From the unpublished autobiography of Anabella Maria De La Cruz. . .
In order to understand my history, you must first understand my family. My parents were both born in San Marcos, El Salvador where they met and got married. My mother was 16 and my father was 20. Three years latter they immigrated to the United States, and 14 months after that my mother gave birth to me, her first and only child.
My mother died when I was six, and I was raised by my father, who never remarried. I don’t remember much about my mother, only that she smelled like hibiscus. I was raised by my father with lots of help from my aunts. My extended family in America consists of four aunts, three uncles and dozens of cousins and second-cousins. I’m kind of the baby in the family, and my cousins are very overprotective.
My papá is the head of a large drug cartel, which manufactures, transports, and distributes methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. Many of my cousins are members of the MS-13’s in Los Angeles. I love my papá very much, even if I don’t like how he gets his money. I also love the rest of my family; I don’t like the gang, but they’re my blood.
My papá has tried to raise me away from the violence of the gang and his business. I grew up constantly surrounded by older cousins; it wasn’t until years latter that I realized they were really there as bodyguards, not playmates. I am a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and I grew up attending Mass regularly. I have since stopped going to church, my father disapproves.
Right now things are, difficult, for me. My papá wants nothing more than for me to marry and settle down in a house on his rather large compound. He says he expects grandchildren out of me. I just want to live. I want a life of my own, away from my family, where I will be free to make decisions for myself.
This way of thinking has made me restless. I try to escape as often as I can, taking my motorcycle on long rides across the empty flats of the desert. When I go out like this I usually only tell my cousin Teo. Not long ago I was out in the dessert when the strangest thing happened.
It was close to nightfall, with the last colors of dusk barely visible in the west, I was watching the clear night sky, and not the road, when I looked back there was a man in the road ahead. Distracted, I felt the bike waver, and then without warning I fell; laying the bike down on its side and skidding across the road, coming to rest in the warm sand by the side of the highway. I hurt, but I knew it wasn’t serious; out of nowhere I felt someone looming over me. Through my dazed vision I saw the pale strange looming over me, close up his skin looked like aged paper, and he smiled with thin lips, there was something wrong with his mouth, almost like his teeth didn’t fit.
“Yes. . .” His voice was dry and reminded me of crackling leaves. “You will do nicely.” I blinked, and he was gone. I lay in the sand, too tired and stunned to move.
I must have laid there for a long time, because Teo came to find me. He brought me and the bike home, bandaged my scrapes, and didn’t say a word about why I was lying in the dirt. My life isn't usually this weird. . .
The Cabbage Patch
One of a kind roleplay characters; a Breedables/Changing Pets shop. Lurkers welcome!
