woman approached the gap of the open door, darkening the interior.
“Why did you call me an idiot?”
I flipped down the hinged flap of the sun visor in case the owner had stashed a key.
“That man hurt me,” the woman said, “and you insulted me. You could’ve given me a hand.”
I bent over to slide a forearm under the seat, rooting among candy wrappers and clumps of dirt. I barely diverted my gaze toward the midsection of her dress.
“Why the fuck are you still here?”
“Where should I go?” she asked, sounding dazed. “Home, like you said? To hide in terror? No. I’m supposed to get my pictures taken, and I will. That nasty man won’t ruin my day.”
I slumped against the seat as if my muscles had fallen asleep. I leaned over to frame her face in the door’s opening.
“The photographer assaulted you.”
“Excuse me?”
“The photographer assaulted you after shaving his head and sticking on a fake mustache.”
“The same photographer we talked to yesterday?”
“The only one that connects us.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You ran into the Southern California Prowler.” I shook my head. “A serial killer. Besides, do you really want them photographing that hand-shaped bruise on your neck?”
When the woman traced the bruise’s outline, pain twisted her features. She let her gaze wander over the other parked cars and the sky, as if cementing the information to the slow rise of the mountains.
While I felt around the gearshift, someone rapped on the passenger-side window. A middle-aged man, hair combed like some bank employee. He eyed me, eyebrows raised. I stretched across the passenger seat and turned the crank to lower the window.
“Yes?”
The man creased his brow and tried to smile.
“You’ve mistaken this car for yours.”
“I need it. It’s vital. Can you give me the keys?”
He stared at me like I was refusing to admit that this was all a joke.
“I don’t think so.”
I got out. The man came around the car and hurried to sit behind the wheel. He shut the door while throwing me a suspicious glance. He then started the engine and pulled out of the lot.
I was heading for the third car, a cinnamon-colored Chevy Caprice, when the woman grabbed my arm.
“People like the guy who attacked me show up when everyone forgets how to be kind.”
I shook loose.
“Jesus. Go home or to a hospital. But leave me alone.”
I tugged on the Chevy’s door handle, and it opened. I slid in, fitting my legs beneath the oversized steering wheel, and rifled through the glove compartment. Under a mess of papers, I found a key ring.
The woman bent over the doorway, holding onto the frame.
“I’ll stay happy. I owe it to the world.”
I wanted to scream until she fled. I made it clear with a scowl that I was sick of nonsense.
“You owe it to the world that let you get raped? That nearly strangled you to death?”
“I knew someone would save me. And you showed up.”
My back sank against the seat. I dipped my head, filled my lungs, and exhaled for three seconds. Then I stuck the key in the ignition.
“Thanks to you, I’m still alive,” the woman said.
When I turned the key, the engine purred, making my seat vibrate. The door handle shook as well.
She was smiling, leaning in so that her breasts all but spilled from her dress like upside-down bells framed by glossy, golden strands. A pang of hunger hit me.
“I don’t need your gratitude. I stopped expecting it a while back.”
She straightened, and backed away while fumbling with her left hand. She softened her voice.
“We should spread love, you know? In the end, that’s the one thing we’ll remember.”
I closed the door and gripped the steering wheel. I sighed. I let go with my left hand to open the door again.
“Sorry I called you an idiot, even though it’s true. Enjoy the rest of your life.”
I shut the door. I jiggled the gearshift into reverse and drove out to the street. On my way back, traffic slowed me down. I should have stolen an ambulance and blasted the siren.
I hopped the curb near my comrades-in-arms. The bodybuilder was driving a knee between Richard Alcala’s shoulder blades while the vagrant girl pressed the killer’s head into the dirt. As I climbed out of the car, Alcala’s eyes went wide. He whimpered like a frightened dog.
“Oh, you parked nearby,” said the bodybuilder.
“It’s not my car. Thanks for your help. I’ll take care of the Prowler.”
Richard Alcala flailed around like a fish on the boards of a pier, but the bodybuilder dug his weight into Alcala’s back. He growled, and the girl punched him in the crown of his head.
“Shut it, bastard.”
The bodybuilder freed a hand to calm the girl.
“We’ve got him. Don’t go overboard.”
She shot him a glare.
“Are you serious? You know he raped and killed like a dozen women, right?”
I popped the trunk. It was stuffed with camping gear. I cleared it out by dumping the bags next to a parked car until a body would fit.
“What are you doing?” asked the bodybuilder.
“Taking the Prowler somewhere else.”
“The police will come.”
“He hasn’t called them,” the girl said casually.
The bodybuilder looked at us, confused.
“Isn’t it enough if the police take him?”
I stepped closer. With half his face mashed against the dirt, Alcala strained his eyes toward me.
“The cops will hand him over to the legal system,” I said. “Trials. A media circus. Years spent arguing whether keeping him locked up or executing him is humane. His victims are rotting and their families suffer. I’m ending this for good.”
“Spending the rest of his life in prison seems like punishment enough.”
“I’ll keep him from ever getting out. Decades from now, someone may set him free.” I fixed my gaze on the vagrant girl’s. “Some idiot puffed up with pride over how compassionate he is, someone who’d be outraged to learn what I’m going to do. This killer deserves a classical treatment.”
“In a few decades, we’ll have forgotten all this,” the bodybuilder argued.
“I’ll remember it like it happened yesterday.”
“You can also let me go,” Richard Alcala said, spitting dirt. “I don’t hold grudges.”
“Need any help?” asked a woman over my shoulder.
A retired couple with bronze-tanned skin had come up behind us. They wore sleeveless shirts and shorts, carrying towels and toiletries.
“Move along,” said the girl, nodding toward the beach.
“He’s a thief,” the bodybuilder said. “We’ve got it under control.”
The woman looked down at the killer.
“Have you stolen something?”
Richard Alcala flared his nostrils and scowled.
“Fuck off, old toad.”
The retirees backed off, mouths agape. They scurried toward the Venice Beach boardwalk, whispering and eyeing us nervously, as if we were hooded thugs loitering outside a bank.
The bodybuilder forced Alcala’s chest into the dirt while pinning me with his stare.
“I see your point, but turning him in spares us a lot of trouble.”
I clenched my jaw. I longed to kill from a distance, offing murderers who suspected nothing, distracted by their own schemes. How would I convince two people I’d rather not harm?
Partly due to the unrelenting sunlight, a throbbing pain in my head demanded I barricade myself in a dark room, lie down, and hope that when I woke, this week’s nightmare had passed. The clamor of tourists, beachgoers, and traffic scraped my skin like sandpaper.
I lifted the hem of my T-shirt to show off the Smith & Wesson’s grip.
“You’ve noticed the guy’s missing a few fingers—courtesy of this gun. You two are the most decent people I’ve met in a while, but you’re letting me take the Prowler.”
The bodybuilder raised a hand.
“Listen, man, neither of us wants to get shot over this.”
The vagrant girl was eyeing the gun.
“Are you an undercover cop?”
“No.”
“You’re carrying a gun for no reason?”
“No. Let me put this killer in the trunk.”
“I knocked him out by throwing my bike,” the bodybuilder said.
“I remember. That was cool.”
The bodybuilder looked down at Richard Alcala, whose frantic thoughts escaped in mutters, but the giant mushroom of a man remained indecisive.
I rubbed my eyelids and took a deep breath.
“This killer raped and murdered someone I cared about. I’m not letting him rot in a cushy cell. Richard Alcala and I are going to have some fun. Whatever’s left, I’ll send to the police in boxes.”
I crouched down and seized the killer’s wrists. The bodybuilder eased off the weight of his knee.
“Help me if you feel like it,” I said to the girl.
“Absolutely.”
We hoisted Alcala by his arms and legs while he squirmed. We wedged him on his side inside the trunk, then I slammed it shut. Alcala let out a screech.
On the boardwalk, the retired couple, far enough that they could fit between my fingers, was talking to two cops who looked our way. Electricity shot down my spine.
“How do we know you’ll do what you say?” the bodybuilder asked as he rubbed his palms on his pant legs.
“Read the papers.”
The cops were weaving through the streams of people on the boardwalk, pink faces turned toward us.
When I opened the driver’s door, the girl slid a hand inside my unzipped jacket and grabbed my shirt. Her eagle eyes a couple of inches away. The smudge of dirt on her cheek suggested she’d started putting on war paint but got sidetracked. Her open mouth shifted the chewed gum like a washing machine’s agitator. She smelled foul.
“You need a Robin?”
“I work alone.”
She pressed her lips to mine and slid her tongue into my mouth. She tasted of strawberries and neglect.
I stepped back. I groped the air before remembering I had opened the door. Sweat coated me like I’d just climbed out of hot water.
“Thanks.”
I slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Once I sped off, in the rearview mirror, the bodybuilder was scratching his neck, and the girl crossed the road while eyeing my stolen car. She was slender—her body worn thin from life on the street—and her fixed smile rarely meant joy.
I kept watching her, a pressure swelling in my chest, until her figure vanished from the mirror. Was she still alive in my present? How had she filled those decades? Found a partner, had children? Died within a few years thanks to any of the disasters that loom over those who sleep on the streets?
As I turned a corner, I let go of another person that time will ruin.
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish in a collection titled Los reinos de brea, about ten years ago. I guess back then I considered romancing a vagrant girl who doesn’t brush her teeth. I can fix you, babe.
Smile, Pt. 9 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
Richard Alcala smiled with quivering lips. He wagged the index finger of his intact hand like a TV show host embarrassed by someone’s answer, but then he curled that hand into a fist and threw it at my face. I dodged. The killer used that momentum to pivot and run diagonally toward the bike path.
I sighed. I chased after him.
Richard Alcala was sprinting as if he’d taken advantage of the stroll to get his energy back, like he were grabbing the baton in a relay race. He had pulled his left hand out of his pocket, and with every stride the bloody smear flicked drops around.
His shoes kicked sand into the faces of beachgoers lying on their towels, and of children playing with their plastic buckets and shovels. They shouted at him as he pulled away. A surfer crossed his path, and the killer rammed him shoulder-first. The people in that area looked at us the way they’d stare at a howling ambulance.
Richard Alcala reached a group of vagrants sitting on bulging backpacks—gaunt women and men with tangled hair and dirty beards.
The killer shouted between gasps, “That maniac’s after me!”
He took off running while placing the vagrants between us, and they turned to watch me approach. A figure peeled away from the group. As I tried to sidestep her, she shoved me in the chest.
I found myself facing a gum-chewing girl around nineteen or twenty. The raven-black fringe of her hair covered her eyebrows. She wore a gray T-shirt with one sleeve rolled all the way up to her shoulder. Lacking a bra, the outline of her small breasts was visible through the fabric. One of her cheekbones was smeared with grime, like she’d rubbed it with a greasy finger and no one had told her.
“You think you can harass a vet?” she asked with a voice like a cartoon fairy’s.
My vision vibrated, partly because of my exertion and partly because the sun had baked my brain. I had to wet my mouth before I could speak.
“You don’t want to know what he’s a veteran of.”
I pushed her aside with one hand. As I passed the girl, she drew a standard-issue army knife and pressed the tip against my neck.
“Show some respect.”
I held my breath. The metal poked like a needle drawing blood.
She chewed gum with her mouth open, her front teeth sticking out. She smelled stale, like she’d been stuck on a bus for ten hours and slept on the beach. Her gray eyes stared calmly back at me.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed her companions: scruffy, bearded men, both white and Hispanic. Off in the distance, looking small as a toy, Richard Alcala was showing signs of fatigue, glancing over his shoulder.
I slid my left hand inside my jacket toward the right pocket, but the girl nudged the knife’s tip a few millimeters deeper and broke my skin. The nerves around the cut lit up with a jolt.
I could have snapped her wrist, but did she really deserve that? I recognized in her gaze the conviction that she was in the right, that she could dispense justice.
I pulled out the folded wanted poster. When I unfolded it, the movement jostled my shirt, and the girl’s eyes dropped to the butt of my pistol, which stuck out behind my belt. She looked back at me, suspicious, her brow creasing.
I showed her the wanted poster.
“You’re letting the Prowler get away. That’s how you’re helping.”
Her body jerked around in a swift half-circule, her shoulders shrugged as if she’d just waded into icy water. She slid the blade back into the sheath on her belt.
“Shit.”
She tore off after the killer. I followed, weaving through the scruffy men. Two of the vagrants tried to keep up, but they gave up after about ten meters.
Richard Alcala was getting away down the bike path. I was risking losing him in the crowd. As the girl ran in front of me, the way her T-shirt clung to the tendons in her arms and narrow back suggested she was long overdue for a decent meal.
When I rubbed the puncture next to my carotid, blood stained my fingertips. The heat of my neck kept me from really feeling the bleed.
We closed the distance on the killer, who was glancing sideways at people passing him on skates or skateboards. I blinked to stop the row of palm trees and Richard Alcala’s figure from shimmering like a desert highway. My lungs were on fire, each breath filling them with hot air.
A cyclist was coming up the path—a teenager with blond dreadlocks, wearing a psychedelic T-shirt. The killer blocked him. As the teenager swerved, Richard Alcala grabbed the handlebars. The teenager spoke up, frowning. The killer clutched his dreads and yanked him toward the sand like he wanted to tear off the kid’s entire scalp. The teenager screamed. A dozen beachgoers raised their heads like gulls. The teenager lay halfway on the path halfway in the sand, clutching his head with both hands. Richard Alcala shook out his hand to release the torn strands, then mounted the bike.
The vagrant girl shouted. The killer looked at us with eyes rolled white, his features twisted with anxiety. He wobbled the bike, forcing two women in bikinis and rollerblades to move aside, then straightened and shrank into the distance along the path. He was about twenty meters ahead.
