Homesickness. That was all it was. He was certain of it. It explained it all.
The infrequent pains in his chest and stomach. The inexplicable weakness in his bones. The restless nights filled with nothing but nightmares, each more horrendous than the last. The way his step lost its signature spring, the joy so vital to his musical performance cut off from his feet, hands and mouth. The way nothing tasted quite right anymore. The way everything seemed threatening as the distrust so emblematic of the forlorn traveler set in, leading him to doubt and grow wary of even his dear, honorary hermano Ernesto.
His heart ached, and his eyes felt oddly dry, lids and surrounding skin laden down by sleep deprivation and deep, deep sorrow.
One evening, after a day spent distressing over a particularly horrific pesadilla from the night previous, Héctor decided that enough was enough. He was going home.
…He was going home. At last, the agonizing sensations of wistfulness that accompanied a life without his lovely girls would dissipate, fading into nothing but a dim, distant memory as the relief and love and contentment of home and belonging flowed through his misplaced soul.
The very thought of home and the solace it brought was enough to bring a faint smile to his lips. It was even enough motivation for him to lift a shot glass to his grinning mouth, and such containers never neared Héctor's visage, unless he was in a particularly celebratory—or despondent—mood.
He was sorry, to part with his amigo this way. To let his ambitious, hardworking hermano in all but blood down in such an abrupt manner pained him greatly, but, when push comes to shove, blood is always thicker than water.
This became dreadfully apparent as all blood rushed to his head, viciously wrenching his gangly form close to the ground, despite his sweat-coated cranium feeling as if it were floating boundlessly upon the windless air.
His abdomen felt as though it had been thoroughly impaled by daggers of varying lengths and sizes, each one impossibly sharp. Some were jagged and warped, others, barbed, and still others were laced with a potent poison that sent waves of white-hot anguish ripping through his bloodless wounds.
It took all of Héctor's willpower not to vacate his near-empty stomach upon the streets that had, in spite of his tremendous paranoia, been so very welcoming to him.
As the musician's throat grew thick with suppressed bile and unshed tears, he managed to choke out one last desperate, pleading word, intended for the only family he had by his side.
"Ernesto—" he gasped, violently trembling form doubled over and wheezing stridently as his dagger-filled stomach used his ribs to tear itself open, turn itself inside out, and reseal itself with the aid of his pulsating veins.
"Perhaps it was that chorizo, my friend." The man's voice was light, yet concerned (or so Héctor thought), panic and fright trapped in his heart, which was laced shut by the usual cool and composed attitude that the man always adopted in moments of crisis.
Héctor's visage paled, still contorted by agony, as the realization of his own ceaseless foolishness struck him at full force.
Of course. He hadn't been homesick! No longing was capable of degrading a man's near-perfect health in such a brutal manner, no matter how intense it was! He had been severely ill—treatably ill, mind—and yet, he had passed all of the blatantly obvious warning signs off as the result of something as trivial as homesickness. He was a fool—both for leaving, and for blinding himself to the truth. Now, his stubborn will to return would be the very thing that prevented him from doing so.
'I'm sorry I cannot return as I promised,' he thought morosely. 'Recuérdame ... y por favor, perdóname, queridos,'
The faces of his beloved family danced tauntingly in the acrimonious rain puddles littering the darkened, empty street before him, each sweet countenance drawing nearer, nearer, nearer still, until suddenly, they disappeared altogether, coalescing with the faint street lights and his swimming vision, driven away by Héctor's very own fall—and not for the first time.
Regret, immeasurably more bitter than the very last substance that had touched his palate, consumed every agonized fiber of his being.
He would die a liar. He would die alongside a promise, one that would not be kept, no matter how much he wished to fulfill it.
His emaciated limbs touched down, awkwardly sprawled about the rain-sodden earth like those of a starved bird, struck down mid-flight.
Everything began to swirl, fading and amalgamating until all that remained was a vast mass of blackness.
As his vision faded, so did his pain.
So did his breath.
So did his heart.
Things continued to slip away, one after the other, in a manner that seemed slow and melancholy, despite occurring in but an instant.
All too soon, his body grew still, his rattling chest silent.
His pain was no more.
.
.
.
…or so he hoped.
TRANSLATIONS COURTESY OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE (for non-Spanish speakers… including me):
Hermano = brother
Pesadilla = nightmare
Amigo = friend (masculine)
Chorizo = pork sausage
Recuérdame ... y por favor, perdóname, queridos = Remember me...and please, forgive me, my dear ones.