The Vinegar Tasters
B. Zaragoza
THE VINEGAR TASTERS
Copyright © 2013 B. Zaragoza
ISBN: 978-0-9835099-9-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to events as well as actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Melissa Muldoon
Published By
P.O. Box 211322
Chula Vista, CA 91921
MuRaList: You’re hot, baby. Soooo hot. I want you. Oh yeah. Take those brushes, that red paint, drag ‘em, slip ‘em down my pants.
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MuRaList: Are you there?
FEEL_gd: Yes. I’m here.
MuRaList: What’s the matter?
FEEL_gd: I don’t want to play anymore.
MuRaList: Okay. You seem different today.
FEEL_gd: Different how?
MuRaList: I’m not sure.
FEEL_gd: Can I tell you something?
MuRaList: Sure.
FEEL_gd: There’s a dead boy in my closet.
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FEEL_gd: Hello?
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MuRaList: How did he get there?
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FEEL_gd: I killed him.
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MuRaList: Who are you?
FEEL_gd: Female, black hair, brown eyes.
MuRaList: You’re telling me what’s on your profile.
FEEL_gd: Yes.
MuRaList: That could be a lie.
FEEL_gd: You thought I was telling the truth yesterday.
MuRaList: Yesterday you weren’t claiming to have killed someone in your closet.
FEEL_gd: Do you feel scared?
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MuRaList: I have to go.
FEEL_gd: Wait! I want you to stay. Today… I cried for the first time.
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FEEL_gd: Are you still there?
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MuRaList: What’s your real name?
FEEL_gd: I’m Rachel.
MuRaList: What city do you live in?
FEEL_gd: Does it matter?
MuRaList: It matters if I’m going to call the police.
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FEEL_gd: Do you care about me?
MuRaList: What?
FEEL_gd: Yesterday you said you wanted to get inside of me.
MuRaList: Yes, but we were having, well, sex.
FEEL_gd: It meant nothing more to you?
MuRaList: Is there a dead boy in your closet or not?
FEEL_gd:. Yes, he’s here. And I can prove it. Send me your address and I’ll email a picture of the corpse.
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FEEL_gd: I can feel you gulping.
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FEEL_gd: Your fingers are trembling against the keyboard.
MuRaList: Stop it.
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FEEL_gd: You said you were a muralist. Was that a lie?
MuRaList: No. It’s true.
FEEL_gd: What’s your favorite color?
MuRaList: I want you to tell me
FEEL_gd: I like red. Red speckles on the walls.
MuRaList: Your profile says that you’re on United States territory.
FEEL_gd: We would like pictures on the walls here. In my city there is very little color.
MuRaList: What city is that?
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FEEL_gd: I’ll attach a .jpg or .bmp file. What’s your email address?
MuRaList: I’m logging off now.
FEEL_gd: Okay. Nice talking to you, Hidalgo Rivera, hospital chaplain at Mass General in Boston.
MuRaList: Jesus! Did I say all that yesterday?
FEEL_gd: Do hospital chaplains usually have Internet sex in the middle of the day?
MuRaList: I’m at lunch.
FEEL_gd: I see. Mr. Hidalgo Rivera in Boston is at lunch.
MuRaList: Stop writing my full name in the chat box.
FEEL_gd: Ah yes. The chat box. The box that, if for example, the police come and take me to jail, will be saved for them to read.
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FEEL_gd: I can hear the tat-tat-tatter of your fingers just above the keyboard.
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FEEL_gd: Won’t you tell me the truth?
MuRaList: I have! Christ!
FEEL_gd: I mean the truth about if you’re scared.
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FEEL_gd: You won’t answer?
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FEEL_gd: But you’re still here.
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FEEL_gd: Give me your email address.
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MuRaList: This isn’t happening. This isn’t real.
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FEEL_gd: Yesterday…
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FEEL_gd: I couldn’t feel anything. Not sadness, not joy, not anger, not fear. But he cured my condition.
MuRaList: Who did?
FEEL_gd: The corpse in my closet. After it was all over, I cried.
MuRaList: Give me your location.
FEEL_gd: I listened to you yesterday, didn’t I?
MuRaList: A telephone number.
FEEL_gd: I made you feel good yesterday.
MuRaList: What’s your real name?
FEEL_gd: Why won’t you let me send you a picture?
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MuRaList: Why are you pressing this?
FEEL_gd: Because I want someone to see inside of me.
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MuRaList: I can’t see you. Not here. Not on-line.
FEEL_gd: Yesterday you said you saw inside of me.
MuRaList: That’s true.
FEEL_gd: Did you mean it?
MuRaList: I felt like you understood all my needs.
FEEL_gd: Do you still think I understand you?
MuRaList: I’m a hospital chaplain. I have a moral obligation to report you if you killed somebody.
FEEL_gd: You sound like the perfect holy man.
MuRaList: I’m not playing games here.
FEEL_gd: Of course you’re not, Mr. Hidalgo Rivera, the hospital chaplain.
MuRaList: I said stop writing my real name into the chat box!
FEEL_gd: Why? The police will know that you weren’t involved. You were just someone playing on the Internet very far away.
MuRaList: How far away?
FEEL_gd: Let me send you a picture.
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FEEL_gd: You have something to loose. It’s the only reason why you haven’t disappeared yet.
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MuRaList: yes
FEEL_gd: And if you get my location and report me, you’ll be able to talk to the police, go to my house, find the computer, erase the chat box.