When I sprinted, a stitch stabbed my sides. The girl ran like she’d just realized she needed muscles. She waved an arm while her other hand pointed at the figure disappearing on the bicycle.
“Stop that man!” she yelled between gulps of air, though her voice sounded like she was teaching kids to play a game. “The bald guy with the mustache!”
Coming the other way on the path was a black man riding a mountain bike. His afro made him look like a toasted mushroom. Judging by how built he was, when he walked, all those lumps of muscle must have gotten in his way.
The girl shouted her order again. The bodybuilder spotted Richard Alcala, who was pedaling like a speeded-up film clip. The man jumped off his bike, grabbed the frame, hoisted it onto his shoulders, and hurled it at the killer. It clobbered Alcala in the face and knocked him flat on his back, his head cracking on the asphalt.
We reached Richard Alcala, who lay sprawled across one lane of the bike path. I was breathing fire. Beads of sweat trickled down my face, chest, back, and limbs. I blinked until my vision cleared.
The vagrant girl bent over, rested her palms on her thighs, and breathed through her mouth while chewing her gum. The killer’s lips were parted, his eyes fixed on the sky. His arms were curled as though gripping invisible handlebars.
The bodybuilder picked up his bike and straightened it. Though the top of his hairline reached my chin, his torso was twice as wide as mine. The veins in his arms bulged like plastic tubes forgotten inside during surgery.
“Did I crack his head open?”
“He’s breathing,” I said.
“Thinking might be another matter,” said the girl.
On both sides of the bike lane, cyclists and skaters had gathered. Some beachgoers watched as they stood on their towels or sat in their chairs.
I needed to get Richard Alcala off the streets. I doubted I could have stopped him alone, but I had to get rid of my companions.
“Let’s get him out of sight. Behind that row of parked cars.”
The bodybuilder hurried to chain his bike to a signpost. He came back and lifted Richard Alcala by the armpits like a child. I took hold of the killer’s legs. Spit dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
We dodged skaters, staggered around tourists and passersby in tank tops and shorts. A child in a cap with the Eiffel Tower on it snapped our picture with a Polaroid. A couple noticed Richard Alcala’s vacant stare and the drool at his lips, and asked about it, their voices colored by concern.
“Booze and heat, bad combo,” the bodybuilder said.
Dozens of people hurried past, barely giving a glance at the unconscious man we carried. Maybe they assumed we had a valid reason.
We ducked behind the line of parked cars and laid the killer on the dirt shoulder. The girl was smiling, baring her yellowed teeth. Between chews, her tongue rolled the gum into a ball. The bodybuilder lifted one of Richard Alcala’s eyelids, finding his gaze had slipped downward.
“Who did I knock out?”
The girl laughed. She knelt and tugged one end of the killer’s fake mustache, pulling up his upper lip and revealing his gums. Flakes of adhesive clung to his skin like dead, sunburned tissue.
“Why was he wearing a fake mustache?” the bodybuilder asked.
I unfolded the wanted notice and handed it over. The man read the poster, then glanced at Richard Alcala.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I scanned the boardwalk to see if any cops were around. If they took the killer in, maybe the problem would be over—unless he escaped. I’d return to my present and discover that for decades they’d put on this farce of trial after trial. What was there to discuss, when I knew this man had killed more than two dozen people? Maybe I’d find out that instead of executing him years earlier, they’d let him out of prison—gray-haired, a withered parody—so he could enjoy the California sunshine, thanks to judges who talked a big game about morality but at the end of the day went back to their gated communities with guards at every entrance.
My fists shook. I wanted to grab the killer by the shirt and drag him into an alley. How could I ditch these two?
“Now I can say I brought down a serial killer,” said the bodybuilder.
I sighed.
“It gets old fast.”
The girl laughed in a sudden burst, like someone tickling her. She leaned over Richard Alcala’s face. A peace sign pendant in silver slipped out from under her gray T-shirt, swinging back and forth.
“We got you, bastard. You enjoy raping women and girls, huh?”
She rested her hand on my shoulder for balance and pressed the grimy sole of her sneaker against the killer’s cheek. The skin around the shoe compressed, the eyelid on that side twitching. Then she lifted her foot away, leaving a print of sand and dust on his cheekbone.
Beyond the row of cars, a family passed. The mother and father peered over a hood, but after they got a look at Richard Alcala, they hurried their kids along toward the beach.
I placed a hand on the bodybuilder’s shoulder and the other on the girl’s.
“Keep him here while I call the cops.”
As I circled around the row of cars toward the opposite sidewalk, the bodybuilder called after me, “Cops show up here every few minutes.”
I turned back to face him with the kind of urgency I usually handled by breaking bones—but in his case, all that muscle would get in the way.
“No. Keep him hidden. Play it cool. I’ll be right back.”
The girl looked at me tilting her head, her thumbs tucked behind her belt.
-----
Author’s note: this is a translation of my novella titled “Sonríe,” contained in a collection I self-published a decade ago. Barely anyone read it, so I figured I may as well post it on my site.
I had completely forgotten about the punkish vagrant girl and the mushroom bodybuilder. This was likely the goofiest part of the tale.
Richard Alcala smiled with quivering lips. He wagged the index finger of his intact hand like a TV show host embarrassed by someone’s answer, but then he curled that hand into a fist and threw it at my face. I dodged. The killer used that momentum to pivot and run diagonally toward the bike path.
I sighed. I chased after him.
Richard Alcala was sprinting as if he’d taken advantage of the stroll to get his energy back, like he were grabbing the baton in a relay race. He had pulled his left hand out of his pocket, and with every stride the bloody smear flicked drops around.
His shoes kicked sand into the faces of beachgoers lying on their towels, and of children playing with their plastic buckets and shovels. They shouted at him as he pulled away. A surfer crossed his path, and the killer rammed him shoulder-first. The people in that area looked at us the way they’d stare at a howling ambulance.
Richard Alcala reached a group of vagrants sitting on bulging backpacks—gaunt women and men with tangled hair and dirty beards.
The killer shouted between gasps, “That maniac’s after me!”
He took off running while placing the vagrants between us, and they turned to watch me approach. A figure peeled away from the group. As I tried to sidestep her, she shoved me in the chest.
I found myself facing a gum-chewing girl around nineteen or twenty. The raven-black fringe of her hair covered her eyebrows. She wore a gray T-shirt with one sleeve rolled all the way up to her shoulder. Lacking a bra, the outline of her small breasts was visible through the fabric. One of her cheekbones was smeared with grime, like she’d rubbed it with a greasy finger and no one had told her.
“You think you can harass a vet?” she asked with a voice like a cartoon fairy’s.
My vision vibrated, partly because of my exertion and partly because the sun had baked my brain. I had to wet my mouth before I could speak.
“You don’t want to know what he’s a veteran of.”
I pushed her aside with one hand. As I passed the girl, she drew a standard-issue army knife and pressed the tip against my neck.
“Show some respect.”
I held my breath. The metal poked like a needle drawing blood.
She chewed gum with her mouth open, her front teeth sticking out. She smelled stale, like she’d been stuck on a bus for ten hours and slept on the beach. Her gray eyes stared calmly back at me.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed her companions: scruffy, bearded men, both white and Hispanic. Off in the distance, looking small as a toy, Richard Alcala was showing signs of fatigue, glancing over his shoulder.
I slid my left hand inside my jacket toward the right pocket, but the girl nudged the knife’s tip a few millimeters deeper and broke my skin. The nerves around the cut lit up with a jolt.
I could have snapped her wrist, but did she really deserve that? I recognized in her gaze the conviction that she was in the right, that she could dispense justice.
I pulled out the folded wanted poster. When I unfolded it, the movement jostled my shirt, and the girl’s eyes dropped to the butt of my pistol, which stuck out behind my belt. She looked back at me, suspicious, her brow creasing.
I showed her the wanted poster.
“You’re letting the Prowler get away. That’s how you’re helping.”
Her body jerked around in a swift half-circule, her shoulders shrugged as if she’d just waded into icy water. She slid the blade back into the sheath on her belt.
“Shit.”
She tore off after the killer. I followed, weaving through the scruffy men. Two of the vagrants tried to keep up, but they gave up after about ten meters.
Richard Alcala was getting away down the bike path. I was risking losing him in the crowd. As the girl ran in front of me, the way her T-shirt clung to the tendons in her arms and narrow back suggested she was long overdue for a decent meal.
When I rubbed the puncture next to my carotid, blood stained my fingertips. The heat of my neck kept me from really feeling the bleed.
We closed the distance on the killer, who was glancing sideways at people passing him on skates or skateboards. I blinked to stop the row of palm trees and Richard Alcala’s figure from shimmering like a desert highway. My lungs were on fire, each breath filling them with hot air.
A cyclist was coming up the path—a teenager with blond dreadlocks, wearing a psychedelic T-shirt. The killer blocked him. As the teenager swerved, Richard Alcala grabbed the handlebars. The teenager spoke up, frowning. The killer clutched his dreads and yanked him toward the sand like he wanted to tear off the kid’s entire scalp. The teenager screamed. A dozen beachgoers raised their heads like gulls. The teenager lay halfway on the path halfway in the sand, clutching his head with both hands. Richard Alcala shook out his hand to release the torn strands, then mounted the bike.
The vagrant girl shouted. The killer looked at us with eyes rolled white, his features twisted with anxiety. He wobbled the bike, forcing two women in bikinis and rollerblades to move aside, then straightened and shrank into the distance along the path. He was about twenty meters ahead.
When I sprinted, a stitch stabbed my sides. The girl ran like she’d just realized she needed muscles. She waved an arm while her other hand pointed at the figure disappearing on the bicycle.
“Stop that man!” she yelled between gulps of air, though her voice sounded like she was teaching kids to play a game. “The bald guy with the mustache!”
Coming the other way on the path was a black man riding a mountain bike. His afro made him look like a toasted mushroom. Judging by how built he was, when he walked, all those lumps of muscle must have gotten in his way.
The girl shouted her order again. The bodybuilder spotted Richard Alcala, who was pedaling like a speeded-up film clip. The man jumped off his bike, grabbed the frame, hoisted it onto his shoulders, and hurled it at the killer. It clobbered Alcala in the face and knocked him flat on his back, his head cracking on the asphalt.
We reached Richard Alcala, who lay sprawled across one lane of the bike path. I was breathing fire. Beads of sweat trickled down my face, chest, back, and limbs. I blinked until my vision cleared.
The vagrant girl bent over, rested her palms on her thighs, and breathed through her mouth while chewing her gum. The killer’s lips were parted, his eyes fixed on the sky. His arms were curled as though gripping invisible handlebars.
The bodybuilder picked up his bike and straightened it. Though the top of his hairline reached my chin, his torso was twice as wide as mine. The veins in his arms bulged like plastic tubes forgotten inside during surgery.
“Did I crack his head open?”
“He’s breathing,” I said.
“Thinking might be another matter,” said the girl.
On both sides of the bike lane, cyclists and skaters had gathered. Some beachgoers watched as they stood on their towels or sat in their chairs.
I needed to get Richard Alcala off the streets. I doubted I could have stopped him alone, but I had to get rid of my companions.
“Let’s get him out of sight. Behind that row of parked cars.”
The bodybuilder hurried to chain his bike to a signpost. He came back and lifted Richard Alcala by the armpits like a child. I took hold of the killer’s legs. Spit dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
We dodged skaters, staggered around tourists and passersby in tank tops and shorts. A child in a cap with the Eiffel Tower on it snapped our picture with a Polaroid. A couple noticed Richard Alcala’s vacant stare and the drool at his lips, and asked about it, their voices colored by concern.
“Booze and heat, bad combo,” the bodybuilder said.
Dozens of people hurried past, barely giving a glance at the unconscious man we carried. Maybe they assumed we had a valid reason.
We ducked behind the line of parked cars and laid the killer on the dirt shoulder. The girl was smiling, baring her yellowed teeth. Between chews, her tongue rolled the gum into a ball. The bodybuilder lifted one of Richard Alcala’s eyelids, finding his gaze had slipped downward.
“Who did I knock out?”
The girl laughed. She knelt and tugged one end of the killer’s fake mustache, pulling up his upper lip and revealing his gums. Flakes of adhesive clung to his skin like dead, sunburned tissue.
“Why was he wearing a fake mustache?” the bodybuilder asked.
I unfolded the wanted notice and handed it over. The man read the poster, then glanced at Richard Alcala.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I scanned the boardwalk to see if any cops were around. If they took the killer in, maybe the problem would be over—unless he escaped. I’d return to my present and discover that for decades they’d put on this farce of trial after trial. What was there to discuss, when I knew this man had killed more than two dozen people? Maybe I’d find out that instead of executing him years earlier, they’d let him out of prison—gray-haired, a withered parody—so he could enjoy the California sunshine, thanks to judges who talked a big game about morality but at the end of the day went back to their gated communities with guards at every entrance.
My fists shook. I wanted to grab the killer by the shirt and drag him into an alley. How could I ditch these two?
“Now I can say I brought down a serial killer,” said the bodybuilder.
I sighed.
“It gets old fast.”
The girl laughed in a sudden burst, like someone tickling her. She leaned over Richard Alcala’s face. A peace sign pendant in silver slipped out from under her gray T-shirt, swinging back and forth.
“We got you, bastard. You enjoy raping women and girls, huh?”
She rested her hand on my shoulder for balance and pressed the grimy sole of her sneaker against the killer’s cheek. The skin around the shoe compressed, the eyelid on that side twitching. Then she lifted her foot away, leaving a print of sand and dust on his cheekbone.
Beyond the row of cars, a family passed. The mother and father peered over a hood, but after they got a look at Richard Alcala, they hurried their kids along toward the beach.
I placed a hand on the bodybuilder’s shoulder and the other on the girl’s.
“Keep him here while I call the cops.”
As I circled around the row of cars toward the opposite sidewalk, the bodybuilder called after me, “Cops show up here every few minutes.”
I turned back to face him with the kind of urgency I usually handled by breaking bones—but in his case, all that muscle would get in the way.
“No. Keep him hidden. Play it cool. I’ll be right back.”
The girl looked at me tilting her head, her thumbs tucked behind her belt.
-----
Author’s note: this is a translation of my novella titled “Sonríe,” contained in a collection I self-published a decade ago. Barely anyone read it, so I figured I may as well post it on my site.
I had completely forgotten about the punkish vagrant girl and the mushroom bodybuilder. This was likely the goofiest part of the tale.
January 16, 2025
Life update (01/16/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
I’ve been in a better mood these past couple of days, which isn’t saying much given that I was contemplating very dark thoughts until then. A significant part of my change in mood has been thanks to my basement girl (my subconscious, in case you picture a fragile female chained under my floor). Recently she brought my attention to a novel I wrote about ten years ago, that I abandoned midway through because it wasn’t viable. Its core was worth exploring: it dealt with an autistic, reclusive person who was writing a novel about the artist she was obsessed with. It delved deep into how I lived for most of my twenties: deep seclusion, detachment from society, sinking in obsession, etc. I never processed that period properly, I don’t think, and working through such issues with a story tends to help, so I’m not surprised that my basement girl has been focused on it. Throughout the day, she has come up with the proper tone for the narration, with a bold idea for who the narrator should be, and for how to handle the scenes of the book-within-a-book (the entire book the protagonist wrote is one that I actually wrote, so that will be interesting to depict). As I was standing on the bus or the train, either heading to work or back, new moments from that story kept bubbling up from my basement, sometimes even interrupting my daydreams, clear proof that my mute girl is hard at work piecing it together. It will take me quite a while to organize all my notes and structure the whole thing properly, but as for now, I feel like I’m going to do this.
I’ve also been translating one of the novellas I wrote back in the day. I was surprised to discover that I still like it a lot, although it puzzled me with how different I feel these days. Back when I wrote Smile, the vastly increasing crime where I lived, as well as the regular terrorist attacks in Europe, kept me enraged. I couldn’t understand how people kept Don’t-Look-Back-in-Anger-ing. It was like most people had been brainwashed into becoming perfect little lambs for the slaughter. The situation hasn’t changed much, and in many ways it has worsened, but I don’t rage about it remotely as much. That may be in part due to a mix of growing older and caring even less about the world. I don’t feel like I’m part of this society; I just happen to live here. If I had the balls to do it, I’d move somewhere else. Maybe the Catalina foothills in Tucson, AZ, to give 65-year-old Augusta Britt a massage.
Speaking of troubling daydreams, yeah, I’m still fantasizing about Alicia Western, the haunting character from Cormac McCarthy’s last couple of novels. The daydream has become so elaborate that I may as well detail it now: a version of myself (perhaps even the protagonist of Smile, who was a recurrent protagonist in my daydreams whenever my savior complex kicked up) travels back in time to the Stella Maris sanatorium in Wisconsin, before Alicia Western killed herself. I show up in her assigned room. She’s all blonde-haired and shit, wearing such a pretty white gown. Anyway, I convince her that I’m from the future, that Bobby will wake up from his coma and be ready to dick her down. After a good cry, she gets hungry, so I bring her over a plate of Italian pasta from the future or whatever. The following day she decides to leave the sanatorium and travel around with me until Bobby wakes up. A few days into the trip, that involves watching movies from the future in modern TVs installed in roadside 1970s motels, Alicia gets curious about her younger self, and she asks me to set up a line of video communication with her teenage self about the time that Bobby fell in love with her. So I return back in time to her grandmother Ellen’s home to show her older Alicia’s video. That leads to a whole bunch of interaction from both sides, with 22-year-old Alicia recording videos for her younger self to guide her through her troublesome hallucinations and all that. Probably lots of advice on how to seduce her older brother. Anyway, I’m feeling generous, so I gift her grandmother like a hundred thousand dollars. “Oh, we can’t accept this!” “This isn’t even chump change, old broad! I’m a fucking time-traveler: I can win the lottery then win the lottery then win the lottery. I know the locations of piles of gold that won’t be found for decades. Just take the goddamn money and buy yourself a platinum dildo or something, will you?” They spend some of it on a tractor.
Ah, daydreams are so soothing. Just being able to close my eyes in the train and be transported mentally to these inner worlds where I can have conversations with a delightful, fascinating fictional character (though based on real person) the likes of which I’ve never met in real life, in part because I hate dealing with human beings.
Oh, I forgot to say about my novella Smile, the one I’m translating at the moment, that it may come close to what I consider “angry autistic guy writing.” The closest form of that which I recall is the manga Gantz. I hope it never quite reaches that point. I was fully aware during writing it that I was making it harsh and generally unpleasant, because it had to be. The protagonist, although an avenger who saves people, is a nasty serial killer himself who has murdered far more people than the serial killers and terrorists he hunts down. Of course, he’s justified in doing so… or is he? There’s the whole dilemma about his methods, the way he interacts with others, etc. I found him a very interesting guy. Of course, such a story would never get professionally published, which for me is a plus, as seemingly most of what gets published these days is politically correct slop. I want my writers deranged and half-evil, possibly even escaping to Mexico with fourteen year olds.
Anyway, I hope you’re getting to orgasm on a regular basis. That’s what life is ultimately about.
I’ve been in a better mood these past couple of days, which isn’t saying much given that I was contemplating very dark thoughts until then. A significant part of my change in mood has been thanks to my basement girl (my subconscious, in case you picture a fragile female chained under my floor). Recently she brought my attention to a novel I wrote about ten years ago, that I abandoned midway through because it wasn’t viable. Its core was worth exploring: it dealt with an autistic, reclusive person who was writing a novel about the artist she was obsessed with. It delved deep into how I lived for most of my twenties: deep seclusion, detachment from society, sinking in obsession, etc. I never processed that period properly, I don’t think, and working through such issues with a story tends to help, so I’m not surprised that my basement girl has been focused on it. Throughout the day, she has come up with the proper tone for the narration, with a bold idea for who the narrator should be, and for how to handle the scenes of the book-within-a-book (the entire book the protagonist wrote is one that I actually wrote, so that will be interesting to depict). As I was standing on the bus or the train, either heading to work or back, new moments from that story kept bubbling up from my basement, sometimes even interrupting my daydreams, clear proof that my mute girl is hard at work piecing it together. It will take me quite a while to organize all my notes and structure the whole thing properly, but as for now, I feel like I’m going to do this.
I’ve also been translating one of the novellas I wrote back in the day. I was surprised to discover that I still like it a lot, although it puzzled me with how different I feel these days. Back when I wrote Smile, the vastly increasing crime where I lived, as well as the regular terrorist attacks in Europe, kept me enraged. I couldn’t understand how people kept Don’t-Look-Back-in-Anger-ing. It was like most people had been brainwashed into becoming perfect little lambs for the slaughter. The situation hasn’t changed much, and in many ways it has worsened, but I don’t rage about it remotely as much. That may be in part due to a mix of growing older and caring even less about the world. I don’t feel like I’m part of this society; I just happen to live here. If I had the balls to do it, I’d move somewhere else. Maybe the Catalina foothills in Tucson, AZ, to give 65-year-old Augusta Britt a massage.
Speaking of troubling daydreams, yeah, I’m still fantasizing about Alicia Western, the haunting character from Cormac McCarthy’s last couple of novels. The daydream has become so elaborate that I may as well detail it now: a version of myself (perhaps even the protagonist of Smile, who was a recurrent protagonist in my daydreams whenever my savior complex kicked up) travels back in time to the Stella Maris sanatorium in Wisconsin, before Alicia Western killed herself. I show up in her assigned room. She’s all blonde-haired and shit, wearing such a pretty white gown. Anyway, I convince her that I’m from the future, that Bobby will wake up from his coma and be ready to dick her down. After a good cry, she gets hungry, so I bring her over a plate of Italian pasta from the future or whatever. The following day she decides to leave the sanatorium and travel around with me until Bobby wakes up. A few days into the trip, that involves watching movies from the future in modern TVs installed in roadside 1970s motels, Alicia gets curious about her younger self, and she asks me to set up a line of video communication with her teenage self about the time that Bobby fell in love with her. So I return back in time to her grandmother Ellen’s home to show her older Alicia’s video. That leads to a whole bunch of interaction from both sides, with 22-year-old Alicia recording videos for her younger self to guide her through her troublesome hallucinations and all that. Probably lots of advice on how to seduce her older brother. Anyway, I’m feeling generous, so I gift her grandmother like a hundred thousand dollars. “Oh, we can’t accept this!” “This isn’t even chump change, old broad! I’m a fucking time-traveler: I can win the lottery then win the lottery then win the lottery. I know the locations of piles of gold that won’t be found for decades. Just take the goddamn money and buy yourself a platinum dildo or something, will you?” They spend some of it on a tractor.
Ah, daydreams are so soothing. Just being able to close my eyes in the train and be transported mentally to these inner worlds where I can have conversations with a delightful, fascinating fictional character (though based on real person) the likes of which I’ve never met in real life, in part because I hate dealing with human beings.
Oh, I forgot to say about my novella Smile, the one I’m translating at the moment, that it may come close to what I consider “angry autistic guy writing.” The closest form of that which I recall is the manga Gantz. I hope it never quite reaches that point. I was fully aware during writing it that I was making it harsh and generally unpleasant, because it had to be. The protagonist, although an avenger who saves people, is a nasty serial killer himself who has murdered far more people than the serial killers and terrorists he hunts down. Of course, he’s justified in doing so… or is he? There’s the whole dilemma about his methods, the way he interacts with others, etc. I found him a very interesting guy. Of course, such a story would never get professionally published, which for me is a plus, as seemingly most of what gets published these days is politically correct slop. I want my writers deranged and half-evil, possibly even escaping to Mexico with fourteen year olds.
Anyway, I hope you’re getting to orgasm on a regular basis. That’s what life is ultimately about.
Smile, Pt. 8 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
I pulled out the gun, flicked off the safety, and yanked open the trunk in one go. The music hit me like a howling wind. On the floor of the van, the woman’s face was turning red, her eyes bulging toward the ceiling. A hand with every vein, tendon, and bone standing out clutched her throat. If it squeezed harder, it would’ve taken her head off.
On the man’s bald scalp, hundreds of pores dotted the skin. A missile-shaped sweat stain darkened the back of his T-shirt. His skin was bleached pale in the shape of underwear, extending from his waist down his thighs. His pants were bunched around his ankles.
Too many men in vans with their pants down.
I raised the gun toward Richard Alcala’s back while he twisted around, shoving his left hand in the way. I pulled the trigger. The blast rattled me as if a bell had tolled right by my ear. My vision blurred, and my eardrums throbbed. I blinked at the hazy shapes, my nostrils lined with the smell of gunpowder.
Richard Alcala shoved me. My back slammed against the side of the trunk, but my right hand still gripped the gun’s handle. The killer, on his feet, hunched in a cloud of smoke, eyes flared as though he’d lost his eyelids. On his raised left hand, the middle and ring fingers were gone. They ended about an inch from the knuckles in two bloody stumps.
As I straightened, something crunched under one of my soles—the aviator sunglasses—and my foot slipped. When I was about to aim at Richard Alcala, the woman kicked him in the ass, propelling the killer through the open door onto the pavement. The snapshot of his bald head and white butt cheeks pitching out of sight stayed fixed in my mind for a second. Too long.
I sucked in air. Over the ringing in my ears, I heard the jingle of a belt buckle and a guttural groan. The woman propped herself up on her elbows. Her face was flushed from the near-strangulation, but she looked at me calmly, as if waiting for me to answer a question. Her dress was hiked up and wrinkled under her navel, and blonde pubic hair peeked out over her tanned thighs.
When I spoke, it sounded like scraping rust from a pipe. “Go home, you idiot.”
As I climbed out of the trunk, I tripped over the record player and went sprawling on my chest. The impact knocked the wind out of me. The gun bounced free, but with a slap of my hand, I pinned it against the rough asphalt.
I got up, panting. On the pavement, a finger gleamed in the sun amid blood spatters, a bit of bone sticking out the bloody end. Richard Alcala was running, hunched forward with his left hand jammed into his pants pocket. He passed through the gate to the street and vanished from sight.
I went after him. The music spilling from the van drowned beneath the whine in my ears, replaced by the swell of voices, traffic, honking. I slowed near the gate as if I might trip—was he waiting on the other side with a brick in his hand? No, he was running off to lose himself in the crowd. I clicked the Smith & Wesson’s safety back on, then slid the barrel behind my belt and covered it with my shirt.
I was sweating, my chest hurt. I hurried to the sidewalk, drawing looks from passersby. At the far end of the street, toward Venice Beach, his hunched shape with the shaved head grew smaller. People stepped aside without really looking at him, like he was a homeless man.
As I threaded through pedestrians and their clouds of musk and patchouli perfume, I pictured myself catching up to Richard Alcala, whipping out the Smith & Wesson, and blowing out the back of his skull, replacing his nose with a crater. How hard had it really been to aim at the bastard before that woman kicked him? And she—why had she hauled a record player into the van of a shady guy in disguise? I lived among babies who’d stick their hands into a chainsaw, then act shocked when it chopped their fingers off.
The hairs on my arms still stood on end. I craved a release, that rush of relief I always got when the week’s target lay splayed out like a puppet with its strings cut.
