The Obsidian Ritual to Punish My Swindler

The San Bartolo del Valle market smelled of hot dust and flowers just beginning to wilt when Mariela saw him for the first time. She was twenty-eight, had skin the color of wet earth, and a habit that had gotten her into 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 slid under your clothes. Mariela’s face flushed. It had been years since anyone had looked at her like that, as if she were the only person in the market.

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

—Then get used to it —he replied—. 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, told her about a house with a patio on the outskirts of town. A house for the two of them. Mariela, who had slept alone for far too long, let herself be carried along by that promise like someone surrendering to a warm current.

—Empty the account, my love —he told her one night, his mouth pressed to her ear—. I’ll put up the rest. By the time summer ends, we’ll be living together.

And she did it. She withdrew every last peso she had saved in ten years of work from the bank and handed it over to him, her hands trembling with pure happiness.

That same 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. Mariela surrendered completely, convinced that this was love.

—You’re mine —he whispered, burying himself in her against the wall—. Forever.

She believed it. She believed every thrust, every hoarse word, every promise he poured into her ear while she dug her nails into his back and moaned his false name. At dawn, Rodrigo was gone. So were the pendant, the money, and the address of the house with the patio that had never existed.

***

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

Mariela stopped believing in people. In its place, something new grew inside her, cold and patient. She didn’t want blood. She wanted to take from Rodrigo the one thing that truly mattered to him: the body with which he seduced and destroyed.

—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 planted with candles and cempasúchil, 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, perhaps. A sign.

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

—Offer it to the fire —she thought she heard, a deep voice coming from nowhere—. 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 fell onto her feet in a black stone amphitheater ringed with bonfires. The ground was covered in warm ash that got between her toes, and above everything floated that purple mist that hid the sky. Somewhere, an invisible clock marked the time with a slow, steady tick.

Rodrigo was in the center. Naked, held by chains that seemed made of smoke, his body shone with sweat under the flames. When he saw her, his fear disguised itself as arrogance.

—You? —he spat—. The foolish girl who fell for the story. You can’t touch me. You never could.

—I thought 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 centuries for that order. One of them, taller than the rest, stepped forward.

—To punish his body —it said in a voice that echoed through 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, stiffened her nipples, quickened her breathing. For the first time in a year she felt no shame, only hunger.

***

The figures surrounded her. Strong hands lifted her by the hips and a body drove into her all at once, without preamble, setting a rhythm that made her scream into the shoulder of the one holding her. Another mouth found her sex and worked it with its tongue, slow and then brutal, while fingers scattered warm ash over her chest.

—Harder —Mariela gasped, and they obliged.

They turned her around. One of the women kissed her on the mouth and bit her lip until it drew a moan from her, while behind her another body opened her slowly, centimeter by centimeter, until it filled her completely. Mariela clung to the nearest back and let the rhythm split her into two pleasures at once, the one in front and the one behind, synchronized with the ticking of the clock that never stopped.

—Let him hear you —the woman whispered in her ear—. Let him see what he lost.

And Rodrigo saw. He strained against the smoke chains, gray eyes fixed on her, on the way her body arched and shook, on how each thrust tore a new cry from her. He watched and could do nothing, and that was only the beginning.

Mariela came once, and again, and again, until she lost count. Sweat ran over her skin mixed with ash, the figures’ hands marked her, held her, guided her from one mouth to another, from one body to another. It was not violence. It was a plunder of pleasure in her favor, everything Rodrigo had promised her and never intended to fulfill.

—More! —she shouted, her voice shattered—. Don’t stop!

***

The ticking quickened. And then the figures turned toward Rodrigo.

Mariela, lying on the ash with her body still trembling, watched him with a new calm. One of the women knelt in front of the chained man. What he expected as a caress turned into punishment: the ash of the circle rose, covered his groin, and when it dispersed nothing was left. A smooth surface, no sex, nothing to touch. Rodrigo howled.

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

—It was never yours —said the woman—. You used it to do harm. You’ll never use it for anything again.

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

—Your punishment is not death —Mariela told him, rising to her feet—. 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 cempasúchil and a warm echo in every inch of her skin.

She never again heard of Rodrigo under his false name. But in San Bartolo there was talk of a stranger who appeared in town that very dawn and who, over the years, lost his mind. They said he spent his nights writhing in bed, crying out for a desire that nothing could soothe, going from woman to woman without any of them ever managing to ignite him. He died old and alone, with a grimace of impossible hunger on his face, searching until his last breath for a pleasure that never returned.

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 reclaimed 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 not for sale and not a gift. It is only taken.