Ah, Carpincho Cagado, a place of unmatched rural beauty. But not unmatched in the sense of being peerless, no, but rather in the sense of not being burnt to the fucking ground for its sins against the eyes and noses of foreigners. How to put Carpincho Cagado in words that do justice to the reality it represented? The tiles on the roofs yearned for a mercy killing that would deliver them from the thick layer of bird scat that served as an all-natural varnish. You could see in the faces of the inhabitants, as they went around dressed in their exuberant ponchos and brandishing their deadly banjos, that poisoning the well was unacceptable but doing so with the gene pool was considered tradition.

The cattle of thoroughly licked coats looked at me like I was covered in the dead bodies of their aunts. To be fair, I probably was. A particular cow was level two hundred. A sign warning about approaching “the beast of Carpincho Cagado” had been planted some meters away from her.

A small child, that clearly didn’t know how to read, heed not the warning. The cow started by kicking the little girl in the face, making her body fall before her pigtails did. Then, the cow bit her shirt and lifted the girl, making her describe an arc that went over the cow and ended on the ground again. That followed by a flurry of hoofings to the face gradually silencing the screams and suffocating the little struggles form the harem of bleeding wounds that the girl had become. Lastly, the cow vomited a tattered apron, put it around the neck as a makeshift bib, and began swallowing the agonizing girl whole, head first, dislocating her jaw as if she was an anaconda.

“This is the best example of the circle of life I have ever seen,” I commented to my horrified companions.

“Walter, shouldn’t we help the little girl?”

I pondered over Florencia’s kind words as the cow finished swallowing her meal. “I think… I think there comes the rumination now.”

Sabrina covered her eyes. Cornelio sighed, exasperated. Mariana licked her nose. “Walter , can I have a child?”

“I see Canaver has influenced you negatively, Mariana.”

Then, my attention got back to the cow, that lumbered over to a bench— you know, the random weight racks that spawn amidst the god-forsaken fields in rural areas? One of those— and began pumping iron. As she raised the dumbbell the mound of beef looked at me dead in the eye, as if saying that one day, she would be high-level enough to eat me.

“Moo.” she said, menacingly.

“Walter, we must at least try to destroy the town…” telepathed Mariana, noticing my body language.

I picked the closest shit-free piece of straw (for which I had to walk around ten paces) and stared determinately at the cow “This backwater town is not big enough for the both of us.”

“Moo noon moo.”

“No, no, you don’t understand me.” I began approaching with assertive steps. “I am proposing to expand the town. Invest in it.”

The cow stopped training her biceps, joined her front hooves in a pensive gesture, and then asked with a business tone: “Moo moo moo?”

“Does Walter speak cow?” Florencia asked to her siblings.

Sabrina shrugged. Cornelio simply lay on the floor and closed his eyes.

Mariana, however, answered. “Walter is quite the polyglot.”

“But… cow?”

“He hails from Argentina and that place is full of cows, so it’s only natural,” Mariana skillfully contended.

My new bovine acquaintance and I discussed the benefits she would get long and tired. “… no, you see, a bigger town does mean more children, but we should keep certain amount of children alive for them to grow and produce more children, as humans grow slowly.”

“Moo moo moo?”

“No , I cannot feed them manure so they grow faster. They are animals.”

“Moo?” The cow asked, shocked. “Mooo!” she sorrowfully expressed her now defiled veganism. “Mooo?”

“How to go on, Indeed.” I sat beside the crying cow and patted her in the back. “Lift it out of your system, beefwoven sister. The iron will never betray you, unlike veganism.”

“Moo moo moo!” One could notice the cow was broken, her worldview quickly disintegrating.

Stolen story; please report.

“Yes humans eat cows, but that doesn’t mean eating meat is wrong. You can always eat chicken or pork. Even people I don’t care about.”

“Moo.” The cow vomited a star of David and pointed at it. “Moo.”

“Well, I don’t know if people can be made Kosher, I’d need an expert on Cannibalistic Judaism to answer that.”

“Moo.”

“That’s right, most humans don’t have cloven hooves.”

“Moo.”

I stood. I couldn’t believe she had gone there.

“Some do chew their cuds!”

I stormed away and back to my party. “Well, people, can we add Daisy to the party?”

“No, it’s a man-eating cow!” Florencia bigoted out.

“I want to live,” Cornelio carelessly conspiracy-theorized.

“Walter, what part of adding a Jewish, vegan, anthropophagous, weightlifting ruminant to the party sounds like a good idea to you?” Sabrina Antisemitismed.

“The part where it bothers you all. Mariana, you have the final vote. What say you?”

Mariana stopped licking her asshole and looked at me confused. “We must pretend to destroy the town at least; I am getting bored. Discussing about a cow won’t bring the Escapists out if they are hiding.”

“But she is so sad. Look at her, she is crying onto her sports drink.”

