by Sergio Gomez
Ignacio didn’t know this, because he was too young to know the extent of his father’s business, but Canguro was one of Arturo’s low-level drug dealers. Mostly he sold ecstasy to young adults outside of nightclubs and bars in downtown Veracruz, nothing too serious. But still, Arturo wasn’t nicknamed “El Toro Macho”—the Alpha Bull—for no reason. Whenever someone owed him money, as Canguro did, he made sure to make an example of him.
“Sir, sir. I have some of your money—I got robbed—” Canguro started, but Guicho slapped him on the back of the head to get him to shut up.
“What’re we going to do with him?” Guicho asked Arturo.
“Same thing we always do. Put his head on the table.” Arturo wasn’t leaning against the countertop anymore; he was standing straight and reaching into his back pocket for the knife he always carried there.
Ignacio watched his father’s face transform from the one he knew, his fatherly face so to speak, to the one he wore when handling business. It was almost like a dark shadow was cast over his father’s face, and his eyes were about ready to shoot flames out of them.
He looked over at Canguro, who must’ve noticed the same thing Ignacio did, because he was bawling now. In between sobs, Ignacio pieced enough words together to figure out Canguro was begging to not be killed.
And the look on his father’s face, as scary as it was, was nothing compared to the face when Ignacio made a mistake and was about to get a whooping. Ignacio thought Canguro would’ve shit himself if he saw that face.
Guicho did as he was told, and slammed Canguro’s head on the table. Canguro tried to turn his head, but he was too slow, and his lip busted on impact. Guicho held his head down, while the kid screamed and bled on the table.
“Hey, Arturo, you think we should tell him to leave?” Guicho said, referring to Ignacio.
Arturo looked over at him, almost as if he’d forgotten his son was there. He shook his head. “He’s old enough by now.”
“He’s six,” Guicho reminded him, and then immediately regretted challenging his brother when Arturo shot him an icy glare.
“Shut up and worry about doing what I tell you,” Arturo barked.
Guicho didn’t respond. He was too afraid to.
Arturo took his knife out of the sheath, laid the sheath down on the counter behind him, and then went over to Canguro. “How much do you have on you?”
“I—I have two-hundred pesos, señor.” Canguro answered through bloodied, quivering lips.
“How much does he owe, then?” Arturo asked Guicho.
“Three-fifty.”
“Listen here, escuincle.” Arturo grabbed Canguro by the top of his ear and pulled hard on it. The kid yelped. “If we catch you tomorrow and you don’t have my money, I’m going to do more than pull on your ear, you understand?”
“Y-yes, yes. I’ll have it, I promise—”
“Shut up. Don’t talk unless I tell you to,” Arturo said with an edge to his voice.
Canguro nodded as much as he could underneath Guicho’s pressure. He stopped crying at the thought of being let go harm-free. But he wasn’t going to be. No one that owed El Toro Macho had ever been let go harm-free. That was how he got that nickname and reputation in the first place.
With his free hand, Arturo reached down and grabbed Canguro’s wrist, and slammed his hand on the table.
“No, no, no, please!” Canguro cried.
“What did I say?” Arturo yelled. “Speak without permission again and it’ll go worse for you.”
Canguro started to sob again but fought the urge to plead for mercy.
Arturo moved the pressure from his wrist to the middle of his hand, forcing Canguro to splay his fingers out. Then, he took the knife and started sawing his pinky finger off.
Canguro screamed like Ignacio had never heard anyone scream. Each slice forward and backward on the finger changed the pitch of his yell. It was like each motion was a different note, like his father was playing some sort of horrifying instrument.
There was a pop as the knife sawed through the bone.
It excited Ignacio. Excited him a lot.
The knife finally went all the way through Canguro’s finger. Blood oozed out from both the detached finger and the wound on his hand, pooling on the surface of the table.
“You get the message?” Arturo asked, grabbing him by the hair. Guicho had stepped back to give him room.
Canguro nodded. “Y-yes! I’m sorry—”
Arturo threw him against the countertop, the one Ignacio was standing by, and he jumped back out of reflex. Canguro’s ribs hit against the edge, and he bounced off it dramatically and turned around to face what was coming next. At the same time, both his hands reached behind him to brace himself against the countertop.
Ignacio watched his wounded hand smear blood onto the white countertop with the fascination of a child watching an artist painting. Only this was touching a part of him he didn’t know existed until now… He didn’t have the word in his vocabulary then (or even now), but it was the morbidly curious part of him that was excited by the sight of the red blood.
He looked over at the cut finger, still sitting on the kitchen table, and felt the same thing. He wanted to touch it, but when he looked at his father, he saw he was still wearing his business face.
Arturo was pinning Canguro against the counter, holding the blade up to his throat. “What did I say about not talking? Do you think I’m fucking around, pendejo?”
Canguro shook his head and closed his eyes tightly, squeezing fresh tears out of them.
“Good. Now, remember. You get my money, or I’ll cut your ear off next,” Arturo said. “You think the ladies are going to want some payaso with one ear?”
Canguro shook his head again.
