Handsome Freaks
A Serial Novel
by Ezra Vancil
Missed The Last Chapters?
Ch1-P1 | Ch1-P2 | Ch2-P1 | Ch2-P2 | Ch3-P1 | Ch3-P2 | Ch3-P3 | Ch4-P1 | Ch4-P2 | Ch4-Pt3 | Ch4-Pt4 | Ch5 | Ch6 P1 | Ch6 P2 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9
This is an original STEEM series novel. I'm writing it as I go, so bear with me. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–you might like this. Enjoy and RESTEEMs, upvoted and comments most pleasant.. thank you.
Missed the last Chapter? Read it now << Chapter 9
For more convenience, I'm will have at some point an updated Novel index here soon!
Chapter 10 - The Short End of the Short Sword
“Oh Magdalene, my dear child. My heart can not bare this dirt! how filthy am I? I will surely die tonight,” Geraldo James said, in the slur of sewn together drunken words.
Magdalene crouched at her father's feet removing his elk leather boots. She peered up at his bobbing head. He had soiled his tailored slacks in the night as he drank himself into oblivion. One remaining bottle of his imported American whiskey still hung a few inches from the floor, teetering in the clutches of his fingers. The nauseating stink of shit filled the small library but she was careful to let no offense show on her face.
She placed the boots by the chair and reached out to take the bottle from his hands. He shuttered awake and wrapped his fist around the bottle’s neck, sat up and looked at her in defiance. Magdalene’s soothing stare calmed him instantly. He let the bottle go and sunk back into the chair.
“Father, don’t worry.” She said. “I will clean you all up. You know I’m not a lady who cares about such things.”
He was between a sleeping and waking state. He roused himself with a jolt of irritation as she briskly untucked his shirt.
“No, Magdalene. Not that. Not my filthy slacks,” he whispered. “My filthy heart.”
He mumbled tearfully “Leave the damn filth in my slacks. Clean my heart. Can you do that?”
Magdalene stood and pulled the shirt over his head. Revealing his hairless barrel chest. “Father you are a good man. Everyone knows that you are. You've done nothing wrong. and," She paused, "...mother, she was not your fault. She had become sick. We both know that.”
“No!” He shouted while pushing her away. “... I have cursed an innocent man to death. He was a boy. Just a boy, lost in this damn Godless city. And I...” He paused mid-sentence, huffed a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet.
A new bloom of odor blossomed into the air from the piss and wet fecal matter that had seeped through his trousers into the fabric of the chair. Magdalene felt her throat clinch tight; she gagged dryly and covered her face with his shirt. She saw brown liquid dripping down his legs onto the floor. She coughed sour bile into her mouth but thankfully managed to slow her breathing and held back the vomit.
She stood grabbing his arm tightly.
“Father sit down! I must clean you. You will ruin your rug, Mother’s fav...”
She stopped her self from saying the word 'mother' again; thinking of her dead mother in the ice house combined with the smell was too overwhelming.
Geraldo stumbled toward his wide oak desk. “I am damned—oh God...” he said, then fell forward on the desk barely catching himself before knocking his head against a gold-handled sword that was displayed at the edge of the desk.
Magdalene rushed over behind him supporting his limp body with her tiny frame. “For God's sake Father... please. I don’t care what you’ve done. You are my only...” her words were stifled by a surprise of tears._ She was overwhelmed by embarrassment for herself and her father's despicable position.
“I have no one but you left on this cursed earth. Please, let me get these clothes off. I can not handle seeing you like this.”_ She felt panic, as if a crowd of onlookers encircled them, laughing at this shameful scene; an ugly bearded woman pulling her drunk shit stained father's clothes off. She yanked his belt off in one motion of the hand, then tugged at the hem of his slacks.
“No!" He turned and pushed her away, then fell backward sliding down the frame of the desk to the floor. He covered his face with his hands and wept. "The city burns. I burned my beautiful Valencia. What have I done.”
Magdalene looked away from Geraldo to the library window, beyond the courtyard and seven miles out; she could still see streams of black smoke rising. She did not know why it burned. She did not care to know. Memories of the bloody fight with the priest had begun to materialize in her thoughts. Yet, she could not fully remember because she did not want to remember what she had done. The night before, as her father whimpered in his locked library, she had sat in the garden, the pigeons cooing at her feet. That night she watched Valencia burn. She knew it burned for her. But she did not know why. Her thoughts were many. Thoughts that could never be admitted. Not even to her self. Like the whispering wind in the high sycamore tree, the murmurs of her mind were airy, quiet and elusive. They were of a sort of sad celebration. She looked at the burning city with a type of glee that she did not fully understand. "The city should burn"_ Those were the quiet words in her head:
...the whole world should burn.
