He was silent. Lisa opened her eyes. He was looking out over the ocean. It seemed peaceful on the surface. Even the waves crashing into the sand seemed deceptively peaceful – timeless.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’m Lisa. Pestova – Lisa Pestova. Elizabeth, actually.”
He looked at her, then noticed she was watching him – watching his reaction to her nudity. She seemed – pleased – that she made him nervous.
“Mac,” he said. “Call me Mac.”
“Not much of a name,” Lisa said. “Did you just make that up or what? I’d like a better name than that for the first guy who ever shoved a dick up my ass.”
“Macario,” he said, unable to keep from grinning at her remark. “Macario Sebastian Martinez. At your service.”
They grinned at each other.
“Macario,” Lisa said, letting the word slid over her tongue. “I think that’s the prettiest name I’ve ever heard.”
She smiled as she watched Macario blush.
“Does it mean something special?” she asked. “A name like that has to mean something…”
She waited, oddly entranced by this young Latin boy sitting in the sand next to her.
He smiled, still embarrassed. “In English, it means, ‘happy’.”
They sat, silent, for a moment. He seemed to be getting more comfortable in the presence of her nudity.
“An odd contrast,” Lisa observed, “between the man and the name. You seem tortured by something.”
Macario frowned, blinking several times. “Our lives here are not…”
He sighed, not understanding how to tell this beautiful gringo girl what the lives of his people were like. Then he remembered – she wasn’t a gringo! Last night, she’d used the phrase, ‘my people.’ Perhaps she could understand, after all.
“Who are your people?” he asked her.
Lisa saw in his mind where the question had come from. She smiled, not knowing how to tell him.
“My people are not native to this land, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied. “More than that, I’d rather not say. Please don’t be offended. Our secrets keep us alive.”
“Then there are not many of you?” he asked.
She shook her head, agreeing with him. He cleared his throat.
“My people will be harmed if I do not give you to Juan’s brothers,” he explained. “It makes me unhappy to sacrifice one so beautiful as you. You should run – far away. Forget about us.”
“I can’t forget,” Lisa explained. “You saved my life. In my world, I am indebted to you. I would help you, if you let me.”
“You will simply die,” Mac explained earnestly. “And my saving you would be wasted. Leave while you can.”
Lisa sighed. “Sorry, I can’t. Let’s go meet Juan’s brothers. Shall we?”
“You’re willing to die for people you don’t even know?” he asked, simply not believing it.
“You’re willing for people you know to die for me,” Lisa explained. “How can I do less for you? Besides, how do you know I will die? You thought I would die last night.”
“Yes!” Mac said, pouncing on something more tangible to discuss. “How did you survive? Either he butchers the girl himself, or he lets his faggot lover stomp her to death. If she’s still alive in the morning, she gets fed to the sharks.”
Lisa grinned. “The shark won’t be back, either.”
She laughed at his surprised expression.
“You killed a shark?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He looked her over quickly. There was not a mark on her perfect body. Even the gash on the side of her head and the wound on her shoulder from where she hit the rock was healed.
“I don’t understand,” he said, finally. “Who are you? What are you? I pray daily for an angel to deliver us from the Verdugo Brothers. Are you that angel?”
Lisa had no idea how to answer his soul-rending questions. She sat silently, gazing at him. She didn’t know how her mother calmed the people she helped, but she tried radiating ‘calm’ into Macario’s mind. Surprisingly, he noticed her mental touch.
“I felt you touch my mind last night,” he confessed to her, “and I fled. After I left you with that butcher, I went to confession. I knew it wouldn’t help you, but I needed to unburden my soul. I’ve helped him to kill so many…”
There were tears in his eyes. “I walked the sands this morning, searching for your remains. The gulls always come to this beach. His victims draw them. Part of what I do to protect him is make certain that the remains are covered and out of sight of the turistas. I was glad when I didn’t find you.
“But I saw the gulls flying over the ocean,” he said. “That happens when he feeds the shark. But I swear, as I squinted out to see the gulls – to see if they were diving for food or just flying – I swear I saw an angel flying among them.”
He stared at her intently. She looked away, afraid of his next question – afraid of her answer. She was discovering that she was strongly attracted to this young man, this handsome Latin whose name means ‘happy’ and who was the most tormented, tortured soul she’d ever met.
“Are you that angel?” he asked quietly, hopefully.
She looked up at him, her mouth open, uncertain what would come out.
“I’m not an angel,” she said quietly. Then she added, “but I do know how to fly. Although, I’m not very good at it.”
