Victus walked across a lake that was on fire. Victus was unscathed. Not even a sliver of flame would harm her body from the oil-rich waters that blazed uncontrollably. She was looking for a mother who had lost her baby during the paralyzed abduction. She was six months pregnant at the time. Victus needed to find her as she did me because of “Nostro Proposito.”
These glowing spheres, orbs entered our airspace undetected all around the planet and sent out some sort of shock wave that froze all life on the planet to a motionless state but still coherent. In a split second, a bright flash engulfed the planet and the people where gone…disappeared…vanished. Entire families. Mother and child were taken from father. Husband taken from wife. All children under 17 years of age across the planet were gone. People that were asleep woke up to more than half of the people in their neighborhood missing.
Religious and scientific propaganda or theories were silenced and manipulated as the government secret intelligence agencies exposed it as a depopulation “act of war” by an unknown species.
The world was still controlled by the corrupt. They explained that the abduction was by a nefarious alien race and anyone that questioned it would be eliminated. Demonic anomalies would rise in the open out of man and war would continue.
It did unite the world to start a specialized military to pull all resources into developing a plan to counter this unknown alien force that they claimed invaded. The world was full of restless civilians that were hateful, angry, jealous, greedy, sinister, emotionless, and vengeful. It was hard to contain as people formed their own militias or organized crime syndicates to take territories of cities and land.
It was a confusing time globally after extraterrestrial beings took a portion of the human race. All people of faith were questioning why some Christians got taken away and some did not. Why did some Muslims get taken away and some did not? Why did some Jewish people get taken away and some did not? This was a question everybody wanted to know the answer to.
The left behind leaders of all religions put aside their scripted beliefs and disagreements. They got together and formed a coalition in the Vatican to research, investigate and form resolutions for the followers of their faiths on Earth.
I was once a man who had it all. My congregation was one of the biggest in Mexico City. But what the people did not know was I was laundering drug money for the cartels. I would like to say at first I had good intentions. I thought I had strong faith, but that was a lie. The moment I was tested on my faith, I got offered a large amount of wealth from these monsters, and I took it. Now more than half of my congregation has disappeared and the ones left behind that came to church no longer believe.
The deal I made with the cartel would take a turn for the worst as they stripped me of the fraudulent lifestyle they once gave me. I was taken away by the cartel and put into a forced labor camp on an agricultural farm to maintain crop supply as most farmers were no longer with us. I wouldn’t say I lost my faith. I just never understood its true meaning. I was beginning to learn.
My routine on the farm consisted of many forms of punishment. Being mocked and spit on constantly took its toll on my broken mind. I’d rather be tied and whipped for disobedience than hear the continuous verbal assaults as they waterboarded me for fun while playing the church worship hymns in the background.
I was a televised preacher, so being a religious celebrity, I stood out amongst the others that were enslaved to harvest crops for the tyrants that ruled us.
There was one guard in particular that I hated the most and could not forgive. He was a large man, a brute. His foul mouth and tongue formulated sentences of pure evil as his favorite method of torture was sodomy. Mainly his victims were the young men in the camp.
In Spanish, the camp laborers called him el Perro del Diablo, The Devil’s dog. He was vicious even to his fellow cartel members. Most guards kept their distance from him because they never trusted his behavior. They called him the Devils dog because he liked leaving his teeth marks on his victims after he had raped them. The worst of it was if he got intoxicated, he would bite off an ear or rip a piece of flesh from the body of his victim. He was a spirit of evil.
We separated into specific groups based on the type of farmland we attended that month. They rotated us to different parts of the land as a way of giving us something new to keep our morale just above a breaking point. That was the only thing I looked forward to because every three months, a particular field I worked on had a buried solution to a question I have been building up the courage to answer.
The question was a taunt of my psyche boiling over like a pot of water left on high as I could not turn the heat down or keep the pressure of my thoughts from haunting me. I knew the pecking order of rape victims was about to rotate and in my imprisoned group of men was a young man named Juan. He was one of el Perro del Diablo’s favorites.
He was very thin. A fragile man. There was something off about Juan. He seemed mentally slower than the rest of us. Also, there was a hollow look in his eyes, and if you looked real close, his eyes told a story of a man with regret. Juan never spoke, but you could hear his cries from the torture chamber where the monster guard resided.
I tried to console Juan or even get him to talk to me, but my powers as a preacher have been revoked. I was no longer a man of God. I never was.
My everyday routine of abuse had finally reached its peak. The water is boiling over. A stick of wood. A thinly sharp rock. What was the chance of this being at my feet in the fields that I maintained? Every three months, I would reach that buried spot and little by little fashion a blade out of the piece of wood.
I knew a point of no return was imminent. If there is one ounce of good left in my cowardly soul it would be a gift to the tormented as I would strike down el Perro del Diablo and face my demise from a firing squad.
I had the evil guard’s demonic moves down when it came time for him to take Juan for his weekly punishment. He always came alone as no other guard from the cartel would bother to associate with his vile actions.
