by Stefania Gil
A Future Next to You
Stefania Gil
Translated by Annette
“A Future Next to You”
Written By Stefania Gil
Copyright © 2017 Stefania Gil
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by Annette
Cover Design © 2017 La Taguara Design
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
A Future Next to You
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Stefania Gil
Other titles of the author:
The characters and events described in this novel are fictitious. Any similarity to real people, living or dead, is a coincidence.
“Love has no cure, but it is the cure of all evil”
-Leonard Cohen-
Spain, 17th century
Francisco Requena was mixed with a deep panic and even deeper dread at the mere imagine of what could be expected at the hands of the Holy Inquisition. His driving force helped him escape the guard carrying him and run in the opposite direction.
He ran as fast as he could, however, he was arrested again very quickly. The bastards had a clear advantage with their horses.
He heard his brother’s screams moving away from what had been his family's home. His brother begged for mercy for them, for him. As always, Juan Carlos protected him.
There was nothing to do but resign themselves to what was waiting for them and ask God, —yes, the very one for whom those wretched ones worked—to please send death, although he supposed it would not happen.
According to his mother, and the old legend told to them since they were children, one of Rocio’s ancestors prepared a concoction allowing them to live longer - much longer - than a human should live. No one could confirm this absurd story, but in those times when witchcraft and magic were so feared, no one dared to believe anything except the legend was true. Apparently, after many years inhabiting the earth, her relative, Ximena, found death in her beloved’s arms. It seemed the potion was only effective until the bearer of eternal life found true love, or at least, that’s what his mother always assured them.
In any case, he never believed preparing a reliable potion to lengthen life indefinitely, was anything serious. The recipe couldn’t be shared or used lightly. Rocio and all the women before her, were the guardians of such a mighty potion.
He did not blame his mother for preparing it for them.
He just couldn’t.
The plague was selfish and swept away everything in its path. The first of their family to fall was his father. After his death, Rocío decided to save her children from the cursed tortuous disease. She prepared the brew in hopes that it would be their salvation. She was a mother first and foremost who sought to save and protect her children.
That's why he could not blame her, although she knew they would raise suspicion.
On her deathbed, she warned them to get away from there, and being idiots, they ignored her. Now they were in the hands of something far worse than the plague.
A tear slid down his cheek as the cell was closed in the back of the cart.
“Why are you crying now?” One of the guards asked ironically. “Didn’t the devil tell you about this when he made you his slave?”
Francisco glared at him with hatred as the man mockingly laughed at him.
They threw a dirty, stinking canvas over the bars containing him and started off.
***
The days they held him in jail were turning into a real hell.
Francisco was never a friend of seclusion. Small spaces overwhelmed him and even more if he was surrounded by people, as was the case. The people with him were accused of witchcraft and demon worship. They arrived in good health and within a few days, some fell ill due to the precarious conditions in which they were locked up. Others were taken for interrogation in which, sometimes, they did not return. On countless occasions after being returned after questioning, the people had hope in their eyes because they were not tortured. Perhaps the fact they were returned to the common cell gave them the opportunity to fight for their freedom. Poor people, they could not be more mistaken. Their fate ended up being six feet underground just like everyone else. Malnutrition, dehydration, infection, viral diseases and moisture were some of the most frequent causes of death among prisoners in that cell. At best, they died for one of those, at worst —as was the case with most— They were all brought together, making the road to death cruel and painful for all human beings.
After a couple of weeks, Francisco managed to get used to sleeping, eating and living on a ground full of shit and vomit. Also the poor condition of the food. They barely fed him and threw it around, forcing the prisoners to eat it as it was. On several occasions he had to suffer the agony of eating food full of excrement.
Of course, he didn’t get sick and it was beginning to catch the attention of the bigwigs in the filthy company called the Holy Inquisition. He had heard many things in connection with them while he was free. He never truly believed anything due to it sounding so cruel, so abominable. Francisco limited himself to telling people those atrocities were mere gossip so people would be afraid to act against the Church and the Kings.
It also helped that in his town, even in the city, no one had ever witnessed a prosecution for heresy. It seemed they inaugurated the hunting of innocents in the area. In addition, they were going to unveil the crematory cells for everyone in the city to see.
What was waiting for him?
Why were they not taking him out for interrogation?
He was tired of asking the guards for his brother. He wanted to know his whereabouts.
Would he be in the same building?
“Juan Carlos! It’s Francisco, brother. Are you here?” He shouted as loudly as his voice would allow. Every day he did it and every day he received mocking glances from the guards, as well as, pitiful glances from his cellmates.
