Cap de xai (A Ciutadella i Villa Olímpica)

Originally published in Dream.FM (Raging Opossum Press), April 2025

I 

“I feel so sick for some reason.” 

Kyle shoots me a look from across the table that lets me know that there is no way in hell that I will be cutting my night short. I nod my head, affirming my statement. I must’ve eaten something rotten for dinner, I shouldn’t have trusted that supermarket Paella. I cough, and then swallow a clump of thick phlegm that creeps up my throat.

“Did you drink too much?”

“I didn’t drink at all.” 

We stare at each other blankly, I furrow my eyebrows. I clear my throat, and another clump of phlegm comes up and sits on my tongue. The thought of swallowing it makes me want to gag, so I let it sit in my mouth. The moment Kyle looks away, I spit into a stranger’s empty glass. Nobody notices, so I don’t bother to feel any shame. 

“Do you think you need to go home?”

“Yeah probably.” I pick at the loose skin on the side of my thumb. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be out if I feel like I’m gonna be sick.” 

“Okay, whatever works for you.” There is disappointment behind his eyes, and I don’t blame him. I have skipped out on every night out since March. I just don’t have it in me to see and be seen, especially when I’m sick to my stomach. I feel no hunger for dancing, no desire for one night stands with English guys on erasmus. I pull my coat over my shoulders. 

I exchange quiet good-byes with my friends who are in my nearest vicinity, and I bid a polite Irish Exit to everyone else.

I shuffle out of Ovella Negra, the neighborhood bar. I walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke and sewer stench, which doesn’t make me feel any more sick. I catch a couple of older men staring at my legs. They say something to me in Catalan, but I don’t bother to acknowledge them. Maybe if I was feeling better, I’d try to bum a cigarette, but not tonight. 

It’s a short walk to my apartment. I scan my keys to get through the doors. My least favorite security guard is on duty tonight, his eyes sunken and skin green per usual. I always take notice of how he stares at my friends, ravenous and yearning for soft American Girl Flesh, but he ignores me tonight. Good, I think, I wasn’t trying to be polite to you, anyway. 

I get to my room and I tear off my clothes. I let them fall to the ground and kick them into a pile of Kind Of Dirty/Kind Of Clean clothes in the corner. I pick up a t-shirt from that pile and throw myself on my bed. My hair smells like cigarettes, my fake lashes holding onto my eyelids for dear life. I’ll let both things settle themselves. I kill the lights and snuggle into my duvet. I move my box of tissues next to my bed in case I need to cough up some more phlegm, but I’m feeling better now that I’m in my bed, even if I’m a little bit scared. 

I’ve been having these nightmares recently, more intense than they usually are. I am prone to vivid night terrors that cause me to wake up and hate everyone who was involved in said night terror. I rarely ever get much sleep, which is probably why I’m not feeling up for clubbing. I always get an influx of night terrors when a big change arrives in my life—in this case, moving to Barcelona. In my most recent series of nightmares, XXX has been visiting me. I haven’t spoken to him in years, he has no tether to any happening in my life other than these dreams. Each Holy Vision of him is more unsettling than the last. It has become a sick game for me; I dread reliving what he’s done, but I can’t help but long to see him again.

I think of all that he has done to me while we were awake. I don’t know if I can stand to rewatch him shove his hand into my pants without warning, seeing his dirty fingernails caked with my blood. I can’t stand to relive that cold flush feeling across my body—reliving that deep, primal horror of feeling like prey, his hand over my mouth. Although, I can stand to relive the image of me punching him in the nose, his blood running down his pretty pale face and down my forearm. In these dreams, he violates me again. In these dreams, I win. Sometimes he shoves his hands down my pants and I kill him. Sometimes I die. Sometimes the both of us curl up together, die in position, and get smothered in ash like the poor souls of Pompeii. I would hate to die next to him in real life, casted together for eternity for tourists to point and stare and take pictures of. We had enough of that in our real lives.

