Selección Terror: La sangre exige un precio

About this issue

Ralph Barby's "La sangre exige un precio" (Blood Demands a Price) is a thriller serialized in the Spanish pulp series Selección Terror. The narrative follows Denis Rasoir, a young Parisian engineer on a motorbike trial through the French countryside, testing a prototype carburetor he hopes will secure industrial backing. While resting, Rasoir discovers a girl named Etoile Lignée tied to a tree and being whipped by hooded assailants—fellow boarding school students from an elite institution. Rasoir intervenes, chasing off the attackers, one of whom he unmasks as a red-haired girl named Suzanne. After freeing Etoile, who bears welts from damp towel-beatings designed to leave minimal visible marks, Rasoir encourages her to report the incident. Etoile refuses, preferring anonymity. The two bond briefly over cigarettes in the countryside as Etoile reveals the boarding school's corruption and dysfunction, hinting at hashish use among students and faculty, while Rasoir discloses his independent engineering ambitions.