People feared me. They always had. Wings the devil graced me with, eyes that evoked the bloodlust of a thousand, and a body that tore into half. If I hadn’t lived in this decaying vessel for this long, I would fear myself too. But this was my fate. With the walls of my centuries-old skin caving in, I succumbed to the vengeance and rage that shackled my soul to a boundless eternity in this realm festering with humanity’s worst.
I had not always been this way. Before my skin emulated the color of a corpse, I used to glow gold in the sun. My eyes used to only know how to hold love. My lips used to be warm on my love’s skin. I remembered everything like it was just yesterday. We used to be happy. I never thought I would know the putrid taste of vengeance on my tongue.
Diego. Diego Rodriguez. His name rang in my head like it was the first time I heard it. His name tasted like the malignance of all the evil in this world. I used to say his name like rose petals would come out of my throat every time I did. And he used to look at me like I was the moon. I loved him beyond the world. I used to think that if we died, our souls would glimmer in the sky together as stars so that even infinity would not bring us apart. So much for that because he was already dead. And I wasn’t. I felt alive more than ever, an undead brimming with ire tormenting me.
Diego and I had a child four hundred sixty-eight summers ago. A wise elder told me I would birth a girl with my eyes and Diego’s smile. I came home that day with such excitement to tell him, only to be met with such indignation. I still felt his palm hard on my face to this day. Apparently, Diego only wanted a son to preserve the family name. He changed that day. His brows began to meet each other often. He looked at me like I carried the devil’s spawn in my womb.
The night crept up that day, and I was barely comfortable. I was forced to sleep on the coarse molave floorboard of our living room. I awoke to Diego walking lightly around me. Perhaps he would like to invite me over to our bed, I supposed. I wished for nothing more than him to hold me fondly again. He knelt down and lightly cupped my face, sticky with dried-up tears.
“Magdalena, I was too misguided with my anger.” I wanted to hear him utter. I looked at his eyes, hoping to see regret, but instead, there was a calculated determination in his gaze. He quickly reached behind his back, and before I could even see it, the machete behind him made its way deep into my belly, slicing my torso in half. It was too quick; I was only alive long enough to hear him say, “Your womb is of no use if it could not give me a son.”
I awoke to a dimly lit tavern after who knows how long. I felt different. My skin was colder, but the pain was gone. I looked around and saw the elderly woman I came across the other day sitting in the corner of the room.
“It was a bloody death,” she said, “What a waste. The molave floor was opulent.” She plodded towards me. I wanted to ask her about everything, but I physically couldn’t. My tongue felt weird.
“You can’t talk, Magdalena. You’re no longer human. The morning after your death, your husband disappeared to run from the charges. The day I saw you, I knew he would murder you. I could not mention a thing because then you would call me a heretic. Diego does not have that kind of love you held for him, and it was bound to happen.”
𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩’𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙄 𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙩 𝙞𝙩. I was alive in a different form. In my new skin came flooding my pent-up rage and malevolence. 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱. 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙜𝙤. 𝙃𝙪𝙧𝙩 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙜𝙤. 𝙆𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙜𝙤. I didn’t want to live like this. We were supposed to raise our children in the house he built for us. I was supposed to wake up to his arms wrapped around me daily. We were supposed to mark eternity with our love as stars in the sky.
“Magdalena,” her voice brought me back to the grimy tavern, “You must listen. This is the best I could do. The world is not kind to women. There are others like you that I was unable to save. My time here is short. For as long as you live, you must protect these women. With your new form, you are more than able to do so.”
So, I did. The first step to protecting innocent women was hunting men like Diego. And where else must I start if not with him? I flew city to city, searching for that face cursed with the antipathy of masculinity. I could fly now. Although the machete Diego ran across my torso, it only allowed half of my body to soar; the other half would remain on the earth.
As soon as I saw his face, I felt alive, as if my heart started beating again. He looked so different years later. His hairline receded, I noticed, and he’s built a bit more muscle. He must’ve gotten a new job, I supposed. I morphed into the figure of a young woman, one with the features he was fond of. Long, silky hair, down-turned eyes, and a perfect cupid’s bow. I talked to him for a while, trying to seduce him. Men like Diego were easy.
I took him to a shabby inn, somewhere less populated. As we undressed each other, his voice wavered, “I can’t, I have a family.” My heart began to beat again. Not out of extreme pain but out of excitement. The thought of his family—his new wife, his children—waiting at home for a dead man brought an indescribable thrill to me.
And so I did my part.
I left the inn with blood on my graying skin. Suddenly, a thought came to me. His family must be next. This was not enough. Diego was not enough. The anger still lived in me. Perhaps if I were to kill the woman whose life I was supposed to live, I could live on to be what the elder told me to be. I was envious of her, but beyond that, I pitied her. Being a wife in this world was hard, and so was being a widowed mother of three. In this world, death seems like a kinder option than being a woman.
Peering through their three-story house’s window sill, I could see Diego’s new wife tending to their two children–two sons I presumed to be around ten, as she carried another in her womb— oblivious to the fact that I had just killed her husband. Diego must’ve been over the roof when his wife birthed two sons. His wife looked rather plain, or perhaps this was the face of a woman bearing the weight of a decade of motherhood on top of being a wife to Diego’s temper and violence.
I felt sick to my stomach. I thought about how Diego might have wooed her—if he also played her the songs he played for me, if he promised her the future, he promised me, if he loved her the way he loved me. I felt sick to my stomach. The only difference between me and the woman I had been staring at for over ten minutes now was that she was able to give Diego sons that I could not give. After all, beyond our abilities to birth and nurture our offspring, we were still just women. Beyond the fading redness of their house’s brick walls was a woman who had suffered just as much as I did, and the world was oblivious to it.
What a lonely, lonely life. I thought about what their faces would look like if they were to receive the news of the death of Diego and how the cause of it was unknown. That their husband and father were left in a shabby inn with his insides spilling out, eyeballs gouged out, and countenance frozen and petrified. It sent shivers down my spine, thinking about what Diego looked like. He deserved it. He deserved to die in an undignified death. I did this. I was the one who killed Diego Rodriguez. Men like him are the reason the world was corrupt. His blood and organs spilling out of his cold and pale flesh were the insignia of my accomplishment. Men were good for nothing if they didn’t scream for help as they bled into wooden floor crevices.
The dangers men were bringing made the earth hell without flames. Perhaps it was just in their nature to be the world’s most vile creatures. From the moment their hearts began to beat in their mothers’ wombs, evil circulated with their blood. The earth was tainted by the existence of men. With each breath they took, each breath they let out, the devil ran through their nostrils. With each step they took, the ground they walked on became infertile.
Perhaps this was what the wise elder intended for me to do. I must sacrifice my humanity to save the world from the curse of man. Even at the expense of women’s lives, I must fulfill my duty. Mothers who were carrying the messengers of the devil in their wombs must also perish. If I just as much allowed the devil to breathe in this fragile earth, then I would have failed.
Five. The number of lives in my hands. Or deaths, if I was being literal. As I left the house Diego’s family lived in, the humanity in me died. I knew this bloodlust would be insatiable. Men like Diego deserved to suffer and die. Even before they could see the light of day, they must not exist. To the women who had done nothing wrong but were cursed to carry the leeches of hell in this world, I must bring them a peaceful and dignified death. If I was cursed to live this life and never be graced with death’s embrace, then I should bring the warmth of death to them before they could end up like me. I, too, would’ve chosen death over this curse. But I was to suffer this fate to save women from the world’s tyranny.
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘨𝘢𝘭.