Lucha La Muerte

A Sneak Peek at a Future Crossover Event

You’ve met Aaron and Ben from Spirits, and Tommy and James from How to Whack a Demon. In a couple of months, you’ll meet Gnash and Marvin from Penance of Gnash. Tonight, you meet San Demonio.

Mexico City.

The birthplace of Lucha Libre.

It is mi hogar.

But it is also home to evil, great and small. Weak and powerful. Natural and—

We will come back to that, but now, it is the small and weak who pretend to be something more who have drawn my attention.

The people of this city, they call me San Demonio. I am savior to some, devil to others. To all, just.

This mask I wear is a harbinger.

It is not just worn. I become it. And through it, I become fury, and hope.

From this rooftop, I can see all the way to Arena México—the Cathedral of Lucha Libre. Many worship at the altar of luchadores. Others worship a darker god. Or goddess, as is the case in this place.

Below, in an abandoned warehouse, men who serve La Falsa Santa are selling women to other men who worship only money. They will all beg their gods for mercy this night.

It is nothing to sneak past this escoria guarding the door. His clumsy hands fiddle with a karambit as I pass through the window above him, left open by some idiota.

Necios.

Inside, I find the two men I am here for: The trafficker—his cheap tan suit a pitiful attempt to dress for the job he wants that will never pay off, and his cliente, a round man in sweatpants and an ill-fitting Hawaiian shirt over a stained wife-beater. The former grasps a young woman by the wrist. A prostituta by her appearance. The latter examines her like livestock.

The buyer and seller are each flanked by two protectors, only slightly more capable than the imbécil guarding the door.

She’s drugged, but still aware. Weeping softly. Resigned to her fate.

“This is all you have for me?” the cliente scoffs.

“You do not like her?”

“No. Look at her… she is fiero. Homely and spent.”

One of the guards laughs. He will regret that.

Her tears cut lines through dirt and blood on her face. Her left eye is swollen, cheek cut, but she is precious. A thing of infinite worth—as we all are, though we often choose to be less—being peddled for filthy wads of paper.

“Are you blind? She is guapisima, and you know it. She is going to make you a lot—”

“Hola.”

I speak from the shadows. My voice low, inhuman. It echoes around the cavernous space, rattling broken glass.

“Who’s there?” the enganchador holding the girl shouts, his voice frantic, sweat beading up on his forehead.

“You know,” I say. Calm. Reverberating. Dust rises from nearby shelves.

“Go!” he says, pointing at the shadows where I dwell. His two chuncos draw their pistols, begin to creep past piles of old boxes and broken crates. They split up. The one nearest me holds up a lighter, hoping to catch a glimpse.

Regret for that decision will haunt him the rest of his short life.

He screams. Two quick muzzle flashes.

Then silence.

The shadows receive me again as I wait.

“Jorge?” his partner manages to breathe out as he draws near, his voice hushed.

“Jorge está dormido,” I whisper back.

He begins to unload into the darkness, but with a single tug from my clawed hands, his arm breaks free from his shoulder like pulling apart carnitas. It fires two more shots. The final obedience of muscles severed from their source.

The arm and pistol land at the feet of the remaining pieces of human basura. They do not wait to find out what’s happening. They already know. Every worthless malandro and tratante in this city knows of San Demonio. They pray to their bony lady for protection. They hope she will be enough.

And if she cared, she would be. More than enough. But she does not weep for them.

All of the scared little alimañas rush for the door. The man with the karambit peeks in, knife shaking in his hand, and is plowed over like a bowling pin by the first two. The fat man who called her “fiero,” he throws the trafficker aside, and almost makes it out.

I take him by the hair, and drag him back in as the rest look on, his screams echoing through the alley and out into the night.

His bulbous form vanishes, replaced with a visage. A crimson face with black horns and glowing yellow eyes staring at them from the darkness.

“Run,” I say.

They obey.

And then I go to work.

As the blood flows, as the flesh rips and the bones break and the screams turn to whimpers, I can’t help but smile. These men who treated women as disposable are flowing down the drain, into the sewer, like waste.

***

I think about that moment when I left her outside the Hospital de Jesus as I saunter down the catwalk in Arena México.

The girl will be safe now.

I had watched from the roof as nurses rushed to her. One pushing a wheelchair.

“San… San Demonio… he saved me,” she mumbled, the drugs beginning to wear off.

“She is delirious,” one nurse said.

“No, he… he is real…”

They shook their heads in pity as they wheeled her in.

“…and he is a hero.”

Perhaps, but not here.

10,000 lucha fans jeer at me, show me their middle fingers, spit in my general direction.

My demonic mask replaced with a false mustache, sombrero, and a plastic smile.

“Boooooooo,” they shout.

Out there, I may be a héroe.

Here, I am only a rudo.

I am…

Mal Mariachi.