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FEEL_gd: I can hear the strategies going through your head.
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FEEL_gd: It’s all about you, isn’t it?
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FEEL_gd: Except…
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FEEL_gd: Who looses from the game we’re playing?
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MuRaList: My wife.
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FEEL_gd: I see.
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FEEL_gd: Should I be jealous?
MuRaList: I’m asking one more time. What’s your location?
FEEL_gd: You’ll have to tell her.
MuRaList: Turn on the video. I want to see you.
FEEL_gd: Yesterday you said it was better only in chat.
MuRaList: I want to identify you.
FEEL_gd: But what if
I’m pretty? How will your wife feel?
MuRaList: She’s none of your business!
FEEL_gd: Give me your email.
MuRaList: You sick bitch! GIVE ME YOUR LOCATION!
FEEL_gd: Well, hoorah.
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MuRaList: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
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FEEL_gd: Maybe you’re telling the truth. Maybe I’m just this foul.
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MuRaList: Yesterday…
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MuRaList: When we were…
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MuRaList: I felt you got me.
FEEL_gd: Got you?
MuRaList: Understood me. Rachel, I thought I was falling in love with you.
FEEL_gd: You can’t say that.
MuRaList: I said it and I meant it. I mean it now too. I care about you.
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FEEL_gd: Even with a wife?
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MuRaList: I don’t want to call the police. I just want to see you. To feel you in the dark.
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MuRaList: Are you there?
FEEL_gd: I’m thinking.
MuRaList: Tell me.
FEEL_gd: I want something else now.
MuRaList: Name it, baby.
FEEL_gd: Could you, Hidalgo, imagine a life that’s good for someone else?
MuRaList: For you, anything.
FEEL_gd: You don’t understand me.
MuRaList: I get it. I get YOU.
FEEL_gd: Do you? Because what I mean to say is could you spend a moment imagining yourself wearing an abaya?
MuRaList: An abaya?
FEEL_gd: You’d only have to imagine it.
MuRaList: What does this have to do
FEEL_gd: Could you imagine men in masks coming into your city, then into your home and taking your father away?
MuRaList: I’m feeling
FEEL_gd: Could you wonder how it would be to live in an abandoned city with no lights, no water, no family? Only your brother? And then you are taken in by people who destroyed your life?
MuRaList: Who would destroy
FEEL_gd: You are taken into a block where you sit everyday and can only watch a computer while living inside a wire fence.
MuRaList: Where would
FEEL_gd: What I ask, Hidalgo, is have you ever wondered outside of yourself?
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FEEL_gd: Six hours before I created a profile here
MuRaList: It’s true, Rachel.
FEEL_gd: My brother committed suicide.
MuRaList: I’m scared
FEEL_gd: It was a sunny afternoon. He took one of the American machine guns and turned it on his own belly.
MuRaList: I’m not sure what kind of mess
FEEL_gd: They told me to stay in my room.
MuRaList: And my wife
FEEL_gd: He was crumpled in the closet. Bits of his skull shattered into the wall. It looked like a painting. Red speckles everywhere.
MuRaList: Christ
FEEL_gd: I stared at the wall for a long time. Like the wall wanted to say something.
MuRaList: I can’t do this
FEEL_gd: Then I came to this computer and I had sex with you… It was my first time.
MuRaList: Your first, wait, how old are
FEEL_gd: I found you. A muralist. My brother remained in the wall. The world stood still. Today, tomorrow, two hours, five days. Everything was quiet. Everything was numb. Then the soldiers came.
MuRaList: But you had tears.
FEEL_gd: Yes, that was today. After I died.
MuRaList: You died? You can’t be
FEEL_gd: Life stopped. But outside the window, I look now and see how they walk along the wire. They laugh. They talk. They eat apples. For them, everything keeps going.
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MuRaList: You sound angry, Rachel.
FEEL_gd: Something should have happened.
MuRaList: Like lightening. A storm.
FEEL_gd: Yes.
MuRaList: And now you want to send me a picture of the corpse.
FEEL_gd: I want your life to stop.
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MuRaList: It already has.
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MuRaList:
[email protected] |
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****** FEEL_gd signed-off*****
TO: “Hidalgo Rivera”
[email protected] FROM: “LCpl Swift Badok”
[email protected] SUBJECT: [No subject]
I’m in Baqubah. Her name was Rachel and her brother committed suicide yesterday. Today, she found a gun too. She is the dead girl by the window. And I’m the photographer with the tears.
***** Please wait while we scan the .jpeg file *********
About The Author:
B. Zaragoza is a writer living in San Diego, California.
Also by this author, check out the fast-paced thriller novel, THE LISTENER’S LABYRINTH.
What Others Are Saying:
IndieReader: “THE LISTENER’S LABYRINTH is an enjoyable, fast-paced novel that will keep lovers of the genre and readers who might not be so keen on military stories wanting to read on. Well worth giving it a try.”
“Fun, fast action, ran it by my wife who then cursed me for giving it to her, she stayed up reading "just 1/2 hour" in the evening and ended up finishing in 3 nights. (No ... not a 1-1/2 hour book)”
“This tale has a little of everything; sex, intrigue, military, international affairs, compelling relationships, blood & gore, tenderness, gripping plot, and picturesque settings.”
Also, check out other published works by Merchant’s Press.