The Kingdom of the Damned

by Mario Garrido Espinosa

  "If you ever have any Alexandrian left over, it will have been so long that you will not remember me. Besides, you will never stop being poor, my unfortunate Pelayo...”

  "A man's luck can change," the boy pointed out, pointing at one of his right fingers.

  "The poor dies poor and the rich dies even richer.”

  "That is not always true.”

  "Well, think what you want. When you are five or ten years older, you will see the truth of my words.”

  Irene Lopezosa sat on the cot, showing part of her sex, in a position highly used in her years outside the convent. However, Pelayo was becoming so accustomed to the false nun’s nudity that he did not realize that detail.

  "I'm not going to be poor all my life. I plan to work, and I will save and...”

  "Foolish boy nonsense!"

  "Be careful who you call a fool!" Said the fool Pelayo, reaching for the sword hanging from his shoulder.

  "Do not be angry. All I know is that you've sold something that did not belong to you... And now, besides, you want to leave...”

  "I'll tell you again that, in my house, there is little need. You, as a nun, should know how to forgive these things.”

  "All right. I forgive you, but you must fulfill your part of the covenant...”

  "I do not know what to do. I should go.”

  “No!” Irene demanded firmly, to finish speaking more submissively in an attempt to calm the spirits. “Please! Do not be cruel. If you have come this far, it is because the Most High is condescending with this little sin of mine," she said with the greater face of conviction that she knew to gesture; “and yours... Do not forget.

  Pelayo did not decide to leave or stay.

  "Do you not like me anymore? Something you have to pay for selling my virgin..." Irene said solemnly rising from the cot.

  "You go in a very strange way..." Pelayo said as he took his belt off his shoulder with great prudence and without knowing whether he would regret what he was doing. Then he threw it away from them both.

  "Do not worry about that," she said, moving tantalizingly.

  "Why did you not take off your hood?" The boy asked who also began to wonder that the nun was entirely in leathers, but with a groan. The false nun was so accustomed to that garment that she had even taken care of it. Sometimes she did not take it off even for sleeping. It was for her like those fake moles, that of so much to look at them, they ended up almost by never taking off the skin.

  "What's the matter with you if everything important is in sight, right?” With the bonnet covering my skull, I feel dressed before the eyes of God," Irene said, who did not want to discover her head.

  Pelayo had not thought of it before, but now the fact that he had sold the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of all the Faithful Dead, in exchange for eating that day and the next, was undermining his flesh. Now, he was convinced that he did not want to do anything with that sinister woman, but it was as if a force of his mind compelled him to perform this penance for his wrongdoing. As a result, the buttons of his nightgown began to unfasten.

  "Now, you cannot stop me!" Irene mumbled, pouncing on the boy like an exhalation. With a jerk, she took off her shirt, breaking buttons and seams, remaining in a half-naked body. Then, she threw a violent jerk to the bed, caressed, and kissed him with the bad and accurate arts she only knew.

  When Pelayo came out of his reverie, from that sky in which he had gotten himself in, Irene was already tying the girth of the swords, which being larger than the thin contour of her waist, was graciously propped up towards the middle of her butt.

  "But what does he do?" The young man protested, as if he were not quite clear on what his unpredictable lover was busy with.

  "Stay Nude, Pelayo!" Irene Lopezosa ordered, sword in hand and her bloodshot smile.

  5

  Sister Mikaela was restless. She seemed to be guessing that something terrible was going to happen. It was not the first time she felt that way. A few years ago, she experienced the same sensations and within a few hours, the kitchen caught fire, leaving poor sister Mary Fernanda dead and totally burned. Today, the awe was much more pronounced.

  Sister Mikaela left her cell in the direction of the high altar. Something told her that there she was going to start what was so disconcerting. It was deserted and in the dark. She turned around pensively and deeply worried. Walking, she reached the cloister. Everything was stillness. A stillness that, despite being the usual, today scared and caused her, at the same time, a huge uneasiness.

