Brujas TOC
Read Brujas pt. 1
Previously: Catriz and her goat, Elvis, receive visitors Kim and Loré at their secluded ranch in the desert. Tensions are high as Catriz does not like visitors and her reputation as a Bruja precedes her.
⚠️ Content warning: the below passage discusses pregnancy loss in some detail.
The inside of the adobe house was bright and open, despite the fading light of the day. Catriz led them through a small seating area with a couch and a small coffee table, past an open dining room, and toward the back of the house, which held a small indoor courtyard filled with greenery. Their shoes tapped lightly on the terracotta tiles, while family relics from generations past stared at them from plain white walls.
They followed Catriz through the low, arched doorway to the left of the courtyard and into the kitchen, where she stubbed out her cigarette in a cobalt blue glass ashtray. She hurriedly cleared away a pile of papers and photographs from a small table in the corner and gestured for them to sit as she retreated to the back of the room. The kitchen was a blend of pale, textured walls, wooden shelves, and tiled counters, complete with appliances that hadn't been updated in twenty years.
Glasses clinked and a cabinet door swung open and closed as Kim and Loré took their seats. The goat sauntered in, head bobbing, and seated itself on a woven blanket in the corner next to the table, under a window that faced the front of the property.
Catriz returned with three small glasses and a bottle of tequila.
"I assume you two are old enough?" she asked as she unscrewed the lid. The question was meant for Loré, since she knew how old Kim was.
"Old enough," Loré affirmed coldly.
"Old enough," the older woman nodded and began pouring.
Silence filled the kitchen as all three women sipped their drinks, each one avoiding the task of beginning the conversation. Catriz's chair issued a long groan as she leaned back and regarded the two women seated at her table. Loré was drinking her tequila too fast, already in need of a refill, while Kim sat spinning her nearly-full glass in her hands. They both studied the table, lost in thought.
"Well," Catriz slapped the tabletop with her open hand, startling the other two, "What do you need?"
Kim sighed and took a gulp of tequila, biting back the sting of the alcohol.
"Like I said, it's Jenna. She's looking for us. I don't know if she'll find us out here, but she could. She's —" Kim paused to take a deep breath, "she's been practicing magic for a while now. She asked me to teach her some of the ancestral stuff you taught me but I said 'no'. Mostly because I can't stand her. But she said I was a racist snob — that I wouldn't show her because she's mixed."
At this, Catriz's dark eyes narrowed. Kim held up her hands in front of herself, palms up, exasperated and pleading.
"Which is ridiculous, obviously, because I'm more mixed than she is. I have less of the ancestors in my blood than she does."
Catriz waved a hand at Kim and looked out the front window. She shook her head.
"Everyone is mixed these days, with plenty of us carrying colonizer blood in our veins, whether it shows on our faces or not."
She tilted her head to peek at Loré, who was still looking down at the tabletop. Catriz grabbed the bottle and refilled Loré's glass, trying to sound casual as she talked and poured.
"And you, mujer? What's in your blood?"
Loré lifted her head to look at Catriz. She delicately wrapped her fingers around the fresh glass and shrugged.
"I don't know anything about where I come from. No dad, no real mom, no family."
Catriz nodded, filling her own glass, then adding some to Kim's. She produced the packet of cigarettes from her skirt pocket and leaned across the table, holding the packet out to Loré. She studied the mysterious woman's face for a moment before replying in a grave tone.
"Puede ser. Pero, you look an awful lot like someone I know."
The hint of an unspoken challenge filled the air between them as Loré took the offered cigarette. Catriz put down the packet and pulled the lighter from her pocket, leaning her elbow on the table and extending it to the other woman between her index and middle fingers. The end of the white stick lit up orange as Loré took the first inhalation. Blowing out the smoke in Catriz's direction, she shrugged again.
Catriz nodded and leaned back. Slipping another crisp cigarette from the pack, she lit it and gazed out the front window again, one elbow propped up on the table.
Kim shifted and started again.
"Jenna..."
"Sí, Jenna. Tell me."
