We stopped in the middle of nowhere. There were a bunch of cops and an old, beat-up car in front of us. I got out of the SUV and walked towards the cops; my men followed me.
"Good day, boss," one of the cops said to me. "These must be the ones you're looking for" and he pointed to a family sitting on the ground. The son was distracted by the dirt and pebbles on the floor, the mother was sobbing, and Juan was staring at me, scared shitless.
I approached him.
"Aren't we friends?" I asked Juan.
"I don't want any trouble," he said.
"Well, you would have had them if you'd escaped, you asshole," I said, looking at his car. From the outside, I could see all the bags and suitcases they were carrying. "You hate me that much?"
"We'll give you the car, whatever you want, but please, we don't want any trouble," he was crying.
I cast a very weak spell on his chest, but I still managed to knock him to the ground.
"I don't want your shit, you fucking idiot," I told him. "Do you think I need that fucking garbage? I can buy you and your fucking family with my spare change, you bastard. I earn more in a day than you'll earn in your entire fucking life, you broke, worthless fuck."
His wife hugged him and cried her eyes out. It was so annoying.
"Don't worry," I told her. "He and I have been friends since we were little. He knew me when I still had both my eyes."
He clutched his chest and slowly got up.
"Don't tell me that actually hurt?" I asked, pretending to be surprised. "Wasn't magic supposed to be bullshit?"
"Please, don't hurt him!" his fucking wife was crying as loudly as she could.
And I was so tired of it.
"You and your kid can leave. Juan stays." I told her.
"Please don't take him away!" she didn't shut up.
"Tell her to get the fuck out," I said to Juan. "Or do you want me to tell my men to take her and your kid away?"
"Go," Juan told his wife. He was crying too. "Take the kid with you."
"I'll just talk to my friend," I told her. "He'll bring him back with you later."
But she just didn't let go of him.
"Give him your car keys and tell her to fuck off," I told him. "Or I'll kill all of you."
She finally realized she was a fucking nuisance and got up, picked up the kid, and put him in the car. Then she got in, started the engine, and drove off. None of us followed her or anything.
I enjoyed the silence a bit, even though Juan was trying his hardest to not plead for his life.
"I never told anyone about you. Please don't do anything to us."
"Who told you I was looking for you?" I asked.
"No, we were gonna visit my aunt," he lied, and I casted a spell on his shoulder that burned both fabric and flesh. Juan cried in pain.
"Friends don't lie to each other," I told him. "Aren't you my friend?"
Juan kept crying.
"You've always been a piece of shit," I said and kicked him on the ground. "A fucking piece of shit. I've always hated you, and I've killed tons of people for way less."
I crouched down to get closer to him. I grabbed his hair and pulled him up so his face was next to mine. His eyes were closed and he was clenching his teeth 'cause of the pain.
"But I can forgive my friends. Your family's waiting for you, but if you want, I can tell my men to go after them. Just tell me who told you I was looking for you."
"Paco's sister," he said, and I let go of him.
"Was that so fucking hard?" I asked.
I sat beside him.
"So, you're my friend, right?"
"Yeah, whatever. I don't want any trouble. Please." Juan was still on the ground, clutching the wound on his shoulder. That fucking idiot was still crying.
"Friends don't lie to each other," I repeated myself.
"No, no, no, I am. Yes, I0m your friend, and you were right. You were always right. Magic is awesome, it's the coolest thing in the world, and I've always been a piece of shit. Forgive me for saying everything I said, but I had to help my parents with the store, and I didn't have time to practice magic anymore. But I'm your friend, I'm your friend.
I put my hand on his other shoulder.
"I'm your friend, I'm your friend, I'm your friend!" He was trembling and crying.
"How can someone who left town just to avoid me be my friend?" I asked him.
"Please, don't kill me."
I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up again.
"Let me tell you something: you're living the fucking dream. You have your family and you live without a care in the world. Yes, you can't even feed your family, and you probably have tons of debt, but those aren't real problems. You know how I know? Because you sleep, and you don't even realize how fucking lucky you are for that."
"You know how many people want to kill me? You know how many people have tried to kill me in the middle of the night? A fucking ton. And they would have killed me if ''d been asleep. If you sleep, you die, and if you don't sleep, you fuck this up" I tapped my forehead with two fingers. "And not only do I not sleep, I have to be always on edge 'cause any day, at any time, someone can try to fuck me over, whether it's the other gangs, the police, even these assholes" I pointed at those assholes that were my men. "I can't let my guard down for a single fucking second or I'm fucked. And being so on edge all the time also fucks this up" I tapped my forehead harder and harder.
