An Excerpt from Venganza
by P.J.
The car came sliding to a halt and he tumbled out holding his left side. The razor wire had sliced his gut, which meant he was trailing blood with every step. He had to stop it from bleeding. He needed something to eat. He needed to rest. It was dark and he couldn’t tell one direction from another and so he stumbled off into the darkness and further away from the road hoping to find something.
Before he veered his car off of highway 41 and onto an unlabeled back country road toward the town of Clover, he’d been confident of survival. Now, in a wooden shack that housed nothing but a farmer’s rusty tools he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know it yet but his long run and just barely longer life was coming to an end.
He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. Through the flame he saw a rusty saw, a sickle, and other useless clumps of metal. Wrapped lazily around the handle of a pitchfork was a flannel shirt probably there to save the user from getting splinters. He fashioned the ragged shirt into a wrap and tied it securely around the slice in his gut.
Full of sweat, blood, and exhaustion, he threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Seven hours later, as the sun crept up and over the long green fields of Clover, he was jolted awake by the backfire of a tractor. Moments later, he was interrupted by Jose, who was looking for a post-hole digger.
“¿Qué estás haciendo aquí? ¿Quién es usted? ¿Qué quieres?” Jose was insistent, accusatory and worried. “¿Quién eres tú? ¿Cuál es su nombre? ¿Qué estás haciendo en este cobertizo?”
Reluctantly lifting his right eye open, the strange man’s raspy voice responded to Jose in broken half Spanish. “¿Dónde estoy? ¿Cuántos people? ¿How far es casa?”
Jose gave the stranger a puzzled look and was about to ask the man to stand up when he was shot in the head. Pulling himself to his feet the man shoved Jose in the tiny shed and took a moment to look around the field. Squinting, he saw a dilapidated house not too far away. He returned the gun to a holster in the back of his pants, and started toward the house.
Halfway there a screen door swung open to let out two children who ran off to play as the stranger lay on his belly in the tall thick grass. Wincing from the pain caused by the slash in his side hitting the ground, the man continued toward the house. He slowly made his way around to the back of the house and peered in through a cracked kitchen window.
The only person he could see was a young Spanish girl sitting at the table reading. He followed her as she moved from the table to the stove. With a large wooden spoon, she stirred the contents and then lifted a taste to her lips. Satisfied, she let out a soft moan and then made her way over to the window to summon Jose.
“José. José mi amor. La sopa está lista. Ven a comer.”
Crouched underneath the window completely still, the man could smell a faint whiff of perfume mixed amongst spices. When she lowered the window, he sprang up and shot her through it. He then watched as the Spanish beauty struggled to crawl herself toward the front room, and then let out another shot to stop her.
He walked over to the stove, turned off the burner and reached into an overhead cabinet for a bowl. After settling down on the couch with his soup, he turned on the television and beamed a crooked arrogant smile at himself.
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