Sometimes he just wanted them to come in and take him before the jury to finish everything he was going through.
He didn’t know how to feel. He had so many mixed emotions. Every night, when everything was in a sepulchral silence, he placed his head on his knees and cried. He wept with fatigue and fear. He wanted to end this. He just wanted to know. What would they do with him?
***
Francisco lost all notion of time when he lost the desire to live in that miserable place. The prisoners came in and out of the cell, or they never came back and were never heard of again, but him, he always stayed there. No one spoke to him, no guards would tell him what they were going to do to him, nor would they allow him an audience with the Inquisitor General.
He was tired of eating bread with shit, drinking his own urine to disguise the fact he remained in good health because, as he expected, he could go without eating and drinking for who knew how long and not suffer any physical change.
One good day, two guards entered, each grabbing an arm to take him to a room where the moisture dripped from his bones just by entering. Several buckets full of water sat on the floor.
Francisco tried to resist the moment they began stripping him of his clothes, however, one of the guards beat him severely leaving him without the strength to continue fighting. They hung him from
the ceiling and threw several of those buckets of ice water over him while another guard scraped his skin with a rudimentary brush which looked like soap. Or at least that was what it smelled like to Francisco.
Francisco’s skin began to get irritated. He thought about how good it would feel when they poured more ice water over him. That would calm the newly obtained scrapes, but that didn’t happen.
Buckets of boiling water were thrown on Francisco.
Those were the first cries of pain from his throat in the terrifying place. He endured the burning sensation as it reached every corner of his body. The tears streaming from his eyes, didn’t allow him to see anything clearly but he did not need to see to know he had burn blisters already.
The guards laughed at him.
It was the first time he heard a strange voice in his head delighted in telling him how he would kill them all if he could, although he didn’t like those thoughts at all. Never in his life had he dared kill anything, even the flies his mother hated so much. He found a little peace in those thoughts and that is where he dwelled.
In the depths of his soul, he longed to be able to kill them all.
***
Three days later, his burns healed completely.
He was transferred to a large cell with a stone floor, a window, a cot and a potty. When he woke up he did not quite understand what was happening.
“Ah, young man! I do not know how you recovered so soon but, this is not going to be good for you.
Francisco blinked a couple of times. Before him was a gray haired man in a robe which at some point had been white.
“Water...”
He nodded and the man handed him a glass of clean water.
Francisco thought he was dreaming when the transparent liquid touched his mouth.
“More...”
The doctor poured him another glass and Francisco sat up on the cot.
“Careful,” the doctor said. You suffered severe burns. You have been lying there for three days.
“Why do you work for them?”
The doctor avoided Francisco’s gaze.
“You have to earn some bread.” They pay well. Besides, son, they are God's helpers.
Francisco narrowed his eyes, staring at the doctor.
The man was pretending.
“You lie, and don’t call me 'son'. I’m not your son and I don’t believe in God either.
“Shhhh.” The doctor jumped up and covered Francisco’s mouth with his hand. “I have seen horrible things down here, do not talk about God like that because you have no idea of the future that awaits you. I do not believe in God either. These are fucking despicable.”
Francisco peered at the man with compassion as his voice began to tremble.
“My daughter was caught with her fiancé in the woods in positions ...” the doctor tried to say but Francisco did not need so many details. He could imagine what they had been caught doing, so he nodded indicating no further explanation was needed. “They put her on a horse and brought her here to do monstrous things to her.” His voice came out in a mixture of panic and hatred. “I arrived in time to see her being prostituted among all the guards. My poor little girl” —tears of anguish were falling from his eyes— “how afraid would my little girl be? So I made a proposal they couldn’t deny. I'm a doctor, boy, and here it doesn’t matter what social class you are as long as you sell yourself to them as accepting their disgusting ideas of torture are satisfying to you. I did that. I exchanged my freedom for that of my Mary. I have already lived my life, but she has not. I'm not with them, but for the sake of my family, I must be.”
They heard the locks on the door.
The doctor jumped away from Francisco and lost his balance. He fell to the floor as the guards entered the room. These made the sign of the cross as the doctor began to tremble.
“I've fallen on my own, this man hasn’t done anything,” the guards lifted him off the floor as if he were a piece of paper and flung him against the wall. One of them wrapped their hand around his neck.
“Are you defending that miserable heretic, Peter? I saw when he made you fall,” the guard muttered with uncontainable hatred. “Do you want us to pay a courtesy visit to your beautiful daughter and wife?”
“No, no! Please! Don’t hurt them, it's my mistake. I’m not defending him either.” He looked at Francisco with pity. “I fell alone; I tripped as I stood up.”
