A Heart for a Kex

The town had long since stopped seeing Yunuen as one of their own. He walked through the dusty roads with the same lightness as a beautiful ghost, invisible and yet present in every whispered conversation, in the hushed voices of the women as they passed by their low-roofed, crumbling-walled houses. No one remembered exactly how he had arrived in town, and he had no interest in recalling it. He lived on the outskirts, in his small, barely constructed house, where the cobblestone paths faded into weed-choked trails.

It had been a good year for Yunuen. The money and provisions he had accumulated had finally allowed him to install a wooden door in the front frame of his house, get a new pair of clothes, not second-hand ones, and finally get some other piece of furniture to make his house warmer at the sight. Before, the entrance was an open hole, just like his windows or the area that goes to the backyard, exposed to the wind and the curious glances of the few children who dared to peek inside, letting them find a lot of boxes as seats, trying to unravel the mystery of this beautiful, ragged boy. Now, with the door, he could at least have the illusion of privacy and make that space much more his than for others' entertainment, even though his home was still just a bare structure, with an old bed, a wobbly table, and two splintered chairs as his only furnishings.

"I'll accept everything from everyone but this is the only that remains," Yunuen would say to himself at night as he counted the bucks and coins he had received that day. They were of all sizes and colors, a reflection of the diversity of his visitors. Some left crumpled bills, others food wrapped in worn cloths or rusty pots: fruits, beans, and sometimes even a bit of dried meat that he accepted with a grateful smile.

There weren't many town villagers who dared to touch him, to get too close and cross the limits of the cursed place. They spoke to him politely and gave him looks of pity or desire from the other side of the fence, but they never stayed long. Occasionally, when someone brushed his hand while handing over payment from his partners or the groceries from the neighbors, he could feel them tense up, then discreetly wipe their palm on their clothing. He knew they did this, even if they pretended otherwise. Both sides of the fence mirror the same intentions, the facade of ignorance to keep going with their lives in relative peace.

Yunuen was just another tourist attraction after the mystic pit in the center of the town. He knew it and, in a way, accepted it. Tourists came to swim in the cenote's crystal-clear waters, to take pictures in front of the moss-covered walls, and then asked about the "Kex," that strange myth that spread through the town. The story had changed over time; now they said that Yunuen was a powerful avatar, a being into whom the darkest atrocities should be entrusted before destroying him in a ritual that, mysteriously, left Yunuen unharmed, but not those who dared to get involved with him.

"He absorbs the evil," the elders would say to the strangers, their voice trembling but sure. "Everything they tell him, everything they do to him… it stays with him. That's why he's always alone."

Yunuen would laugh silently when he heard those words, hidden behind his wooden door before the residents left the new client in front of his dry garden. He didn't absorb anyone's evil; he just survived it. He survived the looks, the sharp words masked as kindness, the nocturnal visits filled with urgencies and needs that weren't his, and even though each encounter left invisible marks on his skin, like an animal branded for sacrifice.

On the night that the moon gets full, when the town sleeps and his bed is occupied by just one, he unties the thin sheet and walks out to the cropped dirt to talk to the stars, his only confident of his most endearing wish: He knows that he should not desire anyone's company because who dared to seek something more, but he still dreams with the moment when someone directs pure and innocent affection to him. But he is interrupted by the partner of the month, knocking on his doors. 

Yunuen receives them and lets them enter to exchange no more words than necessary. Yunuen tended to them with an almost loving delicacy and gave them what they sought without asking for anything in return because he knew that, in the end, they would give him everything: pocket money, some provisions, their secrets. He looked at them with tenderness, even knowing they would never speak to him again after that encounter. Some would leave the town and never return; others avoided his eyes on the streets as if by looking at him, Yunuen could unleash the memories of what they had done and said in the dimness of his home.

He never held it against them. Somehow, in his twisted, painful logic, each encounter felt like a promise, a coin thrown into a wishing well. 

“One day,” he thought, “one of them won't leave. Someone will truly love me.”

But that day has not come yet. Sometimes, Yunuen thinks it will never happen, soaking his face in tears.

Each morning, after his visitors had left, Yunuen would stay in bed a little longer, staring at the bare ceiling while his body recovered the energy. Then, he would get up, water his potatoes in the backyard garden, and walk out into the town with money in hand and his head held high. People greeted him kindly, some even left food at the entrance of his house. Everyone knew what he did, but no one spoke out loud because he is a curse in flesh.

They said that the Kex could not die until he had heard all the sins of those who dared to trust him with their darkness and that he would disappear in a final act of redemption. Yunuen, for his part, just waited because inside him still burned the absurd belief that one day, among the shadows and broken voices, someone would come not seeking redemption, but love. And then, his suffering today, his endless nights and unbreakable loneliness, would have a meaning... even the sensation of a hideous gaze following him.