“Good god,” Gisela said, “Your blood is immensely pure. Are you still a virgin?”
“Yes,” Simon said, embarrassed.
“Congratulations. If I’d known that, then I would have gotten some of my friends together and we’d do something… a bit more special with this, I mean -nevermind. Forget what I just said,” and like a lizard, she sipped up some of the blood from the quantity Simon had provided.
Ewhh, Simon thought.
Gisela looked up and her eyes suddenly went dark.
Her pupils turned into ovular slits, like a cat, then back again to normal.
“What do you want to get out of this again?”
“I want Margaret. I want her to break up with her man and go for me. I want to be with her forever.”
She waved her hand, dropping white dust onto the floor.
And just like that, a ring of fire emerged in the living room.
The fire was not started by any human hands nor kindling, but summoned.
It erupted of its own over a star shape that she had made with black chalk.
She recited some verses out of a book.
One by one, she put the items she had asked Simon for in the middle of the ring of fire, then spoke some more verses from a different black book in some foreign language.
A language not of a human tongue, but those of another world, another dimension.
As quickly as the spell began, it ended.
“Finished.”
“And the blood?”
She had kept the crucible clutched in her hand, but did nothing with it.
“This? This I’ll keep for later.”
Simon loved his aunt, but he had to admit that she was a bit… odd.
As Simon walked home from his aunt’s, he felt different.
Something, or somebody, was constantly standing over him from that point on.
Also, his perception changed.
He could see things he’s never seen before.
Dark figures and lights constantly followed him for the rest of his days.
At first, he thought it was just paranoia, like his eyes were just playing tricks on him.
But as time would go on, the effect of his supernatural sight got clearer and clearer.
Spirits were surrounding everyone at all times.
And Simon could now see them.
“Simon, where were you all day?”
“Just walked around town, mom.”
“Did you find a job yet?”
“Not yet, but-“
“Why not?”
“I-“
“Simon, you know that in this life, if you want something, then you must go for it. You can’t waste time at home doing nothing.”
“I know that, mom.”
“Only those who have nothing to give can do that. You can do so much!”
Simon couldn’t bear hearing his mother’s incessant nagging any more.
She meant well, but it seemed like every conversation turned into some nag-fest or life lesson about what she felt like he should be doing.
And yet, what he thought he should do was something completely different – laboring in the oil fields.
He stormed off to his room.
No one from his family had agreed to drive him to the oil fields.
“It’s too dangerous. You might die, or permanently get injured,” they all said.
“How is that better than what I’m doing now? It’s like I’m dead already!”
“Oh Simon, stop being so dramatic! You have your whole life ahead of you!”
Too bad, being oppressed by your own family, he thought.
He laid in his bed, trying to think about his next move.
When suddenly, he found himself in another dimension as he drifted into a deep sleep.
In his dream, the silence of the night turned into screams of terror.
“I’m going to kill you!” shrieked a skeleton figure draped in red.
It carried a scythe in its hand, like the figure his aunt said was her “lord”.
For the rest of the night, he saw himself burning in a dark chasm.
On top of that, a giant clown laughed at him from a distance.
Every time the clown laughed, it launched a tennis ball-sized meteor from his mouth directly at Simon.
All he could feel was pain.
This continued during the dream’s entirety.
Every time he tried to move, his legs seemed bound, as if in chains.
Adding to this was the fact he hated clowns more than any other thing.
“God, please don’t send me to hell!”
Simon woke up drenched in sweat.
He did the sign of the cross over himself three times, almost involuntarily, and ran out of the house to the front yard, gasping for fresh air.
It was still night, and thus very dark outside.
Looking around, he decided to run straight over to his aunt’s house.
“I need to undo this spell.”
Simon didn’t want to be sent to the place of his deepest fear – where the giant clown laughs and meteors shot forth from its mouth.
His version of actual hell.
Something had changed within him from one day to the next.
The spirit of death seemed to have dropped into the deepest parts of his weary young soul.
And he knew it was all because of that stupid spell.
“Auntie, auntie!” Simon yelled, knocking on her door loudly.
“We have to break this spell!”
Something was odd about that night, however.
There were extra cars in her driveway, ones he had never seen before, and no one came to the door.
Simon thought his aunt was a woman that never went out much, nor had very many friends.
But on this night in specific, he found out that she wasn’t at all who she made herself out to be.
He could smell a campfire and went around to the side of the house, where he witnessed smoke billowing up from the backyard.
Looking over bushes that kept the back lawn from being seen at the front of the house, he witnessed a terrible sight.
His aunt, in a white hooded robe, was with three other people, also in different colored robes.
In the fire pit, a tall person stood hooded in red.
Though he couldn’t see who it was, Simon already knew…
He had just seen Santa Muerte in his dream, and now she was standing before him.
“Santa Muerte, you hold our lives in your hand,” they chanted in unison.
“Take the blood of sacrifice from this young life as your own, and may you always be blessed.”
Pouring the crucible of blood into the fire, La Flaca began laughing.
“Oh my God,” Simon said, fainting back onto the grass.
His nightmare was turning into reality.
MARK SOTOMAYOR 