I was awake now, but couldn’t open my eyes.  The lids were welded together by some biological glue, and with the dull burning in the back of my head I could tell I had been sleeping for quite some time.  I reached toward my face to open my eyes and pawed at my face with a massive bandage that covered my hands.  Someone said something in spanish and I immediately felt euphoric and dumb, and sank back into blackness.

There was light this time.  My eyes had been freed from their sleepy cage and I could make out some shapes in the brightness.  “Mister, you have been in a horrible accident.  Don’t try to get up, you will feel better in a few minutes.” somebody said to me in a thick mexican accent.  I tried to answer, but all that came out was a wheezing and coughing that seemed to come from my throat.  A hand reached across me from behind and adjusted a tube coming from below my chin, a strange sensation.  A pulling feeling that started at my core.  I could sense some spittle pouring from the corner of my mouth, but when I tried to lick it away I realized there was no tongue.  Or teeth.  But I didn’t care.  Good drugs, whatever they were.

An hour or so later I came to realize the pile of shit I was in.  They tried to be easy on me, breaking the news that I barely survived a car crash and subsequent suicide attempt, but I had no tears to give anymore.  I lost everything back in the desert when I left Vanessa to rot on the bed of a honeymoon suite.  My hands were both badly broken, with one finger amputated on my left.  Most of my teeth and tongue had been blown through a hole in the back of my head, a hole that was now packed with gauze.  They said the tube in my throat was needed for me to breathe normally, that the pressure in my mouth could disrupt the dressings and lead to a possibly fatal infection.  Fuck them for saving me, I kept thinking.  If only I had aimed higher, maybe under the chin, this nightmare would be over.

I was certain that they had amputated my legs, too, but I could see a lumpy form under the blankets.  For the first few hours I was sure that I already was fitted for prosthetic legs until they told me I was paralyzed. I am so fucking stupid.  Through the glass at the end of the bed I could see two uniformed policemen guarding the door.  Mexican policemen.  And without legs, hands, or any way to communicate, I was at their mercy.  I couldn’t write for them with my crippled hands, and trying to lip-synch words to  someone that barely speaks english is tough enough, but trying to do it with swollen, burned lips and no tongue is impossible.  They could tell I was frustrated, and one doctor went into another room to get a keyboard.  He pointed at the keys until I nodded, patiently writing down the letters.

O-D M-E.  D-I-E N-O-W.

It took a while for them to figure it out.  They smiled and shared a laugh and then emptied the room.  I wonder where they send mute paraplegic murderers in this country?

THE END

The end of the line.  It was a place you didn’t want to visit, especially half-naked and covered in blood and sweat.  Luckily it was bearable through the fog of liquor.  I pretended I didn’t see the lights screaming at me through the rear view as I pulled another deep drink from the bottle.  I still had some shots left in the six shooter, but honestly it would probably end up in my mouth before it was turned on the federales.

*Bump.  The cop car was losing patience as it brushed up against my tail.  I couldn’t feign ignorance anymore.  Fuck this country.  Fuck my life.  And fuck this goddamn sun.  I pulled over to the shoulder and watched as the cop calmly exited his vehicle, shotgun in hand.  He screamed something spanish at me, then immediately followed with some indecipherable broken english.  As a full time drunk with pullover experience,  I presumed he wanted me to put my hands on the steering wheel, so I did.  The left hand was torn to pieces.  At some point I had put a sock over it as a bandage, but didn’t remember doing it.  Thank god for booze.

I could only imagine his reaction as he looked through the window at me, a gringo covered in blood with a sock on one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other.  “ID!” he shouted.  Almost out of reflex I dropped the bottle and reached into the plastic bag at my feet and grabbed a handful of US currency, then tossed it out the window like bloodstained confetti.  Then I lurched forward and got back on the road, fully expecting a pump-action load to punch me in the occipital lobe.  It was a few moments before I looked in the mirror and saw the cop frantically chasing down airborne $100’s.

