[P] THE UNLOVED .

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

Pursued by a broken memory.

El Rey heaves himself over the canyon rocks like a thing that is not meant to do so because he is not, never has been, and never will be. His skeleton feels like iron weapons curled in the shape of a man. He wonders if he will live to write about it. 

I think I deserve this, he thinks. But maybe not. Maybe he’s being unfair.

We all do things because other people want us to, don’t we? It just happens that way sometimes. We’re just made that way, at least some of us are. 

It feels like a lie, wrapped around his windpipe like a funnel of sand. He knows it to be false. 

He has so much to live for, Rey thinks. There must be something to live for that is not my death. One day I will come to an end and if it is not today it will be another day, and this man will have nothing left to live for if I am it. 

I wonder if I am it.

He thinks about asking the other man, but he is running, wheezing and clambering up the sandstone like a great black slug, death gaining momentum on his trail of slime rather than slipping on it. 

The black bull slides down a mess of rocks and when he lands in the clearing he is bleeding. It feels like being trapped in a great great dish. He wonders if it could fill with his blood, if maybe this brother o mine will make it so. 

Anyway, he caught up with me.


”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[El Toro]

but what is he to a warrior?

El Toro flies on anger made of wings and ribs. I’m gonna kill you, he says. I’m gonna kill you and it’s going to take a very long time, and that’s when you’re gonna know. You’re gonna know what it was like for them, each and every one. You’ll have to suffer a thousand times over but it’ll be worth it. It’ll be worth it for all of us. No one will know but you and I and the people in the sky, brother. I hate to call you that. I don’t care where you came from. I only care where you’re going.

Are we not brothers? El Rey had asked.

Not by blood, and not by honor, Toro had thought. What he said was, “Never.”

He recognized the shape of those horns and saw the curve of his nose. Uncle, he thought.

It did not matter in the sense that El Toro rejected the black bull for his heinous crimes. It mattered in the sense that Toro’s honor was being weighed on a scale that looked suspiciously like his very own horns, and on the other side was El Rey’s life. Were they of equal value? 

Don’t make me answer that.

The black bull slides down a cliffside and Toro descends after him. He nearly crashes into Rey, standing there, disoriented, like an idiot. Is that the confidence of an executioner? Just standing there, thinking I’m not gonna strike you from behind?

Thinking I would do the dishonorable thing?

(Never. Not even to you. Especially not to you.)

“Look at me, murderer. Look at me and fight.”



”WILL HE BE A BULL OR A MAN?“
WILL HE PERHAPS BE A BULL WITH THE FACE OF A MAN?
OR WILL HE BE LIKE ME?

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

El Rey turns to look at him. It is a slow and painful movement, the blood spilling down his legs like little sanguine streams and the very movement seems to take an eternity. Great black eyes look at little opal ones. “Why must we fight, brother?”

“I am not your brother.”

“But you are something to me.”

“I am your killer.”

Avenger of the lost.

“Maybe,” Rey said, “but why?”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“No.”

“People like you deserve to die.”

“Like me?” Reality wriggled in his grasp. He knew the wrongdoings, the murder, the torture, but they had been Right at the time, Acceptable, Upright and Moral things to Do…Did they lose that quality, being in the past, when the present was a time of different values? 

My brother charges me with the intent to kill. Is this any more right, I think, than what I have done? Family has evaded me all my life and now that I have found it, it has come to kill me. My own blood. 

El Rey thinks of the things he has to live for and imagines that they outnumber the things El Toro has to live for. He may be right.

They lock horns.



”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“

I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[El Toro]

but what is he to a warrior?

Both bulls are injured now; El Rey more so, and in that moment of white sparking on black charcoal, of hate trying to spark a fire, in that moment when their horns separate and El Toro leans back, open for a dagger to the throat - stupid, stupid - Rey runs.

How could you, how could you, how could you do this to me when it is my time to kill you, my time to pass judgement, o executioner, you are to die here and you would evade me-

Toro doesn’t realize at first. He swings his head forward and cuts only air. Adrenaline has ushered the black bull across the blood-bowl like a witch’s wind and Toro is racing after him, heaving, heart shouting you come back here, you come back, bastard, brother, beloved. Come back.

Toro slips. 

The same fate that befell his cousin momentarily takes him down, brittle sandstone slamming between his ribs and he wonders, briefly, if today will take his other lung-

He struggles against the rocks and screams, screams “Come back here and die like a man, El Rey,” but no one comes, no one comes back to kill him and when he finally struggles out of the rocks and over them, there is nothing but a trail of blood, and dust on the horizon. El Toro prays that Rey dies in the sandstorm, and prays that Rey survives it, so he may kill the black bull himself.


”WILL HE BE A BULL OR A MAN?“
WILL HE PERHAPS BE A BULL WITH THE FACE OF A MAN?
OR WILL HE BE LIKE ME?