The day is hot. Hotter than any Opiparo remembers. Only one thing is familiar. The smell. Dirt, blood and fire. Feces, corn and salt. Sweat, roses, or sweat over roses. The heavy scent pinches the nose. Reeks from the man before him. The laughing man. He slides, ducks and wavers - back and forth. An unknown body language. Sweat and roses. Opiparo knows this bouquet of ingredients. It is the recipe for fear. Also, for pride. Another, called Deslio, had once brought it back to the ranch, and now he, Opiparo, faces it in turn, himself. But there is more to the smell, Opiparo learns. The heat. The noise. The air… And how it bites. Burning and vibrating with flies - a thousand whispers, swarming around his wet oozing eyes, drowning under his lids. The flies and their wingless brothers - the fleas, sucking at the fruit beneath his skin; he feels their wriggle within him. But the insects matter little next to the voice of the man, and his laughter; they are just there, in the distant background, along his memory of entering the arena - the roar of a thousand sounds and smells at once. Miasma world. The laughing man owns reality. He speaks in pain and steel. And waves a sheet of silk at his face. “Julio Aparicio Diaz! Ole’!” What down that mean? Opiparo listens but fails to comprehend. Another stab turns into question. Why? Why? Why? He’d been beaten before, in the ranch, on different occasions, mostly with a stick, sometimes with a whip. But never like this. In the ranch, pain meant action. Move. Stop. Stay. This pain was different. Deeper. What did it mean? “Julio Aparicio Diaz!” – the voice announces more pain. Opiparo charges forth and the man steps aside. Dirt rises in clouds. Roses meet sweat.  For a moment, Opiparo’s natural curiosity, long lost to the first touch of steel, rekindles.    Deslio. The one who returned. The bringer of smells from another world. Opiparo watches him walk his mind, just like that very day, Deslio had returned, stepping through the Ranch, slow and proud, the masters beside him, washing and rubbing his back. The smell of blood and steel trailing after his mammoth figure. Then a night of food and grape, and mellow sounds - the masters moving to it, back and forth, somewhat like the laughing man but different, painless. Not a glance in young Opiparo’s direction but he knows. All of them do. The night belongs to him. The one who’ll never work again. Who’ll never be beaten again. Who’ll only eat and mate, till his last breath. The one who was pardoned. Deslio. He wears the scent of sweat and roses like a crown. The laughing man’s perfume. Opiparo had seen others of his kind vanish for no reason. Led into the world beyond the ranch’s gates. Only Deslio returned, with the smell of the Great Outside on his back. “Bravo! Dance for Julio Aparicio Diaz! Ole’.” – the man yells but Opiparo understands only the pain that follows -  “You will learn my name, beast. Julio Aparicio Diaz!”  The dialog of pain and sword continues. The laughing man dances. Laughs. The gentle breeze of silk precedes. A few more swords go in, joining the ones left by the other men, earlier. More “Ole’!”.  Opiparo stumbles. The conversation carries on. “Julio Aparicio Diaz, the legend! Dance, Diablo!” Opiparo wants to ask the laughing man if he remembers Deslio. His effort is lost in translation.             The background noise is deafening. Opiparo hears the laughing man no longer, now only the thud in his ears remains.             He seeks out his master but the world belongs to strangers.             Behind the fences - voices, screams and laughter, shrieks of joy and horror.  A mass gathering, one collective howl, discordant, in the full specter of emotion. For a long time, Opiparo considers the mass is telling him something, something he fails to comprehend. It is only after another streak of pain in his back, as the metal pierces his skin and sinks into his meat to hang, that Opiparo realizes it is not him who the voices address. Through Opiparo, they spoke to the laughing man, and through his pain stick, he spoke back.              By now, Opiparo has learned to tell how the mass reacts to every move of his or the man, to every word in their conversation. The crowd’s noise and smell changes often, shifting from content to fear to anger, and back. The conversation keeps flowing, and with it, the blood.             And then, right there, Opiparo finally understands the language of the arena but still finds no way to speak back.             To say, leave me alone. Let me be. It hurts. Hurts real bad. I’m hot and I’m tired. I’ll work twice as much. I’ll obey. Just take me home.             But new pain keeps arriving, mixing with the old. It is the way the matador speaks.             The noise wavers with each blow Opiparo takes or evades. It is the source of the pain, a will that commands the hand that commands the sword.             “Remember the name! Julio Aparicio Diaz!” – the man laughs ecstatic –“Remember… And dance, dance, Torro, dance!”             In the next clash of bodies, as silk rustles through the air, and the noise rises, Opiparo darts forward, expecting a stab of pain. But the matador misses, and the arena goes quiet.              The silence is somehow worse, and Opiparo decides to break it. To speak the way of the matador. To explain. To connect.              Like Deslio had, perhaps.             And the laughing man loses balances, laughs no more.             With the force of his half-a-ton torso, Opiparo picks the man and waves him in the air like a flag. A silk sheet of his own.             Something wet pours on Opiparo’s horn and head, and it feels refreshing in the heat. Opiparo is thirsty. But it is no water.             Suddenly it gets yet quieter.              Opiparo makes out the collective pulse of the crowd, while no one remembers to breathe. Was something wrong? Had the mass heard him at last? His pain spoken their tongue?             Then Opiparo turns, right into a flash of events. The man who speaks in pain is moving away, unsure in his step, as if awoken from a deep sleep. His face is pale as a blind eye. The odor of his feces dissolves the sweat and roses, and fuses with the cloud of the arena. Two other men hold him under the arms. His legs trail after, lines in the dirt from the spurs of his boots.             Opiraro sees no more the laughing man, as three other men take his place. They move quick, throw sheets over his head, yelling and touching, confusing his eyes and ears, make him sick. What are they saying? Is it over? Are they taking him back to the ranch? Not Deslio but Opiparo – the new king of the ranch?             But Opiparo’s knows not that they, the men, are the banderilleros in the quadrilla. Another lead matador replaces the old - known to him as the laughing man.             The man stands before Opiparo, his face is stark and merciless, no trace of a smile under the thin mustache. It is the last image Opiparo sees, before the silk sheet falls gently on his face.             The Estocada is delivered with one final thrust of steel, elegant and fierce, right between the shoulder blades and into the heart. But Opiparo does not acknowledge it, he just feels the brush of silk against his muzzle, and then the ground rises, folding and embracing him on both sides, like the master’s blanket on cold winter nights.             The noise in the back erupts strong as ever.                 In his final moments, lying on one side, breathing dirt and drooling, as the red in his mouth mixes with the red of the matador, Opiparo’s eye catches something in the mass of the crowd and stays on it. A flicker. His bovine mind cannot translate what he sees; yet somehow it feels important. Every time the small square object holds the sun’s rays and sends them to his eye, the pain grows more distant, fading with the noise of the arena.             The boy’s hand that holds the mobile phone, recording the Corrida with his camera, is the same hand that titles the video “Matador Gets Owned!!! Opiparo - The Bull Who Won!”             Millions of views later, it continues to spread through the information network, replaying Opiparo’s horn gorging through Julio Aparicio Diaz’s throat and coming out of his mouth, on slow motion, ad infinitum.