Now what?  It seemed unlikely that I would ever find a calm place to hang out for a while, but more importantly, what was my long game?  I gave up on happiness back when I ditched Vanessa’s corpse, and all I had left was the booze.  Then I saw the lights again.

The cop was back.  Fuck him for screwing with the age old agreement between mexican police and criminals.  If you pay them off, they leave you alone.  They don’t get to double dip in the honeypot.  Soon he was right up my ass again, pressing against my bumper.  I hit the brakes hard, and the truck turned sideways.  All I remember is the bottle floating through the air like a glass bird, and smashing me in the face.  I would have expected the crash to knock me unconscious, but there was no such luck.  Money was everywhere, greenbacks turning in the wind as my vision stabilized, and I noticed I was laying in the passenger side footwell, breathing heavily.

All I could think was that my back is broken.  I couldn’t move my legs, but there was pain there.  Screaming in spanish.  Shotgun pointed at the truck for sure.  End of the line.  I put my head down and saw it, my last salvation.  I reached out with my “good” hand, the one with only three broken fingers, and grasped the revolver.  Without hesitation I guided the barrel over my teeth and fired.  It could have been all over, but god hates me.

The young girl was possessed by seemingly endless energy, and kept fighting and screaming for the entire four or five minutes her father was gone.  I have done many horrible things, but this one was certainly on the top of the list.  I stood there nude, covered in blood, and gripping a small, shrieking child in my arms.  Anyone who walked in on the scene would assume the worst, and they’d be right.

Her father came back in the room, and I was relived to see he was sobbing still, not chomping at the bit to tear me limb from limb.  He threw a fresh pair of pants that were way too fucking large at my feet, and placed a beat up .38 on the floor with a half empty box of ammo, a small plastic bag with a few stacks of american currency, and an unopened bottle of tequila.  I motioned for him to back up and he complied, while I grabbed the gun and inspected it.  Loaded.  This guy was taking some serious chances by handing this over.  Bad idea.  My index finger was badly twisted so I fed my middle digit through the trigger guard and raised it at him.  He didn’t flinch as I fired three shots into his torso.  The fucking sound deafened me to the world, but I could tell the was screaming at an extra few octaves now that I had dropped her, and was crouching over him as a large bubble of blood formed in one of the holes in his chest.

I put the pants on and the promptly fell back off, so I kicked the half-blind girl off her father and sloppily dragged the belt off his corpse before tying it around my waist.  I had no shirt, but fuck it, three quarters of the people here didn’t wear them anyway.  I gathered up my goods and headed for the door, glad to put the memories of torture and the sound of wailing behind me.

I was surprised to see that it wasn’t some back country shed I was being kept in, but a seemingly nice middle-class house upstairs.  Out the window I could see a pickup with the windows down and a shine near the wheel.  Keys.  I didn’t waste time in stumbling out the door and tossed my gear onto the passenger seat before sitting down and starting up the truck.  The leather was burning a hole in my back, but I was happy to have it.  Some dreadful mexican polka music flooded the car and I quickly shut it down, then tore the cork out of the tequila bottle and drank deeply.  With any luck I would forget this shithole in a few hours of drinking.

I was about two miles down the road, a gringo covered in blood, shirtless driving a stolen pickup while half drunk, when I saw the federales behind me.

Nearly a half hour passed before I heard the sound of heavy boots pounding the stairs outside the door.  The brutish man was back with a cell phone and leather gloves on.  It seems he didn’t think I was going to be able to come up with the money, and he was prepared to finish me off.  Following close behind him was the little girl translator, no doubt tagging along to make sure I didn’t try anything stupid.  But the joke was on them.  Not only had my family disowned me long ago, but I never really had friends.  Especially not friends with the means to save my ass right now.  If I needed drugs or booze then maybe... but not money.

