On the desolate plains of Montecino, my brother lay stricken by a hideous disease he brought upon himself. The oozing abscesses on his swollen limbs had long since turned purple. After weeks—perhaps months, I can’t remember—of whiskey and prayer, he asked me to hitch his mule to the buckboard and make a day’s ride to the telegraph office, which did not exist, hoping that God had sent words of healing or redemption. “Of course, I will,” I said, never intending to carry out the request of a merciless wanton who deserved to die in squalor. Instead, I spent those hours in the shed, finding relief from the weight of my brother’s misfortune in the arms of his wife.

“My apologies, Copal. No answer has yet arrived from heaven,” I said upon my false return. “I’ll ride again tomorrow, if you wish. There’s bound to be good news.”

“Don’t bother, Teofilo. I have a better idea,” he said, then drifted off into fitful sleep.

Marisol and I had been quietly drinking pulque in the kitchen when Copal called us into his bedroom. He insisted that we take him to a church in the distant village of El Sueño to seek the help of the Virgin, who would intercede on his behalf.

“El Sueño? Are you sure you’re up for such an arduous journey, brother?”

“I must,” he said, his eyes fluttering as they fought off fatigue. “She answers all men in need of healing.”

“Isn’t that what a wife is for? Be reasonable,” I said. “The Virgin is an it, not a who. Besides, you’ll never make it there alive in this oppressive heat. Show some pity for us, if not yourself.”

Copal gestured for Marisol to approach and hold his blistered hand, which she did.

“Would you deny me hope, dear wife?”

Marisol demurely shook her head.

“What about you, Teo?” he growled as if I were Death, coaxing him to surrender. “You forget the good times when we rode together. The wild adventures of our youth. Those were the days, eh, brother? Admit it. The same shit runs through our veins.”

Marisol gasped at his remark. “No, mi amor, she said. “Your blood is no different from that of all men.”

The defense of Copal seemed borne of her mysterious affection, which I yearned to possess.

“Cuñada,” I said, “please go to the kitchen and fetch more drink. My throat is dry.”

She exited the room, her hips swaying as if caught between shifting winds.

“Marisol is right, Copal. Only one of us is sick. It’s not in the blood, but in one’s nature.”

“Believe what you want. I accept punishment. In the end, perhaps you will accept yours. But, how long must it last?” Pink spittle ran down his chin as he slavered into a bowl beside a stained pillow. “I put my faith in you and my wife, yet received no relief.”

“That’s unfair. I’m not offended by your ingratitude because I expect it, but don’t blame Marisol. Every day, she shaves your ugly face, bathes your branded body, cooks your slop, cleans the muck you leave behind. The woman does not rest, trying to keep you alive. Not once has she complained, nor have I heard you thank her.”

“You find odd what you do not understand, Teo. It is called love, the emotion from which all actions arise.”

“You are mad. And, as for the trip you demand we make, the idea of the Virgin must have sprung from a fever dream.”

“Perhaps, but what do we have to lose? Some inconvenience on your part … which might pay off. If I don’t survive the ordeal, you and Marisol will be free to carry on. ¿Eh, cabrón?”

“Listen, hermano. I don’t much care for your remark. Just say the word, and I’ll leave. I came to help while you heal. If I’m not wanted—”

“Oh, pobrecito. Have my words upset you?”

“I’m not upset. This vile sickness has twisted your mind. Tell me. How can you have faith in an idol when the cure lies in your own strength?”

“¿Mi fuerza? If I had any, I’d leap off this bed and—”

“Give me ten lashings of brotherly love?”

He flung an empty whiskey bottle at me, his aim as bad as his temper. The glass shattered against the wall.

“¡Silencio! Everything depends on God, who has cruelly refused to consider my plight.” His voice softened, almost sounding contrite. “Or, maybe He has considered … and found me unworthy of His grace. Still, I deserve an answer. What do you think, Teo?”

“God is no less cruel than any man, Copal. You have forgotten that He stared at His reflection when He created us.”

“That is why I must find the Golden Virgin. She is my conduit to the Almighty.”

“Now it’s a Golden Virgin? The Almighty is no more an alchemist than you.”

Copal flipped his hand as if to dismiss my words.

“Don’t brush me away. How many men have you killed and how many women have you ruined? You filled an orphanage with your transgressions. Is it so hard to see why you are unforgiven?”

Marisol returned with my drink, then dutifully picked the glass shards off the floor and tossed them into a straw bin filled with putrid towels. Copal’s hand touched his lips and let a kiss fly off his fingers.

“Come to me, Mari,” he said. “Behind every beautiful dream lurks a nightmare. When one wound closes, another one opens. My brother thinks I do not deserve mercy and should remain here to die. I only ask that you not forsake me when I am gone.”

“Don’t speak like that, husband. We will take him to El Sueño, won’t we, Teo?”

I swallowed the pulque and nodded, wanting to please the almond-eyed woman.

“You will get well, Copal,” she said, “and come back to me.”

“You mean, come back for you.”