He crosses my mind a few more times before the feeling of fighting sleep meets my eyelids. I lose myself in the thumping bass from the discotheque down the street. It is faint and distant, but I imagine Kyle sloshing gin and tonic over the dance floor, embracing other warm bodies like a drug. I feel bad for ditching him tonight, I think of the movement of his arms swaying as he dances. His arms embrace me and sleep wins. 

I’m now walking down a sunny two-way street, the overpass above the beach at Ciutadella i Villa Olímpica. It’s a lot longer than I remember, stretching endlessly towards the beach. I’m not too sure how I got here, but it’s sunny out, warm. I cannot complain. It is late winter, but I’m wearing a top that exposes my arms. I feel the warmth of sunlight on my shoulders and can’t help but think, “life is getting good again.” It’s a good thing I went to sleep when I did. Otherwise, I would’ve missed this warmth.

Next to me on the overpass is a figure I cannot bring myself to look at. It’s probably Kyle, judging by the stance. I’m so grateful that he followed me here, he must not be too upset about me leaving early last night. We are talking; he’s carrying the conversation. I tune out his words but follow the cadence of his voice. I can’t help but marvel at the sky. It’s a beautiful day outside. I am so lucky.

There aren’t many other pedestrians on the overpass, which surprises me. It’s such a beautiful day out, the most beautiful we’ve had since October. I expect to see more children, more locals hungry for the sunlight, but it’s just me and my Best Friend Figure.

Fifty feet ahead of us on the bridge, I see other figures. I see shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair and a slender, swishing gait. It approaches me like litter in the wind, so fluid but lacking control. I don’t think much of the figure, but subconsciously, I fear that it’ll be him. I brace myself for that primal fear that will wash over me when he eventually stops in front of me and sticks his hands down my pants.

Soon, I meet green eyes, and I’m certain it’s him. What is he doing in Barcelona? I moved all the way out here to get away from him. Why is he on the overpass? Why is he following me across the ocean? I keep staring into those green eyes—God, will those green eyes take me home? Neither of us speaks. I don’t think I have the ability to speak this time around, even though I’m dying to ask him questions. I’m paralyzed from the waist up. I try to move my hands, ready for the punch, but I’m locked in place. I can still feel the warm sun on my shoulders, my nose, the top of my head. It grounds me.

We’re a foot apart on the overpass, crossing each other on different sides of the pedestrian path. Maybe, this time, we’ll just pass each other, lock eyes in a solemn knowing of what this exchange could possibly be, and go on with our lives. Finally, some peace between me and him.

However, peace between us would be too rare, too kind. We have never known peace, only fear and desire. So, without any action, reaction, or movement, though our eyes are still locked, my Beloved Psychological Omen’s head slides clean off. Decapitated.

He’s all blood and strawberry blonde tumbling to the floor, and I scream. I scream, I scream. Severed, rolling down the walkway. His blood follows his rolling head each turn it takes. Nobody reacts but me, screaming so loudly that I begin to lose my voice. It feels like whoever is standing next to me on the overpass has taken my neck into their warm hands and is trying to asphyxiate the screams. My vision becomes spotty and black.

I wake up.

II

I am walking down the overpass. It’s warmer out today. I feel the warm sea breeze on my exposed legs. The embrace of the Mediterranean and the summer sun feels like home. I feel like a child again, unafraid of how my body appears in the sunlight. I don’t take note of what I’m wearing; it doesn’t matter. I am alone, skipping down the overpass above the beach at Ciutadella i Villa Olímpica. Nobody is here to witness me, to take in my flaws—the scars on my legs and arms, the claw marks around my neck. This is exactly why I moved to Barcelona: to be free, to get away from all that has haunted me. I left my ancient spirits on the East Coast, scattered across Upstate New York and New England. I am certain they will all rest in Taconic Mountain Purgatory, and I am here, on the overpass above the beach, on my way to the tapas bar on the other side. I feel peace.

Rolling down the endless expanse of overpass is a figure I cannot quite make out. I squint and blink my eager eyes, hoping it is a small dog or a stray cat. I will follow it down the expanse of the overpass, happy to have a companion on this long, long walk to paradise.

