The Trail of Don Juan

I felt my mind slipping again, another notch of sanity falling from me as she stood up and caressed me, purring at me in the back of her throat. She spoke in a whisper as she kissed my chest.

"You see, he will want me, he will come back for me.....no one can resist me."

"Who?" I almost shouted, "Who will come back for you?" I felt some focus return and I pushed her away, hastily trying to pull up my pants over my softening cock.

She smiled, "They have gone, but they will come back for me. He must!" Her face looked almost feral in the red light, and I could see a dribble of my cum on her chin.

"Where did they go? Where did you go with them? Answer me!?" I grabbed her and shook her as I said this, and her eyes looked frightened for a minute. A flicker of sanity returning for but a moment.

"I don't know where they went, but we stayed at La Mansion de Rio, and he loved me, and he loved her. Damn her!" She spat the last words out like a curse. "Now they are gone." She collapsed to the floor and began to weep. "He is gone and he will never return and I am lost, lost." I stood staring at this woman, and I felt the madness rising up within me. And in my mind I said over and over. 'I will kill him. I will kill him...'

* * * * *

My mute cabbie dropped me at La Mansion de Rio with only a nod as I paid him, and I looked at the sweeping Spanish architecture of this ancient building. The night was pleasant now, warm but no longer hot, and the cicadas sang in the trees next to the old hotel.

It too bordered the Riverwalk, not far from the restaurant I had been at earlier. I walked into the plush lobby, and approached the desk clerk. She looked worried, and some part of my brain realized I must look pretty bad. I smiled, and tried to ignore the pounding in my head. I pulled out my wallet, and flipped open her picture holding it up to the woman as I spoke.

"I am sorry to disturb you, I am looking for this woman. Have you seen her?" she shook her head quickly.

"No Sir, I have not. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

I hung my head, I was so tired, and my head hurt so badly. "Yes, a room for the night. Whatever you have available."

I slid my platinum visa toward her, and she nodded as she typed on the computer. A few minutes later I was walking into a lavish room overlooking the river. I walked to the desk and dropped both my bags on it, before turning to look out at the night. My head still throbbed with the beating of my heart, and the music of the cicadas seemed to drill into my skull. My world was evaporating, some part of me knew this, but I could not stop. The voice in my head said again, 'I will kill him...'

* * * * *

When I woke the noonday sun was streaming through the curtains, and the room felt overly warm. I lay on top the bed, still in my clothes, and I felt sore and stiff. I sat up and shook my head slowly. The pounding in my head had stopped, and my head had cleared somewhat.

As if more from force of habit then desire I stripped and climbed in the shower, washing the spit and cum from my cock, as I wished I could wash that memory from my mind. I tried to think, to ground myself in what I needed to do, but I was so far removed from the reality of my day to day life I felt I had no purchase on anything.

After I dried myself, I powered up my notebook and plugged it into the wall outlet that had a sign advertising high-speed Internet access. I drummed my fingers as I waited for the machine to boot, and connect to the network. At last I opened the credit card site again, and logged in. the last charge was for La Mansion de Rio. The date was last night. I began to feel my blood pound again, and the world seemed to dim.

"They might still be here I thought." I stood and looked around the room hastily, as if they might appear behind me or in the shaded corner.

There was a knock on my door and I left in my chair, staring wildly about.

"Housekeeping?" a voice said as the door cracked open and the face of an older Hispanic woman appeared. "Oh! Sorry Sir, I thought no one was here." She began to close the door as I shouted.

"No wait!"

I stumbled up from the desk as she opened the door. Her face took on a look of alarm as I rushed toward her fumbling for my wallet. I tore her picture from it holding it up to her.

"Have you seen her, is she staying here." I could see the recognition in her face immediately, but then her brow crinkled as she looked up at me.

"We are not allowed to give out information about guests senior."

I tore open my wallet pulling out several hundred dollars and holding it out to her. "Please, she is my wife. Please?"

A haunted look crossed the woman's face. She stared at the money, then back into my face. I don't know what she saw there, but she looked scared, or haunted. She reached out and slowly took the money.