A police cruiser made its way up the road. Before it got close to him, Richard Alcala slowed and mimicked the casual gait of the other people around him. A darkening stain spread across the left pocket of his navy-blue pants, but did anyone notice? Should I alert the police? Rage rippled through me. I clenched my teeth. Let the cops botch the arrest again, and I’d be stuck waiting for another ambulance.
Dozens of people walked by Richard Alcala—fliers with his mug shot stapled to posts and storefront windows—and they didn’t even glance at his flesh-and-blood version. I matched his pace, crossing walkways and heading under archways. If this society would wise up and pay attention, I’d turn and disappear. Even if the cops questioned who’d blown off two of the killer’s fingers. But if nobody took note, I’d decide how to squash this cockroach.
Sunlight dazzled off car hoods and windshields, half-blinding me. Richard Alcala wove through a crowd that neither saw nor sensed him. A man I’d almost taken for a plainclothes officer was leaning against the entrance to an alley, scanning the street. Richard Alcala slipped right past him like a ghost.
What unconscious filters were turning this serial killer into harmless scenery? He was oozing a tar-like trail that people stepped in, that clung to their soles like fresh asphalt, yet they moved along as though it had cooled and hardened. A myriad globs of seething tar, steaming like a compost heap, roamed in search of their next victim to swallow.
Richard Alcala waded through tourists pawing at trinkets in the boardwalk shops. A pair of street musicians sang while playing timbales and a harpsichord. He hurried past the outdoor gym, where shirtless bodybuilders lifted weights. He skirted the basketball courts. Then he headed toward the sand, crossing the bike path. He zigzagged among towels and groups of people, dwindling in size against the waves that, after crashing, draped foam along the wet sand.
I rushed after him. Richard Alcala kept opening and closing his right hand, maybe trying to shake off the nerves. His left pocket, bulging with his injured hand, had darkened to near-black, and thin ribbons of darkness trailed down that pant leg.
Walking on sand, I drew even with the killer.
“Nice mustache,” I said. “Almost looks real.”
He glanced at me sideways. The wrinkles that framed his mouth when he smiled looked like fissures and aged him.
“Pretty stupid showing yourself to the public,” I said.
“You won’t shoot me here.”
He’d hardened his voice, but lacked the confidence that usually charmed unsuspecting women.
“They’ve plastered your face all over the streets.”
“They took that photo back when I still had that blond mane I hated keeping up. People see what they want. They’ll figure I fled to Mexico.”
“You’d like it down there.”
As though ashamed to be walking hunched over, he straightened. His left arm trembled, and his eyelids twitched in sync.
“They’re watching the exits. Buses are out of the question. I should’ve guessed a man from the future would know I’d intercept that woman before she reached the fake address.”
“That has nothing to do with me being from the future, and everything to do with you being a moron.”
He laughed as though his mouth were full of sand.
“Anxiety makes me hungrier. And the cops must’ve impounded my Ford Thunderbird. God, I loved that car.”
“Not surprising.”
“You dirtied its trunk with corpses.”
“You’re the one who turned them into corpses.”
Richard Alcala shrugged and let out a sigh as if to say, what can you do?
We passed two women in their twenties lying facedown, their faces buried in folded arms. The sun gleamed off their oiled skin, and the smell of tanning lotion hung in the air.
“So, you’re from the future,” the killer said. “How is it?”
“Worse.”
A shirtless man walked by kicking up sand while carrying a candy-colored surfboard under one arm. We heard shouts from a nearby volleyball match.
“What do you think the people looking at us believe?” said Richard Alcala. “They’re thinking we’re veterans stuck in overseas horrors. Today’s convenient rationale moves us out of their heads.”
“Except you’re part of the horror those veterans have seen overseas.”
He let out a laugh, cut short by a cough.
“I get it, man. You don’t like me. Can’t please everyone.”
He flexed his left arm. For a moment, he pulled the hand free of his pocket to glance at it. I caught a blood-smeared blur before he stuffed his mangled hand back inside the soaking pocket.
“Maybe you did me a favor,” he said. “Women will see I’m missing two fingers, and pity me. No cast needed.”
“If you survive.”
His face twisted. His gaze swept the beach. He picked up his pace, then gave it up a few seconds later.
About thirty feet away, a couple swayed in a close embrace, whispering kisses, feet sunk in the damp sand.
“What good do you think you’ve done by saving her, Man from the Future?” he asked.
“You mean the girl on roller skates or your wannabe model?”
He raised his right hand and wagged the index finger at me.
“You put the kid in your car.”
“Sure did.”
“What a hero, distracting me from strangling her. What do you think you achieved by interrupting my fun? That girl’s dumb as a stack of bricks. She was born pretty and well-built, so she thinks the world exists to shower her with gifts. Why? Because packs of men—and maybe a woman or two—treat her like a goddess in hopes of undressing her one day. Now she’s free to spread her stupidity. Ten years from now, when her flesh sags by fractions of an inch and that endless parade of men seeking comfort in her holes turn to girls in their twenties, she’ll see the party’s over. She’ll spend the rest of her days crying, paralyzed by fear. She’ll wear herself out with makeup and surgery to fight the passage of time. Because what else is she good for? In three or four decades, sporting an old-lady hairdo and skin spotted with age, she’ll die without having developed another talent beyond having once been hot. Why let a person like that pollute the world?”
Why would I argue? We’d wander the beach another five or ten minutes.
Some kids had gathered around a woman seated on a backpack, strumming a Dylan tune on her guitar. If we stood by them, their weed smoke would probably get us high.
“You know,” said Richard Alcala, “I agree with what you told that idiot I was trying to rid the world of. But hearing you say it irritated me.”
I struggled to recall what I’d said yesterday when I barged in on them, but being this close to a killer—and needing to keep an eye on his hands—warped my thoughts like a pirated transmission.
“You revealed the trick while I was in the middle of it,” he said. “They believe in good intentions, in warm smiles. They submit blindly to these principles and rationalize any intrusion that sparks doubt. Something good must balance out the bad, they’ll say, so their world stays intact. What good counters what I do?”
“You mean raping and murdering women and girls?”
Richard Alcala smiled like we were sharing a private joke.
“Yes, my little hobby.”
“I don’t think like they do. There’s no balance.”
“But you still step in for them. You save them. You feed their fantasies. You must respect them a lot.”
I was shaking my head before he finished talking. Each laugh from the beach, like seagull squawks, raked at me, and I wanted to scream for them to shut up. Riding their surfboards, floating on their backs, climbing onto each other’s shoulders then jumping into the water—seals at an aquarium performing stunts for an invisible trainer.
“Respect? None. They don’t deserve it. Anything that unsettles or saddens them terrifies them, which includes most of what goes on. They’d rather drown the background music in noise. They wander with eyes shut and fingers in their ears. The more of them cluster together, the dumber they get. If evil blows up in their faces, they lock themselves in a shell of comforting platitudes and leave factual reality behind. They recast surrender as a virtue so they can still think of themselves as good people. Then when the inevitable happens, they’re shocked. They whimper, wondering how they could’ve foreseen it, even though they silenced anyone who tried to warn them. After a short time of mourning, back to business as usual. Life’s too short, right? Let’s keep believing in a nice world where prayers get answered and goodness reigns, and an invisible father in the sky makes sure disasters happen only to other people—who surely deserve them. Humanity is led by the nose toward complacency like cows. Locked in a psyche that survives by bouncing from one pleasure to the next, they see everything else as a minefield. Uncharted territory they sometimes refuse to even admit exists. They modify their beliefs to match public opinion’s definition of decency, and band together in righteous fury against anyone who names the darkness closing in, with the calm conscience of those who know they’re the majority. So no, I don’t respect them. I can endure five minutes around people before I feel nauseous. The world’s a puddle of vomit, and you, knowing that, still stomp on it and make the mess spread. I can’t fix humanity, but I can clean up some of your stains by wiping you out.”
“You think that’ll revolutionize the world? I barely matter.”
“All that pointless butchery. Breaking into homes and hotel rooms, abducting women and girls, raping and sodomizing them, killing them—sometimes torturing or mutilating them first—for what? You hardly ever stole money. The thrill was your drug, your pleasure. And that’s all there is to it. You did it because you needed to.”
Richard Alcala lowered his head. He slid along like a monk in a procession; all he lacked was a hood to hide his face.
“Do you have any idea how easy it was?” he asked. “They thought I came up because I was nice. I pretended I’d broken my right arm, so they saw me as harmless. My record was four women in one day. All it took was a dazzling smile, and they followed me to the slaughter. The killings they read about happen to other people, and they forget them by flipping the page or turning off the TV. They’ve convinced themselves the universe will protect them from guys like me. They’ve earned it, right? They glaze over the filth because their worldview depends on staying blind. If they really saw me, every pillar holding up their mindset would crumble. They’re dodos—like those birds wiped out in colonial times.”
“I know what the damn dodos were.”
“They exist to waddle until a predator guts them. In the last moment, right when I flash them that final smile, their expressions shift. They become different women. They’d have learned a lesson for next time—except there is no next time. Terror contorts their features as if the glass pane in their minds just got shattered. And when I squeeze their throats, their faces turn red and their eyes search around. They struggle to let some cry for help slip out, but even if they could, none of the people they love and who love them will save them. That just universe they believed in keeps on drifting by inertia, and that nasty business that only ever happened to others—who must’ve deserved it—winds up happening to them. As their brains shut down, they realize that God only ever looked down upon us with hate. I promise you, man, no other look gives me that kind of high.”
When I came back to myself, I was stunned to see we were still on the beach, kicking up sand. Everywhere I looked, the sun flashed on white smiles. Some couples sitting cross-legged or stretched out on towels laughed. But my awareness was tearing down centuries of dusty spiderwebs where I’d been hanging all this time.
I cleared my throat.
“A lot of those women and girls you killed grew up with people who loved them. Adults who took care of them. They didn’t see you coming. You, and monsters like you, thrive in this society because it has no clue how to process you. But I see what you see. On every street I walk, I have to know where I’d escape, how to keep someone from jumping me. If a stranger steps too close, I picture how to counter any attack, which nearby object I could use to stop their heart. I see myself yanking back their hair and landing a punch that shatters their windpipe. Or plunging a pair of scissors into their arteries, jamming them into their eyeballs. The techniques I’ve learned—and performed—loop in my mind over and over in detail. So I see you. And I used to spare people from seeing monsters like you, handing you over to the cops. I thought I was punishing you, forcing you into the system’s jaws, but you’d be coddled by psychs and sociologists who twist language so that you come out the victim. Their weakness seeped into the law. You served ten years. They shaved more time off because you kept busy knitting scarves or some other bullshit, and you walked free as the misunderstood victim, with your identity protected. Some of you went on to kill again. The fools on their thrones who let you back on the streets kept quiet. No one took responsibility. No one even apologized. After all, those rapes and murders happened to other people’s daughters. Our societies have gone soft, adopting the mindset of slaves. They think they’re riding a wave to a brighter future, guaranteed by God, or karma, or progress, or any made-up cosmic payback. Otherwise, they’d have to face that they survive on blind luck. Their sugar-cube minds would collapse. By the time they leave school or college, most have learned all they’ll ever know. They can’t even process new data unless it’s shoved up them like a suppository. Talking is the only tool they’ve got. When evil smears a tarry hand across their faces, they turn into a dog cowering under its master’s beating. Whimpering, tail between their legs, begging, “What do I have to do to make you stop hitting me? Name it.” In their so-called just universe, they must have deserved those blows. Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale. They figure they’ll fix evil by hugging it, by giving away more of the taxpayers’ money. They feed a beast that dresses in designer brands and uses the latest phones, free to spread darkness 24/7. But I remember that only a sharpened stick keeps predators at bay—and there will always be predators and a flock that needs protecting, because the flock doesn’t know or doesn’t want to protect itself. You know that as well as I do. Even if you picked the other side, you understand.”
Richard Alcala cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice.
“I didn’t choose anything.”
“You should have.”
By then, we’d wandered below the fishing pier, held up by pillars, some angled, that had blackened and thickened at the base from shell encrustations. The pier’s shade spread over us, cooling me down.
I watched Alcala. Would he try to attack me or run?
He limped along, staring at the waves crashing against the pillars. A surfer balanced on his board and glided between the slanted beams as if racing a course.
We passed the pier. With the sun at that angle, every little dune in the sand cast a shadow, highlighting each lump and hollow like a pockmarked surface.
Then Alcala spoke again.
“Why’d you let me kill so many people? What, to teach me a lesson?”
“Cassie was the first victim of yours I found out about. I can only jump back in time if the right combination of rage and despair hits me the moment I learn about a specific victim’s death. That rarely happens when I read about the others. Also, the last time I meddled with the past, there wasn’t even a Richard Alcala killing dozens. Maybe you weren’t even born.”
He lowered his head, frowning, mouth half-open, as though struggling to grasp the joke.
A homeless man was asleep on the sand, using his backpack for a pillow.
“That’s how it goes,” I said. “I hear about some person who fell into a pit. If I care, I jump back and nudge them out of the way. Sometimes I kill the pit itself. If the ones I saved figure out I stepped in, they often get pissed. The rest of the time, I hear them chirp about how we should all be positive, how the universe blesses the worthy. But the universe killed them, and they’d have vanished had I ignored the news. I move on, trying to forget what I’ve seen and done, until the next person drops into another hole. A lot of times it’s just bad luck. But in cases like Cassie’s, if she’d thought twice before getting in your car, she would’ve skated home. And sometimes these same people later stumble into some other hole—because I kept them from learning the hard way. I’m sick of babysitting so many kids at play. If they’d stop running around blind, I wouldn’t need to guard the edge of the cliff to catch whoever’s about to fall.”
Richard Alcala smiled like a terrible poker player holding a winning hand.
“You’ve built a complicated reason for doing what you need.”
“And you cooked up some justification for doing what you want.”
