Chapter 15: Chapter Fourteen - "Refugee Season"

That thin, flamboyant body I knew—and only met at the Catz bar—is running towards me. The Santo hugs me. Then the Santo takes off his mask. But behind him are more luchadores.

"Divine! How are you?" Noe repeats.

Is Noe el Santo; Or are the Catz part of the Santo's plans; or are all the luchadores part of the Catz?

Don't reference me verbatim.

Do they work here as we thought?

Luchadores over plain white, with a delta background, then blood as the main decorator, decorating and redesigning as much as possible, as much as it could reach wherever it was distilled from—view this picture with me.

Not all of them are Santos. Noe is the only Santo.

But there is Pamela!

Then there's Fernando!

They are both under luchador masks.

Is my prediction of the Catz also being the fighters right?

The jodhpurs on a few of them—the ones I notice—meant we are not going anywhere where vehicles may travel. No, it is to the mountains they take us, like they did back in my grandmother's day when they would steal the women from their houses, in horseback.

It is a horse that carries the men from the times before, but it is us, the horses, that carry the men with times before, before any time could give us a horse to give a man a ride through time, so indeed the bullet in the hands of the Gods comes and the Catz purr, as we take a dive into this purr-gatory we're riding into.

"Your mom is giving this rule to the Catz under Zushka power. Whether she likes it or not," says Zero.

The wrinkles on my grandmother seem to hang a bit lower every time I do look at them.

"The war, my darling," they say. "The war is always chasing us."

"Divine where have you been?" Noe then asks like everything is supposed to be fine and like I've only been at a carnival grabbing toys for a fair, or like I've only been out picking strawberries for a great fucking breakfast or one of his fucking cocktails. Is he el Santo? Will he prepare me a Santo cocktail? Maybe one that would shoot me straight up into heaven like the shot it is meant to give to the heart (I could use a cocktail now)? That is what a Saint would do, after all.

A purple mask is what I see next. Luviel puts it over her face and sticks her tongue out of the hole that rests over her mouth—because this mask was privileged enough to have a mouth-hole.

"Come on, divine! Join the family!" she slurred out, tongue out. "Join the family..."

...she said this in repeat, skipping, rewinding like a fucked up a cassette or vinyl or record not wanting to play, skipping with every turn forward; this was said as if the repetition would somehow change my mind.

Then, all of a sudden, there is new hair on Luviel—there is purple hair; there is bright, light purple hair which she switches from the hair I was used to, in which, in turn of the swap, would reveal the bald head she had been sporting and maneuvering this whole time, this whole time under that fake, real-looking hair.

Zero, I assume, is with her on her beliefs: in the ones where I'm supposed to "join the family"—whatever fucking family this is, sis.

"Okay—this new stream is brought to you by Gecko—reminding you that you can save and not be like these fuck ups by choosing Gecko to ensure your life, for your family," says one of the youths, reading a giant note card with giant blank ink being held by a youth with Catz colors. Noe and Pamela and Fernando help hold up the que cards being read before the "family meeting".

"See what you're making us do, divine?" says Zero. "Now we have to find sponsors for our streams to pay back for all the shit you've destroyed."

*************

"Well, if this is my fault, then who is at fault for taking me?"

"You can ask your mum about that," flicks Luviel, ashing her bud on an ashtray a youth had brought her. It looks like an elegant thing too. One out of one of those expensive China shops that sells the expensive china that usually hangs over us, before our eyes, in impossible-to-reach places, impossible-to-reach scenarios—like museums or books, or anything that can save us now.

Back on the other side, whenever grandma was down, she'd save herself through travel. But there were always a few funny side-effects that came with her constant airport visits and exchanges. When we had to worry about them—when the airports were still open, still visible, and not destroyed to rubble.

The funny thing about the world is, that when you travel so much, when you explore every angle of the world you can possibly see, it shows you how similar and same-minded, same-thinking, we all are—how we all have that same upbringing (sort of), same seed dug into dirt to rise as it may or was allowed to rise; travel shows you how no matter where you are in the world, no matter what continent you're in, you can always find a spot—whether on the outskirts of the city or near the outback—that reminds you of home; no matter what place you call home—New York City or Madagascar, Sao Paolo or Tokyo—the world, like us, is the same; but, it has proof to show, because you can't get rid of mountains—well you can, and companies are doing a good job of getting rid of them and the ocean—but you can't get rid of the whole world, like Earth—not until you get rid of yourself first—and when you do, you'll see we are all fighting for the same thing, the only thing that tells us apart, and that the only things that make us think we have to keep keeping each other apart, is the food, music, traditions, that we share with our local cultures; but if we were to look at the bigger picture, as the world is, we'd see we are the same as the earth's crust is the same for the whole world; we may live in different countries and speak different languages and know different people and have different jobs, but for all of us, for all the humans of the world, the crust, the core, the platitude and altitude and equator of Earth is the same for all of us; the moon and sun that shine down on us at day and night is the same for every soul on Earth. So why do we feel that we come from different places? Why do we believe we come from different Gods, sent for different purposes? Why do we kill each other for these beliefs?

