LaMancha
written by: Derrick R. Lafayette
With one eye open, Magnus, a commoner by morning and a charlatan by midday, journeyed upon a meandering path in a rickety four-wheeled carriage. The sinuous route led him into the heart of a verdant pasture encircled with lavender foxgloves three feet tall. Doubtful of his destination, Magnus reexamined his map.
He turned the parchment upside down, wondering where he had gone wrong. Of all the mistakes he’d made, like purchasing a cotte so small his navel was exposed, or his tight breeches made of degraded wool, he never thought of questioning the map’s validity. Or its origins, because he acquired the map from a man with a forked tongue in the smoky corner of a saloon. During the discussion, as he consumed libations, Magnus nearly drew his gun, believing himself bamboozled, until the map materialized in his hand and a buxom bartender refilled his ale. The forked tongue man exited in a cloud of periwinkle after coins were exchanged.
Coming to terms with the fact that he might be lost, Magnus tried looking for solutions with his left eye as a bead of sweat descended into his right eye, which was nearly swollen shut. He placed his last two ice cubes inside a ripped smock and gently applied pressure. He knew why it was inflamed, infected, and cursed. But the lie he concocted was…
“I simply awoke with the condition on the tenth anniversary of my marriage. The initial pain was overwhelming, and I never got the chance to see my soon-to-be ex-wife travel over the hill and out of my life,” Magnus said into the wind, holding the carriage’s reins firmly in his hand.
Half blind, he scanned for signs of life. All he found was an eerie silence as if the earth had fallen asleep from the sound of his voice.
“Perhaps it was south instead of north?” Magnus asked his horse, Alexander. “Either that, or Penelope also took my sense of direction when she broke my heart.”
Alexander neighed, tired of being an audience of one.
“We both know how this is going to end. I need to be prepared. You must believe your own lies to make them true. Haven’t I taught you that by now, my faithful steed? I know it’s been a rough couple of days. I don’t see anything. Not a hamlet, a road, animals, anything. Not even noise, and this pasture has no bugs, despite the sweltering heat.”
Alexander snorted.
“Let us take a rest, and I’ll look over this—”
A shooting pain on the right side of Magnus’s orbital bone struck mid-sentence. He took the ripped piece of smock off his face and decided to test the vision in his afflicted eye. Initially, his view was blurry, but shapes started to form. An outline became a silhouette that blossomed into a woman with golden knee-length hair dancing beneath a weeping willow. She was symmetrically perfect, twirling in an ivory gown with a black chemise.
“Penelope?” Magnus whispered to himself, struggling to keep his right eye open.
Suddenly, a man in a tunic and leggings emerged behind her. He wasn’t classically handsome, more a cheap imitation of male beauty. On his face was an expression of aloofness and beguilement, and he was as limber as a twig in a breeze. The man caught the woman’s rhythm. A courtship of dancing ensued. They spoke without words, interlocked fingers, and skipped deeper into the forest for privacy. Once out of view, the woman screamed.
“Alexander,” Magnus said, frustrated. “The vision hasn’t changed in fifty moons.”
Alexander nodded.
“I’m still seeing the past out of my right eye. The same flashback that I wish to bury. It’s quite depressing.” Magnus covered his right eye with the smock, welcoming the darkness. He reached into a satchel near his person, took some twine, and created a makeshift eye patch. After securing the eye patch on his face, he looked around, testing his depth perception.
“Good thing I brought a firearm instead of a bow and arrow. In four minutes, we move,” Magnus said to his horse.
***
Four minutes later, Kilch, a frail man with jaundiced eyes, no taller than five feet and weighing one hundred pounds, made his way into the dull grassland on the back of an exhausted donkey. He looked like a rat that had evolved into a man, with a patchy beard on one side of his face. Before Magnus could wave hello, the donkey collapsed to the ground, and Kilch collapsed with it, lying motionless in the dirt.
“People,” Magnus said to Alexander, as he leapt from his carriage.
Kilch was alive. The donkey was dead.
“To the victor go the spoils, as they say.” Magnus carefully reached into Kilch’s pocket. He felt parchment, maybe a map, perhaps money.
“Bad luck to steal from a dead man,” Kilch said with his eyes closed. “Generates negative karma.”
“You can’t be dead if we’re communicating.” Magnus retracted his hand and opened his palms, showing a sign of peace.
