Hell is empty, all the devils are here - William Shakespeare

"Your turn."

The room was cluttered with books and sheet paper, the miscellaneous guitar string, attempts at notes on bullfighting techniques. An old cape was thrown on a corner chair, his bed was shoved into one corner, unmade. A vase sat on the dresser full of deep red roses. Tacked to the wall in odd places were posters for Manolo's bullfight and old ones for members of his family passed.

In the middle of the room Manolo and María were facing each other, between them was a cup and a bottle of tequila. Manolo was staring intently at her, leaned forward hands pressed together and positioned beneath his nose like a prayer.

"You…" he thought. "Have never been dancing."

"Drink."

"Ay, no, no, mentiroso,," he said. But she looked triumphant, leaning back onto her palms and tipping her head. "When did you go dancing in a convent?"

He poured his penance into the cup and threw it into his mouth. It was tangy as before, but progressively less numbing now on his third go. He gave a shudder and smacked his lips together.

"Once a year we had a dinner and service with the boy's school across the city. After all the sisters had gone to sleep we'd sneak out together," she said with a quirked eyebrow and she poorly suppressed a giggle when Manolo looked like a devastated puppy.

She leaned forward and grabbed his wrists.

"Relax, Manolo. I was thirteen and most of those boys ended up priests," she said. "And besides, it's not like you haven't had your share."

"What did Joaquín tell you?"

"Enough that I was mildly jealous," she said. "Was. Perhaps still am. A little. Really Manolo, Rosaria Saenz?"

"I'm going to kill Joaquín."

"I'm kidding Manolo. Mostly."

She leaned forward and gave his collar a tug to meet her in the middle. She kissed him softly but with purpose, even after his neck began to complain from the strain and angle. He wouldn't pull away even with a knife to his throat.

"You taste like tequila," she murmured against his lips.

"I keep losing."

"I guess I just know you better than you know me."

"We should change that."

And she leaned forward again. This time she pushed her knees up to properly kiss him, hands sliding around his neck. He shifted and hiked her skirt a bit to straddle his legs and they continued. Her hands wandered now, his own were too nervous to move away from their grip on her hips. Her fingers found the buttons of his jacket and began popping them one by one, opening the lapels. She splayed her hands out on his chest and slid up, fingertips pushing the jacket from his shoulders. He pulled his hands from her to shrug the jacket off completely and tossed it.

It occurred to Manolo at this point the door to his balcony was still open, the din below was quiet and seemed completely unaware the guests of honor had vanished an hour ago. He let it be, especially when her fingers began unknotting his tie.

"You're good at that," Manolo said when they broke to pull the tie over his head. He was afraid to ask if it was from experience.

"I imagined doing it all day," she whispered. Her deep blush revealed the girlish nervousness she was trying to hide, but it was still enough to earn a shudder.

The buttons were her next project and now he could feel her hands shaking. He pretended not to notice and didn't dare remove an article of her clothing without her first asking. Soon enough, he was free from the shirt and his bare torso was playground for her hands.

Until her hands brushed something odd and she looked down on reflex. She'd come across a scar, oddly shaped low on his stomach, not far from the belly button. It started like a puncture wound, oblong but then pulling back and around his hip like the tail of comet.

"No one said it was a safe profession," he said, sheepish.

"You were gored?" she said. Her fingers went back to it without warning or permission. His stomach twitched, fighting off the tickle.

"Only once. First time I faced a real bull when I was fourteen," he said. "They had to take the appendix too."

He drew her lower to a smoother, lighter scar right next to his hipbone.

"It hurt," she said. He nodded.

"I passed right out," he said. "Joaquín laughed at me."

She looked horrified.

"After I was better, of course," he said. "First thing I saw when I woke up."

She rolled her eyes and looked over him more. Manolo felt his ears go red at her inspection of him. Her eyes raked him more thoroughly than her hands ever could. She stopped her search at something on the left side of his chest.

"And that one?" he pointed.

Manolo looked down and spotted an odd shaped scar. It was something like an asymmetrical x with one slash longer than the other and it sat right over his heart.

"What?"

He'd never seen the scar before and had no recollection from where it could have come from. He'd only been truly hurt once in his life and the scars from that sat lower and already examined by María. This one was new.

"Manolo?" she said.

"I didn't—I didn't have this one, before," he said.

