Tijuana has a minion!

Esperanza the La Muerta

Avenida del agua

You're lost, unable to remember if your group left you or vice versa; you're aware there's loud music, too many voices, and there's something sticky looking on your left shoe and you pray it doesn't stain because these are really expensive shoes and you don't have another ninety dollars to--

A hand reaches out to grasp yours, startling you. You glance up into unfamiliar eyes on a woman who you assume has a pretty (prettier) face when it isn't covered in makeup or paint or mix of the two. She's no older than twenty, twenty-two at the most. Maybe she senses you're lost or maybe she assumes you came alone, for as you open your mouth to speak ("Please help--" is perched on the very tip of your tongue, about to slip past), she raises a finger to silence you, a golden band around her gloved finger catching your eye under the street lamps.

The hand is surprisingly delicate and coy in its movements as she steps backwards, pulling you along, and it's as if you're the only one to really see her; people are flittering so closely to walk around her it's almost as if they're passing through her. You wonder how this is possible, for she seems to stand out so prominently, and it's then you finally realize that it isn't her unusual painted mask that is so eye-catching, but it is instead the large golden crown that sits upon her head. You wonder, for the briefest of seconds, how you didn't notice it immediately, and wonder, too, why no one else seems to be stopping to take notice of her loud appearance.

She's now wearing a smile, painted in black stitches across her full lips. Beneath the white mask you can see she's amused at your reaction, amused at your emotions which must be splayed across your face openly; amused, too, perhaps that you've clearly just noticed what should have been obvious immediately. Or, quite possibly, she's most entertained that you're now letting her lead you like cattle to--to where, exactly? You'd been so focused on the people around her, so absorbed by her features and appearance, that you hadn't noticed she's been leading you through the large crowd.

"Where are we going?" Your voice is only a notch above a whisper and though she doesn't answer her smile widens in acknowledgement.

"It's a surprise," she says, her English accented but not muddled in the least.

She steps forward to you, her hand underneath your chin as she guides your face to look upwards in the slightest.

Your eyes catch on a street sign and, with some squinting, you can read Avenida del Agua upon it. Water Avenue, how fitting, considering you're being lead by a force that seems just as powerful and subtle as water. The name strikes you for another reason, too, but you can't quite remember why. Hadn't a friend told you not to walk the avenue alone earlier, before you were separated?

"Would you...like to dance?" Her voice draws you back and you realize that her words are an invitation to follow her down the street, where--after peering around the corner skeptically--you can see an even larger group of people and even louder music, though the tunes don't sound quite as festive as the ones you heard earlier. It's hard to pinpoint why, but the music sends chills through your arms, causing flesh to rise for a moment.

Is it safe? you wonder, trying to remember the words you'd been told earlier before being parted from your group. Upon thinking of your friends, you recall that you did, in fact, come with a group, and the trance you'd been in with this woman is broken. Your snap your head to look behind you as if to see someone familiar; all you're met with is a throng of unfamiliar faces, some painted even more elaborately than the woman who has led you to this very peculiar spot.

You turn your body back to her, to find that her head is cocked to the side just a tiny bit, her golden mantle appearing to be slipping to the wayside. You reach out to touch it, to fix it for her, and your hand is just inches away before you're bumped by a passing stranger behind you. Your feet stumble and you trip over the curb, landing in what looks suspiciously like dog fecal matter but you pray is mud from earlier rains.

"You are clumsy," you hear from the woman and your face flushes, because she's pretty and you're looking like a ditz.

"Sometimes," you admit, smiling with a touch of nerves. She holds her hand out to you once again and for a second, a brief moment, you hesitate, but when your hand grasps hers you forget exactly where you are, too absorbed in her smile. As she leads you down the street, her hand laced tight with yours, you think for a moment you hear your name being called behind you, but you're walking too fast to stop and look.

Besides, you think, you came alone anyway; with her warm hand tight in yours, you follow her down Avenida del Agua.

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