| Killing Mago was the simple part. The hard part was what to do with her. Her body and her body parts. To understand how Stewart found himself in this particularly unusual position we need to start right from the beginning. Stewart Winter had for his entire life been nothing more than simply ordinary. A simply ordinary soul from Sandusky, Ohio, where, at the age of forty-six, he still lived with his mother. Stewart had been a travel writer for ‘Explore the Midwest’. He had held this position for nearly twenty years. His articles on the Winter Carnival of Bowling Green, Ohio, the Fishing Festival of Chapel Plains, Iowa, and the Haunted Woods of Greenville, Indiana, had made Stewart a favorite among the twenty-five hundred readers that the magazine’s circulation had fallen to over the last decade. Stewart’s mother Marie had never been happy with Stewart’s career choice in life. She had wanted him to be an accountant like his father. Marty Winter had gone out for a dozen donuts before Stewart was born and had never returned. Marie continued to leave the porch light on, waiting for his big step to slide up onto it until the day after Stewart’s twelfth birthday. “Marty never knew which way was up or down and he was too proud to ask for directions,” Marie would say to her neighbors, in the hope that they believed he had mislaid his way back from the donut store. “I always told him he would be lost without me. He just never listened.” Stewart was not very good with numbers, so he told his mother that he was destined to be a great writer. She felt writing was only for alcoholics, drug addicts, and perverts. However, Stewart’s destiny did not turn out as planned. Instead he settled for being a press operator. A press operator who lived at home with his mom. “This is a good thing baby, everyone needs to know their place in life and Stewy your place is with mommy,” she explained as she rocked him in her arms. “We both know you’re a good boy but you would be nothing without mama,” Marie would sigh this little saying into his ear, day after day. It is said, “that there is someone for everyone,” but was there really anyone for a short, bald, round, half- blind, press operator who still slept in the same bedroom his mother had changed his diapers in, all those years ago? After years as the chief, and, in fact, only press operator at ‘Explore the Midwest’ Stewart’s big break finally arrived, entirely unannounced. Dennis Magee’s eardrum had burst and he could not report on the Davenport, Missouri Annual Barrel Races. Stewart volunteered without a blink of the eye. With one- hundred-and-fifty dollars, a Polaroid camera, and a small suitcase full of clothes, Stewart boarded the Greyhound bus and set to tackling his first ever-writing assignment. Marie cried for the entire time Stewart was away despite the fact that he called her twice a day. “You should be ashamed of what you are doing to me!” she would scream down the other side of the line. He wrote an article that focused more on the trees he saw along the roadway than the races. He took a picture of the fourth place finisher instead of the winner, and boarded the wrong bus home. However, Dennis Magee died of complications in the hospital and no one applied for the new position. Stewart was handed the job with no questions asked. A twist of circumstance returned again almost two decades later. This time, however, on the crueler side of the fence of fate. Julian Press purchased ‘Explore the Midwest’ and decided to “go a different direction.” This meant Stewart Winter was “out.” As compensation, Julian Press offered the now middle-aged boy, a position as a travel writer covering the economy hotels up and down the Pacific Coast. The Pacific Coast of Mexico! Marie was not happy about her boy being gone for so long. Truth be told, at first neither was Stewart. He had become adjusted to the routine of his life, the boredom of his meager existence, and, of course, he had become very, very used to living with his mother. As fate weaved itself around the days, his initial unhappiness suddenly screeched itself into near perfection. Stewart slowly began to see his new position as a tremendous opportunity. An opportunity to continue writing. To see new places. To leave not only the Midwest but also the country itself. Most of all, this was a-one-chance-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to leave his mother. For after that first trip to Davenport, Marie had always been present alongside Stewart. She was there, she assured him, in order to make sure he didn’t get on the wrong bus ever again. And she was there in order to make sure that he never took the wrong picture ever again. She assured him over and over again that that was why she was always and, all the time, there. When Stewart wrote of the Winter Carnival, the Haunted Woods, or the Fishing, Festival, Marie was always by his side. She made sure he ate his greens, tied his shoes, and, of course, completed the job correctly. You can bet your last dollar that Marie made sure that Stewart would never forget for one single minute of his waking life that, he would be lost without her. Stewart astutely took advantage of the fact that his new job paid much less than his previous one, in order that he could no longer afford for mother Marie to ride shotgun. As a crying Marie was packing his suitcase the night before, she repeated the same solid mantras he had heard throughout his life. Words that crept like woodworm under his skin and sucked, like a baby, at his blood supply. “You won’t last a week without me.” “How will you know what picture to take?” “You’re just like your father, hopeless without directions.” On and on she cried out in low, desperately low, whispers. Stewart Winter fought back the smile of a happy man. If Stewart was happy to be rid of his mother, he was even happier to be rid of the Transportation Security Administration team that he came in contact with at the airport. He had heard of these T.S.A. people from co-workers and read of their “security efforts” in other travel journals. However, this was his first, close to hand and face-to-face experience. As he prepared to board his plane, a group of these steroid filled ex-football players with guns and nightsticks approached him. They questioned his