Warning: This chapter contains severe violence such as: attempted murder, sexual assault, and assault of a minor. Please read at your own discretion.
CHAPTER 3
OF PATRIARCHS, CURSES, AND RUNAWAY GIRLS
OCTOBER 31ST, 2017
The woman's smile transitioned into a brilliant white-toothed beam. Seriously, if her teeth shone any brighter Michaela might just have gone blind. "Si, mija!"
Looking back at the others surrounding her, Michaela began to hazard guesses to ascertain their identities. To her left, the man with the small stature and white hair (plus that fine mustache) managed to place his head back on his neck...the wrong way around. The taller, dark haired woman with spectacles helped him spin it the right way around.
Pointing at the man first,"Papa Julio?", she guessed who he was and watched as he finally got back on his feet and gave him a beam just as bright as Rosita's. "Hola." Her great-grandfather chuckled nervously. Papa Julio...was shorter than she thought he was (and it made her want to hug him, he and Mama Coco must have looked so cute together-!).
Shaking that thought away, she turned to the bony woman (not just her hands of bone, she seemed skinny in general with some very nice cheekbones). Her brother, who looked a lot like Papa Imelio's picture, stood next to her.
"Tia Victoria and Tio Victor." Here Michaela was certain of their identities. She never met Victor while he had been alive, but she hadknown Victoria and seen many photos of both twins in Abuelita's family photo albums.
Victor strode over to Michaela, bending over so that he could poke at her cheek. Scanning the teen from head to toe on the side opposite her brother, Victoria spoke with a dry and skeptical tone. "She doesn't seem to be entirely dead like the rest of us. No bone, no markings."
As Victor straightened, he pinched her cheek and tugged gently at the skin, looking at her curiously as Tia Victoria began to prod at her as well, poking at her shoulders and her back, even her stomach.
Abruptly, Michaela went completely stiff as a sensation like ice water doused her from head to toe, causing her to yelp and jump back into Victoria. Her body shimmered like translucent mirage as a man stepped through her, like she was some sort of ghost.
As she shivered and tried to recover from that feeling of being struck with thousands of tiny pins and needles, she briefly thought that it was only fitting to be a ghost if you were walking among the dead. That feeling, it could only be described as someone walking over the grave.
Rosita, with wide-eyes, spoke up. "She's not quite living though." Victor helped Michaela straighten up. "Well, this is curious isn't it? A half-alive girl standing amidst the spirits of the dead. How did this happen?"
Papa Julio grasper Michaela's hand, and though it was bony, it was also warm and offered strong reassurance that everything would be okay, something Michaela didn't realize she needed, especially right now.
That reassurance went down the drain about ten second later when Papa Julio announced his decision on what to do. "We need to find Papa Imelio. He should have crossed over by now, and he'll be able to find a way to fix this. In response, Michaela blanched.
Papa Imelio...?
From behind the closely clustered party of five, two sets of footprints pounded heavily upon the ground. Yet another set of twins came over to them, thin as sticks and as tall as trees, if trees wore glasses and had some rather fine mustaches. One of them, huffing as though they were out of breath (did the dead need to breathe?), called out to draw their attention. "OYE!" He called, a hand raised as he finally reached them, his body double no less then five steps behind him at the most. The body double, as winded as his brother, managed to wheeze out a sentence. "It's Papa Imelio-"
"He wasn't able to cross over the bridge!" Eerily, they spoke in unison with wide-eyed alarm written across their faces as they peered, not at Michaela, but at everyone else. Glancing between the two, she could've sworn she recognized the shirts they were wearing. White linen, striped vertically with lines in pairs made of some shade of soft blue or green...from a photograph somewhere? Both of them wore aprons as well. Strong, durable, and heavy leather aprons, etched with a name in silver thread at the lower right corners...Rivera Zapaterio, Since 1921. The image of the family ofrenda clawed its way to the forefront of her minds, bring with it a startling realization.
"Tio Oscar? Tio Felipe?"
One of them glanced over at her. "Oh, hello Michaela." The other, Felipe (?), continued speaking to everyone else. "He's stuck in the land of the dead!" Abruptly, both twins freeze in place and share a sharp look with the other before pivoting to face the living child who could see and hear the dead and should not be able to. "Michaela!?" It was almost humorous how they both balked at the situation. In perfect unison. Must be timed.
Then it clicked in Michaela's head, what they had said before noticing her. "Papa Imelio can't cross over what bridge? He's stuck...where?" She might have sounded like a bit of an idiot, but this night so far had already stretched her mind taught, her composure ready to split at the seams and unleash the veritable flood of unpleasant emotions and thoughts and drown her if she didn't try and chase it away. Besides, she was talking to the dead and now some freak of nature pseudo-dead spirit anyway, which was a nuclear warhead of mindfuckery all on its own, so might as well just roll with the punches.
Victoria turned to Michaela and pinched the teenager's cheek. "I think you'll find out soon enough," she drawled, "I have a funny suspicion that your situation is tied to whatever is going on right now with you." Rosita cut in at that moment, bring up the current grand problem. "But if Papa Imelio's the only one of us who ha a chance of figuring what's going on and can't come to us..."
Julio straightened his spine (and his hat), before gently grabbing Michaela's arm. "If Papa Imelio can't come to us, then we must cross over to get to him!" He started marching through the cemetery with Michaela in tow. "Vamonos!" Quickly, everyone else began to rush from behind the duo. At the very back, Dante pranced along after them.
Minutes passed as the Rivera weaved through the growing throng of the celebrating living, dead, and the stone monuments which marked their burial place. Eventually, the came to rest at what first appeared to Michaela as a radiantly luminescent, incandescent mound of marigold petals (and even whole flowers). They seemed to reflect slight even, as though they had hardened and crystallized into jewels at the peak of their lovely beauty. That was before she caught her breath and lifted her gaze up from her feet.
That golden mound was no mere pile of flower petals. It lifted up and rose from the ground in a great, grandiose arch and extended further upwards far into the sky. The rest was obscured from view, veiled as though by a strange perfume, a mist woven of magic and dreams. Rainbow light fell from where the petals bent light and showered color. All in all, it was a positively breathtaking view especially taking into account the brilliant moon which hung high in the sky, almost as though it were the crowing glory. A silent, stunned expression of awe spread across Michaela's face, plain as day despite the night's literal and figurative darkness that she was shrouded in.
A small family of three, a woman and a man, and a girl about Michael's age, reached the bottom of the bridge. Unlike herself and her family, who were transparent and seemed to shimmer and ripple like desert mirages, they were solid and seemed to carry actual substance and not just the shape of human beings (humans, spirits, seriously what did she call them? They were not living while being very much alive, and no less human than she was). The flower bridge seemed to glow even brighter where their feet rested upon its surface. How was that bridge, made of flowers and petals and some kind of magic, support their weight anyway?
As they left the bridge, they passed through another veil of sorts. It...wasn't like the mist which they had stepped out from, the mist made of silver light and distant stars, but of woven gold and honey spun silk that gave off the impression that walking through it would would feel the same as basking in the heat of a warm bath. It rippled around them as they walked through it, and once they touched the ground, they were just as translucent, as intangible to the living as she was.
This image, she wondered what Rosa would think about it. Unlike Michaela, who was decent at art but had no prowess or talent in that subject, Rosa thrived with paint and pencils and charcoals just as she did with textbooks and homework or Abel with his football games and scholarships. It was a passing, fleeting thought and promptly shoved into a back corner of her mind, buried beneath faint resurfacing pain covered by her unreality made reality. She could not help but wonder though, particularly on her dear distraught Mama, still carrying Michaela's younger sibling in her stomach...
As her deceased family began to pass through the golden veil and start their way up the bridge, Michaela hung back, hesitating. As Tia Rosita and Tia Victoria and Tia Victor had said, she was neither living or dead. Would that bridge of dreams and magic carry her weight, or would she sink through it and down into the depthless eternal void with nothing but the petals caught beneath her weight to keep her company for all eternity?
Michaela never believed in hell, but looking across the bridge to the veil of silver mist, where both ground and sky fell away and only a dark void beneath and above met her sight, she could believe all too easily that it could reach out and swallow her whole if she let it, if she let herself fall. If someone tried to catch her...
Would they fall too?
Then Papa Julio was there, Papa Julio just beyond her reach with his kind eyes and warm, gentle grasp. Meek when stunned, but ferocious with a steel spine when faced with some form of adversity. He...there was no way he'd let Michaela fall, fall into the depths of hell, or leave her to drown within her own fears. His voice was soft as he coxed her forwards. "Come on, Michaela. It's going to be okay."
