The Long Day of Revenge (11 page)

“I suppose it is the same as fighting the bulls. I enjoy the cheers and the rush as I flirt with danger. No doubt about that. The only thing I don’t really like is the kill so much, but that’s the way of things. There’s only one animal I live to kill, and his name is Gaditano.”

“How strange,” Esmeralda noted. “You look to kill one bull above all others.”

“Yes,” Manolo answered.

“You will spend your life to kill one bull.”

“This isn’t just one bull. It is a demon with four legs.”

Again, the room fell into silence for what seemed an eternity, until Esmeralda spoke her mind.

“I’m imaging you’re too spent to fuck again, and my ass can’t take another pounding. Do you want another massage and try to rest some?”

“Why not?” the matador answered, thinking now of his hated enemy on the Manzano ranch. “Why not?”

Chapter Eight

Normally, a bullfight from Nogales would not have been seen on national television, but because Manolo Garza and Fernando De La Torre were fighting together, there was sufficient interest to air the event. The hottest new sensation alternating with the veteran star. A formula for greatness.

Lucinda watched the screen as a commentator told of the careers of both men, bringing up as usual the horrendous injury Manolo had received on the Manzano ranch. The press, too, seemed never willing to let the matter rest.

From high above, the trumpet sounded and the band exploded in the playing of
Cielo
Andaluz
. As they did, the wooden gates were opened, and Manolo Garza strode into the ring, looking regal in a costume of black and gold. De La Torre was to the far side of him, wearing white and silver.

With both men offering smiles unbecoming people who were about to face death, they entered the stadium. Slowly, they walked across the sand in the opening parade as applause swelled around them, followed by the banderilleros and picadores who would help them in the functions of the spectacle this day.

Lucinda held no real interest in De La Torre, and while she wished him no harm, he was not the true focus of her enthusiasm. It was Manolo she loved, though at times she was starting to question why.

She had not wanted to go to Nogales, but opted to stay in their Mexico City apartment, so far away from the border. She had prayed for Manolo that afternoon as she always did, but in his absence, like always, she had been left a keepsake to remember him by. Her own buttocks were healing, but sore via bruises from the session before he flew out to Hermosillo, visited the Manzano ranch, and caught a train to Nogales.

If only she could yield to Manolo’s strange nature and relish the spankings. What they did was so bizarre. It even seemed abnormal. He punished her like a little girl whenever she did something awkward or displeasing. At other times, he punished before sex and sometimes afterward. Whatever happened to just good old fashioned fucking?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a roar from the crowd as the first bull of the day, going to De La Torre, plodded slowly into the ring. It was big, but not terribly fast.

“Go! Go!”

The words came to her. Terrified cries as Rafael Gonzalez ushered her dying man into the truck and strove to save his life. As a manager now, he was in Nogales somewhere behind the fence watching the action as nervously as she would be when it came to Manolo’s turn.

“Is he gonna make it?”

“Get him to a fucking hospital!”

“I’ve got him!”

She wondered how big Gaditano was now and exactly what Manolo was planning. This long day of revenge he constantly spoke of was still vague to her. Perhaps he had no concrete plan, yet somewhere in her mind she knew better.

“Ow!”

She thought of the spanking she had received just before Manolo was on his way north. As usual, her pants were down and Manolo was into delivering the blows far more than she was at receiving.

“Owwww!”

She could hear her own cries.

“Owwwww…”

She was stretched across his lap like usual with her pants and panties down by her ankles, taking blow after blow with a hair brush.

“Ow. Ow. Ow.”

These rituals were really getting hard to take.

“Ole!”

Fernando De La Torre has finished his cape work with his bull, and the picadores, the mounted men who weakened the animal with their pointed poles, much like at the ranch testing, were leaving the ring. Next came the banderillas, the prong tipped shafts placed in the bull, which she also hated.

“That’s the way of things,” Manolo always explained in his usual trite phrase. “Well, that’s just the way of things.”

