CADEJO

The screen door slams behind her as she storms out, down the front steps and into the night, half full whiskey bottle snatched from the kitchen bar in hand, hair wild in the autumn wind. 

“Jocelyn, come back! That was nothing, that didn’t mean anything!” he shouts after her, storming out through the same screen door. 

She keeps walking, he doesn’t. He stays on the front porch and calls her name a second time. She tries to reply, her back to him as she leaves. The words “fuck” and “you” catching in her throat, coming out squeaky and pathetic, like the voice cracking of a teenage boy. So instead, she takes a long draught from the whiskey bottle with one hand and holds up her middle finger with the other. She barely hears his reply over the party’s music; the distorted bass of the trap beat swallowing his voice, mumble rap mumbling over his words as hi-hat drums tick away at the same tempo her heart beats at.

What had she expected coming here tonight? Had she expected they would get back together? That she’d show up at the party she said she wouldn’t show up to, in her sexy little crop top, that he’d look at her and sweep her up, take her in his arms, forgive and forget all they both had done to one another and spend the rest of the night drinking and looking into each other’s eyes? Is that what she expected? Well, whatever it was that she secretly hoped would happen, it definitely wasn’t walking in on him in the upstairs bedroom, naked, and crawled on top of a blonde with big tits.

No, it sure as fuck wasn’t that.

The trap bass recedes to nothing by the time she reaches the long dirt road that leads to the bus stop that takes her back into the city. Large pines flanking her on both sides, house hidden behind the trees before the tears come streaking down her face. This was a bad idea. Look where she is now. 

Her phone buzzes. She pulls it out. A text: “Jocelyn come back. Where are you going? Who did you come with?”

He texts, but he doesn’t come after her. As ashamed as she is, a part of her wants him to. But no, this has to be how they end. So she puts her phone away and continues walking. 

She should be scared going down this deserted road alone, in the middle of nowhere, lit by nothing but the moon overhead, and without the friend she came with. But she isn’t. All she wants to do is finish the bottle before reaching the bus stop. All she has to look forward to is the nice long drunk ride home.

But then she nearly trips when she sees it, stopping in her tracks, heart in her hand. It looks at her pitifully, a beautiful white dog that peeks out at her from between the trees. In the light of the moon its eyes nearly appear to shine red. She wipes the tears from her face, and the snot from her nose.

“Hey buddy, you lost too?”

It sniffs at her, shaggy white fur blowing in the wind as she smiles at it, her long black hair tossed by the same wind; two shaggy lost things on a dirty road to town. Only a beat passes before it gets bored, turns around, and pads away, deeper into the woods.  She can’t help but smile as she takes another swig of her whiskey.

the first meeting

The white dog reminds her of a story her abuelita used to tell her. The story of El Cadejo. “Cah-deh-ho,” she’d enunciate, drama flashing in her eyes. Jocelyn used to love when she’d tell her that story. The way she used to tell it, the way she used to live it. El Cadejo came in two forms, her abuelita used to say; in the one it would appear to you as a large shaggy white dog, and in the other, as a large shaggy black one. In both cases its fur was long and wild, with eyes red like burning coals, and depending on how many glasses of vino she had had, sometimes even goat hooves instead of paws. Her abuelita said that if it was the white one you saw, it was there to protect you from danger, but if it was the black one, it was there to kill you for something you had done, to punish you and eat you up. 

Jocelyn smiles and takes another sip of her whiskey. Her abuelita with her stories, her abuelita with her sad kind eyes that shone with mischief, her abuelita who’d take her first drink by noon, her abuelita that had had her mother when she was only fifteen; her abuelita five years gone. 

The cold night air whips around Jocelyn as she walks, pressing her top to her body. It feels great. Better to think about her abuelita than Mike back at that party, better to think about her than him; him with his apologies and his blonde. She shouldn’t have been surprised, she had cheated first, or had it been him? Who knows? But this was supposed to be it. The moment when they forgave one another, when they both grew up, stopped their respective bullshit and actually worked at a real life adult fucking relationship. But maybe she was being stupid. Why would that happen at a party? Maybe it just wasn’t in him to change, maybe it was in her either.

She takes more than a sip of whiskey. She had known guys like Mike her entire life. Her mom had dated guys like Mike her entire life. Hell, whoever her abuelito had been, if her abuelita even knew who that was, had probably been a guy like Mike. Gorgeous and funny. The kind of guy who smiled easily, made you laugh even easier, and was never far away from an opened bottle of beer. The kind of guy she tended to love. But wasn’t she the kind of girl they tended to love? Either way, whoever he had been, wherever he had gone to, after him, her abuelita had to live the life of a single mother, never had time for men or love or dating. That wasn’t really a part of the culture at the time either. So, she had died lonely, with nothing to cling to in death but her family and her stories and Christ and Mother Mary. For whatever any of that was worth.

