Untitled (for now)

Chapter I: Another Scratch

—They'll make me stand before the firing squad for this... —

An effervescent and nervous laughter followed up a moment of brief incredulity for Octavio Martinez upon observing his hands, pricked in some sort of crimson viscous liquid. Of course, he had believed for an instant to have spilled whatever that was on his hands while attempting to brew alcohol with some other potion that could have easily been found in any dusty old bottle from his workshop. It would not have been the first time and, if he was lucky then, could be on the verge of intoxication and never waking up ever again.

After a while trying to hold is sight still and, for what Octavio supposed, was his drunken state in full effect, it was impossible for him to find the bottle containing what was covering his hands in the near vicinity of where he was laying, on the floor. «Must be shoe polish», Octavio thought «Or iodine, perhaps?». Upon groping clumsily over the floor by his sides, the man examined his hands for a brief while on the feeble light of the sole bulb hanging from the ceiling in the room and raised them under his nose to sniff them. Suddenly, his heart stopped dead. It was neither iodine, nor polish, nor any other kind of liquid that could ever come to his mind. The unmistakable stench of blood, not too far from drying up, filled up is nose all of a sudden and, not being able to believe it, sniffed loudly over and over again in between short and quick exhalations.

It was right before he was done palpating his head when, at last, he noticed the bulk laying at the opposite side of the dining table, situated a few meters north of him. As if his breath was suddenly cut by a hook to his belly, Octavio found himself sober again. Feeling the horror growing and taking over, he observed that what he believed to be a bulk was over a pool of a similar liquid to the one that was covering his hands, and then he could finally realize that the bulk was a corpse. Of a woman.

Raising violently and in the middle of almost tripping over, he rushed towards the telephone on the other side of the room. His eyes fixated on the body, as if it could stand up and attack him at any second, Octavio lifted up the telephone handset with a shaky hand, putting it back on its place and lifting it up again a couple of times due to misdialing the number on the disc dialer.

«Four, seven...», Octavio dialed again. He stared, not paying much attention, at the woman's blood-soaked chest.

«Three...», his eyes moved further up to stop at her chin.

«Eight...», he examined her nose and cheeks. She began to look familiar.

«Three...»

Suddenly, he stopped dialing. When his eyes met hers and stared, he covered his mouth with his left hand. Octavio's breath got cut off; the man leaned on the telephone table so hard that it slipped off and hit the floor in a loud bang. For Octavio, this bang was like the destruction of a bell tower in the middle of a last, vigorous toll.

She was his fiance.