Without her realizing it, her Father had clutched the gold handle short sword which had fallen from the desk with him to the floor. He pushed himself to his feet again, swaying back and forth, then lifted the sword up toward the ceiling. He peered down the blade as if to measure its sharp point against the golden handle. The candlelight gleamed from the sword as he studied its blade in a hobbled dance of a drunk man. Feeling a danger she had never felt around her father, Magdalene jumped quickly three steps back.
“Perfect..” He said. He sounded slightly soberer than a few minutes before.
She accepted that he would not be controlled in this state; so bided her time.
“The short sword,” he said dropping it to his side, “...this was taken by my father, from one of the Napoleón men. The first soldier my father killed. Shot him in the stomach from twenty paces. My Father—”
He made the mocking gesture of aiming a gun with his free hand. Then abandoned whatever story he might have told. Surely, yet another re-telling of his own father heroic life. But, not tonight. He stopped, straightened his shoulders and walked carefully a few feet to the library window behind the desk.
He pressed his nose against the milky glass and spoke. “The end of pageantry. The genesis of war—of all the wars to come, my dear. And, the wars before? Nothing... nothing... He waved the sword in a cavalier circular motion by his side; his nose still pushed awkwardly against the glass. "... Nothing but simple pageantry. The dance of kings! Kings who were bored with wine, sugar dates, and whores. But, this man, Napoleón... he wanted to be God. He knew the secret.”
He turned on his heel toward Magdalene, who stood now close behind him hoping to release him of the sharp sword. His arms went limp and the short sword clanged on the floor. She was released.
She put her hand on his back. “Father.. you are a good man.” She said while kicking the sword to the corner of the room.
"Do you know his secret Magdalene?"
He pointed at her with a sad grin on his face. Magdalene noticed new tears welling in his old eyes. “This secret—I will tell only you. The secret of Napoleón..."
He signed and flicked at a stream of tears on his cheek, then continued, "...any natural born man can become a god if only he could bare his own wrath. The wrath of his own sick soul. That is the secret dear.”
He laid his sweat-drenched forehead on her shoulder and whispered: “But, I can not bare my own wrath I tell you.”
Magdalene felt a great pity for her father. She placed her hand on his greying thick hair. All the limitations and expectations she felt as a young daughter were at once removed. She felt a motherly pity for him. Even the smell of his released bowels no longer bothered her as they had. He had been such a strong man in her life. A pillar of stone. Yet now, as he wept on her blouse, she knew that the child that she once was, was forever gone. A new season had arrived. The childish ways were to find their place in the long shadow of the past. “It’s okay Father. What do you need to do? I will help you.”
She was a grown woman of 16 now but she felt so much older.
Geraldo lifted his head and cupped both his hands under her elbows. It snapped her back to a childlike mind, for this was how he had spoken to her as a distracted young child when he needed her to heed his words; gently but confidently gripping his hands around her for arms—as if to capture her wandering energies through her hands. It had always made her feel secure. The knowing that there was some force, a power, outside of her rambling aimless thoughts that could instantly call her into one thought.
She noticed his hands no longer quivering.
His eyes were now familiar; the eyes of her father.
“I must go into the city, make it right before it is too late. I have to tell the truth. For you my dear Magdalene, that means that you must leave. That is, leave forever. They can not see you this way. They will not understand the curse, the hair on your face. You will be to them, only a witch. A murderous witch who took the life of a saint. They will hunt you like a wolf.”
“But Father, come with me. They will surely kill you. They are mad, I could hear them last night, even outside in the garden; shouting for blood.”
Geraldo touched her face below her dark green eyes; the back of his hand against her cheek—the only tender skin which still shown beneath her beard. He wiped new tears away. “So be it dear Magdalene. So be it... I did it for you. So if I must die for you. That is my noble end.”
Magdalene burst into tears. "Where will I go?"
Even with his slacks still stained and wet with pungent shit; Magdalene felt her father's comforting strength and honor return to his voice. "You dear, you will have a good life. I Promise. You will go to America. But you must go as a man."
...to be continued.
Missed The Last Chapters?
Ch1-P1 | Ch1-P2 | Ch2-P1 | Ch2-P2 | Ch3-P1 | Ch3-P2 | Ch3-P3 | Ch4-P1 | Ch4-P2 | Ch4-Pt3 | Ch4-Pt4 | Ch5 | Ch6 P1 | Ch6 P2 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9
I'm Ezra Vancil a Performing Songwriter, writer and artist based in Texas. Thanks for reading. If you like, please RESTEEM, UPVOTE and follow 
All mages except sword, public domain original public domain creations.