  A sparrow perched on the sink and drank water. The sister watched it, trying to calm her spirits and noticed its light chest, in contrast to the dark strips that ran down its back. The bird trilled cheerfully and then resumed its journey.

  Meanwhile Pelayo shed his pants with the horror drawn on his face. At the same time that he did so, he kept an eye on his father's sword, which the nun held threateningly. When he was naked at all, Irene watched him intently. He began to feel a deep shame and in a reflex act hid his genitals with both hands.

  “Remove your hands from there!” Irene ordered, standing a few steps away from the kid.

  The boy did not obey, so Irene was forced to put the tip of the sword in his throat.

  “Take them off, damn it! Let's see what it is that you are so zealously hiding...”

  Sister Irene began to touch with total impudence the pudent parts that were shown there, while the sword continued pointing at the nut of Pelayo's neck. She used her fingers as if measuring the member.

  “Well, well! You are also well armed," Sister Irene said ironically, laughing very low. “Doesn’t this massage turn you on, my noble Pelayo? Answer back!”

  "Yes ... Yes," he said, although he was almost pissing with fear, and of course, his pennis was relaxed, almost hidden.

  Next, Irene ordered him to open the cell door and walk down the hall. Pelayo, after obeying, could feel the intense cool of the empty corridor and gave him a —other— chill.

  Right in front of the door was a small statue representing a sleeping baby Jesus, leaning on a skull. The boy was caught by surprise and in the darkness; it seemed as real as the cold sweat that fell on his forehead. He took a leap of pure terror.

  “Walk, but do not make noise!” Irene ordered him as she prodded the boy in his skinny white buttocks. “Or are you afraid of the statues now? Look.” He moved with the limp of a stiff leg and hit the baby Jesus' head with his knuckles. “It's not real. Come, do not stop!” She ordered giving him another sting in the backside, this time deep enough for a trickle of blood to come out.

  Guiding him in this way, they came to the chapel. With a gesture of the face, she ordered him to sit in front of the altar, in the presbytery, where a rough crucified Christ of two meters presided over everything. In the gloomy darkness of the candles, Pelayo Castro could see three paintings, whose protagonists seemed to observe everything with eyes of attentive disapproval. The canvases represented St. Peter’s Martyrdom, Saint Jerome’s Apotheosis and the Virgin with the child and St. John the Baptist next. All had been created by a neighbor from Pelayo’s town and given to the convent, many years ago. They had a very pronounced crackle. As if they were antiquities of five centuries. The cause of those huge cracks in the painting was a bad varnish, which was now completely cracked, thus increasing the mystery of the faces of the protagonists of the paintings; making them monstrous and almost unrecognizable.

  “Very well. Didn’t you want to do it? Well let's do it.”

  "I do not want to," the boy said, scared and cold.

  “Well, you're going to have to do it, my good Pelayo.”

  Irene laughed heartily but avoided making much noise.

  “But here...”

  “Here! Let all these bastards see it," she said, laughing again, in clear reference to the four images. “But first, I'm going to tie you up. I do not want surprises.”

  With the tablecloth that covered the altar table, he made two pieces. He never neglected the
sword, so he had to help himself with his mouth. With one of the pieces, he immobilized his hands, grabbing the end of one of the priestesses. With the rest of the sheet, she covered his head making a knot as strong as possible, by the nape of the neck. He could not see and barely breathe, and now began more than ever to notice in his back and buttock the terrible coldness of the ground.

  Irene Lopezosa flexed the leg of the wound and the other left it as it was, like a stick, because she could not move it. Then, very slowly, she got down to work, since the boy was not there for sexual boasting. Two minutes later, Sister Mikaela happened to pass by. When she saw the scene, she uttered a great cry and fell to the ground in a faint.

  “Damn!” Sr. Irene exclaimed.

  Her mind started to work like thunder. This mishap complicated matters and prevented her from making love with Pelayo, which, after so much time, she wanted to do enough. Now there was no time left for carnal relations and she must act quickly if she wanted to succeed in her grisly effort.

