Vacation Time (Finally)

I saw him standing in front of me as we both waited in line for the Spiderman 3D ride. He wasn't blonde, tall (or at least taller than me) and built, so I didn't think much of him until he turned around, and started talking to me about how long the wait had been. He asked me who did I come with and if I lived in Orlando. I told him I was on vacation with my sister and will be going back to El Paso in a week. He said he came from Austin and wanted to bring his kid to the theme parks. I asked him how many kids he had. He said one. I asked him about his wife and why she didn't come along. He told me he had been divorced for four years.

"How about you, are you married?" He asked.
"Nope," I said.
"Well, where's your boyfriend?"
"I don't have one."
"You don't have one?" He asked as he focused his eyes on mine.


We then talked about the humidity and how in July it gets even worst. We both agreed that we were lucky to be in Orlando in the month of May because it gets hotter and more humid in other months. And the theme parks are so crowded with people that you can't even walk freely without bumping into someone. Your lucky if you can just hop on one ride.

"So where are you staying at?" He asked.
"At Parc Corniche," I responded.
"Is it far from here?"
"Yeah, is kind of far, but we take the shuttle from the hotel."
"Oh, that's cool," he said.

We finally arrived to the front of the line.

"Do you want to get together sometime before you leave? Have lunch maybe?" He asked.
"Sure, let me give my cell number." I took a pen out of my purse, and holding his hand I wrote my number on it.




To be continued...

By Olga L. Chacon

Besame

Besame, besame, besame
como tu quieras
y en la parte que tu quieras
Porque manana ya no me veras.

Desaparecere tan rapido
como una hoguera
que se apaga con la lluvia.
Estare mil lunas lejos de ti.
Las cartas que escribiras
nunca llegaran
porque no sabras de mi.

Pero, besame, besame ahora
y en donde tu quieras
porque sera la ultima vez que lo hagas.
Manana mis labios
estaran cerrados con candado,
y botare la llave
sin hacer copia alguna para ti.

Al fin libre estare
de tus sucios pensamientos,
de tu olor a chancla,
de tu aliento de vaca,
de tu cuerpo sin musculo,
de tu cerebro de hormiga,
y de tu cara de frankeistein.

Besame, besame, besame
como tu quieras
porque manana
te dejare con las ganas.
Y cuento los segundos
para el dia en que me esfume
de tus malas vibraciones.

Conocere alguien mas,
buen parecido y formal,
y no un animal como tu.
Te quederas con el deseo
mientras yo me reire de ti.
Te podras ir con otra
que aguante tus mentiras.
Vas a haber que tambien
ira a salir corriendo, huyendo de ti,
y de tu falsa seguridad.

Pero, besame, besame, besame
como tu quieras
y en la parte que tu quieras.
Porque al fin libre estare
de tus sucios pensamientos,
de tu olor a chancla,
de tu aliento de vaca,
de tu cuerpo sin musculo,
de tu cerebro de hormiga,
y de tu cara de Frankeistein.

Besame, besame, besame...


By: Olga L. Chacon

A donde ir?

Por que se alimentan de mi? Me arrancan el corazon de mi cuerpo como si fuera un juguete y lo cortan en pedazos como un rompecabezas. Asi lo veo arrastrado en el suelo cubierto de sangre negra con un espacio lleno de espinas. Crean abrigos de mi alma, y los usan exponiendolos a la lluvia y a la sequedad del viento...

Voy a desaparecer por un tiempo. Como lo oyen. No se a donde irme, pero por seguro muy lejos del presente. Al futuro no quiero ir porque no me parece muy atractivo llenarme la cabeza de mas molestias. Tengo suficiente con las preocupaciones del presente. Y al pasado? Pues, al pasado lo visito a diario, al menos asi lo siento. Es doloroso caminar hacia atras. Aunque ya lo he vivido, siempre me encuentro con alguna sorpresa. Quiero despegarme de todo aquello que me rodea.

