Toni Sala - The Boys

So distract yourself, celebrate the boys’ destruction, celebrate with their parents as if the boys were your daughters; swallow the incest, the necrophilia, it’s over, they won’t die again, move toward her, sink yourself deep inside.

A thrust for his life in the office, two thrusts for the boys’ lives, and one each for the short jacket, the earrings, the wings, a thrust for the ivy tattoo on her back, and another for not crying, for life to live, for life impossible to live, for the lure of life that kills you and nourishes you, for the guilt of feeling guilty, for the shouts and the chains, for life where the only joy is in deception, for life sunk in muddy quagmires filled with drowning, crying babies, for life that knows no pain or rapture, and a thrust for each closing coffin; he had to ejaculate, to rid himself of that intention, and he asked the girl to give him a hand.

Had the dead boys been released from inside him with his orgasm? Can there be consciousness of the unconscious? She got up, grabbed a towel, and left the room. She wasn’t that professional. She left the men alone too soon.

He heard the voices of Miqui and Cloe on the other side of the door, and a laugh. Water ran through the pipes. Marga was showering. She would come back into the room soon to get dressed. He couldn’t allow himself to sleep, but his eyelids were heavy. He’d drift off, he wouldn’t think about anything, he would melt. .

He heard a door open and gave a start. It was the trucker coming into the bedroom, buckling his belt.

He covered his belly. He sat up against the headboard. The trucker extended a hand: “Buddy, I gotta go.”

“You’re going?”

“I’m leaving you in good hands. For a hundred euros, you couldn’t ask for more.”

“Do you get a commission?”

“I don’t want any misunderstandings.”

Ernest got dressed and got the money. He took a last look at the jacket and wings on the floor. He rushed. He didn’t want to see her again. He would give the money to the other girl. He would get home, have dinner, a shower, and go to bed. Maybe he’d have a bath. The next day, he’d go back to the office. He would start the week over. The truck heading off blended into the persistent sound of the shower. He wondered if he’d gotten her that dirty.

As he left the house, the water was still running through the pipes.

After a few kilometers he stopped the car. The wheels skidded as if it had been raining for weeks and the highway was flooded with mud. He got out of the car and found the asphalt soft, but it wasn’t mud, it was flesh. He looked around. Mountains, trees, and houses of flesh. Blood flowing in the rivers, the clouds were blubber, everyone had gotten out of their cars, there were worms everywhere.

He yawned, let his pajamas drop to the floor, and put on the sweater he’d worn the day before, with wisps of hay still on the elbows. It was eleven in the morning, and he had been up past five chatting online with a girl in Seville, a nice set of jugs if the photo was actually her — and if not, whoever was typing in her name had good taste, they’d chosen a very warm, summery photo. Even though now it was winter, the girl in the picture wore a red tank top, the sides open in wide ovals from the shoulder to the waist, with no hint of a bra, the neckline revealing incredible orbs of flesh that lifted the fabric. The best jugs on the market. If they weren’t hers, they must have been chosen by a man or a lesbian. But that didn’t matter, you went online to be altruistic, to find and offer generosity, to forgive from the get-go, to give yourself over to the gratuitousness of a limitless, empty planet devoid of responsibility — created by man, though, and therefore not infinite, just beyond your reach. The Internet didn’t have nature’s independence; tied to humans, it could only be fantasy up to a certain point. And it contained a world of altruism — you could be talking to the scum of the earth, to the worst criminals, serial killers, and terrorists, bad people who, if they caught you in the forest, would crush you without thinking twice — but that’s just how the Internet is, it redeems and purifies them. And how many imposters do we come across every day without even realizing? Who wasn’t covering up their belly, the folds we want to hide even from ourselves, since we can’t go around showing them? But if all you get from the imposters is a sham, what sham are we even talking about? The mask is the truth, they don’t cheat you on the Internet: whores who don’t charge aren’t whores.

He posted different photographs depending on the day, out of generosity. He used the name “Miqui” so he felt more identified with the photos, and he updated them depending on his mood. He had folders full of faces to choose from. The best photo was of an executive with very short blond hair and a gleaming new shirt. Chicks drooled over guys like that. It had taken him months to find a photo that fit his personality so well. Our outsides and our insides never match up. The earth is a chaos of seven billion outer shells and seven billion personalities; faces never perfectly fit their owners, souls and bodies do their own thing; the dead, the living, the young, and the old in a tangle of locations and moments, all chaos and orgy. Who was that blond jerk whose face Miqui’d swiped? What country was he from? What year was the photo taken? Maybe the blond was bald now. And what if that exact blond guy had a personality that matched Miqui’s face? What if the blond guy’s personality — from inside Miqui’s shell — was punching and kicking at the walls of his prison of a face? Who knew what son of a bitch was wearing the blond guy’s façade. Who knows whose boobs those really were or what kind of narcissist hid behind the sweet smile of the waitress at the social club yesterday.

They can do face transplants. They transplant the whole kit and caboodle: the forehead, eyebrows, eyelids, nostrils, cheeks and lips, moles, chin. They resuscitate the dead face for the blank head of a poor wretch who’s lost his. They take off what’s left of the old face, file down the bones, and slip a new face on like a sock. The transplantee washes it every morning in front of the mirror. He’s the same, he just looks different. His face sweats or is cold like always, it itches or it stings, he feels the sun beating down on it, he feels the rain falling on it. He gets blackheads, inflamed pimples, his beard grows. . but wait a second: whose beard is that? His hairs and his tears go through someone else’s skin. If it’s a woman who receives the transplant, who does she put her lipstick, eye shadow, foundation, and sunglasses on? More masks atop the mask. Her boyfriend doesn’t know who he’s caressing. Who’s he kissing if he kisses her on the cheek? The flayed skull of a cadaver buried a thousand kilometers away. And when he kisses her on the mouth, whose lips does his tongue slip through?

There’s a whole business around it. They bring faces from far away, just in case, but they can’t bring them from too far off, from some continent with other races; for example, they can’t put an Asian face on a European body. But the faces travel to and fro, there are markets, they organize swaps and fairs on sporting fields, with stands filled with faces, butcher shops of masks, wholesale or retail — How many would you like, doctor? That makes a kilo — and right now trucks like his, filled with faces, drive down the streets, roads, and expressways. There are stockpiles of faces traveling on planes, trains, and boats. In portside warehouses, containers filled with faces wait for a semi to come pick them up. Flesh masks hang on hooks in refrigerated rooms beneath clinics and hospitals, surgeons handle them with surgical gloves, spin them on two fingers like pizza dough to air them out so they’ll give a bit as they’re sewn on the head. There are catalogues of masks, categories, supply, demand, swaps. . You like this one? It’ll suit you perfectly. Would you like to see the photo of its previous owner to get an idea of what you’ll look like?