A Short Nightmare

WARNING : Story contains depictions of sexual violence and vulgar language PG13

Zia was high on the annoyance of turning fifteen only a few days after Día De Los Muertos. Having a birthday near holidays is a curse when you're a teenager who is craving attention. The celebrations were loud inside as she took a few drags on the cigarette she snuck from her abuelas’ purse. The Mexican beats of the music were vibrating the warm October night air. The stench of candles, spices, and sweets filled the nose. She snuffed out her cigarette on the puckered adobe garage wall lined with deflated party balloons and unbroken pinatas. She loathed making pinatas with her family but she loved making the extra money on her endeavors. 

As she entered the dusty back yard she saw her drunk tios spinning dirty circles around their tias and she was irrationally angry. Another family party that she wanted nothing to do with. The overused christmas lights hung off of the adobe walls shining yellow onto brown and gray concrete that was laid with foldable tables filled with silver tins drained of food. The ofrenda glowed happily with glee behind her on the garage facade. She turned and studied the smiles of her ancestors. Some she loved, others she had met when she was too young to recall, and some so long dead their pictures were grayed and fraying from the repetitive display. Sweets, flowers, and candles all lit for their memory. She took a cookie from the ofrenda and muched a bite to rid her mouth of the cigarette taste. The spices mixed with sugar on her tongue. Smoke and cinnamon. As she goes in for another bite a hand slams into the back of her head knocking the cookie onto the table and away from her awaiting grin. Caught red handed. 

'Oh great', she thought as her eyes rolled. Now she was going to be used as a martyr for her cousins to learn what not to do to the alter for our loved ones. Her tias mouth spoke to fast for her inebriated brain to keep up. Zia was frustrated, humiliated and now pissed. The anger boiled in her as her tias words slurred toward her with spit and lessons. 

Screw this. 

She shoved her lecturer and made a break for the fluorescent doorway pass the old sedan and out the garage door into the neighborhood. The darkness beyond the party was calm and comforting. She began to run down the road away from the music and shame. About a mile down the road there is a dirt entrance to the acequia ditch that feeds water to the irrigations of the houses. The water is long gone and the only life that remains are crusty pokey bushes that lay in cloudy lines beside what was left of the raised trail that hovered above the dry channel. The houses off of the acacia all in their own variations of celebration and dimly lit. The smell of cow dung wafted around her head as she passed a pasture surrounded by green panels that held this years bulls, steers, and cattle. Livestock raised for the rodeo. They were wealthy and could afford to party somewhere besides there house as the lots were quiet with the cattle's chatter. Just beyond the panels were broken wooden fences that attempted to section homes from public walking space. 

She kicked a rock with all her fury and it bounced satisfyingly off the wood with a konk. The public displays of hand painted Mexican characters from the Land of the Dead were scattered everywhere as the city must have done a light attraction on the ditch for the festival. The cutouts all lay dark and looming. The exhibits’ must have ended a while ago to allow people time to visit graves and get black out drunk. The low budget festival still had songs playing in the distance at the local park where the attraction must have started. The sorrowful guitar floated on the wind forgotten by some audio person. She weaved in between them humming the tune and missing the treats she abandoned prematurely. In the darkness she began to hear voices. 

“You have not. You coward.”

“I have too why else would I have this if I haven't used it on someone?”

“Because you are a sissy bitch that’s why!”

“Take it back or I’ll zap your nuts!”

Having already spent most of her anger on her family Zia could feel her heart race and wanted nothing to do with people. She was alone in the dark away from home on the ditch and about to intersect with two teenage boys. A mystery she had no interest in solving. Quickly her heart began to race and she ducked down by a tumble bush that pulled on her clothing. Their shadows approached and kicked down the cutouts coming closer to her hiding spot. They were tall and only getting bigger. Only ten feet from here did they turn and begin their journey down the acequias' side toward the rocky yard where the broken wood fence was failing. A huge gapping hole that allowed the boys a feeling of delinquent-tism. Before moving down the raised plateau of dirt one of the shadows stopped. Her heart beat so loud it kept rhym with the bands in the distance. He couldn’t hear her breathing could he? His shadow was looking at her. His head crooked to the side. He studied her shoes, legs, dress, body, and face. His eyes seeing a object and not a person. It was like he could smell the smoke and cinnamon on her breath. His friend was in the yard and she urged him to move forward and stop seeing her in the dark. He turned and began to walk away. He hadn’t noticed the human amongst the weeds. She sighed and closed her eyes in relief. 

“Dude, come here.”

Her heart stopped. He had seen her and was not blinded by the black night she thought her cloak. Zia stood and ran away towards the ranches’ panel fence and both boys broke chase. She was fast and had a head start but their legs longer and gaining. There was no way she would make it home. She dodged a cutout and jumped a bush. In her fear she had forgotten that she was armed. Armed with the pepper spray her father gave her that year. A weapon in her pocket that her hand wrapped around. She turned to the boys with arms raised.

“Get the fuck back before I blind both of you!” She shouted. 

