I stand in the middle of an empty street, a gun in my hand. I three-sixty the street, at first not knowing where I am or what I’m doing there, but little by little recognition starts to settle in.
The houses around me. The macadam cracked and warped in places. The dark cloudless sky.
This is a place I’ve been before.
This exact location.
Almost a year ago.
The heart of Culiacán sits several miles away from where I’m standing. Its lights shimmer off in the distance, but I don’t hear the sounds of the city. Of course I don’t. Because this is a dream.
There is complete silence. Like I’m stuck in a vacuum. Like I’m in outer space. I’m certain that if I lift the gun in my hand and fire off a round I wouldn’t hear a thing.
I don’t lift the gun and fire off a round. Instead, I start forward down the street. My footsteps don’t make a sound. My own breathing—if one even breathes in a dream—is noiseless.
I know where I’m headed because I’ve walked this street before in the middle of the night, a gun in my hand.
Gabriela’s house is now only two blocks away. The fearless Gabriela. Her parents died at the hands of the cartel, and so she decided to take it upon herself to stand up to the cartel. Reporting on their crimes when the national and local media refused. She had known what she was doing put her life at risk but she did it anyway, and so it was probably no surprise to her when, in the end, the narcos came for her.
Soon I’m standing on the street outside Gabriela’s house. It looks exactly like it did the last time I saw it.
The garage door is closed, but the gate has been forced open.
Before, I knew it may be a trap—that narcos may be waiting for me inside—but now I have no hesitation in pushing open the gate and stepping into the yard.
Despite the cloudless night sky, the darkness is thick. I slip a penlight from my pocket, just as I did that night, and shine it at the door.
The door, too, has been forced open, the lock smashed apart. The door has been pushed closed, though, so that anybody passing by on the street would think nothing of it.
I cross my wrists—the penlight in my left hand, the gun in my right hand—and kick the door open and charge inside.
Like that night a year ago, the living room is empty.
Except it’s not.
Instead of Gabriela’s grandmother, Leila Simmons is propped up in the chair in the corner. Her face tilted to the side, her dead eyes open. Her throat has been sliced, and dried blood covers much of her shirt.
In real life, Gabriela’s grandmother didn’t have anything on her lap, so I’m surprised to see something there now.
I train the penlight’s beam at Leila Simmons’s lap. A duffel bag sits there.
Part of me wants to rush forward, tear the bag from her lap, look inside. The only way I’ll know if Star’s in there is by moving forward and opening the bag.
I don’t rush forward. I shift the penlight’s beam away from Leila Simmons and the duffel bag in her lap. Neither is the reason I’m here now. They’re mere window dressing for whatever my subconscious wants to me to see.
Because I’ve done this already—have gone through the house clearing the rooms one by one—I know better than to waste my time.
The penlight in one hand, the gun in the other, I head toward the door that leads into the garage.
I turn off the penlight as I open the door and flip the switch just inside. The single bulb in the ceiling blinks to life.
The cinderblock wall is the same as I remember it, as are the tools spread out around the place where Juana’s dead body lies in pieces. Like Gabriela, it looks like they took their time with her.
My focus is trained so heavily on what’s left of Juana that at first I’m not aware of the man in the cowboy hat standing in the corner. The badge on his belt glints in the light. A gun in his left hand, he reaches up with his right hand to tip back his hat.
“Evenin’, pretty lady.”
He says the words, but since this is a world of silence, I don’t really hear them except inside my head.
Just as I hear his partner’s words as he noiselessly steps up behind me.
“What took you so long?”
The silent voice echoing in my ears as the man presses the barrel of his gun against the back of my head and pulls the trigger.