The Dead Collector

And the desert was quiet, and the desert was good.

There was a chill. Pregnant with whispers, a mist crept from the black sky above onto the sand, stretching its limbs, a cat awakening. Not a pinpoint of light was visible; the mist did not choke the throat, nor did it smother the vision, but instead enveloped the inhabitants in a flurry of shivers both drowsily confusing and mildly alarming.

This is where I draw the line, chico. This is where I draw it.

A distant sputtering tore the equilibrium of the desert, the dense silence and the starless sky, the mist and the chill, the animals and their sleeping dens. A low-riding red automobile, some ancient American make, snaked along the one established road, sandy gravel and crumbling asphalt crunching underneath the silver-rimmed wheels. The driver made an ample turn off the road and killed the engine, the loud wheezing dying to a low, rhythmic hum. A moment passed before he exited the car, swinging his head around tiredly to affirm that he was alone.

He kicked the door shut and surveyed the vehicle, noticing again the white decorative line wrapping around the entire body of the car and the three bullet holes directly below the window, forming a sideways V of puckered metal and melted paint. Exasperated, he rubbed the back of his neck and continued past the automobile to the small building ahead.

You don't tell me you got too much to lose. There ain't nothing to lose when you're in this.

A tiny, decrepit shack, positioned a small distance away from the road, sighed under the weight and effort of standing upright. Made entirely of moist dark wood, it boasted a porch with three steps, a slightly peaked roof, and scarcely enough space for two rooms. A long rectangular sign at the entrance hung vertically, nail-ends bent and gaping in the open air, reading LA NIDO DEL BUITRE sideways in chipping white paint.

After approaching the building and reading the sign, a frown playing at the corners of his lips, the man crouched with creaking knees and lowered himself onto the top step of the porch. The moisture of the shack's wood sent a small tremor through his legs and to cancel it out he remembered a bed, a large iron-framed bed of sticky affection, a pillowed safehouse, a breathless haven.

And he used that to escape for a little while. He used it as he held himself defiantly against the creeping, threatening chill before him. Perhaps he would also use it to lessen the lurch inside his body whenever he looked at the bullet holes in the car door.

You think this is all one big joke, man? You think I'm fucking with you?

Still trying to recall that silk jungle of sheets, he waited. He picked at his dirt-rimmed nails, rubbed a groove in the sand with his shoe, counted his breaths; he did everything in his possible power to distract himself from nauseous anticipation. He had been sent without information. Something told him he needn't know anything else.

The door of the shack opened behind him. For some curious reason the sound did not alarm him, and neither did the figure that stepped out with careful purpose and a slight clatter of bone on wood.

I tell you, man; you'll see shit you never even thought was possible.

Funny, he thought. The festival was yesterday.

-----------------

She placed herself on the edge of the bed, crossing her thin brown legs delicately. The crimson ruffles of her skirt brushed her thighs as she hiked it up and puckered her lips, ready. Her eyes narrowed in breezy anticipation.

He rubbed the small pot of black tint with the bud of his index finger and raised it to her mouth. She closed her eyes as he applied the color to her lips, tracing the curved lines and ripe flesh beneath. Placing the pot next to her on the bed after finishing, he surveyed his work.

Her entire face, Spanish-skinned and smooth as wet clay, was covered with white paint; black encircled her eyes, nose, lips, and cheekbones. Several thin, vertical black lines extended from the middle of both cheeks across her mouth in a skull's toothy pantomime. Tiny flowers and flourishes embellished her hairline and jaw in red and yellow hues, and she kept her full dark hair back with a band made of flower stems and colored string.

He held a small mirror to her face. She looked at her reflection and turned her head downward gently, a satisfied smile curling her lips.

"Hermosa," she cooed.

"Hermosa," he repeated.

She bent forward to slip her elf's feet into a pair of black boots near the edge of the bed. He admired the tanned arc of her shoulder, her muscles working with finite feminine effort, as she began to lace the boots. Some flighty emotion, a hummingbird in his ribcage, fluttered and then was gone as he willed it to go. She raised herself, finished, off of the bed and adjusted the folds of her dress one last time.