Something tense in her chest loosened when she heard him say that, though she was still wound up as tightly as a Jack-In-The-Box ready to pop its top. Briefly, she wondered in this tense sensation in her body was the only thing that let her pretend she wasn't broken, or if it was her last line of defense against breaking entirely, like a fallen mirror.
Rolling her shoulders back nervously, she pulled her hoodie tighter around herself and stepped onto the Marigold Bridge. It held her weight. It was odd, standing on a bridge that by all means should have lacked strength and support and still supported her weight. Like with the others, the petals glowed beneath her feet even brighter. The odd haze she found herself in ended when a dark, hairless blur darted between her legs and began bolting across the bridge, knocking her flat on her ass. Getting back to her feet, Michaela caught sight of a heavily panting, bony and skinny xolo dog with a fast and furious tail-wag strong enough to swipe someone's legs right out from beneath them. "Dante!" Michaela shouted, annoyed.
The dog in question barked joyously at his human, as though beckoning her to come after him, before vanishing through the silver veil. "Dante, come back here!" Michaela called again, seized by what she faintly deemed as unreasonable panic. After all, her family was acting as though everything was fine, that walking on flower bridges and magic veils was normal, and may be it was for them, but they were also dead, and she and Dante were both alive. Continuing to call after 'that dumb dog with no self-preservation instincts whatsoever', Michaela took off after him, kicking up petals in her wake. They drifted down from the sky, sad and almost lonely as they fell. The wind carried them forwards on a melancholic lullaby.
The wind blurred the world in Michaela's eyes, and she felt briefly as though she was rising high above the clouds, then running through water weighing down her every movement, before finally standing on her own two feet again and ascending to the very apex of the bridge, nearly tripping over Dante as she came to a stop. Dante was sniffing at the ground (?), his nose digging through the jewel petals. As Michaela knelt besides him, he lifted his face up as though to greet his kind-of-but-not-really-owner, before sneezing marigold petals in her face.
Shaking the petals away, Michaela pulled Dante to her and straightened his collar. "You can't run off like that, boy!" She scolded him. "We don't know where we are or...where..." Her voice trailed off into silent as she took in her surroundings and turned her gaze outwards from Dante. She went very quiet, and very very still.
Rising from the darkness of the void, looming overhead stood the towering skyline of a colossal city. From a distance, those city lights seemed to resemble the billions of stars strung across the night sky, and just as radiant. Buildings of bronze and steel, stone and wood, climbed higher and higher as though they strive to reach the heavens. It was more than dazzling, better then sparkling, more...than anything words would be capable of expressing. The bridge was breathtaking, but breathtaking did not even begin to cover the city.
"It's stunning, isn't it?" A handsome, smoky-smooth timbre voice spoke up. Victor sidled up to Michaela. The light reflecting off his dark eyes made them shine like polished obsidian. "This...is the Land Of The Dead." The others trailed behind him as Michaela settled back on her haunches, hand still loosely resting on Dante's collar. Unreality turned reality...began to sink in.
"This really isn't a dream, is it?" Michaela's voice was somber, almost dejected as much as it remained awed. "You're all...really out there, out here..." Tia Victoria peered over her shoulder as the teen got to her feet once more (she'd spent a lot of time on the ground so far, and on her feet). "You thought we weren't?" In response to that, Michaela shrugged. "Tia Victoria, I didn't believe vitamins were real until I turned 14." Victor narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, looking at Michaela as though she were a particularly difficult conundrum, one that thoroughly confused him. Victoria stared at Michaela and pushed up her glasses.
"Vitamins are real, Michaela."
"I know that. Now. Just as now I know the dead really do still exist."
The family continued walking in comfortable, companionable silence (with the exception of Michaela's odd and growing discomfort, hidden so neatly that Victor quietly thought no one but he and Victoria noticed. Something must have happened for the girl, so bright and cheerful and chatty even in the latest hour, to be so quiet, so cautious around her family, even if everyone except Victoria were little more then strangers with blood ties to her. She was hiding something, not quite meeting everyone's eyes).
Other spirits (Michaela had settled on calling them 'Spirits' for now) passed them on the bridge. Some, who looked closely at the girl with hidden bones and no facial markings, looked at her oddly. One girl in particular, a child that couldn't be any older than five or six, had pointed a small and chubby finger in her direction. "Mama, that pretty girl doesn't have her markings!" She gasped, twisting her head around to continue staring at Michaela.
Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. "Mija, it's not nice to stare- Santa Maria!" The woman's eyes widened as she made eye contact with Michaela before scanning the girl head to toe in undisguised astonishment before swiftly looking away and moving onwards. After that incident, Michaela put her hood up and kept her head down. She had enough of peoples stares. She had enough of them in Santa Cecilia, in the land of the living. She didn't need them here.
Amidst the starlit glow of the horizon, strange winged and wondrous beasts glided through the air as though they were light itself. They were bright, vibrantly colored in brilliant neon patterns. Some were patterned haphazardly, like walking warning signs for traffic accidents. Other were a bit more mellow, regal and calm (like a warm, low fire in a hearth).
"Alebrijes..." she murmured quietly. Oscar glanced at her. "They're as real as we are." The alebrijes in the air continued to dance, and as the Rivera's continued on their way, Michaela could make out more on the rapidly approaching architecture of the city. Some were scaling the buildings, or making themselves nests to rest in. Rosita made an intonation of awe. "Some alebrijes you see nesting here were once animals people owned and cared for in life. Now they wait here, for their owners, the souls they are meant to guide on their journey."
"Watch your step, Michaela. They make caquitas everywhere." Felipe mentioned. Michaela checked the bottom of her shoes to be safe, despite wondering how alebrijes left caquitas everywhere when they were already dead. Did dead human spirits need the bathroom as well? At the very least, did they wash up and brush their teeth?Clearly, they still ate judging by the way the living offered them food. Eventually, the slope of the bridge began to decline and Michaela couls see, in the near distance, a large structure reminiscent of a train station. From where she stood, she could make out that it was a positively massive complex of some sort. Wires hung from the air and led into entry points of the building, like trolley cars without the railings (or ground). Like...the area where a train would pull in the station. There was positively tons of people, bustling in and out...many of whom were either heading to the marigold bridge or departing from it.
Stepping off the bridge, Michaela began looking around herself in undisguised awe. The dead milled around her, and a voice spoke from speakers somewhere overhead. "Welcome back to the Land of the Dead. Please have all offerings ready for re-entry. We hope you enjoyed your holiday!" Papa Julio led the way to a ticket booth like area, where an overhead sign read as [RE-ENTRY].
Michaela twisted her head back to speak to Victor, who milled behind the group leisurely as though to make sure Michaela stayed with the group and didn't run off out of curiosity or fear as she did earlier in the graveyard. "Tio Victor, what is this place?"
"This is the Marigold Grand Central Station, the primary center of the Land of the Dead's mass transport system. Technically though, its a massive complex of many different departments. For instance, new deceased spirits usually awaken within the Department of Family Reunions."
A short ways away from Michaela, a young woman on her own stood quietly on the other side of the gates. A very young woman actually, barely more than a teenager. She had to be somewhere from her late teens to early twenties at the most. As the Rivera family got closer to reentry, it was a little easier to make out her physique. She seemed fairly tall (at the very least she was taller than Michaela), and very slender as well. The girl had very long dark hair that fell down her back in disorderly curls.
As Michaela watched the woman, she caught glimpse of something that intrigued her. Honestly, it was the reason she had spent so long staring at a stranger in the first place. The girl's left arm was nothing but bone. That was something commonplace here, but its coloration was not. It was a sickly yellow and looked incredibly frail. Judging from the bandage wound around her upper arm, it had already been injured. Occasionally she'd rub at it, as though trying to sooth an ache.
As her line moved forward, she seemed sad about something. Her clothes were faded, and nearing the edges of her skirt the hem was fraying slightly. Her dress was very pale blue dress, as though the years had bleached it of most its color. The only thing that seemed to be in perfect condition were her shoes, embroidered with roses. The toes were tipped in steel. There were dark bags under her eyes, and her mouth was drawn into a grim, thin line. If she smiled, or rested a bit more, Michaela could see her being even more startlingly radiant.
She stepped up to a massive scanner, like an X-Ray screen, that was hooked up to a monitor. There was a short conversation between the girl in blue and the woman stationed at the monitor. Michaela couldn't make out their conversation, but the girl shook her head as though in doubt. The woman pressed a few buttons, but not a second passed before a harsh and curt buzz filled the air, accompanied by a blazing red light at the head of the scanner. People surrounding the girl in blue looked away uncomfortably, some even grimaced at her or glared.
This was a mistake. As the agent made to offer some sort of condolence, the girl dropped into a sprint and ran pass every person around her as though the devil were at her heels. She was fast, and graceful too, dodging the grasp of uniformed men standing guard at the gate to the marigold bridge. Her hair spun out behind her like dark colored silk ribbons. She didn't make a sound, all attention focused on a single point in front of her. The horizon of the marigold bridge.
Michaela was in awe of her. That scanner, judging from what she inferred...probably was some device to decipher whether someone could visit the land of the living or not. Every single person coming away from the Marigold Central Station went through those scanners and received a green light, clearing them to go. For whatever reason, that girl had not been given the green light. She could not cross the bridge. She could not visit the living. Yet she still strove to do so. She shone radiantly doing so.
The girl reached the bridge but...it didn't hold her weight. There was brief flicker of gold beneath her feet, as though something was trying to support her progress. Then the bridge folded beneath her in a whirlpool of orange-red and gold petals. To say she sunk like a stone would be crude and inaccurate. It was closer to floating downwards like a feather, as though she were a petal herself. "Dammit!" She swore softly, so close to Michaela and her family now that she was really only a few feet away and behind them.
A guard came over and scooped her up from the ledge just beneath the bridge which she had landed on before depositing her feet again before gently guiding her away somewhere by her elbow. "No luck again, hm?" He hummed. The girl didn't respond, muttering vociferously under her breath with a scowl. "Stupid flower bridge!" Rosita turned to check on how Michaela was doing so far (as she had done for the past 15 minutes) and noticed the girl's retreating back. "Poor thing, she comes here every year in an attempt to cross the bridge. I can't imagine what i'd do if no one put up my photo. It's how we spirits cross the bride."
Michaela turned to her. "Tia Rosita, do you know that girl? And what do you mean about your photo?" Rosita pursed her lips a little, as though tasting something unpleasant like a sour lemon. "Well, I don't know her really. She's just infamous around her.. My best guess is that she was killed young and that her family is in denial about it. It happens a lot with children who go missing and die. Their families don't believe they're dead, they don't want to believe it, and a photo is never put up. Others say she was victim of a domestic dispute. There's even some more...unsavory rumors about her. No one really knows anything except that year after year her only goal seems to be crossing the bridge, even if it means breaking the law. Once she apparently rode an entire legion of alebrije up to the barrier and spent the entire night trying to pierce it."
"As for our photos, that's how our living family allows us to cross over and visit them. I'm not sure how it works, but that's the way things are. Before photographs, people used to place paintings of the deceased on ofrendas, or items that belonged to them. Anything that invoked strong memories of that person. If we don't have our photos on the ofrenda, we can't cross it. Some people believe that the will of the living, the desire for us to visit them, i what forms the marigold bridge, and our photos are that desire made manifest. To not have a photo up, to be unable to cross the bridge...it mean the living find you undesirable, unwanted, and at the worst, unloved. It's one of the worst things that can happen to us, Michaela."
Unwanted. Undesirable. Unloved. Is that how the living would portray their hatred for the dead, or is that how the dead interpret it? Those people from around the girl...the had looked away in shame or at her in scorn. Did her great-great grandmother suffer from this as well? She had certainly never been welcomed on their family ofrenda. Having no photo...was a brand that marked you for stigmatization. You became something to be scorned, to be jeered at, to be avoided. You became a freak. The beauty of the land of the dead seemed to grow duller before Michaela's eyes, and just a little bit colder. There is nowhere you can flee from persecution and isolation. Not in the land of the living, and not in the land of the dead.
Before she could raise any more questions, the line surged forward, an agent calling out "Next Arrival Please!" Rosita gave a small jump as though she had been shocked. "That's us mija."
The deceased Rivera's crowded the entrance gate with one very (or partly) alive Rivera in their midst. The friendly face at the gate greeted them buoyantly. "Welcome back, amigos! Anything to declare?" He dropped his pen, and without blinking disengaged one hand to crawl on the floor to find it. Literally removed it from his wrist. Julio chuckled nervously as Michaela was urged forwards. "Well, yes." It took the agent to realize Michaela had no facial markings or bone as the dead and his jaw dropped as she waved nervously. "Hola."
An uncomfortable minute of silence passed. Then his hand clambered its way back onto the desk (how did it do that while carrying a pen?) before reattaching to his arm.
"Welcome back to the Land of the Dead."
They were escorted up a staircase and down a hallway with grand arched doorways by a security guard, who seemed to be just as hapless as the Re-Entry Agent. As they walked, the public announcement speakers would crackle to life every now and again. Michaela fidgeted anxiously with her sleeves as they continued deeper and deeper into the station. At least Dante was alongside her for the ride.
"If I'm going down, at least you're coming with me." Michaela whispered to Dante as passerby took note of her presence, staring at her as the tended to their own business. If they were tending to their own business, why couldn't they keep their nose out of hers? Victor snorted quietly from behind her. His niece was really quite the dramatic character.
It was then she noticed Tio Oscar staring at her. "Why are you staring at me?" She asked. Oscar responded by poking at her forehead and cheeks. "Sorry, it's just pretty strange to see a living person. We, the dead, have facial marking as you can tell. Almost like tattoos really, without needing to be poked by a needle. They represent our personality in life and death, our passion. You could say it's our defining feature. To see someone without them is just...strange." He shrugged.
"But you get to see the living on Dia de los Muertos." She pointed out.
"Only once a year," Felipe cut in from her other side, "We only get to visit three days out of the year. For a lot of people, as wonderful as it is, it's not merely enough time to see how the world and their family has changed, to remember what life was like and not the afterlife. Even the dead forget things. Even the dead take things for granted. Such is the way of life and death."
The family came to the end of the walkway, large doors emblazoned with [DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY REUNIONS] on it. As they passed through them, Michaela tried to repress a sense of foreboding.
Somewhere in this building, in this area...
Papa Imelio was waiting.
The Security Guard brought them to a receptionist's desk just pass the doors. "This is where I leave you." He said to them, and then turning to the lady at the desk, "Rodriquez, this family has an...interesting case. A relative of their's should be here due to a mishap with their ofrenda preparation." With that he quickly strode away. Michaela suspected him of trying not to outright flee.
Rodriquez turned to them, took a glance at their clothing and let out an aggrieved sigh. "Are you the Rivera Family? The Patriarch being Imelio Rivera?" She sounded tired. Papa Julio at the front answered in the affirmative. The woman turned to an aged computer on her desk and began typing rapidly before pulling some information up on the screen and skimming through it. "Rivera...ah, here it is. Senor Rivera should be in back, pertaining to some questions regarding your family ofrenda. Head straight past my desk and to the right corner of the back of the room."
Papa Julio thanked her before everyone began quickly moving away as a fervid pace. Almost frantic.
Eventually they reached the back of the room, where a slender man was conversing with another seated behind a desk, his voice clearly and distinctively toned with displeasure. "Senor, just to make sure, you have not suffered any spells of dizziness or migraines, a loss of strength, any sign of increased fragility to-" The man in dark clothing might have growled if he was less composed. As it was, he was very close to snapping at the agent. He eyed the agent coldly and spoke in such a frigid voice, he could have frozen over hell itself.
"I assure with with utmost certainty that I am in the best of health, senor. You should also be aware that it is none of your business. Your questions should pertain only as to possible and plausible reasons as to why I may not cross, just as mine pertain to the maintenance of your scanners and the possibility of a faulty reading relating to the same situation. Unless you are absolutely certain this...devil box of yours is without fault." His glare shifted to the computer.
He looked as though he wanted nothing more to smash it, but decided being fined for damaging someone else's property wasn't worth it. Michaela wondered who this rather frightening figure was. Until Papa Julio cautiously stepped forwards before speaking tentatively. "Papa Imelio?"
Oh. Fuck.
Imelio turned on his heel sharply, eyes softening minutely as his gaze landed on his family even as his mouth drew into a thin line. The tension drained from him slightly and his voiced warmed up considerably. "Mi familia, were you able to get to the ofrenda? What's the situation at the hacienda, with my photo?" He strode towards Julio, who chuckled nervously and looked askance, taking off his hat. "Well, we never made it to the ofrenda..."
"What?" His brows furrowed in both confusion and concern. Had something happened to the ofrenda? Had it or the hacienda been damaged somehow? Was there an emergency among the living family which had halted preparations for Dia de los Muertos? Such a thing wasn't unheard of, and with Coco being so frail in her old age now it was entirely possible that any day his daughter could- Julio shaking his head and beginning to speak again roused the patriarch from his thoughts.
"We ran into...that is to say, we..."
Michaela blanched as Julio steered her right into Imelio's line of vision.