"Room 214 senior, just down the hall." She pointed down the hall, then paused as she turned away. "She has not been alone." She turned and pushed her cart down the hall.

I turned my back to her and walked down the hall, sleepwalking. I passed the rooms, counting them in my mind as I walked. "208, 209, 210" My world seemed to narrow as I walked up to the door. I could see the detail in the old wood of the antique door. I watched my hand reach out and grasp the wrought iron doorknob as if someone or something else was in control. It turned and the latch clicked and some part of me thought how quaint that this old hotel still used these old knobs and keys.

The door swung open into a cluttered room. Cloths and food left around the room, and central to it all a huge bed with the covers crumbled in a heap in the center. Then I saw the covers move, and I could see the long black hair as it snaked across the bed from under the covers.

I walked slowly into the room, the lush carpet cushioning my feet. The door clicked closed with a loud clunk, like the closing of a cell door. I could see the table beside the bed littered with half empty wine glasses, discarded food, and a scattering of pills that slopped off onto the floor.

As I approached the bed, I could see she was alone in it, that the man was not there. I stopped at the edge and stared down at the mound of covers, and I could see one of her shapely ears where her head emerged from the heavy quilt.

Then, as if she knew I was there she rolled over and I beheld the face of my love. Her eyes were swollen and red, and tears had wet her face. My heart stopped beating. "So beautiful, So lovely. . ." echoed through my mind, and then she smiled and my heart lifted in song.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered as she stared at me, more tears spilling down her face. "God forgive me, I'm, so sorry." And her voice cracked as she sobbed.

I lay down and pulled her into my arms kissing her wet face. "It is alright beloved, it will be alright." All of my being was lost in this moment; I could forgive her, as long as I had her.

She kissed me back passionately, her arms grasping at me, pulling at my cloths. I felt my world narrow, until nothing existed but her and me. My heart felt as though it would burst from my chest like a wild animal in flight. I tore my clothes off as she continued to kiss me, and her tears wet my cheeks.

In moments I was nude, and I pulled the covers from her. I drank in the sight of her golden skin and her full beautiful breasts. I lowered myself onto her and the heat of her body burned through me.

"Now, take me oh take me once more.." she begged in a whisper, as I settled between her thighs. I felt my cock slowly push into her, and she was wet and welcoming. My body shuddered with the contact, with the feel of her enveloping me. It was the feeling of home, of love, of everything I thought lost and now regained. It was the feel of her and me as one.

Slowly I pushed into her over and over and I could feel her heart hammer against my chest. I kissed her as I pushed into her over and over again. There was a symphony in my ears, and I felt lifted by a joy I have never known. I lost track of time, and all that mattered was the flow of the movement of our bodies, the feel of her next to me.

But then I felt her hands slide from my back where she gripped me, and her kisses became soft, then almost faint. I pulled my head away from her and looked into her yes. They were misty, and seemed to see far away. She looked pale.

"My love? What's wrong?" I said reaching up to stroke her hair from her face as my cock throbbed in her.

She smiled a faint smile, and I could feel the heavy pounding of her heart, and it seemed too hard, and too slow. She spoke, and her voice was barely a whisper but it rang through me as clear as a bell.

"I'm so sorry. I thought you weren't coming back. . . I . . . I couldn't live without you. I'm sorry, forgive me, forgive me . . ." With the last word the breath left her body and I felt her heart give two great pounding beats, then stop. A chill went through me then, and I think the last vestiges of my mind fled from me. She had thought I was him. The pills on the table swam into my mind. She had been apologizing to him because she was dieing, and she thought he had returned. She hadn't even seen me.

With a rage and a madness that was complete I began to pound my cock into her as I screamed, "It's me, I'm not him, it's me damn it, it's me!" How long I flailed at her I don't know before I spent myself in her, but finally I crawled off of her and sat on the floor looking at her still form. Even in death she was beautiful, more then any man should dare to call his own.