LIONS AND TIGERS, CHILDREN AND DEMONS

Though I walk with the devil,

I kiss the veil that shrouds thy face, oh Lord

And I feel the love and the joy without which the world could not stand

Vile and base as I am, I am still thy son

But I feel that love is slipping from this world

We are as insects trying to stand against the fury of the tempest

Cruel lust and hateful dominance press up against the walls of my very soul

The air is deafening with the sound of a million lost souls crying out to a Father

whom they believe has abandoned them.

I only ask of you, oh Lord

do your children cry out in vain?




The decision to kill Christian Ernett came fairly easily to Caleb. It was no big thing after all, to take the life of a bleeding sack of obscenity. Caleb just happened to be in the right frame of mind when he heard Christian beating the fuck out of his wife for the billionth time. The Ernetts were the family that lived next door to his shitty, little apartment. There was the husband Christian. There was the wife Linda. And then there was the little girl Samantha.

God she was precious…11 years old with those big brown eyes that saw everything. And that was the problem.

No way in hell that she would be able to block out all the shit that daddy did to mommy. In fact Caleb was pretty sure that daddy forced himself on mommy on a fairly regular basis, probably with Samantha watching. The abuse happened day in, day out.

God knows what else she witnessed living in that tiny wretched little hole with that animal. They could probably afford a lot better on his salary but that would never happen. Not the way he drank and gambled and fucked away their grocery money. Sometimes he would bring prostitutes home. He pissed away all their income on the lowest of vices and it was Samantha who had to pay in the end. Once Christian even stabbed Linda with a kitchen knife. Later in the ER they both claimed that she slipped and fell on it. Hard to believe that they could possibly serve up that crock of shit with a straight face. It didn’t matter though. No one cared. No one did anything. Everyone in the building knew. How could they not? But still, no one did anything. No one picked up the phone. The one time Caleb called the police she denied everything and defended him completely and utterly.

No, Christian would never do anything like that. To hear her talk you would think that her husband was beyond reproach. He was perfect. Christian was a shining example of everything the American male should strive to be. He broke her jaw that same night after the cops left, angry at how she hadn’t been convincing enough. Caleb didn’t call the police anymore after that.
Personally, Caleb thought that Christian was an inhuman pile of dog shit that personified everything that was wrong with the world. Christian beat his wife, cut her , raped her. He was sick. Repulsive. Christian treated women like cattle. Christian was everything the American male should hate and despise.

Eventually Caleb realized that the worse was yet to come. Samantha was a beautiful little girl and soon she would make a beautiful young woman…and it was only a matter of time before Christian would notice that.

Caleb thought that Christian was the purest form of evil that walked the earth. This only goes to show how naïve Caleb really was despite all the things he’d seen in his 26 years of life.

It was a simple thing really and done without any great fanfare. It was an obvious choice really, when you think about it. Make the world a better place. That was how his conscious mind made his decision. But truth be told the decision, the real decision to kill someone does not take place in the realm of the here and now with all the logical synapses in your brain working together to form a logical conclusion. The choice of becoming a murderer is not that easy. The real struggle, the War Within takes place somewhere primal, far beneath any conscious or subconscious mind you can read about in any book. The dilemma is fought out in our dark places. In the farthest reaches of our selves. It is as the saints are fond of saying "a choice of the soul" one that every human on earth no matter how good or how vile is capable of making. Such is the essence of free will.

And that struggle had ended inside Caleb one night when he was awakened by the sound of Christian beating his wife for the billionth time. He just lay there in the dark in his bed with his ear pressed to the paper thin walls that separated their bedrooms.

Sound of fists hitting flesh and breaking bones. Deafening.

But the screaming, the crying, the sobbing was the worse. She kept on pleading and crying out to a God who simply was not there.

He wanted to crawl inside himself then. To run away from this place. In his mind: just pack up, get my things and leave this shitty apartment building. These run down slums. This city with its gloomy skies, its shitty weather, its filthy streets and houses and endless supplies of rundown buildings where the desperate and wretched congregate.