  “Well, sister Mikaela, I'm going to thank you for those damn candlelit nights to pray.”

  Sister Mikaela was stripped naked and, with her own habits, tied to Pelayo, body to body. The boy did not stop moving and as he saw everything very black he did not care to start screaming, forming quite a scandal. In this new situation, Irene, using the hunting knife hilt, hit him on the head, opening a good gap that immediately shut him up.

  At last, the two were left as if they were one, and Irene, although satisfied, regretted the frightful pain that her two legs were again causing her. She took the sword in her right hand and the knife in her left and began to walk like a cripple, clenching her teeth and swallowing the pain of her knee and thigh. That was the long-awaited moment of her revenge. She was hurt, but she had to take revenge now or never. Surely, some nuns would be wondering what was Sister Mikaela’s cry and poor Pelayo’s voices... Therefore, her sick mind passed the pain to the background, and in the first put the sweet honey of outrage that, after spending so much time thinking about it, she was finally going to execute.

  6

  Sister Cornelia left her cell at the sound of Sister Mikaela's cry. She wandered for a moment disoriented, not knowing where the scream came from. Then, she heard the distant screams of what seemed, unmistakably, a young man. After a long time of traveling the convent desperately, she ran into Sister Irene. The nun was paralyzed to see Sir Higinio’s daughter naked, bleeding from one leg, with the other stiff completely, with a weapon in each hand and the face of madder more frightening than ever seen. The false nun took advantage of this moment of confusion and thrust the knife into her sister's enormous belly. She split it up to her neck in two strokes, and then pulled the knife out so that it opened her chin in two. The huge woman, just before she died, picked up momentum and collapsed on top of Irene, crushing her body and twisting her numb leg. She howled for the most intense pain she would ever felt. She released her sword and helped herself with that arm struggling to get out from under the nun. It took a long time, but in the end, she got rid of the dead nun tonnage. Her back and buttocks were destroyed due to the scrapes resulting from scrubbing on the cobbled and Chinese-filled ground. She felt nauseous when realized that her body was smeared with blood and the nun viscera remains she had just opened in gutter. After vomiting impulsively, she looked for the sword. She retrieved it from the floor as she uttered a thousand curses. Suddenly she thought she heard footsteps and, without giving the time to react, she was lifted up by her shoulders by Sister Cyprian, who seemed to have come out of nowhere and who, with a silent and abrupt movement, ended up holding her as if caught by a pair of pincers. Irene Lopezosa now looked like a doll hung from two thick steel bars. She could not bear the discomfort of her whole body, especially the shoulders, which imprisoned the titanic hands of the great nun, and shouted as someone whom they burn alive, moving his neck with something akin to spasms.

  Immediately, the whole congregation was present. Prayers began to be heard and most of the sisters made the sign of the cross over and over again, thinking perhaps that the demon was once again possessing Sister Irene and that this dreadful scene could not be due to another reason.

  The immense sister-in-command of the kitchen waited for instructions from the Superior, but Sister Lorenza Justiniana could not speak.

  "Mother, what should I do with Sister Irene?" Came the last words of the gigantic nun, due to Sir Higinio's daughter dropped the knife, grasped the sword with both hands, and thrust it with her full force between her two legs, pierced the body of Sister Cyprian, who fortunately for the murderous, fell backwards, making the ground rumble.

  Irene easily opened the hands that still gripped her shoulders. She drew her sword from the brutal nun before the terrified and helpless eyes of all the other nuns. Then he took the knife from the ground and cut it through her neck, finally killing her, between vomiting of guts and black blood.

  The nuns began to disperse, but Sister Lorenza Justiniana did not consider fleeing, because her age would have rendered the attempt useless. Irene Lopezosa approached the abbess mother disgustingly enjoying the moment and without a word, she cut her with a single blow of the sword. The good woman fell lifeless to the ground, blood flowing from her neck like a spring.

  "Dear Mother Reverend... You will have to find another slave.”

