Paradais

by Fernanda Melchor

It was all fatboy’s fault, that’s what he would tell them.

First sentence.

his guts marinading in the juices of his own rage,

And ever since then he hadn’t been able to sleep, he told Polo. Instead, every two or three days, his body would collapse and he’d black out for a while. That was what falling asleep felt like now, but the truth was that not even then could he avoid the nightmares, and he noticed the same was true for a lot of the boys: they would moan and cry and even talk in their sleep, and there was always one weirdo who’d kick off out of nowhere, start ranting and raving just because someone was snoring or farted; although, of course, the scariest of them all were the ones who slept like angels the moment their heads hit their mattresses, they really were sketchy motherfuckers.

He couldn’t sleep, but nor did he dare go over the plan again; his mind kept wandering. Was he really going to go through with it? Was he really as crazy as fucking fatboy? Crazy enough to go through with that stupid, ridiculous, childish idea? And all so Franco could dip his wick in some woman! As if a rotten swamp of a cunt justified all that effort, all that energy, the carnage that was to come, their lives devastated, everything gone for a second-rate fucking snatch: a grubby, slimy, murky hole. What was that fat fucker even thinking?

They pulled the tights over their heads. It was a horrible, suffocating feeling. They looked so ridiculous they almost got the giggles when they saw each other.