Chapter Text
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Or so they say.
But if that were true, then Bruno Madrigal’s 1979 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency wouldn’t be occupied by the two worst people in the whole state of Nevada.
Bruno was mumbling along to Supertramp’s “The Logical Song.”
He honestly didn’t really like it, but it seemed that every goddamn radio DJ was fucking nuts for it. Bruno couldn’t even count on his fingers how many times it had already played at this point. At this point, he felt like his ears were going to explode. But still, he found his fingers tapping along to the tune, dripping sweat onto the leather steering wheel of his big fancy convertible.
Next to him, a short, freckled boy enthusiastically rambled on about something that didn’t quite reach Bruno’s ears. The boy was dressed like a bible salesman - well, if a bible salesman had gotten ravaged by a coyote in a dirt pit on the side of the road.
A once-crisp tailored white shirt now hung loosely on the boy’s slender frame, a tie hanging on by barely a thread tucked limply under his collar. His black slacks were dingy, dirtied with dust, moth-gnawed and covered in some mysterious black substance (motor oil?).
His overgrown curls were slicked back with cheap pomade, the bottom coils sticking to the back of his tan neck. He looked like an Afro-latino Clark Kent.
Then again, if Clark Kent had gotten ravaged by a coyote in a dirt pit on the side of the road.
On his finger was a large, oversized ruby encrusted golden band, which the boy took extra caution to make sure didn’t slip off his finger.
Bruno smirked.
He had gotten the boy that ring in Reno.
It was a shocking pleasure to him that he hadn’t lost it or traded it to some hippy for some acid, especially since he was all too aware of the kid's fascination with mind-altering substances.
He could easily picture the boy, eyes wide with curiosity, trading the ring to some shady character for a dose.
The kid really fucking liked acid.
But hey, so did Bruno.
That's one of the reasons they got along so well, despite the fact of how much they hated each other.
Bruno had a soft spot for his nephew Camilo, even if he would throw himself off a cliff before admitting it.
Liking somebody is a flaw in character, he thought, especially when they're as naive as a kitten playing with a coiled rattlesnake.
Camilo was a good kid, but he was too trusting, too full of wonder for this world that had already chewed him up and spat him out. The world was a cruel place, and if he didn’t toughen up soon, it would swallow him whole.
He was also a fucking idiot.
The “beyond hope” kind.
Maybe he had been a bright kid once upon a time, but whatever point he started frying his brain cells with drugs had snuffed out any intelligence indefinitely.
“Cami, you gotta stop with the alien shit, for christ’s sake?” Bruno interrupted, his voice gruff but not unkind. He had heard enough about extraterrestrial life forms and UFO sightings to last him a lifetime. Or two. The boy’s imagination was a wildfire, and it was about to burn down the whole fucking forest of reality. “We ain’t got time for that. We got a job to do, remember?”
Camilo’s eyes lit up, a spark of excitement igniting in them. “But Tio Bruno, what if they’re out there, watching us right now?” He gestured dramatically at the vast expanse of desert that surrounded them, the setting sun casting long shadows across the landscape.
“I doubt any extraterrestrial life form would take interest in us. Farrah Faucet? Maybe. Us? Nah, homre. Not a chance.”
Camilo sniffed and rubbed his sweaty hands on his slacks. “No alien would ever waste their time on such a stupid show.” he whispered under his breath.
Bruno’s head turned sharply off the road to face his nephew in the passenger seat.
“What was that?” he growled.
Camilo slumped down even further into the embrace of the seat, feigning a casual demeanor as he waved his hand dismissively in the air, “Only chicks like ‘Charlie’s Angels’. Farrah Faucet isn’t even that hot anyway.”
“Plenty of people love that show! And Farrah’s the hottest goddamn woman on earth!”
“Pfft, barely. Dude, have you seen Joan Jett?”
Bruno wrinkled his nose in disgust, “Who?”
With a knowing smile playing at the corners of his lips, Camilo leaned back into his seat, his hands folded behind his head. "Joan Jett," he began, drawing out the name. "You know, the guitarist or drummer, I forgot which, but the black-haired babe from 'The Runaways'?"