Oh fuck.
Michaela felt timid, like a meek rabbit cowering before a snarling wolf ready for it's next meal. The man turned towards her and his dark eyes narrowed. He was tall, taller than Papa Julio but not quite as tall as her (elder) twin tíos. He starkly reminded her of Victor actually. The realization and awe she felt ended up as a car-sized stone of dread that dropped into the pit of her stomach. Her heart began trying to climb up into her throat.
Papa Imelio, the man who had held the Rivera Family together, who her grandmother practically worshiped as a god, was standing right before her. The man responsible for the century-long ban on music. He was taller than the teenager had expected, at least a foot taller than her. He was dressed nicely. A purple vest over a black shirt, casual slack pants and pristine Rivera brand boots on his feet. He looked like he was prepared to go on a casual date or something. If Michaela were to say if anything were out of place, it would be the Rivera Workshop apron he wore that was slightly painted grey with dust. It fit with his outfit, but in a way that would seem odd if anyone else tried it.
He looked...young. From what she had heard, his voice had a slight rasp brought about by age, but it was deep and sent vibrations down the spine of anyone who heard it. Instead of the warm flesh and soft tanned skin his face had, his hands were thin and bony in quite the literal sense. They were made of white bone without tissue or tendon or flesh, pristine and shining white in color unlike the yellowed bone leg of the girl she had seen falling through the marigold bride earlier. Absentmindedly, she wondered why the dead looked only like partial skeletons.
Everyone she had passed by looked almost like the living, if it weren't for the odd leg or hand or arm made of bone. Some people looked far worse off though. Taking that girl from earlier as an example, her left arm and right leg both were nothing but bone! They were yellowed too, like old crooked teeth that hadn't seen a toothbrush or toothpaste in too many years. Was it because people were remembered as they were when alive even though they dead are portrayed as skeletons in figurines and murals? That was the only thing Michaela could think of as to explain why a man who died at 75 (76?) didn't look a day older than his early 20's except for a streak of gray hairs amidst the black.
His eyes widened in evident shock at the presence of his very-much-alive-Great-Great-Granddaughter. "Michaela? How on earth-?" The girl in question began giggling, almost hysterical in her panic. She almost wanted to smack herself at how annoyingly shrill she sounded. "Papa Imelio..." she acknowledged apprehensively. Imelio just stared at her with a somewhat stoic deadpan expression (the equivalent of the average person's dumbfounded shock). He turned back to the others, eyes narrowing in suspicious. "What happened?" He asked slowly.
As the family slowly turned to Michaela, hoping she'd explained the events leading up now as well, a door opened up and a clerk poked his head out of it. After glancing around at Michaela's family and taking note of the girl herself, he spoke.
"You the Rivera family?"
The clerk got straight to the point. "You've been cursed." There was no beating around the bush, no mincing of words or cushions to soften the blow. Just the cold, harsh truth. As a collective whole, Michaela could feel her family recoil as though repulsed. As for the girl herself on the other hand...
"What? How?" Never mind the fact that, remembering the mausoleum, she had a pretty educated guess. The clerk's next statement confirmed it. Glancing at her over his glasses with one single, judgmental eyebrows raised, the clerk stared at her. "Dia de los Muertos is a festival to celebrate the memory of your deceased loved ones, and to GIVE to the the dead. Instead, you did the exact opposite. You STOLE something from the dead, and it was something so important to them in life that its viewed as integral to them even in death. You didn't just steal something. You took something important."
Michaela balled her hands into fists and ignored the memory of wooden shards scattered on the ground. "I wasn't stealing the guitar! I just wanted to borrow-" A shadow at her side drew her attention to the man towering over her with a cold expression on his face. "A guitar...?"
"Besides, it belonged to my great-great grandmother's brother! I asked if I could borrow it-" Imelio cut her off again. "We do not speak of that...woman. She is dead to this family, and no role model for you to follow!" Michaela glowered right back at him, blood boiling in frustration. "You're all dead." Once again, no one ever listens, she thought bitterly.
"I'm sorry, but whose alebrije is this?" The clerk sneezed as Dante attempted to clamber up on his desk, trying to reach a plate of food. Michaela lunged for his collar. No need for a repeat of earlier. As she firmly tugged Dante back, she snorted. "Dante isn't an alebrije. Dante is Dante." There was no other way to describe him. Dante was Dante. A dumb dog he may be, but he was also one of her greatest friends. Or only friend now...
Rosita cooed at him. "While he certainly doesn't look like alebrije, he does seem to be a very big sweetheart." As Rosita managed to both wrangle Dante away and began to give him scratches and praise, Michaela stared at her like she was a magic wielding alien with two heads. Dante didn't behave that way even for her. As she did so, a large alebrije that seemed to be a mix between a dragon and fox or coyote passed by the window with a cry like a phoenix among a crowd of others in almost deafening cacophony.
"Dante, huh? Well, no matter how you look at it, he looks like a plain old dog..." (Michaela thought this was Oscar.)
"Or a sausage sent to the barbershop instead of the factory." (Felipe?)
The clerk blew his nose. "Whatever he is, I am terribly allergic."
Imelio watched quietly with a deepening frown. Michaela had stolen from the dead? Theft was an act absolutely out of character for her, as she'd always been a very sweet and well behaved girl (if not a little mischievous). It didn't make sense. Furthermore for it to be a guitar? She knew very well the rules he had set in place for the family. Those rules had been put in place for a reason. To protect the family. Even then... "How do you undo this curse? Furthermore, none of this explains why I couldn't cross over." This was directed towards the clerk.
He didn't expect Michaela to shift sheepishly, recalling something Rosita had said earlier.
"As for our photos, that's how our living family allows us to cross over and visit them. I'm not sure how it works, but that's the way things are..."
"Umm, I think I might know why you can't cross over..." She carefully pulled the photograph out of her pocket and unfolded it. Imelio gives her such a harsh glare than she takes a step back. She sees where abuelita got it from. "You removed my photo from the ofrenda?!" Michaela squeaked and backed even further away from Imelio who in turn stepped closer. "it was an accident! Dante was trying to climb the ofrenda to get to the food, and then it starting shaking, and the photograph started shaking, and then your photo ended up falling and-" She began rambling in panic as Papa Imelio took a very deep breath before turning to the clerk.
"How do we send her back?"
The clerk began flipping through a book on his desk. Peeking at the curses, Michaela could just barely make out the title. [Maldiciones, correcciones y consecuencias]. How many got cursed like her, and how?! "Lets see...curses of theft, curses of theft..." After taking a minute to flip through the pages, he seemed to find what he was looking for and put the book down. "While it was theft of another person's belonging, it was theft of a family member's belonging and is therefore referred to as a family curse. Instead of having to get the blessing of the person you stole from, all you need to do is get a blessing to return home from one of your family members in general."
"That's it?" Michaela asked. For having to take a trip to the land of the dead, this seemed pretty simple to solve. The clerk corrected her. "If you get your family's blessing, everything should go back to normal and send you home. However, you have to receive one before sunrise, otherwise the consequence will be-"
"Hijita! Your hand!" Julio exclaimed suddenly. Michaela looked down, startled. "...!" She couldn't breathe for a moment.
Stretching across the back of her hand was an odd, glimmering gold and silver pattern in shape of her veins. It pulsed very faintly with an otherworldly glow that invoked a sense of dizziness the longer you stared at it. The pattern extended out from her veins almost like a grid, or magic circles like in those TV shows Rosa used to watch with Michaela a few years ago. It reached to her fingertips, before it seemed to fade...but that wasn't quite right.
Not only had the glowing pattern faded, but her skin and flesh and muscle too, leaving only the skeletal tip of her fingers. She could see her bones.
Holy shit.
Her vision began to waver like an out of focus microscope lens, darkening at the edges as if all the light in he world was being obscured by black mist...Papa Julio caught her before she hit the ground and lost consciousness entirely from shock. Gently slapping her on the cheek, he spoke trying to help her refocus. "It's okay, Michaela. Can't have you fainting on us now."
Michaela managed to stand up again, trying to ignore the fact that her knees shook like they were made of wet cardboard folding in on its on weight. After a very thorough and definite silence, Papa Imelio was the first out of everyone to speak. "How do we give Michaela a blessing? His eyes had darkened in concern, his skin just a bit paler, though it went unnoticed by anyone. The clerk gave a jump in his desk chair, as if shocked by the tail end of a live wire.
Without speaking, he got up and began searching for something. First he check the surface of his desk, moving and rearranging the various stacks of books and paperwork, rifling through the desk drawers, and even overturning a few empty flower vases, before walking around the room and scanning the floor. Evidently no one had a clue what he was looking for, not even Imelio, judging by their expression. What the hell was he doing?
