Author’s Note: You know, I’ve always wanted to write a story about a sin eater. Well, here it is. I guess.

Resurrect

Victor Valdez had been dying for days. No one was quite sure of the reason, some said stroke, most said an act of god, but it didn’t matter. Death would claim him, all the same.

His granddaughter, Mina, one of the few who still loved him, begged him to hold on just a few more days, just a few more, until mama could track down that monstruo of a Sin Eater. Just a few more, just a few more…

And now here they were, five o’ clock in the evening, the entire extended family crammed like sardines into the tiny, dirty room of the dying man. The sunlight that leaked through the cheap plastic shades was a bloody red, glittering darkly on the crucifix on the wall above the abuelo’s bed, causing it to glow malevolently, as if illuminated by some inner light. The air was thick with approaching death, and the sound of the old man’s labored and unsteady breathing.

The Sin Eater had been located at last, a strange young man with shaggy black hair and hazel eyes that seemed to burn, despite the dark circles beneath them. Darkness permeated this man to his very core, so prominently so that the family, already pressed beyond all illusion of comfort, crowded further as one unit, all but climbing the walls and smothering the children to clear a path for him to the bedside.

“We will give you one-hundred and fifty.” Mina explained, following in his cursed footsteps, the slight quaver in her voice betraying that she was standing far closer to the monstruo than she would like.

“One hundred fifty?” The Sin Eater’s very voice was a sneer, his words cut through the air like a whiplash. “Not likely. Don’t you think I know that señor on the mattress? The man had a ruca in every town from here to Chihuahua in his day. Liked his booze and his dice, too, not that he spent what he won, the greedy bastard. Three hundred.”

The shocked and scandalized gasps were all the answer he needed, if the muffled Spanish curses weren’t enough.

“Three hundred or I walk.” He insisted.

Mina, desperate, turned her pleading gaze on her mother. The woman, a domineering matriarch who controlled her family with a tight and iron fist and had no problems resisting the doe-eyes of her offspring, glared fiercely at the stranger in their midst as if she could shatter him with her eyes. When he refused to back down, meeting her gaze with a stare equally as violent, the dragoness of a woman opened her purse with her clawlike fingers and a sigh and counted out three hundred dollars…before lazily dropping the bills onto the cement floor at her feet.

Time seemed to stop as the stunned occupants of the room attempted to process this new snub. In her mind, the dragoness had won; had let this pecador fetch his money like the dog he was.

She realized her mistake, however, when his bright eyes flashed cold and he drew closer. Slowly, slowly, step by step, the darkness that seethed under his skin reaching out invisible tendrils that stroked lightly down her arm and caressed her face, touches that had her trembling and fighting the urge to flinch away as he knelt down on one knee to retrieve his money, eyes never leaving hers.

In fact, he refused to release her from his crushing gaze until the bills were safely tucked away into his pocket, and he had turned towards the dying man, and even then she couldn’t look away. He made his way over to the opposite side of the mattress, where the light of the dying sun through the shades cast him a bloody halo as he eased himself onto a low stool at the bedside.

“Let’s get this over with.”

The spell was broken. Mina sprung to life as if she had been switched on, appearing with a crust of bread and a small wooden bowl full of wine. Cautiously, fearfully, she approached her grandfather’s body and the strange man on the opposite side, placing the crust and the bowl down, balanced precariously on the old man’s gaunt, heaving chest.

As soon as the young woman’s hands were clear, the Sin Eater reached in, plucking the bread carelessly off the dying man’s chest and popping it into his mouth. He chewed contentedly, seemingly unaware of the silently horrified scrutiny of the family, before reaching out with both hands for the bowl of blood red wine. He raised it in a sort of blessing, before downing it like a man who had not had water in days.

Once this was done, he carelessly tossed the bowl into the trashcan in the corner, sending several family members ducking for cover in the process.

“You can kick it in peace, old man.” He declared as he stood. “Consider yourself absolved.”

Three hundred dollars for a lifetime of sin. Not bad for one old man, all things considered.

And the nausea?

It would fade in time.