“I’m doing the universe a favor. I’m filtering out the idiots who can’t see danger. Like killing spiders that run along the walls instead of hiding. A few years down the line, only the cautious ones remain. I’m strengthening the human race, friend. These dummies who trust without a second thought, who live in fairy tales—I dole out the fate they deserve. The rest survive to spawn a better generation.”
“You’re a real philanthropist.”
“I’m as vital as a shark. Nature made me. If you kill me, you’ll upset the ecosystem.”
“I’ve met too many serial killers, though none ever begged me to respect biodiversity as an excuse to spare them. Most adopt some moral code in which their murders represent the universe self-correcting. You kill because your brain wiring rewards you with an orgasm. The rest is just an excuse, a balm for whatever faint echo of conscience you have.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. I feel nothing for anyone. When some chick comes up to me at a bar or the office thinking I’d make a nice boyfriend, I feel like I’m hearing a robot talk.”
“I know exactly what that’s like.”
“But when I corner another idiot and the moment comes when I’m inside her and her life flickers out, I’m flooded with a pleasure not of this world. I see heaven. I see God. Why would He condemn me to a numb existence, if all I have to do is smile at a pretty, brainless woman and lure her someplace no one can hear?”
“I’m sorry you were born that way, or raised that way, or both, so that killing is the only thing that gives you feeling. I’m sorry because otherwise I’d be spending my day in a hotel room, discovering music and movies. The universe doesn’t care. You picked between being miserable and being slightly less miserable at the cost of destroying dozens—maybe hundreds—of lives. Those you killed deserved to live more than you deserve a climax.”
He muttered through breaths, like blood loss was making him groggy and he could barely form words.
“All this because I saw that roller-skating kid and wanted her. Cassie, you said. If you’d been one minute late, that kid would’ve climbed in my car like the others I’ve had fun with. She’s nothing special.”
“One among millions.”
“You think she deserved saving more than the others?”
“I don’t know. She’s of average intelligence. She’ll turn into a decent woman, like her mom. Go to school for something ordinary, work some job persuading strangers, or maybe stay home raising kids. Like most, she’ll toss aside her dreams to pay rent and serve others. A couple decades after she dies, all that’s left is a fuzzy memory and a row of photos gathering dust on someone’s table, little stabs of sadness at how time rots everything.”
Alcala let out a groan.
“None of this makes sense. Being born just to die. Such a waste. The more damage I do, the better. It can’t get worse.”
“It can. And some things are worth saving.”
“Like what?”
He asked it in a hollow tone, like he needed a reason.
“Curious people who seek answers, who unveil hidden truths. And art—literature, film, music.”
“I don’t kill musicians.”
“Right, you only kill stupid women. While you were raping and strangling them, did you pause to ask, ‘Sorry, by any chance do you play an instrument?’ When you destroyed a child’s innocence minutes before ending her, did you ever consider what person she might’ve become? You never cared. Don’t lie to yourself.”
He was trudging along like he’d been hauling a hundred pounds for half an hour.
“This is all God’s doing. I’m a demon who escaped from hell, and He sent you to drag me back.”
“Dangerous for me to believe that. You’d probably turn hell into a holiday.”
We’d reached the end of the beach, blocked by a narrow walkway, a breaker, and about three hundred meters of water where a white yacht was heading toward Marina del Rey. We either had to retrace our steps or move onto the walkway.
Richard Alcala halted a stride away and turned to me. His left arm was shaking. With his shaved head white as though it’d never seen sun, and his features twisted in pain, he looked like a patient fresh out of brain surgery.
“What do you think happens next, pal?”
I brushed my jacket, feeling the shape of the Smith & Wesson beneath.
“I’m done debating philosophy with a serial killer. I’m taking you somewhere nobody can hear you. Then I’ll slice off one of your fingers. Tomorrow, I’ll take another. Then another. When you have no fingers left, I’ll hack off an arm. I’ll use a tourniquet so you won’t bleed to death. A few days later, the other arm. Then a leg. Then the other one. Once you’re flopping around like a worm in a puddle of your own fluids, I’ll cut off your balls and make you swallow them. Then I’ll tear out your tongue, gouge your eyes. Finally, I’ll peel off your skin. If you’re still breathing, I’m sure I’ll think of something else.”
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally released in Spanish about a decade ago. It’s contained in my collection titled Los reinos de brea.
I pulled out the gun, flicked off the safety, and yanked open the trunk in one go. The music hit me like a howling wind. On the floor of the van, the woman’s face was turning red, her eyes bulging toward the ceiling. A hand with every vein, tendon, and bone standing out clutched her throat. If it squeezed harder, it would’ve taken her head off.
On the man’s bald scalp, hundreds of pores dotted the skin. A missile-shaped sweat stain darkened the back of his T-shirt. His skin was bleached pale in the shape of underwear, extending from his waist down his thighs. His pants were bunched around his ankles.
Too many men in vans with their pants down.
I raised the gun toward Richard Alcala’s back while he twisted around, shoving his left hand in the way. I pulled the trigger. The blast rattled me as if a bell had tolled right by my ear. My vision blurred, and my eardrums throbbed. I blinked at the hazy shapes, my nostrils lined with the smell of gunpowder.
Richard Alcala shoved me. My back slammed against the side of the trunk, but my right hand still gripped the gun’s handle. The killer, on his feet, hunched in a cloud of smoke, eyes flared as though he’d lost his eyelids. On his raised left hand, the middle and ring fingers were gone. They ended about an inch from the knuckles in two bloody stumps.
As I straightened, something crunched under one of my soles—the aviator sunglasses—and my foot slipped. When I was about to aim at Richard Alcala, the woman kicked him in the ass, propelling the killer through the open door onto the pavement. The snapshot of his bald head and white butt cheeks pitching out of sight stayed fixed in my mind for a second. Too long.
I sucked in air. Over the ringing in my ears, I heard the jingle of a belt buckle and a guttural groan. The woman propped herself up on her elbows. Her face was flushed from the near-strangulation, but she looked at me calmly, as if waiting for me to answer a question. Her dress was hiked up and wrinkled under her navel, and blonde pubic hair peeked out over her tanned thighs.
When I spoke, it sounded like scraping rust from a pipe. “Go home, you idiot.”
As I climbed out of the trunk, I tripped over the record player and went sprawling on my chest. The impact knocked the wind out of me. The gun bounced free, but with a slap of my hand, I pinned it against the rough asphalt.
I got up, panting. On the pavement, a finger gleamed in the sun amid blood spatters, a bit of bone sticking out the bloody end. Richard Alcala was running, hunched forward with his left hand jammed into his pants pocket. He passed through the gate to the street and vanished from sight.
I went after him. The music spilling from the van drowned beneath the whine in my ears, replaced by the swell of voices, traffic, honking. I slowed near the gate as if I might trip—was he waiting on the other side with a brick in his hand? No, he was running off to lose himself in the crowd. I clicked the Smith & Wesson’s safety back on, then slid the barrel behind my belt and covered it with my shirt.
I was sweating, my chest hurt. I hurried to the sidewalk, drawing looks from passersby. At the far end of the street, toward Venice Beach, his hunched shape with the shaved head grew smaller. People stepped aside without really looking at him, like he was a homeless man.
As I threaded through pedestrians and their clouds of musk and patchouli perfume, I pictured myself catching up to Richard Alcala, whipping out the Smith & Wesson, and blowing out the back of his skull, replacing his nose with a crater. How hard had it really been to aim at the bastard before that woman kicked him? And she—why had she hauled a record player into the van of a shady guy in disguise? I lived among babies who’d stick their hands into a chainsaw, then act shocked when it chopped their fingers off.
The hairs on my arms still stood on end. I craved a release, that rush of relief I always got when the week’s target lay splayed out like a puppet with its strings cut.
A police cruiser made its way up the road. Before it got close to him, Richard Alcala slowed and mimicked the casual gait of the other people around him. A darkening stain spread across the left pocket of his navy-blue pants, but did anyone notice? Should I alert the police? Rage rippled through me. I clenched my teeth. Let the cops botch the arrest again, and I’d be stuck waiting for another ambulance.
Dozens of people walked by Richard Alcala—fliers with his mug shot stapled to posts and storefront windows—and they didn’t even glance at his flesh-and-blood version. I matched his pace, crossing walkways and heading under archways. If this society would wise up and pay attention, I’d turn and disappear. Even if the cops questioned who’d blown off two of the killer’s fingers. But if nobody took note, I’d decide how to squash this cockroach.
Sunlight dazzled off car hoods and windshields, half-blinding me. Richard Alcala wove through a crowd that neither saw nor sensed him. A man I’d almost taken for a plainclothes officer was leaning against the entrance to an alley, scanning the street. Richard Alcala slipped right past him like a ghost.
What unconscious filters were turning this serial killer into harmless scenery? He was oozing a tar-like trail that people stepped in, that clung to their soles like fresh asphalt, yet they moved along as though it had cooled and hardened. A myriad globs of seething tar, steaming like a compost heap, roamed in search of their next victim to swallow.
Richard Alcala waded through tourists pawing at trinkets in the boardwalk shops. A pair of street musicians sang while playing timbales and a harpsichord. He hurried past the outdoor gym, where shirtless bodybuilders lifted weights. He skirted the basketball courts. Then he headed toward the sand, crossing the bike path. He zigzagged among towels and groups of people, dwindling in size against the waves that, after crashing, draped foam along the wet sand.
I rushed after him. Richard Alcala kept opening and closing his right hand, maybe trying to shake off the nerves. His left pocket, bulging with his injured hand, had darkened to near-black, and thin ribbons of darkness trailed down that pant leg.
Walking on sand, I drew even with the killer.
“Nice mustache,” I said. “Almost looks real.”
He glanced at me sideways. The wrinkles that framed his mouth when he smiled looked like fissures and aged him.
“Pretty stupid showing yourself to the public,” I said.
“You won’t shoot me here.”
He’d hardened his voice, but lacked the confidence that usually charmed unsuspecting women.
“They’ve plastered your face all over the streets.”
“They took that photo back when I still had that blond mane I hated keeping up. People see what they want. They’ll figure I fled to Mexico.”
“You’d like it down there.”
As though ashamed to be walking hunched over, he straightened. His left arm trembled, and his eyelids twitched in sync.
“They’re watching the exits. Buses are out of the question. I should’ve guessed a man from the future would know I’d intercept that woman before she reached the fake address.”
“That has nothing to do with me being from the future, and everything to do with you being a moron.”
He laughed as though his mouth were full of sand.
“Anxiety makes me hungrier. And the cops must’ve impounded my Ford Thunderbird. God, I loved that car.”
“Not surprising.”
“You dirtied its trunk with corpses.”
“You’re the one who turned them into corpses.”
Richard Alcala shrugged and let out a sigh as if to say, what can you do?
We passed two women in their twenties lying facedown, their faces buried in folded arms. The sun gleamed off their oiled skin, and the smell of tanning lotion hung in the air.
“So, you’re from the future,” the killer said. “How is it?”
“Worse.”
A shirtless man walked by kicking up sand while carrying a candy-colored surfboard under one arm. We heard shouts from a nearby volleyball match.
“What do you think the people looking at us believe?” said Richard Alcala. “They’re thinking we’re veterans stuck in overseas horrors. Today’s convenient rationale moves us out of their heads.”
“Except you’re part of the horror those veterans have seen overseas.”
He let out a laugh, cut short by a cough.
“I get it, man. You don’t like me. Can’t please everyone.”
He flexed his left arm. For a moment, he pulled the hand free of his pocket to glance at it. I caught a blood-smeared blur before he stuffed his mangled hand back inside the soaking pocket.
“Maybe you did me a favor,” he said. “Women will see I’m missing two fingers, and pity me. No cast needed.”
“If you survive.”
His face twisted. His gaze swept the beach. He picked up his pace, then gave it up a few seconds later.
About thirty feet away, a couple swayed in a close embrace, whispering kisses, feet sunk in the damp sand.
“What good do you think you’ve done by saving her, Man from the Future?” he asked.
“You mean the girl on roller skates or your wannabe model?”
He raised his right hand and wagged the index finger at me.
“You put the kid in your car.”
“Sure did.”
“What a hero, distracting me from strangling her. What do you think you achieved by interrupting my fun? That girl’s dumb as a stack of bricks. She was born pretty and well-built, so she thinks the world exists to shower her with gifts. Why? Because packs of men—and maybe a woman or two—treat her like a goddess in hopes of undressing her one day. Now she’s free to spread her stupidity. Ten years from now, when her flesh sags by fractions of an inch and that endless parade of men seeking comfort in her holes turn to girls in their twenties, she’ll see the party’s over. She’ll spend the rest of her days crying, paralyzed by fear. She’ll wear herself out with makeup and surgery to fight the passage of time. Because what else is she good for? In three or four decades, sporting an old-lady hairdo and skin spotted with age, she’ll die without having developed another talent beyond having once been hot. Why let a person like that pollute the world?”
Why would I argue? We’d wander the beach another five or ten minutes.
Some kids had gathered around a woman seated on a backpack, strumming a Dylan tune on her guitar. If we stood by them, their weed smoke would probably get us high.
“You know,” said Richard Alcala, “I agree with what you told that idiot I was trying to rid the world of. But hearing you say it irritated me.”
I struggled to recall what I’d said yesterday when I barged in on them, but being this close to a killer—and needing to keep an eye on his hands—warped my thoughts like a pirated transmission.
“You revealed the trick while I was in the middle of it,” he said. “They believe in good intentions, in warm smiles. They submit blindly to these principles and rationalize any intrusion that sparks doubt. Something good must balance out the bad, they’ll say, so their world stays intact. What good counters what I do?”
“You mean raping and murdering women and girls?”
Richard Alcala smiled like we were sharing a private joke.