Eventually he went straight up to where Tia Rosita was. Finally, Michaela was able to pick up what he had been muttering under his breath the whole time. "Cempasuchil, cempasuchil. Aha!" He was at the very hem of Rosita's skirt and looked up for a moment. "Perdone, senora." Rosita tittered like a bird, saying something along the lines of "oh, its fine, don't worry," while he plucked a single petal from her skirt before handing it to Papa Imelio.
Imelio took it from him as the clerk began to explain what to do. "First, you must say the name of the blessing's recipient. Inform them that you have offered them your blessing to return to the land of the living, therefore relieving them of the curse. You can also set conditions to your blessing, as to prevent the curse from reoccuring." Imelio looked at the petal, to Michaela, before returning to the petal again. A condition...to ensure the recipient's safety...
"Michaela."
The girl seemed to brighten just a little as Imelio called her to attention, straightening her back as she gave him her full attention.
"I give you my blessing to return home..." The petal grasped between his fingers warmed, glowing gold from the inside out.
Michaela stepped forward imperceptibly, eagerly.
"To return my photo to the ofrenda..." He continued. He sounded like he was chiding her.
Something in Michaela's stomach wavered, even as she nodded. Was it fear? No, it was concern of something. Papa Imelio looked as though he were considering something, something the clerk had informed him of, of something he had already added to the blessing. A condition.
"And to never play music again."
Imelio's chest burned as something in Michaela's expression brutally shattered. This condition was for her own safety. Even if it made her hate him, it was all in place to protect her. Music was what had gotten her cursed. He would not ever allow another person to be stolen away, not lose another person to it as he had lost her, if that wench had ever truly given herself to him in the first place. He would not have it happen again. No matter the cost.
Michaela pivoted on her heel to face the Clerk, with a vicious and wounded expression on her face. "He can't do that." It was both a statement and a demand. Two emotions rolled into one to form a bitter tasting sound on her tongue. Anger. Despair. It turned to a harsh denial, a sour treat.
The clerk had the audacity to shrug at her, as though he wasn't as much at fault as Imelio, having informed the patriarch of a blessing's conditions in the first place. She could see where abuelita had learned to be a bitter hard-ass. "Technically, he can add any condition he wants. The purpose of a condition is to prevent you from getting cursed again." Michaela glared at him, if only to alleviate the painful helplessness his words had dredged to the forefront of her mind from where she had buried it in all the chaos of getting cursed in the first place.
Desperation fueled her words. "You can't do that!" She may as well have been spewing venom as she faced Imelio. "That's not fair! Why won't you let me live my life after yours ended some forty years ago?!" The rest of the dead present recoiled. To speak of someone's death was rude, family or not. To do so as callously as Michaela had was even worse, regardless of how...upset she was. The corner of Imelio's lips twitched downwards and his eyes narrowed.
"Watch your tone. As the clerk stated, I can." His voice was sharp and cold, unyielding as a steel blade. If Michaela had been the young puppy who barked at him, he was the wolf who growled back.
They stared the other down, each firm in their resolve. Michaela's hands balled into fists at her side as she grit her teeth, trying to bite back the instinct to scream. She tried to ignore the sensation of bone scratching skin. In that moment, she thought she knew how Papa Imelio had felt about his wife, if only in a small way. To love them and hate them in the same moment, or to love the person and hate their actions. To hate a person based off their actions. Finally she looked away, glaring harshly at nothing but her feet. "Fine."
She was lying through her teeth.
Imelio exhaled. It was neither soft or harsh. "Good." He extended his hand to Michaela, the petal held firmly in front of her. Her eyes were nothing short of resentful. There was a minute of silence. Then two. Then four. She just kept glaring at the ground or the petal, refusing to look at anyone and ignored their attempts to draw her attention. For a time, she seemed to be sculpted from stone. Only Imelio kept silent, waiting.
It happened in less then a second.
Michaela grabbing the petal.
Michaela disappearing in a whirlwind of petals left scattered across the floor.
It was only then the deceased could breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, everything could return to normal.
Michaela woke up with her back pressed against the cold floor and the scent of marigold petals lingering in her nose. She sat up slowly, before bring her hands up to her face. There was no glowing pattern, no bone showing. Only smooth skin with the exception of calloused fingers from...playing the guitar without a pick. Standing up, it took a moment to figure out where she was.
Somehow, she had showed up right back in the mausoleum. Maybe because this was where she had been cursed?
Heading to one of the windows, she could not see any spirits. No one with bare bones or wearing clothes of bygone eras. No glowing bridge stretching into the distance. Had it all been just a dream? Had she fallen, hurt herself somehow and lost consciousness, only to dream of her long dead family and the imaginary realm they lived in after life? Dream or not, it had been terrifying.
She wanted to go home.
As she turned to leave, talent show be damned, Mariana be damned, Antonio be damned...something glinted out the corner of her eye. De la Cruz's guitar.
It shone from where it was hung on the wall, of pearl inlay and white polished paint. Her heart bled thinking of her replica. Months of sweat, tears, splinters and callouses, of practicing in forgotten corners of the plaza...all destroyed in seconds and left scattered alone and abandoned on the ground. It had been her own family that did that, the same family surely waiting at home for her to return.
She wanted to see them and wanted to flee from them in equal measure. She wanted to prove that she could be that perfect daughter and cousin and grandchild. She wanted for them to see music as she did. She wanted them to see her.
Playing in the plaza, where they would definitely find her would be a perfect example. Maybe she'd even be able to talk to Antonio, at least try to ask him what was wrong...maybe even talk to Mariana. She almost remembered a time when they had played with dolls and coloring books together, instead of it being the one-sided hell of Mariana and her other friends chasing Michaela throughout the Chavez house.
She was just as likely to get arrested for breaking into someone's grave, stealing their guitar, and using that instead of her own instrument. Not like she had any other option except to just give up though.
Michaela was confused. She was hurt. What was she supposed to do? What was it that she wanted to do?
...If, if there was even the slightest chance someone would listen...would the repercussions be worth it? If there was a chance of her family falling in love with music, of reconciling with Antonio regardless of the fact that she still didn't know what happened...would it be worth it?
Michaela didn't realize she had reached for the guitar again until she found herself consumed by cempasuchil petals.
It felt almost like swimming through molasses while being wrapped up in a bundle of silk and sinking. As though time and space had inverted itself. All in all, a weird as fuck experience.
The Rivera family had all but left the room when a suspicious sound had them freezing in their tracks, including the clerk who had been in the process of escorting them back to the main desk.
Turning around, Imelio confronted the sight of Michaela staring at her hands with the most dead-eyed expression he had ever seen on anyone that young. There was a moment where she looked up, then back to her hands, and repeated the motion several times. Her lips moved silently as though she was trying to speak and simply could not. Finally, she settled for a lucrative, single word sentence which summed up Imelio's mood perfectly.
"Goddammit."
Imelio was the first to stride over to Michaela, the rest stuck in their state of shock. He pinched his nose in annoyance. "Two seconds and you've already gone back on your word?!" Michaela stared at him and began slowly stepping back until she found herself backing into the clerk's desk. "I was kind of hoping it was just a dream and I'd somehow managed to knock myself via falling on my face."
Proceeding to completely ignore Imelio, knowing all they'd get was a repeat performance throughout the entirety of Dia de los Muertos, she looked around the room and picked up a petal from among a new abundance of cempasuchil flowers (whole or otherwise) in the room. She marched over to Papa Julio. "Papa Julio, I ask for your blessing." Julio parted his lips as if to speak, read Michaela's expression, closed his mouth and opted for just shaking his head silently in response. Her frown deepened.
She looked around at the others. One by one, they denied her with a shake of their head and pity in their expression. It wasn't their pity she wanted. Imelio pulled the petal from her grasp and crossed his arms, looking for all the world to be a father in a state of leisure, waiting for his children to end their temper tantrum. "Mija, you will go home my way, my conditions. This will take as long as it needs to take for you to realize this."
"You really hate music that much, all because of a dead woman you won't even talk about?" Michaela stared at him.
"I will not let you go down the same path she did." He spoke, wary of Michaela's completely blank expression. Something seemed to shift in her eyes, and she took out the ofrenda photo once more, peering down at the faceless woman in black and white who cradled Mama Coco so tenderly. Something didn't seem right, and it certainly didn't line up with that raunchy, yearning letter in a woman's hand deliberately sent to Imelio which she also had hidden in her pocket. The path she took...how did Imelio know what happened when she never returned home?
"I pity you, Papa Imelio."
