The Scourges 7 That Evening, Death Appeared To Me In All Its Beauty!

Slaloming through the crowd of trees that stands in his path, he runs like the wind. With a punch, he smashes the huge rock that prevents him from progressing. He positions his arm over his shoulder, turns the palm of his hand backwards and as he leaps to avoid a beast more than twelve feet high and which has all the characteristics of a wolf, without even looking, he propels a red beam towards his pursuers.

Following his attack, which splits several trees in half in its path and temporarily blocks the path of those who chased him, the one who is neither really human nor really animal, but a savage endowed with a formidable power, jumps off the small cliff before being carried away by the current of the mountain river.

At the top of the cliff, four men in thick silver armour with a snake biting their tails watch closely the moss on the surface of the rapids below. Never breaking their stoic stance, they wait a few minutes, but confirming that the savage can no longer be seen, the largest of them makes a hand gesture to invite the other three to retrace their steps.

Not far away, sheltered by a large bush that has grown on a small gravel beach, the savage licks the wound that the big man has made on his forearm when he attacked him by surprise. A little tired and particularly hungry, he nevertheless decides to postpone the meal to get some rest.

As always when he lies down on his back and is about to enter the realm of silence, the savage can see strange things that do not correspond to this world. The houses that humans inhabit are different from those in this world. The carts have nothing in common with those he has seen on the roads or during his few night visits to the surrounding villages.

Exhausted after a long day spent avoiding a strange army of very strong men, the savage falls asleep with the image of brown hair.

…

Sunday 19 March 1986 - 04:50pm

"I can see a lot of very dark energy around you, my friend. Have you had a bad encounter or are you one of those fools who make the mistake of playing with their lives, thus inviting death to come visit him?"

With only the amenities of a metal bed with a mattress on top, and a very basic toilet, Mr. Samson, curse his misfortune. First, his son is cruelly taken away from him, then, as if this injustice was not enough, the police prefer to arrest him, an innocent and honest High School Teacher, rather than the guilty one who was before their eyes.

Mr. Samson is a little surprised by the words of the old man, a little drunk, who is sharing his cell, but to have peace, he decides not to play into the hands of a marginal, certainly still under the influence of bad quality alcohol.

"I'm just a man who sees everything he's built crumbling around him, nothing more."

The old man runs his finger under his nose to remove the snot that tends to escape from it in his final days and finding it slightly uncomfortable to stay that way, he wipes it off on his old military jacket. Hearing the words of the man who to him is still a young man, he nods his head, but deep down he is far from convinced by this simplistic explanation. About twenty seconds go by. So much time that is a torture for the old man who holds his mouth eager to open and finally, unable to resist any longer, he approaches this young man with to the dest.i.tute expression.

"Young man, you must be thinking I'm just an old fool and an alcoholic who doesn't smell very good, right? Your present look at my question is not misleading and though I humbly confess to being an alcoholic who doesn't smell as good as a garden in the spring, I can a.s.sure you I am anything but crazy."

"It's good for you not to acc.u.mulate all the faults, but please sir, could you avoid get too close?"

"Understood, I'll step back a bit, however young man, there's a very dark atmosphere around you. Let me tell you an old story and you can judge whether you believe me or not:

I may not look like one today with my drunken face and dirty clothes, but years ago I was a Lieutenant in our great and powerful army. World War II, Intervention in China in forty-six, in the same year I was put in charge of an armoury in the Philippines. The following year, ha, the following year, that's what we're interested in.

I don't know if you know, but Mexico joined the UN in 1945, but at that time a dissident group was threatening Valdes' political power and the highest international bodies didn't want that.

Forty-six, a few days before Christmas, I just back home, I was summoned by my superior who after giving me my new a.s.signment in a few words, ordered me not to leave the barracks.

My superior briefed me slightly about the coming mission, but this few words did not smell good. Anyway, the day after New Year's Day we landed near Toluca, a city not far from Mexico City.

The person we had to obey was wearing a well-ironed suit and very good quality shoes. His proud and somewhat haughty behavior was nothing like that of a real soldier, but we had our orders and although none of us said a word, the thirty-four soldiers present all felt a little pain at being handed over to the hands of a paper sc.r.a.per, certainly from a government agency.

At 01:00am the next morning we entered a property a few miles from where we had landed and at 01:02 the first shots rang out between the columns of the huge villa briefly occupied by the militia leader who was giving the government in power such a hard time.

I'll spare you of the battle, because I don't think it's of interest to a civilian like you, and I'll come straight to what interests us.

The mission had just been accomplished. 01:17am, a clean, timed attack, without a single one of our men losing their lives. The militia leader was lying on his bathroom floor with a bullet in his skull and already we were ready to leave the villa when something particularly unhealthy took over the whole property.

My comrades-in-arms of one night, saw nothing suspicious approaching. Nor did they feel the discomfort that penetrated every bone in my body and freeze my blood. I had the feeling that a spider of gigantic size was patiently weaving its web over our heads and viciously watching us as we waited to throw ourselves into it.

[a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as a sack of horsehair, the whole moon appeared as blood, and the stars fell to the earth.] I thought back to the Apocalypse according to Saint John and thought that maybe we had shed too much blood because, although the stars were firmly hanging in a beautiful night sky lit by a full golden moon, I felt the cataclysm. Not a cataclysm in the biblical sense of the word, but a small glimpse of the h.e.l.l that was specially reserved for us.

You know young man, war is not something clean and I had already seen countless things that I will not tell you about to avoid shocking you, but that evening I would have liked, no I unconsciously prayed for, but unfortunately I was not mistaken and quickly, viciously, the spider closed its thick web on us.

When a shot rang out, my comrades and I thought that a militiaman must have been hiding and if so, it would have been for the best, however, all our enemies were already cold. A second shot rang out, then a third and soon, I, who was subjected to this intense anxiety due to this incomprehensible feeling, a little behind, I witnessed the unthinkable.

I thought they had all gone mad. They were shooting everywhere, even targeting their own allies. None of them tried to take cover to protect their lives, but they were all running and firing bursts of bullets through the huge garden of the property.

All of them, may have seemed like alienated at first glance, but that wasn't the point. These brave men, who had braved death for their country many times, were no fools set free. No, they all had this dark energy that seemed to crush their skull like a vice could. Caught in the darkness that dominated their judgment and their actions, they continued this morbid little game and soon, until there were only three left, including me, one after the other, they all fell to the ground.

My two comrades who had miraculously survived appeared to come to their senses. They stood still, observed their immediate surroundings for a few moments, and then dropped their machine guns. A little relieved that these two comrades had unharmed, through the window of an office on the first floor of the villa, I was preparing to signal my presence to them, and that's when I noticed it.

As ugly as the pride of a politician or as beautiful as the pure gaze of a child, death can take on many appearances, and that evening death appeared to me in all its beauty, at least, until my comrades took their pistols out of their sheaths and had their heads blown off.

I thought a lot about it after that night and I believe that if my comrades are now missing in action, it is because we have upset the plans of death. Tell me, young man, have you upset death or are you just a collateral victim of one of its great plans? I see! I see! Well, if you have toyed with death, only it can deliver you from the many torments it has in store for you."