He asked quietly without thinking, "¿Quién eres tú para recordar?"

She paused. "Mi madre," she said, looking at him with her beautiful lost eyes, and then turned and opened the door, fingers working like wisps of cloud. She slipped out like a mist.

He came to the window and watched her pass the tiny tienda next door with the calaca figures on the shelves, the mercado with the pan de muerto cheap, free after midnight; and he almost whispered, "Margarita, quédate conmigo," but there was nobody there to hear it; and so he returned to the bed and laid down, inhaling the faint absent scent of flowered hair that lingered on the pillow, and slept.

Before his slumber, he wondered if he could ever meet death so bravely.

-----------------

The skeleton stood over him, peering down curiously through hollow holes of eyes. The man turned slowly over his back and stared into the bottomless sockets, emotionless, for a moment, and then turned back and continued to gaze ahead. He heard the skeleton close the door gently and sit down beside him on the porch, its bones clanking against one another whenever it moved. The presence was less eerie than bothersome, as the man only wanted to be alone.

The figure drummed its toes expectantly against the wood of the porch, but the man still did nothing. There was no fear within him, but he did not plan to interact first. And so the other took the initiative.

"Cold?" it asked. A drawling, masculine voice resounded from where the vocal chords should have been.

"No."

The skeleton stretched backwards and leaned on its elbows. "You don't have a jacket."

He said nothing but looked at the trunk of his car in the distance. He thought of its contents, or rather its lack thereof, and released a sigh; perhaps he had been wrong, and had always been wrong, and will always be wrong.

"Oh, come on now," it reproached, darkly, playfully. "What are you sighing about? I just thought you looked cold."

The man reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. "You speak English."

The figure let out a coarse, barking laugh. "Of course I do, hombre. I was a full-blood American citizen, for god's sake. Had a plant in Waco, got destroyed, came here years ago. I ain't no hombre hispano."

"Well, you weren't." He lit up, shielding the flame with his palm against the desert wind despite its stagnancy.

The skeleton laughed again. "You got a point."

The silence between them was almost comfortable as the man smoked and the figure next to him watched. The surrounding chill increased as the night grew darker and longer, and the man tried not to shiver because some masculine force in him did not want to seem weak. Eventually he opened his mouth.

"I think you're a day late."

"A day late?" asked the skeleton.

"El día de los muertos. It was yesterday."

"Ah," it replied, "ese día. I see. But how do you know," it leaned back further and scratched its skull with a bone finger tip, "that the dead only come out for one day?"

The man was quiet. He took several puffs of his cigarette, offered a half-interested shrug, and stared off into the folds of desert sand.

"Exactly." The skeleton was self-satisfied. "Besides, we gotta do things just like living people. We don't only come out just to have fun at a festival for an afternoon. We got obligations."

"Obligations," the man echoed. "Like what?"

"Oh, you know, menial jobs," it replied, shrugging just as the man had moments earlier. He noticed the figure's wide shoulder bones as they moved up and down with a comical, clattering shift.

"I'll take your word for it," he said and snuffed out his cigarette.

Another moment passed in stillness. The wind swelled with supernatural vigor, causing the man to visibly tremble with cold.

"Chico, hold on," the skeleton said, raising itself and stepping inside the shack briefly to retrieve a striped woolen zerape. The man took it, hesitant, and draped it around his shoulders.

"Better?"

He nodded begrudgingly. The moon, a sort of uneven circle of light stuck in an endless black basin, was past half-full but not quite complete. For some reason, the sight frayed his nerves whenever he glanced upward.

The figure surveyed him. "So what brought you here?"

Irritated, he responded, "I was sent here. Business endeavors. I'm supposed to meet someone," before adding, "Why are you here?"

The skeleton chuckled. "I live here, hermano. This is my house, my den." It crossed its legs and followed the man's gaze skyward.

"That's strange," he mumbled. "Are you the one I was supposed to meet with?"

"I doubt it," the figure answered nonchalantly, cocking its skull to the side. "But maybe I can help you out. What did you bring with you?"

"What do you mean?" He became equally offended and anxious.

