Swaddled in Red, Drowned in Spit

I watch as the lawyer asks my father to take a seat on the stand beside the judge. My jaw aches from how hard I clench it, almost sneering in hatred and betrayal. My fingernails plunge deep into the skin of my palms as my knuckles pale. They wanted to know how many more victims he killed, if there were more, how he killed them exactly.

Every sound of the room is drowned out by the red I see when looking at the man. The jagged scar that run diagonally across his face is red, the tattoo on the side of his neck is red. It’s so red that it’s crimson.

The kind of dark crimson his victims blood were.

“Can you please describe how you ended Kamilah’s life, Mr. Delgado?” the lawyer asks.

My stomach rolls.

I can’t read how my father must be feeling as he shifts in his seat, sitting upright. It’s eerily blank, I guess. Guess I could say I’m not surprised. Reading my father’s facial expressions was like reading Shakespeare’s work; it was difficult to decrypt.

“She was lost on the street,” he begins, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “She was asking me for directions and I let her in the car. I drove for a little bit until we were at the woods, and then I threw her out the window.”

“Shit,” I whisper, my stomach sinking.

“I covered her mouth with duct tape when she tried screaming for help, and then I think I used a rope to tie her down.”

You THINK?”

What scares me the most is that he says all of this with a blank face and an even tone. He looks too calm for a man convicted of over fifty murders and sexual assaults.

My eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets when he laughs. Laughs. The corner of his eyes crinkle and there’s deep creases on the sides of his mouth when he smiles, flashing his pearly whites.

“I took off her pants and fingered her for a while,” he snickers, and bile rises at the back of my throat when he pumps his index finger a little bit, as if he were demonstrating to a class.

"I used my other hand to wrap around her throat and squeezed until she fell asleep." She lost consciousness. "I pulled my finger out and used a knife to stab her stomach. And then I used some lemonade and salt to add a little extra sting."

I can't listen anymore.

Thank God I was in the back, otherwise people would have been suspicious when they saw me storming out in a rush, chest heaving and saliva gathering in my mouth.

I haven't thrown up like that in a long time.

Several Hours Later...

"How the hell could you do that?" I demand, glaring at my father through my tears. "How the hell could you just...Papi, you laughed while describing how you fingered a FIVE-YEAR-OLD before you killed her! Don't you have a soul?!"

"I've done this for a long time, princesa," he says simply, sighing through his nose. "In El Salvador I needed the money, so I couldn't afford the luxury of guilt. I needed to provide."

"What about raping them then, huh? You needed to pleasure yourself?"

He shrugs, as if it weren't a big deal to him. "What do you want me to say, Sofia? I can't change the way I am."

"You could change how to not rape young girls," I snap.

"Porque? It makes me happy."

My eyes blow wide, and I almost throw up again, but I swallow the chips I had earlier down and shoulder on. "You're sick," I whisper. "You're sick and you're a monster!"

"I raped those girls because I liked seeing them in pain," he bites, snarling at me now. The sudden change in his demeanor startles me so much I flinch violently. "I like watching them choke on their own spit and blood while I fuck them raw. Their screams have me hard and I like it. Is that what you want me to say?"

I tremble, my stomach churns and my throat aches with suppressed sobs. Those girls were my age. Did he even think about how he would feel if someone did that to me? How they would like raping me while killing me? Does this man even love me?

"Papi," I say, voice cracking, "what if someone had done that to me?"

His blank stares gives me the confirmation I need.