The interrogation room fell away, replaced by a swirling black morass and a lifetime of experiences. A village, slaughtered. Countless women, raped and killed. Enough coke to fell an army, blown off the naked skin of men and women both. A young boy who looked like him, into whose bed he snuck a time or two while his wife slept. And countless nights of Gulf breezes and swanky parties, on yachts, in palaces, on island beaches. As if this bastard hadn’t a care. As if his conscience weren’t touched by all he’d done, his heart full in those moments of laughter and light.
Again and again, though, one memory bubbled unbidden to the surface of his mind. Of a tunnel — dirt and darkness. Of men and women screaming. A low growl. Teeth gnashing in the black. The popcorn pop of gunfire. The metallic tang of discharged firearms and blood. Cool, clean air as the dirt above gave way to starry night, but still, the creature followed. And then the wet, sticky sound of flesh ripping from bone.
And then running. And then here.
One phrase over and over, a sturdy stitch that held the tattered scraps of memory together: El Chupacabra.
I released his soul from my grasp. He collapsed, gasping, to the table, tears streaming down his cheeks. Tears streamed down mine as well, and my borrowed flesh trembled with the fresh hell of its doubly borrowed memories. Like Guerrera, I couldn’t stop the tears. My strength comes from knowing not to even bother trying.
The two of us sobbing, I slammed him backward in his chair once more. His eyes were so full of fear — all the more so for seeing the echo of it on my borrowed cheeks. Cheeks built for smiling, not for this. It was clear to me he didn’t understand. Why I was crying. What it was we shared.
I didn’t need him to.
What I needed was a location.
Memories aren’t like a road map. They’re messy. Partial. Untrustworthy. I needed him to unpack them for me. To make sense of them. So I reached my hand back into his chest and squeezed until he wailed like an injured child. Then I let go and asked him questions. He answered — mostly lies. I squeezed again. And asked again. He changed his tune. Screamed so hard I bet he tasted blood.
It took longer than I expected. An hour, maybe more. But eventually, his answer stayed the same, no matter how hard I pushed. So I stopped.
Then I remembered that little boy, and I pushed a little harder, just for kicks.
It was Guerrera who gave up this rathole bar, and Telemundo who led me to my current meat-suit. A sergeant in the Mexican Army. Once I was through with Guerrera, I spent some time live-streaming the network’s coverage of the body-dump on I-83, trolling for a decent bag of bones to tool around in. Ortiz was far too soft for what I had in store. When this guy — Solares, according to the sewn-on patch on his uniform, since my fifty words of halting Spanish couldn’t keep up with what the well-quaffed talking heads back in the studio — stepped up to the mic, all sinew and barely concealed rage, I knew I’d found my man. Because I didn’t need to know what his words meant to know from his grave expression, his unwavering glare into the camera, that he was promising the perpetrators of this horrible act would be brought to justice.
What he didn’t know was that to make good on his promise, he’d need my help.
I waited until he finished his statement and left the makeshift podium, and then I left Ortiz behind. Solares flinched as if struck as I took him, but he didn’t fall — and though his mouth flooded with saliva as it prepared to purge me, he didn’t vomit. He was too disciplined — his mind too orderly. Like entering a strange kitchen, only to find it arranged exactly as you would have done. I opened a drawer, and boom bam — there was the button for his nausea response. Anyone who saw me/him mop the flopsweat from our brow probably assumed it was simply a case of delayed stage fright kicking in.
Of course, it’s possible Solares was not as disciplined as I’m giving him credit for. That the reason the transition was so easy was me. See, historically, I’ve preferred the quiet of the newly dead to the cacophony of a living meat-suit. Only these past few days, I’ve found myself hitching rides with the living more and more, and what’s worse, I’ve not minded it. Partly because the living have access to all manner of creature comforts in which the newly dead cannot indulge. Their credit cards have not been canceled. Their homes are not off-limits to the likes of me. Their IDs and access badges afford entry to all manner of hard-to-reach places, from prison cells to border crossings, and one never has to worry one’s meat-suit will be recognized by some poor sap who’ll subsequently piss himself and run screaming to the nearest tinfoil-hat blogger about how their uncle Merle is Patient Zero in the pending zombie apocalypse.
Like I said, partly for that reason. But partly not.
See, the dead — even the newly dead, so fresh and unspoiled by autolysis and/or putrefaction you’d have to check their pulse to tell — drive like that car you had in high school with a busted muffler and no third gear. They’re all tricky. Goofy. Hard to get the hang of.
But the living — they’re Ferraris, built for speed. for handling. They ride like a dream. Only catch is, you’ve got to subjugate their owner’s will before they’ll relent to your commands. Used to be, I didn’t like that much.
These past few days, though, I’ve begun to develop a taste for it. Found I kinda sorta enjoy it, like playing a game of psychological Whac-a-Mole. Only the mole I’m whacking is the thinking, feeling, human owner of the body I’ve gone and hijacked. And the fact I’m having fun is terrifying.
This gig of mine is a punishment for a life misspent. And as punishments go, it’s a doozy. When I collect a mark, there’s this beautiful, horrible moment in which I experience every decision that’s brought them to the front door of damnation, just as surely as if I made those choices myself. And likewise, every time I abandon one meat-suit in favor of another, I leave a little bit of what makes me me behind. The sum total of those two events is that every job, my humanity is slowly eroded, until one day — ten days from now, or ten minutes, or ten thousand fucking years for all I know — I’ll be as cold and vicious as the demons who pull my strings. I used to think that I could stave it off, that I could avoid my fate.
Now, as I admire the handling of my military-tuned meat-suit — its owner howling bloody murder from the makeshift cell I fashioned for him in the back corner of his own mind — I think it’s gonna be closer to ten minutes than ten thousand years.
In fact, I was beginning to wonder if I’ve already lost too much of me to well and truly care.
All this emo-bullshit inner turmoil meant nothing to the men in this nameless, rathole bar, though. All they saw was my fully automatic rifle aimed right at them, since I’d stopped off at the address on Solares’ ID long enough to swap my olive-drab fatigues and sergeant’s bars for some jeans, a T-shirt, and a gun. These were not Mensa cardholders — they were men of action, men of violence. Given half a chance to consider their predicament, one of three was bound to roll the dice and come up shooting. And while I doubted the world at large would miss any one of them, these men weren’t mine to kill. So best to head off any such ideas at the pass.
“Any of you fellas speak English?” I asked. None of them responded. though the one nearest me flinched when first I spoke, as if surprised to hear uninflected English come from so clearly Mexican a face.
I locked my eyes on him as I continued. “I spoke to Javier,” I said. “I know what happened. I’m not here to harm you.”
The two on the other side of the pool table looked twitchier than ever, my words clearly so much nonsense to them. But before either of them could do anything rash, the one nearest me raised his hands and patted the air on either side of him in a cool-out gesture.