“That band with all the chicks? Kid, I think they’re all dykes.”
Camilo's shrug was one of indifference.
"Maybe," he conceded with a smirk. "But hey, I'm not one to judge. They're rockstars, man. And Joan? She's a total babe, take my word for it."
Bruno grumbled and shook his head defiantly.
“Nobody’s hotter than Farrah Fawcett.”
They had been driving for hours, and Camilo was getting antsy.
First, it started in his armpits. The sweat had accumulated in his underarms, and the sensation of it sticking to his skin was driving Camilo up the wall.
A common LSD withdrawal symptom he was all too familiar with.
Reaching under his left arm, his fingers vigorously scratched over and over, but the relief was short lived. He only got hotter, and his pits only got sweatier. He reached over to his right arm, repeating the same action. But it only reaped the same effect as before.
Eventually, he couldn’t handle only scratching them one by one anymore, so he resorted to crossing his arms and sticking his left and right hands under his right and left arms.
Bruno's eyes darted between the road and Camilo's knew he was now noticing peculiar behavior, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.
The desert heat was definitely getting to both of them, but Bruno seemed to be handling the situation better than his nephew. "Cami," he warned, "you're gonna give yourself heat rash like that."
"It's not just the heat, Tio," Camilo protested, his eyes shifting to the side-view mirror. His pupils looked like two tiny black dots in a sea of white, a clear sign he was higher than a kite. "It's like... it's like something's watching us, you know?"
Bruno sighed, his eyes never leaving the horizon. "Yeah, I know," he murmured, his voice thick with sarcasm. "It's called a mirage. Or maybe it's your brain playing tricks on you. Again."
The car jolted as it hit a pothole, and Camilo's head bobbed with the motion.
He giggled, his eyes still on the mirror. "Or maybe it's chupacabra," he suggested, his voice cracking with an anxious laugh that seemed to blend into the whistling air.
He continued to vehemently scrape at his pits, nodding to himself at the grand revelation.
“Yeah…it's the chupacabra.”
Camilo new he wasn't the sharpest knife on the christmas tree, every person who entered his life had made that crystal clear
But he wasn’t about to admit it.
He had enough shit to deal with.
Like the chupacabra.
He swore that in his peripheral vision he could see the little furry scoundrel springing through the sand, leaving dust clouds in its wake. His blurry eyes couldn't quite make out its shape, but from what he had read in that book he got that one time when his mother took him to the library, they were lithe, agile dog-looking thingamabobs. They were skinny and boney, and could both walk on fours or on their hind legs if they wanted to. They had a nasty bite, and big scary wrinkly snouts.
They were not something you'd wanna cross all alone in the middle of nowhere.
Camilo gulped, the realization that that's exactly what was going on right now dawning on his altered mind.
He was in the middle of nowhere with a chupacabra stalking them.
“TIO BRUNO THE CHUPACABRA THE CHUPACABRA!!!! THE CHUPACABRA!!! THE CHUPACABRA IS FOLLOWING US, I SWEAR TO GOD, I JUST SAW IT!!!!!"
Bruno’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, expecting to see some sort of creature.
Perhaps a stray dog or wolf, but all he saw was a cloud of dust, and the same desolate road stretching out behind them.
"Cami, there's no such thing as a chupacabra," he said calmly, trying to ease Camilo’s paranoia. "It's just your imagination playing tricks on you."
But Camilo wasn’t listening.
His eyes were wild and darting around, searching for any sign of the creature he was certain was stalking them. His heart was racing, and he was sweating even more than before.
He could feel it watching him.
The little pest.
The car suddenly swerved to the right, and Camilo let out a shriek. "Look!" he pointed to the side of the road.
But all Bruno saw was a cactus, tall and proud, standing alone in the desert.
Camilo's eyes were frantic, searching the horizon as if he expected a stampede of the creatures to come charging at them at any moment.
Bruno gritted his teeth. "It's just a cactus, kid. Chill out."
The boy looked at him with a mix of fear and desperation. "Tio, please. I'm not tripping right now. I know what a damn chupacabra looks like. I saw it in a book one time."
