The Redhead from the Lake Invited Me Into Her World

On the outskirts of the city there was an oval-shaped lake, with a perimeter of a little over four kilometers. People came there to run, to walk, to pretend that routine had some meaning. Damián preferred the dead hours of dawn, when there was still no one around and the water was so still it seemed solid.

For weeks now he had kept running into the same girl. She was a redhead, slim-waisted, with a few freckles scattered across her cheeks. Damián was almost three decades older than her, so he was surprised that she—Lucero, according to what he had read in her gesture when she greeted him—was so friendly, so flirtatious, each time their paths crossed on the track.

Normally, strangers did not greet each other, or they would mutter a “good morning” with a long face and keep moving. Not Lucero. She looked him straight in the eye, held his gaze for a second too long, smiled as if they shared a secret he had not yet learned.

One especially cold morning, Damián finally decided to break the ice. When he saw her coming toward him, he slowed his pace and gently cut across her path.

—It’s fucking freezing this morning, isn’t it? —he said—. Do you live around here?

—I live inside the lake —she replied, without blinking.

Damián thought she was winding him up and decided to play along. She was one of those women who preferred fantasy to boring conversation, and women like that had always disarmed him.

—Well, then your place must be very damp —he replied sardonically.

—Not at all. It’s nice and warm. If you feel like coming with me for tea, I’ll show it to you.

He translated that absurd conversation as coded flirting, as a come-on, call it what you will. They walked together so they wouldn’t get cold, and they asked each other their names, and kept up that banter so typical of two people who desire each other from the very first glance. It seemed like mutual love at first sight, direct and without anesthesia.

—And you live alone in that peculiar house? —he asked.

—No, there are loads of us. It’s a huge house. You can’t imagine how many people.

Lucero let him understand, with both words and gestures, that she felt attracted to him. Damián, who had been alone for far too long, began to fantasize about accepting. Then he asked the only sensible thing that came to mind.

—And how would we get to your house?

—What a question —she laughed—. We take off all our clothes and leave them on the shore so they don’t get wet. Then we jump into the water and dive down to the bottom. The entrance is there.

Damián thought Lucero was an eccentric, maybe one of those free spirits who collect oddities. But he was so attracted to her that he was willing to do anything, so long as he did not see her drift away.

The frost was still whitening the reeds on the shore. And there they were, naked as Adam and Eve, their skin prickling in the icy air. They threw themselves into the water. The cold was a punch to the chest. They dove downward, and downward, until the surface light was far away.

A few meters down, Lucero moved close to his ear and spoke as if the water did not exist.

—Do you know where my name comes from? Lucero is the morning star. The same name they gave Lucifer before his fall. I’m going to take you down with me into the depths, darling. Your desire is going to cost you your life, and it’ll give me one more soul for my collection.

And she let out a laugh that Damián heard clearly underwater, a laugh that had nothing human about it.

He tried to return to the surface, but it was already too late. The brutal change in temperature stopped his heart dead. The last thing he felt was the cold turning, all at once, into impossible heat.

***

Hours later, some forest rangers found his clothes folded on the shore. They searched the lake and pulled out the body.

—Another eccentric city dweller who goes swimming in the middle of winter and kicks the bucket —one of them grumbled, wiping his hands—. And that makes fifteen. Let’s see when they learn.

***

Damián, now at his destination, was left breathless by what he saw around him. He had imagined Hell as a gloomy place, full of fire and wailing. Instead, he found something that looked much more like the Eden they had promised him in the other life.

—The real paradise is here, friend —a voice said behind him. It was Lucero, though now there was something different in her gaze, the calm of someone who has won the same game a thousand times—. What up there call heaven is really an unbearable dictatorship. People spend eternity on their knees, worshipping their creator, with no permission to doubt. Not here. Here everyone does whatever they want.

—And I spent three hours a day praying to end up by his side —murmured Damián, still incredulous—. What ignorance.

—Ignorance is the only true sin —she replied—. But that’s behind you now. Now you’re free. Take a walk, try whatever you want. If you get lost or have any doubts, you only need to call me. Enjoy your stay.

And she vanished, leaving him alone in the middle of that impossible city.