spanking new passport, and then searched his luggage. They laughed and teased him about the labeling system his mother had insisted upon, and all of the usage instructions she had left inside each bag. One of them, Bob, even held up Stewart’s underwear for all the other passengers to see. Underwear with his name sewn on. The laughter was generously humiliating. As if this was not enough, they questioned him as if he was a common criminal on the purpose of his travel to Mexico. Before letting him aboard the plane, they subjected him to a very full, very thorough, body search. Stewart Winter was sure that he could feel blood seeping from his rectum as the plane left the runway heading to Mexico. One way or the other, there were tears in his eyes. On arrival, Stewart was nonchalant about the twelve-hour ensuing bus ride. “So what!” he thought to himself. Over the years with ‘Explore the Midwest’, Stewart had experienced many long bus excursions across America. However, as the bus finally pulled itself into the sleepy town of Pacifico, a full day after Stewart’s plane had departed the tarmac, his nonplus attitude had somewhat changed to a sobering reflection on the marvels of drop-dead exhaustion. There had been the Six-hour flight to Mexico City followed by an hour’s subway ride, which, by the way, had included three station changes. This led to an indeterminably large bus terminal followed by a further hour in the crowded and dusty depot waiting for the indeterminably long ride ahead. The day-turned-into-night-turned-into-day journey to the coast also included a further six hours on the side of the road waiting for an accident to be cleared away. The bus’s air conditioning working sporadically as the passengers looked passively out of the steam filled windows of their mobile sauna. Nobody complained. There were, of course, no stops for food or beverages and the shuffling, swerve-filled, unforgiving bumpy Mexican highway system left him so nauseous, he couldn’t sleep a single solitary wink for the entire time. Yet, what Stewart found the most trying amongst all these trying factors was the sensory overdose. The too much. The competitive and contradicting salsa beats coming from three different music machines. The smell. Mostly it was the smell that threw him into turmoil. Thirty-plus bodies whose sweat, over the hours, had slowly cooked into one indistinct mass of heated, melting, rancid flesh. As the hours went by he gave in to the language of survival. And then suddenly, without forewarning of any kind, he arrived. The over-laden, bus came abruptly to a halt. Lowering his contorted and now convulsing body onto the exit step of the boneshaker he had come to know as home, all was suddenly and even lovingly, forgiven. The hours of deep discomfort without a by your leave simply vanished as if they had never actually existed. A sensory forgiveness flowed into his sticky, clogged up veins as the pollution free air muscled through his nostrils. The heat from the sun’s rays delved deep into his spine, a forgiving set of vertebrae whispered through his tendons. His eyes breathed in the sight before him. A heavenly blue sky bleeding relentlessly into a heavenly blue sea, in endless episodes of aqua upon aqua. He breathed it in with his eyes. His nose. His lips and his bittersweet bones. There was a stillness that was new to him. It made him nervous with its touch. He protested with a repetition of desperate thoughts. Until his body, simply and without warning, surrendered. “Is this what freedom feels like?” Stewart asked himself. This sense of total independence was gracefully replaced by an overwhelming sense of beauty. From the top of that small Mexican town, where the bus had come to its end, Stewart Winter’s eyes gazed and gazed upon the Pacific Ocean for the very first time. No picture could represent the size of what to him appeared to be a giant blue canvass. No words that he knew could translate this bowl of beauty. This could not be taught, sung or written about. The waves were as tall as any house he had ever visited. The sea threw them forward with a never-ending frequency. They arrived at the shoreline with a criminal force. They crashed his hearing and deafened his vision. Yet within these deep, blue dramatic waters there lay a boneless, inert handmaiden of calm that beckoned him in to swim in her, to partake in her swirling arches. To play God in her bloodstream. This small Mexican coastal town was no different to many others in its layout. Like its other Pacific partners, it sat on a hillside overlooking the ocean. High ground precaution. A vantage point from the increasing flooding and increasingly rare, tropical storms. High on that hill, the West of the eye looked out upon the mighty Pacific Ocean. And to the East; it glimpsed the gorges and peeked the peaks of the Sierra Madre del Sur. Stewart knew no Spanish. He began his long walk from the pueblo’s highest point, clumsily tripping over the few street vendors still open in the late, hot afternoon. No amount of read-up had prepared him for such a climate. In his shiny shorts and cotton shirt he felt over- dressed. He humped and dumped his heavy bags up and down, up and down. His breath shortening. His sweat increasing. This was to be the first of six towns he would be exploring on this trip. Naturally he had picked the most southern destination first and his itinerary planned for him to make his way back up the coast. Besides this being the most southern town, it was also the smallest town on the list. His research had told him that there were less than fifteen thousand community members. The small town or large village had been a hot spot for surfers in the early seventies, but in time its clientèle had begun to divert to the mega resorts of the region instead. All that now remained were two small hotels and a handful of inexpensive eateries. From time to time an old white Volkswagen bug marked “taxi” would pass by and honk its horn at him. Stewart tried, despite the whip of the heat, to capture a feel for the place, as he had done so many times before. Just as his forces were finally crumbling into sweet deserts of desperation, a ray of hope sprang before him in the image of sweet smelling, fresh-baking, home-cooking, Mexican style. The small