"She's been really mad at me. Calling me and hanging up. I'm pretty sure I saw her creeping around our apartment. This went on for a couple weeks. Once, Derek went out and yelled at her, but she kept on. Then, one day she just stopped. That should have worried me."
She stopped and turned to Loré.
"Do you want to tell your part?"
Loré shook her head and took a gulp from her glass, setting it back down on the table with a rough slam. Her hands trembled as she held the cigarette to her lips.
Kim went on, "I guess that was when Jenna found Loré. She didn't just find her, though, she targeted her. Loré ... Loré's never practiced but she has the way about her. Like, big time."
At this, Loré pushed her chair back and left the kitchen. Catriz kept her eyes on the window, unfocused and distant, as the sound of the front door opening and closing rang through the house. The planks of the porch creaked under the woman's steps.
Leaning forward, Kim kept her voice low.
"Jenna really messed with her. She doesn't remember much — just cold, darkness, voices. She thinks she blacked out because she only remembers waking up over her boyfriend's body, with Jenna there laughing."
A low hiss escaped Catriz's lips and she beckoned Kim to continue.
"She didn't know what to do, so she came to my house. I guess she knows a lot about me from Jenna. Before that night though — we think it's right when Jenna found Loré —," Kim paused here and downed her drink, "Jenna hexed me...and my mom. I think she was channeling Loré when she did it. My mom got sick and died and I can't get rid of her dark magic. It all got stuck on me. Some shit went down."
She paused to blink back tears, "Derek died. I was...pregnant."
Her voice wavered and then choked on the last word. Catriz closed her eyes, but didn't move. After several moments of long sniffles, Kim continued between soft sobs.
"Jenna knew about my baby. I don't know how. Maybe from all that time spying on us. But that's why she found Loré, why she hexed us. I could feel her poisoning the baby."
She held her face in her hands but continued to tell her story in a half wail, more for herself than Catriz.
"I kept bleeding black blood. The doctor said the baby was fine, but the blood wouldn't stop. He must have been crazy. They wouldn't listen to me or help me at all. They sent me home and told me to drink water, call them back next week."
Lowering her hands, she placed them on her stomach.
"I felt the baby's pain," a high-pitched cry cut the air in the still kitchen, "The night my mom died, a fire burned in my belly and the shadows kept reaching for me, squeezing my arms and legs and pulling on me. I lost Derek that night, too. Came home. Gone."
Her words came forced between breaths, short and chopped. She grit her teeth to get through the last part, almost growling with pain and rage.
"I couldn't let Jenna have my baby. So I took —," she hit the table with her fist, "I took the herbs and I did the spell. And...I ended it."
She broke, her confession finally free, and let herself openly wail. Long, jerking sobs hammered through her chest as she laid her burning forehead on the cool table. The sounds escaping her open mouth echoed a heartbreak with endless depths into the small room, filling it to the brim with ache and loss.
Grief welled up in Catriz's heart and behind it, there bloomed a determined, protective love for Kim and Loré. And behind that love, a red hot fury boiled and nearly blinded her.
Steadily, without looking at Kim, Catriz extended her hand across the table. Kim slid her hand up from her lap and over the pitted surface to grasp it. The kitchen grew warmer, a soft hush of waves rising as the women synched their breaths together. The goat stood, hooves clicking on tiles as it walked to the courtyard and disappeared between the tall plants.
A leaky faucet dripped, the porch planks squeaked, in the distance a hawk screeched, and the women sat, hand-in-hand. Into this calm, quiet moment, poised on the edge of a sheer cliff of resolution, Catriz spoke.
"Mija, are you still bleeding?"
Kim whimpered and tightened her grip, which the older woman took as a sign of affirmation.
"Bien. It's almost dark. Rest for now. Meet me at the mesquite tree when you see a fire lit outside the window. I'll leave you some food in here, and cots in the back room, but I'll be busy until you meet me. Kim," she squeezed her hand roughly, "I am sorry."
Cover art comprised of original images by K. Mitch Hodge and Mulyadi, edited under the Unsplash license.
This is a really fucking good. Doesn't feel like a witch story. Feels real, serious, not romantic at all. Love it 🔥
The stakes just shot up. And it’s personal.