Michaela did not look up. She did not see how Imelio recoiled at her words, how Oscar and Felipe's jaws had dropped in alarm. She did not see the consternation of Julio and Rosita, or of Victor and Victoria, in relation to Michaela's words. Not once, not once since the immediate fallout of that woman's absence, had anyone dared to pity Imelio. He hadn't needed their pity, nor had he wanted it. Above all else, Imelio Rivera despised pity.
Looking closely at Michaela, he noticed something that had gone unseen before. She had always been well behaved, never this blunt, never this audacious...something had happened. Something must have happened. Lines of pale, dried silver rested on her cheeks. They stretched from her chin, up across the curve of her cheek, right to up against her eyelids. Tear tracks...? Why?
It was painfully reminiscent of those early years. His chest ached with emotion he thought he had discarded years ago.
Michaela straightened her back and put away the photo. The same path as her great-great grandmother...the same path as her Tio Ernesto. They were also her family. All she needed to do was find them. If she couldn't get a blessing from the shoemaking side of her family, she'd search for the ones who had bred music into her blood instead.
"I'm going to wash my face. Don't follow me."
She left the room with a harsh glare, heels clicking against the ground and leaving the others frozen in her wake. The door swung shut heavily behind her.
Finally, the Clerk spoke up. "Did anyone have a chance to tell her there are no public restrooms in the land of the dead?"
Her heart was beating like a drum in her chest, frantic and at maximum volume. Dante panted softly besides her as she peered out from beneath the staircase. It had been fairly simple to reach the ground floor, but as she looked up, she doubted it would remain so as the night went on. Back on the second floor, Michaela could clearly see her deceased relatives in a hurry to find her.
As Tio Oscar began speaking to one of the patrolwoman, Michaela pulled up her hood, remaining beneath the upper floor so that she would not immediately be seen. She could hear the crackle of the walkie-talkie. "We have a family looking for a Living Girl, do you hear me? A living girl..." She pulled the drawstrings a little tighter upon hearing that.
Scanning the ground floor, it took a moment for her to register anything except the horde of people passing through. Finally, she spotted the exit, one of those fancy revolving glass doors you see on TV, like in fancy hotels. All the while, Michaela could hear more and more guards talking about a 'living girl'. Shadows lingered in some corners, and her hyperactive anxiety and paranoia of getting caught made her think they were watching her. "Vamonos, Dante. We can't stay here." She whispered, tugging gently at his collar. After a short second of scratching an itch, Dante was ready and willing to go.
'To be a musician, I must get a musician's blessing. If I want to go home, I must receive the blessing of the persona I took from. To hit birds with one stone, why don't I go to the one person who meets both requirements? After all, he's family too. Tio Ernesto. And he probably knows where my great-great grandmother is, or has some clue to what happened after she left if, as according to her letter, they were traveling together.' She thought quietly.
Just as the two of them got within range of the doors, calloused hands grabbed Michaela by the waist. One rough palm landed heavily over her mouth, muffling any sound she could make. Before she could even attempt to struggle, he moved his other hand to the small of her back, where something cold, even through her clothes, dug into her spine. Her blood ran cold. Other men, dressed in patrol uniform, grabbed Dante and muzzled him, before snapping a leash onto his collar and forcing him to trail after the man carrying Michaela.
Silently, they dragged the duo away from the main exit, and down a narrow corridor that led to a smaller exit off in an alleyway.
"You thought you got away this time, huh?!"
Michaela landed sprawled on her hands and knees across the cobblestone, a thick boot pressing her against the ground and knocking all air from her lungs. The man might as well have been putting his full weight on her, she couldn't breathe. He must have mistaken her for someone else. As a living child, she sure as hell didn't know anyone in the land of the dead! She held her tongue, not knowing what to say or do. Would they let her go if she said they were mistaken? Evidently, the man disagreed with her silence.
He removed his boot from her back, watching as she pushed herself up onto her knees. Out of nowhere, his leg stretched out and landed straight into her abdomen. She choked for breath, sent back by the force of his blow into some trashcans. They rang loudly in her ears. "Answer me, you goddamn whore! The boss said no broken bones...but he never said anything about bruises."
Dante tried to howl from where he had been muzzled and tied to a lamp post. He began circling the post, clawing at the leash to try and get loose. Michaela looked to him with eyes bleary from the pain. He had been trying to get to her for a while now, but running or walking hadn't worked. If he tried to move any farther than the leash allowed, it would choke him. The first time Dante had tried to run to her, the first time she had heard that awful gagging cry, she wished that she was dreaming and back at home in bed, that soon her Mama would come and wake her up...then the day would just be filled with the agonizing lack of music.
There had to be something wrong with her, favoring music over her own life.
"I- I don't know- what your talking about..." She wheezed. "You've mistaken me...for someone...else..."
There was a sudden clicking noise, and she looked up slowly to see something silver directed at her forehead as the man's cronies dragged her by her arms to her feet. If being grabbed had caused her heart to stop and blood freeze, then this weapon caused turned her heart to stone and blood into ice. A gun. Without a doubt, it was definitely a gun. "I'll ask you one time. Did you think you could get away forever, Helene?"
Michaela stared at him. And continued to stare. "Helene is not my name. It's Michaela."
(Oh, she was dead. Or soon to be dead. Here she was in the land of the dead, about to be dead at 16 years old after getting mistaken for some lady wrapped up in some shady business, and oh god, Papa Imelio was going to be pissed. It's not like they didn't have many photos of him (they did), but the ofrenda photo was one of the only photos of Mama Coco's earliest childhood and literally the only picture of the family matriarch and and she still had it on her which was equally bad...if she died here in the land of the dead, what would happen to her physically body. Would it just poof back to the mausoleum while her spirit stayed here with the photo, or would she just become some sort of freak of nature missing kid from that one family in that tiny town in Oaxaca that never played music? Oh, and she just handed out her name to that shady lady's shady would-be captors, and oh god, if she died would she get wrapped up in this shadyness too?)
The man pursed his lips, before finally reaching over Michaela's head and pulling back her hood (In the midst of her panic-induced internal rambling, Michaela wondered why they hadn't just removed it earlier. Did they get off on intimidating pretty young ladies, regardless of whether they were this 'Helene' lady or not? Either way, she couldn't care less since she was absolutely about to die).
He yanked her head up by her hair, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes darkened with fury, before he landed a blow even more vicious than before on her stomach, made worse by the fact that his friends held her up. She was completely exposed and unable to shield herself. "It's not her." He said softly, voice simmering with restrained anger.
The other two men groaned. That seemed to be all they were good for. Groaning, grunting, and holding the arms of the ring-leader's victims behind their backs. Before they continued their whimpering, the man returned to examining Michaela. His gaze felt like nails scratching against chalk, a blade against her skin. He put the gun under her chin. "You're still quite pretty for being so young..." Bile rose in her throat as his hand came up and pinched her cheek. It was disturbing, not because he did so harshly...but because he was now being eerily gentle. It was almost like Abuelita had pinched her cheek, but crueler, colder...more perverse.
He smirked coldly. "A living girl is quite the commodity in the Land of the Dead. You'd make a lovely, exotic pet once dead...If you're lucky and I'm in a good mood, I'll even consider letting you warm my bed instead of the floor. Once I find that exquisite tramp for the client, I think I'll keep you as payment. Yes, a fine retribution for my troubles. The true question is how I'll string you up first...will I see you dancing from a noose or bleeding out beneath me like a stuck pig?"
Terror. Unbridled terror filled Michaela. This man wasn't some average sicko on the street, some average gang member. He was a paid sadist, a fucking psychopath who spoke about woman as though they were cattle. Michaela remembered learning about this in class, hearing about an incident involving a classmate...human trafficking.
People would kidnap others, men and women and children, and sell them to others in exchange for money. Sometimes it was for sex, to have a warm body pliant and malleable for your own use. Sometimes it was pure sadism, to see people suffer, to take away their lives in an instant. Her stomach began to cramp.
No. His hands began to glide down her cheek, down her throat. The gun was gone. Had he discarded it, thinking she would just lie down with spread legs for him, or was it hidden in his pocket? Either way, it wouldn't be within her reach.
Not a chance in hell. One hand began pulling at her hoodie zipper. The other was sliding under it, beneath her shirt to touch skin. What could she do to get out of this situation? It was her own fault she had landed in it, yes, but it's not like she had anything waiting for her except harsh rebukes at home with her family.