Bruno chucked, "Holy shit. I didn't know you knew how to read."
Camilo clawed at his hair, the panic on his face palpable. "Barely!" he exclaimed, his arms darting back and forth, "I mostly just looked at the pictures!”
Before Brubo could gear the car back up and respond with some snide remark, Cami was leaning over the passenger seat and ruffling for something on the back seat. Bruno’s head shot back to see what it was that the boy was trying to do this time.
His nephew's hands frantically scrambled for something, and his breath was quick and his body was trembling.
Bruno was just about pissed off at this point.
He yanked on Camilo’s shirt in an attempt to pull him back into his seat, but the boy wasn't budging
“Whar the fuck are you doing!?” Bruno hollered.
Camilo replied through a series of pants, “I'm - looking - for - the - gun!”
The gun was indeed there, but it was buried under a mess of junk. Fast food wrappers, a half-empty bottle of tequila, a few joints, and a small bag of what was probably not oregano.
"What the hell did you do to the backseat?" Bruno snapped, his grip on Camilo’s shirt tightening. "Look at this shit."
Camilo's eyes widened, and he paused in his frantic search to look over his shoulder. "Oh, sorry, Tio," he mumbled, his cheeks reddening. "I had a bit of a snack earlier."
"A bit of a snack," Bruno echoed, his voice thick with disbelief. "Looks like a tornado hit a truck stop."
Bruno yanked his shirt again as Camilo's hand finally found the cold metal of the gun. He pulled it out with a triumphant cry, holding it up in the air like he had just discovered gold.
"Got it!" he exclaimed, his eyes still darting around the horizon for any sign of the chupacabra.
Bruno sighed heavily, before successfully pulling the kid back into his seat. "You're gonna get us killed, you know that?"
Camilo's grip on the gun was firm, his thumb flicking the safety off without thinking. "For your protection," he said, his voice a little too high.
"From what? Your messiness or imaginary creatures?"
The gun was a 9mm, a piece of shit they had picked up from a sketchy pawn shop in Vegas. It was supposed to be for protection against the more human dangers of their line of work, but
Camilo had convinced himself it would also work against the supernatural.
Bruno rolled his eyes but said nothing. He knew better than to argue with Camilo when he was in one of his states. The kid was as stubborn as a mule and twice as stupid.
He reached over and grabbed the gun from Camilo's hand, clicking the safety back on and tucking it into the glove compartment.
"Hey!” Camilo exclaimed, his green eyes flashing, “I need that!”
Bruno booted the car up again, looking over his shoulder with his arm swung around the headrest as he began reversing out of the sandy roadside. “No you don't.” he sighed, “You should honestly shut the fuck up for a bit. Your stupid voice is getting on my nerves.”
Before Bruno could even rev up the engine again, Camilo was already up to trouble again.
Instead of heeding his uncle’s instructions, he was jamming the glove compartment open and fishing through the junk for the gun.
“Kid, if you touch that gun one more fucking time, you're outta here.” Bruno snapped.
Camilo defiantly shrugged. “I'm doing this for our own safety, tío. You really don't want to become a midnight snack for some bloodthirsty beast.”
He clicked the safety off with a sharp, decisive motion. The pistol felt heavy in his hand, a reassuring weight against the growing unease that gnawed at him. He raised it, his finger hovering over the trigger, ready to aim at any unseen menace that lurked in the shadows of his own imagination.
“Give me the gun.”
“Nope.” Camilo answered inattentively as he squinted his eyes, anticipating the return of the foul beast.
“Give me the gun.”
Camilo didn't even bother to answer this time when a brown flash infiltrated his line of sight.
There it was!
The chupacabra!
“I swear to god, if you don't give me that -”
' BANG !!!‘
The gunshot tore through the still desert air, its thunderous crack reverberating across the stark landscape. The bullet struck the scorched earth with a forceful impact, sending a plume of dust and grit spiraling into the air.
When Camilo dared to open his eyes again, he was met with the furious face of his tío.
He, in a desperate attempt to quell Bruno's fury, hurriedly pointed his arm towards the impact zone.