Then I got knocked out by a single tail wag of my pet, and the world faded to black, making me feel slightly uneasy due to my racist leanings.

----------------------------------------

I woke up a while later, judging by the sun that was almost in the same place, and the town had mysteriously caught fire. To add to the disgrace, Daisy was nowhere to be found, her empty Cattlorade bottle lonely, abandoned upon the grass.

Sabrina and Mariana were by my side.

“Wait, why isn’t Mariana setting fire to the town? Or, rather, how come it isn’t Mariana causing this place’s downfall?”

Mariana, panting happily, answered my question: “Flor’s Armageddon Drive got triggered.”

“What Mariana means is that she overheard someone admit he was cheating on his wife, and she went on seek-and-destroy mode."

“And where is Cornelio?”

“Encouraging her to go on in her crusade” I glanced around and I saw a familiar figure running in the distance, towards a stone well. I would recognize that wide frame anywere, and thus I saw red. Like a killing robot I raised to my feet, cracked my neck to the right and then to the left.

“Give me a minute, girls.” I said, my tone grave and a demented smirk taking over my face. I had found him, after so much time, I had finally found him!

I raced for the well, enhancing my speed by using the belts to act as springs, , so to not lose so much energy when contacting the floor. Finally , I extended a line of belts and grabbed the chubby arm that was desperately pulling on a rope to gather some water on a bucket.

“What? Who are you?” asked the fat merchant.

“Hi, Pedrissimo, I believe you owe a blonde lass an anti-flea potion.”

Pulling from my belts I raised the man in the air, making him drop the bucket back in the well.

“You never came to reclaim the potion, so I had to throw it out to make place in my stock! I thought you were dead!”

“Potion seller, I am going into walks, and I need your preventive potions!” I joked, knowing nobody would catch the reference. He was there, struggling as my belts coiled around her fat neck. And I couldn’t care about anything but making him pay. “You scammed my dog.”

“Please, I can prepare you another potion! I remember the recipe! Free of charge, even!”

I liked seeing him squiggle, beg like the worm he was. I turned to see what was that burning mound in my peripheral vision. A pile of manure. “Fleas don’t exist here. In the words of my people: me cagaste, gordo forro.” I began dragging him, with hands and legs restrained, towards the pile. “You shat on me, and now you will be baked in boiling shit.”

“No! I will refund your money!”

A belt gagged him as I slowly raised his body closer and closer to the fire.

“Oh, but if I accept your offer I cannot be an edgy asshole. Release steam. I bet the stabber was your associate too. Stab whoever wants to buy expensive potions to show them the quality of your healing ones, making them trust you as a potion maker. I bet you are just a fat grifter that only knows how to make healing potions. Normally, I would let small-time villainy go unpunished. But I don’t like scammers. Less so when they mess with the health of my Golden Retriever.” I smashed him against the cobblestone wall of a nearby house, and I heard something crack. His HP bar lost 1/5 of its total. “Only I mess with the health of my Golden Retriever.” The embers in the air and the smoke of the burning manure got between us. I was laughing under my breath, getting impatient. “I wonder how long does it take for a human body composed mostly of lard to be baked inside a pile of cow shit. I feel pretty empirical today, so, do you want to be my lab partner?” I said, lowering him closer to my face and finally kissing him in his sweaty, greasy forehead. “Be good for once, Pedrissimo.” Describing an arc with my belts I released him, launching the man against the burning manure. Immediately after I rushed to the pile, casting reanimate on it. The shit hardened around him, becoming a scorching prison that only let out his screams. I watched, sitting on a chair made of belts, how his skin bubbled and his health bar dropped until it was in the lone digit. I made the pile spit him out, and extinguished the fire on him via suffocating it with the cape of succubi skin.

Florencia passed by us and didn’t notice me, she was tunnel-visioned into a scrawny man that ran faster than someone with such stubby legs had right to. “Come, I shall smite you, wife-betrayer!” She claimed, and then lowered her hand, making a ray of burning light descend from heaven and smite the parch of dirt where the man was standing moments prior. “Grrr, missed again!”

I didn’t pay her further attention, for Pedrissimo was trying to crawl away. I stopped him tying a belt on his blistered leg. “We have just started having fun, scammer. This doesn’t end yet. You still have eyes!”

Pedrissimo could just whistle miserably as I signaled for Mariana to come by rubbing my thumb, index and middle fingers repeatedly.

She bolted to my side. “Yes?”

“Heal him back to full.We will torture him until I get tired of him and I harvest his penis bone.”

Mariana tilted her head. “Humans don’t have a penis bone.”

“He better grows one fast, then.”

The man screeched and struggled, clawed at the belts while Mariana licked his wounds, restoring a tiny bit of the health bar with each caress of the tongue. I had plans for Pedrissimo. So many plans.

And that’s how our visit to Carpincho Cagado became a very enjoyable day. For me, at least.