The Drug Mules and the Hell Lords (Short Fiction)

The Drug Mules
And the Hell Lords


A Demonic Hell Lord


Long before they did what they did, they knew man; they knew his nature better than he knew himself.
Long before the old man (the victim) Mr. Santana, heard the sound of the engines to the 747 jet in Lima, Peru, in route to Miami, he knew the dangers that surrounded his journey. He did not need to rise from his straw-mattress bed, pretend he was not one of the many caught in a bee-hive, so dense with tenements, few if any survived the trials and tribulations that go along with it, with the business at hand, accordingly, tongueless and dreadfully he boarded the jet, anxiety ridden, merged with health problems, henceforward the 67-year old man went and sat down quietly in his seat, as the jet took off, and the night faded on.
He had been raised in a mountain city in Peru, called Sapallanga—in fact, he was dreaming of going back after this one last delivery; if only he could (he had remembered as a boy the legends of the sighting and visualizations people have had of the Holy Virgin of Cocharcas, on the hilltop of the City. How he’d climb the hill during the fiestas, and like so many others, making his pilgrimage, his homage, he’d give his respects to the Virgin). If only he cold get out of the hands of the Hell Lords (the Drug Mules).
He was among the doomed men—of his kind, his dealings, his trade, which he appeared to have gotten it by blind chance, and bad luck. It had become visible one day as a lustful echo in his brain, and then a golden apple in his lap—then it all died away, left were the chief demons that were already disgorging his soul.

Evil, sin, cowardliness, repentance, guilt, bravity, lust: the Hell Lords (Hela, Pluto, Mephisto), they all believed in them—and hoped the men and women they were after, to be put into their eternal dens: of madness, misery and spells, put into their death-dens, would not come out of the darkness until they acquired their rude awakenings. Yes, they all believed in them, and hoped man did not, and did not become capable of such beliefs, they gave them promises, affirmed them, not needs, but wants, wishes, then they’d flee for a little while, putting them into the loneliest experience of all, into the land of darkness, slowly as if boiling them alive like a frog. That’s how it is done.
To believe, not in anything, to enter the sphere of emptiness—then escaping into one’s past, future, seeking out the promise, the one given, but to really living it, became another thing: or to have the chance to live it simply become an obsession. This was Mr. Santana’s actuality, truth, yet he was hanging on as if he had an unaccountable time period to get things right, a time he set to do what he wanted to do for himself, not quite knowing he needed to do it sooner than later, sooner than he thought. Yet in the back chambers, a hidden chamber in his mind, he knew nobody in this business really could escape his fate (so he confirmed with the source, the ones that put him into this dilemma).

There he sat in his seat, morning was breaking, and he could see it through the porthole next to him, the dark rainbow of purple and orange, a new horizon. The seat to his right was empty. There he sat in his seat doing nothing in particular, the only thing left he could do was breath and dream, and he was tired of dreaming, and he was starting to get tired of breathing, and he had to go to the restrooms. And there he sat, with fifty-packages of heroin inside of him (so the autopsy would read).
He got up from his seat, walked to the back, on his way, to the restrooms, someone’s foot was strangely laying in his path, as if extended, as if it had an extension on it, as if it grew outward from a hip, like a stem, into his pathway, and the old man tripped, stumbled trying to balance himself as he fell, but was tripped and fell nonetheless over that unidentified foot, it was still somewhat dark, and inside that darkness—down that aisle, the old man fell on top of the tip of the black shoe, that encased a foot (or a hoof) which broke open two bags inside of him, of heroin, split them open as he fell deep—sunk deep into the tip of the shoe, and its substance escaped and when he awoke (dead), there they were, the three Hell Lords waiting!


Note: Partly written 10-8-2008, completed, 10-10-2008
Dedicated to Enrique Herrera