The Curse of Oswaldo Buffay
In his sleep, Oswaldo was restless. He clutched at the edges of his bed, a block of the quilted foam in each hand as if to prevent himself from falling off the side. His eyes were half-open, but they perceived nothing. His body twitched incessantly, and the intermittent groans that escaped his tightly-shut mouth could only be described as guttural. Then, without warning, a kind of spirited force washed over him, and his eyes were forced shut — as was he, in the seemingly inescapable world of a nightmare.
He was sitting with his back against a corner, having nowhere to run. But who did he have to run away from? He looked about himself and tried to peer through the dark. There was the sound of water right in front of him as if the flowing, viscous carpet of darkness could be a cistern. Which it was, as he soon realized in the flash of light that illuminated the whole place for an instant, except, it wasn’t water.
It’s blood!
His eyes were bleached by the sudden light so that the darkness now was as solid as a shroud hanging over his face. But a faint red light began to spread around him insidiously, accentuating the bloody cistern to the point it seemed more flesh than blood. On the other side of it, he could see the figure of a woman.
“In the halls of immortal desires, cursed be thee unto death.” Her voice wafted through the cold, sullen air almost effortlessly. Oswaldo felt the tightening clasp of a hand around his heart, which managed to beat against it every second or two. He could have sworn she didn’t move her jaws when she spoke, had she not drawn down the foot-length cascade of her hair like a veil over her face.
“The light of my demonic fire rids you of your breath!” Oswaldo shuddered. The voice was coming from the back of her mouth, distorted by a gurgling sound that might have been caused by the presence of a liquid in her throat, like phlegm. Or, perhaps, blood.
“Not by fire will you suffer . . .” She began to speak faster, without pause, in a continuous flow. Her voice became louder, and surprisingly even more raspy. He was only able to understand a part of what she was saying. But he still listened unmoved like a stone.
“…with the power in me, I curse that you will not wake up from your sleep…” — Oswaldo felt himself shivering all over — “…nothing can take the curse away . . . but for the kiss of a loved one . . .”
The words were only echoes from a distant place as the disconsolate voice died off abruptly. Oswaldo clasped his hands together and tried to hold his body steady, which fluttered like a leaf in the wake of a relentless storm. The woman walked forward slowly, with feet that hardly made a ripple, and bent down at the edge of the cistern. She cupped her hands and scooped up as much of the thick, rotten-black blood as she could, and lapped up her drink like a werewolf whose throat had gone dry from howling for too long.
When Oswaldo Buffay woke up in his shabby studio apartment, he was already sitting up on his bed. For the first few moments, he had no idea what was happening. Then it hit him, as he regained clarity with every wave of his surging adrenaline. But even when he realized it was all a nightmare, for some reason he couldn’t be sure if he could relax now, feel safe, and go back to sleep again.
He looked around with subsiding terror, dazed and disoriented. In the stark, unfiltered light of the full-moon spilling in through the skylight window set at an oblique angle above his bed, he noticed a sheet of paper lying on the table by his side.
He switched on the lamp, picked it up, and went through its contents. It was a poem, signed at the end by nothing more than a drop of blood. As he began to read it, the horror of his nightmare came crashing back; word-for-word, it was what the woman from his dream had yelled at him:
In the halls of immortal desires,
Cursed be thee unto death;
The light of my demonic fires
Rids you of your breath!
Not by fire will you suffer,
Nor by blood will you pay;
But the bonds of my curse are tougher
Than the strongest wills are today.
O with the power in me, I curse
That you will not wake up from your sleep —
If such sleep is conceived to coerce
The passage of the dark whence Satan and I leap.
No earthly thing can take the curse away,
But for the kiss of a loved one;
Which irrevocably transfers it one-way
At the hour when a day is done.
Oswaldo felt like he had woken up in a world that was estranged from the reality in which he went to sleep a normal man. In a fit of delirium, he dressed up quickly, took his hat, and stepped out into the midnight air — which was surprisingly warm for an iron-gray October sky.
He squinted into the paper again in the moonlight as he walked alone in a completely deserted street. No matter how many times he read it, he couldn’t bring himself to make any sense of it, without, of course, believing that he was now . . . cursed? A gust of the easterly wind caught his hair, which he had let to fall in unkempt strands under his hat. His overcoat fluttered, as the paper in his hand tried to wriggle its way out of his hold. For a second, that was what Oswaldo wanted to do, to let it drift away into the night.
“With the power in me, I curse that you will not wake up from your sleep,” he read under his breath, “if such sleep is conceived to coerce the passage of the dark whence Satan and I leap.”
So I can’t ever sleep during the nights, then? he thought, wondering if he was going crazy. The drop of blood at the bottom of the paper gleamed in the moonlight — slick like oil — as if it was freshly bled. He touched it with the tip of his finger, and when he turned his hand to see, his finger was somehow still dry. His heart was jolted by a newfound fear, which a small part of him wondered might be because he subconsciously expected it to happen.