The devil’s dog had an arrogance to him when he entered the bullpen jail cell where we were imprisoned at. He would enter and start barking like a pit because he knew the nickname we called him. Filthy narcissist! He would walk in with his chest puffed out and breathing heavily as his anger salivated like a dog that hasn’t eaten in days. I would be the first person he approached. He would hock up and spit in my face as it was tradition for all guards to do so. He then walked around the room to intimidate the others as he thought we were all cowards, and for the most part, he was right. He would put his assault rifle to his back and grip Juan by the neck, and throw him to the entrance of the jail cell doorway.
He would take one final look around the room and then turn his back as he walked through the door kicking Juan as he got to his feet, just to knock him down again. I knew that would be my moment to jump on his back and stab him with the wooden blade repeatedly in the throat until he dropped to the ground.
I don’t think I am a man with courage. I think I am a man who can no longer look Juan in the eyes and live with myself, knowing what he puts up with from this monster. Maybe we all are monsters…
I would like to say I have some dignity left. I would like to look at myself in the mirror one last time and believe that I am gonna do the right thing this time.
The day quickly turned to dusk as the sun was setting. We were getting rounded up by the guards from the crop fields. One by one, we would hop in the back of the truck. I was already in the back of the truck when Juan jumped in. He knew what day it was. We all knew what day it was. They all had their heads down in somber silence, but I kept mine up. I knew today would end in a blood bath. I put my arm around Juan as we were driven back to our prison quarters. I started to focus on the murder that I would commit.
My adrenalin was ramping up. The voices in my head that were once taunting me, were now pumping me up with obscenities about what I was gonna do to that serial rapist. The wooden knife was nestled under the waistline of my pants, on my right side. As night fell on deaf ears, the ones that ignored the actions of el Perro del Diablo, I prepared mentally the moves I would make when this situation took place.
I didn’t tell a single cellmate of my plan. I felt nobody could be trusted, not even Juan. If I told him, he might have snitched maybe to better his outcome from being sodomized. It was a quiet night. You could hear el Perro del Diablo walking in the distance to our holding tank. He was laughing out loud and talking to himself recklessly. To my advantage, he sounded drunk, delusional, a beast that needed to be put down. I was ready.
He makes his way into the hall leading to the bullpen cell. You can hear the cell keys in hand as there are many, twirling them like a parent teasing a child. He gets to the front of the cell. Everybody freezes into their usual pose when this foul-mannered demon enters the room. He belts out a loud bark and then a chuckle. He opens the cell door. I am to his right, and as usual, he turns to me, presses his finger over one of his nostrils, and blows the snot out of the other one onto my face.
He makes his way around the silent room. I take the wooden blade from my waist and hold it hidden behind my forearm, but gripped tightly. He stops at one prisoner on his way to Juan and asks a morbid question to the man. The prisoner looking down at his feet does not respond. To el Perro del Diablo’s dislike, the prisoner is met with a heavy-handed slap across his face. El Perro del Diablo is feeling himself tonight. He then looks in Juans direction and smiles like a liar who can’t help himself.
My blood is boiling. May God have mercy on my soul for what I’m about to do.
El Perro del Diablo puts his rifle to his back and grabs Juan by the neck aggressively throwing him through the cell doorway. The moment has arrived. El Perro del Diablo makes his way towards Juan turning his back on us, and with the wooden knife flexed in my hand, I jump on his gorilla-sized back and go for his jugular!
As fast as I could, I repeatedly stabbed the devil’s dog in the side of his throat. He clutches onto me, but it’s too late as he drops to his knees, to the floor gurgling helplessly. Blood is everywhere. I stand over him as he clutches his throat, slowly fading back to the hell that sent him here.
I lean down and open up his mouth, pull out his tongue, and cut it off with the wooden blade. I then walk over to Juan and throw it at his feet. No more!
I am still holding the blade and covered in blood, I look to my left and jump backward in shock as a nun is standing down the hallway holding a book. Where the fuck did she come from?
She begins to inch closer to me as the dead body of El Perro del Diablo lay in her pathway. It becomes more apparent to me that this nun walking towards me is Sister Gonzalas…from the orphanage I grew up in. It can’t be…
She calls out my name, my real name that only she would know. She reaches the body of the man I just murdered and stretches out her arm with a book in her hand and tells me in Latin that I must learn this book for what is to happen in the upcoming events on Earth.
I met her at the body and took the book from her hand. She then turns her back to me and heads toward the front door. With strange comfort, I begin to follow her.
When we reach the front door, I stop. I am hesitant to walk out of the jail facility because of the cartel’s heavily armed minions that await. There is no escape. She turns to me and says, “If you follow me, out this door, you will take the first steps in restoring your faith.” I nod to her and she opens the door.
I walk out to see dead cartel members everywhere. I questioned again inside my head, how could this old lady take out 14 cartel members? And another voice in my head that sounded like Sister Gonzalas said, “Having faith means you have a purpose.” I left the imprisonment camp with Victus and never looked back.