The rolling figure seems to speed up out of nowhere, defying the laws of physics. Then I see the murky strawberry blonde and the trail of blood that follows behind. The smile on my face falls, it isn’t a small animal after all. I figure he must’ve lost his head somewhere further down the overpass. I do not scream this time; instead, I watch the rolling head with childlike curiosity and anticipation. This time around, I don’t think much of it, though everything else is silenced by the pounding of my heart. A warm sea breeze tickles my forearms. I close my eyes for a moment to feel the sunlight on my face. I realize that the sun is too warm and the food on the other side of the overpass is too delicious for me to stop and give time to his severed head. It rolls closer and closer to my feet, and without thinking, I kick it right over the railing of the overpass. I hear it splunk into the sea below, and I smile again. I imagine myself as a Deus Ex Machina to starving sharks below. One breaches the water and swallows it in one bite. I watch in fascination and lick my lips. His blood is sticky on my toes. I smile.

III

It is so fucking hot outside, so hot that I can barely breathe. Walking next to me is my father; he is 17 years old. He tells me about his life in the 19th Arrondissement, the stench of the city wafting past our noses as he goes on. He shows me the scars he got when he was living on the streets; I show him the scars he gave me. “God,” I say to him, “it is so hot outside, I can barely breathe.”

We have been trudging across this overpass for hours now; there is no end in sight. I can’t figure out why they made the overpass above the beach at Ciutadella i Villa Olímpica so long. I am so hungry, starving even, and making it to the tapas bar on the other side feels like a pilgrimage. I mention Mecca to my Childfather, but he doesn’t respond.

My stomach rumbles deep inside of me, but we keep on walking. I keep asking questions to my reactionless Childfather, who tells me more about his affiliations and haunts. He cannot hear me, which doesn’t surprise me, but I am grateful for what he tells me. His breath smells like Marlboro Golds and a can of tuna that cost 50 centimes. I notice a sadness in his eyes that he will not reveal to me until he is older.  Evil notwithstanding in this young man, he is unafraid of hell, and so am I, so I reach for his shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze. I mention Mecca again, and he disappears into the overpass.

I look up from the concrete where my Childfather disappeared and watch as xxx walks toward me on the other side of the overpass—a lover from the present and past. I look to my side, hoping my Childfather came back to protect me, but he and his stories are gone for good. I should’ve known. You can never hold him down. It is just me and xxx. I look at him; he looks at me. I meet those green eyes—God, green eyes, won’t you take me home? I know what happens next: he will lose his head, and I will watch. I will watch. I will watch.

Again, without any action, reaction, or movement, with a clean and sudden cut out of thin air, his head is on the hot concrete of the overpass. I hear the squelch of his open mouth hitting the pavement, the copper smell of his blood. I watch his limp, headless body hit the floor, but it isn’t that that interests me. It’s the head rolling slowly to my feet, his blood making a holy trail to me. This is how it was meant to be—him dethroned in front of me. I find myself amused this time.

I crouch down and sit on the overpass. The hot asphalt burns the backs of my thighs, but I don’t mind. I’m so fucking hungry that it barely registers. I wait, cross-legged like a child, for the head to make it to my hands. When it does, I hesitate. Do I pick up the head of someone I once loved? I contemplate morals, ethics, and all that I was disciplined for. My stomach growls.

I decide to pick up that darling severed head. His pale, rosy flushed cheeks are cold, I notice. This is the first time I’ve held this head in my hands in years. I grab those greasy strawberry blonde strands between my fingers and yank them. A shiver runs its way down my spine. I think about how I used to run my fingers through that hair and pretend to enjoy it. I yank again, and a few tresses come out of his head and stick in between my fingers. I shake my hand to get rid of them, and watch them glitter as they fall through the cracks on the overpass. 

I am so glad, I think, that he is dead. I caress his cheeks, so still, so lifeless. Like this, he cannot say anything to me. He cannot tell me to stop. He cannot tell me to shut the fuck up. He cannot tell me shit. I smile.