restaurant was half-filled with locals who stared at him with one single pair of eyes, shrouded in centuries of history. The words “do you come in peace?” were on the tip of every tongue and in the mind of every eater. Stewart was hungry. Hunger wiping history from the blackboard sat him down, undisturbed by the staring. In fact, he was used to staring. In Ohio he was stared at all the time. The history was different but the feeling was the same. His hunger and their hunger were no different to his mind. His waitress, an orderly woman in her mid-fifties, was curtailed by his lack of Spanish. Stewart, on the other hand, was also quite shocked that neither the woman nor anyone else there spoke a word of English. He thought everyone spoke English. He attempted to ask some questions, trying to express his wishes by pointing, grunting, and of course hand gesturing. His original desire had been for a plain slice of beef and a long glass of cold milk. What actually arrived that day was an entirely different matter. A whole range of chicken parts smothered in green and red sauces, and a local beer with a napkin tucked into its neck were placed before him. Rarely getting what he ever wanted from his own mother’s kitchen, Stewart sat, looked down, breathed in, and ate up. Cleaned the plate before him, not a word said. As he returned to the pavement, belly bloated and braved-up, his mind set itself on the other most important aspect for his good health. Sleep. If a shower accompanied it as well, heaven would surely be his, he thought. With this aim permeating all others, he began the search for either one of the two hotels the town offered to its visitors according to his research. It wasn’t long before he realized that every street in the town offered a new turning and every new turning turned into another street. The heat was pushing up the pavement. The night was moving in and Stewart was practically on the verge of exploding with fatigue. The unfairness of his plight began to prey on him. Meanwhile he could hear the constant, constant chant of his mother’s mantra plucking at him from behind, “You’re just like your father, no good with directions. You’re just like your father, no good with directions.” Over and over the words ran their ground like a train chugging over hill and dale. Now furious with his lack of grip on the situation, he shouted out loud to himself, “How the hell can I be lost in such a small, goddamn place?” He knew he would have to ask directions. He chose a short, young boy around the age of fourteen to endure the task. It was all the boy could do but grin and run. For all that was not said, the communication was perfect. “What an idiot you are!” said the boy with his eyes. “What an idiot I am!” said Stewart to himself, for the third time that day. “No hay!” the boy shouted back to him as he bolted through the shadows. After hearing this phrase a multitude of times since arriving, Stewart finally began to take notice of its constancy. He sat on the sidewalk and pulled out his English-Spanish translation book. “There aren’t any!” It translated perfectly. Panic now sat in. The sun was beginning its fast recline and still no sign of a hotel bed. “Come on Stewart, you can solve this, don’t panic!” he thought. “Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, I know exactly what to do, exactly what to do!” And he did. Stewart decided he would call his mother long-distance. And she would know, exactly, what to do. A few minutes later Stewart Winter stood staring at a pay phone with an international phone card in his right hand. His heart sank in communion with the sun. The mere memory of his mother’s voice on the other end buckled his knees at the bone. He stared at the phone. He couldn’t pick up. As his hands went back into his pockets, his knees straightened like a puppet with its strings pulled. With his newfound courage still hanging in the air, he turned away from the phone and bumped headlong into Roberto. “Ah, ello, you lost Señor?” Roberto spoke some English. Quite a lot of English it turned out. Stewart found out that the town was full of places to eat but there was not a hotel bed for another 200 miles. “No worries, no problema,” ranted the excited Roberto, “There are bungalows on the beach. I take you there. They beau—ti---full,” he savored the word like a good wine, swishing it around his mouth, “No problema, todo bien!” There was something in the immense enthusiasm of Roberto that gave Stewart the creeps. His options, however, were few. Roberto had an old, green Ford pick-up. There was no room in the cab for the two men and the bags, so Stewart’s luggage was tossed in the bed of the truck like sacks of old potatoes. A squawking chicken made his presence known as the bags flew through the air, landing like planets from the heavens directly around it’s claws. Before they arrived at the bungalows, Roberto needed to stop and purchase some gasoline. He filled up the little, old, green truck and then smiled kindly as he asked Stewart to pay. Stewart continued paying as they stopped again for beer, cigarettes, eggs, and tortillas. The bungalows were most definitely on the beach. During high tide the water would easily wash into some of the units. Each bungalow was about the length and width of two average-size toilet stalls. Made exclusively of wood and palm they contained no fan, no window, no security, and no pest protection. The group of eight bungalows all shared an outdoor bathroom, shower, and kitchen. The owner of the beautiful bungalows was Eduardo, a plump man in his sixties. Eduardo had a glass eye that was yellowing from age and a fairly unlikable disposition. He did speak a little English but it was almost impossible to understand. Masticating large amounts of food whenever he spoke either Spanish or English assured his listeners of little linguistic satisfaction. Stewart paid the one hundred and fifty pesos for the one night he was staying and asked Roberto if he could pick him up the next day and deliver him to meet the bus. “Ay, Señor, bus no come till Monday.” Stewart paid the three hundred pesos for the two nights he was now staying and thanking Roberto asked him would he be so kind as to pick him up late Monday afternoon. “Claro que sí, Señor, no problema, todo bien.” After