Copal pointed to his hunting knife hanging on the wall above the bed. I handed him the weapon. He removed the blade from its sheath and slowly stroked the jagged edge with his thumb until blood ran down the shaft.

“Here, brother, tell me if it smells different than yours.”

***

I readied the buckboard and harnessed the mule for our journey to El Sueño, but Copal surprised us at the last minute.

“We will walk. Like flagellants who do penance by the wrath of their own hands, the sun shall be our whips. Then God will see that I am serious.”

Copal’s decree seemed more a crucible of my devotion rather than a pledge to the Almighty. I showed kindness, quietly dismissing his ravings, refraining from gutting him with his knife right there on his fetid bed.

“What of sustenance?” I asked. “Food, water …”

“We’ll travel along the riverbank. There we can bathe and drink. Agave will nourish us until we reach El Sueño.”

“All right,” I said, yielding to his folly, confident he had sealed his own fate.

Much of the way, Marisol supported her husband with strong, firm legs that no longer served him the way he wished. Sickness prevented Copal from satisfying her. Deprived of her husband’s flesh, she sought comfort in mine, offering herself freely, matching my desire. But her otherwise fealty to that monster troubled me.

After days of slogging southward toward El Sueño, what was left of my brother’s mind fractured.

“Oh, dutiful pallbearer,” wailed Copal as he slid down his wife's back, falling to his knees on the dusty road. “I can’t go on.”

He removed the knife from its sheath strapped to his raw shin and held the blade against his throat.

“No, Copal! El Sueño is almost in sight,” said Marisol. “We are so close to the Virgin. It would be foolish to abandon our quest.”

She disguised a lie in a shroud of hope, for our destination lay far in the distance.

***

Copal, listless and grotesque, barely clung to life as we pressed on beneath the unrelenting sun, our footsteps measured in inches. Days of thirst and hunger nearly routed us before we reached the main road running alongside a bone-dry river. I grabbed my brother’s knife.

“Teo, what are you doing?” said Marisol, her brows lifting in fear.

“Over there. Both of you!”

“Why have you waited so long, brother?

“You fool. Agave, agave.”

We sat chewing on the flowers when an unexpected herd of men approached.

“Hello, Brother,” said one, holding a staff, dressed in a tattered robe like his brethren. “Your burnt skin suggests you hail from Montesino.”

“It matters not where we’re from, and I’m not your brother. Look upon a true one,” I said, pointing at Copal.

“If so, why haven’t you covered his festering wounds with clean linen? He will bleed to death,” chided the stranger. “Let me help him.”

“Mark his suffering. He doesn’t seek nor deserve help, just an audience with a higher power.”

“Ah, searchers,” said the stranger. “Those who follow me suffer the same affliction, but won’t admit that Death has already taken us. No one will be saved, no matter what the clerics say. Still, we move forward on this path, our nettled minds placing whatever little faith we have left in the power of the Virgin.”

“There is no need for a Virgin if one has already tasted of her pleasures,” I said.

The stranger appeared confused by my comment. Then he glanced at Marisol. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

Together, we walked along the road toward El Sueño, guided by fated pilgrims, bound like blind sailors on a ship whose cargo reeked of spoiled flesh. Lunacy served as our sextant beneath a low, dead sky. When night fell, the grim crusaders howled like wolves. They pounded their fists against the ground and danced, beating themselves as if trying to exorcise a deeper pain harbored beneath their exuding skin. My brother joined the chaos until he collapsed. Two men brought him back to our camp.

“Where are his sandals and clothes?” I yelled over the commotion.

“He ripped them off and threw them into the fire.”

“Lay the fool here,” I said, unable to hide my disgust.

One man took off his robe and laid it on the ground. The other man placed Copal on the garment. They stepped back, wiping their hands on their loincloths, as if the blight on my brother’s flesh would worsen theirs.

Noise of the night’s reveling faded and was replaced by the screeching wind of the colorless plains. Marisol gazed at the low sky and pressed her body against mine. I wrapped my arm around her hips, where all the sins of man are sown, then led her into the dim light carved out by a pale moon. There, I found release from the day’s aberrations. We returned to find my naked brother frantically pacing.

“Look at him, Marisol. What will it take to bring such a man down?”

She ignored my words and ran toward her husband.

“Mari, I feared you left me with those crazed men.”

“Calm yourself, Copal. Why would—”

“Please, wife, forgive me. My thinking has become flawed. You and Teofilo have borne my burden well, having chosen to sustain rather than abandon me. I cherish that. Rest, but only for a short while. We must get to El Sueño before the others, or the Virgin might run out of miracles.”

We slept for what felt like a second. Copal, clothed only in a robe, woke us, strutting in circles, crowing like a proud cockerel who had bested the weaker of its breed.

“Time to go. Keep your heads above the horizon,” he said, flapping his oily wings as the hot morning rays crept across the land, lighting the travelers who lay motionless on crimson ground.

“Rise up. What of your odyssey?” I called.

I shook the leader. Blood trickled in a crooked stream from his pierced neck. Beside him lay my brother’s knife. Death, whose name was Copal, had strolled among the weary during the night and claimed the entire flock. My brother shrugged and bowed his head as if he had committed an act of compassion.