Michaela's limbs wouldn't move. It was like she had been submerged in subzero water in nothing but a nightgown. She couldn't move, could barely think past her denials. In her right pocket, she carried the photo of Papa Imelio, Mama Coco, and the unknown Rivera matriarch. If she died, she had no guarantee of getting that photo back to the land of the living. Mama Coco, who still waited for her mother, would be devastated to lose the last piece of evidence left that proved the woman had ever existed. Furthermore, it was her sole key to finding her great-great grandmother or drawing the attention of Tio Ernesto. Her sole key to a life of music. Her great-great grandmother's letter was with it.
In her left pocket...was a small plastic pink capsule. Her mother had gotten it for her after the incident...
Cold air brushed over Michaela's bare skin. The man's fingers teased the edges of her bra. His fingers had begun to tug at the elastic when she pulled her leg back and launched it as hard as she could right between his legs. He stepped back and dodged, briefly wearing a cocky grin, only to suffer an elbow right into the stomach as she pivoted on her heel. That's payback, you son-of-a-bitch.
She was turning into him on her right, her left hand cocked back into fist ready to swing which he caught at her wrist. "You really think struggling will-" With her free right hand seconds away from being pinned between her side and his torso, she managed to reach into her left pocket and grasp the canister, pointing the nozzle towards his face. There was only a split second between her next action, where awareness registered on his face.
Michaela pressed the tab of the pepper spray and directed it straight into the bastard's eyes. He drew back, cursing and spitting like a feral tomcat in heat. When he looked at her again, he was hunched over and clawing at his face in clear agony. He looked between his fingers and glowered at her with red, watery eyes. "You little bitch! I'll wring your goddamn neck!" He lunged towards her.
The men from before were back. They'd been hiding, watching. Waiting for her to struggle. One was carrying handcuffs, pulling her hands behind her back to lock them up. The other threw the rope over her head, like an incomplete jump rope swing, only it was around her neck. He handed the ends to the man in front, now crazed with bloodlust. Two men were behind her, one restraining her arms, the other forcing her to stand by pulling her hair so tightly in his fist that he was pulling out strands of it.
The man leaned forwards, tightening the rope viciously and relishing as she began to choke. Guttural noises left her throat, odd rasps that sounded like the shutter of a camera going off rapidly. She could feel saliva pooling in her mouth, unable to go anywhere except passed her lips, dripping down her chin as though she were an infant. "Remember the name Marco, little princess. You have fire, and I'll enjoy dousing it as I break you into my perfect little toy."
The only thing she could see past the overwhelming darkness clouding her vision was his smile. Dark, ravenous, full of teeth that seemed to be as sharp as needles at that moment.
Marco relished in this. The despair in those lovely, dark brown eyes of hers seemed to drown out any thoughts of futile resistance. Her body swayed on its feet, hands trying to pull the rope away from her throat as she gagged. He wasn't planning to kill her just yet. It been so long since he'd seen a living person after all...he wanted to toy with her, he wanted to break her...to see her bloodied and bruised beneath him, no longer screaming for mercy but for more. Just the thought made his body throb with excitement. Oh yes, he'd break her and mold her into the perfect whore for him. He liked his ladies a little older, but her body wasn't bad at all...Neither was her fire.
Her eyes grew dimmer, her struggles faint as she began to lose consciousness. Michaela whimpered, unable to make a sound anymore as her eyes began to roll back into her head. A dull sound, like something hitting the ground at a rapid pace, barely reached her ears, accompanied by a fearsome bark and a sound like two small pops.
A second later, she was gasping for breath on the ground, her throat sore and bruised but free. From where she was laying, she could see a gray, hairless blur biting at Marco before a third pop sounded. Something shone in the air, before connecting with the man's forehead and sunk down to the ground, eyes shut and body still. Dante rushed over to her, frantic and lapping at her face with his tongue.
Someone knelt beside her, sitting her up and making quick work of the handcuffs that restrained her. She almost lashed out at whoever grabbed her as the pulled her to her feet. The handcuffs were scattered on the ground, the gun held in their right hand with a box of something that looked like rubber bullets tucked up their sleeve. As Michaela took in heavy, rasping breaths, she came eye to eye with the most spectacular face.
The woman she had seen failing to cross the marigold bridge.
The woman in question looked Michaela over as she holstered the gun at her hip, as though cataloging her injuries. Up close, her eyes shown like fossilized amber doused in glossy molasses brown. She could barely be a few years older than Michaela, yet her expression was one of ancient solitude. Almost as though she could be centuries old.
"Follow me, and quickly. With such hard skulls, it's a miracle I managed to knock them out. It's not safe here, and I need a closer look at those injuries. Not many of the dead bleed red, so I'm assuming you're the living child that damn Corrections Officer was called out to help search for. Come or don't, it's your choice."
She held out a hand, which despite the similar callouses, seemed much gentler than that of those traffickers and...Marco. She shuddered.
The woman led Michaela and Dante back into the Marigold Station, down a corridor and through a door labeled DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. She glanced briefly through windows of darkened or empty offices, before finding one that seemed to hold...whatever it was she was looking for. The oil lamp on the desk had been turned down low, which surprised Michaela. Most of the lighting so far had been electric. A weird thing to note, but she'd rather focus on anything except what just happened.
The woman sat Michaela down and began rifling through the desk drawers, eventually pulling out a plain white box. It was only after she opened it and removed simple rubbing alcohol, gauze wrapping, and small cotton balls that Michaela registered it as a first aid kit. It was also at that point she recognized how badly her knees and hands were stinging. Looking at them, they had been scraped raw and blood had begun to soak through her skirt. Her nails were bloody too, and her throat stung.
The woman took a cold compress from the kit first, instructing Michaela first to squeeze it and then put it around her throat to treat the bruising. She'd help the teen clean the small scratches later.
The woman took care of her hands first, very gently soaking up the blood with a very soft handkerchief drawn out from some unseen pocket, before using some tweezers to carry a cotton swab, dampen it with rubbing alcohol, and begin to clean her palms. As she worked, she murmured very softly, "You're very lucky you know. Not all young ladies carry pepper spray, or have someone nearby who hears them and comes over to help. Thankfully, you don't have any dirt or small rocks in your hands. Those are a hassle to remove."
Very tenderly, she wrapped up Michaela's hands. Clearly, from the well practiced motion and the gauze wound up her own arms, she had to do something like treat minor injuries very often.
When the woman knelt down, Michaela pressed her knees together tightly and pretended it didn't hurt when the fabric brushed across the open wounds. Regardless of whether she wanted to think of what had almost happened because of her reckless or not, she couldn't get it out of her head. She had nearly been killed, or at the very least, strangled into unconsciousness. An unknown stranger, barely fifteen minutes after she had been so determined to find other family to give their blessing and allow to play music, had attempted to kidnap and rape her.
It's not something you can just...move on from. It's not.
The woman exhaled slowly before looking up at Michaela with a strong resolve. "I know you feel uncomfortable, frightened right now. I know you most likely want to deny anything has happened. I've seen it before in others, displayed in different way as well. However, I need to treat your injuries because I sincerely doubt that you can do so yourself in your...current state of mind. At least to prevent infection from setting in. While the dead can not die again, we do get sick. We feel fatigue, we feel pain. Wounds can get infected, because its part of the memories which sustain us, and in part, the land of the dead. You can tell me to stop, and I will wait as long as it takes for me to be able to continue. I will not stand for you refusing treatment."
Her eyes burned with immense intensity. It was like...the Parent Glare. Perfected by parents everywhere, given to a child when you need to let them know that They Fucked Up or that You Are Serious And Mean Business. Michaela looked away and nodded, feeling a strange mix of revulsion and amusement. Revulsion at what had occurred, and amusement at her own thoughts. Hysterical coping mechanism and all that.
Very carefully, she pulled up her skirt. The blood had run down from her knees and had been smeared up and down her legs by the fabric. The woman pursed her lips as she repeated the process of cleaning the wound, checking to ensure nothing had been embedded in it, and wrapping it up in cotton pads and gauze wrapping. After she finished, Dante came over and laid his head in her lap, looking up at her with big, mournful eyes.
"I'm alright, buddy. You did a very good job, Dante." She cooed, scratching behind his ears as she praised him.
The woman stood, straightening and gazing down at Michaela. "You shouldn't be talking right now. After what happened, it's a wonder you can speak at all. What's a living child doing in the land of the dead?" The last part was directed more to herself than Michaela.
Before Michaela could answer, she turned to face the door and held a finger to her lips. Distantly, the sound of footsteps was coming down the hall. The woman ushered Michaela to a very small space beneath the desk and told her to hide.
After a few minutes, Michaela heard a man enter the office. He paused, evidently in surprise of some sort, before moving behind his desk. "You're still here? Well, I'll be damned. Usually you get the hell out of dodge as soon as possible, even at risk of receiving further charges." The woman scoffed. "Don't bother with the small talk, amigo. You and I both know your shift is ending and you want to get across the bridge as soon as possible to visit your living family." She spoke bitterly, reluctantly.