a very short, very cold shower, Stewart walked back to his bungalow for an over-earned sleep. He laughed when he realized there was no lighting. He laughed again when he bumped into a chair and his ankle stung like a swarm of bees. He laughed because he could hear the waves almost running under his bed. He laughed because he could sense independence knocking at his door and because hope stood holding his hand. He laughed because he had survived so far. His newfound freedom, however, knocked him sideways during the next eight hours of paradise lost. The heat crawled beneath his belly and under his nails. Anxiety held him as gripped in her lock just as the lack of one on his door had him gripped in terror of his life. He fumbled around for his shorts and changed his flannel pajamas in the dark. Just as he was beginning to settle again, the effects of the chicken with the red and green sauces that accompanied it woke him to tell him all about their own version of independent survival. Stewart Winter passed out from exhaustion just a little before sunrise. The first time Stewart saw Mago she was standing just outside his bungalow door. The sound from her sweeping had woken him. He rolled over in his bed and looked out of his doorway to find the owner of the noise. What he saw was a woman flinging her entire body weight from side to side in a kind of disco dance with a broom. Mago’s dreadful attire, as well as her special way of cleaning, quite simply overwhelmed him. In her early thirties at most, she carried herself like an old woman. Her back, bent to a life-time of sweeping, was arched in such a way that she had to turn her whole head around to face her audience. Her hands, from years of attending the worn wood of her broom, were gnarled at the knuckles and taut at the tendons. Her skin had lost all buoyancy; all color, all life, like an olive, long forgotten at the bottom of the jar. She was no more than three feet tall. She was dressed from head to foot in brown polyester overalls. Other than her forearms, her hands and her face, there was no part of her exposed to fresh air or sunlight. Her hair was long, lank and jet-black and held together with a cheap elastic band. She wore white, high top boots with beige, frilly socks. She was, without a shred of a doubt, a sight for sore eyes. Stewart Winter climbed slowly out of bed and made his way to the door. He wanted to study Mago in her entirety. She wore no ring and her solemn brow told a story of sadness and solitude. Stewart watched as her image unfolded itself. A petite thing with a potbelly struggling on heels unsuited to both her job and demeanor. A bold, hairy mole sat proudly on her nose. As she made her way to the kitchen area, Stewart followed cautiously. He did not want to be discovered. She began to clean the dishes. He smiled as she frowned and cursed in Spanish while scrubbing the leftover plates from the night before. He admired her as he watched her open up the fridge and spit directly into the half-full lemonade jug. And he found his heart begin to quicken pace as he watched her pick her teeth and hide the contents in a wrapped up sandwich for some unknown guest to enjoy at a later date. He continued his stalking as she began cleaning the toilets. As she bent over and cleaned out the basin barehanded, he saw that one of her small breasts was larger than the other and that her buttocks had no substance at all. His heart began to pound with sexual arousal. Her lifelessness. Her bitter expression. The body she dragged around like extra luggage was not the quirks that turned him on. It was the perfectly rounded, expertly molded hump on her back that was moving Stewart’s world. Mago was an unhappy, unlucky, under-loved hunchback. As he thought of her lying flat on her stomach, her glorious hunchback completely exposed and he gently licking her deformation with a delighted palette, his arousal increased beyond his control. He turned away from her, filling himself with the image of her. He closed his eyes tighter and tighter pressing against himself until he physically hurt. Stewart climaxed in beautiful and sudden bouts of pain. “PUTA MADRE!” Upon opening his eyes, Stewart was horrified to find Eduardo was staring directly at him and snacking on a shiny, green apple. Nonchalantly, between bites, Eduardo would look at his daughter leaning on her hands and knees over the toilet bowl and spit some obscenity her way. He finished the apple and dropped it on the ground. Without saying a word, he suddenly picked up a mop and threw himself towards Mago, cursing into her face. Mago, with a terrified look in her eyes, tried to crawl to a standing position to escape the onslaught. It was useless. Stewart made his way back to his sleeping quarters, his face red from an embarrassment that was no longer his own. He did not see Eduardo beating Mago but he could clearly hear the muffled sounds of the mop stick hitting the young woman’s clothing and he could clearly hear the whimpering of her voice as she begged him to stop. An hour later, Stewart was completely dressed, packed, and ready to leave. He could find something better than this surely. He sat quietly on the edge of his bed with the door to the bungalow closed. The day had turned overcast. His room had darkened considerably. Out of the darkness the door swung wide-open. Eduardo stepped aside and his hugely proportioned wife, Lizzy, entered to the right, introducing herself in her movement. Her English was good. Mago also entered the scene and shuffled to the left. Eduardo remained in the doorway between the two and between them all they devoured the remaining sunlight. Mago did not look up but Stewart could tell she had been crying. He took in her aroma. She smelled like cleaning supplies, which aroused Stewart much to his bafflement. “Mago speak no English,” snapped the enormous Lizzy “So I make translate between husband and yourself to our daughter.” Stewart nodded his head in comprehension. “Mago,” he thought, “what a beautiful name.” The combination of the words Mago and daughter however, had an unsettling effect on him. “I would like to say big sorry to you, Señor Winter, for our daughter. Whatever she do, we not understand. Please, you must forgive of her. She is child of devil. She know not