Juan’s mother said he became a man when his brother was killed.
The family called the older brother Guero, but his name was Jesus, he had long black hair that flowed in the wind. He had sharp cheekbones and black piercing eyes. He smiled all the time. He liked life and people liked having him in their lives. He was a good kid. Even though he juggled women. He went to mass, and loved guitar. He could play like a demon when follada. Juan loved to watch him sweat and sing.
Getting fucked up was a nightly ritual for Guero. He liked to drive up to the city and dance at the clubs all night. If not clubbing at would be dinner and beers under the night sky.
Maybe Guero could have become a good man, if not for getting sidetracked into financing his up all night lifestyle. Perhaps it was this that put body on the side of a dusty highway. The desire for money rarely results in positive outcomes for all parties involved.
And his head was never found.
Somewhere Guero’s blood dried. Maybe the same place his head was. Some shadowy corner of a basement wrapped in plastic shoved into a corner with other rotting skulls of other headless corpses. Maybe buried out in the desert. Maybe placed in a jar covered in formaldehyde in some collection by a sick fuck with a sadistic decorating style.
He didn’t wield the machete.
He didn’t force Guero to his knees. He did not have to hear the sobs and the man begging for his life.
Not that Guero simply begged just so he could live, but for his family, “Para mi esposa.’ He sobbed ‘Por favor, ¿por qué haces esto? Por favor, no hacer?”
And it was over. No gunshot. No witty pith, just a hacking machete, like an attempt to fall a small tree, chop, chop, chop and a headless body collapsed among twenty others in a plastic sheet wrapped basement.
Guero’s body was left on the main street North into Guadalajara.
Four million people live there. The murder did not even earn a mention on the evening news. The next day another body was left and then the day after that, another.
Stories 