Oh, God, why me?
The thought of never waking up from sleep was so horrifying to him that he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it. Who was the woman, anyway, the witch? Who was supposed to have sicced her on him? He walked aimlessly around till morning, and then found his way to Pirouette, the shopping mall where he worked. He oversaw the majority of the aisles on the second floor. He hated working there, but it paid him good for having to do literally nothing.
“What? I thought you were pretty satisfied with your job, Oz,” his supervisor, a burly man of forty, said with evident surprise.
“I am sick.”
“Sick? What happened?”
“No, I’m sick of the job. And it’s Oswaldo,” he said, did half a pirouette himself as he turned and went home jobless.
He slept most of that day, but when he woke up, he started calling favors from old friends whose numbers he had to dig up from his address book. Some of them couldn’t even remember who he was, but others at least pretended to be glad that he called. Yes, anything at all, absolutely no problem. Yes, I will try my best. Night shifts only? Okay, I’ll get back to you. Take care now, old pal.
For about half a month, he did nothing but sleep during the day, and keep vigil for demons during the night. At times, he lay on his back and named the few stars that he could see through the skylight window. Amelie, he named the biggest of the lot and even started talking to it during his endless pursuits of daybreak.
At one point during a moonless night, immured in the gloom, he sat writhing on a chair. His eyes were weighted by their lack of sleep, listless like wilted flowers. One second — just one — of his mind losing control was all it took. His eyes clamped shut. The next thing he knew, he was drowning in blood — in the cistern from his dream. The blood was much thicker than he could have ever thought. It clogged his mouth and nose, and almost blinded his eyes.
Something pulled at him from below. Something hungry, Oswaldo could tell, because there was no need for him to be clawed at, not when he was drowning anyway. Perhaps the demons are fighting among themselves, for the biggest chunk of meat. The witch was standing by the cistern, he noticed during his convulsive attempts at swimming. Her eyes, red with expectations. She was waiting for him to be torn apart and digested, but the blood — that was for her.
And then something really funny happened.
In the blink of an eye, Oswaldo was jerked and spewed back to his world. He was mid-air when he realized this, as he fell down from his chair with a thud.
He switched on the lights and looked at himself in the mirror. He was still dry. His feet hurt, but there were no zigzag teeth marks of some otherworldly demon as he had feared. When he realized what had happened, he understood how close to death he had been. The fall from the chair had broken his sleep.
Right in the nick of time, too.
Just about the time he had eaten through most of his savings, one of his friends called back. There was a job for a night guard in a mansion. The housekeeper, his friend told him, was a girl he knew from high school. “The pay’s not extraordinary, but it’s not a tough job. All you have to do is man the gates and not sleep through the night.” Oswaldo would have said something but bit his tongue.
The gates in question were huge, to say the least. They were painted a stately gold, with interventions of black where there were either arcs of flowery design, or thick ribs at the borders for reinforcement. The hinges were automatic and worked on a motor, and the gates themselves swung along tracks paved out of metal, with wheels that never made a sound. The shack by the gates was his post, where he was entrusted with the authority of pressing a button to either open or close the gates. Among other things.
His employer was a man of about sixty, with sparse, gray hair, and a waning back that by default made him appear helpless and submissive. His wife was a short and plump woman whose vivid color made claims of a solid and healthy future that the numerous wrinkles lining her body instantly debunked. The resident housekeeper, however, was a mystery. She never spoke, although she did most of the chores around the house. Her rich, auburn hair, dark eyes, and hyperbolic hips fell awkwardly out-of-place with being just the caretaker of an old couple.
“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” Oswaldo asked one evening, out of curiosity. She shot a passing glance at him, holding a broom in one hand, some kind of an expression working around the rims of her eyes. It was not anger or confusion, nor annoyance. Oswaldo swiftly made an effort to apologize, but she was already gone.
His job was pretty simple. Punch-in time was 7 in the evening. He then bellowed a quick greeting to Mr. McKenzie, before retreating to his shack. The cabin was comfortable enough with a steel chair and ample legroom, so he read a book or played games on his phone for a while until his eyes became tired. And then he stretched and lazily walked around the house, sometimes barefoot, on the soft grass of the lawns, which was always kept perfectly manicured. By around 10 pm, the housekeeper turned off all the lights, and she retired to the bedroom on the second floor. Mr. McKenzie found it unnecessary to have to climb a flight of stairs every night to go to sleep, so he and his wife used the room on the first floor.
Oswaldo brought with him a small, leather carryall every day. It had a thermos full of coffee, his dinner (mostly sandwiches), and a flashlight. When he felt really sleepy, the caffeine helped pulse some life into him. But he soon chanced upon certain pills, which, he was told, would fire up his nerves when his spirits were down. The pills were called “Provigil”, and he began to take 20 milligrams every night. It heightened his senses invariably, rousing him to a batlike state of alert, making sleep feel like a faraway, alien thing.