“Yes, my little hobby.”
“I don’t think like they do. There’s no balance.”
“But you still step in for them. You save them. You feed their fantasies. You must respect them a lot.”
I was shaking my head before he finished talking. Each laugh from the beach, like seagull squawks, raked at me, and I wanted to scream for them to shut up. Riding their surfboards, floating on their backs, climbing onto each other’s shoulders then jumping into the water—seals at an aquarium performing stunts for an invisible trainer.
“Respect? None. They don’t deserve it. Anything that unsettles or saddens them terrifies them, which includes most of what goes on. They’d rather drown the background music in noise. They wander with eyes shut and fingers in their ears. The more of them cluster together, the dumber they get. If evil blows up in their faces, they lock themselves in a shell of comforting platitudes and leave factual reality behind. They recast surrender as a virtue so they can still think of themselves as good people. Then when the inevitable happens, they’re shocked. They whimper, wondering how they could’ve foreseen it, even though they silenced anyone who tried to warn them. After a short time of mourning, back to business as usual. Life’s too short, right? Let’s keep believing in a nice world where prayers get answered and goodness reigns, and an invisible father in the sky makes sure disasters happen only to other people—who surely deserve them. Humanity is led by the nose toward complacency like cows. Locked in a psyche that survives by bouncing from one pleasure to the next, they see everything else as a minefield. Uncharted territory they sometimes refuse to even admit exists. They modify their beliefs to match public opinion’s definition of decency, and band together in righteous fury against anyone who names the darkness closing in, with the calm conscience of those who know they’re the majority. So no, I don’t respect them. I can endure five minutes around people before I feel nauseous. The world’s a puddle of vomit, and you, knowing that, still stomp on it and make the mess spread. I can’t fix humanity, but I can clean up some of your stains by wiping you out.”
“You think that’ll revolutionize the world? I barely matter.”
“All that pointless butchery. Breaking into homes and hotel rooms, abducting women and girls, raping and sodomizing them, killing them—sometimes torturing or mutilating them first—for what? You hardly ever stole money. The thrill was your drug, your pleasure. And that’s all there is to it. You did it because you needed to.”
Richard Alcala lowered his head. He slid along like a monk in a procession; all he lacked was a hood to hide his face.
“Do you have any idea how easy it was?” he asked. “They thought I came up because I was nice. I pretended I’d broken my right arm, so they saw me as harmless. My record was four women in one day. All it took was a dazzling smile, and they followed me to the slaughter. The killings they read about happen to other people, and they forget them by flipping the page or turning off the TV. They’ve convinced themselves the universe will protect them from guys like me. They’ve earned it, right? They glaze over the filth because their worldview depends on staying blind. If they really saw me, every pillar holding up their mindset would crumble. They’re dodos—like those birds wiped out in colonial times.”
“I know what the damn dodos were.”
“They exist to waddle until a predator guts them. In the last moment, right when I flash them that final smile, their expressions shift. They become different women. They’d have learned a lesson for next time—except there is no next time. Terror contorts their features as if the glass pane in their minds just got shattered. And when I squeeze their throats, their faces turn red and their eyes search around. They struggle to let some cry for help slip out, but even if they could, none of the people they love and who love them will save them. That just universe they believed in keeps on drifting by inertia, and that nasty business that only ever happened to others—who must’ve deserved it—winds up happening to them. As their brains shut down, they realize that God only ever looked down upon us with hate. I promise you, man, no other look gives me that kind of high.”
When I came back to myself, I was stunned to see we were still on the beach, kicking up sand. Everywhere I looked, the sun flashed on white smiles. Some couples sitting cross-legged or stretched out on towels laughed. But my awareness was tearing down centuries of dusty spiderwebs where I’d been hanging all this time.
I cleared my throat.
“A lot of those women and girls you killed grew up with people who loved them. Adults who took care of them. They didn’t see you coming. You, and monsters like you, thrive in this society because it has no clue how to process you. But I see what you see. On every street I walk, I have to know where I’d escape, how to keep someone from jumping me. If a stranger steps too close, I picture how to counter any attack, which nearby object I could use to stop their heart. I see myself yanking back their hair and landing a punch that shatters their windpipe. Or plunging a pair of scissors into their arteries, jamming them into their eyeballs. The techniques I’ve learned—and performed—loop in my mind over and over in detail. So I see you. And I used to spare people from seeing monsters like you, handing you over to the cops. I thought I was punishing you, forcing you into the system’s jaws, but you’d be coddled by psychs and sociologists who twist language so that you come out the victim. Their weakness seeped into the law. You served ten years. They shaved more time off because you kept busy knitting scarves or some other bullshit, and you walked free as the misunderstood victim, with your identity protected. Some of you went on to kill again. The fools on their thrones who let you back on the streets kept quiet. No one took responsibility. No one even apologized. After all, those rapes and murders happened to other people’s daughters. Our societies have gone soft, adopting the mindset of slaves. They think they’re riding a wave to a brighter future, guaranteed by God, or karma, or progress, or any made-up cosmic payback. Otherwise, they’d have to face that they survive on blind luck. Their sugar-cube minds would collapse. By the time they leave school or college, most have learned all they’ll ever know. They can’t even process new data unless it’s shoved up them like a suppository. Talking is the only tool they’ve got. When evil smears a tarry hand across their faces, they turn into a dog cowering under its master’s beating. Whimpering, tail between their legs, begging, “What do I have to do to make you stop hitting me? Name it.” In their so-called just universe, they must have deserved those blows. Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale. They figure they’ll fix evil by hugging it, by giving away more of the taxpayers’ money. They feed a beast that dresses in designer brands and uses the latest phones, free to spread darkness 24/7. But I remember that only a sharpened stick keeps predators at bay—and there will always be predators and a flock that needs protecting, because the flock doesn’t know or doesn’t want to protect itself. You know that as well as I do. Even if you picked the other side, you understand.”
Richard Alcala cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice.
“I didn’t choose anything.”
“You should have.”
By then, we’d wandered below the fishing pier, held up by pillars, some angled, that had blackened and thickened at the base from shell encrustations. The pier’s shade spread over us, cooling me down.
I watched Alcala. Would he try to attack me or run?
He limped along, staring at the waves crashing against the pillars. A surfer balanced on his board and glided between the slanted beams as if racing a course.
We passed the pier. With the sun at that angle, every little dune in the sand cast a shadow, highlighting each lump and hollow like a pockmarked surface.
Then Alcala spoke again.
“Why’d you let me kill so many people? What, to teach me a lesson?”
“Cassie was the first victim of yours I found out about. I can only jump back in time if the right combination of rage and despair hits me the moment I learn about a specific victim’s death. That rarely happens when I read about the others. Also, the last time I meddled with the past, there wasn’t even a Richard Alcala killing dozens. Maybe you weren’t even born.”
He lowered his head, frowning, mouth half-open, as though struggling to grasp the joke.
A homeless man was asleep on the sand, using his backpack for a pillow.
“That’s how it goes,” I said. “I hear about some person who fell into a pit. If I care, I jump back and nudge them out of the way. Sometimes I kill the pit itself. If the ones I saved figure out I stepped in, they often get pissed. The rest of the time, I hear them chirp about how we should all be positive, how the universe blesses the worthy. But the universe killed them, and they’d have vanished had I ignored the news. I move on, trying to forget what I’ve seen and done, until the next person drops into another hole. A lot of times it’s just bad luck. But in cases like Cassie’s, if she’d thought twice before getting in your car, she would’ve skated home. And sometimes these same people later stumble into some other hole—because I kept them from learning the hard way. I’m sick of babysitting so many kids at play. If they’d stop running around blind, I wouldn’t need to guard the edge of the cliff to catch whoever’s about to fall.”
Richard Alcala smiled like a terrible poker player holding a winning hand.
“You’ve built a complicated reason for doing what you need.”
“And you cooked up some justification for doing what you want.”
“I’m doing the universe a favor. I’m filtering out the idiots who can’t see danger. Like killing spiders that run along the walls instead of hiding. A few years down the line, only the cautious ones remain. I’m strengthening the human race, friend. These dummies who trust without a second thought, who live in fairy tales—I dole out the fate they deserve. The rest survive to spawn a better generation.”
“You’re a real philanthropist.”
“I’m as vital as a shark. Nature made me. If you kill me, you’ll upset the ecosystem.”
“I’ve met too many serial killers, though none ever begged me to respect biodiversity as an excuse to spare them. Most adopt some moral code in which their murders represent the universe self-correcting. You kill because your brain wiring rewards you with an orgasm. The rest is just an excuse, a balm for whatever faint echo of conscience you have.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. I feel nothing for anyone. When some chick comes up to me at a bar or the office thinking I’d make a nice boyfriend, I feel like I’m hearing a robot talk.”
“I know exactly what that’s like.”
“But when I corner another idiot and the moment comes when I’m inside her and her life flickers out, I’m flooded with a pleasure not of this world. I see heaven. I see God. Why would He condemn me to a numb existence, if all I have to do is smile at a pretty, brainless woman and lure her someplace no one can hear?”
“I’m sorry you were born that way, or raised that way, or both, so that killing is the only thing that gives you feeling. I’m sorry because otherwise I’d be spending my day in a hotel room, discovering music and movies. The universe doesn’t care. You picked between being miserable and being slightly less miserable at the cost of destroying dozens—maybe hundreds—of lives. Those you killed deserved to live more than you deserve a climax.”
He muttered through breaths, like blood loss was making him groggy and he could barely form words.
“All this because I saw that roller-skating kid and wanted her. Cassie, you said. If you’d been one minute late, that kid would’ve climbed in my car like the others I’ve had fun with. She’s nothing special.”
“One among millions.”
“You think she deserved saving more than the others?”
“I don’t know. She’s of average intelligence. She’ll turn into a decent woman, like her mom. Go to school for something ordinary, work some job persuading strangers, or maybe stay home raising kids. Like most, she’ll toss aside her dreams to pay rent and serve others. A couple decades after she dies, all that’s left is a fuzzy memory and a row of photos gathering dust on someone’s table, little stabs of sadness at how time rots everything.”
Alcala let out a groan.
“None of this makes sense. Being born just to die. Such a waste. The more damage I do, the better. It can’t get worse.”
“It can. And some things are worth saving.”
“Like what?”
He asked it in a hollow tone, like he needed a reason.
“Curious people who seek answers, who unveil hidden truths. And art—literature, film, music.”
“I don’t kill musicians.”
“Right, you only kill stupid women. While you were raping and strangling them, did you pause to ask, ‘Sorry, by any chance do you play an instrument?’ When you destroyed a child’s innocence minutes before ending her, did you ever consider what person she might’ve become? You never cared. Don’t lie to yourself.”
He was trudging along like he’d been hauling a hundred pounds for half an hour.
“This is all God’s doing. I’m a demon who escaped from hell, and He sent you to drag me back.”
“Dangerous for me to believe that. You’d probably turn hell into a holiday.”
We’d reached the end of the beach, blocked by a narrow walkway, a breaker, and about three hundred meters of water where a white yacht was heading toward Marina del Rey. We either had to retrace our steps or move onto the walkway.
Richard Alcala halted a stride away and turned to me. His left arm was shaking. With his shaved head white as though it’d never seen sun, and his features twisted in pain, he looked like a patient fresh out of brain surgery.
“What do you think happens next, pal?”
I brushed my jacket, feeling the shape of the Smith & Wesson beneath.
“I’m done debating philosophy with a serial killer. I’m taking you somewhere nobody can hear you. Then I’ll slice off one of your fingers. Tomorrow, I’ll take another. Then another. When you have no fingers left, I’ll hack off an arm. I’ll use a tourniquet so you won’t bleed to death. A few days later, the other arm. Then a leg. Then the other one. Once you’re flopping around like a worm in a puddle of your own fluids, I’ll cut off your balls and make you swallow them. Then I’ll tear out your tongue, gouge your eyes. Finally, I’ll peel off your skin. If you’re still breathing, I’m sure I’ll think of something else.”
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally released in Spanish about a decade ago. It’s contained in my collection titled Los reinos de brea.
January 15, 2025
Smile, Pt. 7 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
1313 Main Street turned out to be a record store. I parked the car and got out. I walked past the neighboring shops in case I’d misread the address. Trees with white trunks and thick crowns, pruned where they touched walls and windows, were spaced out along the sidewalks. Their foliage obscured half the facades of the two-story buildings. Amid the sparse traffic, men and women rode by on bicycles. None of those shops hinted at housing a photo studio, nor did it seem likely that Richard Alcala could have convinced an aspiring model that they did.
I went back to the record store. Half the store window was papered over with posters announcing past concerts by Graham Nash, Neil Young, Roy Harper, Hendrix, Morrison. Behind that pane of glass, the rows of boxes must have held about a hundred records.
When I grabbed the door handle, I noticed a wanted poster stuck to the glass. In the headshot, Richard Alcala was smiling as if he’d foreseen I would show up.
I opened the door. A rippling, electrified Hendrix solo greeted me. Behind the record rack that split the store, a man perched on a stool was practicing the intro to “All Along the Watchtower.” A cable dangled from the body of his Stratocaster and plugged into a pedal, and after a small tangle of more cables and pedals, another cord climbed into the input of a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. Though he’d turned the volume so low that from outside I barely noticed him playing, the notes still resonated through my bones. He glanced up while he played.
A door beside the counter led to the back room. I flipped through a crate of albums and came across a Karen Dalton record I wanted to buy.
The man kept tripping over a phrase; on his fourth try, he stopped. He sighed as the notes died away.
“Looking for any album in particular?” he asked.
I pointed at the pedals.
“A Vox Wah, the bulky Arbiter Fuzz Face with germanium transistors, and a Uni-Vibe. The same rig that went to Woodstock.”
