The Naked Stranger Who Came to My Door

I’ve lived alone in an old house in Coyoacán since I finished my residency. The ground floor is a clinic and pharmacy; upstairs are my bedroom, the guest room I almost never use, and an indoor terrace with plants I don’t know how to care for. The street is quiet, but sometimes the neighborhood cats make such a racket at midnight that there’s no way to sleep.

That November morning, it was past two when someone rang the doorbell. Three long rings, a silence, then two more. I went down the hallway in my pajamas, barefoot, my hair tangled, ready to scream at the bastard on the other side of the door.

There was no one there. Only a cat sitting on the branch of the ash tree, watching me with yellow eyes. I shouted something absurd at it about the police and went back to bed.

As soon as I pulled the covers over myself, the meowing began. Long, plaintive cries, like a baby crying. Then the dogs. Then a human voice, barely audible beneath the chorus of animals.

—Please… somebody help me.

I put on my slippers, grabbed the first-aid kit from the bathroom, and ran downstairs. When I opened the door, I found a naked woman in the middle of the sidewalk, curled up in the fetal position, her hands and legs torn up. She was bleeding. She looked about twenty-eight, with extremely long, dark hair, wet with sweat.

I dragged her into the courtyard as best I could. I locked the door. I applied alcohol to every wound, and the woman clenched her teeth without screaming. Then I covered her with a blanket and sat her down on the living-room sofa.

—What happened to you? I asked.

—The dogs, she said. There were so many. They tore my clothes off before biting me.

—And why were you coming… like that?

—There were so many, she repeated, and she didn’t look me in the eyes.

I didn’t press her. I didn’t call the police, either. Something in that woman’s gaze told me she wasn’t going to answer any more questions that night.

—My name is Renata. I’m a doctor. You can stay here until tomorrow.

—Camila, she said. I’m from the mountains, from Zongolica. I came to look for some relatives who live around here.

***

The next day, when I went downstairs for breakfast, Camila had already made coffee, served the eggs, and set the table. I examined her wounds and nearly dropped my plate. Where there had been bloody tears the night before, there were now only pink lines, like old scars. Impossible. I touched them carefully, expecting her to complain, but she only smiled.

—I’m strong, she said, shrugging.

We went to the address she’d given me. Her relatives had moved away three days earlier, and no one knew where they had gone. We returned home in silence in a taxi. I wondered what to do with this woman who had nothing and seemed to have fallen from the sky. She stared out the window as if she had never seen so much concrete together.

—Stay until you decide what to do, I told her as we got out.

And she stayed.

During the first week, she cooked, washed, and tidied up. I never asked her to do anything, but she moved through the house as if she had known it all her life. The plants I had dried out through sheer neglect began to regain their color. The pharmacy filled with people: neighbors who hadn’t come in for months, men who stopped to buy anything at all just so they could stay awhile. I didn’t understand a thing.

—I’ll pay you eight thousand a month, I offered one night. If you stay and help me with the pharmacy. Just fill prescriptions, nothing complicated.

She accepted with the same smile she accepted everything with. That smile that never quite closed, always leaving her lips slightly parted, as if she were about to say something else and thought better of it.

***

At night, the neighborhood cats grew more numerous. There had used to be one or two; now there were dozens. They meowed outside my door, fought on the rooftops, and got into the inner courtyard. One morning I found one curled up at Camila’s feet in her room, purring like a machine.

—They’re going to fill the house with fleas, I told her.

—They’re good, she replied, stroking the animal. They know more than we do.

One Saturday she went to the market and forgot her phone in the dining room. It rang and rang. I wasn’t planning to answer, but when I went upstairs to get my keys, I passed the guest-room door and saw that the phone was still vibrating on the dresser. I went in.

The altar covered the back wall. A statue of Santa Muerte surrounded by burning candles, clay figures smeared with red earth, a bowl of thick water that smelled of bitter herbs. Split fruit. A handful of black hair tied with a thread.

I touched nothing. I closed the door and went down to the clinic with trembling hands.

When she returned, I waited until she had left the bags in the kitchen and spoke to her from the doorway.

—Camila. What do you have in your room?

—You went in?

—The phone was ringing. I thought it might be urgent.

She stared at me for a long while. Then she sat down in the chair and sighed.

—It’s time you knew, Renata. I’m a nahuala.

—What?

—A nahuala. I come from a family of women who transform. My mother was a nahuala. My grandmother too.

I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do.

—Camila, seriously. You believe in that stuff?

—It isn’t about believing. It’s about being. Do you want proof?

—Let’s see it.

—A female cat is going to come into your room tonight. Before the week is over, you’ll want her. Not with the affection you feel for a pet. The other kind. You’ll want her to eat you whole, Doctor. You’ll spread your legs for a cat and you won’t know why.

I laughed again, this time with less enthusiasm.

—Camila, that’s ridiculous.

She didn’t answer. She got up, washed the dishes, and went to her room. Dinner remained served on the table. She didn’t come down to eat. I knocked on her door and got no answer, so I turned off the lights and went upstairs to bed, convinced that the next day we’d both laugh about it.

The next day, Camila was gone. Her clothes hung in the closet, her toothbrush was in the bathroom, her shoes were beside the door. But she was gone.

***

The first night I dreamed of a black cat beneath my bed. She meowed softly, as if asking permission to come up. I picked her up and carried her into the hallway, but she came back in, curled around my feet, and licked the tops of them with a rough, slow, patient tongue. I woke with cold feet and my pussy wet, throbbing beneath my pajama pants as if it had a life of its own. I slipped my hand inside the elastic almost without thinking and touched myself until I came, my fingers pressed against my clitoris, biting the pillow to keep from making noise. When I finished, my thighs were sticky and a strange shame had lodged in my throat.

The second night the dream was the same, but the cat climbed onto the bed and walked across the blankets to my chest. She had the yellow eyes from that first night, the eyes of the cat in the ash tree. She ran her tongue over my closed lips. Then over my chin. Then down my neck. Then she moved slowly down the neckline of my shirt, and when she reached my tits she began licking my nipples with that rough cat’s tongue, up and down, over and over, until they grew hard as stones. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I woke with my hands between my legs, two fingers buried deep inside me, shaking myself alone on the sheets.

The third and fourth nights brought the same dreams. Each time I was more awake, less afraid. Each time I was wetter. On the fourth morning I came three times in a row before dawn, my pillow clamped between my thighs, imagining that little tongue climbing up the inside of my thigh, searching for my pussy.

It’s the heat, I told myself on the fifth day as I washed my face. It’s exhaustion. It’s seeing too many patients this week.

But patients kept arriving in impossible numbers. And while I took blood pressure and examined throats, I thought about the cat’s tongue. What it would really feel like. What it would feel like entering me.

***

On the sixth day I decided to put the whole thing out of my mind. I ate a light dinner, took a long bath—too long, with the shower aimed directly at my clitoris until my knees trembled—and went down to the kitchen in my robe to have a glass of warm milk before bed.

The cat was sitting on the counter.

It was her. The same one from the dream, the same one from the ash tree that first night, the same yellow eyes. Black, small, with glossy fur. She looked at me without moving, as if she had been waiting for me.

I should have chased her away. Instead I let her come closer. She rubbed against my ankles, purring, and when I sat on the living-room sofa, she jumped into my lap as if it were her place.

—Hello, you little minx.

She put her paws on my chest. My robe opened a little. The cat burrowed there, in the hollow between my tits, and began kneading with her front paws over my nipples, as if she knew perfectly well where she was touching. Every push made me breathe harder. Every push sent an electric current straight to my pussy.

—Hey, I said in a voice that wasn’t mine. You shouldn’t do that.

She jumped onto the back of the sofa, then onto the armrest, then to my neck. She licked behind my ear, very slowly. I felt the rough tongue moving down the line of my jaw, and a shiver ran up my back and down across my tits to my crotch. My robe fell completely open. I was naked underneath. My nipples stood stiff and hard, pointing at the ceiling. My pussy throbbed.

—Mischievous little thing, I murmured. Are you trying to seduce me? Weren’t the dreams enough?

An incense smell came from Camila’s room. Copal, rosemary, something sweeter I couldn’t identify. It smelled as if someone had lit the entire altar.

I lifted her in my hands. I brought her to my face and kissed her cold nose. In that instant, I saw Camila’s features in the cat’s face. The same jaw, the same eyes.

—I like you, I told her. I like you very much. Come on. Transform. Fuck me.

And then she grew.

***

The cat’s body lengthened between my hands. Her fur withdrew inward, her paws became arms, and her tail dissolved. In less than a minute, Camila was lying on top of me, naked, looking down at me with her yellow eyes still glowing. All woman, all skin, all tits and hot thighs pressed against mine.

—I told you, she whispered.

She took me by the nape and pulled me down to her mouth. I didn’t resist. There was no point resisting: I had wanted her from the first night I dragged her into the courtyard, and I hadn’t known it until that moment.

Her lips were warm. They tasted of something metallic, old blood, grass. She kissed me slowly, biting my lower lip, opening my mouth with hers. She thrust her tongue all the way in and worked it around as if she were fucking me with her tongue. I moaned inside her mouth. One hand pushed my robe off my shoulders. The other grabbed one of my tits and squeezed my nipple between two fingers, slowly twisting it until I arched.

—Stay still, she told me. Shut up and let me do it, Doctor.

She straddled me. I felt her wet pussy pressed directly against my belly, hot, her damp hairs brushing my skin. Her tits were level with my face, and I lowered my mouth before I could think. I sucked one nipple into my mouth completely, filling it with saliva, and she threw her head back, laughing softly as if she found it amusing. I ran my tongue over the other. I bit it. She sighed, rubbed harder against my navel, and left a sticky trail on my skin.

—Suck properly, she said. Suck them all. Then it’s your turn down below.

—Renata, she said my name as if it were something else, a while later, when I had left both her nipples reddened and shining with saliva.

She made me lean back against the cushions. She took my robe off completely and stared at me for a long while in silence, with that smile that never quite ended. She opened my legs with both hands, unhurriedly, and held them open while she looked at my pussy as if she were studying something.

—You’re soaked, she said. Look how you’re shining. How many times did you touch yourself this week thinking about me, Doctor?

—Every time, I told her voicelessly. Every night.

—Good girl.

She lay on top of me, skin against skin. She began moving her hips slowly, rubbing herself against my thigh, and I felt her wetting my leg within seconds. I felt her pussy opening against my skin, her hot lips sliding up and down, leaving a shining puddle on my thigh.

She kissed my neck, my collarbone, my sternum. She bit each of my tits until I flinched. She moved lower. She licked my navel and kept going down. She kissed my pubic mound. Then another kiss lower, right where my pussy began. I took her head in both hands and let her do it.

Her tongue was the same as the cat’s. Rough at first, soft afterward. She learned quickly. She parted my pussy lips with two fingers and blew gently before touching me. The shiver made me squeeze my thighs against her face. She laughed and opened them again.

—Still, she repeated.

She licked me from bottom to top, all the way in one long stroke, up to my clitoris. She found my clitoris faster than I could when I was alone, and began working it in small, slow circles, with a patience that didn’t seem human. Then she sucked it. She caught it between her lips and tugged lightly, and I let out a muffled cry and buried my fingers in her hair. I begged for more without opening my mouth. I pushed her face against my pussy until she could barely breathe.

She put in one finger. Then two. Then three. She curled her hand inward and found that spot almost no one could find. She began fucking me with her fingers while sucking my clitoris, using a rhythm that rose and fell, fast now, slow then, playing with me as if I were her toy. I writhed on the sofa. I told her things I had never thought I would say, not aloud, not to someone I barely knew. I told her she was a slut, that she was my slut, that I would lick her pussy until dawn if she didn’t stop. I begged her not to stop. I begged her to split me open. I begged her to make me come.

