Two Eyes Cenote tiburon

all violence has its eventual conclusion, and for most petty bits of savagery, it ends simply in death. 

he might have had the good sense to fear it, had he not seen so much of it.  

be it by karmic justice or the cutthroat hand of his own kind, he knows peace will be a forever elusive concept. for this reason he embraces the dissolution and his part he’s played in this world’s malice. knowing he is one segment of a thousand-headed hydra, replaceable and indistinct, keeps the fear away. there’s not just one soto; there’s thousands of them. and they die for the cartel every day. 

death was simply their final transaction. 

now, reckoning comes for him in the pudgy shape of a pigeon-colored boy. it’s lights out and he’s lost too much blood to make a fuss of it. he’d shown khusobek true fear and that’s all that matters. a gutted laugh presses from his throat as he recalls this memory, his appetite so close to being sated —

he’s sinking. the world falls away from him and somewhere close to where he’d left his body he feels khusobek stumble away. run, little piggy — right to the jaws of the waiting abattoir.

mazoi pile into the cell. they bustle across stone roach-backed, their long gazes dark with solemn question. they probe the blood-matted air and scuttle around him, shielded backs rounding in alarm, in outrage, in mutual conspecific hate for the slouching heap on the prison floor that erroneously believed itself a ‘man’. 

numb and so thirsty. something scrapes, something drags. soto’s eyes roll to the cavern where blood hangs in perfect constellations of red. he murmurs something, drunken by exsanguination. ‘khusobek maybe, but the words mumble from him like the soft babble of riverwater. 

he’d enjoyed beating the shit out of one another, but this is worse. the mazoi close in with hard kicks that overwhelm him and send his consciousness spinning into black orbit. 

when the dust settles he’s left seeping in his own unraveling fluids. he groans as he shifts. there’s rib protruding against sluicing organs. something wet dribbles from his ruined eye. breathing hurts. hell, existing hurts — he’ll be lucky to make it to morning. 

he’d shown khusobek that there were things out there far worse than death; this alone keeps him alive a little longer.