Kilch sat up, wiped dirt off his clothes, and glanced at his donkey.
“Maybe you’re dead, too. I know for sure that the donkey’s dead. He’s been dead for days. Surprised his body carried him this far—a loyal steed till the end. I’ll be sure to cook him slowly.”
Magnus glanced at Alexander and frowned at the idea of eating him, regardless of whether the horse was long-simmered.
“I can’t be dead, and you can’t be dead. Only the donkey is dead. Which also negates the entire comment about negative karma. I’m already cursed. I can’t be cursed twice on the same journey. That would be cruel. The gods aren’t that cruel.” Magnus said as heat increased in the atmosphere from bearable to taxing, proving that maybe the gods were, to some degree, unpleasant. “And we’re not bad people,” Magnus continued, using his hand as a canopy to block the sun and see Kilch clearly with his good eye. “You and I are fellows. Not evil or villainous by any means. Assuming we’re on the same serpentine path.”
Kilch raised his eyebrows, then squinted. “LaMancha?”
“Aye. LaMancha. I fear my map may be wrong, so I wanted to compare it to yours, not steal.”
“The map can’t be wrong if it led me to you, and us here.” Kilch looked at the wet cloth covering Magnus’s right eye. “I can see and smell what you want. How many silvers did you give the man with the devil’s tongue?”
“My last two. Honestly, her last two. Taken from my previous lover’s purse. I would’ve taken more, but that’s all she had. So desperate to leave me that she escaped in a violet nightgown I had purchased for her the day before.”
Weary of Magnus’s lies, Alexander sighed. Magnus kept on.
“And I’ll be honest, I’m not here to get revenge.”
“I gathered,” Kilch said, staring into Magnus’s eyes, as if he was falling in love with him.
Magnus rubbed his neck, unsure what he was reading between the lines.
“I can only hold one heart at a time, dear sir.”
Kilch steadied his bizarre gaze as iridescent particles the size of a fist coalesced above Magnus’s head. Swirling in concert, the atoms formed two words: repair impotence. Unbeknownst to Magnus, Kilch could see a person’s true intentions. All he needed was intense eye contact. When the spell was complete, Kilch cracked a half smile that would shatter a thousand mirrors.
“The name’s Kilch. I’m a donkey raiser from the old country. I’ve spent my entire life alone since the age of ten, after my family drowned together in a lake during a vacation I wasn’t invited to. Is there room in your cart?” he asked.
“A pity. I am Lucius Magnus Dio. But I prefer to be called Magnus,” he reached out his hand delicately, ensuring the dagger in his sleeve didn’t slide out and catch a reflection from the relentless sun. “I’m currently between jobs and women. And yes, there’s room on my carriage.”
“Let me ride with you for the rest of the way, and I’ll allow you to see my parchment. I imagine the treasure to be elusive. We need to work together to corner it.”
“Not a problem. My horse, Alexander, laughs at the elements. Why, he could even walk across molten lava if need be. Isn’t that right?” Magnus tried to touch Alexander’s chestnut-brown mane, but the horse dodged his hand. “Hmm. I missed. Depth perception is a little off, but three eyes are better than one.”
Kilch sat on the right side, while Magnus occupied the middle seat in the carriage. Eager to compare, Magnus reached into his satchel, retrieved his map, and used his index finger to illustrate how far he’d come from his home village to the vacant grassland.
“Over seven days of travel,” Magnus said proudly. “I did pass a quaint settlement with a Derringer gun range and moonshine that could make a mute man sing. However, the name slips my mind. Quakersville…Bethledine…”
Kilch snatched the map from Magnus’s hand while he was talking and turned it upside down, or from Magnus’s perception, right side up. “How are you reading this? There’s just a square labeled home, and broken black lines leading to an X.”
“Something in the air, I suppose.” Magnus pursed his lips. “Followed my gut. The directions felt right, until now.”
“Relying on instincts will get you killed. Or is this someone else’s map? How many dead men’s pockets have you stuck your hands into?” Kilch licked his lips. “And you’ll do it again. It wasn’t your first time. There was no hesitation.”
“I may be extraordinary, but I am no thief. Now,” Magnus cleared his throat. “Have at it. You’re in my carriage. Alexander is waiting.”
“Keep the horse still and sit on your thieving hands.”