He hated this city. Its streets were crowded and lonely.

In his minds eye he saw himself moving on to the next city and finding something. But he knew better. It would all be the same, just like before. In reality this place was no better and no worse than all the cities that came before it. All the big urban centers were turning into cesspools with the people just crawling around them like parasites. Then there were all those small towns in between. But Caleb didn’t belong there either. Maybe because he’d spent too much time wandering in the big cities. It had seeped into him. He could never wash the filth away. These quite, sleepy, little places could smell the stench of the cesspools on him, and they rejected him like some alien organism that might infect the rest of the colony.

It didn’t matter where he went. All the same.

Everywhere.

And then his mind was forced to come back into the here and now. Reality kept pushing back into his brain. It was like a strobe light at the back of his head and he could do nothing to stop it. The sobbing and crying poured into him till finally he realized that it wasn’t coming from the next room. His own tears and his own snot and his own hell poured down his face. He too cried out in the name of God, though he secretly knew it would do them no good. Not tonight. Tonight was for the devil. He felt something swelling up inside him like it would tear through his chest cavity and it felt like his very soul trembled in his throat. At that moment he sensed that he was coming to his breaking point. Either something in this world had to change or something in his mind would snap. Whichever way it played, something had to give. And he fought, oh Christ did he fight it. With every inch of him he fought to hold on. He clawed at anything that may save him, like an animal. He felt barely human in his desperation. Again, he tried to run away from reality.

He though of his brother. The good son who had gone on to join the seminary, only to be killed senselessly by some fucking junkie. He thought of the conversations they would have. The ones about God. About salvation. Redemption. Forgiveness.

He remembered his brother telling him in that calm slow voice of his how God created us in his image and how each one of us is precious and why we are all deserving of life.

Something stabbed at him when he thought about that.

He clenched his teeth. He shut his eyes. He covered his ears with his hands and tried to curl up into a little ball like doing all that would somehow shield him from what he knew he must become. In the next room things started to get bad.

The screaming got worse as Christian mounted Linda and Samantha begged him to get off her mommy. All it did was drive him on. It excited him. He reveled in the power he held over them. He started to pump away and it lasted no more than 2 min. but it held for an eternity. The moaning and the grunting of his cruel lust mingled with the sobs and the tears of his victims.
Christian, Linda, Samantha, Caleb. In that moment they were all joined together. For a few moments they were all connected. Christian even began to see into Christian himself. You see in Christian’s own mind, there was no difference between what him and Linda were doing now and the way they had made love as teenagers in the back of his beat up old Chevy out by the woods as the rain drizzled onto the lake. To Christian’s own sick perspective, he was doing nothing more than making love to his wife. Taking what is his. She was just another possession, like his T.V. or his sofa.

The steamy, dirty sick cries of " oh, god, oh, god" that Christian made as he approached his climax mingled with the cries of his wife and his child and his neighbor whom he barely knew existed. So that for a brief eternity it seemed to Caleb as if the whole world cried for a God who had forsaken them.

We are all deserving of life. We are all deserving of love. We are all deserving of god’s forgiveness. Mercy and love shall overcome all evil. No sin can never be forgiven.

NO
NO
NO
AND NO

The blade dug deeper into him, the more he began to understand. The more he began to realize the big lie and saw what lay ahead of him. Some part of him tried to hold on to what his saint of a brother had tried to teach him. But no…his brother was wrong.

SOME PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE TO LIVE.

But still, the War Within raged and burned him until he felt like he would be consumed by it. He entered into that crucible of the soul where he must either allow himself to be transformed or be destroyed.

