The Legacy of the Monster Diego Tomas, Part 1
1113 Words
The Legacy of the Monster Diego Tomas, Part 1Ramon stood shirtless in front of the open window, dripping sweat onto the warped pane. It was two in the afternoon, the worst part of the day, when the sun angled in and beat and beat and beat. At ten floors up, there was no relief, no escape from the heat, even if it rained. Rain this time of year was tropical. All it brought was more humidity.
He stared at the flooded avenues below. Skeletal awnings, rusty and broken, poked up out of the oily water, catching errant debris—flotsam from yet another building that had collapsed in some far off part of the city. The Barquemen fished the narrows, shouting and scrambling as they hauled in another catch. They weren’t going to eat any of it. Nobody would. They used it for oil. For their lamps. And their bombs. Stupid Barquemen. They stank like fish. They f****d like dogs. They were animals.
“Be glad we live up here, Ramon,” his father, Diego Tomas, used to say. “The air’s fresh and we’re clean, not like down there with those f*****g wetbacks.”
It made perfect sense to Ramon when he was a kid: Barquemen hauled the fish, so they reeked and were inferior. Roofers tended the garden, so they smelled like earth and were better. He always struggled to classify the Generators. They didn’t smell like anything, yet Diego Tomas called them stupid for choosing to live in the middle of the building. It created dissent, he said. They were always fighting the Barquemen or the Roofers, striving for position, respect. Now that they could no longer keep the electricity running, Ramon knew that they weren’t just stupid. They were stupid and desperate. He experienced that desperation first hand when the bastards broke through the fifth-floor barrier and tried to take over the building.
He rested his elbows on the sill, wincing at the pain from the pellets in his back, pellets his own son, Michal, shot at him. While he was downstairs defending his people, fighting off the i***t Generators, Michal did their job for them, took over the roof, made his own barricade. Ramon tried to talk some sense into the boy, but after the battle, his anger was difficult to contain. He couldn’t get the image of his son’s eyes out of his mind, how they went dead and blank as he raised the shotgun.
“How much longer?” Ramon asked.
His wife, Zoryana, said, “Almost ready.”
Ramon turned back into the dark apartment. The wood floors were worn and warped. A few turquoise drapes hung over the windows. Zoryana, her long black hair draped over her shoulders, came toward him with a knife and a bowl, bandages and honey. He pulled up a chair and sat in it backward so he could look out the window while she worked on him.
“You have to go down and talk to her,” she said.
“I don’t want to go down and talk to her. I want to go up and beat some sense into my son.”
“That sounds productive.”
“Yes. Productive for me.”
Zoryana pushed the tip of the blade into one of the puncture wounds, withdrew a metal pellet, and dropped it in the bowl with a plink.
“Didn’t you try that already? Why am I picking these things out of your back?”
“I was too fast for him to hit me in the face, that’s why.”
“Psh.”
Plink.
“I wouldn’t even have to go through the barricade,” he said. “I could grapple up the side. It’s only three floors.”
“No, Ramon.”
“It’s the only way.”
“Not if you talk to her. Alone, you’re weak. But together.”
“Zoryana. I just killed four of her people. We fought, she and I. One on one. I . . . her arm.”
“You have to talk to her, Ramon. She’s the only one who can help. You know Michal’s already done it.”
Someone in the distance zip-lined between two buildings, a black silhouette against the red sun. A stray bee buzzed by, followed by a message flying down on a string from the roof to the fifth floor. Michal really was talking to the Generators, talking to her, planning a coup. Ramon sucked his teeth and shook his head.
“I want to strangle him.” Zoryana jabbed him a little too hard with the knife. “Aye, Zory!”
His foot rubbed against something, and he looked down to see what it was. A shoe. A little white shoe with a yellow flower on the heel. It belonged to Mia, his daughter.
“How is Mia?” he asked.
“Fine. She’s in her room.”
“I want to check on her.”
“Don’t. She’s finally asleep. She was terrified when you left.”
Ramon let his wife work. After a while, he said, “How long has he been building that barricade?”
“Since you went to down to fight her.”
“And you let him?”
Another jab, another pellet.
“He took your gun, Ramon. What was I supposed to do? Why did you leave it up here anyway?”
“I left it for you, for him,” he said. “Just in case.”
She stopped, and he wondered if she was mad or thinking. He knew better than to force it. After a few minutes, he heard her unscrew the lid to the jar.
“He better be taking good care of my bees,” he said.
She spread honey on his wounds, massaged his shoulders.
“Of course he will.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s your son. You trained him.”
Ramon put his chin on the sill and closed his eyes. Lately, when the sky finally did open up, he and the others had had to haul in the big flats of corn and peppers, the grape vines and melons. First it was enough to store them in the rooms on the twelfth floor, but now the roof leaked, had even crumbled in places, and he wondered how long it would be before it vanished entirely, just rotted away. How long would their building last? How long before it listed and fell and turned into so much debris floating in the narrows? What were they going to do?
“This is madness.”
“He’s just mimicking you, Ramon. How many times did you tell him the story of you and Diego Tomas?”
“I’m not Diego Tomas. Diego Tomas was a monster.”
“And what are you? What did you just do?”
“What was I supposed to do? They broke through the barrier.”
“Your son sees it differently. He’s in love.”
“With some pale, midlevel slut. How did they even meet?”
“They climb the elevator shaft, the old trash chutes.”
Ramon knew this. He did the same when he was a child.
“It’s dangerous.”
Zoryana turned his head and took his face in her hands and gave him a sweet kiss.
“It’s how we met. Remember?”
“I remember. But you were one of us.”
“In love, what does that matter?”
“I’m his father. He should listen to me.”
Zoryana stood up and started to gather her things.
“Go see her. Go talk to your sister.”
Ramon emptied the bowl into his hand before giving it back to her. The metal painted little dots on his skin. He looked out the window. The sun pounded down, fat and red. The Barquemen continued their haul. Ramon watched them. He shook the pellets in his fist.
- Writer