This was a new body, perhaps it came with new pieces. But this was not his scar, it couldn't be, it looked like something had stuck a knife in and then twisted a bit. But there it was, visible to both sets of eyes.

"Before you…Before you died?" she said, looking down.

A part of him wanted to find his old body and compare. Joaquín said he planned on burying it in the morning. But he couldn't leave for that, abandoning his wedding night to ogle his own dead body and find differences. María already shut down the topic, even jokes about to for now were off limits.

Which is why he'd have to go tomorrow, early in the morning, before she woke and before Joaquín gave it a final resting place.

"It's nothing," he said. "I probably got it while I was down there."

She seemed half convinced. So he kissed her. This time it was hungry and ambitious and she, not to be outdone, very quickly fought back. Tongues became involved quickly and María made it more of a game than ever. He felt her smile against him when he groaned and her hands latched tightly onto his shoulders, decidedly avoiding the anomaly below.

After a few moments she took one of his hands, reattached to her hip, and moved it to the buttons at the back of her dress. He gave the slightest jump and she rested her lips to place her forehead on his, her hands placed on either side of his face.

"Manolo."

That was all he needed to hear and he obeyed.

At some point in the middle of the night Manolo woke up and realized they were both on the floor, wrapped in a blanket he'd pulled from the bed. He moved them to the bed and he rested in next to her. In her sleep she'd clung tightly to him and he made him all the guiltier when he woke again to sunlight and brushed her hands away.

He shimmied out as carefully as he could and moved to the balcony, shutting the door quietly and pulling the blinds closed completely. He began throwing on his discarded clothes from last night and gave a minor attempt at making himself look presentable. In the bed, only María's head was visible from under the blanket, her own bare body hidden away.

He pressed a kiss to her forward and brushed a strand hair back behind her ear.

"Te amo," he whispered against her skin before backing away and slipping out of the room as swiftly as possible.

He trotted down the road. Few people were out this early except for vendors. The dust of movement hadn't kicked up yet and he privately despaired at not getting to watch the sunrise turn the city gold from the tree. The air was still cool and the occasional breeze gave him goosbumps where the shirt was loose enough to let the wind in.

A stray coyote crossed the road in front of him and he turned a few corners, dodged many odd looks, and smiled at a few congratulations. He stepped through debris and rubble and eventually reached the Case de Mondragon. It was not often occupied with Joaquín out on duty most of the year. Smaller than the Casa de Posada, it was still ornate and an obvious step (or steps) up from Manolo's own house.

He didn't bother to knock, pushing the door open (and he made a mental note to remind Joaquín the medal no longer protected him and he needed to lock the doors). The house was still dark and very still. He went upstairs, dodging the creaky fourth step.

Joaquín's room was slightly ajar and he slid in, making for the lump under the covers, face down in the pillow. He put a firm grip to his shoulder and shoved.

"Huh! Wha-?" Joaquín jumped up, bleary eyed. He quickly became tangled in his sheets as he flipped around to get a better view of his intruder.

"It's me," Manolo said and Joaquín groaned, dropping down into the pillow. Manolo saw a new bandage wrapped around his head and spots of browning red on the pillow.

"You really should get that looked at," Manolo said.

"I looked at it, it's fine," he said into the pillow.

"By a real doctor, María will kill you if you don't," he said.

"Well I don't see her here right now," he said. "Which brings me to my next question…"

He didn't finish as he sat up and sat looking at Manolo with his one visible eye, one eyebrow quirked.

"I came with an odd favor," he said.

"Odder than the night you snuck into my room asking for rice to feed that rabbit you hid from Carlos?"

"Yes."

Joaquín sighed and stood. He walked over to a cushioned chair and the corner and removed a wrinkled button up shirt, giving it a new home on his shoulders. He looked into the vanity mirror and carefully pulled away the bandage. He let out staccato grunts as he pried it from places where the dry blood glued it to his skin.

Manolo winced as he got the mirror's view of an indent where his eye should be. The flesh was hidden in shadow, coagulated blood, and gunpowder residue. It looked unimaginably painful, even more so for Joaquín who hadn't felt true pain in almost ten years.

"You're going to get that looked at later today," Manolo said, watching him unravel a new bandage. "No arguments."

"You sound like her already."

He pulled the white fabric taught and tied it in a not behind his opposite ear. Manolo watched a portion stain brown as it pressed to the wound.

