by Robert G. Retana

​The card was made of white construction paper and had a small flower on the front drawn with crayons. Each petal was a different color, and “Happy Mother’s Day” was neatly written across the top of the card. The handwriting was that of a child but neat and precise, nonetheless. Inside the card, the words “from Victor” were written in blue ink. Victor brought it home from school right before Mother’s Day and showed it to his Aunt Dolores.
 
“Can I send this to my mother?” he said.
 
His words pierced Dolores’s heart because she knew how much pain this poor child carried around and how much he would suffer for the rest of his life for things he had no part in.
 
“Yes, you can send it to her,” Dolores responded. “We’ll find an envelope for it and mail it tomorrow morning. She should get it in a few days.”
 
“When can I see her?” Victor asked.
 
“We can go for a visit soon. But she is in Chowchilla, a long way from here, and I don’t know how soon we can take a trip there.”
 
“When can she come home?”
 
“Baby, she might never come home,” Dolores responded. “But she thinks of you every day, and you can visit her there. It’s far, and we can’t go that often to see her. My car gives me a lot of trouble, and it takes forever if we take the bus.” Dolores hugged him, and he hugged her back. Then he went upstairs to change his clothes and play video games before he had to do his homework.
 
Dolores wondered whether she would have it in her to heal this child’s heart or whether the pain he felt would become rage, and he would wind up in prison like his mother. She prayed he would not change and that God would help her know what to do to make things better. Dolores had her own two children and never expected to raise a third. But now that he was hers, she could not help but want to take care of him. No one should start off in life with so much pain and sadness.
 
She looked at the framed picture of herself and Marisa, her younger sister, and Victor’s mother, which she kept on the living room wall. It was taken when they were little girls, four and five years old. They were clinging to their mother, who looked so happy and beautiful. She had long, brown, wavy hair and large expressive eyes, just like Marisa. Both girls were smiling and holding on to their mother for dear life. Behind them stood their father, a tall, handsome, nicely dressed man with thick black hair combed back and a neat mustache that framed his broad smile. Little did they know that soon after this picture was taken, their father would leave home and never return.  
 
People said he had another family in Mexico and decided to return there. Others said he was spotted wearing a fancy suit in the bars with a new woman by his side. Whatever the story was, they never saw or heard from him again. It was too much for their mother to take, and soon after he disappeared, she killed herself, overdosing on sleeping pills.
 
Marisa was sent to live with her grandmother, who was too old to control her, and just prayed a lot for her salvation. Dolores went to live with an aunt who took good care of her but could not afford to take them both. The girls cried for weeks when they were separated. Although they kept in close contact, they went their separate ways in terms of lifestyle. Marisa always had boys chasing her, but she never found a healthy relationship. Men just brought her more problems. Dolores was more serious and had a stricter parental figure in her aunt. She could not run with the same crowd or tag along when Marisa skipped school or got a fake I.D. to go nightclubbing even though she was underage. Marisa quickly learned that any shyness or awkwardness she felt would go away when she had been drinking and doing drugs, and her self-esteem was boosted by the attention she got from men, even if it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. There was always room at the parties for a pretty girl who liked to have a good time.
 
The pain of losing their mother and father and then being separated from Dolores never seemed to lessen for Marisa. She lied, made everything seem great, and gave Dolores expensive gifts and clothes that she could not afford to buy for herself, never explaining how she got them. Marisa could never look her sister in the eye and tell her everything she was caught up in. People said she used men and women to get what she wanted. Marisa would always drive nice cars but never had a job that would allow her to afford them. She dressed in nice, new clothes and always had her hair and nails done. She looked vivacious, but when she drank, the sadness in her eyes was unmistakable.
 
When she visited Dolores, she sometimes slurred her words like she was high but denied she had a drug problem. Dolores begged her not to use drugs when she became pregnant and feared the baby would be born with birth defects. Luckily, he was born a healthy baby boy. Marisa never said who the father was and gave the baby her last name. She named him Victor, after their father, which surprised Dolores since Marisa always said she hated him. “At least this Victor will never leave me,” Marisa explained. “He will always be mine.”
 
Marisa cared for Victor as a baby, but as soon as he could walk, she started partying again. She would leave him with friends and family as often as she could. She would ask Dolores to watch him for a few hours and then not pick him up for a week. Marisa’s heart was not right, and having a baby did not change that. She always showed up with money, a nice toy for Victor, and a long story. Dolores knew Marisa was headed for trouble; however, she never imagined how much trouble was ahead.

***

​The drive home that night began in the Mission District of San Francisco. Marisa and her husband, Rob, had dinner on Valencia Street. When she took the driver’s seat of their new, black BMW 525i, she made a quick call on her cell phone and then hung up when the call was answered without saying a word.
 
“Who are you calling?” Rob asked.
 
“I want to see if my friend is coming over tomorrow to take me to apply for a job. But I didn’t realize how late it was, so I’ll call her in the morning,” Marisa responded.
 
“Okay. You don’t need to work, but if you want to, if that makes you happy, then you should do it.”
 
About half a mile away, Marisa stopped the car and said the check engine light had come on. “Don’t stop the car here,” Rob said. “This is not the best neighborhood; we can still make it home with that light on.”
 
Just then, a car pulled up behind them. A man quickly approached the vehicle’s passenger side and told Rob to get out. He held a gun pointed at Rob.
 
“Just do what he says,” Marisa told him. He got out of the car and tried to cooperate, not wanting any harm to come to him or his wife. Seven shots were fired as soon as he was out of the car. Three bullets pierced his skull while the rest entered and exited his chest.
 
When the police arrived, Marisa was crying, saying that Rob was her husband and that someone tried to carjack them and they shot Rob. But the car was still there, her purse was still inside, and she was still wearing the expensive diamond wedding ring Rob gave her. Marisa said she had no idea what the suspect looked like or what kind of car he was driving. She had no bruises, although she claimed the suspect hit her and pushed her to the ground so he could take the car. Her demeanor was also strange in that she did not ask about her husband’s condition or come close to his body, maintaining her distance from the crime scene instead. At the police station, she seemed confused and a little bit disinterested. She gave a vague statement to the police but became impatient when pressed for more details.
 
The police did not believe her from the start but had no basis for placing her under arrest. The facts, however, did not match up, as the route she took home was not the most direct route to the freeway entrance, which would lead them to the Bay Bridge and then to their home in the Oakland Hills. Something was up, and Marisa was not a persuasive grieving widow.
 
Rob died from gunshot wounds in the ambulance on the way to San Francisco General. When Marisa was told about his death, she did not cry. She looked more dazed than sad and said she wanted to go home. The police wound up notifying Rob’s family. They would soon learn that he was a 45-year-old executive at a software company in San Jose. He was a shy bachelor for most of his life and never dated much until he met Marisa. He met her at Golden Gate Park one day, where he was walking his dog. She approached him to pet his cocker spaniel. The dog seemed to like her, and Rob let her play with him for a while so he could get a closer look at her. She had long brown hair that was pulled off her face. She was petite, had curves in all the right places, and knew how to show them off. She was someone that people noticed. She was at ease with herself and struck up a conversation with him that flowed in a way his conversations with women never did. Before he knew it, she had given him her phone number, and they agreed to meet for a drink.
 
A drink led to her moving in with him quickly and then getting married in a civil ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco three months later. Rob bought a house in the Oakland Hills for them and gave her use of his credit cards, which she had no problem using. She bought expensive clothes, never worked again, and had frequent calls on her cell phone that she had to take in the other room. He never pressed for details of how Marisa spent her time or his money to prevent her from getting upset. In his eyes, she was a very emotional person with a strong personality and a quick temper, but also capable of moments of great tenderness.
 
Lonely nights alone at home in front of the television with fast food seemed worse to him than putting up with her mood swings. “Everyone can think you’re successful,” he would say, “but when you end the day at home alone, it sure doesn’t feel that way.” His family warned him about her, and she hated his family, saying they thought they were too good for her. Rob tried to keep the peace and wanted to make things work no matter what. He ignored her drinking and tried to bond with her son, hoping that being a good stepfather might score some points with her. It never did.
 
He never knew she was still seeing her old boyfriends, even after their marriage. Nor did he know or want to know who she brought to the house when he was at work. She partied with friends and lovers at home, impressing them with how she lived and telling them that she did not love Rob and would divorce him and collect alimony. They laughed and partied with her, had sex with her, but never imagined how far she would go.
 
The pain and abandonment she felt as a child and the men who used her along the way and then discarded her had caused a change in her. She was once a sweet, sensitive girl looking for someone to love her. Now, she only cared about partying and easy money. An expensive dress, nice jewelry, and money in her pocket validated her in a way that she never felt validated by other people. The pain she felt due to repeated abandonments made her do whatever was necessary to lessen the toxic energy she carried around inside despite the party girl vibe she projected.
 
She had no safety net, so she was not afraid to use any means necessary to get what she wanted. The drugs and alcohol eased the pain but blurred her sense of reality. Her old friends included several shady characters who fancied themselves as con artists and criminals who had gotten away with a lot, even if they wound up doing time for some of it. They would tell stories of schemes that had been successful and large amounts of money that could be made with the right planning and execution. When she told them she did not love Rob and was using him for his money, they encouraged her to get rid of him and cash in, as they were eager to keep her interested so she would continue to supply drugs and alcohol.
 
When she was high, it all seemed to make sense, and she had a feeling of invincibility that a sober Marisa would not have. She just needed to figure out how to get rid of him without getting caught. She spent many hours thinking about how to get it done. When an attorney told her that if she divorced him, she would not be entitled to very much, given the short time they had been married, she began to think that there was no other way to cash in but to kill him. She was not leaving this marriage empty-handed. She would not return to her old life with nothing to show for the time she was married to Rob. 
 
Eventually, she persuaded Rob to agree to purchase life insurance policies and mortgage insurance for the house, with her as the beneficiary. Then, before she knew it, the drunken conversations about hiring someone to kill her husband and collect the insurance proceeds turned into a plan of action. Her ex-boyfriend, Alex, who left her several times for other women, was back in her life and was seeing her at her house when Rob was working. She seemed to forget all the times he abused her and left her without explanation. She needed his approval, even after everything he had done to her. His return meant he was wrong when choosing someone else over her. At least, that is the story she told herself each time she took him back. Each knew that even though they both looked good, their days of trading off their looks were ending, and they needed a score to set them up.
 
Rob’s family began to ask questions about Marisa and told him to divorce her before it was too late. Rob’s demeanor towards her changed, and she found out that his parents had arranged a consultation with a divorce attorney. The end was coming, and she needed to act quickly. Marisa and Alex agreed to kill Rob on a dark street in the Mission District and make it look like a carjacking. Marisa would keep the house and the car and most of the insurance. She would give Alex one thousand dollars and the proceeds of one of the life insurance policies Rob had purchased.  

***

​As they rode the bus to Chowchilla, Dolores and Victor tried to keep cool in the sweltering heat. It took several hours to reach the Central Valley. As the bus exited Highway 99 and went east on Avenue 24, Dolores was glad the trip was almost over. Victor needed to use the restroom, and she needed to get this over with. Some things needed to be said, and she hoped she had the strength to say them without making things worse. The bus was filled with families of prisoners who seemed anxious to get there. However, their collective enthusiasm was tempered by the realization that they were headed to prison.
 
Above the almond trees, they could see the large complex, Valley State Prison for Women. It looked almost like a campus if it were not for the razor wire. It took them an hour and a half to work their way to the front of the line so they could be “processed.” As they passed through the metal detector, they removed their shoes and were searched by prison guards. Dolores almost did not believe they would search Victor, an eight-year-old boy, but figured they had seen it all and had no reason to trust anyone.
 
They were assigned a visiting table, and when Dolores first saw Marisa, she was shocked. Her hair was cut short and combed back off her face like a man’s. The baggy orange pants and top were in stark contrast to the stylish way Marisa dressed on the outside. All the make-up and embellishments she thought she needed were gone, yet the beauty of her bare face was still unmistakable.
 
“Mom!” Victor shouted when he first saw her, apparently not noticing the change in her appearance. She hugged him awkwardly and sat him right next to her. Marisa was happy to see her son and sister but was ashamed that they would see her like this. Marisa asked Victor about school and his friends and whether he was minding Dolores.
 
He then asked her, “When will you come home?”
 
After a long pause, Marisa responded. “I don’t know, mijo. Not for a very long time.”
 
“Why do you have to stay here so long?”
 
Marisa froze for a minute, not knowing what to say. When she was arrested, Victor was being cared for by a friend. Although he had visited her in county jail and had been to Chowchilla once before, she never explained why she was incarcerated. She never asked what Victor had been told by family and friends. She tried not to think about it and prayed that one day she would find a way to explain to him why she had been sent to prison. “It’s complicated,” she told him. “They said I did some bad things, and I’ll be here until the situation gets straightened out.”
 
Tears began to fall from Victor’s eyes as he listened to his mother. He knew what she had done because the neighborhood kids had no problem telling him, having heard about it on the news. He knew Rob was dead and that his mother was the one who had him killed. He heard it many times from various people but never told anyone that he knew. This caused bouts of sadness and anxiety which made him introverted.
 
“People say bad things about you, but I don’t care what they say,” Victor told Marisa. His voice was trembling. “I want you to come home so we can be together like before. I miss you.”
 
Marisa did not know what to say. She hugged him until she was told to stop by a prison guard. Here, visitors may briefly embrace their loved one upon greeting and again upon exiting the visiting room. Anything more was deemed “excessive.”
 
After a long silence, Dolores told Victor to get some food from the vending machines. She gave him several dollar bills to buy junk food, the only thing available to the prisoners and their visitors. “Bring your mom something to eat,” she told him. When he ran to the vending machines, a small line of people was waiting their turn. Dolores hoped this would occupy him for a little while so she could say what needed to be said.
 
“He misses you so much.”
 
“I know he does,” Marisa responded.
 
“He writes to you and makes cards for you, and you never respond.”
 
“You know I was caught up in the trial. Then I was sent to the reception center for ninety days to be evaluated. Then they sent me here. I had to get used to being here. It’s not easy for me. Don’t make it worse by coming here to give me head trips.”
 
“You’re his mother,” Dolores responded. “You didn’t think about him when you were scheming with Alex. You just thought about yourself and all the things you wanted. Now those things are gone, and all you have left is a little boy that misses you.”
 
Marisa remained silent, not knowing how to respond.
 
“Listen, I am not here to give you a hard time. You know you can count on me to care for him and be good to him like he was my own son. But I’m his aunt, and he still needs his mother.”
 
“What good am I to him behind bars?”
 
“I don’t know what to tell you, but you can’t keep trying to take the easy way out. He’ll grow up angry and hate you if you keep ignoring him. You have to be a mother to him from inside here because you may never come back out. I am telling you this so your son can know who his mother really is. He’ll find newspaper articles when he gets older, and, as you heard him say, people will tell him what happened. Is that what you want him to know about you?”
 
“But I told you, I didn’t kill him.”
 
“Marisa, it doesn’t matter; you were mixed up in it, and Rob is dead. You were convicted. Alex testified against you to save himself. Things might have turned out differently if you had spent more time taking care of Victor instead of looking for your next score. Have any of your friends visited you?”
 
“No,” Marisa responded. Tears began to flow from Marisa’s eyes, and she began to look at the floor.
 
“You were the lucky one,” Marisa told Dolores. “My aunt loved you and took good care of you. My grandmother didn’t want to raise me. She did it because she had to. She always wanted to be in church. She never talked to me. She just kept telling me to get saved and accept Jesus. You have no idea how many times I have been abused. I finally decided I wanted to be the one to take advantage of others. It all made sense to me when I was using. But I know I was wrong, and I’m paying for what I did.”
 
“I didn’t come here to make you feel bad,” Marisa responded, “but being a mother to Victor is more than just tattooing his name on your chest. He needs to know you love him and care how he is.”
 
“I just don’t know how. My mother wasn’t around, so I never learned how.”
 
“Well, you have plenty of time on your hands to learn,” Dolores said.
 
Victor came running back, his hands filled with bags of potato chips, candy bars, and soda. “Mom, here are some Cheetos for you. I know you like them.”
 
“Thanks.”
 
“Why are you crying?”
 
“I’m crying because I am happy to see you.”
 
“Did you get my card?
 
“Yes, it made me very happy. It made me have a nice Mother’s Day even inside this place.”
 
“My teacher said I’m a good artist.”
 
“You are. Thanks for thinking about me. It’s hard for me to write to you because I sometimes don’t have much to say. Nothing good happens here. But I will try to write to you. Send me some pictures of you when you have a chance.”
 
“I will, Mom.”
 
Dolores looked around the visiting room and saw several inmates who seemed to be visiting with their children and other family members. Some kids were younger than Victor; others looked like teenagers, almost ready to become adults. She thought about the amount of hurt that gets passed down from one generation to the next.
 
She often wondered how intense the pain must have been for their mother when she swallowed the sleeping pills and made her two daughters orphans. Had she known that one of those daughters would wind up in prison for life, would she have found the strength to survive? Would she have continued to be a mother to her daughters and keep them on the right track? She wondered if Marisa had considered all the pain and sadness that Victor would endure, would she have stopped herself from getting caught up in a man’s murder?
 
Marisa had a lot of time to think about these things while behind bars. She realized that she had left her son without a mother, much like what happened to her when she was a young girl. It was the last thing she would wish on anyone, much less her own son. Love, it seemed to Marisa, was transitory. You can’t count on it from one day to the next. Victor was the exception to that rule, yet she had ruined his life with her actions and did not know how to make it right. The guilt for what she had done to Rob and Victor was almost unbearable.
 
Just then, Dolores saw Marisa peering at her through the brown eyes she had always used to her advantage. She was stripped of all embellishments now, and all that was left was a battered soul in prison clothes. Next to her was a little boy who looked a lot like her. His happiness at being with his mother would be replaced by tears when he was in bed tonight, knowing that his mother would probably never come home.
 
The three of them sat silently for a few minutes, not knowing what to say. They heard the loud voices and chatter of the other inmates and visitors around them. They all seemed to know what to say and could be heard carrying on. But the three of them sat there and looked at each other, unsure how to relate to each other under these circumstances. When it was time to leave, they hugged each other tightly, and Victor did not want to let go.
 
“Thanks for bringing him and coming to see me,” Marisa said.
 
“Of course,” Dolores responded. “Let’s take this one day at a time. Un día a la vez.”
 
Dolores took Victor’s hand and walked toward the exit. The Central Valley’s overwhelming heat was waiting for them outside. She wiped the perspiration from Victor’s forehead. The heat was nothing compared to all the pent-up emotions in the visiting room. “Don’t worry mijo,” Dolores said to Victor. “If there is anything this family knows how to do, it’s getting through hard times.” 

Robert G. Retana is an attorney living and working in San Francisco. He is Chicano, originally from the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, as well as a Tribal Member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. He lives with his husband, Juan Carlos, and their faithful companion, Tigre, a dachshund mix.  Robert’s short story “Leaving Boyle Heights” was published in the Latino Book Review Magazine in 2021. He is a fan of the arts and currently serves as a Board Member of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco.  As a writer, he seeks to tell stories from marginalized communities that are often left untold.  

​“Boys, boys, boys, are you up there?” the mother shouted up the tall, winding staircase. There was no response as her echo came back to her. “Maybe they already went over there,” she then mumbled to herself as she scratched her head due to her uncertainty of their whereabouts. She then took two steps up the staircase to get a better look at their individual bedrooms.

“Hmmm, their doors are shut too,” she said to herself. She then filled her lungs with air and shouted again. “BOYS, ARE-YOU-UP-THERE?” There was still no reply. “Whatever,” she said with a sigh of annoyance as she walked back to the kitchen.

She was trying to find out if her two sons, a tween-ager and a teenager, had already proceeded ahead of her to their neighbor’s house.

It was a typical Friday night in this quiet, safe and affluent community that consisted of very large, million-dollar homes. The evening of Friday, October 24, 2007, was just like any other weekend in this pleasant and peaceful slice of suburbia.

Families across Silver Meadows, Maryland were planning many types of weekend gatherings and events. Particularly since the weather had been quite pleasant, though unseasonably warm.

The Becker family, who lived in a beautiful, large 4,200 square-foot, brick, home on a cul-de-sac, was gearing up for several straight days of family fun.

Tomorrow they were headed to a Halloween party hosted by their Homeowners Association in the commons area near their home. They had collectively settled on The Wizard of Oz for their family costume theme. They truly felt they had a good chance of winning first place in the best dressed family category.

However, tonight they were joining their neighbors for great food and merriment. The party agenda was simple but something they all had been looking forward to ever since it popped up in bright red marker on the family calendar on the refrigerator door. There would be dinner, dessert, adult drinks and lots of end-of-a-busy-week unwinding by all—a mere two doors down from their own home.

“It’s going to be so, so much fun,” said Sofia, the matriarch of the Becker family, as she chatted with her four-year-old daughter Olivia in the kitchen. “Although it’s always a blast when we go over there. You and the other kids can run around in the backyards or even the street, burn off all that energy and get worn out. Or at least I hope.” she said with a laugh. “And mommy and daddy will have a drink or two, or three. I asked Mrs. O’Doyle to turn the patio fire on too, Olivia, just for you, since I know you love to roast marshmallows. Just try to not get it into your hair this time, dear.”

Olivia was in no mood to talk, as she impatiently stood by the patio door, with one hand on her hip, head tilted as she rolled her eyes at her mother’s every word.

“Can I leave now, mommy?” the little girl inquired. “Your father will be here in just a minute, sweetheart, and we’ll all walk over together, like we agreed,” Sofia replied. “Mommy, I want to go now,” the ever impatient Olivia said as she stomped her feet repeatedly on the dark oak, hardwood, kitchen floor.

As Sofia labored throughout the kitchen preparing for the night’s festivities, she had begun to work up a bit of a sweat. An unusual, autumn warm spell had descended upon the Washington, D.C. area and the kitchen had quickly become very stuffy, despite the windows already being opened. Sofia then decided to open the patio door.

“Ahhh, that feels much, much better,” she said as she gazed at the quickly setting sun and took a deep breath. The warm, evening breeze now began to blow through their kitchen while she resumed preparing her concoction for the night's events.

The party planning had begun earlier in the week with an innocuous social media post.

“Family gathering at our house this Friday!” was the message posted to Sofia’s Facebook page by Sharon O’Doyle, their neighbor who lived two doors down the cul-de-sac. “Yay! What time, neighbor?” Sofia replied. “7 p.m., this gives me time to get the food started after I get home from picking the kids up from school and practice,” was the response. “I’ll bring my sangria!” Sofia excitedly replied. “It wouldn’t be a party without it, LOL,” Sharon wrote.

This entire thread was in full sight for all their social media contacts to read since it was on their walls. Even the contacts that neither woman knew personally, could read the conversation. Given how popular these two women were, the thread about the party was seen by thousands of friends, acquaintances and strangers on the emerging, new platform.

As evening further descended upon their quaint community, all the Becker children were rambunctious and eager to go to the O’Doyle’s house because they were absolutely enamored with their neighborly counterparts.

The Beckers and the O’Doyles had quite a bit in common. Their homes were almost identical, their kids went to the same schools and were in many of the same clubs and sports. The O’Doyle family also had two sons and a preschool age daughter, just like the Beckers.

“Hmmm, I think it needs more brandy, yeah more brandy,” Sofia said out loud to herself as she was meticulously preparing her special sangria which would serve as the signature nectar for the night. “It needs about another splash,” she said as she poured a tiny bit more into the large, crystal carafe.

Sofia Becker, a tall, blonde, fit and significantly attractive woman, 41 years of age, took immense pride in her homemade sangria recipe. It was a family tradition that her parents brought with them from their homeland of Argentina. It was an heirloom Sofia truly treasured and had somewhat made it her own over the years. Sofia was known for making the best drinks at all the local functions, and it was an honor she wore with immense pride.

As the family prepared for the soirée, Sofia’s 11-year-old son Karl quickly emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, into the kitchen.

“Mom, can I go ahead?” he asked his mother, already walking towards the patio door knowing what her answer would be. “Wait, I thought you were already over there,” Sofia replied. “No, but Frankie’s already over there,” he answered. “If you heard voices from our rooms, it’s because we were just chatting in the game on our headsets.”

He then moved his head up and down, to show off the headset he was still wearing. “Oh, that must be why neither of you replied to me when I yelled upstairs,” she said.

She then waved the wooden spoon that she was using to stir the sangria, in the direction of the door, to gesture that Karl could indeed leave. “Yeah, go ahead of us,” she added. “We’re right behind you, anyway.”

Despite being weighed down with a handful of video game cases and a headset cable that dragged while he walked, Karl exited the kitchen through the back door as quickly as he entered.