I say these words to myself because of what I've heard from my grandmother and from what I've read in books—and even from the short time of spending with people from this side of the Wall. But if I think this way, does my grandmother? Why don't other people with more vision that me see what I can?

***********

"Summer—that is their peak period," senators and Party members would say about people and souls from different cultures as they would seek asylum for their kids on my side of the Wall, trying to escape the inevitable-death that so impatiently waited for them on their hometown soil; I find it ravishing that these senators, these "people of the people," could say such things, could make such accusations, such descriptions so easily and carelessly about these people, like they are nothing more than animals that have a season where they move around and come-out and therefore, should be hunted, and then thrown away and disposed of as trash once their "peak season" came and went.

"It all could have gone so smoothly," Zero says as youths drag my mother by her hair, and once again, placed her in-front of the camera. "Now, are you going to say what you need to say so they don't die like that poor kid out there," Zero then asked, pointing his gun at a motionless, lifeless Moritz, pale as the light and paint in here, over him—pale as our future, pale as our intentions, or Zero's intentions.

Covetous youths: that is what we're surrounded by.

Or is all this a taradiddle tale's tail?

Or maybe I've allowed the simple gratitude's and exercises of life to become futters holding me back?

"What do you all think?" Luviel asks the room, switching her purple wig to a pink one, then another one—a yellow (bright yellow) one. Everything, even her hair has been fake. I should have guessed.

Looking at Luviel's bald head made me wonder if she has the thing my little cousin used to have, before it took him away.

**********************************

Ever since it took him so rapidly—and only when the meds were given to him—I wondered if it was the disease that took people or the visit to the doctor that took them, with all the meds they force down you.

Do the drugs destroy you faster than your own body can?

I think so.

To this day, I think they did to my cousin—I think the drugs took him, not his body.

But I still think people die, and will always die, randomly. So why go and have a doctor pressure you into stopping that with hell over fire, with poison that would make you all the times-more-weaker and give you all the more-side-effects just for the possibility and chance at a few more years?

I say you do what you can and do the most with the years you have and that's that. Rather than try to add more years just to try to make your life more special—like everyone else that doesn't get cursed...but still fails.

Because failure is the only curse we can never escape.

**********************************

"Say it!" Zero demands to my mother.

Luviel, on the other hand, chooses the color-wig that that hand presents: pink it is.

What would you do in my mother's place?

"Hold it steady," Zero demands towards the youth behind the camera.

"You too," then Luviel says at the card-holding youth.

If a hospital was made for one thing, or not made for one thing, I assume it would be this.

*************************

Long ago, on the other side of the wall, during my first ever soccer practice, I remember our coach picking out the fastest player in our team for her first speech.

"Alright, before we get started, I need everybody to huddle around for a few words," I remember her staring. "This is our fastest player, Sarah," I then remember her continuing. "And she's going to help me for our first lesson."

Sarah then waved at us and stood up. She also introduced herself even though it wasn't necessary because coach Nancy had just introduced her.

"How fast are you Sarah?" Coach Nancy then asked.

"3.9," Sarah then replied, which is fucking fast for soccer. FYI.

"All right. Is anyone here faster?" Coach Nancy then asked the rest of the players, assuring herself, and us, that she had picked out, indeed, the fastest player on the team.

Nobody raised their hands.

"Very well. I'm going to have Sarah here sprint as fast as she can," coach then said. "Ready Sarah?"

"Ready."

"Hell, I'll even give her a five second head start," coach then said.

"Hmmm" we all muttered.

"Go!" Said coach.

And Sarah was off to the races, like a rescued horse just released from the hound tracks.

Coach waited, as she promised. And then she grabbed a ball next to her, and kicked it past Sarah.

"You can stop now," coach shouted, as the ball went right past Sarah until reaching the fence, where it was halted from its joyful freedom.

We all stared at coach like she would be performing a miracle. And she kind of did that day:

"You all know why I did that?" She asked.

And we didn't. We made her aware of that by nodding our heads, side-to-side like a bobble head.

