The Reasons of the Wolf
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The first time I met Andrés was at a no-name strip club in the outskirts of the city. We were introduced to each other by violence: a bloodied face smashed against my table, spilling my drink and making my voluptuous rent-a-date squeal with horror and skitter away; I did not get a refund for the half-hour I still had. The man who stood before me – knuckles raw and veins pulsing – was a mountain of muscle, coils upon coils of sinew that looked like they were about to burst from under his skin. One of his eyes was missing – a permanent reminder of an old fight – and the remaining one was full of animalistic rage. With one hand, he picked up the man who he had thrown against the table and held him by the neck, slowly choking the life out of him.

The other man was lucky to be alive: shards of glass peppered his skin in a mosaic of glittery scarlet, his nose broken and half the fingers of his right hand crushed into uselessness. He gasped through a blood-filled mouth and squirmed as his adversary strangled him, but the other man was not letting go. It also didn't help that the muscle-bound brute was much taller than he was: the soon-to-be corpse was barely 1.5 meters tall, with half a meter between his dangling feet and the ground.

I reached forth with my second eyes and tasted the emotions spilling throughout the venue. There was white-hot rage from the behemoth, spiced with a growing sense of satisfaction at winning yet another fight and the sickeningly sweet color of pride at humiliating this pest of a man before extinguishing him forever. There was instinctual, piss-yellow panic and purplish confusion from the patrons and girls who fled in every direction, knowing that no police would come and that only the end of one life would permit them to return to their business. There was… there was nothing coming from the strangled man. Was he dead already? No, impossible. I looked further inside, past the whirlwind of raw emotions that inundated and overwhelmed my senses, and again found nothing. Nothing, that is, except a steely, unbreakable resolve. It tasted…

Before I could react, the short man took one of the glass shards embedded in his body and stabbed it into his adversary's remaining eye. The now-blinded man screamed as he let go and tried in vain to remove the shard and somehow recover his lost sight, but his rival gave him no quarter. He threw himself against the behemoth and crawled his way back up, his legs firmly clasped against the bigger man's torso. Then he pushed the shard, again, and again, driving it deeper into the skull. He did not stop even as the other man smashed him into the walls in desperation, shattering glass and splintering bones. The taste of primal fear was overwhelming, cut only by the flavor that seeped from the shorter man – the color of will.

At last, the shard reached the brain, and the triumphant fighter stood over the hulking corpse of his adversary. He put his hands on his knees and huffed thrice, each time sounding like his lungs were about to collapse, then stumbled towards the bar and poured himself a drink. He put a cigarette in his cracked, blood-caked lips, but he groaned at the realization that he had lost his lighter somewhere amidst the chaos.

"Need a light?" I asked him, and I gave Andrés the gift of fire.


"It's no use to us like this," Andrés frowns upon seeing Deodoat's bile bladder. The deflated organ – coursed by bulging arteries – has taken on a sickly purple tinge, what remains of its contents dripping down into the gutters. "No deal."

"Don't fuck with us, cabrón," the foreman curses. His balding head is thick with sweat and grease, his hands crusty with dried kaiju gore. His colors taste of frustrated desires, of rage-fueled determination. "You asked for a bile bladder, and we got you one. Take it and give us the damn drug."

"Not gonna happen," Andrés refuses. He lights a cigarette and blows the smoke towards the two angry crewmen who flank their boss like a pair of lumbering flesh pillars. "We don't get the main ingredient, you don't get k'i'ik. That's how the production chain works, see? No raw materials, no goodies."

"Then what? You're just leaving?"

"Yes. Care to try and stop us?"

That's my cue. No guns have been drawn yet, but I can tell it's only a matter of time if this keeps escalating. Emotions are rampant here, raw and ugly. No one is getting what they came for, and for some that may be reason enough to vomit hot lead.

"Gentlemen," I tread carefully. "There's no need for conflict. What my partner says is true: we cannot get you any k'i'ik without the main ingredient: a good few liters of refined kaiju bile. See, the human body can only take so much of the stuff before breaking it down into some rather exotic enzymes. That's where we get the k'i'ik from. With the amount we got here… well, we can't really do much. The way I see it, this has been nothing but bad luck for any of us; no use in pointing fingers when no one is to blame. Sometimes, things just are what they are."

A few crewmen nod in agreement, the colors of aggression giving way to more neutral shades inside their heads. The foreman, however, remains undeterred in his frustration. His brain tastes dark red.

"Now, I think it is for the best if we simply write this off as what it is and go our separate ways. We'll be more than pleased to work with you when the opportunity arises again, and we'll ensure that you all get your k'i'ik. Good night."

I turn and Andrés follows. Behind my back, the foreman clenches his fists and curses under his breath, the colors of rage still threatening to burst out of him and force a steel pipe down our throats. But the other men are already leaving, moving on from their disappointment and chattering the night away, so all he can do is join them, trailing behind as the last blotches of red fade to nothing. He knows I'm right: when your job is disposing of dead kaiju, there will always be new opportunities to make some side business – if not with us, then with someone else.