He handed me the phone and I reached out and took it from him, an ancient flip phone from some mexican prepaid phone service, and pawed at the number pad with my broken fingers with utter futility.  “Can you dial for me?”  I asked the little girl, and she walked over with that same level of chilling confidence she had when she told me all about my dubious fate a short time ago.  As soon as she was within arm’s length I had her.

I stood up with ease with a kicking and screaming child in my hands, hands that showed much more strength than even I thought I had.  The look in the man’s eyes was priceless.  Not long ago I couldn’t even stand, let alone leap to my feet.  He was amazed that I was no longer restrained, the bindings dropping to the floor.  My broken hands had easily slipped through the cord he used to tie me up, the only upside to the agonizing beating he gave me.  When I grabbed the child by the throat she stopped struggling.  I was one quick motion away from snapping her neck and she knew it.

“Tell him to bring me some clothes and all the money you took from me.  And a gun.”  I loosened my grip on her neck so she could mutter the words to him.  He shook his head at me and I smiled.  Then I slipped the fingernail of my left index finger into the girl’s eye socket and punctured the orbit.  I am not sure which I heard loudest, her shrieks or the wailing of her father as he dropped to his knees.  The sensation of her wet eyelid gripping my finger like a miniature vagina turned my stomach slightly and made me cough.  If they had fed me anything in the past day I might have thrown up right then and there, but I held eye contact with the man as he regained his feet, sobbing.  “And tequila”  I added, moving my gore-stained finger to the girl’s other eye.  I heard him scramble back up the stairs.  He would either return with a fierce resolve to kill me, or to appease me.  Either way it would end now.

I awoke with the stinging burn of freezing water spraying into thousands of cuts, burns, and breaks all over my body. For a moment I thought I was drowning again, but it soon became clear I wasn't that kind of lucky. The familiar voice of a young girl began her spanish chattering, alerting my tormentor to my recently regained consciousness. I pawed at the burning on the side of my head and was immediately reminded of my broken fingers as they slid across a prickly texture that could only be fresh stitches.

My rage got the better of me, and I started screaming every obscenity that I had learned in my long life of unrepentant bastardry. I scooted towards the blurred shapes in front of me, kicking and spitting, and told them what I planned to do to the whores they called mothers when they finally sent me to punch my ticket in hell. I had never been so angry in my life, fueled by further frustration when I discovered how difficult it is to get up from the ground with broken hands. But the three figures before me shocked me into silence with a simple dismissal of my fury. Full-throated laughter. They disarmed me entirely by mocking my efforts as they doubled over from strained stomachs. I was left only with despair.

The biggest shadow excused himself from the room, leaving only a tall, skinny man and the small girl. She walked over to me and calmly sat down in on the wet floor next to me. I was shocked that she was not deterred by the bloody, vulgar pulp that I had become. There was no mirror about, but I was certain that I was in the kind of shape that would make an ER doctor cringe. With an unnervingly even voice, she addressed me in near perfect english. "We know you are rich. We found your money. We also know you are desperate, since no white man would ever face the river unless their life is on the line." She spoke with an even tone and maturity that put chills down my spine. "And my father wants everything you ever had. He wants all your money, and all the money you can get from anyone who loves you enough to pay for your well-being. But he is not a patient man. He will come back in twenty minutes and he will ask you to make a phone call. Depending on the result of that call, he will either take you upstairs to be dressed and enjoy a fresh meal at our table, or he will begin to dismantle your body. He will cut off your fingers and toes, your cock and balls, then your ears and nose. It is only when you pass out from pain or loss of blood that he will let you die, then dissolve you in a series of barrels outside."

She then got up while I sat in silence, walked over to the door and knocked gently, then left me to think about my end.

I remember the sensation of being suspended upside down, the pressure in my head swelling to unbearable levels, and the warm, wet fluid pouring into my eyes from my mouth and nose. Drowning must be just like being born. One moment you are nothing, free floating in the womb, then someone awakens you to the suffering that will be your life until your end.

