by Stefania Gil
Francisco returned inside the house, pleased. He had a victorious smile painted on his face that spread when he saw the inquisitor bathed in sweat, his head resting on the table and panting like a dog.
“You're panting like a dog. Like what you are,” he whispered in his ear as he tugged his head back. The Inquisitor looked at him with horror in his eyes and tried to alarm the guards. His voice barely passed his throat as he lost control over his body.
“You thought I had become like you, damn bastard?” He smiled with sincere malice. He was filled with anger and a thirst for revenge.
They knocked on the door twice.
The guards were entering the same trance.
He would leave them. After a while they won’t be able to move.
They struck again.
And again.
Francisco had an unfamiliar sensation come over him. He took the kitchen knife and approached the Inquisitor again.
“As soon as you die, I'm going to revive you to kill you again. So hold on till I’m done with your bastards.”
With short, accelerated steps he advanced to the door. The chains still on his ankles gave him no more freedom.
He opened the door and found a guard leaning on the threshold about to faint.
He shoved him, knocking him to the ground. Luckily, it was the guard with the keys to his chains. Without thinking, he took them freeing his legs from oppression. He felt like crying with joy but now was not the time to get sentimental.
He was about to get rid of those wretched bastards and carelessness could lead him to the same place he didn’t want to return.
So in a quick move, and without stopping to think much, he plunged the knife into the guard’s throat slitting his neck from side to side.
He repeated the same movement with the other two who were trying to reach him, crawling across the field.
Once he put an end to the swine’s lives, he looked inside the house. The image before him could not have been better.
The inquisitor still had not died. He would have a little time to teach him about torture in his own right.
***
A frightening scream left the cottage as a result of Francisco torturing the Inquisitor General after having given him a potion that, with his luck, did not end his wretched life immediately.
He tortured him with agility and speed in every way he could in such a short time. He didn’t stop being angry with the man. No. He made him scream in pain before the damn man released his last breath.
With that he was satisfied. The miscreant had died cruelly by his hands.
He lifted one shoulder, dismissing the matter as he wiped his hands.
“He deserved it.”
When he turned and saw the carnage, he couldn’t suppress the urge to vomit, so he did.
His stomach was emptied instantly. The nauseating scent of blood everywhere was making him dizzy. It was then he realized what he had done.
He became a monster like those he hated so much. Yes, he knew his actions could be justified considering it depended on his freedom. However, it didn’t make him less cruel and ruthless.
For a moment, he began to panic.
He walked like a caged lion from one side to the other. Trying to calm down and release the pressure that settled in his chest.
His throat tightened and he began to tremble.
“I have to get out of here,” he said with his hands on his head as he paced the room. The cloth functioning as a make shift curtain moved a little revealing part of the field in front of the house.
Francisco's lower lip began to tremble uncontrollably.
He dissolved into tears remembering being blinded by anger and how satisfying his revenge felt while killing four men. Four.
He was a murderer. In addition to all the cruel things he had done to the women to gain the trust of those pigs, he let himself be overcome by anger and wiped them out in such a grotesque way. He was thirsty for blood and morbidity when the deep need to see the asshole’s face while he was killing and torturing them.
“What have I become?” He asked with disgust.
Between tears and sobs, he stripped the Inquisitor of the solid gold ring he wore, the bag tied to the belt of his cassock, where he always kept some coins and a gold crucifix that hung around the bastard’s neck.
He took his sparse belongings and left to prepare for his escape. He draped the makeshift bag over his shoulder, stepped out of the cabin, and mounted one of the guard’s horses. Galloping away fast without looking back, his face bathed in tears.
1
“Good morning,” Natalia said entering the office.
Isabel smiled, responding to her greeting.
Natalia left her purse and coat on the coat rack, went to her desk and turned on her computer.
“What do we have for today?” She asked Isabel, pointing at some things on her agenda.
“Getting more clients, my dear. I have an idea for it.” She was excited to see Natalia paying full attention. “I have been thinking the remodeling of the last three estates have been wonderful and word is spreading how well we work but, I want something bigger, something that represents a real challenge.”
Isabel paused leaving her pen on her desk to explain everything more clearly to her new employee.
“I've been exploring the area and I've noticed there are many farms that seem to be completely abandoned. If we could restore two of those, we would take off in a big way. I'm sure it would even earn us an article in the famous decoration magazine.
“It is a good idea. There are not many abandoned estates and I know the history of some of them. Most are in lawsuits.”
Isabel deflated a little.
“Don’t be discouraged. We could get lucky, I'm sure. Go to the ones you like the most and take some pictures. When you return, you show me and I’ll tell you what could be available for us.” Natalia finished with a wink as Isabel applauded excitedly. She gathered her belongings to leave.
