Christmas Bonus
Hernán M. Ferrari
If one were to say that Fleitas acted with relish when committing acts worthy of a disturbed mind, it would be prudent to consider that he acted under the influence of a violent emotion that sprouted from his deepest interior. From the caverns of his psyche. Moreover, he was convinced that he was doing a good deed.
This was evident in his carefree stroll through the Caseros neighborhood, dragging a bag and leaving traces of blood in his wake, scattering clues like a twisted version of Hansel from the Brothers Grimm.
Just minutes before midnight, he arrived at the doorstep of Manrique’s house, his coworker.
Years ago, Fleitas had accompanied him to that very same door after Manrique had overindulged in drinks, trying to drown his bad luck.
From that day on, Fleitas knew he was destined to lend him a hand.
He slid the latch and opened a barred door leading to a courtyard with wilted flowers. As he approached the window, he discovered Manrique’s wife and their two small children sitting at the table, having dinner.
The front door was no obstacle to his precise kick. As he burst into the room, illuminated by the few lights of an improvised Christmas tree, the screams of the family and the howls of dogs in nearby houses blended in a tragic chorus. Fleitas had arrived to spread joy.
Before knowing the events that took place in Manrique’s house, it is necessary to know what was the trigger that led Fleitas, a humble worker and devout Catholic believer, to go down the most misguided paths of human behavior.
Hours earlier, he had just parked the truck he was in charge of at a waste collection company. The parking lot was empty, except for a guard who was lying in his booth, possibly drunk.
He walked into the locker room and undressed to take a bath. As he entered the showers, he saw Manrique standing naked in a mist of steam, shivering as he clutched a hammer in his hands.
“What are you doing?” asked Fleitas.
The man gave him a blank, glassy-eyed look.
“I went to ask the head honcho when we’d be receiving our Christmas bonus, and ……”
“So what?”
“He told me we’re not getting a dime” he replied, banging his head against the white tiles. “The country’s situation, inflation and all. I’m up to my neck in debt. I won’t even be able to give my kids a plate of stew this Christmas! I owe money to little Italian Rody. You know what Rody does to those who don’t pay him?”
Fleitas scratched his head. He knew exactly what was going on inside the little Italian’s hovel near Pineral Square. The whole neighborhood knew about it. When one of his thugs managed to capture some uncollectible debtor, the little italian would grab a pair of rusty scissors he’d inherited from his mom and chop off a finger. One finger per month, until the debt was paid off.
“Hey, we can hold a raffle….”
“No. I already know what I’m going to do,” said Manrique, shaking the hammer. Accident at work, the insurance is going to guarantee me what they don’t.
He placed his left hand on the moldy tiles, extending the hammer towards Fleitas.
“I don’t have the guts to break my finger.”
“But look, raffling a piglet is sure money!”
“You go ahead, I’ll buy you a beer later.”
Maybe those weren’t the plans Fleitas had in mind to help his friend. In any case, he knew that the man was desperate, and that someone in that state can take extreme measures.
The first blow went straight to the nail, causing Manrique to bite his lower lip.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Don’t be a wimp, hit it hard,” Manrique shouted.
The second blow finished splitting his nail in the middle, leaving a trickle of blood that trickled down his legs, until it got lost in a grid covered with pubic hair. Fleitas could only feel a growing anguish in his chest.
He knew what it was like to fall from grace. To have your guts twist with hunger. To have the neighborhood kids tease him about his tattered clothes. Somehow, the situation led him down dark passages in his memory. Passages in which his father’s face appeared replicated on red walls, stained with blood. The same blood that slid from his mother’s body, while his father held a knife aloft.