The officer shook his head. "Let's see...this year's been rather tame. So far you've only disturbed the peace ("By showing up."), and fled from an officer ("He was in the way!"). I'm surprised you haven't tried falsifying a unibrow and dressing in disguise again."
"You're only jealous my Frida Kahlo disguise fooled you, however, falsifying unibrows was ages ago. The 1960's, I believe?" Her voice was cold.
"Ah yes, you rarely disguise yourself now. I heard the charges of Identity Theft were tiresome for the Department of Records to keep track of. You were fairly bothersome to them." His tone of voice was smug, rude. Michaela decided she didn't like this man, so mean to the woman who helped her. Especially with the emphasis he had placed on 'bothersome'.
"I'm bothersome? How rude of you to say that. Fortunately, I don't care. I'm surprised though, I thought you, like many other rabid fans of that performing monkey, would be attending the Sunrise Spectacular and sacrificing family time just for a seat."
"You're just jealous, 'Ms Scorned Lover of De la Cruz'."
Ernesto de la Cruz?
The woman visibly recoiled. "Never call me that." Her voice had gone deadly quiet.
The officer chuckled cockily, satisfied at having 'put her in her place'. "Yes, well, my shift's over. I should keep you detained all night, but...I have family to visit." He stood and strode over to the door. "See yourself out." The door shut behind him with a click, and the woman growled angrily under her breath.
She stood and moved away from the desk, allowing Michaela out. She remained silent as she beckoned for Michaela to follow her out into the hallway. They began to head towards the main lobby of the station again, Dante at their side, when Michaela spoke up. "Um, I don't want to be rude but..."
Yeah, there's no way I can ask about the 'scorned lover' thing, so how about...
"I'm surprised you haven't asked what he meant, calling me de la Cruz's lover." She said this bluntly, staring at Michaela as they walked. She jumped and looked at the woman with wide eyes. "How'd you know?!" she blurted, before covering her mouth. Great job, Michaela. Open mouth, insert foot.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "You gave yourself away right now." She said this so matter-of-factly that it made Michaela's cheeks born in mortification on what was clearly both a touchy subject and something no one else had any respect for. "Why does it matter to you? You didn't seem like you were hunting for juicy gossip on me, though its not like you'd have any interest or gain in doing so. I also still want an answer on how a Living Child ends up in the Land of the Dead."
They were quite some ways through the lobby now, and Michaela hesitated on what to tell her, before settling on a half-truth. She grabbed the woman by the hand and dragged her into a phonebooth. "I need to get de la Cruz's blessing because he's family and I got cursed, so I need a family member's blessing to return home. If I don't get it by the time Dia de los Muertos ends, I'll probably be stuck here forever and die."
The woman stared at her. "That's oddly specific, and you're family how?" Michaela paused. How to make this believable?
"He's the elder half-brother of my great-great grandmother. He's my uncle. It's been kept quiet so our family doesn't suffer backlash. I don't know much about it other than the fact that Tio Ernesto was born out of an affair when my great-great-great grandmother was pretty young and left in an orphanage for his own safety, and that mi tatara abuela was born years afterwards and always taught to admire Tio Ernesto's fame. She didn't know they were related until...after he had passed."
The woman's eyes softened a bit. "De la Cruz is notoriously difficult to reach, don't you have any other family members who could give you a blessing? He's...never mentioned a sister." Michaela shook her head furiously. "No. Only de la Cruz. This sounds weird, but...do you really know de la Cruz? Is there a way-"
She shook her head. "I used to know de la Cruz. As I said, he's nearly impossible to reach..." Michaela deflated. "However, if you truly don't have any other options, then I can try to find some way to get you to him. I...have some friends who've worked with him on occasion. They might be able to get in contact with him, and you through them can meet him. It's only a possibility though."
"Really?!"
The woman nodded slowly. "I have a request in exchange though. It's not a necessity, but I would appreciate it if you accept. It may influence, whether I'm aware of it or not, how hard I will try to get you to de la Cruz. On top of that, considering what just happened, I also owe you at least a small explanation of those men. It'd be best to go somewhere more...private, at least for planning purposes."
They exit the booth together, but before the woman can introduce herself, Michaela notices a very familiar figure at the peak of the second floor staircase, who has focused directly on her. "Michaela!" Papa Imelio called, reaching out to her and taking two steps at a time, while the rest of the family hurried behind him. Not for the first time, she was reminded of a sleek and graceful wolf. Heading towards her as well were at least patrolmen. She paled and grasped her new companion's hand, dragging her along towards the exit.
The trio (the woman, Michaela, and Dante) burst through the entrance of the station, Dante bounding leagues ahead with Michaela just behind. The sound of snapping fingers in her ear caused Michaela to turn around, noticing Helene still halfway up the staircase leading down from the station. Where Michaela had grabbed her arm, it had been the arm made of bone. When Michaela had begun to run, she took the woman's arm with it.
Papa Julio had not been nearly so easy to knock apart, had he?
Eventually, she caught up and reattached her arm. She laughed breathlessly, as though taken in by the thrill of rushing. "Fleeing the authorities, are we? I might have found a protege to teach." They continued to rush through the crowd and an odd thought occured to the woman, something that should have already been mentioned.
"The name's Helene, chica." There was a glimpse of a rogue, razor sharp smile on her face.
Helene.
The woman those men had been targeting.
The women who had saved her life and was the key to keeping it.
"The name's Michaela."
She grinned back as they disappeared together in the crowd.
Imelio swore under his breath as he just caught sight of Michaela's braids disappearing around the street corner. In a crowd this dense, there would be no chance of finding her with their eyes alone. The festivities were loud enough to drown out any calls the family tried to make. Dammit. "She's going to get herself killed." He whispered under his breath.
From a chain around his neck, he pulled a silver whistle from his pocket and gave a very sharp blow. "Pepita! ¡Ven aquí!" There was the brief sound overhead of rustling wind. It got louder and louder, closer and closer, until it was easily identifiable as the sound of flapping wings.
On the stairs before the Rivera patriarch, a monstrous wing beast descended on all four paws, a panther. Imelio caressed her nose gently, before taking in a breath. Family comes first. He turned to his family. "Who has the petal Michaela touched?"
It was Julio who came forwards. "I have it right here." Cautiously, he stepped closer to Pepita with an outstretched arm. Logically, he knew that Pepita would not harm him. She was Imelio's spirit guide and guardian, the one who guided him through the afterlife and protected him. However, that meant she shared many traits with Imelio from his intelligence, to his fearsome strength and temper. That wasn't taking into account her massive physical stature.
"Nice alebrije..." he murmured, holding the petal beneath the panther's nose. If she weren't focused on finding the master's several times over grand-kitten, Pepita would have snorted and rolled her eyes at him by now. She took a deep breath, inhaling the little kitten's scent.
Imelio exhaled in slight relief as Pepita's eyes narrowed, her head turning sharply as she focused on Michaela's scent. They'd find her soon.
With a terrible roar, Pepita spread her wings and took to the skies.
Chapter END
Holy crap, this chapter was long. Sorry for the wait but...things happened. I'm pretty good now though, so I'll be able to start work on the next chapter after this as long as nothing comes up.
How did you like this chapter? I threw in some new characters, changed the way Hector and Miguel meet, and I'm still not sure if this will be enjoyable (at all), but it was fun to write. Either way, it's valuable experience.
Do you think I portrayed Helene well? I'm not very social, so I'm piss poor at describing social interaction. I hope I met you expectation.
Also, Marco does tie into the plot. I'm still not sure how much, and if I finish this story and decide certain things clog up the story's progression or just doesn't fit, I'll probably create a revised version where things are altered or outright removed.
Also, if you've ever been assaulted (sexually or otherwise) please reach out for help. It does not matter if you are Male, Female, Transgender, Genderfluid,etc. No one ever deserves to be treated like that. Ever.
Please leave reviews, I love reading them. They are my primary reason for getting off my ass and working on the story. I love them. Please no flames, because I am a crybaby and will burst into tears. Constructive criticism is welcome though!
It's 9:56 at night, so I have to go and prepare for tomorrow (although I'll probably continue to stay up late anyway). so I'll just head off and upload this now. Also, if you see typos, please inform me. I can't guarantee I'll manage to correct them all, I may forget to check, but I'll try my best.
To those reading this in the morning: "Good Morning."
To those reading in the afternoon: "Good Afternoon."
And to those reading at night: "Good Night and Sweet Dreams."