“There, on the agenda, are the things to do today. Not many, the most important should be passed to Caserío Peña to check the work progress on the site.”
Natalia checked the schedule.
“Count on it. See you this afternoon. Oh! I forgot to tell you I may arrive a little after 5 p.m. because I plan on visiting my grandmother. I have not seen her in a while and I want to take her to lunch.”
“No problem, Nat. See you later.”
Natalia watched Isabel cross the great avenue through the store window. She was fortunate to have gotten this job at such a low point in her life. It was like a light suddenly appeared in the darkness she had been trapped in for some time.
From a young age, Natalia was very demanding of herself. She was never allowed to fail because that would make her a loser. That attitude suited her well as she grew up. It made her achieve honorable positions in elementary school, high school, and then at college. She was lucky her parents could pay for her good education. She wanted to become the best in the world and thought a post-graduate degree in New York and a Master's degree in Florence would catapult her to the position she dreamed of so much: Director of a creative team.
By then, she was about to turn 26 and had gotten a job at German decoration branch which taught her a good lesson. She supposed due to her amazing career in her studies, her positions of honor and her high level of exigency, she would be chosen as the new head of the interior design department. That was not the case, of course. She lacked something indispensable: experience. Life does not always make everything so easy. So yeah, they hired her, as the new department head’s third assistant.
A very low blow for her considering she expected more. Not to be the messenger, to serve coffee to the “new boss” and the whole department if necessary.
At first she took it as a real challenge. She would show she was worthy and she deserved a better position, however, her “nice boss” didn’t allow her to participate during the project meetings in which she had to serve
water and coffee.
“Do the work for which you are paid,” said the man she was beginning to hate. When the second assistant position opens, then you can change jobs, if you want, of course.
Natalia tried to appear calm every time she heard that and watched as time slipped through her fingers.
Thus a year passed and the first assistant position became available.
“You cannot expect to be first assistant if you have never been the second assistant. Don’t try to skip positions, girl. In order to get to my position you have to earn it and I intend to occupy it for a long time,” her boss said sarcastically.
He claimed in a huge outburst of outrage that he would not choose her even if he had to choose someone who hadn’t even graduated.
Natalia began to experience life’s injustices in the flesh. Although her parents suggested to her a thousands of times to look for another job, she was still determined to get her ass of a boss’s job. Several years passed. For five or six, Natalia was not very sure of considering her life was no longer a challenge, at some point she became a conformist. Always ready to complain about all the bad things happening to her. She became a specialist in hallway gossip. She had become what she hated so much. A person who doesn’t expect anything new from life and resigns to what they have because that is what they deserve.
A flurry of excitement always passed through her as she watched the creative team gather and listened to design proposals she herself would throw in the trash, they seemed like terrible ideas to her. Nonetheless, her opinion didn’t count.
She demonstrated to herself that she had the audacity to stay in the office late working on an idea she had for the project her colleagues were working on. The next morning, she took it to her boss. He promptly he threw it in the trash saying she needed to stop disobeying the rules and trying to skip positions.
Two hours later, she watched through the conference room window the applause from the creative team over an idea the boss himself presented. To her surprise it was her design projected on the wall while the man gave her a mocking smile.
The right thing to do would have been to reveal him for stealing her ideas but she didn’t think anyone higher up would listen to her accusations and take action since, her “boss” was a pet and the owner’s best friend of said branch.
Depressed and defeated, she returned home never to return. It didn’t improve her mood. On the contrary, she became an unbearable victim of all the bad things happening to her. She sank head first into a vicious circle which took a long time to get out of.
After therapy, a couple of trips with her parents and a specialization course in California, Natalia got her focus back. This time, calmer but with the same level of determination she had lost in the past.
On her return to Valencia, she had the opportunity to meet a charming couple traveling from the United States to Spain. On the flight they engaged in a conversation leading to her present position.
She sighed at the pleasant memories.
On the flight Isabel asked to see her trajectory in a brief resume. She had been glad to study it. A couple hours after talking to her and her lovely boyfriend Juan Carlos, telling them a little about where she studied, the honors she received and how she served coffee at the important German design agency as a result of not having experience for a macho boss. Isabel was so surprised she took Natalia’s phone number informing her as soon as they arrived in Spain, she would be in touch with her. She was in the process of opening a new branch of her design company and would love to have her as a co-worker.
Coincidences didn’t exist. She met Isabel because they were destined, Natalia thought. They lived in the same city, shared the same passion, and there was a good “feeling” between them.
She loved the idea of working with Isabel and even more, on account of it being a small agency for very exclusive clients.
She looked at the clock. It was almost time to go check the work on Caserío Peña. She picked up her things, switched off the lights, lowered the blinds a little, and locked the door behind her.