Juan was still crying. He looked so fucking pathetic.
"Get up, asshole." It made me angry to see him like that, crying like his life was shit, like he was as screwed as Jorge. But Juan at least had a family, a life. Jorge was practically dead when I found him, and that's why I ended up killing him. He didn't even have a life left to live, he was way past the point of no return, but Juan wasn't. Juan had so much to lose.
I got up.
"Let's go," I told my men. They lifted Juan up and were about to put him in the back of the SUV. "No, he's staying."
They shit their pants.
"You sure, boss?" one of them asked me. "The other gangs can find him and you know what they gonna do to him."
"Or the police can take him away," another one told me. "And you know how those sons of bitches love to torture people."
"Did I strutter, you dumbasses?" I told them. "If I say he stays, he stays."
And they ended up letting go of him. He too seemed confused.
"What? You wanna come with us?" I asked him.
"No. I'm fine."
"Give him a phone," I told one of my men, and he took one of our disposable phones out of the SUV—the kind we only use once and throw away so we can't be tracked—and gave it to Juan.
"Tell your wife to come pick you up," I said and gave him a hug to tell him something else: "Throw it away after you use it, and don't come back to town or someone might kill you and your family."
"I let him go, and he was so fucking terrified.
I got in the SUV, and we left. Juan looked smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
We drove for a while and reached a place in the middle of nowhere. I rolled down my window to let in some air. Outside there was nothing but desert.
"Stop here," I told the driver, and he stopped.
My men were only three: one was in the driver's seat, another one in the passenger's seat, and the last one next to me.
I could feel their fear.
I could feel that they had all grabbed their guns and that they were gonna try to kill me before I could kill them.
You think this is odd? Let me explain: Juan had seen them and could have ratted them out to the other gangs, told them who they were, what they looked like, and so on. The other gangs would then hunt them down, and when they found them, they'd torture them to get all the information they could about me and my gang, and then they'd end up killing them 'cause that's what gangs do. If my men left Juan alive, they were risking that, and in the criminal world, where you risk your fucking life every day, those who take those risks are the first ones to die.
In all my years in this fucking business, I've known of many cases where exactly that happens.
"But what does that have to do with you?" you ask. Well, Juan was supposed to be my friend, and if I wanted to protect him, I had to kill my men 'cause they were going to try to kill him. Now, the truth is, I didn't give a shit whether they killed Juan or not, but it didn't matter 'cause they weren't going to risk leaving me alive knowing there was a chance I'd kill them.
In the criminal world, you can't leave loose ends 'cause sooner or later they'll get you killed. And I already told you: at some point, our enemies will find us and our allies will betray us. We all knew that very well.
"Whenever you're ready," I told them, and they hesitated, so I started by punching the guy next to me in the face. He had his hand inside his jacket, so I reached in, took the gun he was holding, and threw it out the window.
The other two turned around and pointed their guns at me, so I grabbed the passenger's arm and pulled him toward me with all my might. The driver fired several times, but I already had the passenger as a shield, and that idiot took all the bullets. I knew he was dead 'cause I heard his gun fall to the ground.
But the third asshole, the one sitting next to me, grabbed me and pulled me towards him. I ended up dropping my shield.
"Shoot him now, shoot him!" he yelled at the driver, and the driver pointed the gun at me, but I managed to kick his arm before he could shoot me, and that's why he missed.
Then I grabbed the arms of the idiot who was grabbing me and pushed myself from side to side to make him hit the back of his head against the car window again and again.
The driver tried to shoot me several more times, but I kicked him in the face or legs so he missed every shot. Finally, I kicked him in the face so hard I disoriented him for a moment.
Suddenly, the fucker who had been grabbing me pulled one arm off me, and I took the opportunity to take off the other one and move away from him. He already had a knife in his hand that he had taken from me, but I grabbed him by the head and smashed it against the glass so hard that it shattered. I took the knife from him and threw it out the broken window.
The pilot pointed the gun at me again, and I tried to take it from him with both hands. We struggled a bit, and the one next to me grabbed my shoulder and started hitting me on the face, but I pulled the pilot with all my strength, and he ended up between me and that other guy. I took the gun from him and threw it out the window.
The pilot then hugged me tightly so I couldn't move, and the guy sitting next to me grabbed my head and hit me again and again.
Blood started flowing through my face.
