XXXIII

Fumbling with the restraints, Blood Sucker, Scab Picker, Packstrap, and Wing strapped their commanding officer onto a stainless steel gurney lit by buzzing lights. The twins brushed indigo from a clay pot onto the bony arched breast. Somebody pushed play on a death metal mix. One Death rolled his head from side to side in abandon.

“They call me Xbalanque,” announced the boy with the skin condition, “and my brother here is little Hunahpu.”

was our father,” his twin added softly, producing a flint knife from his knapsack. “Does that name ring a bell?”

Without further ado, he punched his blade under the ribs. “I,” One Death gasped, as if he’d just recognized an old acquaintance passing by. After some twisting and tugging, the boy extracted his slippery prize and passed it, still pumping, to a horrified Chen. This wasn’t what he’d been led to expect during rehearsals.

“Aah,” One Death rattled, his eyes emptying out.

As the black lights went stroboscopic, Chen watched the officers set about flaying the body. Some idiot kept blowing a police whistle lodged in his throbbing skull. “Stop,” he sobbed, “please stop,” as the god’s heart slowed, then stopped, in his trembling hands.

“Please,” Seven Death pled as the boys forced him onto his knees. “I don’t remember.”

Don Guillermo Sánchez. Lorenzo Osorio. Tomasa López Ixpatá.

When the flint punctured his solar plexus, Seven Death’s lips contracted into an inaudible O. He inhaled once, raggedly, and the windows in the DFAC shattered, broken glass streaming into his mouth like bats returning to their cave at dawn.

Manuel Chen Sánchez. Jaime Tecú Osorio. Juana Tecú Osorio. Francisco Alvarado Chen.

As the blade slid out, Seven Death breathed in again. Whimpering, Chen ducked for cover as a tactical map of the region sailed past, sucked down the god’s throat, followed in quick succession by the row of wall clocks ticking in foreign time zones, then the filing cabinets regurgitating their lists of names.

Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio. Petronila Sánchez. Dominga Chen. Fernando Chen Tecú. María del Rosario Osorio Chen.

Unmoved, the twins crossed their arms as, one by one, Blood Sucker, Scab Picker, Packstrap, and Wing tumbled into the howling rictus, clutching their folding chairs. The fire exit buckled and turned cartwheels clanking after. With a sound of ripping fabric, the floor slid out from underfoot. Chen barely managed to seize onto the edge of Seven Death’s mouth as he, too, was pulled into that dark rift.

Adnan Atallah. Adam Eashoue. Margaret Wise Brown. Uday, father of Adam Eashoue. Saad Adwar. Hermann Rorschach. Grandson of Mona Abdullah Hadad. Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin. Sab? Nabil? Unborn child of Bassam. Léon Wieger. Madame Blavatsky. Father-in-law of Bassam. Wife of Bassam. Bassam, cousin of Maha al-Khoury. Muriel Rukeyser. Jacques Derrida. Unborn child of Raghda al-Wafi. Raghda al-Wafi. George? Fadi? Rita? Anon?

The mouth began to fold inward under the intake pressure, drawing Seven Death’s inverted visage after it like a Halloween mask slowly swallowing itself from within, until the dark lord’s body turned inside out in a shower of splintered bone. Lost in shock, Chen plummeted through black space, clutching the flapping hide to his chest like a defective parachute, or a toddler’s security blanket, or an unpublished manuscript. At this rate, he was sure to miss his appointment.