Fleitas began to blink in a hurry, and with each blink a new (or old) image of his childhood appeared, as if his mind was taking the form of a demented slide projector. That’s how he saw his father arriving drunk, while he was scribbling a drawing of Santa Claus in a blue notebook. He saw his mother berating him, the man’s accurate knee to the woman’s belly, and Mom’s strands of hair lying on the floor after Dad dragged her by the Christmas tree. And then the slides had sound, and the still photos became a movie in his mind. He saw himself, clinging against the doorway, as Dad held Mom up, grabbing her by the neck. Then the sound, the incomparable sound of flesh opening, the metal blade of the razor penetrating Mom’s belly. Mom shrieking, Mom squirming, as Dad reached inside the open belly and pulled out yards and yards of intestine.
The father asked him to decorate the Christmas tree with his mother’s guts. He took the drawing of Santa Claus, smiling and impregnating it with blood. Then he tore his neck from side to side, and screamed at his son how much he loved him while spitting blood out of his mouth. Then, the movie stopped. Fleitas blinked like a camera shutter.
Now he was facing Manrique, who was looking at his hand and telling him that enough was enough. But Fleitas knew that for that he would only get a few pesos. A placebo for someone whose debts would continue to rain down. Manrique’s family deserved more than the crumbs of insurance.
He clutched his partner’s hand against the tiles, and unloaded the third blow. The fourth. The fifth. Manrique screamed. The flesh of his thumb was beginning to fray, and blood was flowing down in communion with the water. Small pieces of ligaments clung to Fleitas’ beard like inert parasites.
“Don’t pull back, you little shit,” he said, smiling.
Manrique shouted for help, and Fleitas gave him a direct blow to the jaw, breaking his teeth and making him fall against the shower faucets.
Sheltered by the company’s scarce controls, Fleitas had enough time to change and carry his companion’s naked body to the side of the truck. Manrique shuddered at the sight of the razor’s edge towering over him.
Fleitas straddled his friend and began to separate the skin of his face from the skull, until it was completely removed. From the skinned Manrique’s nasal cavities gushed bloody bubbles and it was then when, perhaps driven by the adrenaline of the moment, Fleitas noticed his cock hardening. He was distracted for a moment as he felt the swelling inside his pants. A pungent aroma invaded his sense of smell, an aroma that seemed like an aphrodisiac. Manrique was gasping for breath. Fleitas opened his fly and introduced his member into his friend’s lipless mouth, repeatedly, until he choked him with his semen.
When Fleitas activated the truck’s compactor where his partner’s remains rested, the sound of bones breaking echoed in the parking lot. The guard stumbled out from inside his sentry box and approached the truck. But there was nothing there but the remains of blood. Fleitas had already left the place with the skin of Manrique’s face over his own and carrying a heavy bag.
And this is what happened when he arrived at his friend’s house: the youngest of Manrique’s children asked his mother if that sinister apparition in front of them was his father. Fleitas removed his companion’s rotting skin, revealing an ecstatic look.
“I see that your tree has lights, but no garlands. Who wants to decorate it?” he said, pulling out yards and yardss of intestine from the bag, while the police sirens began to increase in intensity.
The first cop who entered the house could not help vomiting. Behind entered his colleagues, weapons in hand, who were stunned by the sinister postcard. The youngest of the Manrique family was on Fleitas’ shoulders, decorating the tree with his father’s intestines. The older one was trying to stop the incessant hemorrhage emanating from the body of his mother, who was lying next to the Christmas crib with her neck open from side to side, bathing everything in blood.
Fleitas turned to the new arrivals. He lowered the child from his shoulders, gave him a smile and ran a bloody finger across his nose. He approached the cop smiling.
“Welcome! Would you like a glass of cider?”
Someone fired a shot, giving way to a succession of shots that ended up riddling Fleitas with bullets.
The police chronicle spoke of the growing insecurity in the neighborhoods and of the sadism with which the crime was perpetrated.
Few, perhaps no one, stopped to think that Fleitas acted in search of a greater good. Those children would grow up with the peace of mind that their parents’ insurance would give them, and misery would never again knock on their door. He had given his best to save the fate of that family.
The smile on his corpse testified to that.
