Dark As Night

La Llorona

There is an old tale down in the southwest called La Llorona, I've never believed it thinking it was just some stupid tale my grandfather told me to keep me away from the Rio Grande at night. He always told me the story for a bedtime story, twisted I know. The tale always went the same each night.

There once was a woman who lived in the very poor section of Juarez, right across the Rio Grande from where I lived. The woman who was a mother began a relationship with a wealthy man and wanted to become betrothed to him. The man did not know the woman was a mother and spurned her advances toward betrothment.

The mother was thrown into the arms of insanity, she went back to her house and grabbed her children. She lead them to the river and stabbed both her children and threw them into the river. After the deed was done she ran back to her lover's house and told him she didn't have any children anymore, the man, when he saw her bloody white gown, spurned her for good and threw her outside his house.

This was the last straw for the woman's sanity, she cracked. She ran back to the river, screaming and tearing out her hair, trying in poor deluded vain to find her poor murdered children, but it was too late. Grandfather always said different parts of this part so I have no idea which is the truth. Some say she stabbed and drowned herself in the river. Others say she got caught by a mob and killed for committing the murders. Either way she died and that's when grandfather says the weirdness begins.

The townspeople soon heard a loud horrible wailing akin to the Irish Banshee's coming from the Rio Grande's banks. Some of the people who went and checked out the wailing saw something wandering the banks that had the body of a woman and sometimes the head of a horse. People knew after a while it was the woman who murdered her children being punished for her sins. According to grandfather, she will appear when somebody drowns in the river, trust me that happens more times than you think.

Now for my story, one day after I turned 17 I was tired of hearing Grandfather's tale of La Llorona thinking he was just being a senile old man, so me and my friends went down to the river after hearing somebody had drowned yet again in the river. We laughed and opened a couple beers to pass the time mocking the legend of La Llorona. When all of a sudden this horrible wailing had started to sound out of nowhere. It was bad enough we had to cover our ears to stop from going deaf.

When we opened our eyes and uncovered our ears, the wailing had stopped. My friends and I looked at each other, and thought that had to be somebody playing a prank on us, we had told everybody that we were going to disprove the legend tonight. But nobody was around, at least that we could see. We got our courage and walked to the river's edge, at least I did.

I turned around and laughed at my friends who stayed behind by the truck, they were pointing at something behind me. I turned around and came face to face with La Llorona herself. She screamed that horrible wail we heard just minutes before and grabbed me pulling out a knife, that looked ghostly, till she stabbed me in the chest with it puncturing my heart.

After the stab La Llorona threw me into the river and disappeared, my friends ran away afraid they would be next in her attack, that's right I was left to die by the people I called my friends. Anyway I died drowning and bleeding to death. Now my spirit joins La Llorona in her wailing, keeping her company and finding more people to join us in this hellish afterlife.