Damián started walking. The Inferno was a labyrinth of clubs, squares, and alleys where no one repressed anything. It smelled of wine, sweet smoke, skin. Music poured from every doorway and moans from every window. He passed halls where people were celebrating endless banquets, long tables where food, drink, and sex mingled without shame.

He peeked into a red-lit casino where everything and anything was being wagered. In the center, on a platform, a muscular young man held on to a bar while an enormous man fucked him with brutal force. The entire room was betting on how long he would last before giving in. Most assumed he wouldn’t hold out. Damián, not entirely sure why, bet that he would.

The young man held out. He clenched his teeth, sweated, moaned, but never collapsed during the agreed hour, supported by his lover’s hands like a newly tamed colt. Damián left there with a small fortune in chips and a smile he no longer recognized.

—I knew he’d make it —he said under his breath, pocketing the winnings.

A few streets farther on, in a vintage spot of worn velvet, he came across a group of more than twenty women giving themselves over to one another. Some were rubbing against each other, straddling one another, searching with hungry urgency. Others were tangled up in pairs, mouth to sex, devouring each other slowly. And a few, cinched into harnesses and latex toys, were hammering their companions into every opening, setting the rhythm with sharp hip-thrusts that echoed through the room.

Damián was hypnotized by the style of the women who led the way, by the way they dominated their partners without asking permission. He felt the heat rise inside him and understood that this place judged no one. He decided he would join the first orgy he found.

***

It didn’t take long to find one. In a covered courtyard, some thirty people were scattered in small groups, spread across corners with cushions and dim light. Every now and then someone changed places, moving from one knot of bodies to another, as if it were all a choreography-free dance.

There were threesomes, a woman between two men, mouths occupied at once. There were circles where a single man worked hard to please several women at the same time, lost among thighs. And there were corners where a pair of sturdy lovers punished, with gusto, those who offered themselves up, panting, asking for more.

Damián approached a couple who stood out from the rest. They looked Nordic: both blond, both with very light eyes. She was kneeling, trying to swallow her man, but the cock was so long and thick she could not fit it all in no matter how hard she tried. She looked at him, sized him up for a moment, and made room for him with a tilt of her head.

Damián did not think twice. He knelt beside her and helped, sharing the job, licking what the girl’s mouth could not reach. The man threw his head back and let out a long grunt.

—That’s it —she said between laughs, without letting go of the cock—. Get it nice and wet. Nice and deep. You can tell you know what you’re doing, handsome.

Damián had come over to lend a hand, to take some weight off the girl, and had ended up turned into her toy, the target of her mockery. And the strange thing was that he did not care. On the contrary: having that woman laugh at him while using him lit him up like he had never been in his life.

They tried all kinds of positions. Her on all fours, taken from both ends at once. The three of them lying down in a sandwich. Then standing, held up in the air by both of them. When Damián could no longer hold out, she knelt before him again and offered him her face. He covered her, and then, before thinking better of it, he leaned down and licked her cheeks, cleaning up what he himself had left behind.

The Nordic man, who had watched everything, got even more turned on by the scene. He came up to the two of them, who were still kneeling, and marked them both equally. Then they leaned into one another, exchanging what was left, until Damián got it all. He swallowed so much he ended up laughing too, dizzy and satisfied.

He took his leave of the group with a gesture and went on his way. Through the streets of the Inferno he crossed paths with a few famous faces, people whose names he chose to keep to himself, all of them surrendered to pleasures they would never have dared confess to in life.

***

That was when Lucero appeared again at his side. She was walking slowly, hands behind her back, amused.

—Damián —she said—, they’re calling for you upstairs. The one up there claims you belong to him, that you must go up to his heaven and worship him forever and ever.

Damián stopped. He thought about the three hours a day on his knees, about the fear, the guilt he had carried all his life. He thought about what he had just discovered in only a few hours down there. And he shook his head.

—Well, that’s not going to happen —he replied—. Tell him that if he wants me to worship him so badly, he can come down himself. We’ll welcome him with open arms. If we’re lucky, we might even teach him a couple of things.

Lucero let out a long laugh, the same laugh he had heard underwater, only now it did not frighten him. She put an arm around his shoulders and led him back toward the city’s red lights.

—No doubt about it —she said—. You’re one of mine.

And Damián, for the first time in an eternity, felt at home.