Read Online Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa - Free Book Online Page B

everyone’s bitch in the cells, which I don’t like because I’m not of that persuasion, apologies if that makes me sound homophobic, so I carried on toward him, forced my way through the lines of fire coming from his eyes and at last drew level with him, but once again he seemed to have about thirty arms and I fell to the floor again, so hard this time I heard a crack, as if I’d broken several bones, which was in fact what had happened, or so the male nurse said later, and there I lay, with my eyes open, conscious but with my brain a thousand miles away, my friends, or as they used to say, in the arms of Morpheus; then he bent down and picked me up by the neck, almost affectionately, and said, beg God for forgiveness right now or you’re on a one-way trip to the Land of Oblivion, and, being an animal brought up in the mud, I was about to say to him, you’ll be the one going to the Land of the Shit Eaters, I was just about to say that to him when I saw a powerful ray of light behind him, a fiery sunset, and in that sunset a shining city, like the eye of somebody waiting anxiously for something to end, and was dazzled, and said, I beg forgiveness, almighty God, this slave is falling to his knees and begs forgiveness from the bottom of his soul, and I said it not talking to him, in reality, but to that eye shining in the glow of the sunset, and as I said this the man’s eyes stopped throwing out fire and started crying, he prostrated himself on the ground, buried his head in my chest and said, forgive me and may God forgive both of us for everything we had to do this afternoon for you to come to Him.
    From there, he took me to the infirmary and didn’t leave my side for the next three weeks, which was how long I was there, I’d been beaten up so bad, how does that grab you, my friends? it’s a miracle I’m alive, but something even worse was to follow, which was that in those same weeks Walter helped me cleanse not only my soul but also my cells, which had been completely colonized by smack, my narcotic love, the serpent of ice that had grabbed me by the balls or, to be more precise, by the inner lining of my balls, apologies to the purists, and what can I tell you about that cleansing, my friends, it was as if I was dead, cut up into pieces, labeled and frozen in the refrigerator of a factory ship, as if I was in flames and tied to a turning post, as if I was falling into the void and drowning in the ocean, I felt cold and lost my teeth from chattering, I saw monsters with hooks ripping my flesh, I saw Satan himself tempting me, disguised as a Puerto Rican transvestite dancing tropipop, but at the end of it, my brothers, when my blood cooled and I got back down to earth I realized that I was full of peace inside, as if the particles of the air had stopped damaging me, and I started prostrating myself and praying, and Walter, who came every morning to read me the Gospels, talked to me about the life of Jesus and made me realize why all of us who live in this filthy highway parking lot called the Earth have to be grateful to Him, and taught me that I could be like him, save others, win over to Him those who didn’t have the strength to do it alone.
    When I left the infirmary, I said to him, Father Walter, I want to be in your Church, to be one of your people, and he said, you already are, José, it was the eye of God that looked at us and showed you the way, let us give thanks that we met and are both already in His militia, and then he shook my hand and looked at me intensely and I felt life stream into me through all the cavities in my face, as if shot through a powerful hose, as if I had done ten lines of coke in one go, and I think my body started healing at that moment, because I felt this enormous desire to jump up and down and climb the walls and even the ceiling, it was the greatest high I’d ever had and the beginning of my new life, my friends, because with