He swayed on the stool and smiled.
“I guess I don’t need to sell you any of his albums.”
I kept an eye on the back-room door. How would I bring it up? Should I even bring it up? I’d turned toward the rows of records when I spoke.
“Have you noticed anything strange?”
He twisted the first tuning peg while plucking that string.
“Strange like what?”
“I was wondering if you keep a photography studio in the back, with lights and a king-size bed. Something somebody’s using for questionable purposes.”
He scratched at his stubble and set his pick on top of the amp.
“You know, something did strike me as off. You heard of that guy they call the Prowler?”
I straightened.
“I’m here because of him.”
He ran a hand down one pant leg and took stock of my clothes.
“As a friend?”
“More like the police would be after him.”
He nodded. He thumbed the low E string, and the amplifier dispersed the note.
“I used to see him, or maybe his twin, meeting up with girls across the street. I remember him ‘cause he always had gorgeous girls on his arm, and never the same one.”
“Any minors?”
He flinched.
“No, not that I ever saw. I figured he had money or maybe he could play guitar like Jimi. Then again, that blonde hair might’ve been enough.”
“You don’t know where they used to go?”
“Sorry. When I recognized the guy’s face on the wanted posters, I called the cops, but they must get dozens of calls like that. Are you a cop?”
“No. I won’t let him live. Thanks for telling me.”
As I turned to leave, the man struck a chord that swept through the store.
“Plenty of albums worth your while, buddy.”
“I noticed. I’ll be back another day.”
* * *
I recognized the aspiring model by her ass. She was walking under an archway on her way to Venice Beach.
My heart raced as though finding her guaranteed I’d also run into Richard Alcala. I pulled over across the street and got out as she rounded a corner. I followed the sway of her hips from about thirty feet back. I kept an eye on the people approaching from ahead and behind on my side of the sidewalk, and I alternated glances at the woman, who could’ve passed for an actress straight off a film set, wearing full makeup and somehow lost. Compared to that, yesterday she’d looked like she’d just rolled out of bed.
If the killer had forgotten that he’d mentioned the record store address in front of me and showed up to see his own wanted poster plastered on that door, both the aspiring model and I would be walking right into him.
I followed her for several blocks. A group of men whistled at her and told her to stop; she dipped her head politely, maybe faking shyness. She’d once said the positive vibes she emitted protected her, but getting hassled daily by random men must have worn her thin.
As I crossed a crosswalk to keep her in sight, I remembered that Richard Alcala knew who I was. I’d gotten used to, and even become an expert at, stalking killers and terrorists who didn’t know of my existence—or that someone could travel through time. If they saw my face, they rarely got to see another. But if Richard Alcala intended to kill this woman, he’d be tailing her, a skill he was trained in.
The sun hammered my forehead, frying my brain. My arms and legs tingled. I pulled the wanted poster from the inside pocket of my jacket and studied it, burning the photos into my mind. I spied on every reflection in windshields, car windows, and storefronts to keep tabs on anyone walking by. When a blond guy popped up, and there were a lot of them, I held my breath until I could rule out the Prowler.
I lost sight of the model. I hurried another thirty feet in case she had started running, but she wouldn’t have had time to reach the end of the block. I backtracked while scanning the buildings, the traffic, and the parked cars. If she’d hopped into a vehicle, whether Alcala’s or a stranger’s, she would be gone.
Then I spotted her Hollywood-starlet shape standing by a fenced area covered with identical posters advertising some concert. The entrance led to a wide asphalt lot around a building under construction. Through a gap in the fence, I made out piles of plastic tubing and a cement mixer. She was talking to someone.
I moved along my side of the street until the angle revealed her companion: a white man with a shaved head, aviator sunglasses, and a chestnut-brown mustache. He was wearing a promotional California T-shirt—white, with a black print of palm trees and a sun perched over a horizon—and flared navy-blue pants. His right arm was in a sling. He was smiling like a president who relies on such a charming grin to make people swallow whatever he says. He could have bought that mustache at a costume shop.
They walked deeper into the asphalt lot and stopped by a van. Richard Alcala rubbed his right bicep, the one in the sling, as he chatted through that permanent smile. He pointed at a record player abandoned on the ground.
I touched the outline of my Smith & Wesson under my jacket and darted across the road between two cars. My heart was pounding like a row of drummers awaiting an oncoming army. I hid behind the fence, peeking through an opening to watch the van.
The woman was climbing into the cargo area with the record player, whose weight made her tanned legs quiver. Alcala glanced around. He slipped his right arm out of the sling. He climbed in after her and shut the door.
I started in across the pavement. My right hand slid under my jacket and gripped the Smith & Wesson. The van’s body swayed up and down, side to side, testing the suspension. Music seeped out—“Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground—like the soundtrack of a late-night bar. Anyone passing the fence opening would see the van rocking; if someone looked out a window, they might notice, but they’d chalk it up to a spur-of-the-moment hook-up. In a few minutes, the van would settle, the music would fade, and it would drive off into some desert or wooded area.
I inched closer, the chassis dancing, the music growing louder. The van’s shape glowed like heated metal. My breath came in ragged bursts through flared nostrils, my blood rushing to my arms and legs. I wanted to retreat to a hotel room and curl under a steaming shower. I could look away and act like none of this concerned me, the way everyone else did. Let another woman die among so many, then go on living my life. But I had to acknowledge and snuff out evil without excuses, without mercy, saving myself from a future in which I’d regret turning away from that abyss. I’d face it like a legionary wall braced for a frontal assault. I’d guard the frontier of the light, holding back the inky tide even if it devoured my body and mind until I was reduced to a mass of scars. If I abandoned my post, that churning, smoking darkness would flood every corner of the world until it blackened entirely.
-----
Author’s note: today’s songs are “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix, and “Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground.
This story is a translation of the novella named “Sonríe” contained in my collection Los reinos de brea, self-published about ten years ago. In case you can’t tell, I was heavily into playing the electric guitar, a Gibson Les Paul concretely, annoying the hell out of my neighbors.
1313 Main Street turned out to be a record store. I parked the car and got out. I walked past the neighboring shops in case I’d misread the address. Trees with white trunks and thick crowns, pruned where they touched walls and windows, were spaced out along the sidewalks. Their foliage obscured half the facades of the two-story buildings. Amid the sparse traffic, men and women rode by on bicycles. None of those shops hinted at housing a photo studio, nor did it seem likely that Richard Alcala could have convinced an aspiring model that they did.
I went back to the record store. Half the store window was papered over with posters announcing past concerts by Graham Nash, Neil Young, Roy Harper, Hendrix, Morrison. Behind that pane of glass, the rows of boxes must have held about a hundred records.
When I grabbed the door handle, I noticed a wanted poster stuck to the glass. In the headshot, Richard Alcala was smiling as if he’d foreseen I would show up.
I opened the door. A rippling, electrified Hendrix solo greeted me. Behind the record rack that split the store, a man perched on a stool was practicing the intro to “All Along the Watchtower.” A cable dangled from the body of his Stratocaster and plugged into a pedal, and after a small tangle of more cables and pedals, another cord climbed into the input of a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. Though he’d turned the volume so low that from outside I barely noticed him playing, the notes still resonated through my bones. He glanced up while he played.
A door beside the counter led to the back room. I flipped through a crate of albums and came across a Karen Dalton record I wanted to buy.
The man kept tripping over a phrase; on his fourth try, he stopped. He sighed as the notes died away.
“Looking for any album in particular?” he asked.
I pointed at the pedals.
“A Vox Wah, the bulky Arbiter Fuzz Face with germanium transistors, and a Uni-Vibe. The same rig that went to Woodstock.”
He swayed on the stool and smiled.
“I guess I don’t need to sell you any of his albums.”
I kept an eye on the back-room door. How would I bring it up? Should I even bring it up? I’d turned toward the rows of records when I spoke.
“Have you noticed anything strange?”
He twisted the first tuning peg while plucking that string.
“Strange like what?”
“I was wondering if you keep a photography studio in the back, with lights and a king-size bed. Something somebody’s using for questionable purposes.”
He scratched at his stubble and set his pick on top of the amp.
“You know, something did strike me as off. You heard of that guy they call the Prowler?”
I straightened.
“I’m here because of him.”
He ran a hand down one pant leg and took stock of my clothes.
“As a friend?”
“More like the police would be after him.”
He nodded. He thumbed the low E string, and the amplifier dispersed the note.
“I used to see him, or maybe his twin, meeting up with girls across the street. I remember him ‘cause he always had gorgeous girls on his arm, and never the same one.”
“Any minors?”
He flinched.
“No, not that I ever saw. I figured he had money or maybe he could play guitar like Jimi. Then again, that blonde hair might’ve been enough.”
“You don’t know where they used to go?”
“Sorry. When I recognized the guy’s face on the wanted posters, I called the cops, but they must get dozens of calls like that. Are you a cop?”
“No. I won’t let him live. Thanks for telling me.”
As I turned to leave, the man struck a chord that swept through the store.
“Plenty of albums worth your while, buddy.”
“I noticed. I’ll be back another day.”
* * *
I recognized the aspiring model by her ass. She was walking under an archway on her way to Venice Beach.
My heart raced as though finding her guaranteed I’d also run into Richard Alcala. I pulled over across the street and got out as she rounded a corner. I followed the sway of her hips from about thirty feet back. I kept an eye on the people approaching from ahead and behind on my side of the sidewalk, and I alternated glances at the woman, who could’ve passed for an actress straight off a film set, wearing full makeup and somehow lost. Compared to that, yesterday she’d looked like she’d just rolled out of bed.
If the killer had forgotten that he’d mentioned the record store address in front of me and showed up to see his own wanted poster plastered on that door, both the aspiring model and I would be walking right into him.
I followed her for several blocks. A group of men whistled at her and told her to stop; she dipped her head politely, maybe faking shyness. She’d once said the positive vibes she emitted protected her, but getting hassled daily by random men must have worn her thin.
As I crossed a crosswalk to keep her in sight, I remembered that Richard Alcala knew who I was. I’d gotten used to, and even become an expert at, stalking killers and terrorists who didn’t know of my existence—or that someone could travel through time. If they saw my face, they rarely got to see another. But if Richard Alcala intended to kill this woman, he’d be tailing her, a skill he was trained in.
The sun hammered my forehead, frying my brain. My arms and legs tingled. I pulled the wanted poster from the inside pocket of my jacket and studied it, burning the photos into my mind. I spied on every reflection in windshields, car windows, and storefronts to keep tabs on anyone walking by. When a blond guy popped up, and there were a lot of them, I held my breath until I could rule out the Prowler.
I lost sight of the model. I hurried another thirty feet in case she had started running, but she wouldn’t have had time to reach the end of the block. I backtracked while scanning the buildings, the traffic, and the parked cars. If she’d hopped into a vehicle, whether Alcala’s or a stranger’s, she would be gone.
Then I spotted her Hollywood-starlet shape standing by a fenced area covered with identical posters advertising some concert. The entrance led to a wide asphalt lot around a building under construction. Through a gap in the fence, I made out piles of plastic tubing and a cement mixer. She was talking to someone.
I moved along my side of the street until the angle revealed her companion: a white man with a shaved head, aviator sunglasses, and a chestnut-brown mustache. He was wearing a promotional California T-shirt—white, with a black print of palm trees and a sun perched over a horizon—and flared navy-blue pants. His right arm was in a sling. He was smiling like a president who relies on such a charming grin to make people swallow whatever he says. He could have bought that mustache at a costume shop.
They walked deeper into the asphalt lot and stopped by a van. Richard Alcala rubbed his right bicep, the one in the sling, as he chatted through that permanent smile. He pointed at a record player abandoned on the ground.
I touched the outline of my Smith & Wesson under my jacket and darted across the road between two cars. My heart was pounding like a row of drummers awaiting an oncoming army. I hid behind the fence, peeking through an opening to watch the van.
The woman was climbing into the cargo area with the record player, whose weight made her tanned legs quiver. Alcala glanced around. He slipped his right arm out of the sling. He climbed in after her and shut the door.
I started in across the pavement. My right hand slid under my jacket and gripped the Smith & Wesson. The van’s body swayed up and down, side to side, testing the suspension. Music seeped out—“Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground—like the soundtrack of a late-night bar. Anyone passing the fence opening would see the van rocking; if someone looked out a window, they might notice, but they’d chalk it up to a spur-of-the-moment hook-up. In a few minutes, the van would settle, the music would fade, and it would drive off into some desert or wooded area.
I inched closer, the chassis dancing, the music growing louder. The van’s shape glowed like heated metal. My breath came in ragged bursts through flared nostrils, my blood rushing to my arms and legs. I wanted to retreat to a hotel room and curl under a steaming shower. I could look away and act like none of this concerned me, the way everyone else did. Let another woman die among so many, then go on living my life. But I had to acknowledge and snuff out evil without excuses, without mercy, saving myself from a future in which I’d regret turning away from that abyss. I’d face it like a legionary wall braced for a frontal assault. I’d guard the frontier of the light, holding back the inky tide even if it devoured my body and mind until I was reduced to a mass of scars. If I abandoned my post, that churning, smoking darkness would flood every corner of the world until it blackened entirely.
-----
Author’s note: today’s songs are “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix, and “Venus in Furs” by The Velvet Underground.
This story is a translation of the novella named “Sonríe” contained in my collection Los reinos de brea, self-published about ten years ago. In case you can’t tell, I was heavily into playing the electric guitar, a Gibson Les Paul concretely, annoying the hell out of my neighbors.
Smile, Pt. 6 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
The tracker shortened its beeping intervals, suggesting that if I looked around, I would spot the ruby-red body of the Ford Thunderbird. I parked in the first available gap by the curb and switched off the beeps.