Just as an eternity neared its end, Christian finally finished and let out one last gasp of animal pleasure. At the same moment his neighbor passed through the crucible next door. It was Caleb Temple who went to sleep that night. It was Caleb temple who awoke to the rage of rape and violence next to the hovel he called a home. It was Caleb temple who closed his eyes to shut out the ugliness of world that had decayed into moral entropy and social collapse. It was Caleb temple who trembled in pain that reached down to the very thing he called his humanity. It was Caleb temple who beat his head against a wall of lies and false comforts till he finally broke through. Caleb temple shut his eyes…and it was Azrael who opened them. Azrael, The Angel of Death. God’s own executioner on earth who would meet out divine retribution.

It was almost as if Christian’s rape of Linda’s body had given birth to Azrael. And if it was that rape that spawned him, then it was Samantha’s cries and sobs that baptized him. In his mind’s eye he saw…everything. She was huddled in the corner with her knees up to her chin, her long dark beautiful hair falling over her face. That pale skin of hers almost shining with the moonlight coming through the window. Her pajamas had pictures of lions and tigers and bears on it. A tiny stuffed monkey that she’d found God knows where was clutched against her chest.

She was dying. Her life was draining away then and there. Any chance of happiness she might have once had was slipping away and getting farther off with each minute she stayed in that house. She would turn into a troubled and confused teenager who would turn to drugs and promiscuity as a way of filling that void in her. She would end up as an exotic dancer or prostitute or junkie or all three. She’d drift from one abusive relationship to the next, each boyfriend hurting her worse than the last. She’d die young, beautiful and unhappy, probably at the hands of a man just like her father. Another broken soul, a life destroyed by the weakness and selfishness of this creature. Another broken soul in a broken world.

The rage inside Caleb burned with a religious fervor.

Eventually the sobbing stopped and Christian dismounted his wife. He rolled over on his side and went to sleep almost immediately. Linda and Samantha followed for the simple reason that they had no choice. Oblivion was their only refuge from the hell of this man. Caleb prayed and prayed that something could still be done to save Samantha from the path that her father had set her on. Even with Christian out of the picture there was still a lot to be done for her.

So then and there Azrael made up his mind. Christain Ernett had to die. Simple as that.

Finally, Caleb drifted off to the best sleep that he’d had in years. He had finally made a good choice and done the right thing. No more wandering, no more being lost. He had finally become a killer for the God he had loved all his life.

And though our hands may be covered in blood
Let it be blood shed in the name of a holy mission
Amen.

By: Fabian Chacon

Stillness (After Denise Levertov's "Intrusion")

I cut off my loud feet,
and replaced them with quiet ones.

I cut off my running legs,
and attached walking ones.

I cut off my horny vagina,
and connected a puritan one.

I cut off my curvy hips,
and fastened straight ones.

I cut off my big breasts,
and sealed small ones.

I cut off my hugging arms,
and glued shy ones.

I cut off my know-it-all brain,
and pasted a humble one.

I opened my new ears to listen,
and my old ones disappeared.

By: Olga L. Chacon

My Vagina (Unsatisfied)

Bleeds every month.
Wears red panties during
foreplay.

But every time
she’s visited for
sex,
she's left without an
orgasm…

and longs for
the finger.


By: Olga L. Chacon

Prom Pictures

Since the day Lorie began to work at State Farm Insurance, she never left her goddamn long black straight hair alone. No matter what time of day, there she was, at it again. I’m surprised it didn’t fall off with all that brushing. I wish it had.

As soon as Lorie saw Daniel in his black Camaro, her eyes opened wide and she licked her lips all around as if she were savoring a chocolate cake. At first, I didn’t think much of it, until later.
“Hey, Ruby is that your man waiting outside in a black Camaro?” Lorie asked me as she rested her hand on her chin, stood up beside her desk and looked through the front window of the office.

“Yeah, he always comes early to pick me up,” I said and rolled my eyes. “I keep telling him not to. I don’t see the point of him having to wait so long when he knows I get off at five. He thinks I’m gonna run away with some other dude.” I placed some files into the bottom drawer of my desk where I always kept my purse.

“How does he look like?” She asked with a smile on her face. “I can’t tell through the tinted windows.”

