The Obsidian Ritual to Punish My Swindler

San Bartolo del Valle market smelled of hot dust and flowers already beginning to wilt when Mariela saw him for the first time. She was twenty-eight, her skin the color of wet earth, and she had a habit that had landed her in trouble all her life: she believed in people. That June afternoon, among stalls of trinkets and overripe fruit, a man stopped her with a smile that seemed to cost him nothing.

—For a woman like you —he said, offering her a cheap jade pendant—. Something that shines as much as you do.

His name was Rodrigo, or so he said. He was in his thirties, with gray eyes and a voice that got under your clothes. Mariela’s face burned. For years no one had looked at her like that, as if she were the only person in the market.

—No one has ever spoken to me that way —she murmured, pressing the jade to her chest.

—Then get used to it —he answered—. I plan to do it every day.

What came after was quick and sweet, too sweet. Rodrigo showed up with flowers, waited for her when she got off work, talked to her about a house with a yard on the edge of town. A house for the two of them. Mariela, who had slept alone for far too long, let herself be carried away by that promise like someone giving in to a warm current.

—Empty your account, my love —he told her one night, his mouth pressed to her ear—. I’ll cover the rest. By the end of summer we’ll be living together.

And she did it. She withdrew every last peso she had saved in ten years of work and handed it to him with hands trembling from sheer happiness.

That very night, in a rented room that smelled of old wood, Rodrigo undressed her slowly, as if he were discovering her. He kissed her neck, bit her shoulder, pulled her dress down until it fell to the floor. He ripped off her bra in one tug and sucked her nipples one by one, licking them until they hardened like stones, while he slid two fingers into her already soaked cunt. Mariela spread her legs against the wall, gasping, and he lowered his mouth over her belly until he knelt before her.

—Look at me while I eat you —he ordered, and he parted her thighs with his hands.

He buried his tongue between the lips of her cunt and licked her from bottom to top, long and slow, until he found her clit and sucked it like a candy. Mariela dug her nails into his hair and shoved his face against her sex, moaning without shame. He pushed his tongue inside her, pulled it out, shoved it back in, while with his fingers he opened her ass and pressed her hole with the pad of his thumb. Mariela came like that, against the wall, with Rodrigo’s mouth drinking everything she gave.

—Now suck me —he said, standing up and pulling out his cock, already hard and dripping.

Mariela dropped to her knees and swallowed it whole in one go. Her tongue ran under the head while she moved up and down, both hands squeezing his balls and the base. Rodrigo grabbed her hair, held the back of her neck, and started fucking her mouth mercilessly, driving into her throat until she gagged. She let him, let him have everything, her eyes tearing up and saliva streaming down her chin.

—You’re mine —he whispered, hauling her up in one jerk and turning her against the wall—. Forever.

He spread her ass with both hands and drove his cock into her cunt with one brutal thrust. Mariela screamed, cheek crushed against the wood, while he hammered his hips into her again and again in a rhythm that made her breasts slap against the wall. He bit her shoulder, licked her neck, grabbed her hair and yanked her head back to fuck her deeper.

—Tell me you’re my whore —he panted in her ear.

—I’m your whore —Mariela moaned—. All yours, fuck me, don’t stop.

He laid her face down on the narrow bed and lifted her hips. He shoved into her from behind again, his hands gripping her waist, while he spat on her ass and spread the saliva with his thumb. He pushed a finger into her hole up to the knuckle while he kept fucking her cunt, and Mariela buried her face in the mattress and came again, trembling all over. He came inside her with a hoarse roar, emptying himself completely while she felt the hot semen flooding her from within. She dug her nails into his back, moaned his false name one last time, and surrendered completely, convinced that this was love.

At dawn, Rodrigo was gone. So was the pendant, and the money, and the address of the house with a yard that never existed. All that remained was the stain of semen on the sheet and the smell of him on her skin.

***

The town found out before she did that Rodrigo was a con man known across half the region. He had fleeced widows, merchants, women alone like Mariela, leaving behind a trail of emptied accounts and broken pride. People pointed at her in the street with that kind of pity that humiliates more than contempt. “The latest fool,” they whispered.

Mariela stopped believing in people. In its place something new grew in her, cold and patient. She didn’t want blood. She wanted to take from Rodrigo the one thing that truly mattered to him: the cock he used to seduce and destroy.

—You’re going to pay —she told the photograph she had stolen from a poster—. Not with your life. With pleasure.

***

She spent an entire year brooding over that idea until the night of Día de Muertos. The San Bartolo cemetery was sown with candles and marigolds, and the air smelled of burned wax and damp earth. Mariela had set up her own altar in a secluded corner: black candles, Rodrigo’s photo, a bowl of cold ash. She didn’t really know what she expected. Justice, maybe. A sign.

She found it at the foot of an unmarked grave: an obsidian amulet, black and polished, carved with lines that seemed to throb when candlelight brushed them. She picked it up and felt a strange heat rise up her arm.

—Give it to the fire —she thought she heard, a deep voice from nowhere at all—. And punish his flesh with the pleasure he stole from you.

Mariela should have been afraid. She wasn’t. She let a drop of hot wax fall onto the stone and the obsidian flared with a reddish glow. A violet mist burst from the ground, the air filled with the smell of ash and sweat, and the earth opened beneath her feet.

***

She landed on her feet in a black-stone amphitheater ringed by bonfires. The ground was covered in warm ash that slipped between her toes, and above everything floated that purple fog that hid the sky. Somewhere, an invisible clock marked time with a slow, steady tick.

At the center stood Rodrigo. Naked, held by chains that looked made of smoke, his cock already half-hard hanging between his legs, his body shining with sweat in the firelight. When he saw her, his fear disguised itself as arrogance.

