Two Eyes Cenote tiburon

down there in the dirt, soto knows who he is.

a laugh forces its way through his chest. this man with all his words, his violence -- he’s met many like him. every one of them terrified to acknowledge their own mortality. the captor was far removed from the dirt but even he could not scrape the sludge from his soul that betrays his origin.

 there on the prison floor, there's no delusion. every card stacked face-side up, every move mapped four steps in advance. soto grunts beneath the first kick, so forceful it claws right through his lungs. fuck.  

for all khusobek's talk of gods and righteousness, soto might ask: what kind of god gets deceived by a merchant?

another kick. brutal. violent. each blow another weight to the tilting scale. soto quivers, but does not yelp. 

he wheezes a spray of blood and wonders if this man's soul runs blacker than his own. how does one as lovely as his dulce lluvia de verana spring from such basic filth? perhaps beautiful souls are what pearls are to oysters: the shell, the slurping moving guts that live their lives in the dark, the parsing of rot and filth and excrement all to produce a single, exquisite pearl.

more words. many more. blood tickles soto's ears. his sides heave in exertion.  every receptor in his body is fired, the pain forcing its blade-like talons up his spine. bad villains and rough-shod thespians share this in common: the world's their reluctant, enduring stage. how many men's heads are lopped off mid-monologue? did they love anything more than the wagging of their tongue?

every blow fuels the budding power growing beneath the python’s underside. every strike feeds that hungry, lonesome thing as it coils, waiting for its moment.

his captor stands above him, righteous violence spewing from the hateful thing he calls a mouth. soto's bloodied face pans upward to hold the view: a proud stag unaware of the hunter's notching arrow --

soto lunges for the near leg, pushing from the dirt to forcefully unbalance his posturing captor. his jaws snap shut with an archosaur's heavy clunk, intent to wrap around glistening bones and twist in a thunderous death roll --

there, on the prison floor where both belong, the crocodile meets the biding strength of the python.