When Cheque asks him about his great-great grandmother and great-grandmother, things get slightly awkward.
Ernesto hadn’t even known of the existence of Maricruz del Rio until the previous year, when Héctor had revealed it to him. He knows nothing about her other than what he’d been told then: that she’d been left in an orphanage, that she’d died young in childbirth, and that she’d been forgotten years ago.
And, of course, that she’d been his daughter. It feels unreal, to think about it; if not for Cheque – if not for the fact that petal had lit up for the blessing, proving their relation – he wouldn’t even believe she ever existed.
He supposes it should sadden him, knowing that she passed away from both worlds so soon, but the truth is that it makes him feel nothing. She’s a name, and some nebulous information, but nothing more. He knows nothing of her, nothing of her short life and of her afterlife, and nothing of the wretched bloodline she – he – left behind, if not the fact that Ezequiel was its result.
I detailed how that would likely go here but now I also wrote a thing because I should be sleeping and, of course, I am not.
That was not the direction he’d expected the night to take.
Estéban – he’s been Estéban García three decades longer than he’s ever been Ernesto de la Cruz, by now; the name has grown on him – was supposed to have a drink at the usual cantina, watch the firework display later on, greet a few acquaitances while he was at it and then head home, like he’d been doing pretty much every Día de los Muertos in the past few decades.
He hadn’t counted on his alebrijes suddenly taking off, forcing him to follow. He hadn’t expected them to lead him to a mute, recently deceased child sitting alone in an alley.
And he hadn’t expected the boy – Cheque, he said his name was – to turn out to be connected with the Riveras.
I WAS SUPPOSED TO GIVE A BLESSING, BUT I CAN’T.
“You need to go back, muchacho. Just about now.” Before they find you and me by extension. “The blessing must be given before dawn.” No pressure or anything but please get lost. “I’m sure they’re not mad at you. You just need to try again. I can… show you the way to the Department of Family Reunions, sí? From afar.”
Being beaten up by the nearly forgotten and then dragged up there for Héctor to show off how insufferably merciful he was in front of a crowd was bad; being taken to recover into what had been his mansion felt like a fistful of salt rubbed into the wound.
[Héctor suspected he might have just reached a breaking point.]
A/N: Here’s something I began working on… forever ago, and only finished it now because it kept getting longer and longer. But hey, here it is. Set after Down to Dust.
***
Héctor should have known the very pleasant evening catching up with his Shantytown family – not that they lived there anymore, but the name had stuck – was about to take a bad turn when he heard people approaching. Six or seven or them, shouting and jeering and calling out his name. Which had sounded like fun, until he’d turned.
They were half-pushing, half-dragging what looked like a sack of bones; he had hardly enough time to blink before said sack was thrown on the floor in front of him. It took a moment for him to realize he was looking at a dark coat rather than a sack, that the bunch of bones was actually a full skeleton with a few bones broken and badly rearranged… and that the face peering up at him, a look of pure terror on his features, was one he knew too well.
“Cousin Héctor! Look who we found!”
“Not looking so good now, eh, hijo de puta?”
“I say we should throw him in the sinkhole!”
“Taught him a lesson, we did!”
A lesson in pain, sure enough: even from his huddled position on the floor it was easy to see that Ernesto’s right arm was broken and so were a few of his ribs, if the way he held onto his ribcage was anything to go by. There was a crack across his jaw as well, and the injury kept him from closing his mouth properly, allowing Héctor to spot a gap where one of his lower teeth must have been knocked loose by the blow.
Now we match, he thought, and it could have been funny in the right context. That was not the right context.
“Ah,” he found himself saying, unable to tear his gaze away from Ernesto’s terrified expression, the tenseness in his frame as he braced for more blows. “You… shouldn’t have.”
The little face she remembered was gone, replaced by a skull with markings of pale blue, silver and purple; her eyes traced the swirling patterns, paused on the tiny silver dots under his eyes – those amber brown eyes, so much like her own, staring at her from beneath thick black hair she’s stroked and brushed so many times. After thirteen years, she was looking at her son.
A/N: Set a few years after Down to Dust. I started this… months ago, and only just finished it. I really wanted to get it done at long last. I mean, we all knew Cheque’s mother would die at some point.
***
With precisely nothing in her life having ever gone according to plan – not that she’d ever had a plan, she’d just kind of drifted through existence – Celia del Rio found some comfort in the fact that her death had, at least, been perfectly straightforward.
Sepsis. Septic shock. Catastrophic organ failure.
It had been a logic, predictable chain of events. It didn’t have to happen, she knew. If she’d walked into a hospital the moment she’d begun feeling sick, the sepsis would have been treated and she’d maybe have lived to turn forty-seven. Only that she’d missed all the signs, because when you fuck over your body in every possible for your entire life, feeling sick is not something noteworthy. She’d assumed it would pass, and by the time she had known something was wrong, it was too late: she was already slipping into septic shock.
The doctors had done their best, she had to give them that, but it would have been a lost battle even if her body had been healthy enough to take it in the first place. And so things had progressed to the last link of the chain, the one she’d heard someone muttering through her semi-comatose state, the last words her mind could grasp in the Land of the Living.
Catastrophic organ failure.
“So, your name is Celia del Rio. Age at the time of death?”
“Forty-six.”
“Occupation?”
Full time addict, part-time dealer, part-time prostitute. The good news is, I haven’t felt the need for a fix since I breathed my last. The bad one is that my only other skill is useless since we all lack the relevant bits. Or at least I think it is, but asking would be awkward.
Stop talking and start doing: My Fallout Shelter for my Tumblr blog 