"What will we tell Canek?" Andrés asks after we get in the car. "He won't be happy without his kaiju bile."

"There's always another deathmatch," I respond while driving off. "What's important is that we don't draw any more heat. They're still looking for suspects on the fire we started last night. Won't do us any good if there's more bodies in our wake."

Andrés says nothing. He simply stares into the night with his dark green eyes, just like the time we first met, when he was covered in glass and blood and death. I turn on the radio just to drown out the silence.



Killing comes to Andrés as naturally as swimming comes to a fish. That is the first thing I learned about him at that nameless strip club, and I would recall it again and again whenever we were partnered for a job. Recommending someone in an organization like ours means being responsible for that person, so it is often that I witness his exploits firsthand; it's not a show I'd recommend to anyone.

On his first job, Andrés cut out a man's tongue when he wouldn't pay for his drugs. I watched him stand there and let his victim bleed out amongst heaves of pain, occasionally kicking him just to make him wail wordlessly, cowering against the wall like a mistreated child. The colors dripping from his agonizing brain were unspeakable; that night I learned how just how insistently a tongueless man can plead.

In the end, I put a bullet in the man's head just to end his misery. Andrés gazed at me with stone-cold eyes and said nothing; he simply spat at the corpse and went back to the car. His colors were muted, so faint that they almost seemed gentle. I understood it then, the second most important thing about him: Andrés knows exactly when to apply violence, and just how much to use. That night he made his point that I was not his boss, his handler or his keeper. I was merely useful, just like I had been when I gave him fire for his cigarette. The only things I had done so far were watching in horrific admiration and putting a nice bow on it when all was finished; he had no rush or expectations of that ever changing.

But I was not simply going to allow him to do all the legwork and assert some sort of supremacy over me. When violence was not called for – or when it risked ending with everyone's blood splattered on the walls – I had to demonstrate my own talents. Having godflesh fused to my brain means that I can taste everyone's emotions, know exactly what they are feeling and be certain when shit will go south. I can anticipate everyone's next move, and that gives me an advantage far greater than anyone who has no second eyes. I kept both myself and Andrés alive and the money flowing through sheer talk; no one – not even him – can deny that our success depended on us both. We were equals, and that was all we would ever be. It was better that way. Nothing good comes from making friends in this line of work.


As expected, Canek is anything but happy that our transaction was a bust. His colors are all ugly shades of beige and gray – annoyance and vague frustration – because he'd rather not have to explain to his higher-up that there's been a delay. He doesn't complain much, fortunately; after five years running this show, he knows anything can go wrong. No use in shooting the messenger. He does, however, have another assignment for us, because these are still working hours, kaiju bile or not.

"Drop these off at Jimmy's place. Give them to him, and to him alone," he says while handing over three packages whose contents I already know without having to look. He says nothing else, so I figure that we'll be free for the night after that. Fine by me.

Half an hour later, Andrés and I cut our way to the front of the line of Xtabay, Jimmy's nightclub. People – mostly blonde, pale-faced idiots who don't speak a single word of Spanish or Maya – protest and boo us, but the bouncer knows exactly what we are here for, so he lets us in without a single word. They frisk us for guns or knives, but there's no need. Jimmy has never stirred up any trouble for us, so we don't bring death into his house.

Jimmy is like any other gringo in the peninsula: a smiling rat who wants to pass off as a time-displaced hippie – chanclas, dreadlocks, colorful shirts, bead necklaces and all. Beneath his jovial visage, however, he is a predator, a shark out for his next bite, a businessman who will not hesitate to crush you under the sign of the almighty dollar. I hate him, and I hate his patrons: drunk, crass, inflated with unwavering belief in their own superiority.

The gringos love this place, the climate, the food and the spirituality they think emanates from the ruins of past empires – they find sacred meaning in every sunset and meteor shower, think they commune with the gods in steamy mud huts while high off endangered plant species, and participate in ancestral rites and ceremonies that did not exist five years go. And they love the kaiju, of course: the screens are all replaying tonight's match, zooming in to the moment when Magog eviscerates its opponent. They'll forget about it as soon as a new fighter shows up, moving on to the next cheap thrill. To them, this entire city is a never-ending party; the people who live here are nothing but props or servitors. In a way, they're not wrong – all that Andrés and I are here for is to feed their insatiable lust for drugs.

Jimmy isn't here yet, we are told when we reach his private office's door, so we're welcome to have something to drink while we wait – on the house, of course. I order a White Russian and Andrés has an Electric Funeral, and we sit to wait. I sip my drink while imbibing the colors of the bar. Everything here reeks of lust, a bright magenta with shades of future regret. Ogle-eyed perverts circle like vultures and wait for a stripper to drop her panties or invite them to drink a shot of tequila from between her tits, fifteen dollars a shot. Young couples sneak off into the less-illuminated areas to get frisky with the added thrill of public indecency. Old white men pick up bored-looking brown girls who are barely of legal age, their lips dripping with foamy saliva and promises of fat green stacks for a night of passion. Next to me, a short-haired gringa – so drunk that she has climbed atop her table – shakes her ass to lyrics in a language she does not understand.

