Navidad & Matanza by Will Vanderhyden Carlos Labb Page A

He asked me. He already knew. He’d read it in an email you sent him, he said. We’ll kill each other beyond saving, Domingo. The compound should already be working in our hypothalamuses. Really I don’t hate you, he continued, occasionally I’ve been bothered by your need to control everything, just a little bit. That you seemed indifferent to the disappearances of Viernes, Miercoles, Lunes, and Jueves. But tell me, do you hate me?
    No, I replied. I continued to stare at the ceiling, humming a suite by Debussy that my father listened to on Sundays, early in the morning. La la la la. La la la la la. Do you remember “Le mer?” Jueves bought a theremin on the Internet and it arrived on a Saturday. It was the perfect excuse to celebrate. While we put peanuts in his beer, Jueves moved his hands toward and away from the apparatus. The terrifying sound waves oscillated from the deepest to the sharpest. Uuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. I don’t know. Jueves spent a couple weeks making sounds with it; he even printed the Debussy score. This must have been during the periodwhen I was writing the story about the Congolese on the beach. You remember. It was a Friday night, we were playing cards. I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back the chairs of Lunes, Miercoles, Jueves, and Viernes were empty.
    â€œBut, tell me, do you hate me?”
    I stopped humming the suite when Martes’s shouts grew more powerful than my own. I told him: I’m not going to kill you, I’m sorry. I believe in God, that God gives and takes life, and that if I do it intentionally, I’ll be definitively separated from Him, which is the same as dying. Martes began kicking furniture and throwing papers in the air. Rage all you want, but don’t touch the computer, I howled. I brandished the leg of a chair, ready to give him a real blow in the neck, below the nape to calm him. He sat down and kept screaming that I was a fool, a fool. Only a fool can believe in God while at the same time experimenting with cannibalistic white mice. I closed my eyes. I remembered that when Jueves’s hands moved away from the theremin, the sounds were deeper. Martes continued. Shit on the angels, on the first, on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, shit on every single one of the days of creation. That’s what he said. And he added the names of the patriarchs, of the judges, of the prophets, of the kings, of the King. So I stood up and I took the chair leg in my hands. I calculated where I should strike him so there’d be no blood. Right at that moment he stopped talking. He asked me if I hated him. He moved quickly to dodge my blow, his right leg tangled with what was left of the couch and his head smashed against the mirrored wall. He’s unconscious now. Until someone kills him or revives him.
    I remember it well. I came back to the entertainment room from the bathroom and there were four empty chairs. I thought they were pulling a prank. For the rest of the afternoon I opened every door, every closet, I looked under every bed. Nothing. Sabado and Martes were too busy to tell me if they’d seen the others leave. On the computer I wrote that Bruno and Boris Real had traversed the beaches of the central coast, so that later I could email that chapter to the others. While I was writing, I felt like I was walking the seaside streets of the novel. I was furious, as I am now. I’ve felt this way for a long time, ever since my mother took my brother to the supermarket and left me at home. Ever since I kissed a girl who I really liked; she moved her lips softly as if mouthing a phrase or a name. I backed away quickly and asked her what she was saying. I’m sorry, she whispered. A few days later I found out she was seeing someone else. There was someone following me when I left the market in Navidad. A little girl on roller-skates. She’s been behind me for a while, I thought;