“Hey, can you tell dad I scored two goals at practice, in the scrimmage today,” Karl added on his way out. “Oh, honey, he’ll be so excited. We are so proud of our soccer star. Big game this Sunday too,” Sofia said.

“Oh and by the way, can you tell Mrs. O’Doyle we’ll be there in less than five minutes.” Karl then gave a labored thumbs up as he proceeded out the door. "Oh, tell dad one of the goals was a penalty kick. I read the goalie's eyes perfectly and just nailed it."

Olivia's impatience was now very evident. “Mommy, mommy can I go too, with Karl?” Olivia asked again, as the warm breeze swept in and blew past her linen, white sundress. “Oh those cute little dimples, how could I say no to that?” Sofia said out loud. “But the answer is still no sweetheart, NOT YET.”

The response further annoyed Olivia. “But, but, but, you let them go,” she demonstratively pouted and stammered as she continuously stomped one foot on the kitchen floor while she tucked her golden locks behind one ear, lower lip protruding.

Olivia idolized her two older brothers and always wanted to mimic their actions. However, at her age she just could not grasp that she was not yet old enough to be entirely like them.

“You are too little to go by yourself,” Sofia replied, as she was now meticulously stirring the sangria. “Olivia, listen to mommy. I have told you this many, many times before. The rules have not changed. A four-year-old is not old enough to go alone. I love you, and I will continue to give you more freedom once you get older. But we are not there yet. Besides, I’m nearly done. We can get going in just a sec. We won’t wait for daddy, he’s apparently still stuck at the office, since he’s not here and I told him seven, sharp. Just let me grab the diced fruit from the fridge.” The diced, fresh, fruit was the over-the-top garnish to which the sangria would be incomplete without.

“You know what Olivia,” Sofia said as she gestured with a nod of her head in the direction of the neighbor’s house. “Go on ahead, I’m right behind you anyway. Just go to their deck and knock on the back door and they’ll let you in. Can you also leave their door open for me? My hands will be full. Please watch out for the dog shi…, I mean, poop in the yard that’s in between our house and theirs too.”

Olivia’s demeanor quickly changed. “YAY, thanks mommy,” Olivia said with a squeal and a smile knowing she had now been treated as a big kid and given a great responsibility.

Olivia then wasted no time. She immediately darted out the door with the speed of a gold-medaling sprinter, then veered to the right, towards the O’Doyle’s yard. She was as swift as a rabbit, even hurdling a reclining lawn chair on the Becker family deck, merrily dashing on her way.

“She’s fast like her brothers, she may even be faster by the time it’s all said and done,” Sofia said to herself, referencing the athletic prowess that her children were known for. “I was quite the sprinter myself, back in the day too.”

She then shifted her attention back to the task at hand, which was to grab the carafe of sangria and fruit to take to the party. In a hurried effort to grab the fruit from the fridge and follow behind her lightning-fast daughter, Sofia had physically contorted herself in two different directions.

Half her body pointed towards the patio door to exit the house, while the other half was facing towards the refrigerator. It was as if her body and mind were equally confused and at odds as to which direction to proceed.

She then decided to reach one arm into the refrigerator feeling for the fruit, with the rest of her body still facing towards the door, as if she was in some imaginary tug of war.

She was able to grab the fruit with one hand, but then immediately began to fumble it. “Oh shit!” she shouted. Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and diced peaches now rolled across the floor in all different directions as the slippery container crashed to the kitchen floor with a thud.

“Grrrrr, damn it!” she exclaimed with a stomp to the ground, similar to the one Olivia demonstrated just a few moments previous.

She quickly slid over to the broom closet and grabbed what was needed to clean up the foolish mess she just made. “I can just hear my mom saying—that’s what I get for being in a hurry,” she mumbled to herself out loud with a chuckle.

As Sofia began to clean up the mess, she reached for her cell phone in the back pocket of her stylish, form-fitting jeans. She then proceeded to call Sharon to let her know what just happened. Sofia would now need more time to clean up and cut more, fresh, fruit as well.

“Hey neighbor, I’m running a few minutes behind,” she said slightly out of breath as she was sweeping and continuously bending up and down. “I accidentally dropped the diced fruit all over the damn kitchen floor. But I want to make sure my kids are behaving, since you have them all now,” she asked in an annoyed tone, while she placed the phone face up on the kitchen island, to enable the speakerphone feature.

Sofia then proceeded to multi-task and pick up the fruit and toss it into the trash bin while she continued to converse with Sharon.

“Oh yes, your boys are just fine,” Sharon said in an attempt to put Sofia’s mind at ease. “They’re playing upstairs with all the boys. Some new blood and guts, shoot ‘em up video game. The boys from the end of the street are here too. They’ve been here since after school. You know how well they all get along. They’ll be holed up for hours before we even hear a peep from them.”

Sofia then paused. “Wait, where’s Olivia then?” Sofia asked. “I ah, I sent her ahead, less than two minutes ago because I thought I was headed out the door too. But then I dropped the fruit and stayed behind to clean it up real quick. I even told her to leave your door open for me, since my hands would be full.”

Sharon then paused and wrinkled her face. “Well, ah, she’s not here,” she said with a nervous quiver in her voice. “Wait, I’m walking over to the kitchen window now and looking into the backyard to see if she’s maybe, perhaps, playing on the swing-set. I can hear the squeak of the swings, so that must be her.” Sofia then exhaled with relief. “That little trickster,” Sofia said. “I told her to go straight to your door.”

Sharon then shuffled over to have a look at her backyard. “Oh yes, yup, I see her, I see her,” she said, instilling a brief, false, moment of relief in the worried mother. “Yeah, there she is. Wait, wait, at least I think I see her. I don’t know. No, that’s just the wind blowing the swings. Sofia it’s like, it’s really, dark out there. There’s no moonlight or anything,” she added.

As it was late autumn, it was already quite dark outside, despite it only being about 7 p.m. Sofia was now, instantly, hysterical and overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. She then dropped the mini project of fruit clean up and frantically fumbled for a small flashlight that she knew was in one of the kitchen drawers. She then hurriedly rushed out the patio door to examine her backyard.

At first, she followed the prospective path of her now missing daughter. She ran onto the deck and immediately turned in what would have been Olivia’s usual path. She turned right, through the backyard, into the next door neighbor’s backyard, nervously shouting OLIVIA!

It had only been a few moments, yet Sofia was trembling and feared for the worst. She was met by Sharon at the halfway point, who also had a flashlight.

“Listen, we have a security camera,” Sharon said, with her voice trembling in between words. “See, look up,” she said as she pointed the flashlight beam towards her roof. “Oh, thank God,” Sofia replied. “Listen, Ryan’s in the garage, tinkering with something,” Sharon said. “Let me see if he can check the cameras.” Sharon then ran towards her garage to ask her husband to immediately look at the surveillance footage.

Meanwhile, Sofia paced back and forth between the lengthy path that Olivia would have traveled, aiming the flashlight in all different directions.

She walked over to the large evergreens that were nearly twice as tall as the surrounding homes. These ancient pines served as a border between the Becker’s house and their neighbors directly behind them. She looked under the canopy of the trees.

Was she hiding there as a prank? She then looked in all the trees. Did she climb a tree and get stuck?

While doing all this, she phoned her husband Frank. Ever the workaholic, he was running late on his way home from the office.

“Hello,” her husband answered, with a cheerful yet muffled tone as he was answering the call through his car’s Bluetooth speaker while en-route home.

“Olivia is missing!” she immediately shouted without as much as a hello or hey. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what, slow down Sofia, I can’t hear you very well,” Frank said. “Let me take you off speaker phone.”

In that brief second that Frank took to switch the call, he prayed out loud that he hoped he did not hear his wife correctly.

“Olivia went to the O’Doyle house for tonight’s party a few seconds ahead of me.” She then paused to catch her breath. “She cut through the backyards, just like the kids always do,” she said, continuing to sound out of breath, as she was simultaneously walking back and forth throughout the spacious yards in search of Olivia.

“Wait, wait, wait a second—why would you let her go alone, in the dark?” her dumbfounded husband asked. “By herself, really?” Sofia then stopped in her tracks. “FRANK, I was right behind her,” she barked back. “But then I quickly ran to the fridge to grab something. And you know what? If you would have been here by seven like you promised, we could have all gone together as planned. Forget it, just get here and help me find her.” Frank then accelerated his car while he talked, to hurry home. “Hang up and call 911, immediately,” he exclaimed.

As soon as she hung up with Frank, that’s exactly what she did. Frank was only a few minutes away and as he pulled into their long driveway, he could see his wife still on the phone, presumably with the police. As he abruptly shifted his SUV into park, he sprinted into his garage without even removing the car’s key from the ignition. He went straight for his camping equipment and searched for his spotlights and lanterns scattered throughout the garage.

“Anything?” Frank asked his wife in a panic as he met her in their backyard. “No Frank, nothing!” the nervous mother replied. The two of them then spotted their neighbor Ryan charging towards them.

“Oh, Ryan, please tell me you have something,” Sofia said. “I’m sorry,” he then replied with a look of distress on his face. “I don’t know how to explain it, but there is no footage. Nothing since, like, early this morning.” Frank then interjected. “What are you two talking about?” Sofia then pointed her flashlight at the camera on the O’Doyle’s roof. “They have a security camera,” she said to her husband. “But it’s offline,” Ryan said. “It’s been offline since about 6 a.m., 6 a.m. this morning. I don’t routinely check it, so I didn’t know it was offline.”

Ryan then hung his head, with the feeling that he let his friends down. “Then why the fuck do you even have a camera?” Frank said to Ryan out of frustration. “Fucking worthless.” Frank then immediately walked back his tongue lashing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated and worried. Listen, Ryan, can you help me illuminate the backyard with these lanterns?” Ryan didn’t reply. He just started placing lanterns in different directions alongside Frank.

While everyone paced the different yards back and forth, they could all hear emergency sirens in the distance growing closer by the second. Within moments, six Silver Meadows police officers were in the Becker’s backyard.

“Mrs. and Mr. Becker,” said a loud voice in the darkness. At that moment Sofia and Frank both raised a hand in the air. They then were approached by a broad, six foot tall, African-American woman of about 50 years of age.

“I’m detective Theresa Merrick and I’m running this show.” The Beckers were at first taken aback by her confidence, but also encouraged to know that experts were now on the scene.

“Please listen to me. I am going to need you to immediately stop what you are doing and go inside.” She then also glanced at the neighbors Ryan and Sharon who were also in the backyard. The kids were now beginning to funnel out of the O’Doyle house as they were drawn by the commotion, and they began to go to their parents.

“What? Why?” Sofia asked. “Because at this moment, this entire area is a crime scene and we cannot have it contaminated. Please, if you want to help us find your daughter, then let us do our jobs, unobstructed.”

She was extremely polite and never once raised her voice. She respected that the family was undergoing anguish, but she also had to be firm and direct so that the investigators could put forth their best effort.

“OK, that makes sense,” Frank said, speaking for both families. “Do you need anything from us?” he asked before retreating indoors. “Not at this moment,” Theresa replied. “I have most of the necessary details that your wife provided to our team. I’ll come inside in a short while, to give you an update.” She then turned around and began to work.

“All right, everyone, you have the info,” she shouted to the other officers. “Girl, four years of age, 38 pounds, blonde hair, linen white dress and 46 inches tall. Wait, holy shit she’s a tall one.”

About one hour had passed and the investigation was being carried out by dozens of police personnel. The detective was conversing with another officer when her voice began to get drowned out by the loud sound of a motor.

“That’s the helicopter the county sent over,” she said to the other officer. The helicopter caused quite a disturbance as it hovered over the Becker family home, bringing even more attention from the neighbors and the community.

Later in the evening, Theresa proceeded to knock on the Becker family’s patio door. “May we talk now?” she asked as she entered their kitchen. Frank and Sofia both nodded in agreement simultaneously without saying a word. To the Beckers, it was visible that the detective was working hard. They could see that she had perspiration in and around her armpits and beads of sweat dripping profusely from her forehead.

“Listen, I have to be honest, we are all perplexed,” the detective said while she removed her cap and began to wipe her head with a handkerchief. “It appears the dogs, uh from our K-9 unit, are certainly picking up her scent. But in all the places where she would have played previously. So that’s not proving too helpful,” she explained with a pause to catch her breath. “Even still, Olivia’s scent doesn’t seem to leave the proximity of your yard, your neighbor’s yard and the next neighbor, where she was headed. We have also executed all of the standard operating procedures, and then some,” the detective said as she retrieved a list from her breast pocket.

She then licked her thumb and began flipping through the pages. “Amber alerts, as well as notifying all local, state and federal agencies. As you can see, Maryland State Police are on the scene, in addition to the county sheriffs. In fact, that is their helicopter that’s been circling all night. Undoubtedly within a few hundred miles, everyone is aware she’s missing. We’ve also sent our personnel door to door asking neighbors if they’ve seen anything or happen to have surveillance footage, perhaps. Several digital billboards on all the interstates have her photo up too, the one you gave me to be exact.”

Both Sofia and Frank were catatonic and completely unresponsive at first. “She was so beautiful,” Sofia mumbled out loud as she broke the silence. “Is so beautiful,” Frank sternly said as he corrected his wife. “She’s still alive!” he added. “I was going to yell at her for not going straight to the door,” Sofia said as she began to cry.

Frank then hugged her. He then turned the conversation back to the investigation. “I can see that you are all working very hard. So what’s next?” he asked. “Well I’m going to continue to investigate, so I’ll just see myself out,” she said as she exited to the scene of the crime, AKA the Becker family backyard.

As the evening played out, the local news cameras showed up on the Becker family front lawn, just in time for their 11 p.m. broadcast. The bright lights of the news cameras illuminated the cul-de-sac and surrounding yards as if a spotlight had been cast on this corner of the neighborhood.

Both Frank and Sofia were too upset to appear on camera. However, their neighbor Sharon volunteered to represent the family, to help raise awareness. That night, Olivia’s disappearance was the lead story for the local Washington, D.C. area news.

“Local girl goes missing” the title slide read. The reporter on the scene delivered a live update, then rolled a pre-recorded interview with Sharon.

“Please, please, please if you know anything, if you’ve seen something, please contact the police,” Sharon said through tears as she held up a large photo of Olivia. “On behalf of the family, I implore. There will be no questions asked, they, we, all of us just want Olivia returned home. Returned home, safely, to the family that loves her.” As she spoke, the chyron on the screen read “Sharon O’Doyle, neighbor of missing Silver Meadows four-year-old girl.”

As midnight approached, Theresa was beginning to grow weary. “It does not add up, at all,” she mumbled to herself. “Where could she possibly be?”

She then chose to employ a technique that had once garnered her success in the past. The technique involved pacing the dark crime scene without the aid of her flashlight to obtain a more physical feel of the elements and surrounding environment. Her tactic was to rely on her senses of sound and touch to see if she could identify, moreover feel, anomalies in the area.

As she paced the imaginary border between the Becker backyard and that of their neighbor’s directly to the right, she noticed in the darkness under her feet that the ground was slightly softer than in other areas of the yard. She had a metal detector in hand and immediately waved it over the questionable area, but there was no feedback from the device. She then decided to try something different.

“Mireles, come in,” she said as she retrieved a radio from her hip. “Mireles here,” the officer replied. “Can you bring a dog over here, I want to consult their nose. Come to the property line between the Becker’s and their neighbor, 140 paces from the tallest pine.” She then removed her cap and scratched her head. “Be right there,” Mireles replied.

The dog handler then attempted to have the dog pick up Olivia’s scent at the questionable patch of yard she found to be unusual. “Detective, according to the dog, there’s nothing here,” Mireles said as the dog was tugging him in the direction of the Becker patio. “OK, thanks for trying,” Theresa said. “I guess my hunch was wrong. Onto the next idea, I suppose.”

As the evening gave way to morning, despite all the experts on hand, none of their efforts had yielded any results.

“Shit, 6:58 a.m.,” Theresa said as she glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s been almost 12 hours and we still have nothing,” she said out loud. “The first 12 hours are the only 12 hours, and we are now nearly past that.”

She then began to rub her forehead with her thumb and index finger in a weary manner.

“Hey, everyone, we’ve been told by the State Police to stand down,” she shouted to all the officers on the scene. They all, collectively, gave her an odd look and she responded with a shoulder shrug.

“Regardless of what the State Police say, I’m going to give the Becker’s an update,” as she walked towards the patio door. “They deserve to know what is going on.”

Sofia could see the detective make her way towards the door, so she preemptively opened it, eager for an update. “Anything?” the distraught mother anxiously asked as the detective entered the home. “Please, tell us what you know,” she implored as she began to pour the detective some coffee, even though she did not ask.

“May I take a seat?” the detective inquired as she grabbed a chair at the kitchen table, where the coffee was placed. Sofia nodded her head and similarly took a seat with the detective and her husband Frank, who was already seated.

“The older lady, directly behind you, claims she saw something,” Theresa said as she started to retrieve her notebook. Once again, she removed her cap and began to wipe the profuse sweat away from her head, as the steamy evening was now a steamy morning.

“Yes, the nosey old lady, she’s always staring at our backyard from her window,” Frank chimed in. “What’s her name again?” Theresa then took a sip of coffee and began to talk. “Mrs. Krause,” she said. “I ah, had to wake her up as she was asleep when I knocked on her door about 1 a.m.”

Frank then sat up attentively in his chair. “She must know something,” Frank added. “Well, unfortunately not much,” the detective said with a somber tone that was visibly met with dismay by the Beckers. “But here’s what she could attest to. She was indeed sitting in her recliner, staring out her back window, towards your yard,” the detective said as she pointed at the backyard. “She also witnessed Olivia exit your house and head in the direction of the neighbor’s at around 7 p.m.” Sofia cupped her mouth, anxiously awaiting the next bit of eye-witness testimony.

The detective took a deep breath, and then continued. “But she says at that moment, her cat came up to her and pawed her knees, seeking attention. So she says she then reached down to scoop the cat up. She insists she only looked away a split second, but by the time she refocused her eyes on your backyard, Olivia was no longer in sight, she said.”

Theresa left the update at that. She chose not to mention her hunch about the soft ground she felt on the property line, since nothing of value was obtained from the effort. She decided not to instill false hope in the worried parents.

“There’s also more news,” Theresa said with a pause as she took another sip of coffee. “It’s procedural news. I’ve just been informed that by a judge’s order, this investigation is being handed over to the State Police of Maryland,” Theresa said. “Is this normal?” Frank asked. “Honestly, Mr. Becker, none of this is normal, I’m sorry to say,” the detective added.

To the horrified parents, it was now painfully, excruciatingly clear that Olivia was gone and nobody had a single idea as to where. Investigators investigated. Canvassers canvassed. Dogs had sniffed in every direction and in every corner, yet no evidence of Olivia's whereabouts had emerged.

The detective was also taking this very personal. In her mind, she was letting the family down. Therefore, she tried to put a positive spin on the procedural change and the state’s takeover of the investigation.

“Look, take some solace in knowing that all the might and power of the state of Maryland was now in charge of this case,” she said. “My understanding, as told to me by the lead state trooper on the scene, is that even Governor Jürgen Stefan has taken an active role in trying to assist. I’m willing to bet you he’ll probably, personally, call you any moment now.” Merrick had made up the last part about the call from the governor, in an effort to console the visibly distraught parents.

Sofia sat silent at her kitchen table for a moment, but then began to sob and wail uncontrollably, while her husband rubbed her back. “She didn’t even eat dinner yet, she’s probably starving by now,” she said through continued cries. “We were supposed to eat at the O’Doyle house. Olivia was going to roast marshmallows.”

Frank then spoke up. “We’ll find her, they’ll find her,” Frank said in an effort to console his wife. “I mean even the governor’s involved.” Sofia then let out an even louder wail. “What if they don’t Frank?” she asked. “They have to, they have to,” he exclaimed. “Frank, you and I have watched enough of those crime dramas on TV to know that if this doesn’t get solved soon, it will never get solved,” his wife shouted back at him, looking for someone to take her frustration out on.

Frank knew she was right but tried not to show it in his face.

With each passing moment, Olivia was getting farther, and farther away from them. Up a highway, out to sea, to God knows where.

It didn’t make any sense to either of them. Who would want their little girl and why? Neither of them had ever wronged anyone.
​
They both just embraced and continued to cry in each other's arms as they faced this cold, hard, reality. The grim reality that their baby girl had vanished, vanished into thin air.

Oemor is available at Bookshop and Barnes & Noble.

by Armando Gonzalez

​At a small exercise park next to a bike trail, there were three men in the resting area. One of them was sitting on a cement bench, one was on his bike, and the other was standing, a bit drunk, talking and laughing about something. Mexican music was playing on a small portable radio. They are usually there everyday, especially in the morning.
 
A young fit looking woman wearing running shorts and spandex was running past them. They stopped talking and stared. The woman had earbuds in, and kept looking forward. The man standing said, “Unos, dos, tres. Unos, dos, tres.” The other two men chuckled. Whenever someone passed by, they tried their best not to make eye contact with the men, which made all three feel a little superior, and in turn made them feel good.
 
A few moments later a man walking his husky dog was passing by, but then stopped right in front of them. The dog crouched and began taking a shit near the cement bench. The men glared at the man and at his dog. As the dog was taking a shit, the man standing said “No mames guey,” loud enough for the man with the dog to hear.
 
The man looked up and directly at him and said, “¿Qué?”
 
“Aleja tu pinche perro de aquí.”
 
“Vete a la mierda.”
 
With no hesitation, all three men yelled the best insults they could think of at the man. The man shook his head and laughed and started walking away when his dog was finished, though the men were not finished with him.
 
“¡Me cago en tu madre!”
 
“Pinche baboso!”
 
“Cara de mongolo!”
 
“Tu puta madre.”
 
“Eres un maldito.”
 
“¡Callate hijos de puta!” the man with the dog yelled. “¡Todos ustedes pueden irse al infierno! ¡Ninguno de ustedes vale nada!”
 
After another rapid exchange of insults, eventually the man stopped yelling at them back. He gave them the middle finger, turned his back and finally walked away for good. The men continued to yell insults at him until he became a small person in the distance. Suddenly, there was silence. No one knew what to say. The man standing tried to get another conversation going, but it felt very forced. The one on his bike said he had to go. Not long after, the one sitting on the cement bench said he had to go, too, and took his radio with him. Now, the man standing was the only one left. He sat down on the cement bench. He saw people stare at him as they passed by. He stared back at them until they looked away. A mother and her son who was on a small bicycle were passing by. The child stopped right in front of him and stared at him. The man stared back, but the child did not look away. The man wished he could say something mean to the child to feel better about himself. The mother told her son to keep on going, and smiled and said to the man, “Perdón.”
 
There was a long and silent moment where no one passed by. He was completely alone. To his right he looked at the pile of dog shit, which now had flies hovering over it. Eventually, he couldn’t take the smell or sight of it, so he left as well. 

​Armando Gonzalez was born in Santa Ana, California and continues to live there. His parents migrated from Mexico and met here and married. He has no schooling in creative writing, and has two short stories published in Somos en escrito called “Haircut” and “Working Man.” He is Mexican American/Chicano.  

Por Alex V. Cruz

El chico de boca rosada le mordió los labios mucho antes de conocerlo en persona. Ocurrió en un sueño, pero Lucas no lo comprendió hasta el siguiente día que, mientras caminaba con la boca sabor a sangre coagulada, lo vio andar los pasillos de la universidad Utesa, recinto Moca, como si nada hubiera ocurrido.
 
Lo conoció por sus labios, largos y delgados como orugas de polilla, y por la manera en que caminaba, pecho alto y espalda recta como si llevara la torre Eiffel metida por el culo. Sus ojos las aguas azules del mar mediterráneo, y su pelo carbón carecía la textura característica de pelo malo. Se llamaba Mateo, y Lucas lo supo por las olas de bochinches en la que navegaban las chicas que lo veían caminar por los pasillos ardientes de la pequeña universidad cibaeña.
 
Lucas, con la punta de su lengua, pasó el día jugando con los agujeros que dejaron los dientes de Mateo en el adentro de su boca. Ya no sentía el dolor naufragante de la mañana, pero aún estaba ahogado en el sabor metálico cliché de la sangre. Cuando terminó su día universitario, se acostó en uno de los bancos por el jardín principal de aquella institución, donde podía ver las nubes oscuras contemplar cómo y cuándo arruinarían el día de los jornaleros diarios.
 
“Nos conocemos,” Lucas escuchó a alguien decir, y no tuvo que moverse para saber que era el chico español que traía a todos locos. Sus eses agudamente pronunciadas y el intercambio de la ce por la ze lo delató casi instantáneamente.
 