nothing.” Eduardo could not look up at Stewart. His shame was too much. Stewart looked puzzled and he was certainly confused. “Whatever we do for you to make better her horrible action you must to let us know please.” Eduardo continued, “Please my wife and me, we beg to you!” Looking directly at Mago, Stewart announced boldly, “She is not a child of the devil. She is an angel. An angel.” As the words were translated roughly and begrudgingly, Mago slowly, very slowly produced a huge smile from her tender, pinched face. A smile so big that it reached one end of the beautiful bungalow to the other, in turn revealing huge, yellow, and tombstone teeth that told their own tale of time. A smile so big that it lit up her pond black eyes and wide creases appeared all over her cheeks, as if to underline the words. “Angel. Angel. Yo soy ángel,” she repeated to herself. “Señor Stewart, what you say?” Eduardo and Lizzy both stared at Stewart as if he was out of his mind. “I am saying that I have never seen such a beautiful creature,” said Stewart. He rose to his feet slowly gliding towards Mago. He reached down and kissed her smack on the lips. Hesitantly, but as if her life depended on it, she returned the kiss. Stewart stood transfixed admiring the object of his intoxication and licking its odor and taste on his lips. Kissing Mago tasted as sweet and as rancid as month old milk. Eduardo and Lizzy stepped backwards out of the bungalow in horror. Holding each other in fear, barely able to comprehend the disgusting scene they had just witnessed. “What is you say, Señor? What mean this? You joke with us?” Eduardo stood hissing a succession of questions from the safety of the door. Stewart, already beginning to disbelieve his own actions, added to his newfound situation by shouting back, “I want to marry your daughter!” The room stopped moving for everyone until Lizzy, thinking quickly on her feet, jumped back in, “Five hundred dollars, not cent less!” “Ok.” “Dollars not pesos!” “Understood. Mucho muy understood.” The courtship of Stewart and Mago was brief and unusual. Stewart had no intention of alerting Marie and Mago’s family had no desire to celebrate the couple’s bliss. It seemed that Eduardo and Lizzy had done the very best to keep Mago their terrible secret since her birth, some thirty-three years ago. Lizzy was a virgin when she wedded Eduardo. As early as the actual wedding night it became apparent that there was a bridal of unspent wishes that were to bear themselves out in the flesh, shamelessly. Lizzy’s sexual techniques and prowess, and Lord knows where she learned them, put Eduardo into such a hypnotic trance that he lost three consecutive jobs in a row in order to feed her fires. Just three months after the rings had been shared before eighty witnesses, Lizzy conceived. Unfortunately, the celebration of life in her belly marked the moment of death in the bedroom. Lizzy’s desire lied down and died instantly on receiving the news from the family doctor. This tragic turn of events almost killed Eduardo. He pleaded on hands and knees for a touch, a kiss, or a flicker of the eye that would tell him he was still a wanted man. Lizzy, riddled with superstition, was convinced that passion during pregnancy would cause unimaginable injury to the unborn child. Eventually as the bump got bigger, the begging turned into threats. Lizzy, concerned and confused, turned to her sisters for advice. They laughed in her face. Better take care of your man, or someone else will was sister Margarita’s stern warning, flickering her eyes as she mouthed out the words. So the teenage bride gave into her husband’s wishes. When Lizzy saw Mago’s frail, mutant body for the first time she spat in Eduardo’s face. His lust, she told him, had created a “monster.” Shortly after, the small family packed up and drove to the other side of the country, shame sitting in the passenger seat. During the long journey the distraught new mother contemplated ways she could “put the baby out of its misery.” Lizzy’s Catholic guilt writhed happily away alongside shame. They looked back at her from the front seat in the old Chevrolet as if she were the devil herself. For the next three decades Lizzy went to church every single morning to ask God to forgive her. In turn He told her to sleep alone for the rest of her married life. The lack of engagement parties and a lavish ceremony did not hamper the love affair of Mago and Stewart. They walked the beach often, holding hands, kissing, and laughing at each other’s bad jokes. They took turns teaching their languages to each other. He would point out an object and pronounce it in English and she would follow suit. As their vocabulary increased, so did their love. Stewart had never felt like this. He had never had a person, let alone a woman, actually try to understand him. She was the exact opposite of the only other woman he had known well, his mother. The woman of barking orders and rare hollow smiles. Mago held his hand softly, her face, when she looked up at him, a shining peach of kindness. Enjoying his freedom and being in love ensured he did not miss Sandusky, Ohio or his mother for a single minute. Mago was equally happy. Even though she understood little of what Stewart was saying she loved the fact that he never stopped saying it. It made her feel important to be spoken to. No one had ever really spoken to her and here was a man who wined and dined her every night of the week. It made no difference to her that people stared at them as if they were refugees from the circus. Cold floors-wet laundry, cold food, wet feet and the endless silences between sleep, had no bearing on this new, delightful life. She gained more weight, confidence and spirit and walked with the gait of triumph. He began to buy her gifts. A blouse. A ring. A small frog statue made from jade. One Christmas many years earlier, a boy who had lived with his parents in one of the bungalows for a while had given Mago a small doll. She played with the doll everyday, calling it Bebé. One-day Bebé’s dress needed washing and when young Mago took it off to clean, she saw that on the doll’s plastic back the little boy had drawn a hump in blue crayon. Mago tossed the doll at once into the sea. Bebé had been the only gift she remembered ever having. It took