Headhunter – Diego (3)

markwildyr.com, Post #90

Courtesy of PexSnap.com

So far, so good. But what kind of toll have his actions taken on Diego? Maybe we’ll get a clue in this episode when he goes dream traveling again.

Read on.

*****

HEADHUNTER

DIEGO

Diego’s examination of his conscience was different that weekend, but it was Sunday before he turned to what really bothered him. With the first two, it had been an eye for an eye. With Rocco, it had been different. Not subtly different, but powerfully different. He had always recognized the man’s physical draw, but in the end, he had wanted the man. Carnally. Lustfully. He came alive at the touch of the man’s smooth, firm flesh. Like he did for a woman. Why? Did Rocco feel any of this? Sense his attraction. Perceive his weakness?

That thought came as a shock. It was a weakness. To want a man lustfully put him in that man’s power. The attraction to a woman was not a weakness because it was accepted as a norm. But to expose such a desire for a man forever put him in the power of anyone who recognized the desire.

So disturbed by the revelation, Diego delayed any further action. Although it galled him that Leader—who had instigated the whole thing—would escape his righteous fate, he decided to let the whole thing die. Until he had the dream.

Even in his sleep, Headhunter realized he was restless, tossing from one side of his bed to the other. His muscles tightened when he soared above the thick canopy covering the jungle of his homeland. He desperately tried to turn back, but to no avail. Something… someone drew him onward. Natala.

When the mists cleared from his vision, she stood in the center of a clearing, a gigantic cat purring at her side. This was Jaguar, The God of the Underground himself. Powerful, malevolent, benevolent, all seeing, all-knowing. So it was Jaguar who told the old bruja what had happened to him. And now, Jaguar probed his mind and sensed his doubts, his hesitation.

The old woman seemed as dynamic as the magnificent animal at her side despite her frailty. She studied the ethereal Diego calmly, although her anger pressed against him hotly.

“Your task is not completed.” Her voice, not a voice that he heard clearly. Some rational part of Diego’s mind noted he was dreaming in color. The jungle was green; Jaguar, yellow and black and and white; Natala, brown and black. Although she must have been well past seventy, her hair and eyes were glossy black. An emerald at her withered neck gleamed like a frozen green flame.

Diego’s formless self straightened beneath her stare. “It is enough. I have acted like a man.”

“Yes, like a man. Until you found one whose flesh burned your manhood. Do you think it has never happened before? Pah! More often than you know, child. At some time in their lives most men have lusted after a man. That is nothing. What is something is to desire one worthy of your lust. But no matter. Your task is not complete. You must become Headhunter once again and deal with the plotter. Do this first, and then puzzle out your future.”

Shamed that his secret thoughts had been revealed to her, Diego was nonetheless helpless to deny it. In fact, he now admitted what he had only permitted to roam the fringes of his mind. His desire for Rocco Conseco was real. As real as his lust for a woman.

Then Jaguar roared, and through his roaring, spoke. “You have heard her words. Seek out this coward who steals your seed by stealing your mind.”

Desperately seeking to hold onto his vision, Diego felt it slip away. Jaguar became obscured by a thick mist that rose from the jungle floor. Everything disappeared except for the head and shoulders of his grandmother. As her insubstantial image floated amid the fog, he understood that he would never see her alive again. She would soon roam the forest at Jaguar’s side, unseen but not unfelt.

Diego woke in his own bed drenched in sweat. He wished his father were here instead of ministering to the sick in some hot, dusty Moroccan village.

 *****

Okay, so he’s human and has a conscience. But why would it raise its head now? Could it be that the encounter with Rocco shook Diego a little? But with his resolve restored, he has one more member of the gang to bring to account. The Leader. Can we assume from that name he’ll be the toughest one to crack?

We’ll get our answer next week.

Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from readers to get Dreamspinner interested.

My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

Until next time.

Mark

New posts at 6:00 a.m. on each Thursday for the life of this serial; thereafter, the first and third Thursdays of the month.

Headhunter – Diego (2)

markwildyr.com, Post #86

Courtesy of PexSnap.com

We pick up the second installment of our serialized story once again with Diego. How will he recover his memory of what happened to him last night?

Hope you enjoy.

*****

HEADHUNTER

DIEGO

Natala! The name popped into Diego’s head as he stood beneath the pulsing showerhead. As soon as he got home, he’d checked his time/date clock, determined it was Saturday, which meant he wasn’t missing work, and immediately took another long shower. And with that name, his distant past came flooding back even as last night continued to elude him.

Natala was curandera to the Huatani, a remote South American tribe. The tattooed woman from the dream was their healer… and his grandmother. As spiritually powerful as she appeared physically weak, she had been his nurturer, his caregiver, his teacher after his mother was stung to death by a serpent. Her strength came from her talisman, Jaguar, the God of the Underworld.

For a long time, he grew up without a significant male in his life. The Christian missionaries treated him, indeed all of the Huatani children with affection, but they represented only a collective masculine influence. He ceased simply being Diego and became Diego Bárbaro the day the Spanish authorities came to the mountains and hauled away the children, claiming they needed a proper education. For years, a dilapidated old bus took the youngsters to the nearest town so one set of foreign prejudices could replace the heresy of another set of foreign missionaries. He learned later of their little joke. Bárbaro was their name for a savage.

One day, a tall, slender white man named Dr. Walter Collins returned to the mission near Diego’s village after a thirteen-year absence and learned he had a son. The man and the boy were both shocked. Diego had always known he was different; his flesh was lighter, and he was taller than his playmates. His sharp nose distinguished itself from the flat nostrils around him. But a white man as a father? Why had Natala never told him?

