by Mark Sadler
It is said that only three people have knowingly laid eyes upon the true face of El Quetzal. The first is his rotund, but lovable, sidekick, El Tapir. The second is Helena Costilla, the raven-haired daughter of the evil Spanish governor, Enrique Costilla. The third is the governor himself, moments before he fell to his death from the open bell tower of St Martha's Church, in Sacramento. His poignant final words: “but I saw you die!” are engraved as an epitaph upon his mausoleum.
Having obtained revenge for the cold-blooded murder of his wife, El Quetzal returned to his home village, vowing that he would never again hide his face from the world.
“I cut my mask into seven pieces, which I gave to my sons to bury in secret locations,” he says. “Even during this time of quarantine, when wearing a mask in public is mandatory, I refuse to do so. For this crime, I have been confined indoors by the same villagers whose lives I once saved from bandits.”
2. El Tapir, his rotund but lovable sidekick, passed away from typhoid fever, in 1824
“El Tapir wasn't much of a fighter but he was good with logistics,” admits El Quetzal. “The truth is that, behind every great swashbuckler, there is a less-attractive man taking care of travel arrangements and hotel bookings.”
In 2016, he created the Tapir Foundation to research a vaccine or a cure for the illness that claimed the life of the man he described as: “The most loyal friend that a masked vigilante could ask for in a time of revolution.”
3. Swashbuckling is currently forbidden under local by-laws
While El Quetzal has intimated that he might be coaxed out of retirement, he would likely fall foul of current social distancing rules, which expressly forbid public sword fights.
Riding a horse out through the second-storey window of the Governor's Palace, with Helena Costilla holding on for dear life, as the building explodes into flame, is currently punishable by an $80 fine.
4. Even a true master of the blade could not defeat COVID-19
Recent laboratory experiments conducted in South Korea have confirmed that, even if COVID-19 showed an interest in duelling, it is impossible to impale the virus on the end of a Spanish rapier.
Were El Quetzal somehow able to learn how to defeat COVID-19 in hand-to-hand combat, possibly under the guidance of a Native American shaman, it seems unlikely that he would be able to train a rag-tag band of villagers to do likewise, prior to an impending COVID-19 attack upon their settlement.
5. The life-restoring kiss that he gave to Helena Costilla, after she was shot through the heart by her wicked father, was apparently a one-off deal
Disappointing news for anyone who had pinned their hopes on this famous kiss being patented by a large pharmaceutical company, and rolled-out in hospitals across the world:
“It was not my kiss that saved Helena,” concedes El Quetzal. “It was the great love that compelled me to force my lips upon her unconscious body, that restored her to life.”
6. The children at the orphanage need him
In a written statement to the press, El Quetzal said:
“Though I hear the voices of the people calling out for my aid in their hour of need, and feel their despair in my heart, the children in the African orphanage, to whom I donate $3 every month by standing order, for their upkeep and education, also need my help. I think they would miss the money if I were to be killed in the battle against COVID-19.
7. El Quetzal is a fictional creation of the 1920s pulp novelist, Herbert Beauregard
The third divorce of this titan of hack literature provoked a downward spiral into the authorship of grimy, shop-soiled erotica, where fleets of well-endowed interstellar wasps impregnate human women. Around this time, Beauregard also sold the rights to El Quetzal to various conflicting parties, all of whom have been fighting for legal ownership over the character ever since, in a case that has taken the civil court system of Luxembourg by storm.
By the time the matter is settled, the COVID-19 pandemic will be over, toilet paper will be ubiquitous again, and we will be back to worrying about tsunamis, or the escalation of the war between penguins and polar bears.
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