"But, let's hear your strange favor first, hermano," he said, turning around to look at the real Manolo.

"Did you bury it yet? My body," he said.

Joaquín sobered quickly and averted his gaze.

"No, it's, uh, it's down in the guest room. I got it out of your house but I didn't have a chance to—"

"I want to see it."

Joaquín's head shocked back a few inches on reflex and his brows knitted together quickly underneath the gauze. He was already shaking his head when Manolo opened his mouth again.

"I need to see it, I just want to look," he explained.

"Manolo are you sure that's a good idea?"

"It's not for the reasons you think. I'll explain just, let me see it."

Joaquín lead him downstairs, not without many reluctant sighs. He didn't speak to Manolo the entire walk down, he occasionally looked back hoping for a change of heart. He unlocked the door to the guest room and pushed it open. He twisted a gaslight on the wall giving a dim red halo to the body laid out on the table.

Joaquín hung by the door as Manolo stepped in towards his twin on the table. It was pale and waxy, hands laced together over its chest beneath which the double of Manolo's heart remained still. The clothes were dusty, torn a bit. The fang marks were visible in the socks.

"Woah, woah," Joaquín called out when he saw Manolo begin to undress the upper half. He stepped into the room and grabbed Manolo's arm.

"Just let me, I'll show you," Manolo said.

He twisted off the time pulled it off, cringing when the head dropped heavily back onto the table. He unbuttoned the top few buttons and parted the two sides of the shirt to reveal the sunken skin underneath.

The smooth, unmarred skin.

"What?" he whispered.

"¿Manolo qué demonios?" he hissed.

"Look!"

Manolo opened his own shirt to reveal the scar. Joaquín looked, looked at the body and back again. He stepped a bit closer and squinted, forcing his eye to work.

"The scar?" he said.

"I have it, he doesn't," he pointed to the body.

"Weird, when did you notice that?"

"María found it when—"

Manolo turned away and quickly cleared his throat; Joaquín raised an eyebrow and looked down as Manolo rebuttoned his shirt with a red face.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"Right," Joaquín said. "You're sure you didn't have it before?"

"I think I would notice."

Joaquín just hummed in thought and watched Manolo rebutton the body as well. He rubbed his unshaven chin pondering it.

"It's weird but, you could have easily gotten it while you were adventuring down below," Joaquín said.

"I don't know, it's just strange."

"I agree, but it doesn't hurt right? Then nothing to worry about or leave your wife the morning after your wedding night for," Joaquín said, looking at him again.

Manolo nodded and made his way for the door muttering a thank you.

"You can help, if you want, say goodbye I guess," Joaquín offered quietly.

"I think I've had enough looking at myself for one day," Manolo said.

"Just as well, you know what they say about seeing your doppleganger," Joaquín flashed a grin and bounced an eyebrow waiting for the over-laughter he was so used to others spewing at his joke.

Manolo rolled his eyes but smiled back, fingers itching to touch the new gnarled flesh on his chest. He nodded a farewell and Joaquín returned it crossing his arms. Joaquín would worry about him, it started shortly after the wedding, the looks from both of them. He couldn't blame them, from life to death and life again was more than anyone made in a lifetime let alone in 24 hours. Part of him wondered if they both were afraid they were dreaming only to wake in front of his grave.

Well, he had one now, or would when Joaquín was done. He'd be the only living man with a grave and tombstone, one he'd never visit if he could help it and María would forget exists. He should have gone with Joaquín, he shouldn't have to shoulder it alone. But he had to get back, María might very well be an early riser and the last thing he wanted was her to wake alone on her first morning as a married woman.

More people were out on the street now and Manolo hurried before they took too much note of his presence or appearance. He slipped back into the house quietly and paused for a few agonizing moments to listen for damming sound of movement.

Nothing.

He moved back up to his room where María still lay sleeping, her position changed slightly, but still buried under the covers. He removed his clothes and again and laid back down beside her and relished the warm feel of skin on skin, trying to fight away the image of his own waxy skin and bloodless face.

He looked at her face, peaceful, smooth, and framed by her curly hair. Her eyes moved beneath their lids and her mouth looked like it wanted to smile. He allowed his blinking to get longer so the image of her face was the last thing he saw before he eyes closed altogether.

He was lulled back into sleep by her breathing. And for every dream he did not have the night before, nightmares began.