When he was walking around the house one night, he saw the housekeeper standing in her balcony, eyes lifted towards the sky. He had crept up on her like a cat, walking silently on his feet. For a moment, he couldn’t help but relish being able to take a good look at her in her almost transparent nightgown. The moonlight shone through it, revealing more than he could have ever dreamed. And suddenly, she dropped her gaze down, to where he was standing. He began to shuffle slowly, then turned and picked his way back to the shack.
He sat down and turned on the light. There was something he knew needed to be said, but couldn’t figure out what. She was, without doubt, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. But still, he felt afraid to let his emotions loose. No earthly thing can take the curse away, he recalled. But for the kiss of a loved one, which irrevocably transfers it one-way —
“Hey.”
Oswaldo turned suspiciously. And there she was, the housekeeper, still in her nightgown. He stood up from his chair, baffled. She seemed a different person, her face glowing with what could pass for a friendly smile.
“Look, I didn’t mean to — ”
“I am sorry for brushing you off the other day. I was pretty tired,” she said.
“No, it’s alright.” Up close, she was so intimidating Oswaldo couldn’t find words to speak. He stole a quick glance at his watch — the time was 11:53 pm.
“So, how do you like the job?”
“I guess I like it enough. What about you?”
She looked straight into his eyes while she answered, “Yes, I do. There’s really not much work. And besides, I could rest whenever I want. My room is something of a beauty. I slept a lot this afternoon, see? That is why I can’t go to sleep now.” A gust of wind found its way into the shack and raised her gown to that level above her knees, tipping the tone of their conversation to a deeper and more sensual note. Oswaldo coughed twice to distract himself.
“Anyway,” Oswaldo began, “don’t you think it’s too late to — ”
She reached towards him and put an arm around his neck. “You know, I find you really attractive.” She pulled him in an embrace, and before he could say anything, she kissed him on his lips. Although he was shocked, he could think of nothing other than what the witch had told him:
No earthly thing can take the curse away,
But for the kiss of a loved one;
Which irrevocably transfers it one-way
At the hour when a day is done.
If he happened to be kissing her at exactly the end of the day — 12 am — he knew he would give her the curse, just like that, and it would be irrevocable. He wriggled his arm over her shoulders and looked at his watch; three minutes until midnight.
But she wouldn’t let go. She was already caressing him, while their mouths were locked in a perfect kiss. Instinctively, Oswaldo cupped his hands around her face and pulled her closer, kissing even harder. He knew he shouldn’t be doing it, but he couldn’t pull himself away. They seemed to have gone into a trance, a state of complete ignorance of the world, two bodies morphed into one. Nothing could distract them until his watch chimed at the end of the hour.
Oswaldo pulled away from her. He looked at her perfectly symmetrical face with a pang of regret. It was done. And as if she knew of it herself, she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks in a constant stream.
Between her sobs, she said, “I am sorry! I am sorry!”
“What do you have to be sorry about? You did not do anything wrong, I assure you.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said, rubbing her eyes. She then buried her face in her hands and slightly bowed down as if in embarrassment. Oswaldo allowed her some time to compose herself.
“Tell me, what is it about?”
“I shouldn’t have done this. And now — now, I don’t know what to do. Did I do it deliberately? I don’t know! You want to know what stupid, ugly, stinking truth I have? Well, here it is . . . When I kissed you, I . . .” She trailed off, a sudden concern rising in her eyes. “Now listen, all of this might sound crazy, but it’s the truth. When I kissed you, you became cursed. Does it sound crazy? Do I look like I am crazy? Hear me out! There is this witch who cursed me — told me if I ever slept during the nights, I’d never wake up! The only way I could get rid of the curse was to kiss someone in love, exactly at midnight. Yes . . . you heard that right. And now, you can’t ever get rid of it, because that’s just how it works.”
Oswaldo listened with deathly silence, his mouth a gaping hole on his face. She continued, “But when I kissed you, I couldn’t pull myself away. It was like we were bonded. Didn’t you feel it? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s how I know the curse has been passed on. But I am sorry — ” Oswaldo laid a finger on her lips. He kissed her again, this time without thinking twice. He then exited the shack and beckoned her outside.
He sprawled himself across the soft grass, its Spring-sharpened blades tickling all over his back. She followed suit, nestling herself comfortably close to him.
“I think it’s about time we were properly introduced,” he said. “I am Oswaldo.”
“My name is Madonna.”
Oswaldo looked at the brightly-lit sky with a sense of awe. It was a tapestry of white dots, like grains of celestial sugar strewn all over. He wouldn’t need Amelie anymore. In the half-darkness, he managed a smile, although the arc of his emotions the past ten minutes or so had turned his skin to a white pallor.
“Madonna,” he said, “I have really bad news for us both.”