I reached up to the pills on the table and scoped a handful up. I knew how I could join her, but as I grabbed then, I brushed a small note from under them off the table. It fluttered to the floor like a leaf falling on a calm autumn day. When it stilled I could see her flowing script upon it, and with no thought I read it.

"I am sorry my love for what I must do. I can not live without you, and I can not return to the man I love as well as you. He would never have me again after I have so lost myself to you, nor do I think I could live without you. Please forgive me; I thought I could satisfy you...I thought I was the one. I have been a fool. God forgive me."

The pills slowly fell from my hand across my naked body as I read, and the rage began to grow. Like a beast that clawed its way up from the depths of my soul it howled for blood. I trembled as I stood, and with a final act of any feeling I pulled the covers gently up over the form of my beloved, and the voice in my head cried now with no hesitation like a choir of angels. "I will kill him. I will kill him."

* * * * *

I don't know how many cities I tracked him through. After San Antonio I picked up his trail in Del Rio, a small border town. I followed him through Mexico, and always he eluded me, always one step ahead, as if taunting me.

In his wake I found women, beautiful women broken and forlorn as if the greatest love of their lives had left them. Many I found like I had found her, and the townspeople could not understand it, how could she have done it. I knew though. I had started calling him Don Juan, after the mythic figure that stole woman's hearts. But this man, he was also the destroyer, that I called him too.

I had called my lawyer and had him sell everything I owned, the house, the cars, the stock funds, everything that spoke of success and roots in this world, all gone. I had nothing left but my revenge and a swollen bank account with which to pursue it. Every day that passed I became something less and something more. Less of my rational mind remained, and more of the monster of my revenge grew.

After two years though, I lost his trail. I would pick it up occasionally, but never often. Long enough to find a broken marriage, a young girl with wrists slashed, brain dead in a hospital. He was the destroyer, and I would destroy him. I came to loathe him with every fiber of my being.

* * * * *

I was sitting at a little beachside bar, drowning my mind in more liquor, and swimming into and out of sanity as the days had gone for me for a long while now. I had been here for some time, and the bartender and I joked with each other as he tried to pick up on the young college girls that came and went on their vacations.

I had been staying here for the last few months, as my search had become aimless without a trail to follow, and I returned here since I had picked up his trail here several times. I was beginning to doubt if he really existed. Perhaps he was a phantom, a spirit that came in the night and vanished like smoke on the wind.

The gulls cried as the sun sank into the west in a ball of fire, and the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves washed around me. Two years of my life I had searched, without contact with family or friends, and without hope. Perhaps my search was over. Maybe I was to play out the rest of my life on the beach here in Mexico, like some pathetic impersonator of a Jimmy Buffet song.

I felt a hand on my back and I broke from my thoughts. It was Bill, and old American that said he had come down here to retire and relax. He had a beautiful boat he spent most of his time on. He said he liked to be alone. I could respect that. I only saw him occasionally and then briefly, but we had formed a friendship of sorts. Tonight I was happy to see him.

"Hello Bill, how is the boat?"

"Good, good, though lonely out on the waves by myself, but I find it better that way." He said the last few words of this with such a profound note of sorrow that I actually turned and looked at him.

"Well hell Bill, nothing keeping you alone out there, hell I bet half these college kids would jump at the opportunity to go for a sail with you on your boat."

He looked at me and the wrinkles under his eyes seemed to grow and he squinted at me. "It is better if I am alone. Some things are just better." He nodded to himself looking away, and taking a drink of his beer. "And what of you my friend, I see you sit alone here every night I come, why do you sit alone?"

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, and I knew he was just poking fun at me, but something in me must have needed to tell someone, because I started to tell him. It was a long tale, and before long we had retired to his boat, and sat in the dim moon light as the boat rocked.

I told him of her, and of her death. I couldn't be sure but I thought he sobbed at that, as if in grief and I loved him in that moment for that. That he could share my pain. I told him of my lost life, of my madness, and my inability to turn away from this path of revenge. I told him of the nightmares of her dieing beneath me, of her body beautiful even in death. But finally I told him, and admitted to myself, the loneliness of it all, the loss, the isolation, the bitterness.