“No creo,” dijo Lucas, sentándose en el banco y mirándolo a los ojos, porque de que otra manera iba a explicar que lo conoció en un sueño, que todavía lleva el sabor de su boca y sus dientes marcado bajo sus labios. En lo profundo de sus entrañas, en un lugar cerquita al corazón, cuyo latía como locomotora del siglo XIX, llevaba la memoria de la humedad de su piel.
​
“Sabes,” dijo Mateo, “eres muy atractivo…” Lucas perdió el contacto con los ojos de Mateo. Sus cachetes sonrojaron bajo la melanina diluida de su piel. “… para ser dominicano.”
 
Mateo continuó por su camino, el viento jugando con su pelo y sol adorándolo. Lucas, aún sentado en su banco, vio como un chico, quien él conocía de cara, pero no de nombre, caminaba con su mochila a medio hombro, y su camisa ensangrentada en el pecho. La porción inferior de su boca totalmente devorada, y su espalda sudada. “Ese seré yo mañana,” dijo Lucas.

Las primeras gotas del diluvio de esa noche se encunaron en el pelo crespo de Lucas, y supo que era hora de echar camino a casa, donde su madre, con sus huesos de osteoporosis, lo estaría esperando con la comida servida en la mesa, y con el orgullo de ver a su hijo universitario plasmado en su cara. 

***

Se esperaba el tercer huracán de esa temporada, y Lucas se aseguró de llevar en su mochila la sombrilla que no podría usar por los fuertes vientos. También encontró la bufanda olvidada de su primo americano y la envolvió en su cuello bastante veces para cubrir la sangre que caía por la falta de toda su mandíbula y parte de su cuello. No quería ensangrentar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas que tenía esa mañana. Ya el maestro se las traía con él y no quería darle más pretexto para que le reprobara la clase.
 
Lucas llegó tarde a clase. El carro público de infinita capacidad que tomó esa mañana se averió a muchas cuadras de la universidad. Entre los fuertes vientos que amenazaban hacer volar esa bufanda teñida de sangre y el agua percusionista, Lucas pasó por el puertón principal sin despertar el guachimán que protegía la universidad para que nadie la atacara en sueños.
 
Los pasillos ya estaban vacíos y solo quedaba el mal olor de almas y cabello mojado. Se encontró con Mateo, nariz perfilada y pelo brilloso, que lo miraba por debajo de sus pestañas. “Quiero más,” él dijo, y fue en ese momento que Lucas reconoció que Mateo lo estaba esperando. La sangre hecha para el sonrojo brotó por la carne desgarrada de donde debía estar la mandíbula, enchumbando aún más la ya pesada bufanda. Lucas desenvolvió la bufanda poco a poco hasta revelar su labio superior y brotes de sangre fresca y coagulada. Mateo se le acercó y, con su lengua larga y puntiaguda, lamió la cara de Lucas por la frente y bajo las sienes hasta encontrar en su cuello un pedazo de piel aún no destripada por sus dientes y empezó a comérselo a mordidas, deleitándose de su piel morena. Una chica, que salió de un salón de clases, gritó y se desmalló al ver tanta pasión entre los chicos.
 
A Lucas no le quedaba nada en el cuello ni en la parte superior de las clavículas más que esa poca carne rosada y obstinada que no quería desprenderse de los huesos blancos. La bufanda ya no podía cubrir su cuello completo y temía que sus compañeros pensara que parecía zombi de una película de terror. Decidió tomar el día libre. De todas maneras ya era muy tarde para tomar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas, así que regresó a la parada de carros para ir a casa, pero los choferes, al ver el derroche de sangre por todo su cuerpo, le negaron la entrada y no tuvo mas que irse caminando entre el viento, que soplaba tan fuerte que levantaba los vehículos y los hacia llegar rápido a sus destinos.

***

​En casa, donde Lucas puso sus libros abiertos en la mesa coja para que secaran, su madre lo esperaba mientras revolvía el sancocho de tres días en la gran paila de aluminio. “Mira la televisión,” dijo ella, apuntando con los labios al televisor que usaba de antena un paraguas para desviar el gotero del techo de zinc. “El ojo llega hoy y va acabar con todo.” Lucas temía que cancelaran las clases. Temía que no iba a poder ver a Mateo. Temía que no iba a sentir sus labios sobre su carne cruda.
 
Esa noche, entre las fuertes ráfagas de viento, la inagotable lluvia, y los macos escabulléndose entre las tablas de madera buscando refugio, Lucas soñó de nuevo con el chico blanco de la escuela. Este le devoró el pecho y el brazo izquierdo dejándolo en huesos y tendones. Lucas despertó, solo su habitación quedaba en pie. El resto de la casa y su madre se los llevó el huracán y nunca fueron encontrados. “Maldición,” dijo Lucas. “Casi no me queda nada que ofrecerle a Mateo.”
 
Lucas, sin nada mejor que hacer en aquel pedazo de casa que espantar las incansables moscas, se puso su mejor ropa, la que le enviaban los primos y tías de Nueva York, y le envidiaban sus compañeros. Perfumó las llagas que cubría la carne mal comida de su cuello sintiendo el breve picor del alcohol tocando sus heridas y emprendió camino hacia la universidad con la esperanza de ver a Mateo, porque aunque no hubiera clases por la destrucción que dejó el huracán, tenía más oportunidades de verlo en las calles de Moca, que en su pequeño y aburrido pueblo.
 
Lucas llevaba su cabeza en alto, balanceada en casi los huesos cervicales, y con una sonrisa solo en lo que le quedaba de labios, navegaba los obstáculos dejado por el huracán. Ni los postes y cables eléctricos, ramas y árboles, hojas de zinc y cuerpos moribundos pudieron borrar su buen humor. Tenía el presentimiento de que no solo encontraría a Mateo en la universidad, pero que ese día el chico de pelo bueno terminaría el festín que era su cuerpo. Entrarían a un salón vacío y por fin Lucas y Mateo serían uno en un mismo cuerpo.
 
Le tomó horas llegar a la universidad. Su ropa toda sudada y ensangrentada. Limpió el banco, donde tuvo ese corto dialogo con Mateo, de las hojas lloradas por los árboles que aún quedaban en pie. Se sentó y esperó y esperó hasta que anocheció. Mateo nunca llegó.
 
Lucas amaneció sentado, espalda recta, en el mismo lugar donde esperaba a Mateo. No durmió, no soñó, solo esperó. Esa mañana, con la salida del sol, llegaron las moscas fastidiosas que le serenaban constantemente sus oídos. Lucas estaba cubierto de ellas, quienes lamían su carne y ponían sus huevos. Él no podía espantarlas, su columna dorsal estaba tiesa, no podía mover ni siquiera su cuello. Pero por fin lo vio. Mateo, el único en la universidad, llego a verlo.
 
La perfecta nariz de Mateo se arrugó al acercarse a Lucas, quien parecía carne seca al sol. Lucas intento sonreír con lo que le quedaba de labios, pero era difícil al ver la cara de disgusto de Mateo.

​“Que patético eres,” dijo Mateo. “Me das asco.” Lucas miró como el joven europeo tomaba su alrededor, el desastre dejado por el huracán. Él vio como Mateo nunca perdió de su cara la revulsión que sentía por lo que veía, por la tierra que pisaba. Lucas entendió que ya este sitio lo aburria. Ya la gente le molestaba. Lucas sabía que Mateo iba hacer lo que los mismos dominicanos no podía. Iba a tomar sus cosas e irse a otro lugar por otras aventuras. Buscaría a otro que devorar.
 
Lucas no pudo moverse de ese sitio. Allí quedo como monje en meditación. Los compañeros le traían flores y le hicieron una tumba. Cuando sus huesos se hicieron polvo, fabricaron alrededor del banco un jardín de claveles blancos.

by Alex V. Cruz

The slender-nosed figure sunk his teeth into Lucas’s lips before their first encounter. It happened in a dream, and Lucas could not fully grasp what had occurred until the following day. He wandered about with the lingering taste of clotted blood when he noticed the guy strolling the hallways of Utesa University without a care in the world.
 
Lucas recognized him by how he strode along, chest puffed and back straight as though the Eiffel Tower were lodged up his ass. His eyes, waters of the Mediterranean Sea. His sultry lips were like long, thin caterpillars. His charcoal hair lacked the texture of “bad” hair. Lucas learned through the undulating waves of gossip that swept through the university that his name was Mateo. The news propagated and intensified with each new flock of girls and guys that gawked from afar as he navigated the sweltering hallways of that small Cibao university.
 
Lucas traced the wounds on his lips with the tip of his tongue, no longer plagued by the agonizing sting of Mateo’s bite. Still, he was intoxicated by the rusty taste of blood. After an exhausting day of classes, he lay on a hard concrete bench by the school’s central garden, peering at the sky as the dark clouds brooded over the ideal time to ruin the life of the daily commuters.
 
“We’ve met,” Lucas heard his voice, and without a glance, he knew it was the Spaniard speaking—the one that caused the entire academy to spawn in a frenzy. The way he pronounced the “S’es” and substituted the “ce” sound for “ze” immediately gave him away.
 
“I don’t think so,” responded Lucas—sitting up on the bench to face him directly—because how could he explain that they had already met in a dream and he could still savor his lips?  Deep within his pulsating heart, he suppressed the memory of Mateo’s damp skin, which throbbed to the cadence of a nineteenth-century steam engine.
 
“You know what,” said Mateo. “You’re handsome…” Lucas eluded his gaze, finding refuge in passers-by. His cheeks reddened under the diluted melanin of his skin. “…for a Dominican.”
 
Mateo continued on with his day. Lucas was engrossed by how the wind tousled his hair, and the unforgiving sun chose only to caress his delicate pale skin. He fixated on his swaggering stride until the Spaniard was entirely out of sight.
 
A group of chattering students exited the school and Lucas recognized a class peer. His backpack carelessly hung loose off his shoulder, and his disheveled clothing belied his usually compulsively neat attire. His shirt was bloodied and torn near the chest area. Remnants of his jawbone, freshly nude of flesh, glistened like ivory, and his entire chin and lower lip were gone. Lucas felt a strong pang of jealousy but was comforted by the anticipation: “That’ll be for tomorrow.”
 
Lucas hesitated to leave where he and Mateo first engaged, but raindrops began to penetrate his spiraled locks of hair. It was time to go back home where his mother would surely be anticipating his return with a hot meal set on the table for her college son, pride plastered on her face.

***

The third hurricane of the season was approaching. Lucas packed an umbrella and rummaged through his chest of drawers until he found the old, forgotten scarf belonging to his cousin in America. He shrouded his neck as crimson excretions oozed from his shredded skin and absent jaw. Lucas didn’t want to stain the Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas exam the professor had prepared for class.
 
The small and rickety public car broke down on the side of the road mere blocks from the academy. Lucas squeezed passed the other passengers and pressed on, his back hunched against the battering winds and hailing rain droplets, a warning that the hurricane would soon anchor. He reached the main gate, where the watchman slept through the howling storm, fiercely safeguarding the school in his dreams.
 
The stench of decaying souls and damp hair permeated the empty halls. Thin-nosed Mateo, with glistening hair, leaned against the wall and gazed directly at him from underneath his thick lashes.
 
“I want more,” he said. Lucas realized that Mateo was waiting for him. The blood intended for the blushful reddening of desire gushed from his missing mandible and torn flesh, saturating the scarf.
 
Mateo unwrapped Lucas’ scarf unveiling the vestiges from the previous night’s feast. Mateo pressed closer and, with the tip of his tongue, caressed Lucas’ face around his forehead to his temples, exploring down the untouched skin near his collar. Mateo’s mouth widened, his teeth scathing Lucas’s flesh, and with firm pressure, tore a mouthful. An approaching schoolgirl shrieked and fainted at the sight of such passion.
 
Lucas felt for his flesh, his fingers encountered but a stubborn thin layer coating his white bones. His scarf was deemed useless and forgotten on the dirty floor of that school to later become the most beautiful red rose.
 
Already too late to take the exam, and with the professor fixed on failing him, Lucas embarked on the long journey home. 

At his house, he set his soaked books on the flimsy table. His mother stirred the  sancocho in the large aluminum pot.
 
“Look at the news,” she pointed with her puckered lips. “The eye of the hurricane will hit tonight and destroy everything.” Lucas panicked at the thought of classes being canceled, fearing he would miss Mateo’s lips all over his raw flesh.
 
Lucas dreamed of him that night, sleeping through the blustering gusts of winds, endless rain, and the macos that squeezed between the wooden planks of the house and searched for shelter. In his dream, Mateo devoured his chest and left arm, and left only bones and tendons. That morning, Lucas awoke to the house and his mother swept away by the powerful gust, never to be found; only his room standing. “Shit!” said Lucas, discovering what was left of his body. “I have nothing left for Mateo.”
 
With nothing better to do than swat tireless flies, Lucas laid out his finest clothes, the ones sent by his aunts from Nueva York, envied by classmates and others. He poured cologne on the exposed ribcage held together by the half-eaten flesh, indulging in the brief sting of the alcohol infiltrating his wounds. Classes were suspended due to the destruction of the hurricane. Still, his chance to see Mateo walking the streets of Moca was better than staying in his lifeless town.
 
His head held high, balanced on bare bones, and a contrived smile with what he had left of his upper lip, Lucas navigated the remnants of nature’s wrath—electricity poles and cables, branches and trees, and corrugated metal and corpses. He was confident he’d see Mateo and was convinced the thin-nosed slick-haired man would continue feasting on his body. They would stow away in an unlocked room and become one in the same body.
 
After hours of trekking to the academy, Lucas’s clothes were a spectacle of sweat and blood. With his one hand, he swept away the leaves on the bench and sat down as best as his weak body would allow. Lucas spent the night on the bench, his back stiffened by dry flesh. Refusing to sleep, to dream, he simply waited.
 
Mateo never showed.
 
With the sunrise, a legion of flies arose, competing for a nip of rotting flesh and repulsive enough to lay their eggs. His body hardened like meat hung to dry.
 
But finally, just as Lucas was beginning to lose hope, he came.
 
His perfect nose wrinkled as he neared Lucas. With the few teeth he had left, Lucas tried to smile but quickly became disheartened as he caught the look of disgust on Mateo’s face.
 
“Patético,” said Mateo. “You sicken me.”
 
The young man skimmed his surroundings and the devastation left behind by the hurricane. Steadfast and beyond reproach, Mateo’s revulsion never faulted; Lucas now understood that this place bored him, the people pestered him, and he was repelled by the soil he stepped on. With deep, inconsolable grief, Lucas knew Mateo would do that one thing Dominicans themselves could not; he would search for adventure in unexplored lands and find himself new flesh to consume.
 
Lucas froze at that moment and never moved again. The world around him retook its rhythm.
 
Classes resumed and Lucas's fellow college mates purchased a tombstone and planted white carnations around the rustic bench where his bones turned to dust.

Alex V. Cruz es un escritor dominicano de ficción especulativa nacido en la ciudad de Paterson, Nueva Jersey. Él es graduado con honores de la Universidad de Columbia en la ciudad de Nueva York con licenciatura en Escritura Creativa y Estudios Hispanos. Actualmente está trabajando en su master de la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU). Alex ha asistido a los prestigiosos talleres de escritura Clarion West 2022 y Tin House 2021. Alex comparte su conocimiento sobre la publicación de cuentos con su comunidad de escritores dominicanos impartiendo clases gratis en la plataforma de Asociación Dominicana de Escritores (@dominicanwriters). Sus cuentos pueden ser encontrados en las revistas SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, y pronto en Azahares. También él cuenta con un cuento en Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology. Pueden encontrar a Alex en las redes sociales Instagram, Twitter, y Threads usando @avcruzwriter.

Alex V. Cruz, a Paterson-born speculative fiction writer with Dominican roots, writes short fiction in both English and Spanish. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University, he holds a degree in Creative Writing and Hispanic Studies. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU. Notably, Alex is an alum of Clarion West 2022 and a member of Tin House's 2021 Young Adult Workshops. His works have been published in notable online magazines such as Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology, SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, with two forthcoming stories in Azahares. He is an active member of the Dominican Writers Association, passionately supporting fellow Dominican writers by teaching free publishing classes. Alex is dedicated to sharing his knowledge and empowering his community of writers. Join him on Instagram, Twitter, and Threads using the handle @Avcruzwriter.

by Jacob “Jake” Teran

​The homies on the block always had something to prove. As mischievous misfits that did not fit in at home or at school, we found solace in the calles, perhaps because the streets had no barriers or rules to bar us from expressing what we thought or felt. We were young niños y niñas that dressed the way we wanted and expressed how we saw the world through our eyes. No parents to tell us to watch the profanity that spewed from our mouths, no teachers to correct the way we spoke, and no one to fear of getting into a fight because we all fought between ourselves. We did not belong to a gang, but we were prospects to the eyes of the gang on our street and they constantly tried to recruit us. As much as the thought of being in a gang flirted with our adolescent minds, it was something that none of us morros were down to do. At the time being, of course.

One summer I vividly remember, would forever change my perspective on joining a gang. This experience began on one summer night I paid a visit to the hood headquarters on my block to pick up a dime of some low-grade mota. Weed always put me at ease, especially at night. The night was warm enough to rock some brown Shaka shorts and a white crisp Pro-Club shirt. It was an hour or so from midnight on this cool summer night and my mom was already asleep. I was craving to smoke a joint to help me sleep and had the Zags but no bud to roll it with.

I became an expert at creeping out of my two-story apartment door with my skateboard on my hip without making a peep. As soon as I crept out from my apartment driveway and placed my foot on the pavement of my sidewalk, I took flight on my board. I rode down Sapro Street on this warm night, ollieing above all the cracks on the beat-up concrete that you could not see, but able to from the memory cemented from skating down my block so many fucking times. Although my street had an active and affiliated gang, us morros never saw them as “cholos,” or “gang bangers.” We just saw them as our “older homies” that had our back if anyone tried to fuck with us. They were also the connect if we ever needed some decent weed. I approached my destination and got off my board to not wake the homies’ grandparents up. I then made a distinctive pop with the tongue and roof of my mouth that we all made. Whether it was a whistle or a tongue pop, us barrio kids had ways to call each other, especially without the existence of today’s technology.

I entered the homeboy’s lot and chilled under a lemon tree to wait for him to come out and serve me. The tree was as old as my homies’ grandparents. It had rusty pocketknife carvings that read, “Barrio 323” and “Sapro Locotes.” I snagged a lemon and hid it in my left pocket just before I saw movement at the backdoor window, hoping it wasn’t my homie’s abuela. The backdoor opened, followed by the screech of the metal screen door, and I saw Bomber come out sidestepping down his 3-step porch. Bomber was a slightly bald and light-skinned Chicano whose shoes looked bigger than his head. He had this stroll when he walked that resembled a penguin due to his flat feet. Stalky and wide at the shoulders, somewhat tall, Bomber was known for scrapping with other rival taggers after school. But he was better known for his name – getting his hood’s tag up on barrio walls, especially since he was a prospect for getting in the barrio gang. At thirteen years old, he had five years on top of me, making him an “older homie.” Until it was his time to get in the barrio and put in real work, he was a notorious tag-banger who was affiliated with Sapro Street by family and preached the street politics to us youngsters whenever we chopped it up and smoked with him.

“What’s cracking, Guillermo, you good? What you doing out here so late?” Bomber’s eyes were wide open and looked as if they were about to pop out of his sockets as he glared at my hand that I stuck out before shaking it.

We shook hands and bumped knuckles. “Chilling Bombs, are you on deck?” I quietly kicked the tail of my skateboard up to my waist to hold.

“You already know you’re at the spot, Guillermo.” Bomber looked to his pad and then back to the street as if someone followed me. “Caile over here and chill behind the stairs. You already know what’s up, Guill.”

Bomber’s pad was rumored to be a “halfway house” – a residential location usually for formerly incarcerated people. A place that usually offered parolees a second chance to the society that they offended to one degree or another. At least, this is what my dad used to tell me when we drove by, but I never bothered to ask him how he knew nor to challenge him that I knew the people who operated there.

Bomber lived down the block from me in a three-building lot with his grandparents and tío that lived in the front, another tío and a distant cousin in an adjacent building to his own, and his mom, baby’s mom, and himself in the third. The third building directly in the back of the lot was where I hid since we both didn’t want his grandparents seeing any transas, although they knew what the fuck was going on.

I hid behind the stairs and looked up to the sky and appreciated the stillness of the night. No jura sirens, no ghetto bird, no train howling, just the sweet calm summer night scent that filled my street as well as the fresh lemon scent that permeated from my shorts. That, and of course, the smell of the marijuana that flooded Bomber’s lot since they had pounds of weed in the garage lots that I hid near. Bomber opened the door, annoyed and rushed.

“Come here!” Bomber exclaimed to me with his hand. I already had my $10 bill folded in the palm of my hand ready and Bomber had his bag of bud in his. We exchanged handshakes with a knuckle bump exchanging what was within. I could hear his grandma saying that it was late and that he shouldn’t be doing any transas or else the juras would come. “Vuelve a dormir, Grandma…fuck,” he told his abuela. I knew I overstayed my welcome.

“Gracias, Bombs.” I stashed my sack of weed within my sock and was about to power step out of Bomb’s lot.

“Hey Guillermo, you know you’re welcome here and shit, but come earlier if you want bud. You already know it’s hot as fuck right now and it’s late to be serving.” Bombs was annoyed from his abuela but also knew of the interaction me and the homies had on Olympic just a few weeks ago. Bomb’s tío’s rival gang, South Side, were lurking and banged on us morros just a couple of weeks ago to where straps were pointed in our faces, although none of us were affiliated, yet. On top of all that, he looked stressed and him being faded on whatever he was on didn’t help.

“Spensa, Bombs, will do. I’ll come earlier next time.” I shook my head and headed out.

I walked a few houses down before skating back to my pad traversing the crooked and broken sidewalk that was my home. The breeze of the summer night that blew through my long hair felt fresh as I dashed on my wooden deck on wheels. As I got close to my apartment, I got off my board and walked to the front of my laundromat where I faced down Olympic.

I paused and stared at Olympic Boulevard for a few seconds to reminisce on how South Side pulled a chrome .45 that shined from the streetlight to my face… That spider-webbed tattooed motherfucker…Would he have pulled the trigger? If I get in the Barrio, I can look for that fuck…Fuck those levas. I was overthinking shit.
​
The mailbox that was on the left wall of the laundromat always had junk mail and coupons for nearby pizza places that promoted new toppings every week. I grabbed one of the coupon pages to use as a surface to break up the twigs and seeds from the sticky yet mediocre mota I just copped. It was a little more than a half an hour to midnight. I had Zags. I had weed to roll in. I was comfortably alone. I could hear a couple cursing each other on the next block over about a dispute on finances. The sounds of distant ambulance sirens echoed as well. These sounds of the barrio may be unsettling to others, yet, for me, I felt right at home. 

****

​About a week later, I got closer to what may have been a decision that I would not be able to undo. I was dry without weed and wanted to pick up some more bud from both the money I collected recycling from my place and from nearby neighbors’ recyclables that were left unguarded in their garage lots. I waited for my mom to fall asleep in her room as she usually did after saying goodnight. I wore the same clothes from last week, but this time, threw on one of my favorite black hoodies, and made my way to Bomber’s pad. I did my usual clucking sound to call Bombs, but instead of him, Bomber’s tío Funny, came out.

“Who the fuck is this? You know what time it is?” Funny whispered violently. Bomber’s tío was always straightforward and never shy to scold who came, in worry of burning the spot.

“It’s me, Guillermo, Funs.” I could only see the silhouette of Funny coming down from the same back metal screen door Bombs usually came down from.

Funs was one of Bomber’s tíos from the neighborhood. He was way older and was one of the main heads from the barrio. He was a frightening bald-headed chingón with a red lipstick tattoo on his neck and sharp nose. Every time he spoke, his eyes blinked as if he just put in eye drops. Every response you gave him was sharply returned by a swift “aha,” quickly confirming what he heard. His hands were always moving by his crotch and the pockets of his pants as if he was ready to pull out something, listo, of course, even from a 13-year-old like me.

“What’ssss up, little homie! What’s good?” His demeanor changed once he saw that it was me. His left arm wrapped around my shoulders as if an octopus found its prey, while his right hand was ready to pull something out of his pocket. I kicked up my skateboard to my waist as I usually did to act cool, but deep inside, I was scared of this fool. Too many rumors went around that he blasted and killed a couple of dudes from South Side. 

“Chilling, Funs. How you been? Just want to get some bud and smoke out,” I told Funny as I kept my eyes on his hands from my peripheral.

Funny paused, almost knowing I was aware of his own paranoia as he blinked strongly at me. “What do you need, little homie? I know my nephew hooks it up with nickels and dimes, but I can’t be serving that small this late. Chales. If you and your little homies put your ins together, you can easily get a half ounce of this new green shit we got. Pretendo! Better than that fucking stress you little ass fools be smoking.”

Back at this time, there were only three types of weed: Stress, the lowest grade of weed with seeds and stems (which I didn’t mind picking up), Mids or Pretendo, which was the medium grade that had less seeds and stems, and the last tier of course, was Chronic – the highest grade of weed. This was long before Kush and medicinal mota came out.

“Here, smell this. Tell me that shit don’t smell bomb. Feel how sticky it is, too,” as he raised a baggie from his pants and opened it with his left thumb and index finger. I took a sniff, and the aroma confirmed what he previously stated.

“Fuck it, I’m down.” Funs blinked hard and looked down, at his pad, the street, and down beneath the stairs of the building where his nephew was already asleep.

“Alright. Go chill behind those stairs and I’ll come right back.” Funs instructed where to wait (where I usually went when I came). This time, I couldn’t snap a lemon like I usually did from their lemon tree. I waited longer than usual this time too, not knowing what the fuck Funs was doing or why he was taking so long. The grandparents must have not been there or were dead asleep since it was dead quiet this time around. Funs came out looking more serious and signaled me to come into the darkest spot of the lot… Fucking shit.

“Hey, so Guill, when you gonna get hopped in? The big homies are noticing you more. You come through to the barrio…We want little homies like you to come through for the barrio now.” Funs was rolling up a joint for himself as he was telling me this, while still observing my facial expression. “You would be perfect for the barrio, homes…Think about it…on your skateboard, no one would suspect you…” Funs was measuring me out as he was fixing his joint. A perfect expendable soldier for the hood. Long hair, no tattoos, baggy clothes, a “rocker fool,” as some would call.

“I don’t know, G… I don’t know if I am ready for all that shit,” I looked at Funs’ eyes, showing both fear and my seriousness that I wasn’t about that life. At least not now.

From the look I gave Funs, he knew I could be properly groomed to be the right soldier for the barrio, especially to retaliate what South Side did not long ago. He knew we were scared what South Side did, but he also knew we didn’t like it, either. He capitalized on that. I just wanted to get faded and knew I had to say something if I wanted to leave without friction or some bullshit happening.

“On the serio, Funs, I think I’ll be down soon. I see you and the hood. I know you got love for us, too. I just don’t feel ready, but I’m down…” I fronted. I gave him false hope that a youngster like me would be down and put in work as a soldier, because I knew I could. But, at the same time, I honestly felt like I was too young to be soldier; to get hopped in a gang. But in reality, there was no age limit. I knew this and so did he. Funs saw something in me though – the potential to ride and put in work. Maybe an expendable soldier to take someone out that was of a higher rank.

“Trip out, Guill. Listen, I see you putting in work for the barrio. You already know the hood and all the bigger heads. Chino, Happy, Fader and my nephew Bombs all said you’re firme. That we can trust you. Trust don’t come easy in this area, homes. You ain’t dumb and I know you know what’s up with that. Can’t you see yourself posted with a .22 riding your board? Come on now. You been coming here more than any of these other younger fools in the neighborhood. I like you, Guill. Plus, you want those bitch ass fools like South Side to keep running up on you like that? You need to protect yourself and the people around you. Your familia.” Funs had rhetoric to his advantage. I kept my eyes on Funs holding his pocket, not knowing whether a cuete or a fist was going to come out.

I heard stories of homies getting hopped in even without their consent. If the older heads wanted you in the hood, they’d jump you not giving a fuck whether you wanted to or not. Once you got jumped in, you were in. And if you denied you had affiliation, you’d get hopped again. It happened to one of my cousins while chilling with the White Fence Barrio in Boyle Heights. I didn’t feel ready but thought having a strap on me would be firme as fuck. If someone pressed me, I could pull out my strap and handle it. I felt powerful knowing I could be from my own barrio with a cuete on my hip. The thought of having that kind of power, I could take a life away… But something just didn’t feel right. Until then, I made excuses and was direct about not getting in just yet. Bombs and his tío Funs as well as the other members had respect for me for always coming through, especially alone. It showed them I wasn’t afraid, but maybe also showed them I was stupid enough, as well.

“Naw, G, I feel like that’s some shit I’ll be ready for next year. I got some shit going on at home that has my mind occupied.” I too had rhetoric that allowed me to come this late to get served, but now, my street reputation was being tested. I kept my distance from Funs with my board ready to use either as a weapon or shield from his next reaction.

Funs stared me down with his blinking eyes, sharp nose, and even sharper gaze, and I fearfully looked back. This is how it starts – before getting hopped. I was waiting for the putasos to start flying. He stuck his hand out, looking disappointed, but also knowing it was not the time and place. He shook and squeezed my hand hard, smiling, blinking at me, knowing I would come back. There is a reason why he’s called Funny in the barrio, but I didn’t care to find out. At this moment, I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. He knew I was scared, but he also knew I had heart for my age. Most of my homies on the street would bug me to roll with them to Bomb and Funs’ pad because I knew how to communicate and deliver transas without any pedo. But here I was, alone with Funs. He hadn’t let go of my hand yet. I couldn’t look away or flinch either. I stood my ground.

​“A’ight, little homie. Get home safe and I’ll be seeing you on the block soon.” Funs finally let go and I said al rato. I got on my board still in his driveway knowing it was loud but took off anyway. I got home and didn’t blaze it; I just went to bed.

​****

The very next day, the homeboy Turkey and I went to our local park. We were ditching school like we usually did and went to smoke out. The Montebello Park down Sapro Street had a firme program that would feed anyone who came during lunchtime regardless of age. It was to help homeless people, but they didn’t care if kids came to eat the free lunch, so we took advantage. A load of benches near the designated skatepark within Montebello Park was where all the marijuanos chilled at, and Turkey and I had our own special spot that nobody went to, by the second tallest tree of the park.

​From the bomb ass bud I got the night before, I pulled it out and showed Turkey. “Eeeee, some gourmet shit ‘er what?” Turkey chuckled as he snagged the bag from my hand.

“You already know. Fucking Funny was acting weird last night, too. Bombs was knocked out or somewhere else, so Funs served me.” Turkey looked at me with his right eyebrow arched up.

“You keep going at nighttime alone, something funny is gonna happen to you.” Turkey was looking down, breaking up the stems and seeds.

“Fuck you, dick,” I let out a laugh. “But serio, that fool is either tweeking it, or not all there.” Turkey and I were tripping out how sticky and good the weed stunk.

Just as we were done breaking up our bud, Bomber and his homeboy Rome came to our spot unexpectedly. Rome was taller than Bomber and about the same age. Rome already had tattoos on his arm and looked like most of his tattoos covered up some scars on his right arm. Bomber’s homeboy was notorious for starting fights with random people and this fool could scrap. Whether he was drunk, faded, or straight sober, he would speak less by using his fists, and was known for having manos. Rome eventually got hopped in the rival gang South Side a couple of years later, which betrayed Bomber and his familia, but before all that shit went down, Bombs and Rome were best of homies and got into a lot of shit together, especially for their age.

“Orale! What’s crackin,’ Guillermo! What’s really hood, Turkey! What are you fools doing here?” Bomber always looked happy as fuck to see us.

“Quiubo, Bombs! ‘Sup, Rome! Just chilling about to burn it. Want to throw some ends? Gonna roll a leno.” I offered a firme rolled joint to Bombs.

“Fuck that! Put that pencil dick joint away. Rome and I got some shit that will have you stuck.” Rome pulled out a fat blunt with some Chronic. Because Chronic was so expensive and you got so little, it was always a treat when somebody came through.

We got into a circle and started the rotation as laughter, cannabis smoke, and coughing ensued. We spoke about how fucking boring and stupid school was, the latest drive-by shooting, and rival taggers that were plotted against. Finally, the four of us started talking about how South Side came through the other night. This was the conversation – the cherry on top – that further influenced the direction I was going regarding getting jumped in the hood or not. Smoked-out Turkey bounced; he said he had to go somewhere but probably felt uncomfortable talking about South Side since it happened at his house on the corner of Sapro Street. Bomber, Rome, and I continued our smoke session as we all took turns packing bowls from Rome’s pipa.

I was faded and just spoke my mind freely, “Who are the South Siders and why the fuck does Barrio 323 beef it with them?”

“Because they’re bitches,” Rome jolted back with lightning speed while letting out a cloud of smoke.

“They’re the enemigas, Guill. Fools that belong in the dirt,” Bomber added in.

For me, that wasn’t good enough. My dumbass continued talking. “Yeah, I get that shit, but why does our hood have beef with those fools? Like how did that shit even start?”

“It’s complicated, Guill. Years and years of beef from older heads and it gets passed down. It’s all politics,” Bomber got a little more serious.

“But what about Raza? Yeah, I’m faded and not trying to sound like a fucking tree hugger and shit, but aren’t there other groups or hoods we should be beefing it with besides Raza.” Although my young mind was “white vs black” at the time, I really wanted to know why there was beef amongst our peoples. Sure, the Aztecs had beef with neighboring tribes and the North Native Americans did, as well, but I just couldn’t understand and let go of why hundreds of years later, we still beefed it with people that looked like us – amongst ourselves.

Laughter erupted as Bombs and Rome looked at each other. Most likely thinking I was naïve and I was, but I could not wrap my mind around beefing with neighboring tribes because of some shit that happened years ago.

“Don’t even trip, Guill. It’s all politics that you’ll get soon enough. Your ticket will clock in soon,” Rome said as he was getting up from our circle.

We all said al ratos and took off from the park. I completely forgot to get lunch, but I wasn’t in the mood; I just walked home. On my way home, though, I came to the realization that I could not be a part of my barrio or any hood for that matter. I couldn’t fathom inheriting enemigas that I never met, let alone, never knew of. Not to mention having to represent your hood 24/7, while you could never reject, hide, or deny it, or you could face the consequences for ranking it amongst your comrades. I probably like the music and style of gangbanging, even would go so far as to say it looks cool. But when push comes to shove, when it’s time to do gangster shit, it’s straight up scary as fuck. Not too many people I knew at that point in my life ever had a gun pointed at them. Last week when South Side came mistaking us for their rivals, my life slowed down almost as if it was paused. But life does not go on pause. This shit is not a video game and there are no restarts. I was scared shitless when I saw the chrome .45 pointed at my face two feet away from me.

I wanted to be down, represent who or where I come from, but I just couldn’t do it the way so many of my homies were doing it. I wanted respect and to be respected, but I couldn’t fuck someone up, let alone shoot them, unless I know I am in danger; unless they did something to me or my family and they deserved it.

I looked at the blue sky above me as I walked down Olympic. I stared at the clouds trying to envision an image that might give me a sign, but they were just shapes and abstract figures as they hovered slowly. Maybe there is a point here. Maybe we are just clouds floating alongside our concrete world. I began to think I wanted to make an image or sign appear from these clouds in my mind; the same way I probably wanted to appear a certain way when others looked at me. I was just spewing a bunch of bullshit and must have been high out of my mind. I continued walking and took a deep breath and let it all out. I let it all out. I let all that shit out, while watching over my shoulder.

Jacob “Jake” Teran is a proud Chicano living in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles. Jake is a 2nd generation Chicano who was born in Montebello, Los Angeles, east of Los Angeles. He has published his first two short stories on Somos en escrito, called “A Quiet Night on the Boulevard,” “Niños del Sol,” one short fictional story at his community college at Rio Hondo College, and a master’s thesis for his graduate program, where he obtained his M.A. degree in Rhetoric and Composition. He was recently published in an anthology by Querencia Press where his short story “Soy Chicano” and two poems, “Mi Color” and “Bare Tierra” can be found. He is currently teaching composition to several departments in colleges that include indigenous and Chicanx literature. In addition, Jake is an advocate for social justice, self-care, and embracing the identity of others. Jake currently lives in the San Gabriel Valley where he is working on a novel based on his experiences growing up in his barrio that deals with gang lifestyle, drugs, violence, and finding one’s identity in a chaotic concrete jungle that he calls home. 

​

​“The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages … the rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him.”
Theodore Roosevelt, The winning of the West, 1889 CE
​
It was after dusk when Teddy came for us. His breath was thick and wet as it swept through the forest. Not even the coquis dared to chirp with him there, rummaging in the brush. I can still remember the wails of the trees as he flayed their barks, as he dismem­bered them limb by limb.

I was huddled with my family when his tongues slithered through cracks in our zinc roof, bored holes in the tarp that we hoped would shield us. Someone screamed when the roof caved in, splintered under the weight of a fallen yabisi. Its pale trunk cracked like bone beneath his invisible fist. Then, Teddy descended, jaws bared, his saliva oozing down on us in wicked rivulets.

Hands clasped, we pleaded to our creator for quick deaths. But death never came. Instead, as if our cemís had heard our prayers, Teddy’s voice caught in his throat. Silence. It was as if the engine of the cosmos had suddenly shuttered its industry, giving way to quiet entropy. And that’s when I remembered what the Gobernadora had said on the radio the night before, her warning not to trust the stillness. “No habrá paz en medio de la tormenta.”

When it was so quiet that I could hear my heart drumming in my ears, I clambered out of the wreckage. My sisters cursed at me for my foolishness, but soon they followed, curious. Where the roof had col­lapsed, bleached bark and serrated metal parted like the petals of a hideous flower to reveal him, grinning and gordo in the pallid sky. Below, the jungle had withered to a tangle of brown, as if his breath curled with unseen flame. A coconut palm whined and crashed. Its death echoed over the mountains, twisting into something that reminded me of laughter. I lifted my gaze to the sky to search for the face of the Taíno deity that legends say takes the shape of a storm, arms curling like serpents to set the clouds into a devastating spiral. Jurakán.

Teddy was the twentieth of twenty-two names randomly assigned for that year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra­tion. But I like to think that he was named after the Teddy, the American conquistador, the last to lay claim to this little jewel in the Caribbean I call home. How fitting that he should be the one to usher in the end of American dominion here. Perhaps we should be grateful. Some pray that our new masters will be better caretakers of our land, but we jíbaros have our doubts.

I regret not taking Mandarin at university as we sift through the pack­ages our new rulers airdrop for us. Bags of rice. Insulin. Antibiotics. Distilled water. Bioprinted protein powder. Will the Chinese be more sympathetic than their American or Spanish predecessors? They are not strangers to our suffering. They must remember when their people were sent here as laborers to work in the factories, that last ditch effort to save Spain’s crumbling empire with industry. Or when the Americans’ Chinese Exclusion Act uprooted thousands from their communities, leaving them few refuges other than our colonial back­water. What an irony that the ones the Spanish and the Americans spat on and called coolies ended up as our new landlords.

The US sold us off like a bad investment. But on the radio they said that the Americans were on the verge of bankruptcy, that the Chinese seized Puerto Rico as collateral for unpaid debts. The price for defaulting on too many climate loans. I applaud the Chinese for bank­ing on our collective apathy to curb emissions to win out in the end. With this International Climate Bank, they hold all the cards now. Financing natural disaster recovery efforts. Cementing their global influence by sowing debt. Before Teddy, the talking heads said that their President should get it over with and declare himself Emperor. Emperor of what, I wonder? After COVID-19, Androvirus, the gigafires and heat domes, the Thwaites Ice Shelf and Teddy, who wants to rule a world that is half-underwater and half-scorched to a dustbowl?

After Teddy, I had to teach myself not to care about what happens beyond my shores, even if that is what I spent my life prepar­ing to do. I ignore what I hear about the Yucatán, parched by chemical weapons into a desert by the madman elected to care for it. I ignore accounts of drones slaughtering civilians branded as ‘apostates’ in Siberia for opposing the Tsarina’s theocratic regime. I ignore the latest updates on this Sino-American cold war with many fronts, fought by many proxies. It feels silly, my dream of being a journalist, that noble reporter who covered these last days of ‘civilization.’ Teddy had other plans for me. Now I’m here in the mountains, weaving solar nets with my sisters.

“It’s like when I used to braid your hair, Vero,” my little sister Yuíza says, showing me how to entwine kapok fibers, strands of blue tarp, cables, copper filaments, bulbs and glittering fragments of solar panels. She hands me a basket of materials. Her dimples are little caverns that deepen with delight. Yuíza. Ever the optimist.

I set the basket on top of a ladder and begin to thread a mesh of fibers through the boughs of a gnarled fig tree. “Remember when I did your hair for your Quinceñeara?”

Anacaona bursts into laughter behind me. My elder twin, the seri­ous one. Even she cracks at the memory. “How could anyone forget?”

Our mother was running late that day, like always. Deciding that the fifteen kilograms of arroz con gandules she had prepared wouldn’t be enough to feed the dozen people she was expecting, she went to the market at the last minute for more pork, plantains, breadfruit and God knows what else. Anacaona, our mother’s shadow, was recruited for the shopping trip, leaving Yuíza and I behind. What was I to do? The princesa needed to be ready for her big moment. I did what I could, which admittedly was far from adequate. I’ll never forget Mami’s screams of disgust upon her return, how she wrenched the comb from my hands as if it were a murder weapon. The arcane arts of the fem­inine have always eluded me.

“On second thought, maybe you can help Dagüao with the breakers,” Yuíza says gently, her black curls falling over her face as she peers down at me from a rooftop.

“It’s coming along.” Anacaona gestures toward the forest, eyes alight with pride as she repositions her ladder.

I help Dagüao with the labyrinth of switches and breakers he built behind the cancha, the ballcourt that has become our unofficial town square. He’s another genius like Yuíza. Which explains why they’ve been best friends since they could crawl. I remove a rusted screw and grab a cable to attach to the open switch when I catch an expression of alarm in Dagüao’s green eyes.

-Not that!- he signs, the pads of his index and middle fingers clamping to that of his thumb.

I make a circle with my fist over my heart to reply. -Sorry.-

Dagüao passes me the end of another cable wrapped around his shoulder. I socket it into place and retighten the screws. Dagüao grins with approval, tucking his black hair into an elastic tie. In his delicate smile lines and sharp cheekbones, I can see the ghost of his father’s face, an artisan and mechanic from Ponce who moved to our mountains to build a new life with others who could communicate in his language. Teddy took too many of us.

When you’re raised in the campo, hearing or not, you learn to sign if you want to understand what’s going on. In primary school we learned a bit of ASL. But our neighbors speak a regional dialect of their own, sometimes specific to families. Communication is not the most straightforward up here, but you get used to it — you have to. We hearing people regularly switch from Spanish to English to Spanglish to ASL and LSPR and ASLPRish and that resurrected Island Arawak that youth learn at summer camp.

Dagüao riffles through a shipping container filled with useful scrap, searching for solar batteries to attach to his contraption. I follow him with discarded cable shielding and copper thread and drop them into bins that he has meticulously labeled to keep our salvage organized.

In the months since Teddy, we became scavengers to survive. They don’t tell you that the aftermath of the storm is the worst part. They don’t tell you about the despairing nights, praying for help that never comes. About digging mass graves to bury the dead under the smog-choked skies of diesel generators.
In the end, we endured as we always have. Like the petroglyphs of frogs and birds etched in boulders along our rivers. We endured. From the debris of our towns, we created this yucayeke, this mountain sanctuary that has served many generations of our ancestors, going back to those daring Taíno and Yoruba that settled here, to escape the reach of the Spanish crown that enslaved them.

But with our kerosene supply dwindling, we had to find a new way to keep the lights on. Even though Teddy’s Category 6 winds shat­tered most of the island’s solar panels, Yuíza schemed a way to remake the debris into something that might save us. For all that our isla lacks, we have sunshine in abundance. So we weave the reflective shards of solar panels with kapok fibers from our sacred ceiba trees. We stitch circuits into a meshwork that we drape over the branches. We make solar microgrids with life’s stringy filaments. We call them our nasa -- an Arawak word for the nets that our ancestors used to catch fish in our seas and rivers, when they were still teeming with life.

“Y la música?” Anacaona descends from the ladder, the glossy twists of her hair swaying past her hips. She crosses her arms, her broad shoulders and tall stature instantly commanding respect. “It’s too quiet.”

At her bidding, Don Brizuela wheels onto the scene, followed by his grandchildren, Alonsito and Enriquillo. They carry maracas, guiros, panderetas, and his twelve-stringed pride and joy, a cautro he named India Encantada, to honor his late wife. The children guide him onto the raised catwalk we built for him to get around the village, but he has already mastered the makeshift ramps.

“How about something more retro than Bad Bunny?” He chuck­les beneath his threadbare sombrero. The band strikes up an old folk song called “Espérame En El Cielo.”

“Wait for me in heaven, my love,
If you are the first of us to go,
Wait for me, because soon, I will come,
To where you are, beyond the sky.
Between bales of cloud as soft as cotton.
Where we will live again.”

Dagüao notices the tears in my eyes. His hands stack and then part like a square, lips curling to mirror my sorrow. -Sad?-
I feign laughter as I sign, -Estoy bien.-

I tell him I’m fine but I’m not. None of us are. I pretend as I have every day since that wall of mud buried our house with Mami, Papi, and Abuela Serafína inside, the day we became orphans and my dreams for the future were washed away. The day our community’s survivors turned to us, the children of their deceased pastor, for leadership.

Anacaona’s nails gently scratch my shoulder. She has never been the sentimental type, but I recognize this warm gesture. She always knows what I’m feeling. It’s a twin power, our grandfather used to say. “Ready?”

Yuíza and Dagüao huddle in anticipation, eager to see if their mad science experiment will end in disaster or triumph. -Turn on the lights- they sign in unison. They look like magicians pulling rabbits out of hats.

We grab the ignition cord together, and the generator sputters to life.

The forest flickers. Like neon spiderwebs woven across the canopy, our solar nets activate. It’s as if a thousand fireflies are frozen in amber above our yucayeke, their light softening everything as dusk falls. The cheers are hesitant at first, skeptical even. But after a minute or so of uninterrupted power, I jump up to hug Anacaona, shouting in that excited way I used to when we were kids. Don Brizuela is drum­ming his pandereta. Dagüao kisses Yuíza. Alcimar stares up in disbelief, removing his cap. The children clap and cheer and some of them run to their tents to fetch tablets to charge, followed closely by the stray dogs that have become their protectors. Grateful to be able to read his book late into the evening, Don Mateo drops into his hammock. Doña Marta switches on the electric grill, her daughter already prepping iguana kebabs and toasted casabe for the celebration.

Anacaona tosses me one of our last medallas. I snap open the can with care, as if handling a prized vintage. Teddy taught me not to take small pleasures for granted. “Salud!” I say to her, raising my can to hers. Her eyes sparkle as we tip our cans to our lips. The drink is still sweet well after expiry.

“For the yucayeke!” She twirls in a circle with her can raised.

“I thought you didn’t like calling it that.”

“This isn’t Taíno summer camp, Vero. But I think grandfather would be proud of what we’ve built here. The nasa, the yucayeke.”

I take a swig from my can. “Oh, Abuelo Abey! I’m sure he’s look­ing up at us from hell right now. Yeah, that’s what you get for worshipping idols!” I shout, mimicking my mother’s angry exchanges with her eccentric father.

Anacaona chuckles and crushes her empty can. “Mami was too harsh on him. Never forgave him for naming me and hermanita after old Taíno chiefs.”

I grab Anacaona’s empty as I finish my own and toss them in the salvage bin. “I think she believed in that stuff once.” Our mother never stopped me from visiting Abuelo Abey’s bohio, where he showed me the striking faces of the elder gods etched in stone. I remember being frightened by their cavernous eyes, like the orbital sockets of skulls. “It unsettled her … the possibility that her God was only one of many.”

Anacaona scoffed. “Meanwhile our father and his mother were doing Santería in our basement. She let that slide. As long as they have the names of saints.” Anacaona searches the crowd, spotting Dagüao and Yuíza approaching from the grill. The smell that precedes them is smoky and delicious.

“Los pinchos están listos!” Yuíza passes me a stick of charred, greasy meat.

Dagüao smiles as his clenched fist drums his open palm. -Buen provecho.-

I nod gratefully, then devour Doña Marta’s famous pincho. As dusk falls on the mountains and the frogs begin to sing, we drink and feast on iguana kebabs, breadfruit fritters, and crumbly casabe. There is laughter. The children are playing gallitos in the cancha. They giggle and cheer as they toss algarroba seeds threaded through string.

For a moment I allow this contagion of hope to lift me up. Some­how we always find joy, even when everything is taken from us. Even when we live in rubble and so many of us have vanished. For a moment, all I can feel is the love and warmth radiating from the faces of my community. And then I remember the shadow that looms over it all.

As the night deepens, as the people drink and grow bolder, their joy will sour. Even after this miracle we built for them, they’ll whisper and jeer. They’ll laugh and point behind my back. Because they know who I was. And they hate this new me. Just like Mami and Papi. I feel it in my bones.

But tonight I am spared. One by one, every phone, tablet, and computer lights up. An SOS on the emergency alert system. Another crisis. Another opportunity to make a difference. They’ll be too busy needing me to judge.

E.G. Condé (he/him/Él) is a queer diasporic Boricua writer of speculative fiction. Condé is one of the creators of “Taínofuturism,” an emerging artistic genre that imagines a future of Indigenous renewal and decolonial liberation for Borikén (Puerto Rico) and the archipelagos of the Caribbean. His short fiction appears in Anthropology & Humanism, If There’s Anyone Left, Reckoning, EASST Review, Tree & Stone Literary Magazine, Sword & Sorcery, Solarpunk Magazine, and FABLE: An Anthology of Sci-Fi, Horror & The Supernatural. He is also an anthropologist of technology and digital sustainability advocate (as Steven Gonzalez Monserrate). When he isn’t conjuring up faraway universes, you might find him hiking through sand dunes or playing 2D JRPGs from the 1990s. Follow his writing at www.egconde.com or on social media via @CloudAnthro on Twitter.

​
​I hadn’t heard the word Tainofuturism until I attended a reading by E.G. Condé where he read the first chapter of the upcoming Sordidez.  I was amazed. It told of a near future Boricua community turning to renewable technology and a renewed Taino culture to survive a disaster, a hurricane aptly named Teddy after the colonizing US president. I loved hearing about the homemade solar panels called nasa, an Arawak word for nets.

I had to read the novel and know what else Tainofuturism had to offer. I’ve read other kinds of native futurisms and have tried to help Chicanofuturism along. (Shameless Scott-futurist plug: buy all the copies of El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, submit to the Chicanofuturism anthology, look for my upcoming book Old California Strikes Back and, finally, my speculative collection in progress Mexpocalyptic Tales.)

I know that for colonized people tangling with the future raises many questions.

Anyone interested in what questions futurism can answer should read Sordidez. (There is even a glossary with Taino, Arawak, and Mayan words in the back). Condé describes people turning their indigenous roots and land and refining the world and seeking to bring it back with clean technology and inter-reliance. Sordidez is a good example for Chicanofuturism with which to seek connection and solidarity.

Sordidez or sordidness, is a reference to the people with memory loss from a weaponized virus during an ugly civil war. The dirty past we are tasked to deal with as the descendants of ancestors who fought and died against other ancestors who would better be called war criminals.  Boricuas, like Chicanos, are the survivors of two colonial efforts and survival often means imposed or chosen sordid choices: we lose ourselves, our language, our singular voice, our history.  We deal with the culture of survival and having only pieces of ourselves. How do we deal with the trauma, how do we find ourselves whole again as the word Tainofuturism promises with a future that includes native people and outlook?

Sordidez opens in the future with the character Vero who becomes the leader of a small community hanging on in a post-climate and war apocalyptic near future Puerto Rico. Rebuilding the community is inspired by the resurfacing of Tainismo to resist occupation after Puerto Rico is being sold off to China by the USA for past debts. People scavenge from abandoned mansions left by rich Americans and use native language Windtalker-style. After losses in the conflict, the main character Vero believes transphobia will prevent him from ever being truly accepted and leaves for the outside world promised by the UN. The story moves to a “Sordidez” community where people affected with memory loss in the Yucatan from a virus released in a war with a tyrant. The community struggles to deal with the trauma, loss of identity, and finding family as some figures seek vengeance.  As the UN comes to occupy the land for control rather than aid, a figure emerges, Red Wolf, who is steeped in Mayan culture and seeks to lead her people.
​
I was worried when Vero left…I’ve read many lauded books where the central character leaves and makes some side appearance. When Vero enters the story again in Sordidez, I was relieved. Condé does an excellent job of weaving in the characters we follow, with narrative importance, not for asides.
​
The characters had great verisimilitude for future gente, and while reading, I always felt concern over what’s at stake and was excited to know what happens next. Condé carries out the writing advice I jokingly tell myself, “Take out all the boring parts.” Sordidez could have been needlessly longer, but instead it gives us what is important, what feels important, the after affects, the decisions and the giving ups or returns.

Sordidez is an instant classic that deals with issues many occupied and colonized people deal with: intolerance, trauma, loss of history, necessity to reclaim indigenous culture, the poisoning of land and climate disaster. Sordidez offers a future vision that, though broken like the present, has hope.

Ultimately, Sordidez blends narrative, visions, healing and resolutions, in several figures, all willing to transform for their people and offer mutual aid in a found familia. 

Scott Russell Duncan is senior editor at Somos en escrito Literary Magazine and Press and was editor on the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, which was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.  In 2016 his story “How My Hide Got Color” won San Francisco Litquake’s Short Story Contest. His nonfiction piece “Mexican American Psycho is in Your Dreams” won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest.  He is at work on a collection of short stories called Mexpocalyptic Tales. His novel, Old California Strikes Back, a memoir of growing up Native/Xicano-Anglo and a fantastic tour reclaiming the myths of Mexican California, will be published in 2023 through FlowerSong Press. 

​
When Robbie Austin carelessly flicked his cigarette butt into the side of a hiking trail in the Los Angeles National Forest, he could not have known that he would bring a day of bloodshed and terror to a fiery close.
 
Nor could Elisa Martinez have anticipated that her plan to seek revenge for her grandparents would receive help from an unexpected quarter.
 
Elisa was the only one in her family who still made time every Sunday to drive Abuela to church and then take her out for brunch before returning her to the cramped apartment in the senior living community. Abuela could be thorny and never minced words, but Elisa didn’t mind. When Elisa’s parents had thrown her out of the house at sixteen for daring to have a boyfriend, Abuela had welcomed her with open arms. When Elisa spent a weekend in jail for breaking a beer bottle over her abusive brother-in-law’s head, everyone else tut-tutted, but Abuela gave her a long hug and said, with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, “I’m glad you rearranged that puto’s face.”

So, when Abuela sunk into a dark depression, Elisa was the only one who noticed and cared. It took three Sundays for Elisa to get even a hint out of her, with Abuelita simply muttering, “It’s just something I saw on Facebook.” It took another three Sundays for her to finally reveal what was bothering her.
 
“It has to do with Camp Bava.”
 
Those two words were forbidden in the house when Elisa was growing up, but everyone in the family knew the broad strokes of the story. In 1971, Abuelita’s boyfriend had snapped and killed eleven teenagers at a summer camp. She was the only one who survived the slaughter. At first, Abuela had insisted that he was innocent, that someone else had done it. The police ignored her pleas because they were more than happy to pin the crime on a convenient scapegoat. That that scapegoat was some pesky-ass Brown Beret was icing on the cake. To make matters worse, her parents refused to believe her account of events and later disowned her when they discovered she was pregnant with a murderer’s baby. Abuela went on to have other children and the semblance of an ordinary life, but she shut down whenever anyone mentioned the summer of 1971, so her family learned to stop bringing it up. Over the years, she refused interviews from curious reporters and bloggers, many of whom painted her out to be an accomplice.
 
“You want to talk about it?” Elisa asked.
 
“No. Not if you’re going to make fun of me like everyone else.”
 
“Come on. You know me better than that.”
 
“Fine. Here goes. Lalo and I were camp counselors. It was supposed to be a way for all these Chicano kids who couldn’t afford Boy Scouts to get this nice camping experience. We were there less than three days when campers started to disappear. On the fourth day, we found one of the missing girls. You should have seen her. All shriveled up. The poor thing looked like a dried apricot. That’s a detail the cops never released, you know? It didn’t fit their story. After we found her, we packed up to leave. We were all trying not to panic, and Lalo kept us levelheaded. He was always a natural leader. Sometimes I wonder where he would have ended up if...” Elisa could see the tears beginning to well up in her grandma’s eyes. Her mother always said that Abuela was a cold, unfeeling woman, but Elisa knew there was a deep reservoir of feeling beneath the surface.
 
“Anyway,” Abuela continued and gulped down what might have been the start of a sob. “This is the part the cops refused to believe. Everyone tried to convince me I imagined it, that I had tried to make sense of the trauma by making up some boogeyman. I didn’t. I never stopped believing in what I saw. We were about to get into our bus when one of the campers screamed. Standing between us and the bus was that thing. He was a stringy-looking guy, all dried up, almost like that poor girl we found. He was dressed funny, you know? In a kind of tux. The kind you imagine those people in old, black-and-white Hollywood movies wear. Except the tux was all torn up and eaten away at parts. Probably the worst was his face, especially the eyes. They glowed red even in broad daylight. And the glow only got stronger when he grabbed hold of the screaming camper and started to feed.”
 
“Feed? Like a vampire?”
 
“No. No un vampiro. I mean, it attacked us in the middle of the day. But…I don’t even know if feeding is the right word. I just remember it taking hold of Rocky—that was the camper’s name—and Rocky screaming and then not screaming because it was like the thing had drained all the life out of him. That was the only time I saw it feed. When it came after the rest of us, it just attacked us with its bare hands.”
 
“How did you survive?”
 
“I got lucky. El Dandy. That’s what I remember calling it ‘cause of the way it was dressed. El Dandy cornered me and Lalo and the last surviving camper at a dock off the lake.”
 
She paused, and Elisa noticed a flicker of pride in Abuela’s eyes. “I don’t think that monster was expecting a fight. We had a little bit of combat training. We were going to be the revolutionary vanguard, after all. Lalo came at it with an axe. The one we used to chop wood for the campfire, I think. But the monster caught him by the neck, and Lalo dropped the axe. It was choking the life out of him. I had to do something, so I grabbed the axe and swung. Managed to hack off the arm just beneath the elbow. Here’s the messed up thing, mija. No blood came out. Nothing. Como si nunca le hubiera corrido sangre entre las venas. It looked surprised and then angry, and it swatted me away. It was so strong. It sent me flying into the lake.”
 
Abuela began shivering as if telling the story was purging her of years of fear, anger, survivor’s guilt, all sorts of bad feelings that had coagulated inside her. “Broke a couple of my ribs. Never really healed right. Sometimes, I have a hard time breathing.”
 
“You don’t have to keep telling me this,” Elisa said, “Not if it’s too much for you.”
 
“I have to.” Abuela sighed, “I don’t know why it didn’t come after me. I sank and then washed up on a far corner of the lake, and then I passed out from the pain of my broken ribs. When I came to, some cops were wrapping a blanket around me. They’d question me later, but I don’t know why they bothered. They found the last camper, Bennie. I remember his name now. They found him bleeding out right next to Lalo. The thing had buried the axe in Lalo’s chest and returned to wherever it came from. From there, it was easy for the pigs to piece together what happened. Lalo snapped, they said. Bennie had died defending himself and ended Lalo’s rampage—supposedly. My mind, unable to recognize that my boyfriend was a psycho, had concocted this whole monster story. They closed the case and shut down the camp, and everyone moved on.”
 
“But you didn’t.”
 
“How could I? Lalo was the love of my life. No disrespect to your other grandpa—que en paz descanse.”   
 
“What happened with the monster?”
 
“El Dandy is still out there. I’ve kept tabs on missing people over the years. A hiker or two every decade or so. Nothing big enough to draw anyone’s attention, but I know he’s still out there. And then there’s this.”
 
She showed Elisa what had sent her into a spiral so many weeks ago. It was a Facebook ad from an up-and-coming True Crime podcast. It read:
 
Join Ethan and Karlie, hosts of THE MURDER BUDDIES podcast, for a weekend of chills! We’re doing a live recording at the site of the 1971 Eduardo Velez murders! Bring your graham crackers and marshmallows and bug spray! Join us for a spooky good time at Camp Bava! CLICK HERE FOR PRICING. VIP PACKAGES AVAILABLE.
 
“Fucking gringos,” Elisa muttered darkly. “A bunch of brown kids get hacked to pieces, and they turn it into a sleepover party.”
 
“I’m not mad about that. I mean, I am. But I’m also not. You live as long as I have, and you get used to this sort of thing. Our suffering don’t matter to them. I’m just worried for these people. If they go through with it, that demon out there is going to tear right through them. I feel so…powerless.”
 
But Elisa didn’t feel powerless. Abuela had basically raised her and imparted on her these words of wisdom from an early age: “You can be a lot of things, mija. You can be smart. You can be successful. You can be a bitch. But what I never ever want you to be is a victim.” As soon as she was old enough for it, Elisa enrolled in several self-defense classes. In high school, she gained a reputation for clobbering bullies and racists, much to her mother’s chagrin. Elisa later enlisted and started a business training stunt actors for filming fight scenes with weapons. She would not be caught unprepared for a fight.

The Murder Buddies didn’t deserve her protection, but she couldn’t let history repeat itself. She hoped that she could discourage them from recording their episode. Part of her hoped El Dandy wouldn’t show up at all. But a larger part of her wished he would. Nothing would make her happier than ending his reign of terror. El Dandy robbed her grandmother of her youth, joy, and health. He had killed Elisa’s grandfather, who was never properly mourned and had his name dragged through the mud. El Dandy had to be stopped, and the circle of her grandmother’s tragic story had to be closed.
 
That is why she bought a VIP package and a small but sturdy axe and drove up to the ruins of Camp Bava on a hot, windy September afternoon.
 
On the drive up, she listened to the episode on the murders. The hosts, bubbly and irreverent, floated theories about Lalo’s mental breakdown in between ads for mattresses and food delivery services. They pointed out that he came from a broken home, that his best friend was killed by police, that mental illness ran in his family. There was barely any mention of his activism and no mention at all of Abuela’s account of events.
 
Since she was listening to The Murder Buddies, she missed a very important announcement about precautionary evacuations that were underway in response to a sudden wildfire in Porter Ranch.
 
By the time she marched up to the fire pit at the center of the camp, she was ready to give the podcast hosts a piece of her mind. The festivities were already well under way. Everyone gathered around a crafts table with all kinds of summer camp inspired treats: deconstructed PB & J sandwiches, sloppy joes on buttered brioche, chocolate martinis lined with graham cracker crumbs, and so on. No expenses had been spared.
 
All the other guests were dressed appropriately, sporting cutesy backpacks, tiny shorts, and their complementary CAMP MURDER BUDDIES t-shirts. The dilapidated cabins encircled the communal fire pit, looming over the proceedings like creaking, rotten grave markers. The sun glared down on the campers without a single cloud in the sky to shield them from the intense rays. The breeze that occasionally passed through the dry, brittle tree leaves brought no relief from the heat. Somewhere in the distance was a thin plume of smoke, but everyone including Elisa was too busy milling about to notice it. Elisa set down her knapsack, which contained her axe, and began trying to locate the podcast hosts. Sweat stung her eyes, and she could feel the sun block she hastily applied already starting to melt away. She heard some rustling down the trail but assumed it was another latecomer like her.
 
As she milled about trying to find Karlie and Ethan, she picked up snatches of conversation.
 
“…yeah, I totally think the girlfriend was in on it…”
“…okay, but it’s weird that those three people went missing like four years later…”
“…I heard she said that Bigfoot did it, but the cops didn’t believe her…”
“…the real hero of all this. I’m such a Bennie stan…”
 
Elisa grimaced. Here was her family’s suffering transformed into a decades-long game of telephone.
 
She heard the Murder Buddies before she saw them. Karlie, a conventionally attractive white woman in her early thirties, was haranguing her cohost. Elisa wondered how Karlie managed to keep her makeup looking impeccable in the unbearable heat, and her eyes drifted down to Karlie’s semi-exposed upper thigh, which bore a detailed tattoo of a rose. Ethan stood by scowling as Karlie pointed angrily in his face. Their show made them out to be cheerful and spontaneous, but the reality was far from that. As Elisa got closer, she heard what they were arguing about.
 
“We’re already here, and we already blew all this money.”
 
“They’re evacuating people, Ethan!”
 
“A few cities over! Let’s record the episode at least. They’re too busy to even notice. Besides…” But he didn’t finish his sentence because he saw Elisa approaching. It was like a switch flipped inside his head, and Ethan’s glower immediately transitioned into a jovial grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
 
“Hey there!” he said almost too cheerfully as he scanned and failed to locate Elisa’s name tag. “What can we do for you?”
 
“We need to leave,” Elisa warned.
 
“Shit! I told you someone would find out! We should have…” Karlie’s complaint was cut off by Ethan, whose face was mirthless again.
 
“I’ve got this,” he said through gritted teeth. “You can leave if you want, but if you check the purchase agreement, you’ll see you that you get no refund. It’s just a small fire.”
 
“Fire?” Elisa said. “No! That’s not what this is about.”
 
She was about to continue when a loud cheer erupted over by the campfire pit. The assembled hipsters whooped and hollered at a lanky figure that emerged from the forest. It looked just like Abuela had described, though a little worse for the wear given the passage of time. Its tuxedo, which was probably last pristine when Citizen Kane still played in theaters, was frayed. Holes in the pants and shirt gave everyone glimpses of desiccated flesh the color of a spoiled Bartlett pear. As Elisa expected, it was missing most of one of its arms. At some point between 1971 and now, it had tied what looked like a railroad spike to the ruined flesh of its stub. Bits of skull peered from the places where its scalp had rotted off. Even in broad daylight, its eyes glowed red as if someone had placed a crimson-tinted flashlight inside its skull.
 
El Dandy.  
 
Elisa had promised to take her grandmother seriously. On the drive up, she secretly wished that this cadaverous nightmare had really been a figment of Abuela’s imagination. No such luck. An unforgivingly arid gust of wind accompanied El Dandy as he shambled towards the assembled true crime fans. Abuela always said that los vientos de Santa Ana brought not only forest fires but violence and hatred with them. Elisa doubted her less than ever.
 
“You hired an actor?” Karlie squealed in delight.
 
“I didn’t.”
 
“Don’t lie! I don’t get why it’s a zombie though. But whatever.” The wheels turned inside Karlie’s head. “Wait!” she added furiously, “Is this why we’re over budget?!”
 
“Get away from him!” Elisa cautioned.
 
But she was too late. Already the podcast crowd, some of whom shrieked with amused faux terror, were surrounding El Dandy and snapping pictures with their smartphones and commenting on the excellent makeup work. The more squeamish fans shrunk away in real fear. A tall fan who had already cut the sleeves off his camp t-shirt, swung his arm around the ghoul’s neck.
 
“Let’s take a selfie, bro!”
 
El Dandy turned to stare at the man’s cell phone, tilted its head in mild confusion, and then put its arm around the man’s neck.
 
“Ooooh! Cool pose!”
 
Just as he said this, a malevolent smile came over the creature’s face, revealing less than a handful of black, rotten teeth. It dug its scraggly fingers into the flesh of the man’s neck and then violently ripped a patch of skin right off, soaking the surrounding podcast enthusiasts with arterial spray.
 
The selfie-taker dropped to his knees and then collapsed face-first in the dirt, staining the ground around him a sickly maroon shade. A few campers stood rooted to the ground in disbelief, perhaps some of them even entertaining the notion that this, too, was part of an act, that these were just exceptionally well-executed special effects. This might have been what a young woman in a neon-blue miniskirt was considering when El Dandy rammed its spike straight through her chest. As her body went limp, he casually tossed her aside and set his sights on Elisa and the podcast hosts.
 
Before he could go any further, though, a burly man put the creature in a sleeper hold. Elisa recognized him as the one who had proclaimed himself a Bennie stan.
 
“You killed my girlfriend! You fucker! You killed her!” he howled at the inhuman thing, spittle flying out of his grieving, enraged mouth.

Elisa took advantage of this momentary distraction and made a beeline towards her knapsack. As she scrambled to pull the axe out of her bag, she noticed the unmistakable smell of smoke hanging in the air.  
 
El Dandy was at a disadvantage trying to pluck the man of its back. Even for a preternaturally strong fiend, it would have been no easy feat, and trying to do so with one working arm made it even harder. Still, brute strength and evil cunning succeeded won out. El Dandy grabbed hold of the man’s lower jaw and squeezed tight enough for Elisa to hear the crunch of bone even several feet away. In one fluid motion, it yanked the boyfriend’s jaw right off its hinges. The man’s grip slackened, and he dropped off El Dandy, writhing and gurgling until he grew still. The creature carelessly hurled the ruined jaw aside and turned to look at Elisa. She stood before him, defiant and wielding an axe.
 
Having “lived” as long as it had, its memories tended to flow into one another, years of stalking, killing, and sleeping coalescing into one big, dark ocean. Only a handful of events stuck out in El Dandy’s mind like lighthouses dotting a midnight shore. Though it didn’t always remember which memories were months, years, or even decades apart, it still clung to these with the same tenacity that a drowning man clings to a board when adrift at sea. It remembered when it was still a man who used to hold séances and sell crystals and other mystical items to all the gullible transplants, all those times reading the fortunes of impressionable young starlets thinking they’d be the next Katharine Hepburn. It remembered the night a gunrunner didn’t take too kindly to getting conned. It remembered the resulting gutshot even if pain was now a concept alien to it. It remembered the long car ride, jammed in someone’s trunk, and then the fall off the side of a cliff, seeming to hit every rock on the way down. It remembered the voice in its head, older than the hills, predating the boosters that came out to Los Angeles to make it the next big thing, predating even the Serrano and Cahuilla tribes. It remembered the voice’s offer: Kill on my behalf, spill blood for me, and you will never have to die.
 
Most of all, it remembered the greaser bitch that had hacked off its arm. It remembered her fury, which had caught it off guard. It remembered its annoyance and then the satisfaction of killing her boyfriend. Its hatred and prejudice burned brightly in the shriveled lump of meat that was now its heart. For a second, El Dandy confused the past with the present. But then a realization dawned in its decrepit head. This wasn’t her standing before El Dandy right now. Not exactly. But she had the same eyes. A descendant most likely. An opportunity to tie up loose ends across time. The thing that used to be Gregory the Mystic and who had long ago lost the power of speech communicated its rage through a long, baleful hiss.
 
“This is for my grandparents, you ugly piece of shit,” Elisa hissed right back at it.
 
She swung the axe in a downward arc, hoping to bury it in the wight’s head and end the fight early, but it reacted quickly and blocked the swing with its weaponized half-arm. Steel rang on rusted iron, and Elisa’s attack at least managed to sever some of the ropes keeping the spike in place, and it dropped onto the ground with a clang, still covered in ichor and with some slats of the creature’s flesh clinging to it.
 
But a one-armed El Dandy was still dangerous. He swung at her with his remaining arm, and she rolled out of its way and buried the axe in his back. El Dandy turned to face her and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her several feet in the air. She struggled to free herself and fruitlessly flung kicks his way. His gripped tightened. Soon he would snuff her out.
 
And then several shots rang out. Few of them managed to hit anything, but one of them blasted right under El Dandy’s collarbone, spraying Elisa with bone shards and whatever it is that passed for blood in that monstrous body.
 
El Dandy dropped Elisa to face his new attacker, a flustered Karlie struggling to reload her gun.
“Why do you have a gun?!” her cohost stammered.
 
“We do a show about serial killers who kill women, Ethan. Why the fuck wouldn’t I have one?”.
 
“Please. You live in Bel Air,” Ethan answered and then hid behind her.
 
El Dandy marched resolutely towards them. It had decided to save the Mexican girl for later, maybe even drain her lifeforce to replenish its own. The two podcasters broke into a run deeper into the forest.
 
Good. It loved a chase.
 
Meanwhile, Elisa struggled to draw air back into her lungs and spent several minutes trying to normalize her breathing. Her throat felt raw. He had almost gotten her, and she considered calling it a day. Let these two dorks get what was coming to them. But she couldn’t do that. She staggered to her feet and saw that her axe was nowhere to be found. It was still stuck in El Dandy’s back, so she picked up his fallen spike and followed down the trail after them.
 
The sunlight seemed to dim somewhat. By now, the fire must be completely out of control. Flecks of ash whirled lazily in the reddening sky. The event should have been canceled.
 
“Those irresponsible bastards.” Elisa’s seething was interrupted by the sound of more gunshots. They weren’t far ahead.
 
When she finally caught up to them in a clearing, she could see the blaze snaking down a hillside towards her. In the center of the clearing, El Dandy had its claws dug into Karlie’s shoulders. Her eyes were rolling in the back of her head, and a strange, reddish glow emanated from both their bodies. A few feet away lay Ethan, his head a bloody ruin and Karlie’s gore-encrusted gun resting right next to the mushy mess. In the end, the firearm had been worse than useless.
 
Elisa prayed that the spike would be more help and rammed it into the back of El Dandy’s skull as it fed. It dropped what was left of Karlie and let out an ear-piercing shriek.
 
“Now it ends,” Elisa said gravely.
 
Except it didn’t.

El Dandy turned to face her, the pointed end of the spike protruding right through one of his eye sockets. He pulled out the spike and contemptuously threw it over his shoulder. Elisa stared in shock at the hole in the creature’s face through which the orange, smoke-choked sunlight shone. It was unclear what actually kept the abomination going, but Elisa realized, to her dismay, that it certainly wasn’t his brain.
 
She had exhausted her options, and the fire from the hillside now approached the clearing at an alarming speed. She turned towards a path to her right and retreated, pursued by both monster and fire, two equally unrelenting forces. The path she followed took her to the dock where her grandparents faced down El Dandy all those years ago.
 
“Everything comes full circle,” she whispered to herself. “I die here, or he does. Or we both do.” The flames caught up to her before El Dandy did, encircling the lake and creating a blazing arena for the combatants. Black smoke started to blot out the sun’s harsh rays as El Dandy shuffled menacingly towards her, taking his sweet time despite the conflagration surrounding them.
 
Elisa figured that she could lop off his head if she could just free that axe from El Dandy’s back. It was a long shot, but a hope in hell was all that she had left.
 
She raced towards El Dandy and ducked under a swing of his claw. She could feel victory in her grasp as she dislodged the axe, but this feeling was short-lived. With unnatural agility, El Dandy grabbed her wrist. Her bones groaned and splintered in his hand, and her grasp failed—her weapon and hopes now both out of reach.
 
Then El Dandy began to “feed.” The pain in Elisa’s wrist was replaced by a coldness she could feel throughout her entire body. She felt more tired than she had ever felt. “I’m sorry, Abuela,” she whispered hoarsely and looked up, hoping that Heaven, if nothing else, would intervene to save her. As she did, she saw through the hole in El Dandy’s head that the tree behind them had a charred branch hanging on by a knotty thread. With one final burst of energy, she wailed a primal scream and shoved El Dandy as hard as possible into the path of the collapsing, blazing branch. El Dandy seemed to humor her efforts and mockingly grinned at her, but his arrogant sneer was soon replaced by bewilderment when the branch snapped and collapsed on top of the pair.
 
El Dandy caught most of the branch’s impact, and Elisa rapidly crawled backwards, not even noticing that her left pants leg had caught fire. She was having an easier time than the undead killer, who was now pinned down by the flaming branch. It writhed and screeched and grew blacker and smaller until it stopped moving. A pale, red light snaked out of where its mouth used to be and was swallowed up by the flames.
 
She was so caught up in watching El Dandy’s death throes that she failed to notice the fire on her leg, but the pain snapped her out of her stupor, and she furiously swatted at her jeans with her working hand. When she finally put the flames out, she looked around with weary eyes. There was no way to get back to her car. No way to go anywhere, really.

Elisa staggered over to the dock. She had no doubt that the fire would soon eat that up as well. She wondered how long she could float in the lake, perhaps long enough to be rescued, perhaps not long enough to avoid suffocating on the smoke darkening the late afternoon sky.

She stood on the edge of the dock, expecting El Dandy to spring back to life any moment, but the threat of that nightmare had passed.
 
Elisa allowed herself a brief smile before sliding gingerly into the waters awaiting her. The sound of her splash was met by the steady roar of the flames eating away at the wooden dock.
​
Somewhere above her, the buzz of helicopters and the howling of los vientos de Santa Ana fought to decide the forest’s fate.

Salvador Ayala is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University, where he works on twentieth-century U.S. and Latin American literature. He was born in Mexico, grew up in Los Angeles, and resides in Philadelphia. Salvador is an avid fan of slasher movies. His work has been featured in Nightmare Sky: Stories of Astronomical Horror from Death Knell Press. 

​By Joe Menchaca


Part I
There is no death…only a change of worlds.
—Chief Seattle
 
Baltimore Reynolds was about to address his ex-wife Carmelita’s request when three sicarios with tattooed faces slithered into the bar and opened fire.
​
An hour earlier, Baltimore agreed to meet her at The Silver Bullet Saloon, thinking it an opportunity to exact a megaton of revenge for the humiliating way she dumped him in this reality. They met in a Physics for Non-Science Majors class that Baltimore, a research physicist, taught. Carmelita SpeaksToOwls Ruiz was a graduate Cultural Anthropology major, and to Baltimore, the most beautiful woman in nine dimensions: Straight black hair that fell to her waist and moved like whispers when she tossed her head back and laughed, skin like liquid caramel, and eyes as dark and infinite as a black hole. But an aura of danger emanated from her like radiation from plutonium fuel rods. It should have been a warning.

The Silver Bullet was in a part of Old Twosuns where desperation and hopelessness were the dominant social currencies, and even with Google Maps and GTS, it had taken him the better part of that hour to find the place. Baltimore opened the door, and the stench of stale beer and vomit whooshed passed him like a drunk frat boy’s breath at a pledge party. Already peeved that meeting Carmelita might cause him to miss a consultation with his business partner, he nearly turned around and walked away. Reluctantly, he stepped in, paused to let nausea fade and for his eyes to adjust, and scanned the room.

A dark, dingy blind made of partially rusted metal slats covering the front window sliced thin, horizontal bars of sunlight through clouds of cigarette smoke, which hung in the air like smog over an LA freeway, and a mournful wail rose from a smudged and dusty jukebox slumped against the wall next to the window. Feeble light from several randomly placed fixtures with beer logo shades shined through the thickening haze through which Baltimore discerned vague shapes of tables and booths. Carmelita sat in a booth in a dimly lit corner at the back of the room. She waved him over.

About a dozen early morning patrons slouched on backless stools or leaned on a wooden bar, scarred by initials and obscenities carved into its surface. All of them were smoking. All of them turned to inspect Baltimore. Thin, pale, button-up shirt, slacks, and a backpack—not at all intimidating, which in this place could be a favorable characteristic or a major liability, he thought. Baltimore had grown up in a white middle-class suburb and was, thus, unsure how to comport himself as he walked past the patrons. He decided on a confident but not haughty posture, even though he thought he’d need a tetanus shot after leaving the place.

He stepped up to the booth and was startled by her appearance. Carmelita’s skin had tightened around her face like Saran Wrap on a hambone, and several red angry sores marred her once flawless complexion. The ravages of ’cide. Her appearance sapped most of the energy out of his hunger for revenge, so rather than berate her looks, he said, “Geez, Carmelita, you couldn’t find a more lowlife dive?”

“This is the only place where nobody knows me,” she said.

“And that’s good because…?”

“I got a real problem, Baltimore, and only you can help me.”

“What, Ninja Boy ran off with someone else’s wife?”

“Shit, I dumped that fool a long time ago. No, I got real problems, Baltimore.” Carmelita lowered her head, casting suspicious glances around the room, and whispered, “I crossed El Ojo, and now they’re out to kill me.”

“El who?” Baltimore said a bit too loudly. A few barflies glanced in their direction—their moist, filmy eyes betraying little.

“Shh, keep your voice down, pendejo,” Carmelita said. “El Ojo de Oro. If they find me, they’re gonna cut my fucking head off.” Lips quivering, eyes moistening, she was on the brink of losing her composure. She paused to regain control and said, “Please, Baltimore, you’ve got to get me out of here!”

“Why would I want to do that?” he said.

“You’re not still pissed about Alex, are you?” Carmelita said.

“No, why would I be? I mean, the woman of my dreams—my wife—hooks up with a cretin on a Ninja and says, ‘adios, cabrón’ while the newlywed glow was still luminous and warm—for me, that is. And now, after I’ve finally moved on, she calls and says she needs my help. Why would I be ‘pissed’ about that?”

A slight smile curled her lips.

“You find that humorous?” Baltimore said. He was on the verge of losing his cool.

“No,” she said sweetly, “‘Adios, cabrón?’ Is that the Carmelita effect? ’Cause you know I didn’t say that to you.”

“You didn’t have to. And your diversionary tactics won’t work, Carmelita. Yes, I’m still pissed about Alex.”

“Come on, Baltimore, don’t be like that.” She couldn’t look at him and instead cast her gaze down at the dingy table. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Baltimore—”

“That’s it? ‘I’m sorry I hurt you?’ You shattered my heart like a chem lab beaker. And if that wasn’t enough, you shamed and embarrassed me in front of my friends and colleagues.”

“What else do you want me to say, Baltimore? Besides, it’s not like it’s all on me. You claim the ‘newlywed glow was still luminous and warm,’ but that’s not what it looked like from my perspective. Remember that hateful shit you said to me about believing in spirits?”

They had been talking about the native practice of infusing the natural world with spirit, and when she had tried to explain that natives believe all things, sentient or insentient, possess a spirit force, he had dismissed it as superstition and ignorance.
“Many things scientists dismiss do exist in the natural world,” Carmelita had said.
“Like what?”

“Well, like spirits.”

“I’m sorry,” said Baltimore. “But I can’t accept ethereal entities of myths and legends as being real. And I’m finding it difficult to reconcile how you, an otherwise intelligent individual, can believe as real a paganistic, primitive belief with no basis in scientific fact, which offers no substantive proof of its existence.”

“I understand your dilemma, Baltimore, I really do, and I empathize with you because I face a similar dilemma: How can you, an otherwise intelligent individual, believe in a branch of physics that promotes theories like matter exists as probabilities, objective reality may be an illusion, and the universe might be a hologram?”

Baltimore nodded and said, “Great counter-point.” His upper lip curled up on one side, and anger swept across his eyes like light from a passing car’s headlights. “One big difference: Quantum phenomena have been observed in laboratory experiments. Can’t say that about spirits.”

“Have they? Didn’t you once say that scientists haven’t actually seen particles, that proof of their existence occurs when particles collide or pass through film?”

“Well…yes, but—”

“Please, let me finish. My interpretation of ‘quantum phenomena’ is that a particle reveals itself under specific conditions and chooses the form—particle or wave. Unscientific phrasing, but generally speaking, true, right?”

“Generally speaking, yes.”

“Revealing itself under specific conditions—like rituals—and in what form is what a spirit does.”

He had turned away, his face reddening, and said, “Still superstitious pagan bullshit.”

The Silver Bullet’s gloomy environment hid the shame in Baltimore’s eyes. The self-reproach he’d felt at having once said such degrading and disrespectful things to Carmelita hadn’t diminished; he was about to apologize again, but Carmelita held up a gaunt hand to quiet him.

“Still, leaving you the way I did was a fucked-up thing to do, I know that,” she said, “like I know there’s no way I can ever make it right. But, please, Baltimore, you’ve got to help me; you gotta get me out of here.”

“I don’t understand why you called me. If you need to leave that badly, you could buy a plane ticket, a bus ticket—whatever mode of transportation suits you. Surely there must be many places where you could hide from El Ojo.”

“No.” Carmelita looked at him with an intensity that caught him by surprise. “El Ojo’s tentacles run far and deep. I mean, where’re you going to run from an organization whose motto is, ‘No hay donde esconderse’? And it’s not just a motto; it’s a code of honor members live by and are willing to die for.”

“Well, they can’t be that widespread. I haven’t ever heard or read anything about El Ojo de Oro.”

“Are you so sure?” Carmelita raised an eyebrow and smirked.

What did she mean by that? Baltimore wondered. Carmelita’s smirk, a sort of I-know-something-you-don’t-know sneer, fueled the ominous dread growing in his unconscious mind since he established a business partnership with Mr. LaTrans. “Of course, I’m sure,” he said. “It’s not like I socialize with gangsters.”

“El Ojo’s not a gang, Baltimore; they’re a criminal enterprise. They’re the country’s largest manufacturer and distributor of ’cide, and they prefer to operate in the shadows. But the organization doesn’t concern me as much as the assassins who work for them.” Fear accompanied intensity in her eyes. This troubled Baltimore, for Carmelita did not frighten easily. She was born on the Chalk Mountain Kai-yen-ta Indian Reserve and lived there until middle school when her parents divorced. Her mom then moved them to Phoenix, where Carmelita began running with gangbangers, and smoking and selling ’cide. Baltimore learned from her that showing fear in either environment made you a target or a victim.

“I’m telling you, Baltimore,” Carmelita said, her voice wavering in tone and volume, “those guys are death walking—it’s like they aren’t even human. And they absolutely will not stop until they give their boss my head.” She took a drink of beer and drew a long, slow breath as if preparing to dive into deep water. “No, Baltimore. There’s only one place they won’t find me. I want you to hide me wherever it is you go when you’re in your lab.”

“What?” Baltimore hoped his face didn’t lose color and betray his shock. He focused on assuming a façade of nonchalance and said, “I go to my lab when I’m in my lab.”
“Come on, Baltimore. You know what I’m talking about.” She dialed up the intensity—Baltimore was sure he squirmed. “My father says you can walk between worlds.”

“I have no idea what you or he are talking about.”

Baltimore’s attempted nonchalance was interrupted by the bartender—a large, bald man whose sneer exposed an abstract landscape of rotting and missing teeth—who bellowed, “Hey, college boy. You drink, or you walk.”

Ah, this is what ‘saved by the bell’ feels like, thought Baltimore. He hoped the interruption would divert the conversation. He smiled sweetly and asked, “Would you like another beer?”

“No, I don’t want another fucking beer.”

“Well, Shrek says I need to buy something.” Baltimore hoped the bartender didn’t hear that and considered what to order. Given the less-than-sanitary conditions, he ruled out anything in a glass. He turned, smiled at the bartender, and said, “I’ll have a bottle of India Pale Ale, please.”

“Ain’t got none of that yuppie shit here, dufus. All we got’s Budtz, Koors, and Miller.”

“A Budtzveiser it is, then.” Baltimore turned to speak to Carmelita.

The bartender opened a bottle and plunked it on the bar. “That’ll be three bucks.” Baltimore placed money on the table. “And I ain’t no fucking waitress,” Shrek thundered, causing the jagged, crescent-shaped scar on the left side of his face to flare a demonic reddish glow. Should I be surprised the bartender’s disposition matches his appearance, thought Baltimore; nonetheless, he was thankful for the distraction and the opportunity to regain his composure.

Baltimore put a five-dollar bill on the bar and said, “Keep the change.”

Shrek caught Baltimore’s wrist as he reached for the beer. “That ain’t enough,” he said. Before Baltimore could respond, the bartender added, “‘Cause you said you were buying a round for the bar, didn’t he, fellahs?” Shouts of “Hell, yeah,” and “Fucken A,” along with snickers and guffaws, erupted from the patrons. Baltimore stammered what could have been an objection as Shrek and the ‘fellahs’ laughed.

“No, he didn’t,” Carmelita said. She must have moved like a wraith because no one, including Shrek, noticed her until she was standing a few feet behind Baltimore. Her tone—loud, clear, and unmistakably menacing—had the same effect as pressing a mute button: Shrek froze in mid-ridicule, and the barflies stopped laughing.

“Ha, ha.” Shrek tried and failed at levity. “We was just fuckin’ with him, ya know?”
Carmelita didn’t respond to Shrek but didn’t take her eyes off him. “Grab your beer,” she said to Baltimore.

As they walked to the booth, Baltimore said, “I noticed the bulge under your hoodie.” Ugh, that sounded awkward, he thought. “I mean, given your emaciated condition, it is quite prominent.”

“Gee, thanks, Baltimore. You look like a million fucking bucks yourself.”

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as an insult, but the bulge—it’s a gun, isn’t it?”

Carmelita flashed a look a mother gives a kid pestering for another cookie. “Shut up and sit down.”

They sat, and a strange, contradictory impulse swept over Baltimore. Though grateful Carmelita intervened at the bar, he was nearly overpowered by an urge to unleash the total verbal hell on her that he had intended but decided against when he saw her. Perhaps because I’m feeling totally emasculated, thought Baltimore. Nevertheless, the unexpectedly intense desire to inflict emotional pain on an addict seeking help somewhat mystified and shamed him. The retaliatory gesture, however justified, felt like an irresistible biological imperative to kick someone while they’re down—an impulse Baltimore considered himself much too evolved even to entertain. He chose to dial it down.

“So,” he said, “what happened to the young woman who wanted to heal the earth and bring joy and enlightenment to its people through native rituals?” Although he toned down the vehemence, sarcasm twisted his lips into a curvature of cruelty as he spoke.

“So, what happened to the young man who thought quantum physics would rescue humanity from its path of self-destruction?” She didn’t return the cruelty; instead, the icy intensity of her glare frosted him down to the testicles. She answered for him: “The idealistic young man became just another greedy, punk-ass science pimp.”

Silence.

“Checkmate,” said Baltimore after a few tense moments.

“Right,” said Carmelita. “And now, who’s guilty of diversionary tactics?”

Silence.

Carmelita broke the silence this time: “Are you done?” she said. Baltimore nodded sheepishly. Her voice and eyes softened as she resumed at the point where the bartender had interrupted. “My father said that the first time he shook your hand, he sensed an energy in your spirit he hadn’t encountered before.”

“Your father was probably high on peyote.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Baltimore. My father holds you in high regard.”

“Sorry. I think highly of him as well.”

“Father said he prayed for months for a vision to help him understand.” She paused and again switched on her probing gaze. “And when a vision finally came to him, he said…he said you came to him in the vision.”

Baltimore was stunned. Holy crap! That was real? He thought he had dreamed it.

“Except it wasn’t a vision,” said Carmelita.

“Then it was probably a dream,” Baltimore said.

“No! It wasn’t. Father said it started as his vision until it began to feel like he was being drawn into someone else’s.” Her eyes locked onto his. “And then he realized it was no vision. He was in another realm, a realm you drew him into. Father asked how you made that possible. He said you tried to explain—stuff about decoherence, non-locality—things he couldn’t understand.” She sipped her beer. “But he didn’t need scientific explanations to understand that you could walk between worlds.”

Knowing you’re about to fall off a cliff doesn’t make the landing any softer. Baltimore had anticipated Carmelita would eventually find out about his multiverse tripping because they’d had conversations about parallel worlds since their first date.
​

Baltimore chose La Casa Mestizo, a restaurant owned by a renowned Navajo-Mexican gourmet chef, for their first date. About half an hour into their dinner, Carmelita said, “You know, it was obvious you glossed over the topic of parallel worlds in class. It seemed as if there was something you didn’t want us to know.”

Baltimore couldn’t stop fidgeting. “Well, concepts of multiverses and parallel worlds are speculations, unproven theories some consider outlandish.”

“That sounds like modern science denial orthodoxy. I want to know what you think?”

“Do I believe in alternate realities in which we exist as discrete yet somehow connected entities?” Baltimore paused as though pondering an answer, though he was really trying his best to conjure a non-committal response. “Mathematics does say the existence of parallel worlds is possible. If you recall, we studied the Many-Worlds Interpretation.”

“Yeah, I remember. We were completely lost when you tossed around jargon like locality, uncertainty principle, wave function collapse—words and concepts we didn’t understand, and which you didn’t seem too eager to take the time to explain.”

“Those are challenging concepts to explain to a layperson; indeed, one of the greatest theoretical physicists once said, ‘I think that I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ The most common barrier is the limitation of language. English or any language doesn’t have the linguistic capacity to describe quantum phenomena adequately; thus, terms like the examples you used are simply approximations.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said in class. Still sounds evasive to me—although the ‘limitation of language’ makes sense; it reminds me of Edward Abbey.”

“You’ve read Abbey?”

“Of course. Abbey’s one of the few white men who spoke like an Indian about the land and humanity’s connection to it. He said that language is like fishing for simple facts with a loose net.”

“I remember that line. It’s as apt a metaphor for language’s limitations as I’ve ever read, except ‘simple’ and quantum phenomena don’t belong in the same context. Realistically, developing a functional understanding would take several years of math and physics.”

Carmelita nodded. “That sounds reasonable,” she said. “And what about the math? We studied the quantum wave function, but what do you mean math says a multiverse is possible? In regular English, please, if that’s possible.”

“Mathematically, every single point in the wave function represents a quantum state, which physics currently defines as existing simultaneously as a particle and a wave—a definition of superposition you so eloquently pointed out is our feeble attempt to explain what we don’t fully understand.” She executed a seated curtsy; he bowed and continued, “Some physicists define a quantum state as a sum or superposition of all possible states, states they claim we can’t detect because they exist in parallel worlds. Furthermore, they argue that our world, our reality, and even our universe exist in a quantum state; hence, we exist in superposition with thus far undetectable parallel worlds.”

“Wow. We didn’t study that theory in class.”

“No, we didn’t. It’s the simplified version you requested, and it illustrates the limitation of language, for what words do we have to define states of existence beyond particles and waves, heck, even beyond solids, fluids, and gasses? Can we even conceive of what those states might look like? Moreover, do we assume parallel worlds are three-dimensional and, therefore, the same laws of physics apply, including our concepts of space and time? Should we assume parallel worlds are completely different versions of this one or only slightly different worlds in which we live out choices we didn’t make in this world, as some multiverse theories propose?”

“Damn, Baltimore.”

“Indeed. So that’s the dilemma: One can choose the conventionally accepted binary interpretation of quantum states, or one can accept that all states are possible and, therefore, that one exists simultaneously in an infinite number of discrete alternate realities.”

 “So, does that mean you believe in the Many-Worlds Interpretation?”

“The math says it’s possible; it doesn’t show us how to make it possible.”

“So, either you do, or you don’t. Which is it?”

“Hmm. You’ve effectively backed me into a metaphorical corner with only two options for escape: Either I believe or don’t believe.” Contemplative pause, and then an aha moment. “However, quantum mechanics offers a third option: Why can’t I believe and disbelieve simultaneously? A superposition of beliefs, as it were.”

Carmelita regarded him with a raised eyebrow and a smile that seemed more inspired by revelation than mirth. She shook an index finger at him and said, “You’re a tricky one, Dr. Reynolds. I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

“I’m hoping,” he muttered.

“Oh, you are, are you?” She flashed a radiant smile.

Various shades of red washed over his face. He stammered through an attempted apology before saying, “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

“More tricks? Are you a trickster?”

“No. I—”

“You know, in our folklore, Coyote is a trickster,” Carmelita said. “Are you a Coyote, Dr. Reynolds?”

“No. No, I-I, I don’t indulge in subterfuge,” he replied.

In the dingy Silver Bullet booth, Baltimore avoided Carmelita’s gaze by trying to peel off the beer bottle’s label and said, “Well, ‘walking between worlds’ would be quite a scientific achievement, wouldn’t it?” He laughed weakly, knowing the attempted denial was unconvincing.

“That’s why I finally snuck into your lab—or should I say labs? I wanted to find out exactly what you were up to.”

“You could have asked. I would have shown you my lab.”

“You wouldn’t have shown me what I saw behind the door with the digital lock.”

He shrugged, dismissing her last comment. “There’s no way you could have snuck into either lab; they’re highly secure areas.”

“Please. It was easy. I found a janitor—a horny bastard who undressed me with his eyes. He unlocked the front door.”

Baltimore was beginning to get nervous. He tried not to show it. “And then?”

“I saw the door with the high-tech lock, figured it was another lab, and went in.”

“Not possible. That’s a state-of-the-art, password-secured digital lock.” Baltimore shot her a raised eyebrow look. “There’s no way you or a horny janitor could have unlocked it.”

She smirked and said, “Really? You think you’re that hard to figure out?” She described how she had entered the names of physicists she’d heard him and his friends talk about, but none unlocked the door. She then recalled advice he’d repeatedly told his team: Keep it simple, stupid. She asked herself: What’s the simplest answer?
​
Baltimore couldn’t keep his leg still and fussed with his shirt’s buttons. He knew where this was going.

“‘He’s a nerd in love,’ I told myself, ‘what else would he use?’ I typed in my name and”—Carmelita snapped her fingers— “open sesame.”

Baltimore shifted in his seat. He could no longer hide his concern. “What’d you do then?”

“I saw you in a round, steel chamber. I waved but thought you didn’t see me, so I got closer. I looked you straight in the eyes and waved. You were looking right at me, but it was like you were looking through me, at something far away. I got scared. I was worried something awful was happening to you.” She scrutinized him with the intensity of a detective who had just found the suspect’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. “I opened the hatch, wiggled into the chamber, and reached out to touch you. My hand went right through yours.”

Crap! Now, what was he going to do? “You must have been smoking ’cide that day.”

“Don’t say that, Baltimore. That’s just mean.” The icy glare returned. “Besides, I wasn’t doing ’cide back then, fucker,” she said in a whisper that sounded like a snake flicking its tongue. She paused, possibly for effect, perhaps to allow the icy glare to thaw before continuing: “Anyway, when my hand passed through yours, these, uh…these images, no, more like scenes from a movie, flashed through my mind. But…” Carmelita shook her head and looked down. “You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but…,” she hesitated, seemingly gathering the courage to say it. She looked up at Baltimore and said, “It was like watching a movie through a kaleidoscope—images of people sliced into irregular shapes and reassembled in unnatural forms.”