A swarm of police officers clustered at the entrance to an alley, going in and out. One officer was struggling to unroll a coil of police tape. Between the uniforms, I spotted the ruby-red car and its open trunk. Two men in jackets and jeans were examining the corpses.
I closed my eyes. I folded my arms over the steering wheel, pressed my forehead against them, and let out a growl for about three seconds, muting the Graham Nash song on the radio. Then I lifted my forehead from my forearms and leaned back in the seat.
Two officers standing guard at the alley mouth were chatting with a reporter who thrust out a microphone connected by a cable to a briefcase slung over his shoulder.
If they had arrested Richard Alcala, the news would be all over it. He’d escaped on foot—who knew where. The throng of officers prevented me from getting close to the Ford Thunderbird to search for a clue or to rescue my transponder from under its chassis.
* * *
The cook—a black man with a shaved head and a wiry beard—arrived with my pineapple chicken dish, humming along to the chorus of “Hurdy Gurdy Man” on the radio. But the station cut the song short to talk about the Prowler, causing the cook to swear. When he set the plate in front of me, greasy sauce splattered onto the table, sending a piece of marinated chicken skidding. I pinched it up and ate it. He’d gone overboard with the pepper.
“Sorry,” said the cook. “It makes me sick.”
“No problem.”
“Another boogeyman.”
“They’re everywhere.”
“Every time they need to distract us from prices, from rising rents, from their corruption. They force us to look the other way, to distrust our neighbors.”
He walked off muttering and came back with a crumpled sheet of paper. He held it up: a wanted poster. Two pictures of Richard Alcala, facing front and in profile against a height chart. He was smiling like a Greek statue even though one side of his lips was split, a bump bulged under his right brow, and that eye was barely open.
“Does that look like the face of a man who could do the atrocities they’re accusing him of?” the cook asked.
“What does a killer of two dozen women and girls even look like?”
His features twisted in disgust.
“You’d see it right away in his photo, believe me. His eyes would scare you, his teeth would be rotted. They need a boogeyman. Out of the hundreds of women who vanish, plenty ran away from home or from a marriage and now live hundreds of miles away. Some took a ride with the wrong driver, sure. Others got killed in robberies, random assaults. But a single man skulking through Southern California murdering dozens, like Death incarnate? What a lie. In a week, the news will drop the story. They’ll say the police nabbed somebody, and they’ll stop talking about the Prowler like he never made headlines. And they won’t dig up the corruption they were covering before this so-called Prowler crawled out of the sewers.”
“I hope it ends in under a week, because I wish I’d never heard about any of it. That I’d slept through it for seven days.”
The cook snorted and smiled from a corner of his mouth.
“I could use a rest like that.”
“Are you going to hang up the poster?”
He bristled as if I’d demanded it.
“You heard what I said, didn’t you?”
“Mind if I keep it?”
He shrugged, folded the poster, and slipped it under my plate.
“Guess it’ll make a keepsake.”
“Maybe if I say his name three times in front of a mirror, the Prowler will appear.”
The cook laughed and shook his head as he moved on to another customer.
When I finished eating and stepped into the scorching two o’clock sun, a little boy darted across without looking, and I reached out to keep him from crashing into me. But a woman rushed up to grab the boy’s hand. They headed down the street as she glanced over her shoulder to see if I was following them.
I leaned on the roof of my car, which burned against my forearm. I rubbed my eyelids. The asphalt felt like a current, dragging at my legs. This Los Angeles, baked by heat in the mid-thirties, was losing color, sliding into black and white.
Back in my car, I drove to the end of the street and turned wherever my subconscious guided me. Sometimes I forgot the car was even carrying me. My arms felt weighed down by lead, and I wanted to hide between four walls in the dark.
I understood why I’d left Richard Alcala’s arrest up to the police, but I should have foreseen that even though I told them I was guiding them to the Prowler, they’d doubt me, just like the rest of the world that turns its eyes from the evil roaming around. If I’d shot Alcala in the face and left someone else to discover the corpse, I’d be wandering Los Angeles by now, looking for a movie theater. With the trunk stuffed with first-edition vinyl, I’d be planning which storage unit to rent so that years later I could retrieve all the records I’d stashed. But Alcala got away. I had rescued Cassie June, who now hated me, and drove Alcala straight to his next victim.
On the sidewalk, a few people had dragged out a radio and were seated around, listening to the latest on the fugitive. As I passed by, the volume rose and fell with the Doppler effect. Young skaters were everywhere—long hair, big smiles. Couples walked by hand-in-hand, wearing tight clothes that showed off their tanned skin. On one corner, a man narrowed his eyes and scanned the horizon, his gaze jumping from one passerby to another. A cop stapled a wanted poster to a telephone pole while a middle-aged couple with two teenagers came up, looking worried.
Was Richard Alcala in hiding? He had been killing every couple of weeks. Could someone like that hold back? When the police closed in on him, Alcala had kept himself busy with rape and murder, like an office worker putting in extra hours. On a map of Southern California, the spots where the Prowler had attacked women were scattered like shrapnel after an explosion, with Los Angeles at the epicenter. I doubted he’d gotten on a boat and set sail across the Pacific, but he could have stolen a car and driven off to Long Beach, Anaheim, Riverside, or San Bernardino, or west to Oxnard or Ventura. Nothing indicated he’d revisit the same hunting ground.
A patrol car went by in the opposite lane. The cop at the wheel had his tan arm sticking out the window, tapping the door panel right over the LAPD badge. My reflection flashed in the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.
Would Alcala revisit the places where he’d left the bodies? Why would he? Sure, I’d made it clear I knew where three of his corpses were. But once he switched cars, he basically handed those bodies over to the police. That alone was enough to lock him up for life.
Sometimes I glanced at the wanted poster spread out on the passenger seat, then swept my eyes over the sidewalks in case the killer was blending in with the pedestrians. Playing the lottery.
My forearms itched every few minutes, and my sweaty palms made the steering wheel slick. I felt like I was digesting a concrete ball. Alcala remained at large because of me. Cassie’s mother’s face floated into my head, her scornful glare. If I were a serial killer who raped and murdered women and girls day in and day out, what would I do?
Yesterday, I’d caught him in the act of sweet-talking that woman. If I hadn’t visited his apartment, he would have met her at five o’clock at the address he gave her. She’d think this smiling photographer was going to jumpstart her modeling career, but maybe she’d have heard on the news that the police were after the Prowler in the area. She might have canceled the appointment. Really? With no way of contacting the photographer? I’d be following the news, but maybe she wouldn’t. Even if she heard about it, would she grasp the danger? Maybe she was dolling herself up right now to head off to a photo shoot.
-----
Author’s note: this is a translation of a novella I wrote in Spanish about ten years ago, that is contained in my collection Los reinos de brea. Regarding that tracker thing, I’m quite sure I lifted it straight from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. No shame in stealing from the best.
The tracker shortened its beeping intervals, suggesting that if I looked around, I would spot the ruby-red body of the Ford Thunderbird. I parked in the first available gap by the curb and switched off the beeps.
A swarm of police officers clustered at the entrance to an alley, going in and out. One officer was struggling to unroll a coil of police tape. Between the uniforms, I spotted the ruby-red car and its open trunk. Two men in jackets and jeans were examining the corpses.
I closed my eyes. I folded my arms over the steering wheel, pressed my forehead against them, and let out a growl for about three seconds, muting the Graham Nash song on the radio. Then I lifted my forehead from my forearms and leaned back in the seat.
Two officers standing guard at the alley mouth were chatting with a reporter who thrust out a microphone connected by a cable to a briefcase slung over his shoulder.
If they had arrested Richard Alcala, the news would be all over it. He’d escaped on foot—who knew where. The throng of officers prevented me from getting close to the Ford Thunderbird to search for a clue or to rescue my transponder from under its chassis.
* * *
The cook—a black man with a shaved head and a wiry beard—arrived with my pineapple chicken dish, humming along to the chorus of “Hurdy Gurdy Man” on the radio. But the station cut the song short to talk about the Prowler, causing the cook to swear. When he set the plate in front of me, greasy sauce splattered onto the table, sending a piece of marinated chicken skidding. I pinched it up and ate it. He’d gone overboard with the pepper.
“Sorry,” said the cook. “It makes me sick.”
“No problem.”
“Another boogeyman.”
“They’re everywhere.”
“Every time they need to distract us from prices, from rising rents, from their corruption. They force us to look the other way, to distrust our neighbors.”
He walked off muttering and came back with a crumpled sheet of paper. He held it up: a wanted poster. Two pictures of Richard Alcala, facing front and in profile against a height chart. He was smiling like a Greek statue even though one side of his lips was split, a bump bulged under his right brow, and that eye was barely open.
“Does that look like the face of a man who could do the atrocities they’re accusing him of?” the cook asked.
“What does a killer of two dozen women and girls even look like?”
His features twisted in disgust.
“You’d see it right away in his photo, believe me. His eyes would scare you, his teeth would be rotted. They need a boogeyman. Out of the hundreds of women who vanish, plenty ran away from home or from a marriage and now live hundreds of miles away. Some took a ride with the wrong driver, sure. Others got killed in robberies, random assaults. But a single man skulking through Southern California murdering dozens, like Death incarnate? What a lie. In a week, the news will drop the story. They’ll say the police nabbed somebody, and they’ll stop talking about the Prowler like he never made headlines. And they won’t dig up the corruption they were covering before this so-called Prowler crawled out of the sewers.”
“I hope it ends in under a week, because I wish I’d never heard about any of it. That I’d slept through it for seven days.”
The cook snorted and smiled from a corner of his mouth.
“I could use a rest like that.”
“Are you going to hang up the poster?”
He bristled as if I’d demanded it.
“You heard what I said, didn’t you?”
“Mind if I keep it?”
He shrugged, folded the poster, and slipped it under my plate.
“Guess it’ll make a keepsake.”
“Maybe if I say his name three times in front of a mirror, the Prowler will appear.”
The cook laughed and shook his head as he moved on to another customer.
When I finished eating and stepped into the scorching two o’clock sun, a little boy darted across without looking, and I reached out to keep him from crashing into me. But a woman rushed up to grab the boy’s hand. They headed down the street as she glanced over her shoulder to see if I was following them.
I leaned on the roof of my car, which burned against my forearm. I rubbed my eyelids. The asphalt felt like a current, dragging at my legs. This Los Angeles, baked by heat in the mid-thirties, was losing color, sliding into black and white.
Back in my car, I drove to the end of the street and turned wherever my subconscious guided me. Sometimes I forgot the car was even carrying me. My arms felt weighed down by lead, and I wanted to hide between four walls in the dark.
I understood why I’d left Richard Alcala’s arrest up to the police, but I should have foreseen that even though I told them I was guiding them to the Prowler, they’d doubt me, just like the rest of the world that turns its eyes from the evil roaming around. If I’d shot Alcala in the face and left someone else to discover the corpse, I’d be wandering Los Angeles by now, looking for a movie theater. With the trunk stuffed with first-edition vinyl, I’d be planning which storage unit to rent so that years later I could retrieve all the records I’d stashed. But Alcala got away. I had rescued Cassie June, who now hated me, and drove Alcala straight to his next victim.
On the sidewalk, a few people had dragged out a radio and were seated around, listening to the latest on the fugitive. As I passed by, the volume rose and fell with the Doppler effect. Young skaters were everywhere—long hair, big smiles. Couples walked by hand-in-hand, wearing tight clothes that showed off their tanned skin. On one corner, a man narrowed his eyes and scanned the horizon, his gaze jumping from one passerby to another. A cop stapled a wanted poster to a telephone pole while a middle-aged couple with two teenagers came up, looking worried.
Was Richard Alcala in hiding? He had been killing every couple of weeks. Could someone like that hold back? When the police closed in on him, Alcala had kept himself busy with rape and murder, like an office worker putting in extra hours. On a map of Southern California, the spots where the Prowler had attacked women were scattered like shrapnel after an explosion, with Los Angeles at the epicenter. I doubted he’d gotten on a boat and set sail across the Pacific, but he could have stolen a car and driven off to Long Beach, Anaheim, Riverside, or San Bernardino, or west to Oxnard or Ventura. Nothing indicated he’d revisit the same hunting ground.
A patrol car went by in the opposite lane. The cop at the wheel had his tan arm sticking out the window, tapping the door panel right over the LAPD badge. My reflection flashed in the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.
Would Alcala revisit the places where he’d left the bodies? Why would he? Sure, I’d made it clear I knew where three of his corpses were. But once he switched cars, he basically handed those bodies over to the police. That alone was enough to lock him up for life.
Sometimes I glanced at the wanted poster spread out on the passenger seat, then swept my eyes over the sidewalks in case the killer was blending in with the pedestrians. Playing the lottery.
My forearms itched every few minutes, and my sweaty palms made the steering wheel slick. I felt like I was digesting a concrete ball. Alcala remained at large because of me. Cassie’s mother’s face floated into my head, her scornful glare. If I were a serial killer who raped and murdered women and girls day in and day out, what would I do?
Yesterday, I’d caught him in the act of sweet-talking that woman. If I hadn’t visited his apartment, he would have met her at five o’clock at the address he gave her. She’d think this smiling photographer was going to jumpstart her modeling career, but maybe she’d have heard on the news that the police were after the Prowler in the area. She might have canceled the appointment. Really? With no way of contacting the photographer? I’d be following the news, but maybe she wouldn’t. Even if she heard about it, would she grasp the danger? Maybe she was dolling herself up right now to head off to a photo shoot.
-----
Author’s note: this is a translation of a novella I wrote in Spanish about ten years ago, that is contained in my collection Los reinos de brea. Regarding that tracker thing, I’m quite sure I lifted it straight from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. No shame in stealing from the best.