"Because I need everyone to know that nobody is better than the ball," coach said. "Without a team, we can't be better than the ball." She said. "Nobody is faster than the ball," coach continued. "Therefore, the only way to beat every opponent, is to have the ball work in our favor." Coach finished.

**********************************

And now it's my time to have this ball work in my favor.

"I-I-," I stutter, at first, trying to grab the ball from my throat to release it out onto Zero. And after a few tries, I succeed, and say, "I-I-I'm tired of this shit!"

"Tired of what?" Zero asks.

When Zero asks, he doesn't keep an eye out on his killer. It had been in his hand the whole time—the whole time he was dragging me. It was in-between his fingers as he stretched my hair. With one finger, he pulled parts of my stands, and with the other two, he kept the handle of the gun steady...as steady as he could.

Until I grabbed it, of course.

At first, I didn't expect the handle to weigh that much. I guess even though I had handled some before, the first one at my uncle's store and the others at the Catz bar, holding a gun still never really got comfortable, or familiar, for me—I guess killing isn't really my thing.

But when threatening my newly-found family—even though my aunt was a bitch—there are consequences to pay like I've been made to pay. All of this, after all, can only go on for so long until someone has to react. And react I did.

There is only so much I can take from Zero. Seeing Moritz so pale laying behind all of this, helped me make this decision quicker than I would have.

The other killings were fast because they had to be, but this one had time to linger in my mind, making it harder to commit, but commit I still needed to do. "Fuck this," I say again, now being able to feel Zero's scruff.

Within seconds, it always feels like, the salt-tasting-liquid hits my lips even when I don't want it to, even when I look away as I did before.

At my proximity, it is more than I could have handled, and then white—like Moritz—spills, heavily, out of my mouth onto the white, pale floor that reflects my baggage, my eyes, my death.

Luviel screams.

"What the fuck! What the fuck!"

My grandmother screams.

"No! Ludivina! No!"

My mother—or the woman that claims to be my mother screams too.

"Why?" she says. "I didn't want you to be like this!"

The youths—the ones that came with Zero—scream like Luviel. Their reaction is the same.

"What the fuck!" most of them say, rather than ask as the statement is first made-out to be used.

I, however, have never been adroit. Why start now?

Adrenaline takes control at this second. That adrenaline increases my adroitness, if I ever had any.

**************

The click didn't take much. It was more of the fighting with my arm that did.

Since getting to the Black Catz bar, or at least since Zero introduced himself to the rest of the Catz, he's kept his sleeves rolled up right where the muscles on his arms began. And whenever he would curl his arms, those sleeves would stretch with the muscle—I believe he did it on purpose as to show off or try to make his muscles look bigger than they actually were, with tighter shirts. The leather jacket he wore never covered, or censored, his arms. With torn sleeves, the muscles were visible at all times—even now when I forced them in, towards Zero's face.

I started out with a tan face—like my mother made me. You can see that same face, still, on my mother, kneeling across the room, facing the camera.

I don't have that face anymore though.

Now I have a red face.

It's not my red face either.

It's Zero's red face.

That color of blood tastes the same, but it never looks the same.

It's not that we have different colored blood lines, or lies. But some blood is darker than other types. Although, looking at things now, seeing the puddle below me—no, the lake—I realize it all just might be a play of the sunlight, or the light in the room at that time.

My mother gets up when I'm performing my mental science-experiment about blood...mostly the blood that I am holding: Zero's.

"Ludivina—what have you done?" my mother drops on me, shaking herself off and trying to keep calm.

Luviel, on the other hand—or the other side—was not so cool herself.

"What the fuck?" she kept repeating. "What the fuck, divine! You fucking bitch!"

"Mam! The state!" a youth cried.

I was glad to see the youths back on my mother's side.

But the youth still didn't stop Luviel, or Noe, or Pamela, or Fernando.

On the floor, luchadores get picked up.

"What the fuck?" Noe mumbles, drunkenly, placing the luchador over his face.

El Santo is back.

But it's not just El Santo. It's other luchadores too.

"Why?" Pamela asks, covering her nose with a glittery, metallic blue face.

"You really done it now," Fernando opinionates while putting his own new face—his was the old purple one Luviel had ditched just seconds before they arrived—over, his, as you can expect, face.

To think they had no more Zero, and no more Oso and Congo because of Zero, to think all of that and what they would do, must be hell on earth for Noe and the youths that followed them, all of them knowing where they'd end up, all of them knowing they'd probably have the same path as the one I am predicting for myself—well, it's hard to think all of that for myself; because that's what I am now: a Cat. But surely, if there's one thing I know from knowing the Catz this long, is that there's surely more Catz on the way for these Catz, down and injured (or so they want to make us believe).