My grip on his head grows tighter. I am tempted to trace my fingers around his detached spinal cord, but I refrain, though I can’t help but admire it. It’s a beautiful tangle of fiber and flesh, a pivotal part of him that used to tell me what to do. It is dripping slowly, gently, the blood forming a little puddle in front of my legs. I feel my hunger fall from my stomach and pool into a thick heat deeper inside of me. I feel that soon, I will be dripping too. Desire takes over me, so I lean forward, taking in the smell of copper, filth, and cigarettes that comes off his cadaver. I kiss those thin, lifeless lips. I feel nothing, yet I moan. I just can’t help myself. I’m so hungry. I bite his lip, gently at first, then a little bit rougher as anger, desire and hunger takes its course. I feel a slight tear in his flesh in between my teeth. I am unaware of what I am doing at first, but when I taste something copper on the tip of my tongue, I am not alarmed. I bite down harder. His thin, chapped lower lip comes off as I break our kiss. It lingers between my teeth. I sit there for a moment, contemplating what to do with it. I look up to the sky and watch swallows in flight, circling me and his head. They must see this head as opportunity— we are all hungry on this overpass. Suddenly, I am territorial. I take my teeth and maneuver the lip into my mouth. It tastes like copper, filth, and cigarettes, but I eat it anyway. I scream, loud and guttural, up to the sky. The swallows depart, I have claimed my territory. 

I am still so fucking hungry.

His jaw has fallen slack, and without his lower lip, his tongue hangs freely out of the side of his mouth. Is it yellow, gray, and geographic. I bite down on it just before the thin, ropelike band of tissue that keeps the tongue in the mouth. It is tough, a lot less tender than his lip. I maneuver it to my molars to get a stronger bite. It takes me a minute of gnawing to detach the tongue from his head. The moment I slide it into my mouth, I feel the geographic ridges in my throat. I gag, and spit it out onto the overpass. Even though I am starving, I never did like that tongue of his. Sharp as a dagger and eager to cut me to pieces, I continue to cough up and spit pieces of it out onto the overpass. A swallow circles from above and dives to take it for itself. It flies away a few meters, then drops the tongue back on the overpass. I watch it bounce a little as it falls. So foul, not even starving animals are willing to feast on it. 

It is such a shame that his tongue is as foul as ever. I really am still hungry, though I am still picky enough to choose. I return my attention to the rest of his head, and I run the pads of my thumbs under his thin under-eyes. Even in death, he looks exhausted. I always wondered what haunted him. Was it the ghost of what he had done, or was it the ghost of me? I’d like to think I impacted him that deeply, the girl he loved at 16, but I couldn’t be too sure. I look into his green eyes, wide open and hungry. I’m hungry too. These green eyes I loved so much for so many years. I push my thumbs into his thin under-eyes, taking delight in how they bulge from his head the more I press.

I am amusing myself, watching the eyes of this severed head pop out so mechanically as I push. Slack jawed, with no lips or tongue, he looks so foolish. I never had this much control over him. It feels so good to manipulate him, too. With one particularly rough push, his left eyeball pops right out of its socket. It is connected to fleshy, bloody strands of nervous tissue. I gasp slightly, but I lift his severed head above mine, as if he were looking over me one last time, and I watch as his dangling, loose eyeball hangs right above my face. It is so close to my lips, softly parted, ready to eat more. I move the head closer and closer to my face, the eyeball hitting my lower lip gently. I am teasing myself, I’m getting excited. I feel the same way now as I do when I’m alone in my room at night, touching myself underneath the sheets. The thick heat grows thicker the more I let it bounce against my lips. I giggle to myself and nobody else. I grind my hips against the hot concrete of the overpass. This would be the first time a man has helped me come. 

I let the dangling eyeball hit my lower lip a few more times before I take it into my mouth. I begin to suck on it as if I was pleasuring him. Around me, I can smell the detergent his mother used to wash his clothes. I feel his living breath fan across my face, but he is not here. I suck, I suck, and I moan. I always did pretend like pleasuring him pleased me, but this is different. I really, really enjoy this. The texture of the wet eyeball in my mouth is something so delicious. Like an undercooked tapioca pearl, but less sweet. With my head angled upwards, the eyeball hits the back of my throat in a way that no man ever could. I am moaning and giggling on the overpass. I brush the pads of my thumbs over those soft, pale lifeless cheeks one last time, then I bite down.