She sighed, hoping that he wouldn’t flee in terror. She had no idea why she told him that. She felt she couldn’t withhold anything from him. She never felt that way before, not even with her parents. Especially not with her parents!
“Well, angel or not,” he said, confiding in her, “you are special! I felt that last night. Your people must be special people who go where you are needed. And you are desperately needed here.”
“Then, I suppose,” Lisa finished his thought for him, “I suppose we should go met the Verdugo Brothers.”
She rose to her feet. She felt strangely calm – relaxed, even. She didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t tortured about something – fire, sex, parents, whatever.
“We should find you something to wear,” Macario suggested.
‘She’s really going to go through with it!’
“How many secrets can you handle in one day?” she asked, cryptically.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “I saw you fly, and your people are not indigenous to this place. What other secrets do you have?”
Lisa held out her hand. In her mind, she was visiting her bedroom, picking out something nice to get murdered in. A pair of jeans and a cut-up T-shirt with a Suicide Girls emblem on it appeared in her arms. She quickly put them on.
“Ready,” she said, grinning up at him.
Mac read the T-shirt. “Very appropriate. Let’s go.” He didn’t smile.
“You know a lot of big words,” she said, liking the way he talked.
They walked along the beach for awhile, then up to the road and across a gravel parking lot. Mac noticed that the girl didn’t seem to care that she was walking barefoot on very sharp, hot gravel. His feet were tough, but even he would wince if he were walking barefoot here.
“Do you eat?” he asked. “I mean, are you hungry?”
“Do I eat?” she asked, laughing. “Do I look that much like I come from another planet?”
Macario couldn’t believe that, after she’d just admitted and demonstrated that she was much more than a mere human, she would ask such a question.
“I know you’re from another planet,” he admitted. “I just wanted to know if you’d like to eat before you sacrifice yourself.”
Lisa laughed at the way he said that. “I not going to sacrifice myself.”
“What are you going to do then,” he asked. “Kill them?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Do you think I could ask them not to bother you and your friends any more?”
He laughed at that. “Reasoning with the Verdugo Brothers. That’s a new one. Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” she confessed. “What are my choices? Human or animal?”
She was teasing him, now. He laughed again, less forcefully, this time.
“Animal, I suppose,” he said. “Do you eat humans?”
Lisa smacked him on the arm.
“Not before last night,” she confided in him.
“So, you’re new to this orgy-type thing, then?” he asked, hopefully.
“Well, yes, I guess so,” she admitted. “I’ve never been fucked before. It was fun. At least it was until ‘Stomper’ showed up…”
“You really are an angel,” he said, grinning at her.
Lisa just glared at him. They walked along the road for awhile.
“So I was your first?” he asked, wondering.
“Yeah,” she admitted, “You were the first one back there.”
“You should have stuck around,” she continued. “You could have been the first one in the front part, too. That would have been nice. As it is, I don’t know who was the first one in there. But I remember the last one…”
“But I was your first ever?” he asked again.
She stopped and looked at him. “What kind of a question is that? You humans are really weird. Why would you care if you were my first?”
“Us humans?” he asked, laughing. “And you think I talk funny.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said, puzzled.
“No, but you thought it,” he said.
Lisa stopped in her tracks, stunned. “Can you read my mind? Do you know what I’m thinking of? How did you get through my shields?”
“Your ‘shields?’ You sound like somebody from Star Trek,” he said, almost laughing. “I can only tell what you’re thinking when you’re thinking about me. Okay?”
He turned to walk further up the road.
“You’re an Empath!” she accused him, taking a couple of long strides to catch up.
“I wasn’t before you came along,” he confided in her. “I can only read you!”
“Wow!” Lisa said. “I’ve never had that happen before. At least, not with a human – a human male, that is. Not in this lifetime.”
“You keep qualifying everything you say like that,” he told her, “and I’m going to start believing you’re really a Sapphic goddess from another planet that’s reincarnated into an earth body to save the planet or something.”
Lisa stopped in her tracks again, stunned. She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.
“Oh, God!” he exclaimed. “You are? I don’t believe it!”
“Okay, good!” she replied. “Don’t believe it! I didn’t say it anyway!”
She started walking again, getting ahead of him.
‘God! No secret I have is safe with him!’
“Yes it is,” he responded, trotting to catch up. “Your secrets are safe. I won’t tell anyone. Who’d believe me, anyway?”
She didn’t answer. They walked another half mile.
The road was paved now, and there were low, single-story buildings across the road from them as they walked. There was still no traffic, so they walked on the blacktop. Mac noticed that the girl ignored the hot tar on the road they traversed just like she’d ignored the sharp gravel earlier.
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