When I finally talked my story out, and we sat in silence with the sound of the waves hitting the side of the boat, and the wind creaking in the rigging, I heard him draw a long shuddering breath.

"You my friend have endured more then a hundred men should endure. Can you not let it go, can you not go back to your life?" his voice had a sound of pleading in it, of genuine conviction and caring.

"There is no life to go back to."

He shook his head, and then, as if coming to a grave decision he squared his shoulders and stood. "You stay here for a moment. I must fetch something. "He disappeared below decks for a few moments, and I was left alone with the night sounds, and the emptiness within myself.

He came back to his seat and he had a small box in his lap. He opened the lid and I saw the moonlight glint on something inside. He drew it out and handed it too me. It was a beautiful antique pistol. I looked at it in puzzlement.

"It is a gift I want you to have, hold it for a moment while I tell you a story. Be careful, it is loaded." His face was shadowed in the dark, but his voice was rich, and it struck me as odd how it sounded young while he was so very old. I laid the gun in its worn holster in my lap as he took up his tale.

"Once, a long time ago I was not so different from you. I had a wife, a beautiful woman whom I loved beyond all measure. But I lost her. I was not a good husband, and another man won her heart and she left me for him. I too swore revenge, as you have done, though I never did find her, I did find him.

I searched for many years. My life grew on and eventually I began to despair that I would never find him. Then I did. I did not know him at first, but eventually we came to be friends and it was he himself that would tell me he was the man I wanted. I went mad; I told him what he had done to me. I told him I would kill him. He said it was my right and that so it would be passed on, but first he begged me to hear his story too. I did not listen; I shot him with that pistol. He did not die immediately, and the pistol has but one shot, so I listened to him talk as he died, and what he did not have the breath to tell me I have learned the hard way in my long life."

"Now I tell you, like I stood before him, you stand before me. I am your wrongdoer, I am the one who took your love, and shattered your life. By rights my life is yours, and I will give it to you. But like he, I ask you to listen to the rest of my tale before you choose."

As his voice faded off and I sat in silence I thought for a moment, then I began to laugh. This man must be in his 80's or 90's, he could not possibly be the man my love ran away with. I shook my head. "You had me going for a minute there." I said still chuckling.

He sat very still, and I heard the lid creak on the box in his lap. The moon light glinted on something as he raised his hand out to me. It was a ring, a beautiful ring. I had looked for it for six months before I had asked her to marry me. It was her ring. There could be no two rings like it, for I had had it custom made for her. It was like seeing her before me again on that day in the sun in Spain when I had asked and she had laughed and said yes. It was like a shadow of all the joys now gone. I began to shake.

"Please, hear my story. Then choose. Please. You must be free to chose, to take my life or to spare it, only then will it end." He voice was full of pain and sorrow, but the pounding was back in my head. The pounding that had left me for a long time now was back. Back like the night in San Antonio when I had encountered his first victim. Back like when I first saw two glasses of wine on my nightstand.

Without thinking I drew the gun from its sheath. Without thought I aimed it at his heart and cocked the trigger. "Please" he said again, "Please listen." But the pounding in my head, like the drumming of fingernails, like the beating of a her heart before it stopped. Too much had been taken, too much I had lost along the way. Too much of me was empty.

The sound of the gunshot was surprisingly quiet here by the ocean, with the wind and the waves. He slid from his chair quietly, and died quickly, unlike the man he spoke of that he had gunned down. He only said one last thing to me. "I'm so sorry, so sorry, so it shall go on."

I did not understand then, though now near the end of my life I do. Now after carrying the curse for 50 years I know. He was not sorry for what he had done, he was sorry for what he was about to do to me. For when he died by my jealous, vengeful hand I took his curse on myself. The curse of Don Juan I have called it.

It can only be broken when one who has been wronged, comes to seek revenge, and with all the knowledge of who and what has wronged him, chooses not to kill. When I die in peace, the curse dies with me, and I am old now. This curse, it will not let me take my own life I have tried. If only I could have peace for a few more years, it would end. But this very day I saw him, the one who has been following me, like I followed the one I killed.