I raised my arms and managed to grab the driver's head. I yanked one of his ears so hard I ended up tearing it off. He let go of me and screamed. I grabbed his face and gouged his eyes with my thumbs, but the guy next to me punched me so hard in the face that I lost my concentration for a moment, and he lunged at me and kept hitting me again and again. At that moment, all I felt was blood running down my neck.
Then I punched him in the face so hard I knocked him down.
"Weren't you gonna kill me, you fuck?" I asked, tasting the blood in my mouth. "Come on." I approached him, but he grabbed the passenger's gun from the floor and pointed it at me. I grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. The idiot started shooting repeatedly, and I tried to hit him with my other arm, but we struggled, and he kept shooting. I ended up grabbing his face with both hands and gouging his eyes with my thumbs. He put the gun to my head, and the idiot pulled the trigger a bunch of times, but nothing happened 'cause he ran out of bullets. I knew 'cause I'd counted them.
Then he hit me on the head with the butt of a gun, and I pushed my thumbs in even further and started headbutting him with all my might, but he put his hands over my face to stop me and scratched me and tried to poke my eyes with his fingers.
I then saw the pieces of broken glass that were left in the window, and I pulled him towards where they were and pushed him down.
I felt them in the back of his neck, and I kept pushing down.
He desperately scratched my face, grabbed it, punched it, pulled it, and suddenly his arms fell off, and he just stopped moving.
I took a moment to catch my breath, but then I heard the passenger door open. The pilot—that jerk whose ear I'd ripped off—had opened it and he was crawling out of the SUV.
When he got out, he stood up and started running.
I got out of the SUV too. He was already quite far away, but I raised two fingers, aimed, and fired several spells. He was so far away that I missed the first two shots, but I hit him with the third. He fell to the ground.
I walked toward him and it took me a while to reach him 'cause he was already quite far away. He was still alive and crawling on the ground. One of his legs had a large hole and a bunch of burned skin. Blood was leaving a trail all over the floor.
I grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him over so he was lying face up.
"Please, please, please!" that dumbass cried.
"Weren't you gonna kill me, asshole?" I asked him and crouched down to get closer to him. "Come on. Here I am. Kill me… Kill me!"
"Please, I have two kids," that idiot begged for his life, and I got on top of him and punched him in the face again and again. That piece of shit bastard screamed and cried, but he barely managed to put his hands up to defend himself. I kept hitting him and watched as his face distorted more and more into a red puddle. His screams were muffled by all the blood in his mouth. And I kept punching him. I felt his skull slowly cracking and his face becoming a soft, shapeless mass.
And I kept punching him.
He soon stopped screaming; all that I could hear was the flesh, the bones, the blood and splashing.
And I just couldn't stop thinking about that son of a bitch Juan, and I got angrier and angrier, and I kept punching harder and harder. What was left of his head was scattered all over the floor. And why did Juan hate me so much? He called me an idiot since I was a kid, and now he runs away from the city just to avoid me. What did I ever do to you, asshole? I was just a kid, and I never said a word to you. I only let you live 'cause your life is so fucking miserable, and 'cause I'm way better than you, asshole. You're a nobody and you'll always be one. I wish you and Jorge had switched places 'cause he didn't deserve to end up like that, and you don't deserve anything you have, you son of a bitch.
When I came to my senses, the head I was hitting was so smashed that I was practically punching the ground. I stopped. It burned to breathe, and my knuckles were all split open and covered in blood; I also had pieces of skull and pebbles nailed to my hands.
I lay down on the floor to catch my breath. I was breathing through my mouth and making a lot of noise 'cause I was really short of breath. My arms and even my back were hurting so fucking much. My hands were swollen and misshapen. The good thing was that I could use a little magic to heal myself.
Anyway, I don't know how long I laid there, but I don't think it was that long. I got up and saw the body and all the blood everywhere. I could have left it there, but it would be best to get rid of all the evidence that this had happened, so I raised my hand and cast a spell so powerful that it disintegrated him and the trail of blood he had left behind. All that was left was a rather large hole in the ground.
I walked back to the SUV. There were a couple guns and a knife on the floor right outside, and inside were bodies, blood, bullet holes, shards of glass. I raised my hand and cast another spell. The SUV exploded, hurling pieces of flesh and metal everywhere.
I sat on the ground and watched as the last pieces of the SUV and the remaining bodies burned away.
After everything that had happened, there was only one thing I could do:
"I gotta make new friends."