  Having said this, she uttered a brutal laughter that was heard loud and clear in all the rooms of the convent, freezing the blood of all the dwellers of the same.

  7

  No nun knew where the superior hides the front door keys, and Sister Cyprian kept the heavy kitchen back door keys well hidden. So, they were all cornered and so, one by one, they fell in one way or another, without ruling out a heart attack when they were surprised by the monster in which Irene was converted, who emitted terrible noises of pain by the effort of moving her hurt legs and others of joy comparable to those of a person raised between wild beasts.

  Sister Immaculate Conception ended her days without her eyes, as Irene took care of them with the sword. Then, using the same weapon, she pierced her throat. Sister Graciela severed the veins of her wrists with wide, deep cuts, and tied her to a bar of a window, bleeding without remission. She found Sister Ana Toribia hiding in her own cell, and taking Pelayo's mallet, she gave her four blows to the head that created a gap. Irene's brutality seemed to have no limits, and at the maximum of her madness, she was capable of imagining and carrying out a thousand different forms of killing, to which more frightening. In addition, she took her time to carry out each execution... She was enjoying it greatly and even though it was the first time she took a human being's life, she seemed to have done it every day of her life. She felt powerful. Master and mistress of the poor nuns’ fate, and with such a capacity to impose her will, after so many months of being submissive, she measured nothing of what she was doing.

  When she thought she finished her work, went to the kitchen and eagerly ate as much as she could. Then, she washed the blood of her body and cured as much as possible her murders. She re-wounded the thigh wound that had been reopened. She straightened her leg, this was how less pain she felt and smeared her body with the ointment they used in the room to heal and disinfect wounds. She frankly smelled, but could handle the stench without vomiting what had just eaten. Then she prepared two sacks. In the first, she put some food. The second was to use it to save everything she found in the convent of some value and could transport.

  In her search, she swept the office of the Mother Superior. After shattering an old wooden Eccehomo —and something rotten— and scattering parchments and other things of no value, she put two crucifixes of low gold, a chalice, a small silver nave-in the sack —which she found behind a piece of furniture, in a hollow of the wall— a custody of coral and copper and some coins. This is all that she plundered from the convent, because in the rest of the premises, did not come across anything she understood she should take. At the same time, she sought to destroy everything she could fin
d in her path. Thus, for example, a small but very beautiful statue of the Dolorosa, the image that was most dear to Sister Cornelia, was divided into a thousand pieces with a blow to the ground. All the pictures were cracked with the sword with cuts in diagonal. In addition, the polychrome busts that kept the Miraculous Medal Holy Matilde relics were destroyed, and the saint's bones scattered on the ground and, in general, trampled.

  The alleged uncorrupted hand of the saint had a small ring on the ring finger. Irene noticed it almost when she left the place destined to her eternal rest. She picked up the remains of the hand and, without any disgust, extracted the jewel. The finger turned to dust as if the ring were that which held together the structure of the annular assumption of the holy. After a little inspection, she threw the ring down with contempt, for it turned out to be a piece of lead with a stone which, although it was of great beauty, was by no means precious.

  The modest library was the only thing left intact. It was hard work to make all books useless. Most were very heavy and she was not able to handle large weights. She thought about the possibility of leaving some torches burning on the low shelves and thus turning all those centuries of religious culture into ashes, but then she dismissed the idea because it could be risky. She knew very well how dangerous the fire would become if it became uncontrollable, and in addition, it would generate a quantity of smoke capable, perhaps, of alerting the people of Squill River Hard course.

  In her way, she encountered Sister Restitute who, prostrate in bed, vegetated more than live. She was one hundred and twelve years old but seemed to be three hundred. It was useless to waste energy in killing her. There, without care and without food, she would die in one day at the most.

  When the ointment dried up, became almost invisible and lost its pestilence to a great extent, she went to her old cell and dressed in Pelayo's robes, which although not of her size, were more discreet than the habits. She still had the wimple on her head. It was smeared with blood. She folded it and put it in a pocket. She really liked that garment.