Juan Pablo Villalobos - Down the Rabbit Hole

* * *

The most mysterious thing they’ve done to try to stop me being mute was in the morning, when Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl turned up for work. They weren’t alone, they had two little boys with them: a cousin of Cinteotl’s and a neighbor of Itzpapalotl’s. They both had awful haircuts, like soldiers, who have the worst haircuts in the universe. Yolcaut didn’t let the boys stay, as much as Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl kept saying I needed friends my own age, that it was to stop me being mute. They also said it wasn’t normal for me to be walking around in a dressing gown and wearing those odd hats I like so much. Yolcaut got fed up with them and just said:

“You can shut up or clear off.”

And he ordered Miztli to take the boys back home. One of them, the one that was Itzpapalotl’s neighbor, came over to me before he left and gave me a toy he’d brought with him. Pathetic, although Itzpapalotl told him he was a very good boy. It was a Star Wars figure, but it wasn’t an original, it was a fake one from the market. It wasn’t even painted properly. The doll was supposed to have red clothes and flesh-colored skin. Well, a bit of his right hand was actually painted red. And it wasn’t blood. It was just that the doll was cheap. When they’d left I threw it in the rubbish bin.

* * *

This really is mysterious: the minuscule bullets from the tiny little pistol do make corpses. Maybe not human corpses, and not corpses of big animals either, but corpses of small animals at least. I didn’t mean to kill the lovebird, I wanted to see what the birds would do when they heard the sound of the bullets. What happened was after the first shot all the parakeets and lovebirds started flying around as if they’d gone mad. They crashed into the walls of the cage and attacked each other as if one of them was doing the shooting. Colored feathers started flying around everywhere. There were red ones, blue ones, green ones, yellow ones, white ones, black ones, and gray ones. Then I shot twice more, aiming at the feathers. The problem was that inside the cage there was a lot of confusion. It was when the parakeets and lovebirds calmed down and went back into their houses and to their branches that I discovered the lovebird’s corpse on the ground. It was a sky-blue lovebird, although it wasn’t really a lovebird anymore, because it was dead and the dead are not lovebirds. The minuscule bullet had made the blood come out of one of its wings.

Before anyone came I hid the tiny little pistol in the weeds in the garden. I threw it as far as I could into a part where the undergrowth is so high Azcatl doesn’t even bother cutting it back anymore. Itzcuauhtli came over to the cage and started looking at the mess of feathers and the lovebird’s corpse. This was the most mysterious and enigmatic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. How did he hear the shots if he’s a deaf-mute? Itzcuauhtli went into the cage and picked up the lovebird’s corpse from the floor. As he saw it was already dead he didn’t even go and get the medicine to make it better. The good thing is that since he’s a deaf-mute and I’m a mute we stood there in silence and he didn’t ask me for an explanation. But that’s when Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl arrived and when they saw the corpse they started saying, Oh my goodness, poor little thing, how could someone kill a lovebird that never hurt anyone and all it does is give kisses to other lovebirds. They also said that because of me one of the lovebirds had been left a widow and they’d have to find it another mate so it didn’t die of sadness. And they went to Yolcaut and told on me.

Yolcaut didn’t care about the lovebird’s life, because he didn’t make a fuss like Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl did. Lovebirds are faggots. Anyway we’ve still got lots of lovebirds left, seven. The thing Yolcaut cared about was knowing which gun I’d killed the lovebird with and where the gun was and where I’d got the gun from. But since I’m a mute and mutes don’t give explanations I didn’t tell him anything, I stayed quiet. Yolcaut locked himself up with Miztli in the room with the guns and rifles and I felt like asking them what they were planning on doing locked in an empty room. Later on Yolcaut and Miztli had an argument because they discovered there was a pistol missing, the tiny little pistol with the minuscule bullets. Yolcaut blamed Miztli for having left the room with the guns and rifles unlocked. Miztli said Yolcaut’s paranoia was to blame, because without Yolcaut’s paranoia it wouldn’t be necessary to keep the guns loaded. The truth is, it’s Miztli’s fault, because he hasn’t bought me a samurai sword.

Mazatzin also got annoyed with me, but he didn’t get annoyed because I made the lovebird into a corpse or because I stole the tiny little pistol. He got annoyed because in order to make a samurai sword you need a 1,000-year-old tradition and lots of patience. While to make pistols you only need the factories of the capitalists.

“Who do you think you are,” Mazatzin asked, “the Cowboy Mouse?”

But the Cowboy Mouse had two pistols. And my ears are bigger. My ears are so big they always get cut off in photos.

* * *

On the TV there’s a new theory about the human remains: before, they thought the human remains were from several corpses, and with the new theory they think they’re really only from one corpse. This is because they found several pieces of evidence and one clue. The evidence is that none of the body parts have turned up more than once, they’re always different. They’re doing some tests in the lab to find out whether it’s just one corpse. The clue is that they found a piece of flesh from the back. And the piece of flesh had a tattoo of a tiny blue unicorn. The truth is, you couldn’t see a unicorn on the TV at all, just a mark. Then something mysterious happened. Yolcaut sent for Miztli, even though it was nighttime and it was Miztli’s turn to guard the palace. And when Miztli arrived, Yolcaut ordered him to go and get Quecholli. But Quecholli didn’t come, or if she came she left really soon, because when I woke up in the morning she wasn’t there.

Then what happened was that Mazatzin didn’t come to give me my lessons, and today isn’t even Saturday or Sunday. It got to nine o’clock, half past nine, ten, still no sign of him. He didn’t come. That’s never happened. Maybe Mazatzin doesn’t want to come anymore because he’s disappointed I’m not a real samurai. This isn’t my fault, because I can’t be a real samurai without a sword. Yolcaut told me to go and get my books and study, as if Mazatzin were here. But I went and played on the PlayStation 3, taking advantage of the fact that Yolcaut left the palace with Miztli and was out all day. Chichilkuali stayed to guard the palace, except instead of guarding the palace he guarded me. He followed me around really closely all day long, like Quecholli does with Yolcaut. He even stood outside waiting for me when I went to the toilet.

In the evening, Yolcaut and Miztli came back to the palace. Yolcaut wouldn’t let me watch TV with him. He pretended nothing was wrong and sent me away with Miztli to distract me. Anyway now I know why Yolcaut didn’t want me to watch TV. Miztli told me, because Miztli is really good at secrets. What I mean is Miztli’s really good if you want to find out secrets, and really bad if you want him to keep them. And you don’t even have to say a thing to him. What normally happens is that to find out secrets you have to ask lots of times or even give people devastating blows to make them tell you. But not with Miztli. As I’m a mute I didn’t ask him anything but even so he told me that they’re talking about Yolcaut on the TV, about Yolcaut’s business. Although they don’t actually call him Yolcaut, they call him the King. Miztli says that now we’re really in the shit. He says: