Chapter 4

The Little Girl

            “I’m scared.”

            “Mi amor, no te preocupes, soon enough we’ll find her.” He gently embraced her, trying to console her.

 “And then we’ll all go back to El Morro and fly kites together.”

“Who would take our baby away?” She cried.           

“No sé, mi amor, no sé.”

            The man kept looking for his daughter tirelessly around the stadium. He stretched the entire arena and examined every single space in the seating area. He saw the military dragging out people from the arena into the hallways of the stadium. He tried to follow them in, but was aggressively pushed away. He had a feeling that she might be somewhere in that space behind the arena. He looked around for a way in, and all he could see were armed men standing guard. He paced around the arena in circles, looking for a way in.

There was an old rusted steel door in a corner of the arena.

Nobody was guarding it, so he walked up to it to inspect further. The handle was not locked. He looked around him to make sure no one was looking at him and quickly went inside. It was very dark, but he could tell he was at the top of a staircase. He looked down and could see a slight flicker of light coming out of a cracked-open door at the bottom of the stairs. He went down to investigate.

When he stepped out of the staircase, he found himself in a hallway. He was in the basement of the stadium. The long bending path was dimly light by flickering lights; there were doors on each side. As he walked down the hall he heard the sounds of machines beating and turning. They have to be the air-conditioning, he thought. He kept walking until the sounds of the machines disappeared.

Dead silence.

His heart started beating faster.

He hated silence.

Then, he heard footsteps. Two militiamen were walking up the hall, approaching him. He hid behind a cornered entrance to a room and waited—trembling. He could hear the men talking to each other:

“Why do we have to drag down all the fat ones?” one of the men said.

“I know. I tell you, if they weren’t paying this good I wouldn’t be here at all. They give us shit work, man.”

They stopped a few feet before the corner he was hiding in, and opened another door.

He heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

His skin fluttered as if trying to escape his body—he trembled intensely. The militiamen walked away.  He waited in his hiding place until the echoes of their footfalls faded out.

“¿Camila, mi amor, me escuchas? ¿Estás ahí?” he called out to his daughter in a hushed voice. He stepped out to investigate this room the militiamen had walked into. He saw the opened door, and could smell the rancid scent of rotting meat. His stomach turned over and he nearly vomited.

There, he found the bodies.

They belonged to the people who had been shot and killed since the confrontations with the military began. Their corpses were separated by body mass, sex, and skin color. They were piled on top of each other in a large grey-walled room—like mountains of flesh. Who could do this, he thought, as he scanned the putrid landscape. He feared the worst. Could she be here?

There she was.

Her father dragged her out of a pile of small bodies. Her skin was pale blue, and her brown eyes remained open as if staring into infinity. He held her in his arms and kissed her frigid face. “¿Porqué Dios, por qué nos torturas de esta manera?” he said.

She showed obvious signs of physical violence. Her little white dress was ripped open. Her legs were severely dislocated by the tugging force of the army men. She had bled to death from the injuries inflicted upon her little body by the strong army men.

His heart was palpitated faster.

Tears streamed down his darkened face and blurred out everything around him and his little girl.

He heard their steps again.

The militiamen marched down the hallway to inspect the strange sounds coming from the catacombs. He kissed his daughter goodbye and started running away.

They saw him.

“Hijo e' puta!” They started shooting at him. The man thinly escaped the fire as he sprinted out to the door leading up the staircase exit of the basement.

“Olvidalo. We’ll pick him up later,” one of the soldiers said.

“Dead meat,” said his partner.