Her own mother had made time for men. Made time to date and refall back in love every other month; a rotating roster of father figures in the holy mould of Mikes. Or rather, pre-Mikes, proto-Mikes of her mother’s generation. She used to hate her mother for her taste in shitty men. But here she was, dating the same type. Here she was, a present version of her mother, and her mother just an earlier version of her, just a pre-Jocelyn, just a proto-Jocelyn of a prior generation; proto-Jocelyn and proto-Mike, just as happy in their time as Mike and Jocelyn are in theirs. She can’t help but wonder if proto-Jocelyn had ever walked this same dirt road, heartbroken and with makeup running down her face, the same way Jocelyn is doing now.  

She takes a draught from her whiskey bottle, gags, nearly throws up, then drinks again. 

Then she sees it. Again. El Cadejo.

This time she knows it’s not just some dog. It’s him. 

the second meeting

It pads to the middle of the road, impossibly large, like no breed of dog she knows; white fur billowing in the wind as it looks at her. But her abuelita was wrong. It doesn’t have hooves or eyes red like burning coal. No, it’s eyes are big, and human, red, but only the way a drunk’s eyes are red, or someone high, bloodshot and red-veined. It looks at her with its disgusting, inebriated people eyes, panting though the night is cold. She looks back at it and drinks some more.

“Aren’t you here to protect me?” she asks.

It’s blood veiny eyes bulge like it’s way too fucked up, like it needs to go throw up. It pads away back into the woods.

“Okay, feel better! See ya later,” she calls after it. 

Her phone buzzes. She pulls it out. A text: “Where are you!?!? Are you kidding me!? Are you actually going to make me come and get you?”

She puts it away and continues walking. Why couldn’t Mike just leave her alone, just let her go home and cry and hate him like she knows she has to. This didn’t work out. It didn’t work out the way she wanted it to and it was all his fault, it was all her fault. It didn’t matter who cheated first, whether it was her or if it had been him, tonight’s blonde put it all into perspective. This was the way all her relationships had ever ended. 

Her friends never make her feel bad about cheating. But they also never understood why she got into relationships in the first place. She was young and hot, they’d say, she should be out sleeping with whomever she wanted to and not feeling guilty about it either. And she agreed with that, she really did. The problem was that she didn’t want that. She wanted a relationship and all the love that came with it; she wanted that rom-com love, that Danny and Sandy love, that Superman and Lois Lane love, that high school prom dates, high school sweethearts, will-they-won’t-they, enemies-to-lovers, summer fair win me a teddy bear love. And then she’d suck a dick that wasn’t his. Or he’d crawl into bed with a girl that wasn’t her. Enter neo-Mike.

A text: “Jocelyn, you better be okay. I’m coming to find you ok. Wait for me at the bus stop! I swear to god I can’t believe you’re making me do this!!!”

Go away Mike.

She takes a final swig of the whiskey bottle, draining it fully, the sweet sting in her throat, and tosses it to the side; hearing it shatter when it hits the ground. Was this it? Was she destined to follow in the footsteps of her mother, of her abuelita; was she to live miserably and alone like everyone else in her family, just the latest in a long line of proto-Jocelyns.

Jocelyn bursts into fresh tears. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to ruin things anymore. She doesn’t want to be around people who ruin things anymore. She wants to be happy.

And then she hears it. A snarl. And it emerges from the woods.

the final meeting

But when it slips from between the tall dark trees, she realizes its fur is no longer white; it’s a deep black. The shaggy fur on its back bristles as it bares its teeth, this impossibly large dog, and stares at her with its addict eyes, its gross bloodshot people eyes.  

Here it is, ready to eat me up like abuelita said, thinks Jocelyn. And in what seems like a direct response to those thoughts, El Cadejo opens its enormous jaws; enormous and severe, like a yawn frozen in place. And she knows. Tears flowing freely down her cheeks, she knows and she stumbles over to it until she can feel its hot breath on her body, until even in the barely bright enough to see, pale light of the moon, she can see down its open salivating maw. And when she’s close enough, she does it, what she knows it wants her to do, what it’s offering, and reaches her arm down the black dog’s mouth and wraps her hand around a tooth and squeezes tight, drawing blood from palm, gripping, until she takes proper hold and pulls on the canine fang, and not tugging either, not straining and not yanking, but a gentle draw as she pulls the dogtooth blade from its red gummed sheath; its gift to her, its gift in blood and spit.

A car screeches behind her. Mike steps out of the jeep.

“Jocelyn, what the hell are you doing out here!” He yells. She lunges. 

His next words are lost in a gurgle of blood as she sinks the tooth into his neck. He collapses on to his back and she climbs on top, bringing the fang down on him over and over again, each point of contact punctuated by a terrible squelch. 

Goodbye to always ruining things. Squelch. Goodbye to being with people who ruin things. Squelch. Goodbye to blondes with big tits. Squelch. Goodbye to generational curses. Squelch. 

Goodbye Mike.

by Xavier Garcia

Xavier Garcia is a writer/editor from Toronto, Canada. His short fiction work has appeared in multiple anthologies published by Black Hare Press. A short horror film he wrote/produced, also won the Best Film award at the Rue Morgue and Sinister Nights Film Festival. You can find him walking the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh, or at twitter.com/xavier_agarcia.