“You have permission to speak now. What are you going to have tomorrow?” Arturo asked him.
The kid opened his eyes to look into Arturo’s face, to see if the permission to speak wasn’t some sort of trap. Then he saw Arturo getting irritated with his stalling, and blurted out, “Your money, señor… I’ll have your money.”
“Good,” Arturo said, letting go of the front of his shirt. Then to Guicho, he said, “Get him out of my face.”
Guicho went over and hooked his arms under both of Canguro’s armpits the same way he’d dragged him in here, but this time Canguro was going willingly. He was crying silently, which also was different.
Ignacio watched Canguro’s bleeding hand continue to drip blood as he left the room with Uncle Guicho. The floor was checkered black and white, and the blood turned a dark purple when it stained the black. And yet, on the white, it was bright red. This was the first time Ignacio realized how beautiful blood was.
“Ignacio, the eggs,” Arturo said.
Ignacio snapped out of his trance and turned to the stove. The eggs were burning at the bottom, and smoke was rising out of the pan. Ignacio reached out for the spoon and did the twisting motion his father had just taught him.
He looked over at Arturo to see if he was doing it right, and his father’s face had lightened up. He was back to being his dad teaching him how to cook breakfast, not the mean man who takes care of business.
Ignacio was as fascinated with his father’s ability to change faces as he was with the sight of the blood. He hoped to grow up to be like him one day and be able to wear many faces.
“Hey, Ignacio, you okay?”
Martin stepped closer to him and saw the man’s eyes were glazed over as if he was on some downer drug trip. If Ignacio wasn’t so gargantuan, he would’ve snapped his fingers in front of him to try get him back to earth, but no way was he going to risk pissing off a guy this big. He didn’t think even him and Joey together could take this lug.
Thankfully, Ignacio snapped himself out of whatever was going on. He shook his head, and said, “Sorry, boss. Tired.”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s early,” Martin said, unconvinced.
Joey, who had been growing impatient at the janitor’
s immobilization because they were pressed for time before the breakfast rush, repeated the question they were waiting for him to answer, “Well, big guy, think you can handle this?”
“Yes,” Ignacio finally answered.
“Great!” Joey said. “Come on, I’ll show ya where the slop sink is at in the back.”
Chapter 6
Fred and Noelle were at Twisted Treats, sitting on a bench and trying to get as much enjoyment from their ice cream cones as they could before the summer heat turned them into melted messes all over their hands and napkins.
Fred was nervous to ask Noelle to come camping with him, and this wasn’t even the big question. But dammit, she looked cuter than ever in her Legend of Zelda stained-glass pattern dress. She’d also done something with her hair, lightened it or something that made it almost look silver.
If she said no, that meant Fred would be out in the woods doing dumb stuff with Gav while Noelle was hanging out at the dive bars down in the city where all the guys that were slim and tall and dressed better than Fred hung out. One of them would surely catch her attention—or the other way around, whatever—and make moves on her. There’s no way that wouldn’t happen to a girl like Noelle.
Fred swallowed some of his rocky road ice cream while he worked up his courage. If he never asked, he’d never know what her answer would be. He cleared his throat and said, “Hey, Noelle, I know this is kind of sudden, but you wanna go camping this weekend?”
“Hm?” she said, swallowing the lick of strawberry ice cream in her mouth.
“Gav—you remember him?”
She smiled. “How could anyone forget him?”
Yeah, of course. Now that he thought about it, the first time Noelle met Gavin he was hammered at some party. He was being a particularly big asshole that night by throwing limes at some people in the middle of a game of beer pong.
“Well, he planned some camping trip for the weekend. I know it’s such short notice and all—”
“Let me check my schedule,” with her free hand she reached into her dress pocket, but when the hand came out it was empty.
Fred’s eyebrows knitted in confusion.
Noelle laughed and put her hand on his shoulder, “It’s summer, silly. Of course I’m free. Your friend going to be okay with me tagging along?”
“Gav? Oh yeah. He’ll be more than okay with it.”
Noelle gave him a sideways glance but didn’t press him on what he meant.
He wasn’t about to tell her they already talked about her, and that it’d actually been Gavin’s idea to invite her. No reason for her to know about that at all.
“This weekend, right?”
“Yeah. At some place called Lakewood Cabin. Supposedly the most secluded cabin in PA.”
“Ooh, how exciting,” Noelle giggled.
Fred joined her by laughing, then they talked a little bit more about the trip. The conversation lost its steam after a few minutes, and they sat back on the bench to finish their ice creams in silence, watching the birds fly in the summer sky, feeling the golden sun touching their shoulders.
They were glad that it was summer. Glad to be alive. Glad to be young.
And thought it would be like this forever.
Chapter 7
The 1997 Toyota Camry went through a narrow passage between two large oaks and entered a clearing of trees. Pinecones and nuts littering the ground crunched underneath the tires as the car came to a rolling stop.
Ignacio got out of the car. The car’s suspension system squeaked in relief of his three-hundred pounds. He looked between the trees and saw that the sun was only halfway below the horizon. It was later than usual because of the kitchen clean-up job his boss needed him to do this morning, but there was still at least an hour or two of sunlight left.