—You? —he spat—. The stupid girl who believed the story. You can’t touch me. You never could.

—I believed you were my way out of loneliness —Mariela replied, without raising her voice—. Tonight you learn what it is to feel nothing.

Figures emerged from the shadows. Men and women with skin covered in soot, their bodies gleaming, their eyes without pupils. They moved to the rhythm of the ticking, in silence, as if they had waited for that command for centuries. One of them, taller than the rest, stepped forward, a thick, dark cock hanging between his thighs.

—To punish his body —he said in a voice that boomed against the stone— you must first ignite your own. Pleasure is the weapon. Take it.

Mariela understood. She let the black dress fall onto the ash. The heat of the bonfires licked her skin, raised her nipples, quickened her breathing. For the first time in a year she felt no shame, only hunger.

***

The figures surrounded her. Firm hands lifted her by the hips and an enormous cock drove into her cunt at once, without preamble, setting a brutal pace that made her scream against the shoulder of the one holding her. Another mouth found her sex from below and worked her clit with its tongue, slow and then brutal, while fingers spread warm ash across her chest and pinched her nipples until she howled.

—Harder —Mariela panted, and they pleased her.

The cock inside her moved in sharp, deep thrusts, dragging out moans that broke in her throat. One of the figures pressed another cock to her mouth and Mariela opened for it without thinking, sucked it whole, licked it from the tip to the balls while she kept getting fucked from below. She took it down to the back of her throat, let them fuck her mouth at the same rhythm they were fucking her cunt, and felt semen begin to gather on her lips and tongue.

They turned her over. One of the women, with big breasts and nipples dark and hard as embers, kissed her on the mouth and bit her lip until she let out a whimper. She sat on Mariela’s face and Mariela licked her drenched cunt, sucking the swollen clit while the woman writhed above her. At the same time, from behind, another body opened her slowly, centimeter by centimeter, until it filled her ass completely with a thick cock that tore a muffled cry from her against the woman’s sex.

—Let him hear you —the woman whispered in her ear, tugging her hair—. Let him see how they fill you everywhere. Let him see what he lost.

Mariela clung to the nearest back and let the rhythm split her into two pleasures at once, cunt and ass, synchronized with the ticking clock that never stopped. A third cock filled her mouth again and she sucked it hungrily, her tongue circling the head, swallowing what they gave her. The three bodies fucked her in unison, driving into her from every angle, while the woman’s hands squeezed her tits and twisted her nipples.

And Rodrigo watched. He strained against the smoke chains, his cock painfully hard, gray eyes fixed on her, on the way her body arched and shook, on how each thrust tore a new scream from her, on how semen ran down her chin and dripped between her breasts. He watched and could do nothing, and that was only the beginning.

Mariela came once, with her mouth full and her ass dripping other men’s semen. And again, with two fingers buried in her cunt while a mouth sucked her clit. And once more, astride a black cock that reached her throat while another opened her ass from behind and fucked her at the same time. She lost count. Sweat streamed over her skin mixed with ash and the semen of half a dozen bodies, the figures’ hands marked her, held her, guided her from one mouth to another, from one cock to another. It was not violence. It was a plundering of pleasure in her favor, everything Rodrigo had promised her and never intended to give.

—More! —she shouted, her voice shattered, other people’s cum sliding down her tits—. Don’t stop! Fuck me until I can’t take any more!

They put her on all fours over the ash. One cock in her cunt, another in her ass, another in her mouth. All three bodies moving at once, pounding her with a rhythm that made her hanging breasts shake and left juices dripping down her thighs. They came inside her one after another, filling each hole with hot semen, and Mariela came with each one, screaming against the stone, her whole body trembling.

***

The ticking sped up. And then the figures turned toward Rodrigo.

Mariela, lying on the ash with her body still trembling and dripping semen everywhere, watched him with a new calm. One of the women knelt before the chained man and took his hard cock in her hand. What he expected as a caress became punishment: the ash of the circle rose, covered his groin, and when it cleared there was nothing left. A smooth surface, no cock, no balls, nothing to touch. Rodrigo howled.

—No! —he screamed, writhing—. Give me back what was mine!

—It was never yours —the woman said—. You used it to do harm. You will use it for nothing now.

One by one, the figures stripped him of every sensation. They sealed the skin where pleasure had once been, erased every nerve ending capable of feeling, until he was left an intact body on the outside and empty on the inside. Rodrigo remained alive. He still desired. But he no longer had anything with which to answer that desire.

—Your punishment is not death —Mariela told him, getting to her feet with her thighs still streaming—. It’s wanting and not being able to. Forever.

***

The ticking stopped. The amphitheater dissolved in a violet flash, the figures disintegrated into ash that floated into the mist, and Mariela woke on her knees in the cemetery, beside her altar of spent candles. The obsidian amulet was no longer in her hand. It had vanished like a dream, leaving only the smell of marigolds and a warm echo in every inch of her skin.

She never heard from Rodrigo under his false name again. But in San Bartolo they told the story of a stranger who appeared in town that dawn and who, over the years, lost his mind. They said he spent his nights writhing in bed, screaming from a desire nothing could soothe, going from woman to woman without any of them managing to arouse him. He died old and alone, with a look of impossible hunger on his face, searching until his last breath for a pleasure he never found again.

Mariela, by contrast, came to believe in something again: herself. Every Día de Muertos she returned to the cemetery, lit a candle, and smiled as she remembered the night she recovered everything he had stolen from her, and much more.

—You suffered as you deserved —she whispered to the wind—. And I learned that my pleasure is neither sold nor given away. It is only taken.