“I have some pictures.” I got my purse from the bottom drawer, set it on my desk and pulled out three senior prom pictures from my wallet. “Here,” I said and handed them to her.

“He looks nice.” She raised her eyebrows. “And you too of course.” “Does he have a good body?” She asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied and took a deep breath.

*

A year ago, on our senior prom night, Daniel picked me up at six when the party didn’t start till nine. He decided we should go to dinner first and then the prom. Daniel had his black wavy hair combed back. He wore a white shirt with a blue-stripped tie and a blue suit. I had my curly hair down to my shoulders. I wore a long strapless red dress with a three-inch cut on the right side. Daniel drove to Angelino’s Restaurant on the East side. He ordered lasagna and I ordered fettuccini. We talked about taking a year or two off from school and later register for college.

The school’s gym had the walls covered with balloons. One streamer ran high in the air from one corner of the ceiling to the opposite corner. Another streamer ran across the gym from the next corner of the ceiling to the opposite corner. The streamers crossed each other in the middle of the gym and formed an “X.” The chairs had a red bow behind them in the middle, and tables had been covered with white tablecloths.

We walked to the dance floor holding hands. I put my arms around his neck and he placed his hands around my waist. I felt his muscular chest pressed against mine as we moved our feet side to side along with Shania Twain’s song, You’re the One. Daniel confessed he was afraid I would leave him, and go to the prom with someone else. That’s why he picked me up early with the excuse that he wanted us to go out for dinner.

“Why did you think that, silly? I asked.
“I heard rumors.”
“What rumors?” I asked.
“That you might be going with someone else.” I reached out for his lips and kissed him.

*

“He must really like you,” said Lorie.
“I guess.”
“He has a really nice car," said Lorie. "I bet you go cruising all the time.”
“Yeah, it’s nice. I’m used to it. I have my own car, but Daniel wants me to ride with him since we both go in to work at eight in the morning. So I just do, you know, whatever.”

Half an hour later, Roy, the UPS guy with muscular arms, came inside the office to deliver a package for Rebecca, my boss. He handed me a clipboard to sign for it, but Lorie jumped out of her chair.
“I’ll sign,” she extended her hand. Roy walked over to Lorie’s desk and handed it to her. She looked at him straight in the eyes for a few seconds, winked and smiled at him. She gave him back the clipboard. Roy looked at her, smiled and left.

“Hey, you flirty girl,” I said.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said brushing her hair.

Suddenly, Rebecca called me on the phone and asked me for three clients’ files. I then left my desk and hurried down the hallway to the file room. I handed the files to her, and walked back into the office. Lorie grinned at me and continued updating files into the computer.

On Friday nights, Daniel and I always caught a movie and maybe have dinner afterwards. This time we went to go see Mulan Rouge. When the writer confessed his love to the lady, I couldn’t help leaning on Daniel’s shoulder. I started kissing his neck.

“Wait, babe, I’m gonna miss this part,” he said. It never bothered him before. Why suddenly was he so interested in this stupid movie? So I stopped trying.

“Do you want to go eat somewhere?” I asked.
“Where you want to go?”
“How about Chilli’s?” I said getting inside the car.
“Okay.”
“Gee don’t sound so excited,” I said.
“That’s where you want to go, right?” He started the car.
“Well, yeah, but not if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t care,” he replied.

On our way to Chilli’s, I reached out my hand to turn the radio on.

“Turn it off,” he said and moved my hand.

*

One morning, Daniel’s mom woke up with her leg swollen up to her knee. Daniel drove her to the emergency room at Providence Hospital. One of the doctors said she had a blood clot. Since she weighs three hundred pounds, her weight might’ve been the cause of the clot. She had to be admitted in the medical unit in the sixth floor. The nurses injected her large doses of Comadin per day for eight days to thin out the blood.

“Why so quiet?” I asked Daniel.
“I don’t feel like talking.” He lowered his head. I had to drag the words out of his mouth just to tell me what happened.