—Come in my mouth, she ordered without removing her fingers. Come hard. Soak my face.

She didn’t stop. I held out as long as I could, and then I convulsed against her mouth, clutching the back of the sofa, biting the cushion so I wouldn’t scream and wake half the block. I felt my orgasm gush against her tongue, her chin, and the fingers she still had inside me. I lay trembling for a long while, my legs spread wide open, unable to close them, while Camila slowly licked my swollen pussy as if cleaning up what she herself had done.

***

Then it was my turn. I made her lie on her back on the rug. I explored every inch of her with my mouth, slowly, skipping nothing. I sucked her neck until I left a purple mark. I bit the undersides of her tits. I licked her nipples until they grew dark and hard, then bit them with my teeth until she moaned. I ran my tongue over her navel. I bit her hip. I bit the insides of her thighs, high up, very close to her pussy, until she begged.

—Go down, she said hoarsely. Go down now, Renata. Don’t make me wait.

I went down. I opened her legs with both hands and looked closely at her pussy. It was pink and shining, with a stream of thick fluid running down toward her ass. I ran my whole tongue over her from bottom to top, gathering everything. She tasted of grass, metal, something wild. I ate her as if it were the last thing I would ever eat in my life. I sucked her clitoris with my lips sealed around it, tugging slowly, then quickly. I pushed my tongue inside her, as far as I could, and moved it as if it were a little cock. I inserted two fingers and searched for her spot inside while squeezing her clitoris with my mouth at the same time. Camila arched, laughed, and bit her fingers. Her body was flexible and agile, still almost animal-like. She grabbed my hair and pressed my face against her pussy until I choked, and I loved it.

—That’s it, she gasped. Like a cat in heat, Doctor. Don’t stop.

I inserted a third finger. I pushed it in to the knuckles. She gave a hoarse cry, thrust her hips against my hand, and came between my fingers, squeezing me so tightly I could barely move inside her. I felt the warm liquid run down my wrist.

We finished in sixty-nine on the living-room rug, with the lamp off and the courtyard light filtering through the curtain. I was underneath, she was on top, her soaked pussy planted in my mouth and her face buried in mine. I pushed my tongue as far inside her as I could. She did the same. She sucked me, fingered me, and licked my ass too, without asking permission, the tip of her tongue slowly circling it until I trembled. I grabbed her buttocks with both hands and crushed her against my mouth, sucking her clitoris without stopping. I felt her entire pussy contracting against my tongue, felt her begin to tremble above me. We both came almost at the same time, one against the other’s mouth, choking on laughter, sweat, and fluid, our legs entwined and our hands gripping whatever they could.

We stayed wrapped in each other’s arms on the floor, exhausted, one of her arms across my waist and her breath against my collarbone, her mouth and chin still shining with me. We didn’t speak for a long while. Outside, the cats had finally fallen silent.

***

We had breakfast at nine, late for me. Camila had gone downstairs first, made coffee, and put bread in the oven. I went down in my robe, without makeup, my hair still damp from the shower, my pussy swollen from the entire night, feeling the soreness every time I sat down.

—Do you believe me now? she asked, handing me the cup.

—I believe you.

—I did a white working for you. That’s why you’re getting so many customers. It isn’t dark magic. It’s just gratitude.

—Camila.

—What?

—I fell in love with you. I’m not going to say it twice, so listen carefully.

She laughed. Her eyes turned yellow again for a second, then returned to their usual dark brown.

—I’ll come back tonight, she said. Nahualas don’t stay in one place, but we come back. Wait for me with your legs open, Doctor.

—I’ll wait.

That night I left my bedroom window open. At three, the black cat appeared on the bed, purring, her yellow eyes shining in the darkness. I lifted her carefully and kissed her cold nose.

And then she grew again.