Stewart a week longer than he expected to finish writing about the town. Once finished, he faxed it off and asked Mago if she would accompany him on the rest of his tour. Naturally there was no objection from either Eduardo or Lizzy. If shame moved over perhaps there was less room for guilt to confess from. The happy couple toured the Mexican Pacific with a ferocious appetite. In the beginning, buses and budget accommodations satisfied their hungry spirits. But these were soon replaced by rental cars and hotels with more and more stars graded to their status. Corner taco stands were replaced by buffets and five course dinners. It seemed Julian Press was very impressed with Stewart’s work. His information was unique, timely, and interesting. So professionally valuable was his writing that Julian extended his stay for four more locations and increased his salary and his expense account to match. Mago was undoubtedly a great asset to Stewart. Her Spanish along with her negotiating skills were indispensable. She and Stewart worked side-by-side in discovering unique information to assist the average gringo on his travels. However, it was her sense of self-discipline that was crucial to Stewart’s success. She knew when his deadlines were and she ensured he met them: dead on time. The first time that Stewart and Mago made love, it lasted for four hours. The transition of years of mutually shared innocence to a union of bone-tingling howling could not be rushed. Mago lay naked on her stomach hardly able to breath. The breeze from the ocean blew through the open balcony window in a scene right out of Hollywood. Stewart hovered over her at the side of the bed, staring unashamedly. Slowly he leaned forward. The thought of journeying into her body terrified and delighted him simultaneously. With a certain temerity he began to kiss her beginning at her ankles. Curling his tongue into her flesh, into her blood and into her veins, he ate his way upwards. He would flip her back and forwards again and again, kissing the rivers and skies and mountains of her landscape but never once foraging outside the gates of the unknown. Until the end. Until the moment could not longer be delayed. Somewhere between sky and sea, he pushed the rock of her humped back up to meet him. Embracing it with the urgency of single-minded desperation. The oasis in the desert. The island out at sea. The parachute. The net at the bottom of a long, long fall. “I love you, Mago.” “Te amo, Stewart.” The two were wed in a private ceremony in Acapulco the very next week. By the time Stewart returned to Marie it was nearly five months later. Upon his arrival she had planned his favorite meal of roast beef and potatoes. She had also prepared a speech. The speech became void and the house became speechless as she discovered his favorite meal was now taco al pastor and that he had a wife. A wife that she, Marie, had had no part in choosing and one that she, Marie, could barely talk to, never mind deliver her well practiced speech. Stewart enjoyed the first night back in Ohio tremendously. He said little. His mother squirmed at the dinner table. Later that night as Mago showered, Marie sat at the bottom of Stewart’s bed. At first she reprimanded him and threatened him for his behavior and actions. Then she pleaded with him to end her nightmare. During the entire time Stewart held his mother’s hand while ignoring her remarks. When Mago re-entered the room, he escorted Marie back to hers. Upon his return, he left his life-long bedroom door slightly open to be sure that Marie could here the sounds of him and Mago. Hear them once again celebrating their marriage vows, this time under the Sandusky night sky. The first time Stewart ever heard his mother truly laugh was the very next morning. In fact, the unusual noise awoke him from a beautifully, deep sleep. He scrambled into some clothes and tumbled, half awake, into the kitchen where he discovered Marie sharing a cup of freshly brewed coffee with his wife, Mago. As he entered it was all the women could do to barely glimpse his way. As though swiping a fly off a shared shoulder, they looked him up and down with a dual and disparaging eye and continued with their conversation. When Stewart returned home from work that evening with plans to take Mago apartment hunting, Marie and Mago had already decided that it would be best if they all lived together. “The money you save you can use to buy a real house, Stewy,” Marie explained. The eager look on his beautiful wife’s face kept Stewart quiet. But it was the quiet of a dangerous thought. A thought that, given air, would kill its listener instantly. Stewart had no idea what had bonded the two women. He hoped it was Mago’s good nature or maybe the love the two women shared for him. But as time went on, it began to feel like something a little more sinister. The next thirty-eight months went by quickly. Those months, by anyone else’s account, would have been considered good years for the newlyweds. Stewart’s reporting and writing on economical travel in Mexico became so popular that he was given his own division at Julian Press. He was assigned to write an annual travel guide about every country in Latin America. Even though he had several teams out in the field working for him, each one of their travel journals would bare his name. In no time at all, Stewart was a celebrity. With fame came a new set of social circles, money, and a move to Long Island. Stewart Winter as they say, “had arrived.” The fame and money came with a new set of responsibilities as well, meaning less time for his bride, and inevitably more time for family unions that did not involve him. Marie and Mago became best friends. Marie and Mago enrolled in language school. Marie took Spanish and Mago English. Marie and Mago enrolled in a fitness class. Together they helped the other reach the weight and body shape they desired. Later, trips to the dentist and to the dermatologist for a little help here and a little help there became the weekly norm. When it was time to move to New York, Mago insisted that Marie come and live with them. Complying but not wholly compromising, Stewart had the contractor build Marie her own apartment within the new house. This included a separate entrance and a separate