*

“What’s wrong with you today?” I asked as I lowered the window. “Are you okay? Are you having problems at work or home? What is it?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing, okay?” His forehead wrinkled.
“You’re not yourself today, Daniel. I don’t care what you say. Babe, you can tell me. Maybe I can help and--”
“Ruby?” He looked at me straight in the eye. “Remember those pictures that we took on our senior prom night?”
“Yeah, why?” I wondered why he asked me.
“Do you have them?” He asked.
“Of course, why, you wanna see them?”
“I just want to look at them.” His forehead got more wrinkled.
“I’m sure I have them here somewhere,” I said searching through my purse.
“You won’t find them,” he parked right in front of Chilli’s.
“What?”

“You threw them away, remember?” He raised his voice. “Here.” He reached into his back pocket of his brown slacks and pulled out his wallet. “I have them. After you dumped them in the trash, someone picked them up. Look, they’re torn in half.”

“Huh?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Are you seeing someone else Ruby?” His eyes turned red. “Is that what it is?”
“But… I have no idea how that happened, someone must of …”
“Yeah right, like they’re going to suddenly appear in the trash.”
“You have to believe me,” I said and tapped his shoulder.
“You didn’t answer my question.” He lifted his arm and pushed my hand away. “Well, I guess I don’t need an answer. I already know.”

“Take me home.” I raised my hands to covered my face. “I hope he cools off by tomorrow,” I thought.

When I got to work the next morning, Lorie was sitting at her desk brushing her hair, like always.
“You brought your car today?” Lorie asked me looking through the window.
“Yeah, Daniel’s upset at me. I think we broke up. He claims that someone gave him our prom pictures that I supposedly threw away. And now he swears that I’m seeing someone else. I can’t believe he doesn’t trust me. Damn, I hate him.”

“All men are assholes, Ruby. They make up some shit like that ‘cause they’re afraid of a real confrontation, that way they blame it all on you and make you look like a real bitch. I’m sorry, Ruby, that it had to be this way.”

“Don’t be, I’m fine,” I said. “He’ll get over it.”

Daniel hadn’t come to my work for three weeks now. It was already five o’clock when I heard a car parked in front of the office.

“Well, time to go,” Lorie said as she dropped the files on her desk and grabbed her purse.
“Bye,” I said and she was already out the door. I looked outside the window and my mouth opened as I saw Lorie get into Daniel’s car.

Lorie came in the next morning with a smile on her face and sparkles in her eyes.
“You look like you had a good night," I said grinding my teeth.
“Yeah, it was quite a night,” she sat in her chair.
“I bet it was, with somebody else’s boyfriend,” I yelled.
“What do you mean?” Lorie’s smile disappeared from her face.
“You went out with Daniel. I saw you getting into his car yesterday after work.”
“You guys are not together anymore.” She stood up.
“You tore our prom pictures and showed them to Daniel.” I wanted to slap her. “You wanted Daniel for yourself!”

After I got off from work I called Daniel. I told him I needed to talk to him about Lorie, but he said he had to go. He was meeting someone at nine in Dance Club 101. I figured it was Lorie. I needed to get there before she did. I grabbed my purse and keys, and drove to the club. As I drove through downtown, I ran a red light and a stop sign. I was lucky no cars came from the right or left.

“He has to know Lorie got those pictures from my purse and torn them in half. She wanted to break us up,” I thought.

I went inside Dance Club 101 and saw Daniel standing by the entrance.
“Ruby, what are you doing here?”
“Daniel, we gotta talk.”

As Daniel stood in front of the club, Lorie arrived. She approached him and her eyes opened wide when she saw me come out from the front door.

“Looking for someone?” I said and placed my arms around his waist.

By: Olga L. Chacon

The Magician

By: Sergio Chacon

Temper

By: Sergio Chacon

The Sun

By: Sergio Chacon

Strength

By: Sergio Chacon