By the time he took the muleta and sword, De La Torre looked exasperated, as this beast gave him little to work with. The animal bellowed, pawed the dirt, and refused to offer much aggression in spite of all the coaxing in the world.

Angrily, the matador called to it. He jumped up and down. He pivoted and profiled. Yet for all his posturing, he could only provoke a few attacks from the bull.

The commentators were noting he should just give up and kill. Though he had no way of hearing them, that was exactly what he did, making short work of everything.

“This has been a disappointing start to what we had all hoped would be a great showing,” the one newscaster remarked. “Granted, the matador had very little to work with as he faced this animal, but still, our expectations have not been met.”

“Since when are hopes ever met?” Lucinda questioned.

She was not thinking of the bullfight, but her life with Manolo. As time marched on, he had become stranger and stranger.

Again, Lucinda thought of other places and other times, though she should have had her eyes glued to the screen.

“Someday the people will be calling out my name…”

The training session in Agua Prieta where she first realized she loved Manolo. How different things had been. Then there was the matter of that spanking. It was not nearly as harsh as the ones to follow, but the one that started so many other things into motion.

“Owwwwww...”

She thought of Tijuana, where Manolo had brutalized her bottom for making him climax too soon. Was this a game, or was he deathly serious? She didn’t know anymore.

“The long day for revenge is coming. When it is over, everything will be made right, and we can get back to our normal lives.”

Was bringing death to a bull really the answer? He seemed to think so, but in her own mind, things were far more complex.

She was growing tired of the spankings and tired of his obsessions.

The trumpet sounded and Manolo’s bull entered the ring, circling the sand in search of something to kill.

“This is the way of things.”

Manolo rushed out to greet it with veronicas. These were passes named after the legendary saint who was said to have held a cloth matador style to wipe the face of Christ on his way to the cross. The crowd roared in approval as he brought the horns past him half a dozen times before turning, swinging the pink lure over his shoulder and walking away.

Her heart was beating faster.

The picadores and banderilleros did their dirty work, and Lucinda tried to think of other things. The only problem was her mind came back to her most recent spanking episode again.

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”

Her bottom ached like usual as he did a job on her cheeks, striking them mercilessly until they glowed. Neither her pleas nor her tears caused him to cease.

“Owwww.”

She’d made the mistake of moving her hand backward to protect herself as she often did.

“Did I tell you to put your hand on your bottom?” Manolo questioned. “Move your hand away now.”

Her disobedience brought the usual hard punishment, which had her kicking and screaming.

“When are you ever going to learn to be a good wife? When are you going to realize we need to do this so I have good luck in the ring? When are you ever going to accept the job I do and the things I gain for us! Bad girl!”

He came without sex, once again squirting his load as he pounded her bottom, his sticky fluids striking her on her side.

“So is this what it’s all about?”

She was jerked back to reality by the cheers.

Manolo was on his knees, spinning in the lure, just as he had done with that practice session in the rodeo ring. Only this time it was for real.

Though she did not care for the bullfighting world, this was the Manolo Garza she loved. So unafraid. So outrageous. So insane with bravado.

The bull turned and tried to leave him, but Manolo rose and chased him down, again dropping to his knees to repeat the maneuver in another series.

What a paradox life was.

Lucinda did not like the bullfight, yet loved the man who fought the bulls. She hated the moment of truth where the sword was delivered, but knew it was kill or be killed. She loved the man more for what he had been than what he had become. She was not a battered wife by any means, in the true sense of the word, but she was becoming a disciplined one and the thought of such seemed absurd now. What was the future going to hold? Did the change in destiny lie again with the death of a bull named Gaditano?

As she thought of these things, she chastised herself for not paying closer attention to the screen. Manolo was in danger, and this was live rather than prerecorded.

“The long day of revenge.”

This might not have been the day Manolo had in mind, but he killed quickly and cut an ear which he paraded with around the ring while the band played. She was sure he would bring the trophy home, and if she did not praise him effectively, another spanking would ensue.