“Now, Teo, I’ll have all the miracles to myself,” he said, retrieving his knife.

It was a sensible thing to say—for a madman. We stepped around the bodies and started down the road—Marisol and I numb to the brutality still thriving inside his illness.

“Wait,” she said. Marisol removed her rebozo and wiped Copal’s feverish forehead, then tore the cloth in half to swaddle his feet.

“Help me, Teo. I have little strength to bear him.”

We supported my brother between us. His ulcerated body erupted like a thousand purulent volcanoes as we hobbled along.

The ground moaned under the weight of our footsteps while low dust clouds dissolved in our wake.

***

El Sueño should have been named La Pesadilla, for it was a nightmare of abandoned huts bent like ancient tombstones. An old man sat whittling a twig beneath a leafless tree.

“You come for the Virgin,” he said, eyeing each of us. “How do I know? There is nothing of interest here for the righteous.”

“Where is the church?” I asked.

“No church.”

“How do we find her?”

“Only one road runs through El Sueño.”

***

“Look, Copal, there she is,” I said, winking at Marisol. “I can’t believe my eyes. The Virgin is truly made of gold.”

“Lead me to her, brother. The sun has corrupted my eyes.”

We approached a small statue of a woman, its features barely recognizable, likely eroded by the harsh winds off the plains. As Copal knelt in front of it, I pressed my lips to Marisol’s ear and let my hand wander over her body.

“You see, Querida. There are virgins of all kinds willing to perform miracles,” I whispered, inhaling the scent of her sweat.

She wiped her brow with her sleeve, studying Copal as he raised his hands in supplication.

“Mari, Teo,” he called, “a drop has fallen from her eye.”

We stepped in for a closer look. The tear he attributed to the Virgin slid down his cheek. A miracle had indeed occurred. I’d never seen my brother cry.

“Come. It is time to leave,” said Marisol.

“No, wife. It has happened.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “You petitioned a lump of stone.”

He drew his knife from its sheath and leaned forward as if to pray. By the time Marisol tried to lift his body, he was already dead, having impaled himself. She placed Copal’s head in the crease of her lap and stroked his hair in silence while I bowed to the worn-down Virgin and thanked her for granting my wish.

***

We dug his grave in the hard earth of El Sueño, pulling clods of dirt with our bare hands, rushing to conceal Copal in that pit so he would no longer trouble the world with his stench. Marisol neither cried nor spoke during our trek home. Each step took us no further from the shame we tried to escape, our feet forever destined to tamp down the soil covering my brother’s leaking body.

Ahead of us stretched the scorching plains of Montesino and, in the distance, the squalid house of misfortune. Suddenly, Marisol burst into tears as if she were wringing out the filthy rags of our sins.

***

She entered Copal’s room and removed the linens, curtains, and anything else that had touched his ruptured skin. We built a fire and incinerated them, yet his foul smell had seeped into the walls and likely the foundation. Burning down the house wouldn’t guarantee his departure. We stayed for a while, but it no longer felt like a home, rather a haunted waystation where we pledged ourselves to each other before again heading across the plains, with no set destination.

We paused several times each day to eat fruit and rest under the tall Ahuehuetes lining the shore of an endless river. We rarely spoke, except for her musings about how much she missed Copal, and my futile replies to discourage those thoughts.

Marisol awoke each night, trembling from the same cursed dream in which constant winds scattered the dirt under which we buried my brother. His strong arms pulled her down into the grave and held her tightly until she submitted. I thought I knew this woman after all we had been through. She had promised herself to me, but was still tethered to Copal.

“He has come back for me, just as he said he would. ‘There is still time, Mari,’ he says in that spirited voice I remember so well. ‘Let me save you from his tainted blood.’ Who is he talking about, Teo? Copal is driving me over the edge,” she cried, beating her fists against her perfect thighs, then leaning her head upon my shoulder and caressing my face, drawing me into her disquiet.

“They are only dreams, Querida. Malos sueños. Give death time to sweep him away.”

“Perhaps I do not want to, Teo.”

***

Each night, under a purple moon, the ground bathed her in the dampness of love. She drifted beneath my weight as I scattered kisses like seeds across her body, trying to banish her uncontrollable dreams. But her desire for me faded until I could no longer satisfy this woman. Her fantasies replaced me. I could do nothing but wait for Copal to ignite her passion.

Marisol’s lips parted; her almond eyes grew large and round until her body quivered in release. “Copal, Copal,” she moaned, as I spilled myself inside her swollen flesh.

Stephen Myer is a writer and musician in Southern California. His stories and poetry have been published in Tales from the Moonlit Path, Roi Faineant Press, Grand Little Things, Bewildering Stories, JayHenge Publishing Back Forty, Kafka Protocol, and Masque & Maelström Anthologies, God’s Cruel Joke, The Avenue Journal, Close to the Bone, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Blood Fiction Anthologies Vols. 2 & 3, Exquisite Death, Hemlock Journal, Fiction on the Web, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Award for Literary Fiction.