“Look, Bruno!” he exclaimed, “I have perfect aim!”
Bruno didn't share in his enthusiasm however. It seemed to Camilo that he was real sore about Camilo shooting the gun when he told him not to.
In fact, Bruno looked like he almost wanted to kill him. Wouldn't be the first time, he always had a chip on his shoulder when it came to his pesky nephew. It seemed to Camilo that he could never do anything right in his eyes.
But to be fair, he had blatantly ignored Bruno’s instructions.
And he shot the chupacabra!
If it weren’t for him, Bruno would be nothing more than roadkill by now!
Where was his thanks??
Bruno's eyes bulged so much that it looked like he was a bug about to pop.
“What the fuck did you do?!” he roared, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.
“I saved us from the chupacabra!” Camilo shouted back, his voice echoing off the dashboard.
The silence was so thick that it was palpable, until a sad little tumbleweed bobbed into view, rolling across the desert. It was a sad, lonely tumbleweed, minding its own business, just trying to get to the promised land of the next watering hole or whatever.
Bruno’s eyes narrowed at the sight of it.
He didn’t need to hear the snickers from Camilo to know what his nephew had shot at.
And just like that, his temper snapped.
He slammed on the dashboard so hard that Camilo shook in his seat, holding onto the edge to keep himself from hitting something.
Then Bruno struck the back of his head with his palm, and Camilo’s head was thrown forward, his forehead smacking against the dashboard.
“Ow, shit!” Camilo groaned, holding his forehead. “What was that for?!”
Bruno turned to face him, his teeth clenched. “You just wasted a whole fucking bullet on a tumbleweed, you dumb shit!”
Camilo looked at his tío with wide eyes, his mind racing. “But it was gonna get us!” he protested weakly, rubbing the sore spot on his forehead.
“It’s a plant, Cami! A fucking plant!”
“But it was moving!” Camilo exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch.
“So what? You think every moving thing out here wants to kill us?”
Despite feeling the rising fury in his uncle, Camilo nonetheless nodded furiously, not backing down. “It's the desert, Tio! Anything can happen!”
Bruno’s eyes narrowed even further, if that was even possible. “You’re telling me that your stoner brain actually believes that?”
“It's not just me, Tio! It's in the books! Books written by people who know a lot of stuff about this! I read this book by this guy named Donald Keyhoe who said that the government is trying to hide it from all of us! Like, UFOs and the supernatural and shit! It's all a big conspiracy!”
Bruno paused for a moment, looking at Camilo like he was one of those aliens Camilo so vehemently believed in.
Until his fist connected with Camilo’s jaw with a sickening crack, sending the kid sprawling back into the seat with a yelp of pain.
Camilo's hand shot up to cradle his cheek, his eyes wide with shock.
“Don’t you ever, EVER, fucking pull a stunt like that again!” Bruno bellowed, his voice laced with unbridled rage.
The boy shrunk in on himself, his head pounding from the impact and a stream of blood trickling down his chin. He felt his eyes well up as he nodded.
“O-okay, i'm sorry!”
“Oh, you'll be fucking sorry.” Bruno retorted, eyes on fire, his lip curled up in a snarl that made his wrinkles warp and his beard all prickly like the cactus Camilo just saw.
They sat in silence for a beat, as Bruno pondered a proper punishment and Camilo tried in vain to stop the gushing of blood that now poured down his neck. He was now fully crying, but he tried not to make a sound.
Only pussys and babies cried.
He didn't cry when Bruno hit him the last time.
He didn't cry when his big brother Antonio left him three years ago without uttering a word.
He didn't cry when he was locked in that McDonalds restroom that one time. (Although he felt like it, it was really smelly and it made his eyes burn.)
Camilo was taught not to cry, that people would never take him seriously if he did. He was told not to put up a fight, to just lay there, he still, and not make a single fucking noise -
And he didn't cry when his mom called him all those mean names and told him to number his days.
So why should he cry now?
He sniffled. Maybe it was the drugs wearing off, or the heat, or the throbbing pain in his cranium.
