Miguel Alvarez was no maricón, so it wasn’t as if he would have been thrilled about the attention if it had come from someone else. Still, if he was honest with himself (and he was never anything but, no matter how much it hurt – especially when it hurt) part of him knew that if it had been someone else following him around the unit and crooning in his ear, he might’ve found it merely annoying rather than disturbing.
It was the eye that made his skin crawl – vacant and white, a ragged scar dripping from the sclera, a reminder of one of the worst moments of his sorry excuse for a life.
Tráeme los ojos.
Years later, the images still loomed large in his nightmares – the scalpel in his hand shuttering like a series of freeze-frames, skipping on a CD; the photographs he’d been shown in Sister Pete’s office dynamic and screaming, blood and vitreous fluid staining his hands as he threw them to the ground.
Nice to see you.
Every time that eye turned his way, the same images flashed through his head – dread filling his chest, electricity buzzing in his veins – and the walls seemed to move in a little bit closer.
The rest of my fucking life, in a little fucking room.
They might as well beat me to death.
He’d tried to atone, face up to what he’d done and make things right –
You taught the dog Spanish?
Every command, she’s fucking bilingual.
– then ruined it all in a matter of seconds.
What the fuck makes you think we should set you free, you little prick?
Then again, if he was honest with himself (and he always was), it made sense that he had failed.
Every fucking day that I get up, I look in the mirror and I don't see me. I just see this other guy who did this.
Make me forget about that other guy. Let me be alone with myself again.
His intentions hadn’t been pure, and God had seen that, punished him – the same way he had with Miguel’s baby.
l should've cut my fucking throat instead.
I just don’t belong in the world.
Sometimes, when Miguel lay down to sleep, he tried to picture Rivera as he last saw him – the look of gratitude on his face when he left with Julie, the scars from his assault hidden behind dark glass. But inevitably, the glass cracks – his features contort –
I can’t see you, Alvarez. I’m looking right at you and I can’t see you.
Blood runs down his cheeks like tears, the macerated sockets oozing viscera.
I want my eyes back. Give them back to me!
He couldn’t give back Rivera’s eyes, so God took away his window.
The rest of my fucking life, in a little fucking room.
Miguel Alvarez was no maricón, but when his new cellmate entered the pod, he looked up at that eye and knew that this was what he deserved - that this ending was inevitable, from the moment he’d picked up the scalpel all those years ago.
“You wanna be me?”
Two eyes fixed on him - one seeing his body, the other seeing his soul.
I'm going to watch you ripen until you rot.
“You’re welcome to it.”