Baltimore just nodded, his mind racing through analyses of the implications of what he was hearing and formulating statistical probability models for possible outcomes.

“I freaked out and started to back out of the chamber, and then you…you just…you just disappeared.” Tears highlighted the red in her bloodshot eyes. “I got so scared, Baltimore. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to see my father—I hoped he’d help me understand.”

“What did he say?’

Carmelita regarded Baltimore; awe and suspicion framed her expression. “Father is convinced you and he met on another plane of existence. He believes you somehow found a way to walk in other realms, even realms where only the most devout, experienced seers can go.”

“Many-Worlds,” he said as if thinking aloud.

“What?”

“The Many-Worlds Interpretation. The Native concept of other planes of existence is similar to the Many-Worlds Interpretation. Their similarity is what I tried to explain to your father the day he took me for a walk in the desert, and when I….” Baltimore let the words drift to silence, relieved he’d caught himself before admitting he had appeared in…in what? He was still shaken by the possibility he and Carmelita’s father had not met in a dream or a vision but had likely met in another realm—a realm Baltimore may have drawn him into.

Carmelita shook her head and stared at Baltimore—wonder and puzzlement seemed to illuminate her gaze. “I didn’t—I couldn’t believe it back then, and I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around it. But I had to know for sure because it’s my last hope.”

Baltimore was beginning to calm down and simultaneously was relieved to finally share the secret he’d kept from her since the day of his breakthrough experiment. Maintaining government-mandated secrecy meant he couldn’t acknowledge to Carmelita and her father that parallels he had drawn between quantum mechanics and their spiritual beliefs had inspired the paradigm shift that resulted in the experiment’s success. Especially influential was their conversation about the Ghost Dance.

That conversation had begun with him insulting her by insinuating that natives ate peyote just to get high.

“I’m—I apologize. I did not intend to offend,” Baltimore had said.

“I know you weren’t being malicious,” Carmelita had said, “but it still pisses me off that white people think natives ingest hallucinogens just to get fucked up. My father and I practice a sacred ritual called the Ghost Dance. I won’t go into specifics, but it’s a ceremony in which peyote plays an important role.”

“Just curious, so please don’t be offended, but what is the purpose of this ritual?”

Carmelita’s eyes bored into Baltimore’s. He felt himself wilting like lettuce under a heat lamp. “The Ghost Dance lifts the veil between this world and the spirit world.” She maintained the uncomfortable gaze. “And don’t give me that, ‘Oh, no wonder they need entheogens,’ look.”

“I, I…,” Baltimore’s cheeks felt like they were on fire. How did she know that’s what I was thinking? he wondered.

“Peyote doesn’t help us see our ancestors in the spirit world; peyote frees the shackles the mind places on the spirit that bind it to this reality.”

Baltimore perked up. “Yeah, I thought that would get your attention,” Carmelita said. “In one of your lectures, you said some physicists speculate that objective reality doesn’t exist and that we live in a hologram. Some natives believe this reality is a dream and real life is lived in the dream world.”

Baltimore’s mind had roiled with the practical implications of what Carmelita had just said. One thought, however, had risen above the analytical din: How this ritual aligned so closely with the theories of alternate realities and those questioning the existence of objective reality.

 But a new problem now presented itself: What to do about Carmelita. In her present state, no one would believe what she witnessed in his lab. Still, he didn’t want his discovery to go viral until his business partner completed the market potential research. He scoured his memory for the day Carmelita might have walked in on the experiment.

Baltimore stiffened. Several alarming thoughts poked his brain like thorns piercing eyeballs: Carmelita said, ‘greedy science pimp,’ does that mean she knows about my intent to market my discovery? Does she know my business partner, Mr. La Trans? More pressing, what if she’s told someone in El Ojo about what she’d seen? “Have you told anyone besides your father what you saw in the lab that day?”

“Are you kidding? If I told anyone else what I saw, they’d have me tossed into a padded cell faster than you could say Large Hadron Collider.”

“What else did your dad say?” Baltimore wanted to ask whether her father had shared their conversation with anyone but calculated the probability was high she would intuit his motive if he asked the question directly.

“He said that only someone with great power could pull a man like him out of his vision,” She paused to sip the beer she’d been nursing. “There’s something else I need to tell you. During certain rituals, I’ve walked in other realms with my father. Those realms felt peaceful and benign, and the beings inhabiting them were gentle and welcoming. What I saw and felt in your lab that day was the exact opposite. The beings seemed so full of hatred and anger and fear, but the worst part was the vibe: I felt malevolence so overpowering that it seemed to suck the oxygen out of my lungs. The whole experience felt like…like some evil brujo magic, Baltimore, and it terrified me. That’s when all I wanted was to get the fuck away from you.” She shuddered and said, “That’s some seriously spooky shit you’re messing with, Baltimore.”

“So, you ran off with Alex and his Clockwork Orange scumbag buddies. That’s how you dealt with your fears?”

“I told you I was sorry.”

“Sure, and now you want me to take you to a parallel world and hide you.” Baltimore nodded, and his speech slowed as he spoke the last few words. It was like finding the solution to a frustrating equation. He was about to address her request when the tattoo-faced sicarios opened fire. In the half-dozen heartbeats between the thugs entering, locating them, and aiming their weapons, Carmelita grabbed Baltimore’s wrist and yanked him to the floor with her.

“Stay low, and stay on my ass,” she said as gunfire jack-hammered their eardrums. The shower of particles that seemed to leap in slow motion from the surfaces of tabletops, chairs, and the wall entranced Baltimore. It was as if patches of molecules rebelled against their atomic bonds and burst free in a dance of wood, vinyl, and gypsum debris.

“Hurry up!” The sound of Carmelita’s voice broke the spell. She led them through a nearby doorway and into a hall where the bathrooms were. At the end of the hall was a door leading to an alley. Outside on one side of the door was a dumpster.

“Help me roll this,” Baltimore said.

“That’s not going to stop them.”

“No,” he said, grunting, “but it will slow them down.”

With the dumpster in place, Baltimore began tapping on the screen of what looked like a wristwatch.

“You’re checking the time?” Her facial expression seemed to question his intelligence. “It’s time to get the fuck out of here, Baltimore. Now!”

“I’m working on it.”

“What? How?”

Baltimore didn’t answer; he continued tapping on the screen. “There,” he said. He pointed at a metal box about the size of a laundromat dryer some twenty yards away. “Let’s go— and stay on my ass.”

“What is that?” She asked as they ran toward the box.

“An electrical transformer.”

“Not that. The thing on your wrist.”

Baltimore didn’t answer. The thugs trying to shoot through the door tabled any further discussion. They ran faster. One of the thugs screamed, and the shooting stopped. Baltimore deduced that a bullet ricocheted off the dumpster and wounded him. Good, thought Baltimore, that buys us a few more seconds. They were near the transformer when the shooting resumed briefly and then stopped.

At the box, Baltimore once again tapped on the watch’s screen.

“Baltimore, we—”

“Shut up for a second,” he said, keeping his eyes on the screen. The entire time they’d known one another, Baltimore hadn’t ever spoken to Carmelita so assertively. She was momentarily stunned into silence.

The lull in gunfire exploded into sharp reports of rifle butts striking the door, followed by the crackling and splintering of wood—sounds that echoed down the alley as the thugs broke through the door’s bullet-riddled top half.

“How the hell did they find me so fast?” Carmelita muttered to herself.

Without looking up from the screen, Baltimore said, “The logical conclusion is El Ojo offered a reward and—”

“Oh goddamnit! One of those fucking lowlifes in the bar snitched me out.”

“Exactly.” He looked up from the watch and said, “Okay, hold on to me.” She complied. “With both hands. And get closer.”

Carmelita wrapped her arms around Baltimore’s waist. He tapped the screen, and instantly, waves of nausea washed over them as a field of electromagnetic energy enveloped their bodies and began to rotate.  “Damn, Baltimore!” she said. “From a steel shell to a wristwatch in three years?”
​
The gunmen grunted and cursed in English and Spanish as they pushed the dumpster aside. The air around Carmelita and Baltimore pulsated. In microseconds, the vortex’s rotational velocity reached dizzying speeds, and Carmelita had to close her eyes to keep from falling. A dark cloud formed above the vortex as the two remaining thugs shouldered their weapons and prepared to fire. Bolts of black lightning sizzled from the cloud as an aperture of blackness opened in its center and expanded. Powerful vibrations passed through Baltimore’s and Carmelita’s bodies like fast, amplified shudders. The vortex then shot upward into the blackness, and the aperture slammed shut with a thunderclap that sounded like the end of the world, leaving nothing to indicate Baltimore and Carmelita had ever existed in this reality.

by M.R. Subias
                                                              
The battered taxi up ahead weaves around a red mini and I know our guy’s spotted us. I stomp on the Mustang’s gas so our perp, Eddie Mears, can’t pull away from our headlights and lose us. I glance right. Kah-Haas my seven-foot-tall Slitha partner, knees jammed up under his scaly chin in a seat built for humans, calls dispatch for backup.

If our target keeps going straight, maybe some other feds will cut him off, if any are around. The local cops here in L.A. always take just a bit too long to assist. They don’t want other humans to think they’re too eager to collaborate with our alien masters. For them, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator.                   
                                
The taxi heads straight at a slow scooter but before it hits, swerves a hairpin left. A couple holding hands in the middle of the crosswalk freezes in the headlights. The taxi fishtails on wet pavement and skids forward. A pedestrian goes down. A woman screams. Kah-Haas tells dispatch to send an ambulance. In a better world, maybe I’d stop and help, but that’s not the one I get to live in. I slow a little, barely enough to turn clean and miss the pedestrians, then pull straight again. I’ve fallen back, but still see our target.

Our perp makes a sharp right, but I’m ready and take it fast enough to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my partner’s long, green fingers on his gun, but he doesn’t draw it. These days, Kah-Haas values human life enough not to shoot from a moving car and endanger bystanders. And, if the tip we got is good, we need to take this guy alive. Seems our quarry is trying for a secret escape route for people running from the law. And the same source told us somebody skipped town that way a couple weeks ago, carrying something the Slitha badly want to get back.

We’re gaining on the taxi and our guy brakes hard. The taxi fishtails again, skids, then rear-ends a parked truck. A second later, the driver’s door flies open. I can tell from the broad shoulders the guy who jumps out is Mears. He hits the ground running, into the January darkness swallowing the UCLA campus. 

We pull up behind the dead taxi. I don’t wait for Kah-Haas, just get out and run after Mears. My partner needs extra time to pull himself out of a car made for smaller beings, but his long legs always help him catch up. I run down the walkway, trying not to lose the perp in the darkness.

A minute later, Kah-Haas’s voice crackles painfully loud from my earbud. “I see you. Do you have eyes on the suspect? Over.” 

“Roger that. Over.”  

The campus hasn’t completely shut down since the Slitha invaded fifteen years ago, but there’s more dark than light here. The glow from inside a three-story building outlines our man when he opens the door to go in. The perp ducks inside.

“Kah-Haas, I’ll go in. You go around. Over.”  

I jerk the door open and see movement at the end of the long hallway.  I run past a few humans talking. They do a double take when I run by yelling, “FBI, stop right there!”

The door at the far end of the building closes. A human leg disappears into the stairwell. I run to the end of the hallway, but Kah-Haas’s outside so I take the stairs up. I get to the second floor and draw my Glock. I see a bathroom and hear something inside. I bolt for the door, shove my way in, and raise my gun.

“FBI. Freeze!”

In front of me, the rust colored Slitha facing the mirror over the sink does just that. A couple seconds later, the loose skin under the sides of his jaw puffs out and flushes red. It turns around, slowly. The alien’s huge, yellow-green eyes with their black slit pupils look down on me.

I lower my Glock and swallow the lump in my throat. “Sorry, sir. I’m in pursuit of a criminal.” 

The alien lightly brushes long, sharp black nails down a tweed jacket tailored to his eight-foot height. “Allow me to introduce myself.” The alien speaks perfect English. “I am Professor Sath-Osh.” He sneers down at me. “And there are few crimes greater than a human threatening a Slitha with a gun.”

I pull my earbud out and crank up the volume so we can both hear Kah-Haas arresting Mears. I smile the practiced, professional smile I always use for our masters. “Please, sir, my apologies. My senior partner is of the Race and I’m only following his orders - Kah-Haas can explain why I overreacted. After all, humans must obey their Slitha superiors, and I was just doing my best.”

His smile is cruel. If Kah-Haas can’t smooth things over, being out of a job will be the least of my problems.          
​    

​
Work ends and I head home. Leticia and the boys are asleep. I grab a glass and a cheap bottle of bourbon and sit by the front window cradling my Glock.

I drink, look into the darkness, and wait. Slitha Internal Security could be here any time. I feel the cold metal in my hand and think about who I’ll shoot when they finally come for us. Or just me, if I’m lucky. Our masters would consider eating a bullet honorable compensation for failure if one of them did it. But they look down on humans, so from me it’d just be the act of a coward. And a mortal sin. At least that’s what they told me when I was a kid. I look down at the Glock, then towards the back of the house where my family sleeps. How far would I go to keep Leticia and the boys from dying by inches in a Lizard concentration camp?

I holster my Glock, fill my glass, take another drink, and wait. Dawn opens its eyes and Internal Security still isn’t here. Maybe pointing a gun at one of our conquerors hasn’t earned me an all- expense paid trip to a Slitha concentration camp. Or the security goons might just be giving me time to sweat. I leave while my family still sleeps.
​

#    ​

​                                                         
First thing that morning, Kah-Haas and I are standing in Deputy Director Curtis Booker’s office. Our boss’s snarling grimace tells me he’s furious and that his ulcer’s on fire.

“Listen up, you miserable excuse for federal agents, you caught your suspect but thanks to you, the Bureau’s in a whole new world of hurt.” He shakes his head. 

Booker rubs his temples, scowls at me, then shoots a frown up at Kah-Haas. “Let’s take this from the top. You apprehended Eddie Mears, a suspect one of our informants told us was planning on going underground. He’s our only lead in finding out where at least a dozen other fugitives have disappeared to over the last three years.”

Booker glares at me. “But you’re supposed to catch little fish like Mears with no problem – not cause new ones doing it.”   

Deputy Director Booker pulls a crusty bottle full of something pink out of his desk and takes a slug. “You clowns just had to turn a simple arrest into a train wreck.”

His hand shakes a little as he taps a form on his desk. For the first time in years, I see fear in his eyes, from a man who was still fighting against the Slitha invasion after most of the human race had laid down its guns.        

Kah-Haas nods. “You speak of Professor Sath-Osh, the Slitha at whom Agent Cortez aimed his firearm.”

The Deputy Director won’t glare at a Slitha, not even Kah-Haas, so he just winces and nods.

My partner picks up the form and reads it. “This is a serious situation, but one which may yet be weathered.”

We look at Kah-Haas, waiting for the good and the bad news. “This individual is a professor of Slitha studies. Professor Sath-Osh teaches the Slitha language, proper behavior for humans in the company of our race, and history presented in a manner suitable for earth’s inhabitants.”

The loose skin under the sides of Kah-Haas’s jaw tightens up for a couple of seconds, so I know he thinks something’s funny. “I have made inquiries with others of my kind. While Professor Sath-Osh is of The Race and thus may never be spoken of with disrespect, he was assigned his teaching position on earth due to behavior in a military campaign which ‘failed to achieve the level of valor expected of a Slitha warrior against the empire’s foes.”

Booker and I look at each other. He’s not as angry as a minute ago, but his eyes still remind me of a kid roasting ants with a magnifying glass.   

Kah-Haas’s mouth tenses again. “While no human should ever suggest that a member of my race lacks courage, were the fact that you pointed your weapon at the Professor to become common knowledge, some Slitha would speculate that Professor Sath-Osh felt considerable fear when this occurred. In fact, his complaint fails to mention a firearm at all, but insists only that Agent Cortez burst in and behaved with great disrespect toward a Slitha. It also suggests that my junior partner is a bumbling incompetent and that I have failed the Race by allowing my human underling to operate without sufficient supervision.” Kah-Haas’s eyes move back and forth, so I know he’s nervous and that the Professor’s still trouble for us.

The Deputy Director Booker nods. “I have to route this complaint up the chain, to Slitha Internal Security. Maybe it isn’t as bad as the Professor accusing Cortez of threatening him with a gun, but it’s still a time bomb. We’re all looking at demotion or worse.” My gut punches me and I almost ask Booker for a slug of that nasty, pink stuff. 

Booker looks at me, then up at Kah-Haas. He points at the complaint on his desk. “I can move this slow. Nobody who’ll give you trouble will see it in less than a week.” He nods at us. “Close this case. Do that, and things should calm down.”
He nods. “Get out of here and find out what Mears knows.”
​

# ​

Two days later I’m walking slow through a warm drizzle in Westwood. I keep my shoulders hunched and pull the old, black baseball cap’s brim down close to my face. I’ve got a small, brown suitcase, and phony papers inside my jacket that say I’m Eddie Mears. My weight and height are close to his, and my hair’s been lightened to match. Eddie’s still in solitary, in a dry cell, while I’m getting rained on. Not that I’d want to change places.  Of course, if we don’t find our missing man and whatever it is he took, I could soon be joining Mr. Mears.       
  
Every neighborhood in L.A. has gone downhill since the invasion, and with most UCLA classes closed down, Westwood’s worse than most. Student housing turned into cheap motels and seedy apartments. Crowded coffee houses and pricey stores are now mostly cheap bars and second-hand stores. Lots of storefronts stand empty, staring out at me, broken windows for eyes. Paint peels from the walls of once-prized homes. Here and there sit empty lots covered with blackened wreckage, squatter-set fires gone out of control. I’m old enough to remember a better time, when humanity thought it was alone in the universe.

I glance up at a brick wall. One of those big signs stares down at me—the alien metal glows with a rippling inner light. It shows a Lizard, one hand up, fingers spread out, holding up a tiny earth. Written above him in glowing Slitha letters and below in English, the sign says, “Peace and Order.” Our masters started putting up signs like that right after the invasion. Within a week, every one that wasn’t in a high-security area got tagged, usually with something obscene. The Slitha switched to ones with a frictionless coating. The tagging stopped. It isn’t that people like the new signs any better. Paint just doesn’t stick to them. A few rounds of public executions didn’t hurt either.         

Worn-down women with hungry eyes lean against walls. A pale blonde with a chipped tooth smiles at me. “I’ve got a place around the corner,” she says, then sneers when I shake my head. There are no Slitha around. It’s not that they’re afraid rebels might be hiding here. There’s just nothing here our alien masters want.      

Cheap Rooms is a bottom-of-the-barrel motel. I go into the office and breathe the musty carpet smell while I study the prices on the wall. I slide one night’s worth of cash across the dirty counter. I’ll pay tomorrow if I need to stay another night. The old man with dandruff-spotted, slicked-back grey hair slides over the key.

“Checkout’s at eleven and there’s no cooking in the room.”

 I frown. The idea of eating in this place makes me want to swear off food forever. I head up the badly lit stairs.

The room’s small, but the door’s solid, evidence of long-gone, better times. A solid door’s mostly why Kah-Haas and I chose this place. I lay on the bed, then pull out my half-dollar-sized comm unit and call Kah-Haas.

He picks up and I start talking. “I’m settled in and about to go out.”

He responds. “Any problems?”

I scratch a suddenly itchy scalp. “Not unless you count the valiant efforts of the bedbug resistance.”

Kah-Haas’s quiet for a couple seconds, so I can tell he liked that one. I smile before he talks again. “You’re starting with the leads we got from Mears?”

I study a vent on the wall. “Unless something changes.”    

“Let me know if you need anything. I’ll continue to find out what I can at my end and let you know what I learn.”

“Roger that. Later.”

I hang up and look at the vent again. Too obvious. I lift the bed and quietly drag it away from the wall. I draw the black-bladed folding knife I keep clipped inside my waistband, flick it open, then use the four-inch, half-serrated black blade to work the edge of the worn carpet loose from the floor. The floorboard pries up easy so I stash my holster and Glock and the comm unit in the space underneath. I open the suitcase. The cash goes in the hole, along with the collection of gleaming, pre-invasion Rolexes. The cash is almost-perfect counterfeit, but the Rolexes are real, part of Eddie Mears’ stash. Anyway, this juicy haul makes the story about being a rich criminal willing to pay to escape believable. Once everything’s hidden and the bed’s back where it belongs, I leave the room, stopping to stick a hair between the door and the jam. If it falls off, I’ll know someone’s gotten into my room. 
​  ​

​
 I walk out into the night. Light shines from scattered homes and struggling businesses and the street people’s trashcan fires. Among the clusters of people warming themselves, men and women with intelligent eyes in deeply lined faces hunch together. I wonder how many had teaching positions before the Slitha decided a new narrative needed to be taught. I look away from the lost souls. No good comes from thinking like that.
​
First stop is The Noodle Bar. I grab a little table in a corner and study the menu. A skinny waitress drags her feet over, tired as my soul. Her nametag says “Maria.” I order a cheap bowl of ramen and a beer.

“Anything else?” she asks.

I ask just loud enough for people at nearby tables to hear and pitch my voice just a little anxious. “Know where I can score some quality luggage? A friend of mine who passed through bought some around here.” Normally I’d be more subtle, but we’ve got to solve this mess before the Professor’s complaint makes its way to Slitha Internal Security.        

Maria flashes a bored smile. “Quality Pawn’s around the corner.” She heads off.

The beer comes. I drink and watch the customers.

The noodles aren’t bad. I take my time eating, order another beer and grab a copy of the Los Angeles Times somebody left on the next table. Newspapers made of real paper were pretty much dead when I was a kid. They’ve made a comeback since our occupiers shut down most of the Internet and new computers are rare and expensive. Tame reporters write stories about how good things are under the occupation and how they’d be even better if humans cooperated more with our masters. Still, you can find classified ads and weather forecasts and stories about what local music scene’s still around.

Somebody comes in and plays guitar for tips. I nurse my beer and work the Times’ crossword puzzle. When my drink is done, I give Maria money and ration slips, then head back to my room.

Outside, I feel eyes on me and stop at an unbroken shop window to look at the reflection, but it’s too dark to see if anyone’s following me. A car comes this way, so I move fast and cross just before it gets here. Across the street is a big dark shape. Could be a man. Could be nothing. No need to risk getting jumped to find out.
​

Next day, I check in with Kah-Haas. No new leads. I hide the comm unit under the floorboard again. I think about the dark shape and almost take the Glock but decide against it. The noodle place stays open all day, so I sit at the bar and get dishwater coffee and a dry, tasteless roll. A pale, young guy with a metallic-red ponytail works the counter. I read his nametag and meet his eye. “Morning, Roy. I’m Eddie.”
He wipes the counter. “What do you need, my man?”

“I’m taking a trip and need some high-quality luggage. You know where I can score some?”

Roy stops wiping and looks at me for a long second, then nods. He points at a cork board on the far wall with ads on it. I finish my roll and take my coffee over and look.
No one’s advertising secret escape routes for fugitives, but people are selling just about everything else. I grab a three by five card that says “Best Luggage for Sale” with a phone number, then fold it in half and stick it in Mears’ wallet by some lawyer’s business card. Another cork board ad shows a picture of a crystal ball and proclaims that Madam Sabina can provide “all life’s answers.” Don’t I wish.
​
I pull out Eddie Mears’ cheap burner phone and make the call. A mechanical voice tells me to leave a message. “A friend of mine came this way and said somebody could hook me up with quality luggage.” I pause, talk a little faster. “I want to take a trip right away and I can pay.”
​

​
It’s a slow walk down the street to Quality Pawn. I push the buzzer and an older, Asian woman in tidy jeans and a faded Metallica t-shirt comes to look.

Her sharp eyes peer through the glass and her head leans to one side. She buzzes open the door. “Good morning. Let me know if you need any help.”

I go in and look around. The place is clean and well-kept, like every store back before the invasion. A smiling, gold cat by the register waves mechanically. I browse and keep up my trying not to be afraid act. “Do you have any luggage? I’m looking for something nice.”

I say this even though I’ll look stupid, since I already saw shelves with luggage on them.  The woman looks at me like somebody must have once dropped me on the head, but I need to make sure she knows what I’m looking for. She points at the obvious row of waiting suitcases.

“Yes, but I mean something nicer.”

“Just what you see.”

I ask a few questions about the luggage and who pawned it. She brightens at the possible sale but gives me only vague answers while trying to get me to buy something. I leave empty-handed.
​

The rest of the day, I check out other places we think fugitives visited. Evening comes. I walk back to the room, go in, and lock the door.