The boys skidded to a stop and faced her. Their faces dark and unidentifiable. One shadow was wearing a t-shirt, pants, and the other a costume of a sugar skull. The white outlines of the skeleton mask on his face was slightly lighter then the darkness of night. One shadow turned to run away but the skeleton mask approached and Zia pressed the button. The spray must have not been secured in her hand or at the angle wrong because instead of a spray of deterrent there was only a twist of plastic and the damn can was out of her hand tumbling into the bushes. The masked shadow kept coming.  

“Fuck!”

She turned toward the panels and made a break for the pens. She grabbed the cold metal and swung her leg over. The boys were sliding down the angled ground. One hand grabbed her foot. She kicked and connected with fingers which sounded like they jammed.

“Bitch!”

She fell to the ground and landed hard on the hooved compacted ground. The steers in the pen were young and had not grown into their horns. They jumped and squealed at the sudden intruder. The light of a heat lamp glowed red in a barn just beyond them. The youngest were huddled close to the warmth. Their silhouettes were outlined in black and red. Zia saw a black rectangle door farther behind them hidden by the glare of the lamp. The steers were young and full of testosterone as were the dangerous boys who were now jumping the fence. She felt safer with the steers then them so she walked forward into the herd. Steadily she moved around their bodies. They lowered their heads and pawed the ground. She stepped lightly between them.  Behind a wall of muscled bovine she squatted down. A few threw their heads with confusion while other sniffed her head. Their bodies in-between her and the shadows. 

The boys stopped their advance. They were scared and the steers were growing angrier by the moment. They swung their bodies toward the shadow boys. She was high on her adrenaline and excited to see the steers inflict pain. They jumped and kicked toward the shadows. One steer, the bravest, began charging toward the shadows. His head downward ready to knock their shapes to the ground. To her shock, instead of backing away the shadow stepped forward, arm outstretched and from the tip came lightning. The taser made contact with fur and the steer immediately felt the burn of his defeat. The cattle prod of so many other days taught all the steers that the sizzle of electricity was punishment and they, to Zias’ horror, parted. 

The shadows were again her own. She twirled and headed for the dark doorway that had one large panel before it. One metal grid that she could slid through to attempt escape. She ducked under the gap of metal and ground breathing in cattle feces, fear, and dirt. The boys chose to climb and were now above her as she shimmied quickly to her feet and began to enter the dark once again. A object made contact with her back and soon all she felt was pain. Her leg muscles seized and she fell forward hard as the body of a boy fell atop her. It was instinct to kick and scream but there were four hands fighting her two. The mask held her arms and she felt the cold metal prongs on her throat

“Scream and well burn your tongue off.” The shadow whispered.

Her heart should have exploded by now, she thought. A large bang erupted from the panels they had just traversed and the huge dark figure of a bull was outlined in red light and sectioned by dark metal pipes. Metal pipes keeping the manifestation of her anger from reaching its target. The bull bellowed in annoyance and slammed against the fence again. The boys laughed and continued to hold her down. She wanted the strength of that bull to help her. She tried to squirm her knees into their guts but they weighted her down with their violation. To quickly the shadow on top of her was reaching his hands up her thigh to pull at her underwear. She kept her her eyes open and strained her pupils to focus on trying to find details for prosecution. She scanned their hair, smell, and clothes when she felt the pressure holding her hands down release. A scream from the masked shadow erupted and the metal prongs disconnected with her skin. 

The shadows backed off her body. She twisted her head backward and watched the masked shadow get pulled under the panel and into the awaiting bull by nothing. There was no person, no outline of a shadow, only air was dragging the boy away from her. Clear as red lighted night the outline of the masked shadow showed that his arms were above him outstretched and his body followed. He was shaking his head back and forth against his invisible attacker. His shoulders showed his pull but still his hands were held aloft. His body was dragged by the wind away and under the panel, right into the hooves of the awaiting bull. The crunch of his bones and the bellows of the bull rose. Zias’ mouth parted into a smile. She pulled her arms closer to her body and felt a small plastic square. The taser! She grasped it tightly and felt for the button with her thumb as the masked shadows screams turned into gargled squishes. She lurched forward toward the cowering shadow that had since backed off of her and sat shocked at the sight. She pushed the taser into the shadows head and could hear the pop and sizzle of ocular bursts caused by electrical penetration. The shadows hands raised to his head and he squealed as he pushed his body up and away into the rectangle of darkness disappearing into whatever hell he brought onto himself. Zia stood and her shape was drenched in sweat and red light. The steers were all watching her and she listened to the satisfied breathing of the bull. 

“Zia…”

Came a whisper from the dark rectangle doorway behind her. She turned startled by the breathy word. She stood with taser in one hand and power in the other. From the darkness flew a shape that hit her square in the chest. Her hand met the object in flight and her fingers surrounded it. The particles of cinnamon coated her hand. She opened her fist and there in her palm was the cookie with a bite taken from it. An offering of ancestral remembrance.