They needed a secretary. Isabel had already mentioned it. It seemed like a good idea due to it being a bad idea to leave the store closed during working hours. They could lose customers like that.
Before getting into her car, she received a text message from Isabel.
“Oh my God! I think I found gold in the rough. Look:”
She received a picture of a house in very, very bad condition on a vast expanse of weedy land. She frowned. It looked like a very old estate. So old, it seemed strange to Natalia that she didn’t recognize it. She had toured the ancient estates standing or in ruins when she was still studying Interior Design and didn’t remember that one.
“It will have to be investigated because it’s the first time I’ve seen it”
“It’s inhabited. I just saw a man in the window and he almost scared me to death.”
“Maybe he's an invader.”
“I have already thought about that, and I'm crossing my fingers we get it”
Natalia sent her a smiley emoticon. “We'll talk later I'm leaving now”.
She got into the car and took the CV-35 in the direction of Caserío Peña. She really wanted to skip it so she could go visit her grandmother.
***
Isabel came into the office with uncontrollable anxiety. It was not yet 5 p.m. She prayed for Natalia to hurry up. She wanted to take her to the estate she discovered. It looked smaller than it was as a result of a part of it was almost in ruins. A surprise inhabitant gave her a good scare after looking out of the window. The house was in such a bad state you could not imagine anyone living there.
At first, she was tempted to knock on the door to talk to the person she saw leaning out the window. She berated herself for the sudden attack of stupidity and decided to calm down.
The memory of the night Juan Carlos was kidnapped was still fresh in her memory even though it had happened a little more than a year ago. They were still at the estate, waiting for Edward, Carlota, and their daughter, Alice to return from the book signing tour and presentations Carlota had scheduled. Whenever they mentioned, perhaps, they would be back soon, her sister's agent would extend the tour a bit longer. She had never spent so much time on tour and knew Edward would be antsy to get back in touch with the planting in the Alcalá Orange Grove. She could hear it in his voice every time he spoke to them. She expected to see them soon. She missed them a lot.
She notified them about what happened the night she and Juan Carlos were taken by surprise inside the estate. She had to ask her brother-in-law and her sister not to return and assure them everything was fine. The police were handling it. Which was true, but without positive results because they still hadn’t found those strange men. Not surprisingly, the police had the simple version of the facts since Isabel and Juan Carlos could not give some details considering it was unthinkable to betray Juan Carlos’ former immortality. No way. They would look at them like they were crazy. Especially since Juan C, was a normal man. You could see the passage of time in his physique, like any other person.
Isabel still couldn’t believe the magnificent legend her late mother-in-law told her children. It was very true. Juan Carlos regained his mortality the moment he met and fell in love with Isabel. He loved her like no other.
She smiled, thinking how happy he'd been since she’s been with him.
He was a unique and wonderful man. They were thinking about getting married soon.
Juan Carlos still worried he had not found his brother. Isabel could see it in his eyes. He needed to know Francisco's whereabouts. They were using every available resources they had in their reserve however, they were still quite limited. With Francisco's 'special' condition and God only knew who was looking for him, they did not dare hire anyone to help search. So even though it was a bit difficult they had to find him on their own.
Her cell phone rang.
“Isabel, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I won’t be able t
o return to the office this afternoon. I promise to cover the hours in some way; my grandmother doesn’t feel very well. I have decided to stay with her a while longer.”
Isabel deflated.
“Send me the estate’s picture and location, tomorrow, before I come into the office, I'll go see it. Maybe we could meet there?”
She responded to Natalia.
“Don’t worry Natalia, you can take the time you need. It is a blessing to have grandparents alive at our age.”
She looked for the house address and sent it to her.
“I hope you get it. Is that it hidden behind some bushes? I don’t know how in the hell you found it. See you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Isa. See you tomorrow”
Isabel worked at her computer a little while longer. She took the time to organize her agenda for the next day and then, tried to distract herself but it didn’t work. With the estate on her mind, nothing else could dominate her thoughts. She finally gave up and collected her things, closed the business and went home. Natalia would scold her if she found out but it was a dire situation. She needed to get back there and this time, if she saw the man, she would try to talk to him.
She climbed into her car and drove to the estate.
It was already dark, as to be expected at this time of year. The tree leaves had begun to fall forming crumbling beds on the ground.
There was no street lamp nearby so Isabel decided to direct her car headlights toward the property. If Juan Carlos learned she was here at this time of night and alone, he would give her a good earful. However, she just couldn’t wait. She had to know more about that house.
The property was imposing even though much of it was in ruins. Isabel could imagine how it had been and everything she would do to restore it to its original state.
Of course, it was a rather vague idea. Everything would be much clearer in her head when she could actually enter and feel every space on the site.