The gelatinous insides of his eyeball explode inside my mouth. It tastes like cosmic brownies and his dirty cock. It is so delicious, but I am still hungry. I chew up to eat the veins, nervous tissue, and thin flesh underneath his eyes, but I am still hungry. I pop out his other eye, the same way I did the first, and wrap my needy lips around the socket, sucking it out of its place like a scavenger bird. This is the most delicious meal I have ever had. I try to savor the taste, the texture, the memories of us that come to mind as I chew. I am done before I have time to think about that one summer day when we were 14. I lick my lips and admire what is left of his face. Although delicious, the eyes are not enough for me. I am still hungry.

I cannot let the rest of this meal go to waste, I think. My grandparents were raised in the Old World; they taught me to never let anything spoil. Everything, even scraps, could go to good use. Finally, he could go to good use. I lick his eye sockets clean, free of all the tissue, fiber, and eyeball that had been there previously. His green eyes were as delicious as they look. Now that his eye sockets were empty, my favorite part of him would never be his again. They are digesting in my stomach, converting into energy to give me strength to keep walking down this overpass. I am still hungry, full of desire. My core drips. I admire his fleshy cheeks. Would those taste as delicious?

IV

I wake up in a cold sweat and check my fingernails. I expect them to be caked in blood, but they are not. My hands are clean, except for last night’s entry stamp smeared across my knuckles. My stomach rumbles. God, I am so fucking hungry. I have never woken up this hungry—hungry for something I cannot explain.

I get ready fast this morning. I do not care how I look. I am going to Las Ramblas today, to the Boqueria. I want something that will make me feel full. It feels like a long metro ride to Catalunya, but I am patient.

Anything a girl could ever want can be found in the Boqueria. Exotic fruits that only grow along the Costa Brava, nuts and seeds and homemade chocolates, empanadas, frittatas, everything delicious. I am hungry for something different, something fleshy and untainted. I push past tourists to make it to the back of the market. I’m visiting the butchers. In the corner of the clear shop case, I lock eyes with the severed, skinned head of a sacrificial lamb. It stares at me with bared teeth and wide, weary, gelatinous black eyes. In those lifeless eyes, I see pain and hurt that I know all too well, and that he could never comprehend.

The lady at the stand sees me as a foreigner who mocks the traditional dish. She watches me with wary eyes of her own. I ask her how much one head would be; she tells me twenty euros. That is a decent price for me. I hand her my note, and I watch carefully as she wraps the head in yesterday’s newspaper. She asks me something along the lines of, “Do you know how to cook this?” but I stare at her blankly and just nod. I cannot think over how fucking hungry I am.

I bring the head back to my apartment, careful not to damage the wrapping. On the metro, I hold the head tight against my chest. I feel its protruding nose nuzzle in between my breasts. I shiver, but nobody notices. When I get home, I skip the kitchen; this feast is just for me. I bring the head to my bedroom and drop to the floor, cross-legged as I did on the overpass. I am hit with the stink of innocence and dead flesh. My stomach growls.

I unwrap the newspaper gently; the anticipation will make this more delicious. I try to read what is written in the newspaper, but I cannot read Catalan. Maybe it’s for the best. Once unwrapped, I kiss the lamb’s teeth, stripped of fleshy lips. Iron and something foul fill my senses, but it only makes me hungrier. Just like the head of my lover, I run my fingers over pale, lifeless cheeks, though they are not quite as soft as his. I look deep into the black eyes of this dead animal. I think for a moment about who may have killed it—if they felt any remorse as they removed the head from this poor animal. I wonder if it was still attached to its mother before it was slaughtered. I wonder if it even got to grow with its mother. I wonder about my mother back home in New York. I wonder about her own overpass that she, one day, must cross. I wonder if she’s thinking about me. I wonder if she is hungry too.

I trace my mouth up the skinned face of the sacrificial lamb. I wrap my hungry lips around the already protruding eyeball, and I suck, I suck, I suck. I suck until it pops in my mouth. It tastes like regrets and lost happiness. I moan. I am not so hungry anymore.