Despite an obvious strain between his dark grandmother and his pale father, they tolerated one another rather than rend the boy in two. Natala disapproved but permitted Diego to spend time with his sire. Slowly, he discerned the difference between the two healers, so he understood when one was preferable to the other. In the event of an emergency in the village, he always knew which to summon first.

When Diego was fifteen, Dr. Collins was sent home yet again and insisted on taking his son with him. The youth feared an uprising of the clan when Natala set her mind against his leaving, but the white curandero and brown curandera huddled in her small hut for half a day, and when they emerged, he became Diego Bárbaro Collins and accompanied his father to the North American Southwest. Natala must have agreed to the decision, as his father did not fall to the ground and die in agony. Over time, he learned to love and respect the tall white man until his doctor-father went off on another mission in yet another country last year.

After drying off from his second shower of the day, Diego dressed and hunted around for his shades. He wore the darkest smoked glasses he could find, even in class and at the shop because the bright sun hurt his eyes. But when twilight came, he could see a crack in the sidewalk twenty yards away. He didn’t even own a flashlight; he could see adequately even at midnight.

Donning the smoked lenses, he walked over to East Central. He took it easy because he still ached in certain places. Chuck Thalman usually worked on Saturdays…that was why Diego did not. But today, the guy’d called in another press operator to cover for him.

Diego had a phone number for Chuck but decided to wait until Monday to talk to him. Realizing he was hungry, he headed up to McDonald’s for one of their salads. The food irritated his sore throat, so he went home and gargled with warm saltwater. Then he put a small blanket woven with tribal patterns in the middle of the floor, tucked his legs under him, and sat in a lotus-like position.

Friday. After work. He and Chuck ate at a restaurant and then went to The Stomp to to meet some girls. Diego attracted women like mosquitoes. They claimed he was handsome and sexy, but he thought it was just that he didn’t look like anyone else they knew. Whatever it was, he didn’t believe he hooked up with any of them that night.

But he did recall meeting two…no, three…of Chuck’s buddies at the big nightclub. The five of them collected at a table with five women sitting at another not ten feet away, obviously available…insistently available. Hell, Diego had danced with a couple of them, but each time he returned to the women’s table, one of the guys would call him over and get him involved in something.

He remembered drinking a lot, but they wouldn’t let him pay for a round. One of them kept saying South American money wasn’t any good up here, laughing every time. It got tiresome.

Diego shifted on the mat and frowned. He couldn’t remember anything beyond that point. Had he gotten so drunk he passed out, and the guys dumped him in a motel? He’d drunk himself into oblivion a few times, but not lately. And he’d never felt like this when he regained his senses. He didn’t feel rotten enough, sick enough for a hangover that major. Something was strange.

Diego had learned a few things during those formative years with his bruja grandmother. He closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled deeply four times, one for each of the cardinal points, and then took two more deep breaths, one each for the underworld and the upperworld.

His mind reeled backwards until the dark, tangled jungle of home became imprinted upon his closed lids. Towering trees crowded the shore of a broad, muddy river. A cat, a huge tawny beast with dark rosettes, lifted its head from the water and stared through yellow eyes while its muzzle trickled water back into the river.

That was good. Jaguar was Natala’s kinsman. His mind raced down the river to the spot where it broadened and swept past a thatch and mud village, his village. Natala materialized, wrinkled and old and strong and mystical, inspiring fear and love. She smiled, giving encouragement to his efforts. That, too, was good.

Wisps of clouds obscured his vision as he traveled through time and space, arriving at a raucous table in a crowded, smoky nightclub. And then as if he were a disinterested party, he stood apart to watch the interplay of five young men huddled around a small table. One he thought of as Headhunter tried to isolate a woman at a nearby table while his companions vied for his attention.

His eyelids fluttered as his mystical self saw what the women at the next table saw, an uncommonly attractive group of men, all of an age. Diego’s spirit eye regarded each.

Chuck, the guy he worked with, was a stocky, brown-haired, likeable man. He was attractive to women because he represented stability.

John, a diminutive, bantam rooster-type with mousy hair, was loud and obnoxious. Diego dismissed him as Pipsqueak.

Ruggedly handsome, the dude called Rocco looked somehow foreign with black hair and brown eyes that roved restlessly and saw everything with the same watchful wariness as Headhunter.

But the last guy, Ritchie, was the one to keep an eye on. With his open, yellow-haired, pretty-boy looks, Leader had choreographed the whole evening.

Allowing his mind to float, Diego saw the party break up. The four men ushered Headhunter outside and piled into two cars. The procession stopped at a motel on East Central. They practically had to carry Headhunter inside. Using the deep, hypnotic trance of his bruja grandmother to part the chemical clouds of his mind, Diego watched the entire night unfold.

Headhunter had been helpless, weak beyond belief. They stripped him and laid him on the bed. The four men chattered like excited monkeys as they examined and poked his flesh. The duskiness, the difference fascinated them. They fanned the strange orange-gold patterns in his hair and rubbed curious hands through the gold-flecked black mat on his chest.

Diego’s eyes opened in shock as those lost hours were revealed to him. His breath came in short gasps, his skin prickled, his heart raced as he understood what each had done to him. Then a calmness settled over him as his grandmother’s instructions came through the ether. No, he wouldn’t take their heads. He wouldn’t even kill them. But as the grandson of a bruja, as a man, he couldn’t let this pass. It wasn’t the sex so much as the way they’d done it. And he would use all the skills Natala had stuffed into his head to pay them back.

*****

It looks as though a gang rape might have consequences, at least if Diego has his way. What’s he up to? Revenge, most likely.

Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from readers to get Dreamspinner interested.

My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

Until next time.

Mark

New posts at 6:00 a.m. on each Thursday for the life of this serial; thereafter, the first and third Thursdays of the month.