The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

by Mariana Enríquez

That afternoon the news filtered to the media. Two teenagers had dug up Santiago Espina’s coffin using a shovel and their own hands. The grave, only a month after his burial, still didn’t have the definitive marble slab that would have made their task more difficult. But the exhumation was just the beginning. The girls had opened the casket to feed on Espina’s remains with devotion and disgust; around the grave, pools of vomit bore witness to their efforts. One of the policemen threw up too. “They left his bones clean,” he told the TV reporter, who, shaken, was speechless for the first time in his career. The girls were brought in a patrol car to the station, and there it was decided they’d be taken to a private clinic. The police said that Julieta and Mariela had never cried, or even spoken to them; they only whispered into each other’s ears and held hands the whole time.