I was in a basement on an earthen floor, nude and alone. The entire length of the right side of my body was a shredded mess, but someone had dressed my wounds. My eyes however, were burning and left me in agony. I could tell that some fine sediment made its way under my eyelids and scratched grit into my pupils whenever I blinked. There was a vague recollection of being dragged across gravel and feeling dozens of small hands all over me, checking ever recess in my body for some unspoken treasure. And in that moment I wished I was dead.

A small mexican man brought me some milky colored water and only nodded when I spoke to him, clearly unable to speak english. The quality of the water and the lack of conversational english made it clear that I was on the mexico side of the border. Apparently my success came through the most difficult of possible scenarios. When the man left I poured the nasty water into my eyes to clear out the dirt, then drank the rest with the understanding that I would likely be shitting uncontrollably from sickness a few hours later. Then a large man with a large silver belt buckle entered the room followed by a little girl, no more than ten years old. I scrambled to cover my nakedness from her, but she didn't seem startled at all. She spoke. "What is your name?"

When I didn't answer the man shouted some mexican gibberish at me and kicked some dirt up from the floor. "What is your name and who is your family?" she asked again. I just stared back up at them, unsure what to do. The man barked again and the little girl ran out the door and closed it shut, and he stared at me while he began undoing his belt. I wasn't sure if I was in for a beating or a buggering, or even which I preferred in this situation, but the man's intentions became clear as he pulled the belt loose and let the large buckle dangle at the end like a savage medieval flail. I cowered with my back exposed to him like a frightened turtle as he laid into me. He aimed for the exposed part of my head and when I covered up with my hands he focused on them, my brittle fingers breaking with ease. The beating was so violent and relentless that I didn't even scream. I just laid there waiting to die. And after what seemed like an eternity he dropped the belt in the dirt next to me, the silver shine reduced to a dulled blood red, then I saw the shadow of his raised boot for the moment before I lost consciousness again.

It was an uncharacteristically overcast day in the desert. I had whittled down my meager belongings even further to just clothes, a wristwatch, and the money. All could be contained neatly and dryly in some jumbo sealable plastic bags and tied to my belt to ensure I didn't spill thousands of dollars into the Rio Grande.

Now that the liquor was bleeding from my system it seemed like a fucking ridiculous idea. And considering that my abandoned car was cleared from the crossing, the police might have full knowledge that I was attempting to flee the country and would be ready to scoop me out of the water and into custody to face trial. I wish I had my gun back. It was stupid to throw it in the gutter like that. At least I could have used it to force the police to kill me instead of arresting me. But the time for doubt was gone, and so I wrapped my cash in a dirty motel towel and stuffed it in a plastic bag, then marched out the door and into the busy street.

I walked for about twenty minutes until I was out of sight of the crossing and away from the majority of the traffic. The river was about sixty yards across, and the opposite shore was spattered with mexicans staring out at their freedom. This was both reinsuring and ominous. Clearly there was no one posted to stop them from swimming across, but on the other hand, why were they waiting? Surely these men, all my age or younger and with bodies hardened by years of manual labor, could easily swim the distance far easier than I could, and yet they do not. With these thoughts in my head I sat on a dusty riverside rock and took off my shoes, sealing them in a bag and tying it to my belt.

The men on the other side were interested now, gesturing at me and no doubt discussing the crazy gringo that was obviously about to jump in the fucking river. I waded out into the freezing water and immediately regretted it. But I had no other choice, so I jumped forward into the deeper water.

In my head I was swimming forward, but my eyes seemed to be lying to me and indicating I was swept swiftly downstream. I struggled to keep my head above water as I went, the only thing keeping me afloat was the meager bits of air in the plastic sacks tied to my waist. The water was much faster and stronger than I anticipated, and suddenly I realized I was in deep shit. The cold seized the muscles in my left leg and I took in a deep mouthful of muddy water, swallowing fast to clear the way for a desperate gasp of air only to be cruelly denied by another gulp of wetness. I was in full panic when I lost consciousness.