My second sight wanders towards Andrés and I try to taste his emotions, but his head is almost colorless. He's bored, I can tell, and I understand him; there is no point in him being here if he cannot join the revelry. Thus, he mutes his own head and simply lets time slip by, only occasionally taking his glass to his lips.

"Stop doing that," he suddenly says, catching me by surprise. His colors have not changed one bit.

"Stop doing what?" I almost stutter.

"Poking at my head," he does not turn as he speaks, and he takes another sip from his Electric Funeral. I do as he says.

He scares me sometimes with how perceptive he is. Second sight is not a skill that others can detect – not even those who also share this gift with me – and someone knowing when you're tasting their colors is unheard of.

"How the fuck did you know?" I ask him.

"Your pupils narrow when you do it," he says, and adds nothing more.

Shit, he only side-eyed me once. Jimmy sure is taking his sweet fucking time.


Anyone who tells you that killing is an art is lying to you. I know; I've done my fair share of it. Art is art. Killing is killing. I may not know the first thing about baroque or surrealism or whatnot, but I can tell you that blowing a man's brains out has no other meaning beyond itself: a means to an end. In our line of work, this is a simple procedure, a job that must be done to ensure a result.

If you don't pay, you get popped. If you cross the wrong person, you get popped. If you suddenly become a liability, you get popped. Necessity always precedes the act itself; doing it just for thrills is for sickos, and no one wants to work with a sicko. I'm not saying you won't ever enjoy doing it. After all, who doesn't like a job well done? There's satisfaction to be found in showing you're a professional, that you're in control and up to the challenge. That's how you climb your way to the top, be it in a fancy office or in the streets.

However, we draw the line at what's strictly demanded by the job, so we don't incur unnecessary bloodshed. That would be wasteful, and we can't afford to be wasteful. Kaiju can teach you that lesson very well: they're useful even after death. Their meat is inedible for humans, but it makes a great dietary supplement for other kaiju. Claws, teeth, horns and poison glands can be recycled, repurposed for new beasts. Bones can be ground up and made into aphrodisiacs and beauty products. Even their shit can fertilize a whole field – that's how much phosphorus it has. And of course, the bile bladder gives us the raw materials to make the hardest drug currently in the market… assuming we can get it undamaged. Waste is unacceptable when an alternative can be found.

That is why Andrés scares me so much at times. He is not wasteful. He is not psychotic, nor sadistic. He is tactical, precise, odiously so. Over time, killing will harden any man, turn their heart to stone. It only gets easier in the sense that you learn to see it as another menial task in your job description, in as much as you cease to think about it and just get it done. Your brain is built like that to keep out the intrusive thoughts, the horror of what you're doing, the moral implications of extinguishing a life. You are not a monster; you're just going through the motions.

The godflesh lets me see exactly how people react to pulling a trigger or driving a knife into a body: there's a flicker that is the color of a ripe orange; it lingers for a while, only while you get the job done. It tastes like water when you're drowning, like you want it to be over with, your eyes wild as you finish the task as quickly as possible. It's gone as fast as it came, barely leaves an aftertaste in my brain. Then there's a brief muteness, a colorless realization and acceptance, and on you go. Easy. The more you've grown used to it, the less and less the color lasts, but it's always there, every time you end a life.

Andrés has never had that color. His brain has never tasted like that, and all I can perceive when he kills is the same flavor that I tasted on that first night, that emptiness in which only he exists. He doesn't enjoy it, and he doesn't loathe it. He feels nothing. It just is. He just is. Sometimes, it's like he's one of them, one of the titans that tear each other apart in the arena. They kill because that is what they were made for. They die because another had a stronger will to survive. That is what I see in Andrés: a singular drive, a beastlike purpose that is second to no other. Not do because it must be done. Simply do.

It's hard not to fear such a creature. Animals – kaiju included – do what is in their nature, no enjoyment, no displeasure. What they do is all that they know, and there is no changing that. Given a choice, though, perhaps they would elect something different, something beyond mere survival, beyond their own primal instincts. Why, then, would someone who possesses the gift of discernment choose this every single time? Why would a man, if not a beast in man's clothing, not decide to be different?

I have looked Andrés in the eye many times, and all I have ever found, even after picking his brain apart, has been colorless silence. Who knows what is really in his head? Do his victims know? Does he reveal, in their last seconds, some deep secret for them to take to the grave? Do they look into his eyes – beyond his eyes – and taste the hidden color? I do not think that the understanding they gain is a first and final mercy that he bestows to them, nor a simple and brutish demonstration of cruelty. No. I think that, in those final instants, stretched over the eternity that is death, the dying are also like beasts, and only beasts can ever truly understand each other. Who, if not the sheep, is privy to the reasons of the wolf?

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