kitchen. The doors of these rooms went unused and the kitchen remained spotless as Marie ate at the couple’s table for breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week. Naturally, Stewart tried at times to talk with his wife about what was happening to their lives, but conversations always fell apart half way through. Life was busy and besides, Mago had simply stopped listening to her husband. Mago found America and New York very exciting. Marie was the sister, the friend, as well as the mother she had never had. Quietly and dignified Stewart kept his feelings to himself knowing he was losing the woman he married. The simple girl with the humped back that he loved so much was fading into the distance. They no longer made love. It was all he could do to see her. He could not pleasure her in conversation, touch, or time spent. She was slipping out of his hands. Mago had become a leech for all things modern: designer clothing, designer cooking, and designer thoughts. She insisted on eating only at the finest restaurants and insured that they received invitations for them all to be seen with those that really mattered. She watched over every dollar he earned. Through books and seminars she educated herself on the best financial strategies for her husband’s newfound wealth. She was a natural at calculated investment and within a year of opening a book on the subject, she was earning as much as her husband from the interest. One night as Mago watched Stewart being interviewed on national television, she thought, “Where would you be without me? You would be lost without me!” She began shouted at the television screen as she worked herself up into a frenzy. Stewart, on the other hand, would invariably wait until she had gone to bed and spend hours staring at her while she slept. His face reflecting the stranger he had made and the fool he had become. “How did I lose control of my life, yet again?” Stewart was never consulted on anything in his house. Marie and Mago made every decision together. At work he was the king and held court. At home he was merely playing the jester. This was never more evident than when Mago decided to have some plastic surgery done without a word to him. She went to have her nips and tucks completed at a special spa in the mountains of West Virginia. She and Marie were gone for almost six weeks. Mago surprised Stewart in the bedroom when she returned. As he entered it at her request, he was struck by its transformation. She had flung cloths and silks over lampshades and windows and lit candles and incense in every corner. She had erotic belly dancing playing on the DVD. “Do you want me to dance for you like that, Stewy?” she asked, pouring wine for them both into large golden goblets like a practiced seductress. She was covered in red satin from head to foot. She began to peel off his clothing one item at a time and ground herself slowly onto his lap. She was allowing him, for the first time in years, to be her master. He couldn’t resist and wanted to take her there and then, but she continued to play her game. She mounted him with the dignity of a princess while still covered with the blood red veil and, as she rode the wheel of fortune, she let the cloth gently fall away from her face as if by magic. The black hair now blonde! The mole now gone! She screamed with delight and he felt he was cheating on his wife. He liked it. Mago grabbed his hands frantically and placed them on her butt. It was round. She moved against him faster, forcing his hands to her breasts. Once again, her pace quickened. Her breasts had more than doubled in size. As uneasy as he was with the new and improved Mago, Stewart was having the best time in bed he had had for years. He was in charge once again. Whatever was going on, he knew all this effort was for him. He threw her down onto her belly to mount her from behind, as he loved to do and caress the long awaited curve of his deepest fantasy. The immediate sensation of absence under his sweaty palm set a shudder through his body. It was no longer there. The hump. It too had been surgically removed. The finest blades of the country had sliced off the landscape of his deepest lust. He switched off and died out like a television on a Saturday night when there’s nothing else left to watch. “It’s ok, mi amor, your mother says it happens to all men from time to time.” Mago smiled as she rocked him in her arms with all the candles blown out. “I am sure you will be better mañana.” Stewart was not better. Ever again. The following month Stewart’s in-laws arrived for their first ever visit. It was to be a three-day visit and on their first night they all went out to dinner. The dinner went surprisingly well. During coffee however, Stewart noticed how the three women split off into a conversation that had them not only entirely excluding him and Eduardo but glancing his way just a little too often. As his curiosity peaked, he noticed that it was Mago doing most of the talking. “What the hell are you talking about?” Stewart suddenly blurted out unable to contain himself any longer. “Stewy, that is no talk for the dinner table!” replied Marie, horrified. “Mago, answer me!” Stewart demanded, shocked at his own voice. The lull of expectation that blanketed the restaurant at that moment was physically audible. Mago remained staring at Stewart. “Stewart Winter, have you no shame?” Marie snapped, her words cutting the air. Ignoring her, Stewart held his wife’s gaze. Mago stared right back at him. Standing up suddenly, she wiped her eye with her thumb and scuttled her bag together. Scrapping back their chairs, the two older women stood up as loyal as trained entourage and all three simultaneously disappeared into the ladies room to dissect the faux pas. “Maybe you should relieve that tension of yours in the bedroom,” Lizzy hissed to Stewart as she whisked passed him. That night, as they lay apart from each other, covered in a quilt of barking silence, Stewart began to seriously ponder his life. From the back room of his living hell he came to the conclusion that he would have no other choice but to kill Mago. Killing Mago was the simple part. The hard part was what to do with her. Her body and her body parts. As he began his walk into the world of murderous make believe, he