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Maria laughed brightly, her long, dark braids swinging wildly around her head. “Vamanos, Ceci. Come on.”
“I’m coming, Ratón. Close the back door,” her older sister told her. “You’ll let in las chupacabras.”
“No hay chupacabras, Hermanita,” Maria laughed, but closed the door as instructed. Cecilia glared at her, the way she did every time Maria called her little sister when Cecilia was the older one of the two of them, but there was no heat behind it. Her facial expression was fond, if anything.
“I’ll race you to the river!” Cecilia shouted, and smacked Maria’s head lightly, just to prove that she was older and taller than Maria. “Tag! You’re it!”
Maria giggled brightly and took off after her, running as fast as she could. At eighteen and nineteen they really were too young to be playing these silly children’s games, and they would surely get told off for their fooling around if their mother saw them chasing each other instead of doing their chores. Technically, though, they did need to go to the river, which was why they each had their empty buckets to fill when they got there.
If Maria threw her buckets after her sister before launching herself at her and letting the two of them roll through the dry, dead dirt together, then nobody had to know. And if Cecilia smacked her sister as hard as she could and pulled on her braids to show her love as they brawled, then that was between the two of them. They had never been considered particularly ‘lady like’ to their family, preferring to be more physical and dirty in any situation that they could, but in public they always pulled through and came off as respectable.
When it was just the two of them, though? Maria liked to play a little dirty.
“You’re it!” she laughed, kicking at her sister’s shins.
“No, you’re it!” Cecilia shouted back, her laughs equally as loud and unladylike. Maria really was good at being a lady when she wanted, and people so easily fell for that facade. Ceci said that it was manipulative, as if she hadn’t been the one who taught Maria everything she knew.
She was a woman living in a world made for mere men, she thought that she deserved to be a little manipulative and get her way for once.
“Not if I do this,” she muttered, pulling hard on her sister’s hair and then shoving her closer to the muddy river bank. They were in trouble now, muddy dresses were never a clear sign of necessarily behaving, but Maria didn’t find that she cared. Not when Ceci was laughing so brightly at her aggression and fighting back just as much.
“Oh you’re naughty, Maria,” Cecilia laughed. “Mamacita will have our heads.”
“Not if the chupacabras get us first,” Maria teased. She had never believed in chupacabras. Cecilia, though; Maria was pretty sure that she still believed in those bloodsucking monsters. Maria had promised to get her one as a pet if she ever saw one.
Cecilia stuck her tongue out at her, scrunching up her face in a ridiculous way. Maria only laughed more. “Come,” Cecilia said. “Let’s go wash off.” She then took off towards the river bend, where no one would be able to see them.
“In a minute,” she called back, and started to fill up their water buckets; they would forget about them if she didn’t fill them now.
Then, she heard a scream that was quickly cut off.
“Ceci?” she called. “Cecilia!”
She ran around the corner to find a strange figure bent over her sister, who had fallen to the ground. No.
Maria didn’t stop to think; instead, she grabbed a large rock off of the ground and threw it as hard as she could at the figure’s firm.
The figure didn’t even flinch. Then, it turned towards her.
Fire. Maria’s body was burning. Her own blood was setting her skin on fire, burning her body through the inside out. Even as she tried to scream, not a sound came out. Her throat felt raw, her heart felt weak.
Yet her body had never felt more powerful.
Slowly, shaking, the burning sensation fizzled out, and a new, almost worse sensation took over: noise. Birds, bugs, the turning of dirt and the trickle of the river; Maria could hear it all. Loud, thunderous, happening not around her, but right inside of her eardrum, assaulting her ears.
For a moment, she was incapacitated by the sounds, the strength of them holding her down. Then, like a fool, she opened her eyes.
Blinding sun attacked her, causing her to close her eyes immediately. It was too late, though, the light still trapped in her eyelids. It was too much, the noises and the brightness and the feeling of coarse dirt under her. Why was it touching her? Dirt, crawling over her skin, trying to eat her, drown her, bury her alive.
She opened her eyes again, squinting them, trying to see how long she could keep them open even while her whole body felt like there was electricity flowing through her, electrocuting her, dialing her senses so high that they paralyzed her. Once again she squeezed her eyes closed, pressing her hands to her ears until she was sure she could hear a crack. Her body fell to the floor, curling into a fetal position, and she said like that for the rest of the night.
“Cecilia!”
Ceci lay there, in the dirt, her body half submerged in war water. Her head was under the surface.
“Cecilia!” Maria cried, her own shout hurting her ears. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Her sister was dead, a bite mark on her neck, her usually dark skin pale and lifeless. When Maria touched her, her skin was cold.
So Maria cried tearless cries, clinging to her older sister with all that she had, until the bones underneath her snapped and Cecilia’s body caved in on itself.
Still, Maria clung to her, crying out her name until she couldn’t bear to stay there any longer.
Revenge. Maria would get revenge. That figure had to know that Maria would come for that beast. No chupacabra would hurt her sister and get away with it.
So maybe Maria was the chupacabra now. She could live with that.
With her new, assaulting, powerful senses, Maria could easily track that monster, the scent raw and pungent as it filled her nose. Disgusting. After she found that monster, she never wanted to smell that scent again.
“There you are,” she whispered two weeks later, her eyes landing on the hooded figure. Her new voice was too soft, feminine, ladylike. Nothing like the person that Maria was before.
But that person was dead, and a new Maria walked the earth now.
She lunged forwards the figure, tearing off the cloak and attacking the monster with all her might, until suddenly she heard the cracking of ceramic and the body stopped fighting, a lone, dismembered head dangling in her hands.
“Tag, you’re it,” she snarled, and cast the head aside.