When you are approaching the US-Mexico border you can tell by the dramatic cultural changes from street to street. The houses go from earthy shades to flashy neon colors, late model cars transform into battered pickup trucks, and the chain restaurants are replaced by snack cart vendors and food trucks with handwritten spanish only signs promising some two day old organ meat swimming in a spicy broth.

But even the busy background is going totally unnoticed by me, because all I can think of is how I am going to get past the checkpoint without being identified, robbed, or shot. And to settle my nerves a bit I decided to sit in a nearby dive bar and drink a bit, eat a ham on rye, and visit the rest room before staggering into the daylight and staring south across the border toward my salvation. The beer was good and cold, but if you ever get a chance to pass on using a public toilet near the border, jump on it. I got into the car and got in line to cross the border.

I don't know if it was the heat beating down on my non air-conditioned car, or the squeeze of the booze that was making the sweat drip down my forehead and into my eyes, but I was getting anxious. And after what seemed like hours of sitting stationary surrounded by ten lanes of parked cars I locked eyes with a ballsy little shit of a kid who had his face plastered to the rear window of his mother's suburban. He was making stupid faces and motioning the universal gesture for jacking off. I watched it for a few minutes before I lost it and just grabbed Vanessa's bag off the seat next to me and got out of the car. In a stupor I just turned and walked past the endless line of American tourists and Mexican nationals that were waiting for their turn to be counted and filed through the line like cattle, and made my way back to American terra-firma. The car sat with the driver's door open, engine running, and I never looked back.

Standing on the porch of a restaurant and drinking deeply from a fresh bottle of whiskey (which I had to pay a ridiculous amount for) I could see the chaos I had made. The border crossing was visible from here, now with cars facing all different directions and honking like a motherfucker. I could see my car sitting there, with a tow truck trapped among the protesting mass of automobiles, no one able to make an inch of progress now that they had deviated from their neatly organized rows and found themselves entangled in a hellish gridlock. It was most entertaining, and held my attention for several minutes before the conversation of the three men sitting at a table nearby caught my ear. One of them was visibly shook, but the other two were laughing. "Why are you so worried? The US guards don't fucking care if you swim the river over to the mexican side! And the Mexican guards are so fucking lazy that they wouldn't waste their time chasing you down. But for getting back, you're gonna need some help..."

I hadn't been swimming since I was a kid. Shit, I haven't even taken a bath for at least a decade! But I liked my odds a lot better than trying to explain myself to the authorities with my freedom on the line. So I walked back out of the restaurant and walked into the first shithole that looked like it might be a motel.

I was back in the car again, drunk for the last twenty-plus hours. Despite having pulled over twice to be violently ill, some spraying out of my nose, I could still smell the soft remains of Vanessa's perfume. The car was almost empty now, with just my wasting frame and the few things I saw fit to gather into the back seat before abandoning the motel and Vanessa's body with it, and now I was completely lost. Not just on the road, you see. I spent most of my drunk driving days wandering across lanes of traffic in directions that I didn't fully understand at the time, with my destination a mere afterthought compared to the urgency of escaping. There was little hope now. Now I was just a murderer with no one to stick up for my actions. Vanessa could have pleaded my case for me, something that I would be unable to do for myself with any kind of chance of succeeding.

The police would look at the case and see a former lover from a seemingly abusive relationship returning to plead with his lost love only to be confronted by her protective father, a man of means and social status no less, who, after an unseen struggle, fires his heavy revolver through the patriarch's face and kidnaps the grieving and terrified young woman. They would never know the years of sexual molestation she endured at the hands of that man, or that the abuse in the relationship always originated from her side of the equation. Soon I would be caught and exposed as a sexually deranged murderer and thrown into prison with the rest of the dregs of society.