"It's a simple question," it quipped. "What's in the trunk?"

He paused, grappling for answers and explanations, and sprang upward from his seat on the porch. "It's my business, not yours."

"Hombre, calm down now," the skeleton warned, standing up as well and showing his bone-palms in a reassuring gesture. "I'm just trying to help you out. If there wasn't anything in the trunk, you wouldn't be going off on me right now."

"There's nothing in the trunk," the man rushed to reply.

"Ah, so if there was nothing in the trunk, you wouldn't say it was your business and not mine..." He tapped his fingertips together, creating a nausea-inducing sound. "So does that mean there's nothing in the trunk even though something's supposed to be in the trunk?"

The man, flush-faced and panting, turned in the opposite direction and staggered towards his car. The sand betrayed him and he stumbled; his insides turned to ice as he felt a bone-thin, vice-like grip on his left ankle and he twisted around to meet the gruesome figure above.

"You got to learn this, chico," it said, suddenly and terrifyingly dark with shadows and wrath, "and you got to learn it good. There ain't no room for mistakes. You have a debt to pay, don't you?"

The man choked with excuses.

"I'll ask you one more time." The skeleton's black sockets burned holes in the man's eyes. "Do you have a debt to pay?"

Petrified, tears streaming irrepressibly, he whispered, "Yes."

"That's what I thought," the figure declared and dragged the man upward onto the porch. It brought him inside the shack and closed the door carefully, as if it meant for the desert not to hear.

-----------------

He watched her remove the last of her face-paint with fondness. "How was the festival?"

"It was great." Her splintered English and thick accent were endearing to him.

"I'm glad," he said, continuing to watch as she removed her heavy dangling earrings, combed her hair, and changed into a dressing gown. He beckoned her over and she obeyed, laying on the bed with her eyes closed and the back of her hand against her forehead.

He rolled towards her and kissed her. She was tired, compliant.

"I need to tell you something," he pressed gently.

"What is it?" she asked breathlessly. There were more questions in her eyes than he had ever seen before.

"I need to leave," he said. "Tomorrow."

She bolted upwards and stared at him. "Why? What happened?"

He glanced from his hands to the floor as if searching for an answer. "Everything..."

She stared at him, waiting.

"It's... it's gone."

Her mouth opened and closed in shock before she was able to respond. "Querido, you can't just do that. It doesn't work that way. They'll skin you alive!"

"Margarita, no importa." He held a finger to her lips. "It's all gone."

"Gone?" she repeated, trembling.

"Gone."

She covered her face with her hands and began to murmur, "Le pido a María, la Virgen en el cielo..."

He enfolded her in his arms as she prayed feverishly. She turned her face into his cheek but instead of kissing him she whispered, "But you have to meet someone tonight."

The blood in his veins iced swiftly.

"Tonight?"

She nodded. "At midnight. They told me to tell you when I got home from the festival."

No other words could fall from his lips. He looked at the nightstand, on which she had earlier placed a small calavera de azúcar next to two marigold flowers. He noticed the tiny white skull with its rectangular grin and the ruffled orange petals next to it. And then, as he believed was only possible, he prayed silently and superficially for his debts and his sins.

-----------------

The skeleton flung the door open with difficulty. It had slung a large cloth sack over its shoulder bones, which it released downward with little care or ceremony. The sack hit the floor with a dull thump.

The entire table of skeletons turned to look at him. Some counted coins; others calculated numbers.

"What?" the skeleton asked. "Am I late or something?"

"No," a colleague replied. "You're fine. What about the woman?"

"Done," it said, brushing its palms together in triumph. "Easy target. Alone in her bed in a casita next to the mercado."

"Good." The colleague pointed to the sack. "And him?"

The figure put its hands on its hipbones in a proud gesture. "Even easier. Begged and cried for mercy the entire time, though. Kept calling on that woman to stay with him. At least they're going to the same place now."

The colleague chuckled. "Then let's take care of this." Two figures rose from the table and picked up both ends of the sack to carry it away.

"Be careful," the skeleton warned. "He was a bleeder."

And the devil was quiet, and the devil was good.