The guard inspected him for a few seconds, realizing he was telling the truth, he let him go.
“You can go, old man,” the guard ordered, and the doctor rushed out of the cell. His hands were shaking. He was hyperventilating. His condition worsened when he heard the beatings Francisco began to receive from the guards.
***
Francisco Requena was taken to the Inquisitorial Court after the guards beat him several times. Wounded, he arrived before the Inquisitor General and just seeing him, he could already imagine what awaited him from there. The man glowered at him with disgust and morbid curiosity at the same time. The kind of look only sick-minded people had.
The guards let go of him and he stood. He was not going to be defeated this easily, although his whole body ached and breathing was a little difficult.
“Why has he been beaten?” The Inquisitor General asked the guards.
“He was blaspheming, sir.”
The man in charge nodded.
“Do you know why you're here, my son?” The inquisitor looked Francisco directly in the eye.
What a disgusting look! The accused thought at that moment.
“Satan has seized your soul and your conscience. You must be released. What did he offer you? Was he the one who gave you eternal life?”
Francisco remained silent.
The Inquisitor General glanced at the men sitting next to him. Francisco didn’t know who they were. They did not appear, from what he heard in the cells, during these procedures. The Inquisitor General was always present with a sheriff, a secondary inquisitor, the prosecutor and a qualifier. None of them were familiar. The guards were the only ones familiar to him.
“Where is my brother?”
The Inquisitor General smirked.
“Serving his sentence in hell with Satan.”
“Damn bastard!” Francisco shouted in anger. “I swear to you by that piece of shit God you praise so much as soon as I can, I'm going to get rid of these.” He pointed to the chains on his hands and feet, “and the first thing I'm going to do is kill you slowly. Bastard!”
It was the last thing he uttered before the bailiff nodded and the guards began beating Francisco with solid wooden sticks.
He fell to the ground in a ball, and began crying thinking someday he would return each blow to those bastards.
***
Months or years passed, Francisco didn’t know very well. He became a toy for the damn inquisitors. He was their experiment.
They tortured him whenever they wanted, or whenever someone created a new torture machine. The first time he was taken into the courtroom, when he dared to threaten the Inquisitor General, he wanted to die within minutes of being tortured.
His torture sessions began with 'drowning'. They laid him down on a wooden table and bound his hands and feet, inserted a piece of metal in his mouth so Francisco couldn’t close it and then covered his nostrils to drop more than five quarters of water into his mouth little by little and continuously. Francisco's sensation of suffocation was terrible. He thought of all the people who died like this and was sorry for them. He thought at some point in such a long session he would succumb to death. He didn’t believe his immortality could hold so much water.
He survived that and all the other tortures they planned for him.
Crushing his thumbs, the rack, the pulley and the bonfire, were some of the minor tortures Francisco had to endure. Yes, he reached a point of resignation. He felt it was the only thing he could do for himself. He began to classify the tortures he received.
Those were conside
red minor because nothing in the world could compare to the pain caused by the pear of anguish or the damn cradle of Judas. Those tortures were the cruelest, most savage and painful they could do to him. Not only did they violate his integrity as a human being, but also as a man. With each of those monstrous sessions, Francisco couldn’t do more than pray to the God who knew didn’t exist to end his life.
They tore his guts and made him bleed, thinking he would not survive any longer, but unfortunately, for Francisco, he never bleed out completely and sooner or later he was resurrected.
What did he do in life to deserve this? Why didn’t death take pity on him and take him away one damn time?
How much pain could he endure? He couldn’t and didn’t want to do it anymore.
In spite of being the worst torture, The Iron Lady was a miracle to him.
The day they locked him in the metal sarcophagus with immense spikes buried in his body causing him excruciating pain, was the worst punishment they could give him. The mere fact of being locked in a metal box shaped like a human was frightening and traumatic. He thought he would die in there.
But no.
His terror was even greater with the sensation he received after having lost his blood once more.
They pulled him out and took him to his cell.
Pedro, the good doctor, always helped him recover, without raising any suspicion and speaking only when necessary.
“You said you'd give them the recipe.”
Francisco nodded.
In fact, he did. After the wretched inquisitors realized he wouldn’t die, they subjected him to all that torture, in which he would never forget for one single reason: they wanted the immortality potion recipe. Francisco owed it to his mother to protect the family secret.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Francisco still didn’t know which, as soon as he regained consciousness within the Iron Lady, he began to scream hysterically that he would give them the formula, and he would.
He had formed a plan a long time ago and was only waiting for the right time. He knew he could endure any pain possible, but he was also aware one day he would have a moment of weakness and talk.