Magnus took a deep breath and did as he was told. Kilch also took a deep breath. Then, he started to shorten his breaths more and more until he sounded like he was hyperventilating. With his yellow eyes bulging from his rat face, Kilch leaned forward, grabbed his hips, and dry heaved, like an animal with fur caught in its throat.
Magnus, shocked and disgusted, yearned to pinch his nostrils from the upcoming stench, but kept his hands under his buttocks.
“I have wormwood, very little, but—” Magnus tried to say.
Kilch, teary-eyed from effort, let out a sigh of relief when a soggy piece of rolled-up parchment dislodged from his throat. He lightly gripped it by the corner and pulled it out of his mouth, like a magician who’d swallowed a sword. Once free from his body, Kilch waved the saliva away and held it to the sky. The sun’s rays burned in the illustrations, as if, before the heat, the map was drawn with invisible ink. There were geographical details, a legend, scale indicators, and a grid. However, if Magnus placed his crude map above Kilch’s, the X would’ve been in the same spot.
“Fancy trick for a man riding a dead donkey. How much silver did you give the man with the forked tongue?” Magnus asked.
“You can stop sitting on your hands.”
“What of that other parchment hanging out from your pocket?”
“It’s a ruse,” Kilch said, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “I gave the man with the devil’s tongue my life’s worth, and the worth of every other man I’d stolen from. One hundred in total.”
“Ah, the plaintiff is the culprit. Penelope used to do that. Manipulate situations.”
“Who’s Penelope?”
Magnus ignored Kilch’s question and made a clicking noise with his mouth, indicating to Alexander that they should continue along the path.
“With one hundred silvers, you still need LaMancha?” Magnus asked.
“Aye. What I want can only come from the Dark Lord.”
***
The scenery transitioned into a peninsula as Alexander pulled the cart using Kilch’s directions. The edge of the landmass was shaped like half a horseshoe. In the distance, a shore materialized, and the dirt below their feet turned into sparkling sand like crystals painted brown, lining the ocean. On the horizon, across the water, was a mesa, and beyond that a desert.
“I would feel more comfortable on this side of the pond,” Magnus said, watching the waves crest and trough. “Unless the treasure is on the other side.”
Kilch, barely listening, observed a shadow on the ground, judging the time of day.
“Three more hours until nightfall,” he said. “Have you seen any animals?”
“Aside from us, no.”
“Once we capture it, He will find us.”
“Yes. I never want to see Him again. I mean, for the first time. According to the man with the devil’s tongue, He is dreadful.” Magnus said nervously.
“I wish I were Him.”
“If that ever happens by some twist of fate, I would inquire that you wear a hood.” Magnus skimmed Kilch’s head. “Something to cover that je ne sais quoi. But I digress. To each his own. How much further then?”
Kilch watched a line on the map bend toward the beach. A new X appeared. Much bolder and bigger than the previous one, as if the target was moving.
“Within two miles,” Kilch said.
“Amazing.”
They rode silently for ten minutes. Magnus started into the ocean, watching the shimmer on the water’s surface, until he felt Kilch side-eyeing him.
“You…” Kilch hesitated. “You’ve lost your manhood, it seems,” he said under his breath.
Magnus raised his right eyebrow, though the right eye was still covered with the smock. He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t think of anything clever. Instead, he cupped his testicles and shook them, as if on display for purchase.
“It’s all there,” Magnus said. “If that’s what you mean.”
“I believe you. Forgive me.” Kilch scratched the back of his neck, hoping the awkwardness would pass.
“Is that what you want from the Dark Lord, a bigger scytel? Kilch the Impaler. Kilch the Heart Surgeon,” Magnus said comically.
“We’re not supposed to say, according to the man with the devil’s tongue. It can’t be spoken into the ether.” Kilch eyed the map as they got closer to the X. “The Dark Lord will share his rewards with us. We can both get what we want.”
“And then part ways, amicably.”
“Of course,” Kilch said.
“Of course.”
Suddenly, a blast of frigid air rushed past the four-wheel carriage. Alexander froze. Magnus shivered. Kilch smiled.
“We’re here,” Kilch said.
Overhead, an array of clouds formed a symbol, blocking the sun. The strength of the wind turned into a gale. The carriage barely kept its wheels on the ground, and Magnus’s satchel flew straight into the ocean, though his makeshift eye patch remained on his face.
