Isabela "Dread" Maria Rivera del Flores
Here is a little something I wrote as “background” to introduce my Deadlands Huckster/Harrowed character. Partially inspired by this awesome artwork from Camila Vielmond.
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Black. Nothing but a colossal, infinite, sea of black stretching to the edges of consciousness. For a second, just for one short little second, she wonders if she died. Then she remembers all the bullshit about the bright, warm light embracing you at the end of the tunnel. So, either she got robbed (how ironic would it be, right?) of her entirely deserved place in paradise, or she isn't quite resting in peace yet. Not a single thread of light wrapping around her ghostly dead woman limbs in sight. Hell, she could not even see or feel a ghostly dead woman limb around! If she was destined to end up rotting in that aforementioned place, demons and all those other sorts of devils were going to face a serious “lack-of-torturable-material” issue. If death really was this dull, the whole thing definitely got waaaay too hyped up. What was all this fuss about? Who would have known death could be so... lifeless? Ah! Get it? At least she didn't lose her...
Wait. Just here? What was that? There was... something. Not really something and definitely not divine light or anything. She isn't sure what, honestly. Pain maybe? Nah, not really, more like a... tickle? A sensation. Faint, barely even there, a trickle really.
Not nothing. And that's everything. She holds onto it, focuses on it, because this is quite literally her whole world right now and tries to move. Nothing. She tries again. Nothing. But there, she feels something she is sure of it and she isn't the kind to give up easily – not that she has much choice right now anyway. So, she tries. Again.
And this time she jolts awake. Suddenly. Her whole body makes itself remembered and she bolts upward, trying to get into a sitting position just to bounce back to lying down at the intensity of the impact, when her face meets a cold, wooden surface with a dull “bonk”.
“¡Joder! ¡Pero qué mierda!”
Now that was definitely something, she thinks as she keeps swearing. Pain. And not just her face. Spreading throughout her body, radiating to the very end of her fingertips. Her ragged breath shaking unpleasantly her corpse as she pushes onto her string of profanities. At that point she isn't even cussing out of pain or even rage any more, no. If anything, she welcomes fully the ache, she gladly embraces the agony. It's something. And really, she would take anything over nothing. No, she keeps spouting out curses just to fill the emptiness. Because even though she is feeling, now, she still can't perceive anything else than darkness. A new one, though.
This one isn't as vast or as crushing as the one before. No, this one... this one is small and quiet. Cramped. Suffocating, even. She needs to fill it. To not be stuck, alone, with nothing. She starts to calm down, just a little bit, and raises a hand. She feels, under her numbed fingertips, the rugged surface of wood. She scratches it just a bit, at first. Then she starts pushing and feels the overwhelming weight resting on it.
It's at this moment that she starts to realize. It begins softly, modestly, like all dreadful things. Just a meager thought. All gaunt and lean, made of grim lines and fearful strokes. Barely a whisper, really. She doesn't think about it, she refuses to think about it, she can't think about it. Not if she wants to get out of this hole. Instead she channels all the pain and all the rage. All the fear and all the gloom and, instead, she punches. The wood welcomes her fist and her bones with the sickening crack. But she feels it – she feels, now! – creaking against her knuckles. So she braces herself and punches again. And again. Fiercely. And again. Desperately. And again. Furiously. And again. Frantically. And again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. When the wood finally gives in and breaks, she already lost the count and starts swimming wildly through the dirt, the rot and her grief. She emerges finally, in the dead of the night and suddenly there is no nothingness any more. There is everything, there is the hooting of the birds; and the light of the moon; and the taste of blight, of dust; and the rustling of the wind; and the grunting of some animals; and the whispers of the leaves; and the dampness of loneliness; and the smell of decay; and the groan of the wood.
There is everything and it's too much. Way too much. Everything hurts. Breathing hurts and she doesn't like it. She turns around and her memory finally jumps start and floods her mind like a broken dam. The drinks. The smoke. The cards. William. Fucking William “Golden Fingers” and his fucking boys and his fucking habit to be a fucking sore fucking loser.
Yeah, alright, maybe she had herself a bit of a habit of acquainting herself with the rules and being a tad too friendly with them. Maybe even bending them on the occasion. Because if anything, aren't games all about good ol' fun after all?
But god did she ever see someone getting as mad as this William freaking “Golden Fingers” and his boys about losing some – okay, alright, maybe a lot – of money to her. Dragging her in the streets and pulling out quite literally the big guns.
Yeah, hell, no. Now she could be pretty sure that it was unprecedented.
She lets out a sigh.
“La puta madre...”
Breathing hurt. She doesn't like it. “Living things breathe”, a tiny part of her mind chides. But she had woken up in a grave, and graves were for dead things.
She pats her side, pulls out her tobacco and starts rolling herself a cig as her eyes raise up to the shitty wooden cross and her epitaph. It soberly states:
“Here lies Isabella “Dread” Deflore.
May the shameful end she met prevent her from inflicting this rotten feeling to any more victims.”
Ah. Those fuckers didn't even put her full name and somehow still managed to butcher the spelling. She shakes her head, takes a puff of smoke and closes her eyelids taking the time to just enjoy... everything.
Breathing still hurts. And living things breathe, she ponders, while plunging three fingers in the three bullets holes that are now adorning her chest.
Well, she concludes as a few more useless whiffs of oxygen course through her dead lungs, she wasn't quite ready to give up on breathing yet.