Switchblades in Procession
An early excerpt from Il Piacere di Morire (limited Italian edition, 2011)
I stepped out of the precinct absentmindedly and bumped into a stocky blond guy chatting with two hooded Penitentes. I muttered an apology, pushed past. They glared at me, I felt their eyes piercing my neck as I blended into the crowd.
'What the hell are you doing blocking the door, assholes?' I thought.
Easter in Seville: Penitentes everywhere. Conical hoods hiding faces, robes sweeping the streets. Thousands of them invading the center.
Heading home, I crossed paths with the Confraternity of the Cautivo. Wednesday night—the Betrayed Redeemer, prisoner on his way to Pilate. The avenue was a grim spectacle. Thousands of brothers followed in religious silence; no talking allowed, and the rule held firm.
The procession dragged on all night. Barefoot followers would nurse blistered feet the next day; bearers would wake with raw shoulders from hauling the two-ton float.
The boulevard lay hushed, broken only by wind and faint baroque music—oboe, cornet, bassoon. Black robes, crosses, banners moved in solemn procession under a thousand candle flames. Penitentes’ pointed hoods dissolved into the night’s shadows, scented with incense and chrysanthemums. Oppression and betrayal hung thick in the silent dark.
The Cautivo always stirred painful memories. It was the confraternity Maite loved. She wasn’t devout in the usual way—she followed the procession like she wandered cemeteries or lingered in cathedrals. Black suited her; she dissolved her feelings into it.
Time had tried to erase the pain, but nearly twenty years later, the ache of her loss still clawed at me.
The worst memories fade, swept away by an invisible force that shields us from madness. Time’s merciful lobotomy. It heals, cauterizes, dissolves… almost always.
I still wandered in turmoil that day she took her life—feelings shattered, dazed by death’s vision, the claustrophobic airless room. Her motionless white skin, cold lips I had kissed so often, darkness pierced by thin blades of light through the shutters.
But the real pain—the madness-edge grief, the bitter tears swallowed by black void—had vanished. Not even heartbreak is allowed to stay. Everything since felt fragile and pointless.
Death and pain are the only certainties; only the dead know why.
A fleeting illusion of warm light, then dusk again, where everything hurts.
Maite’s presence was strong that night, seeping into everything.
I hadn’t spoken her name aloud in eighteen years.
Though she haunted my dreams often.
That night the darkness exhaled.
A black shape stepped out of the procession—slipped from the space between hooded penitents as if the night had torn open a seam and let her through.
First only the outline: tall, slender, the exact silhouette I once traced with my lips in the dark.
Then the details coalesced with impossible slowness, the way a drowned body rises to the surface.
Skin the colour of cold moon.
Eyes: two holes burned in snow, fixed on me with the patience of something that had waited beneath the earth for this exact moment.
She wore the same black dress from the last night I saw her alive.
The one she died in.
No sound came from her bare feet on the cobblestones.
She did not walk so much as the darkness carried her forward, a tide of absence.
The candles nearest her guttered, though no breeze touched them.
I smelled lilies left too long in water.
Grave holy ground.
My lungs forgot their purpose.
She stopped three paces away.
The space between us thickened, became liquid, became glass.
I could not move. I could not blink.
Her features slowly took shape—faded memory sharpening in the dark. She stood motionless, staring, wrapped in black tunic, pale skin, raven hair and eyes. I froze, breath caught, heart slamming.
She walked straight at me.
I felt the first touch of her like stepping naked into a January river.
She reached the place where I stood and did not stop.
She entered me.
A cold that had weight poured through my ribs, my heart, my spine.
Every vein filled with winter.
Her body passed through mine the way a blade passes through smoke.
I felt her death inside me.
And her voice, intimate as a lover’s, but coming from nowhere and everywhere, from the hollow beneath my left ear.
A whisper.
“Behind you.”
The sound of a switchblade opening.
I spun.
Steel flashed.
I dodged just in time.
A hooded figure lunged with the knife —quick slashes, high to low, left to right.
The blade bit flesh as I twisted away.
Screams tore the silence. The faithful panicked, stumbling over crosses, bodies, spilled candles. The killer pressed on. I tripped on a fallen woman, rolled back.
He charged. I stopped his knife inches from my throat, grabbing his wrist, gripped his collar, locked his arm, hooked his left leg with mine, and flipped him sideways onto the pavement. Elbow to the nose. Teeth and blood sprayed.
I tried to disarm him. Steel bit again.
Fear rose; thought stopped.
We scrambled up. Slashes rained—high-low, left-right, right-left. Instinct waited for the killing thrust.
I dodged unseen, circled his forearm, stepped out of line. He overcommitted, weight forward. My arm slammed into his face like a bar. He flipped backward, skull cracking on stone.
Not over. Two more fake Penitentes rushed in. I recognized the blond from the precinct door. His buddy stabbed first. I felt the blade hit lung—but no. Cell phone in my jacket pocket took the impact.
I drove a kick into his gut; he folded. Shoved them one into the other. They tumbled.
I ran. Miracle against one armed man; no chance against two. I searched through chaos for a side exit. Maite appeared again near a narrow alley mouth. I dove in, pursuers close.
Breathless. Fastest one caught me. We rolled grappling. His partner waited, pistol ready, for a clear shot.
Gunshots cracked. Pistol guy dropped.
Cavalry: Leanne, running, gun in hand. Last attacker fled into the crowd. She aimed—too late; blond vanished.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I think so. Just cuts…”
Leanne said nothing. Ripped the hood off the downed man. South American look, shaved head, intricate tattoos snaking from skull down neck. He glared hate. Two bullets: shoulder, center chest. Blood pool. No doctor needed to see he had minutes.
“Who sent you?” she demanded.
No answer. Eyes full of contempt. Leanne dug fingers into the wounds—slow, deep. He screamed.
“Bark louder. It’s music to my ears.”
“Leanne, Jesus…” I said.
She ignored me, kept twisting. Cold, resolute face. Nothing would stop her.
“Come on, give us something interesting,” she pressed, probing.
“La Flaca te mandó!” The Skinny One sent you! he gasped. Eyes wide. Last breath.
“Ella misma, cabrón!” Herself indeed! Leanne confirmed.
Sirens wailed to the hospital. Neon ads melted into black. City lights streaked past the window like tearing blades.
Leanne smiled, holding my hand in her blood-smeared fingers. Rain came on the wind.
“How did you find me?” I muttered.
“I was tailing you. You’re my special protégé.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Of course,” she said, with a condescending smile.
Maite’s memory and horror dissolving in droplets on glass.
I felt cold.
Disgust, shock, fear.
'What a sickening way to celebrate Easter.'