The Matador

Senor Torres was awoken from his sleep with a start by a loud crashing sound from his living room.

At first he thought burglars had broken into his apartment but then he leaned against his door and listened and heard a sound, like hooves tearing over his living room carpet and then trembling feebly, he slowly opened his bedroom door and peered out at a scene of devastation.

His glass coffee table had been hurled against his wall and its shattered pieces and twisted metal frame lay all over the ground and there were large holes in walls and doors as if something had been driven or punched through them.

“Madre Dios”, said Senor Torres, “What has happened?”.

But then he heard something charging past the doorway and he heard the sound of snorting, like a bull; like a bull in the ring.

But looking around, he saw there was no bull; not that he could see anyway, but there was something large and ferocious that was moving, invisibly, around the room.

Then, to the left of him, he saw something crash through a book shelf with enormous force, splintering it into pieces and then a book with a large round hole in the middle, skewered by one of the invisible horns of the beast; an Ernest Hemingway novel, went flying across the room landing at his feet.

What creature’s horns could make holes like that?, wondered Senor Torres. Was it the devil? Was the devil in the living room of his apartment and why had it come for him. He was a good catholic. What had he done?

But then the creature went crashing past him again and into his black leather Sofa, flipping the heavy sofa onto its back and then he heard a fierce, loud bellow again like a bull.

Or maybe it wasn’t the devil, he thought. Maybe it was the ghost of a bull. Yes, so many bulls had died in the bullfighting ring, was it so absurd that one of them might have come back from the dead, perhaps for revenge.

But this wasn’t the ring, this was his apartment and it wasn’t a bull that had been drugged and stabbed so that it had lost blood, it was the fierce, angry soul of a bull.

Looking round about him, Senor Torres started to panic, sweat dripping from his forehead.  If he couldn’t see it, it could come from any direction but he had to get to his apartment door.

“Why are you doing this?”, he said in a distressed voice, “Why? You’re destroying my apartment”.

He heard the bull bellowing again and then suddenly, his heart almost stopped as his bedroom wall came crashing down, the bull ghost or demon charging straight through it.

“Perhaps it wants me to fight”, he thought to himself, imagining himself dressed in his toreadors outfit, standing bravely up to the invisible creature.

But who was he kidding.The bull ghost would slaughter him and, looking at the holes its horns had made in his apartment walls he now imagined those same horns driven into his soft flesh, goring him.

He had to get out of his apartment somehow, he thought, looking desperately round. The ghost was just toying with him now, he thought but eventually it would tire of that and kill him.

He looked over at his bedroom window and the balcony outside it, illuminated by the red flashing light of a neon sign.

Perhaps he could climb out of that, he thought. But he was on the third floor, he’d kill himself if he fell.

He heard the crashing demon go quiet, snorting and panting as if taking a rest or perhaps waiting and watching to see his next move.

Torres made the sign of the cross upon his chest, screwing his eyes up tightly and praying.

“God, give me courage, please”, he whispered, trembling.

The beast bellowed loudly as if to say,

“Go on. I’m waiting”.

Suddenly, madly, Torres made a lunge towards the window and started to fumble clumsily with the handle of its lock, all the time imagining the bull behind him ready to charge.

But then the window slid open and he stepped out onto the balcony.

He could feel the cold night air and the sound of honking and rushing traffic from the road far below.

Then he just managed to slide the window shut again.

But then, looking through the window, the bullfighter saw the enormous, shadow like creature standing within the archway of the hole it had rammed through his bedroom wall, its eyes glaring at him and glowing red in the darkness of his apartment. It looked unimpressed.

People walking by on the sidewalk looked up in shock as they heard the sound of exploding glass and a mans terrified screaming.

Then a metal balcony and the man in it came crashing down three floors onto the concrete and the people rushed towards him.

But there was nothing any of them could do. The man was dead for sure, in fact it looked like he’d been dead even before he fell, killed by what or whoever had driven a sharp spike through his middle leaving a large bloody hole.