Ignacio grabbed his gym bag from the backseat, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried home.
Ignacio’s home was a farmhouse in an abandoned campsite. The farmhouse had once belonged to the family that owned the camp, but those days were long gone. The place was Ignacio’s now. And as far as he knew, no one knew this campsite existed.
Which was good. He meant to keep it like that way, too. That was why he parked the car far away, in case someone heard his car driving through the woods and followed him, he wouldn’t lead them back to his home.
It would be bad if someone found where he lived. They might ask questions. Ignacio didn’t like being asked questions.
In his bedroom, Ignacio changed into his hunting outfit, which was a camo vest and dark brown leather pants he made himself. The combination of these two colors made it so that if he was standing, he would blend in with the trees. If he was crouching, he would look like one of the bushes. Ignacio was tall and wide enough that both effects worked.
He grabbed the sheathed machete hanging on one of the walls and slung it by the strap to his back. Then he went to the shoddy dresser next to his bed, and from the bottom drawer took out a butterfly knife. He slipped it into his back pocket, blade first so that the handle peeked out into the air, just like his father used to carry his knife. He was no “Toro Macho,” but this was the moment in preparing to go hunting when he most felt like him.
But there was still one more piece to his hunting outfit—quite possibly the most important part of the whole thing.
Ignacio went to the small closet, the one that always had its door closed until this moment, and threw it open. Inside the closet sat a rack of homemade masks hanging from hooks like at a Halloween store. Only these weren’t made of rubber, and they weren’t representations of peoples’ favorite trademarked characters, either.
These were leather masks made from the faces of his human victims. Ignacio had constructed them on a sewing machine himself. He’d learned how to sew by watching his mother make his luchadore masks every Halloween. That was all Ignacio wanted to ever dress as. One year it might’ve been El Hijo del Santo, another year Blue Demon, and yet another Mil Mascaras, but it was always a luchador.
In his childhood room, he used to hang these homemade luchador masks the way the leather masks hung in his closet now. He would put them on when no one was home and leap off the furniture performing various moves he saw luchadores performing on the television.
The highest point Ignacio had ever dared to jump off was the television set. He could still remember flying through the air, elbow drop aimed at the pillow he put on the ground, imagining himself leaping off the wrestling ring turnbuckle at a flattened out opponent.
While he was going through the air, he’d come up with the name of his alternate persona: Varias Caras—Many Faces. It was a name that was fit for a luchador, but eventually became the name of the monster that lived inside of Ignacio.
He grabbed one of the masks and slipped it on over his head. It was the face of Stephen Lang.
The transformation was complete. He was ready to go hunting.
Varias Caras was awake.
It didn’t take him long to find prey.
Varias Caras watched the campers from behind a thicket of bushes. The man was bent over a pit, trying to get a fire going, but the only thing that was burning was his temper from the frustration of not being able to start it.
The woman he was with was by a picnic table, seasoning up some cuts of meat. Pork chops, maybe. Whatever it was, it made Ignacio’s stomach grumble.
Ignacio watched them a little longer. There was only one tent set up in the area, which meant it was likely just these two, but it was always important to make sure. That way, no one could sneak up on him while he was distracted.
The couple continued to go on about their business. The man was cursing and throwing his arms aggressively through the air now. The woman kept looking over her shoulder, trying to soothe the man’s temper with words of encouragement. Each time she turned her head, her eyes passed over the bushes Ignacio was hiding behind, but she was too oblivious to see him.
The prey never noticed him until it was too late.
Ou
t here, campers felt safe. Ignacio wasn’t sure why, especially since there were scary animals, but people always had their defenses down when they were out in the woods.
It didn’t occur to Ignacio that his heightened sense of hearing allowed him to realize all the danger lurking around in the wilderness better than anyone. His hearing was so sensitive he could hear the heartbeats of large predators—such as bears and bobcats—miles away.
The better part of that was that he could hear the heartbeats of prey, too.
And right now, the young couple’s heartbeats were at a steady, normal pace, but they would be thumping in his eardrums soon enough. Ignacio took the machete out of the sheath on his back and prepared himself for the loud sounds that came with killing.
“We should’ve just gone to fucking Puerto Rico, instead,” Chad yelled out to Paige as he threw the piece of flint and stick into the firepit. “This shit ain’t working.”
“I’ll just YouTube a video and we’ll figure it out,” Paige said, wishing she could be more help. She was grateful her sister lent them the portable charcoal grill to cook up the pork chops. At least they’d be able to light that if they couldn’t figure out how to get a fire going.
“There’s no service out here, how the hell are you gonna pull up a video?”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Under his breath Chad said, “Do you ever think of anything?”
In that moment, he hated her. But really, it had nothing to do with her. He was just angry that he couldn’t get the fire going.
Chad stood up from the crouch, and started for the cooler next to their tent. As he was going across the campground, out the corner of his eye, he saw the bushes move. He looked over in that direction, and saw a gargantuan man pop out from behind them. The object in the man’s hand—his mind was so scrambled he couldn’t discern what it was—glinted in the light.