The warm colors of the desert seemed to blur then sharpen at the edge of his vision, and he felt a headache impending. He wasn't sure if it was from the pain or the drugs that were definitely wearing off at this point, but all of it felt too much to bear.
“Hey man, im feeling all freaky-deaky right now,” Camilo whimpered, totally forgetting about the spewing gash of blood to clutch his chest, “I-I think im gonna hurl.”
Bruno momentarily stared perplexed at him, but his expression soon changed to angry, yet again. He made a wry face, and once again slammed his hand on the dashboard, his rings leaving scratches on the alcantara in their wake.
It seemed he had a penchant for expressing his anger this way, cus he did it a lot.
Just like how he would obsessively slam his fists against any wooden surface, when he was lost in the throes of yet another bad trip.
‘Knock, knock, knock, knock on wood.’ his voice would croak eerily.
Camilo scooted back in his seat and cowered against the car door, pulling at the once-slicked-back strands of his hair. He felt his chest rise and fall rapidly, his heart beating faster than a dozen wild horses. His vision buzzed and his eyes twitched.
Before Camilo could utter another plea for mercy, Bruno was already inching closer to his face with a menacing growl.
“Frankly, I'm sick of your shit,” he snarled, ““If all you wanna do is run your mouth about monsters and aliens, steal my stash, mess with my guns, eat my food, and sleep in my car, then you’re just begging to be nothing but rat food.”
Bruno’s furious eyes bore into Camilo, his knuckles whitening even more around the steering wheel. The car remained stationary, the engine rumbling beneath them. The sun was sinking lower, casting an eerie light over the scene, making Camilo’s sweat-slicked skin glisten and the blood dried and cracked.
The air in the car was thick with tension, the stench of fear and testosterone mixing with the faint scent of Camilo's blood and Bruno’s musty cologne. Camilo’s eyes darted around the car, searching for anything that could serve as a buffer between him and his enraged uncle.
The glove compartment remained ajar, its contents exposed to the dim light. The gun lay there, motionless, its presence both inconspicuous and impossible to ignore.
Camilo briefly side-eyed it, a mischievous thought materializing in his quaking head. However, he was soon shaken out of it by Bruno’s gravelly voice.
“You think I’m playing around here, Cami?” Bruno’s voice was low and dangerous, the kind of tone that made even the hardest of men quake in their boots. “You think I’m here to entertain your delusions?”
Camilo’s hand slid away from his wound, his palm sticky with warm, crimson liquid. He swallowed hard, his voice shaky. “N-no, Tio. I just—I just thought we should be prepared, that’s all. For anything. It’s the desert, right? Anything could be out there.”
Bruno leaned back in his seat, his expression morphing from rage to something more akin to a damp squib.
Bruno leaned back in his seat, his shoulders rising and falling with a deep, measured breath. The fire in his eyes dimmed, the sharp edges of his rage softening into something heavier— maybe even scarier - disappointment.
His jaw, once clenched in fury, slackened slightly, and his brows furrowed as if grappling with the weight of what was running through his head. The tension in his hands, which had been balled into fists moments ago, eased as his fingers drummed absently against the armrest.
He let out a deep sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly. “You’re nothing but an extra load on my shoulders, kid. Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”
The silence was shattered only by Camilo’s unsteady breaths and the eerie, distant howl of the rapidly cooling wind. He knew his uncle wasn’t wrong, but it still stung like a fresh papercut.
Bruno continued, “Just - I need to clear my head. Get out of the car, go find your damn chupacabra, and I'll be back in a bit."
Camilo nodded vigorously, his eyes locked onto his uncle’s with unwavering focus. He knew better than to argue—better than to test the limits of his luck.
He scrambled out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him, and he was more than ready to take off into the desert without looking back.
Before he could utter another word, Bruno’s hand shot out and grabbed the back of Camilo’s shirt, yanking him back momentarily. “And don’t you go far, you little shit. I’m not playing hide and seek with you out here. I don't want to deal with a dead body again, am I understood?”
Camilo nodded again, not daring to face his uncle. Bruno soon let go of his shirt, and Camilo sprinted, the heavy mass of the gun he snatched surreptitiously in his pocket.
He was now free to catch the real chupacabra.