revealed a part of himself he didn’t know existed. The ideas flowed from his imagination with a vital ferocity. He could pay someone to do it? He could poison her? She could fall overboard on a long needed Caribbean vacation? A drug overdose? A car accident? A suicide? Accidental electrocution? With each new idea Stewart grew in spirit and felt back on board his own ship. He was loving every thought of living with her dead. Stewart soon became obsessed with killing Mago. He thought about it when he played with himself during his morning shower and again when he typed out his travel pieces at work. He would daydream about it during his lunch break. In the evening sitting down to dinner for three, he would look up at Mago dreamily, imagining her face no longer moving its lips. Sex suddenly broke wild. Mago did not know what had suddenly stirred her husband’s libido and she did not care. His desire to kill her increased his desire to bring her to life. As he ravished his wife into screaming for more, he realized her murder in his head. But as time went on his conscience began to prick him. It seemed every time Stewart would turn on the television it would be CSI solving crimes or some sort of investigation on how they caught a real life criminal. He started to sleep badly. His courage finally won over his fear, and before long he was dreaming up ways of disposing of the body so that it would never be found. Maybe he could tie a rock to it and drop her in Long Island Sound? There were wolves in the mountains that could feast on her. Better yet, a family cookout. He could have Marie, Lizzy, and Eduardo over and he could serve them ‘Mago on a plate.’ ‘Mago on a stick.’ Mago’s disposal after the business was definitely the crux of his problem. Killing Mago was the simple part. The hard part was what to do with her. Her body and her body parts. After weeks of planning, plotting and scheming, Stewart Winter, just an ordinary soul from Sandusky with little imagination, could think no more. He stared once again at his life and concluded that he would just have to live it out to its end, like everybody else. He was nobody and it was nothing. On Tuesday evening one day in November, Stewart Winter looked at his wife lying next to him soaked with the best perfume money could buy and simply rolled over and went to sleep. That should have been the end of the matter. However, a few weeks passed and one late Sunday night Stewart was taking a warm bubble bath. He lay half-conscious, soaped up to the eyeballs, staring out into space. On the radio they were playing some late night tunes from the forties. Mago entered the steamed-filled room. She smiled at him through the fog and kissed him on the forehead. In her hands she held a nice warm cup of hot chocolate. “What a nice surprise.” Stewart was genuinely impressed by the gesture. “Enjoy,” she whispered and she kissed his hand softly and left. He did enjoy his drink and his bath immensely. When Marie entered, he was still soaped up high, lost entirely in the radio and filled with hot chocolate, smiling. He was taken back at first by her unusual presence but settled his mind quickly. “I shouldn’t be so hard on her, I should accept her for who she is, and after all she’s here to stay.” Marie calmly smiled back, reached down and kissed him softly on the cheek. The words “what a nice surprise” remained on the tip of his tongue, as before he could move his mouth, Marie had snatched the cup from his hand. Stewart frantically tried to move his body. Any-part-of-it. He attempted to push a yell out of his belly. The result was the same. Nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. Nothing felt. Stewart Winter lay completely paralyzed in his over-filled, bubbled up, bathtub. He could still hear from inside it. He could still see from inside it. And he could still think from inside it. But he could not do from inside it. “What’s going on?” he yelled in silence. “Help me please!” he cried out to silence. “They can’t hear me. Why can’t they hear me?” Silence drowned out his words. He could see Mago’s shadow creep up behind Marie. They stood before him holding hands. “Honey, it’s ok,” explained Marie, “I assure you he feels no pain.” “Are you sure he can hear me?” Mago asked, her voice shuddering out the words. “Of course he can. This is the same stuff I used on my husband. Now go ahead honey, say your goodbyes.” Marie began to push Stewart’s head slowly down into the bath water. There was nothing he could do to resist her. With tears dropping down her face, Mago spilled her regrets into the bubbles of knees and hands slowly sinking under the water. “I am sorry Stewart, so sorry, but I just can’t do this anymore.” Marie pushed her gently but firmly out of the way. Sighing down at her only son’s face, Marie let him know that it, his end, was all for the best. The last thing Stewart Winter ever saw were the soap bubbles on the end of his nose. He smelled his last breath like it was his last breath. Fear had no part to play now. With his senses now fully collapsed a certain stillness slipped in. A stillness exactly like that of the moment when he stepped off the bus in Pacifico, all that time ago. But Stewart Winter’s last thoughts were not as clear-cut as they had been that day after that hell-filled, chicken-hatching, bone-shaking journey away from his mother’s grip. They were not about freedom at all. No, Stewart Winter’s dying mind was filled with the responsibility after liberation. The consequences of life after murder from those you love or those who loved you. As he drew his last breath Stewart Winter had no other thought in his head other than: “What the hell are they going to do with my body parts?” THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN MY WORK! ME ENCANTA MEXICO IS A COMPLETED MANUSCRIPT CONTAINING FOUR SHORT STORIES *KILL MAGO *THE PRAYER BOX *THE COYOTE *FLORIDA THE COVER ART AS WELL AS THE INTERIOR ART WORK IS COMPLETE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN REPRESENTING MY WORK OR PUBLISHING THIS MANUSCRIPT PLEASE CONTACT ME RAMIZ ADEEB AZAR AT info@meencantamexico.com FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ME ENCANTA MEXICO PLEASE VISIT http://www.meencnatamexico.com/libro.html |
Copyright © 2009 by Ramiz Adeeb Azar