Magnus looked heavenward as the sky completed its ritual, creating a pentagram. In the center of the five-pointed star, a celestial light shone down on a sandflat. After six hundred and sixty-six seconds, the clouds departed. The weather returned to normalcy. Fifty feet from the carriage was a LaMancha goat, the color of rusted steel. The ear pinnae on the side of the goat’s head were very short. Near the back of its jaw, a wattle showed.
Kilch’s map started to burn his fingertips. When the embers grew, he threw his map onto the sand, thankful it wasn’t still in his gullet. The directions were no longer needed, and the LaMancha stared at both men, waiting.
“Magnus,” Kilch said, edging toward the center of the carriage seat. “Do you remember everything the man with the devil’s tongue said?”
“The caveat?”
“We can call it that.” Kilch slowly put his hand in his pocket.
“I guess it’s time lay aside the sham. I had one more good lie to—”
Before Magnus could finish his statement, Kilch pulled out a handleless blade and swiped at Magnus’s neck. Both men heard the steel cut the air. Magnus dodged the attack by falling backward from the carriage onto the sand. He stood up as Kilch jumped onto the shore.
“To be fair, the one-eyed man should win,” Magnus said, trying to get his balance in the sand. “I am worser than you—a cripple.”
“Look at my face. There’s no fairness in this world. At least you have a horse.”
“Tell me, what did you desire the first time?” Magnus asked as he shook his sleeve so his concealed dagger could fall into his hand.
“We’re not supposed to say!”
A knife fight ensued, and the LaMancha spectated. Sand flew from the men’s feet as they skidded in circles, trying to dodge the other’s blade. Alexander stood still, watching his owner lose his advantage. Kilch’s blade was longer, and although Magnus managed to slice a line across Kilch’s cheek, he also took a deep puncture in the stomach.
Magnus started coughing up blood.
“You lost because you trusted me,” Kilch said, feeling his wounded cheek.
“Kilch the Impaler, indeed.” Magnus shook his other sleeve, a small Derringer ejected.
He shot the gun three times, hitting Kilch once in the leg and twice in the upper chest before stepping backward into an odd mix of mud and water. Before Magnus could get his legs to cooperate, he collapsed forward from injury. Postured on all fours, he began to slowly descend into quicksand.
“Alexander,” Magnus said out of breath. “My loyal steed. Come, use your strong teeth, bite my collar, and pull me out. Tear some skin if you need to but do it hastily. The man before you won’t live longer than thirty minutes. I delivered a deathblow.”
Alexander didn’t respond, his mane standing on edge, staring at the goat.
“Horse, assist me, please!”
LaMancha made eye contact with Alexander—a conversation through glances. The horse turned around and bucked back toward the grassland. Kilch burst into a strained laughter that sounded like a wheeze caught in a chuckle.
“There is no fairness,” Kilch said, breathing slowly. “I’ll tell you now. I’ll tell you what I got the first time.”
Magnus’s body sank further into the quicksand. He straightened his neck to watch Kilch bleed out on the shore.
“Whenever you’re ready, please.”
“I wanted to read minds. When I got the gift, all I could see were goals. Yours said, repair impotence.”
Magnus cracked a smile. “A faulty gift, my friend. Lying to yourself really works. I made myself believe that, backed by another lie that my wife had abandoned me on our tenth anniversary. A ruse, or a tool, much like your fake map. However, it worked on some widows that I bedded along the way. So many of them wanted to repair my loins, and they tried and tried and tried. Truthfully, the woman, Penelope, was the person I met on my first journey. The person I sacrificed to the Dark Lord in return for visions of the future from my right eye.”
“What do you see out of it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Magnus said. “Soon, I’ll be seeing nothing. Or fire and brimstone. Whichever comes first.”
Kilch turned to his side, away from Magnus.
“Save me a seat at the table,” he said over his shoulder, before quieting.
Inches away from his face being submerged in the quicksand, Magnus watched the LaMancha goat approach Kilch’s now-dead body. The animal went from a quadruped to bipedal. Long, twisted black horns, thick like wrought iron, protruded from its head. Its eyes merged into one creating a pupil shaped like a diamond the color of crimson over the brim of its nose. Magnus said his last words before descending below ground level.
“He has arrived.”
The End
- LaMancha - September 14, 2025
- Remind Me Again Why I Love You - March 6, 2025