“If only we could just fuck. If only…”

Sudden passion overwhelmed her and there was time, for De La Torre would face his second bull, and this held little interest to her.

In an instant, her pants and panties were off and she was sitting back down on the sofa, feeling only a trace of discomfort in her recently disciplined ass.

In the vision, she thought not of spanking, but a different dream, where Manolo was on his knees before her with his tongue snaking in and out of her hairy pussy.

“Lick it. Lick it…”

She violated herself with her index finger probing within, and she felt the dampness come in a rush.

“Do it to me…”

At this moment, she was unsure who as being weirder. Was it her or Manolo? There was no need for masturbation any longer. After all, she was married and aside from those torrid discipline sessions she despised, there was still room for sex.

“Oooooohhhhhhh!”

In her mind, Manolo was showing skill at cunnilingus. He devoured her sensitive hole and lips.

“Oh God, Manolo! Oh God, Manolo!”

For once, Manolo was giving her pleasure rather than pain. This was what she truly longed to feel. There had to be a way to get back the love they once felt, right after the long wait in the Hermosillo hospital.

“That’s the way of things.”

How simple Manolo’s explanation for everything was.

“Oooooohhhhhhh.”

She continued to poke herself with her finger, extracting it to taste her own juices, which she had never done before.

Was she, like Manolo, going insane?

“So that’s what a woman tastes like,” she whispered. “How fascinating.”

Again, she went between her legs, but this time she toyed with her stiff clit, bouncing it to absolute attention.

“Oh! Yes! God!”

This time nothing was being done to her backside. It was all frontal and all frenzied passion.

“Eat it, Manolo! Lick it.”

Her thoughts were running wild, as were her feelings. Deeper and deeper, she imagined Manolo’s tongue probing into her, flickering in and about as she was pumped to new heights of utopia.

“Oooooohhhhhhh...”

She was starting to climax. She felt the river inside her flowing over its banks. There was nothing to match this, anywhere and anyhow. Though she would have preferred it to be her husband’s head between her legs and not her finger, the old reliable had come through for her.

“Oh, my God!”

She opened her eyes as her scream was matched by a shrill shriek from the television and panic-stricken shouts from the commentators. She had heard them before, back at the ranch in Hermosillo.

“Fuck!”

She had not seen the actual goring, though she was certain it would be explained in short order.

“Fuck!”

Fernando De La Torre was being helped to his feet, and as he arose, the bottom half of his suit of lights was already becoming covered with blood.

“Oh, my God on the cross!”

Ring helpers rushed to the torero’s aid, rushing him from the ring toward a door marked infirmary, but the newscasters were in frenzy, piping out how he would be taken to a waiting ambulance instead and delivered to the Nogales hospital.

“Shit.”

Then the replays showed, with De La Torre bouncing on the animal’s head, his body pin-wheeling through the air. It was the most horrible sight anyone could have ever hoped to avoid seeing.

“God.”

The camera zoomed in on Manolo, who looked as if he planned to throw up.

“Manolo?”

One of the commentators was mumbling something about a femoral artery, but this was foreign to her. All she knew was the obvious. As she had daydreamed, De La Torre had taken a massive injury, even worse than Manolo’s on the ranch, for this was with a full-sized bull and no calf.

“Fernando…”

She was calling the name of Manolo’s friend and rival now, though she barely knew him. Perhaps now it would be too late to get a chance.

“Don’t worry,” she told herself. “Surgeons can work wonders now. Look what they did with Manolo and his goring. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

Yet in the back of her head was a nagging feeling things would not be okay.

It was Manolo who now had the sword and cape in hand, heading toward the offending bull with one deadly purpose in mind. This time he was not acting as an avenger for himself on a bull ranch, but avenger for a fallen companion.

“Manolo...”

Lucinda held her breath, watching her husband profile, aim, and bury the sword.

“Thank God.”