These thoughts traveled through my head as barreled down the highway at some unknown and unmonitored speed. I suppose I was secretly hoping to make my way into oncoming traffic and die as I had lived, drunken and desperate. But it was not to be. By sheer fucking luck I was aimed directly southeast toward the mexico border. A destination that was the only option for a man running from justice, a place that featured towns where being a murderer helped you blend into the crowd, and asking questions about someone's past would earn you either contempt or a thorough stabbing. But long before I realized my good luck I pulled off the road and took a four hour nap, still gripping the steering wheel.

When I woke up there were birds circling overhead. They were most certainly magpies or something, but they should have been vultures. I had been in steady decline for the last decade or so, and no one would fault the birds for their mistaken judgement concerning my likelihood of immediate survival. It was amazing that I hadn't been hassled by the highway patrol in the night, as I was stone drunk with my driver's side door open wide to facilitate the emergency evacuation of my ulcer-plagued guts. I had always held my liquor without a problem since I became a regular drinker at the age of about seventeen, but in the last three years or so the retching began. Now I vomited almost out of routine rather than because it caused me any relief, but I seldom complained about it due to some sense of guilt that had me convinced I deserved it. Besides, any signs of the advancing reaper was welcome at this point.

It hadn't been but thirty minutes or so. There had been no argument, disagreement, or cruel one-way verbal abuse that was so common between us. In fact, when Vanessa shut the door to the bathroom and started running the water the only abnormal thing about it was the door itself, which she so often left unabashedly open to the point that I was certain she would attract a predator other than myself to do her harm, her perfect nudity like blood in the water to dangerous men.

So when the water didn't stop running the bathroom door took on a sinister look that betrayed her wicked plan, and by the time I kicked it in I wasn't surprised to find her dangling there, tip toeing on the tile floor with bent legs like a ballerina frozen in time. She was nude, her dark hair covering her face at the awkward angle that the belt imposed on her neck, and her hands were held together in front of her with elbows bent in a mock prayer that was unnatural looking even to someone that didn't know she discarded her faith as a child. Her pale skin reminded me of my widowed aunt Grace's wedding dress, which hung alone in the guest closet for decades until she passed away. It was even more beautiful there in the darkness, where it's useless futility made the grand garment seem sickeningly sad.

I grabbed her body around the waist and lifted her up, unlatching the belt from the grate in the ceiling, and carried her into the bedroom where I laid her out on the bed. I knew some CPR and had even tried it out on a few drug addict friends when they went bad, but I could tell it was hopeless. She had put on her makeup so carefully, but her lips still seemed dark and blue through the red lipstick, and the shit smeared across my arm proved she had already vacated her bowels. She wouldn't have liked that. She was so clean, and her appearance meant so much to her. There was little doubt that she was very much dead.

I didn't panic. I didn't start wailing and crying, making a racket. People rarely do when there is no one around to impress by it, they just stare silently in mute contemplation. After a couple minutes I went into the bathroom to wash up and I saw it. Vanessa had written in dramatic cliche style in lipstick on the mirror "I am happy". It made me flash back to the first angry message she scrawled across a broken mirror in my old apartment, a distinct contrast to how she had evolved emotionally from when I met her, before I knew her secrets, and long before I slew her demons and took her with me on this long run from our responsibility. She was damaged and volatile then, but became dependent on me in recent months to an extreme that made me feel guilty for fucking her.

In retrospect it was bound to happen. But it still seemed cosmically unfair for her beauty and fragility to be outlasted by my rigid foulness. She rarely drank to excess, almost never swore, and tended to get along with strangers more often than not. And now the only good that was left in my life had slipped through my fingers, leaving the unstompable cockroach to carry on in the filthy gutters alone. I took the time to dress her in one of her favorite cocktail dresses, at least the one I thought she looked best in, but couldn't make it fit right. No doubt they would assume I killed her, and would probably think I kidnapped her after murdering her father. But I was okay with that. She would be exonerated in death, and I would once again shoulder her burdens. I started to pack my things.