The Mark of La Cruz

The streets are quiet as usual. It is a silence made of screams, desperation. A silence that fills the whole city. Nobody notices it. Nobody cares. But things are starting to change. The same screams, now silent, will produce little sounds, barely perceptible. Every knife stabbing a stomach, every gun shot in a corner, will be turned into a melody people will be able to hear, one day. A name is coming. It is a name that represents fear and hope, depending on which side of the coin are you on. That name is La Cruz.

      People, when living in fear, are static, empty, like receptacles of whatever light comes to them. No matter how dark this light really is. No matter whether it hurts or sins. In a blackened world, any light is a bless. Enfer City welcomes it.

    “No! And no, again, Marilyn!”, Peter Gordon screamed to his employee, tired of listening to the same story one more time. “Get out of my office and write about Legion!”

    “Every paper in town is writing about that! Every paper in the country, and even in the whole world. Make someone else write about those terrorists of Legion. What’s hot news here is the new superhuman vigilante, La Cruz. We’d never had someone so brutal, so violent, and moreover, so… just.” Journalist Marilyn Beegot stopped at the end of that phrase. Her eyes, lost, like staring at his editor’s desk, but actually reliving the very first moment she saw the corpse of one of La Cruz’ victims. It was a multiple rapist who tried to claim another victim in a solitary alley downtown. His body, burned; blazed by a flamethrower according to the 13-year-old boy who witnessed everything, saved by this “beast”, as he described him. The corpse had a mark. A mark of a cross, made by a razor blade in accordance to the forensic analysis. Also a note:

If you had been strong enough to carry your cross, I wouldn’t have to forge one for you.

No innocent has fallen here. I’m not looking for the innocent.

I look for the filthy. And I remove the filthy.

Tres

━ Hace bastante frío.

Sus dedos seguían moviéndose y chocando los unos con los otros mientras sus ojos trataban de evitar mirarla tras ese comentario tan trivial.

━ Sí. Supongo que tienes razón━, respondió, no sin antes echar una mirada a sus muslos, los cuales se veían casi totalmente gracias a ese vestido corto que tanto le gustaba a él. Ella, sin voltear a mirarlo, cruzó las piernas y paseó su mano derecha por el muslo, lenta y suavemente. Apenas sintió su propio tacto.

La poca saliva que le quedaba en la garganta le sirvió para tragar una última vez después de observarla y antes de necesitar un trago de agua.

━ Es increíble lo rápido que anocheció━ dijo ella sin permitirse juntar los labios completamente. Se sabía observada.

━ La verdad es que ya es bastante tarde. Han pasado tres horas.

En sus oídos retumbaban los latidos de su corazón. Le dolía la cabeza y por un momento sintió que habría dado lo que fuese por estar en la comodidad de su hogar y no en ese parque solitario con una mujer tan experimentada, pero se sacudió esa idea de la cabeza.