I pull out the comm unit. “Kah-Haas, you there? Over.”   

My partner speaks with a quiet, serious voice. “I am here, agent Cortez. What have you found? Over.”    

“No breakthroughs yet. I’m waiting for a couple of leads to develop.”

Kah-Haas says nothing. I look at the time, then the power light on the comm unit. Still green. I wonder what’s causing the holdup.           

“I have called in favors and learned exactly what it is we seek.” Kah-Haas’s hissing accent lowers in pitch. “It is a journal.”

“A journal. I got it. And?”

Again, Kah-Haas keeps me waiting.       

Finally, my he speaks. “Someone stole this and passed it to a fugitive who fled two weeks ago.” He pauses. “Agent Cortez, you can never reveal to anyone what I am about to tell you.”

My hands feel damp. Kah-Haas is scared.  

“There are Slitha who keep such journals, and a senior officer of the fleet who did so was slain in battle. His possessions were recovered with the intention of delivering them to his heirs on our home world. Someone stole the journal and passed it on to one of our missing fugitives.”

That’s when I know my partner wouldn’t tell me about the journal unless he thought it was the only way to crack this case. Kah-Haas’s also warning me that learning too much about this journal could get both of us disappeared.    
 
I barely hear him speak. “This senior officer wrote extensively about the course of the war. He documented certain embarrassing defeats our fleet has suffered which have, as you humans say, been hushed up. Such details, should they come to light, could ruin the careers of several of our top political and military leaders and bring chaos to the empire.” 

No wonder the Slitha want this back. Somebody might read it and figure out how to contact the aliens the Lizards are fighting, maybe even recruit them as allies against our occupiers. This journal could be a goldmine for the resistance, maybe even give humanity the political leverage to make the Lizards stop grinding their boot on our necks. No wonder our alien masters want it back so badly.

“I have said too much, Agent Cortez. If anyone should learn what I have told you, our lives would be forfeit.”

“If anyone asks, all I know is that we’re looking for a journal written in Slitha, but that I don’t know who wrote it or what’s in it. If it comes to that, I’ll also tell them that my Slitha isn’t that good.”

Kaah-Haas responds. “You’re clever – for a human - Frank Cortez.”

“You’re not too slow for a big lizard either.”

“Goodbye, Agent Cortez. Until tomorrow.”       
          ​

#    ​

I try to sleep before going out into the night but thinking about the journal keeps me up. The rain’s ended by the time I head into the darkness. I walk to Rocco’s Tavern, a dark wood and brick bar where a now-dead informant spotted two Human Defense Force bomb makers before they disappeared. I do the same drill and ask about luggage and friends who came through here. The waiter gives the same useless answers.

I feel something in my gut and look around the room. A man walks up to the table. He limps just barely enough I can see it. He’s got coal-dark skin and a buzz cut and wears an oversized military coat. The guy sits down and pulls a plastic case out of his pocket. He opens it with gloved hands. The open cover hides its contents from passersby. Inside is what looks like a sniffer for finding bugs. Seems like leaving the comm unit in the room was a good call. He pulls an earbud out of one of his pockets and plugs it into the sniffer and his right ear.

Some kind of West Indian accent comes out. “Let’s see the phone.”

I pull Eddie Mears’ cheap, burner phone out of my pocket and slide it across the table.
“Password?”

I tell him. He uses it and hooks the phone to the sniffer. I’ve made some calls consistent with being the fugitive I’m impersonating. I watch the crowd, drink my beer, and let him work. He finishes, slides the burner back, then puts away his gear.

“Call me Sharp. You’re looking for a way out and can pay.”

I could ask how he knew, but Sharp probably wouldn’t tell. He’d probably think I was stupid for asking.

I ask a different question. “How do I know I can trust you?”

We shut up while a waiter stands by the next table for too long. Then he talks. “Lester Moore, Bill Carson, Libby Schultz, Ignacio Salazar.”

I let the smile spread out. Two of those are aliases used by the Human Defense Force explosive experts who went missing. The others were criminals who also disappeared around here. Sharp probably figures I know at least one of those names. No common thief or con artist would have that information.

Sharp pulls a shapeless dark green beanie out of a pocket. “Wait ten minutes. I’ll be out back. Keep your distance and follow me.”

His expensive gear and what he knows tells me he’s no common criminal. Just in case, I say something to protect myself. “What I have that’s valuable isn’t on me.”       
     
Stifling a laugh, Sharp gets up and leaves. Ten minutes later, I settle my tab and follow.
​

I get to the alley behind Rocco’s. There’s a human shape at the far end of my vision that looks like it’s probably Sharp. It starts moving. I follow.

I listen to night noises. A loud argument from an open window. Atonal Slitha classical music, just loud enough to hear.  A cat’s rising yowl. Something big breaks loose from the shadows.  

A fist the size of a small ham flies at my face. I drop down and raise my left arm. My forearm moves the punch off-line, just barely, but huge knuckles scrape my skull and rock my head. I drive my right fist at the center of mass. My punch lands solid, but there’s barely a grunt and my hand feels like I drove it into a side of beef. The big man steps to my right so I circle to keep us face to face, left shoulder forward. My left hand stays up while the right drifts low and close. I’ll be on the ground if this monster lands a solid punch. The big man shuffles forward, hands up like a boxer. I move back. He throws a jab, then a cross. I slip to my right, just in time to keep from ending up on the ground. He pulls back his next cross and I step in fast and whip my open left hand at his face.

One of my fingers hits his eye. The big man curses. Before he can do anything, I pull the knife from inside my waistband with my right and I flick out four inches of steel. The big man backs up a few feet and raises his hands. Smart move. I’m about to tell him to run when I hear a gun’s hammer pull back.

Behind me, I hear a slight Jamaican accent. “Drop the knife.”

I do what Sharp says, slowly, then raise my hands. The big man lifts a hand and rubs his angry eye.

Sharpe says more. “My friend and I have a proposition.”

Somehow, I don’t think they’re really giving me a choice. These guys are smart and cool-headed, and no common criminals. I’d bet my badge they’re Human Defense Force.  

The big man slides over to my side. I tense my stomach, ready for a revenge gut punch. Instead, he pulls out a little flashlight, turns it on, and gently searches my pockets. I get my first clear look at him. Male Caucasian just under six feet, huge chest, thick arms and legs, bearded blond, but bundled up too much for me to see more. He finds my fake papers, reads them, and puts them back. He digs out Mears’ wallet, takes out the business cards, looks at them, shows one to Sharp.

A deep bass rumbles. “Lawyers.”

Both men laugh.

The big man keeps looking through the wallet, “And Doctor Delaveau’s luggage.”

Silence follows. The bearded man gives me back the wallet and puts away his little light.                      

Sharp says something I half expected. “You’ve been asking around. My friend and I are also unpopular with the Lizards and need the escape route you’re looking for.”
I start to speak but one big hand grabs the back of my head and the other covers the half of my face my mouth is on. The big man squeezes, and lifts and my feet leave the ground. My head feels like it’s in a vice. The big man could break my neck without trying. I sweat, but don’t do anything stupid.       

“The man who left this card, Doctor Delaveau, he controls part of this escape route. You need to make contact and find out if he can get us out.” He pauses. “Now you can talk.”

The big man puts me down and takes his hands away.

Now I understand why these two jumped me. They needed to know how I act under pressure, if I could walk into a dangerous situation without falling apart.

“Why don’t you two just go in there yourself?”

“Things are not always what they seem. Who knows? Maybe Delaveau’s working with Lizard Internal Security and they’re sending anyone who looks for help to some concentration camp.”

I take my first relaxed breath in days. These guys have given me my big break. And if this Doctor Delaveau is a stooge for Slitha Internal Security, doing what Sharp wants is just going to help me close this case faster. The journal Kah-Haas and I need is probably still sitting on the doctor’s desk or maybe waiting to get processed in some backlogged Internal Security property room.

This wouldn’t be the first time two law enforcement agencies worked the same case from different ends without either one knowing about it. 

I make my voice tremble but add a note of defiance. “So, I could end up in a concentration camp?”

“We don’t consider it likely, but, as I said, no need to take chances… at least on our end.”

I nod, “So, how do we do this?”

Sharp’s quiet for a few seconds even though I know he already has a plan.

“My friend will walk you to your stash. Then you’ll make contact with Doctor Delaveau.”

“How do I know your big friend won’t put my head through a wall and take everything I’ve got?”           

Sharp grabs my right shoulder and turns me around. His black, snub-nosed revolver is leveled at my right eye. I take a deep breath. Sharp lowers the pistol and presses it into my hand.

He looks me straight in the eye.

I flip open the cylinder. It holds five, .357 rounds. I check them one by one. None are blanks. Sharp must think whatever valuables Eddie Mears has are worthless compared to a chance for freedom. He also believes I’m smart enough to understand that. I nod and slip the gun into my right coat pocket and pick up my knife. Of course, he and his friend might try to rob me later. But with any luck, Kah-Haas and I will arrest them first. The big man, who I’ve decided to call Silent, walks with me through the dark. We reach Cheap Rooms and head up the stairs.       
 
The fight’s adrenaline rush fades. I’m tired and my head throbs where Silent’s fist rocked my skull. I open the door and we walk in. The big man stops just inside the room and shuts the door. I put the suitcase on the floor, pull the bed from the wall, and kneel on the carpet. My body blocks Silent’s view. I glance over at him with my peripheral vision. The counterfeit bills and the Rolexes go in the case. I leave the Glock and the comm unit. I can’t talk to Kah-Haas with Silent here and, if I take it, Sharp might run another scan and figure out I’m a cop. I replace the board, carpet, and bed.

Now for my doctor’s appointment. ​

Silent walks me most of the way, but I go alone the last block to Dr. Delaveau’s house.   Homes and yards are big, though not like the Beverly Hills mansions a couple miles east. Thick-leaved trees line the street and create a sense of privacy. My head aches from when Silent hit me and my left forearm throbs where it blocked his punch. Maybe the Doctor can do something about that. 

Before I go up to Delaveau’s house, I hide the suitcase by the bottom of the stone steps leading to his door, back behind a black, wrought-iron bench mostly hidden by sweet-smelling lavender.  


I climb the steps to the two-story house. Before the invasion, doctors didn’t work from home. Now, many do. I hammer the front door with the tarnished brass knocker.
A tiny metal hatch opens near the top of the thick door. An eye examines me.  
A man speaks. “Is there an emergency?” 

“My name’s Mears. Someone said I could buy luggage here.”

A pause. The man has a slight French accent. “Do you have references?”

I name a criminal who told the real Mears about the escape route before he disappeared. I hear a bolt slide. The door swings open. Male Caucasian with a medium build, just under six feet, with swept-back iron-grey hair. He wears a loose, grey jacket and keeps his right hand in his pocket.  

Light shines from inside and he looks me up and down. “I’m Doctor Delaveau. Please come in. But don’t make any sudden moves.”

I walk in with my hands by my sides. We head down the hall to a dining room. “Please sit. Would you like coffee?”

I sit. “Sure… please.”

He returns with two cups. There’s cream and sugar on the tray, but neither of us use it. He gestures towards me. “You’re injured. Is it anything serious?”

“I wouldn’t turn down some aspirin.”

Delaveau gets up. “Please excuse me.” He leaves the room.

I look around and drink up, hoping coffee will fight my fatigue. The rich, smoky, dark-roasted flavor is like heaven. Twelve years of alien occupation and food rationing hasn’t cramped the doctor’s style. I see expensive furniture and shelves heavy with leather-bound books and beautiful crystal sculptures. If this is a Slitha sting, the doctor left to call his bosses. After they show up, I’ll identify myself. Then, maybe we can figure out where the journal went.

The doctor comes back with aspirin and an ice pack. I swallow the pills and hold the ice pack to my head. “Thanks.”

“I enjoy taking care of my guests.” He smiles. “And speaking of that…”

He takes our empty cups and comes back a few minutes later with fresh ones, and a pot on the tray. “You may wonder how I came to provide the service you seek.”

I stay quiet and drink. Delaveau’s the kind who likes to talk.  

“I lived well before the Slitha arrived, though their arrival made maintaining my lifestyle difficult. But strange as it seems, the invasion improved my life. As with others, events forced me to live by my wits in a way I never would have otherwise. Consider the black market. Everyone uses it, and by so doing, all become lawbreakers. And those who survive best are the ones who have become exceptional criminals. So, while I still practice medicine, my humanitarian sideline supports a fine lifestyle and gives me the pleasure which comes with being exceptionally clever.”

I finish my coffee. He pours me a new cup.

Delaveau talks about how humanity had become soft and how the Slitha occupation sharpened our dulled minds and put us in touch with our primal instincts. The doctor barely lifts his cup as I suck down my coffee, instead going on and on about how the invasion was some kind of great gift.

I yawn, too wide. “Can I use the bathroom?”

“Of course.” He smiles. “In the hallway.”

I nod, get up, use the bathroom, throw water on my face. I step back in the hallway, but decide to lean against the wall, just for a second. As I slide down, I think about how Doctor Delaveau kept talking and talking after he finished his first cup of coffee while I drank deep.

My head feels fuzzy when my eyes open. I see a ceiling, but not in the hallway. I try to get up but can’t. I look down. Three heavy, canvas straps pin me to a stainless-steel table with a raised metal rim. One goes across my chest, the second crosses my upper forearms and lower stomach. The third holds down my legs, just above the knees. My jacket’s gone. Shoes too. I blink and look again. My head feels fuzzy. I laugh. At least I’ve still got my socks. I shake my head and look around.

This room’s bigger than the dining room. There’s an incinerator in one corner, probably for medical waste. By that, gas cans. Between my feet, not far off, I see a metal door with a heavy bolt. I turn my head to the right. There’s a desk maybe five feet away. Spread out on the top are Eddie Mears’ identity papers, his wallet, the burner phone, and Sharp’s revolver. Other IDs sit in an “in” basket nearby. Next to that is a thick, yellow folder and a big book with the black, metallic cover Slitha like to use.

Slitha words glow in silver on the black book’s tall spine. I shake my head and make myself focus. Chronicles of a Time of War. I exhale slowly. I’ve found what Kah-Haas and I need, but I might not live long enough for it to do us any good.  
     
I notice something else. Next to the desk sits a row of mismatched suitcases. Above those, on hooks, hang backpacks, a few purses, and a single, lonely baby carrier. I fight my bonds and arch my neck. Fifteen feet from my head, I see a normal-looking door. Much closer sits a tray of medical instruments, heavy on knives and the surgical saws. Directly above my scalp, built into the table, is a drain. My throat goes dry. I know where all the fugitives have gone. Piece by piece into Doctor Delaveau’s incinerator.
I listen for an opening door but Delaveau is taking his time. When the Doctor stripped off my jacket, he pulled the bottom of my shirt loose from my pants. I reach under the loose fabric for the knife clipped in my waistband. One finger touches the handle, but the strap pinning my arms keeps me from doing more. I inhale deep, then exhale everything. The bonds still feel tight, but not as bad as before. I keep my lungs empty for a couple of seconds, just long enough to grab the bottom end of the knife handle between two fingers. I draw the folder, breathe in, get a solid grip, then flick it open with my thumb. I lay the edge under the strap holding my forearms, inhale to make a tiny bit of extra room, then saw away with the serrated half of the blade.     
          
Just when I’ve cut the strap a little over halfway, the doorknob rattles. The strap doesn’t feel as tight as before. I slip the knife inside my waistband, flip some loose fabric from my shirt over the cut I made, and move my hand back by my side. The door opens, Doctor Delaveau walks in, wearing green surgical scrubs. His medical mask is down, and he has a clear, plastic visor ready to be lowered. The final touch is a white, plastic apron.

He’s right over me and I see his quiet smirk. “My dear Mr. Mears, you had a bit of a fall, so I decided you needed to lay down.”

“Doc, I’m feeling a lot better. I think I can get up now.”

He smiles wider. “Be my guest.”

I can tell he likes the banter, so I shut up.

Doctor Delaveau frowns. “I see you’ve discovered my escape route.”

I keep quiet. His smirk turns into an icy frown. 

“I’m disappointed in you Mr. Mears. I found nothing of value on you.”

I get an idea. “I’m not a fugitive.” His frown gets bigger. I talk faster. “Just hear me out.”

He stares. “I was hired to recover an item. What you do for criminals isn’t of interest to me. There’s a big reward.”

He nods. “Go on.”

“A collector wants that black book on your desk, no questions asked.”

Delaveau purses his lips, then smiles. “Though far from fluent, I am a student of the Slitha language. Over the past weeks, I’ve had few patients, and been translating this diary in order to further my education. The contents is quite fascinating.”

He pauses, as if he wants me to say something, maybe to beg. Maybe to tell him how smart he is. I can tell Delaveau isn’t interested in my offer, so I stop talking again.
   
The doctor raises his voice. “Do you know what, Mr. Mears? Like more than a few of my clients, I believe you hid your ill-gotten wealth before you came to my door.” He watches my face. “Some who come to me in search of sweet freedom hide their valuables in one of my neighbors’ yards, or even my own.” He shakes his head and smiles again. “Please excuse me for a moment.”

Delaveau walks to the desk and picks up Sharp’s revolver. “As you’ve just learned, one can never be too careful.” He flips open the cylinder, smiles, and closes it again. “Never fear. I’ll be back soon.”  

The door closes behind him and I attack my bonds again. Seconds later, I cut through the middle one. Now my arms are free.

That’s when I hear the first gunshot. I jerk my legs, trying to pull them out from under the strap that holds them down, but it’s too tight. Two more shots go off; one close, the other farther away. I start cutting the strap over my chest. Voices echo through the house. More shots ring out. I tell myself Kah-Haas could be out there, but I’m lying to myself. None of those shots came from a Slitha weapon.  

My chest is free. I sit up, but whatever drug Delaveau gave me makes my head spin. Only the strap over my legs keeps me from falling off the table. My knife saws at the last strap. A gunshot again, just on the other side of the door. I cut too fast and slice my leg. The last bond splits. I stand up. My legs buckle. I grab the edge of the table to keep from falling.   

Another gunshot cracks down the hall. I take a breath and stumble towards the door. I reach out to lock it. Before I can, it starts to swing open. I see part of a plastic visor and red-spattered white apron. Another shot pops. A muzzle flash lights up the hallway. A dull, wet slap sounds on the other side of the door. I fall against it, turn the lock, take another deep breath. It looks like Human Defense Force has come to avenge their murdered friends.  

My legs almost feel steady. I walk to the desk fast, stuff the burner phone in one pocket and grab the journal. I rush to the back door and yank the bolt. The other door crashes wide open. A gunshot cracks and a bullet slaps the wall by my head. I shove the back door open and run into the night.

When I’m sure no one’s following, I stop, get my breath back, and flip through the journal. My fingers smooth pages passed hand to hand across years and lightyears. Flowing Slitha cursive documents fleet logistics and weapons systems. Tables list kills and casualties. Star maps show enemy positions and battles. I wish I had the time to sit down and read it. 

Finally, I use Eddie Mears’ burner phone to call Kah-Haas for backup.

I got the journal, but maybe Sharp and Silent will find Doctor Delaveau’s partial translation. They might escape before Kah-Haas arrives with reinforcements. The resistance could get the leverage it needs to become a force for real political change. And now that we’ve got the thing back, I doubt our masters will pay much attention to complaints from some puffed-up Slitha night-school teacher.  
​
I could have grabbed Delaveau’s notes when I took the journal. It would have been easy. But I didn’t. I need to return the journal to my alien masters to keep my family safe. But the Slitha don’t know about the Doctor’s notes and I don’t have to tell them. Like I always say, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator.                                                   
​

​Long-time science fiction fan and longer-time Chicano, M.R. Subias prowls the frontiers of the imagination, seeking strange beauty. As part of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, he founded the speculative fiction critique group Westside Weird and ran it for more years than he can remember. He’s currently editing Intrusion Zone, a hopeful YA cosmic horror novel set at the end of the world. 

by ​Armando Gonzalez

Maria was in her room, sitting in a chair next to her bed, praying while holding her wooden rosary necklace. She was waiting for her husband to come home. She prayed that Miguel, her husband, wouldn’t work so much. Even on weekends, instead of being with her, he mostly spent it working. His wife used to tell him to stop telling people he was available to work because then he would have a lot of work, and most likely would end up working all week with little to no rest. Miguel didn't seem to mind though. He liked working.
 
Miguel left around eight in the morning. That morning, before he left, as he sat on their bed and was putting on his pants, Maria asked him what time he thought he would be back. He said probably eleven in the morning. While Maria was currently praying, it was soon going to be one in the afternoon. She hoped he didn’t lie to her.
 
After she felt satisfied with the amount of praying she had done, she began thinking of what could still be done around the apartment. Although she had basically completed all the necessary work, she still behaved like an employee on the clock, trying to find something to do so as to avoid being seen by their bosses doing nothing. She first went to the kitchen to see if the floor needed to be mopped. There were some footprints on the kitchen floor, most likely from Miguel’s boots when he was mowing lawns. It should have only taken somewhere around five minutes or less to clean it but she took her time. After she was done mopping the kitchen floor, she checked to see if there were any dirty plates in the kitchen sink. There were only two dishes and three glass cups. She washed them, just as slowly as she mopped the floor. After the dishes, she checked the wooden living room floor, but unsurprisingly, it was pretty clean. She checked all around the apartment to do any kind of cleaning, but there just wasn’t anything to clean. She thought of praying some more, but she didn’t think it was necessary, as she was taught by attending mass over the years, that it’s more about the sincerity behind a prayer than the amount of praying one does in a day. 
 
Suddenly, Maria got the idea to go to church. If Miguel wasn’t going to come home anytime soon, then she would go to church, even if it wasn’t Sunday. She knew that Miguel would get annoyed if she did this, and ask her why she went to church, even if she told him there was nothing to do at home. She ignored these thoughts.
 
She changed into a loose fitting dress, brushed her hair and put on black block heels.  Before she left, she told her kids if they were hungry, to serve themselves a bowl of the albóndiga soup she made. She told them that she would be back in an hour, and if their dad asked where she had gone, to tell them she had gone to church.
 
On her way to church, although she felt like she was partially going to church out of spite, she felt happy. She was happy because she felt like she was improving, becoming a more resilient person, each time she went to church. This happiness slowly faded away though, when she tried to push open the front doors of the church, only to find they were locked. She was very confused. She thought the church was open at all times. She went to the back of the church to see if there wasn’t possibly a mistake. When she was in the back of the church, standing behind a black steel gate, she expected there to be parked cars and people walking across the parking lot of the church, but instead she didn’t see any cars and or anybody walking. Just then, she saw someone. There was a man, coming out of the side doors of the church, who then started walking across the parking lot.
 
As soon as she saw him, she yelled: “¡Señor! ¡Oiga!”
 
The man stopped and turned towards the direction of where the yelling was coming from. He squinted his eyes, trying to find whoever it was who was yelling. Finally, his eyes met hers, and he began walking towards Maria.
 
“¿Está cerrada la iglesia? ¿Pensé que estaba abierta toda la semana?”
 
“Antes sí. Pero ya no porque gente de la calle se estaban metiendo, y eso estaba molestando a la gente.”
 
“¿De verdad? Nunca sabía que eso podía pasar. Bueno, gracias por decirme.”
 
She walked away, a bit saddened and disappointed. She was looking forward to going to church, especially since it was her first time going to church on a weekday. Unsure of what to do, she began walking home. All she wanted was to spend some time with Miguel. Now she couldn't even go to church on a weekday, which she thought wasn’t asking for much.
 
When she came back home, to her surprise she saw Miguel’s green truck parked on the curb right in front of their apartment. She remembered when he first brought the truck home, it was so bright and shiny. Now, because the car stood out in the sun for some years, the green paint was so faded that it almost looked like there were clouds painted on the hood and roof of the car. He bought the car from his boss, who sold it to him cheaply. When he brought home the truck, it seemed to Maria like a luxury, to be able to have another car. Now, she despised the truck, just the sight of it made her angry, because it symbolized one thing to her: money. Part of the reason her husband had bought the truck wasn't only because he wanted another car, but because he saw an opportunity to make money. The green truck enabled him to go quickly from lawn to lawn, with all the necessary equipment in the bed of the truck.
 
She opened the door to the living room. One of her sons, Daniel, who although wearing headphones that prevented him from hearing her come in, still did not turn around even when a line of sunlight directly hit the screen of the computer he was using when she opened the door. She was about to tap his shoulder to ask if his dad was home when she heard someone coming from the kitchen and down the hall to where she was. It was her husband, wearing his gray, long sleeve shirt, which was now sweaty and dusty and grass stained. Sweat poured down from his balding head. On top of his head were thin, short strands of hair, which were matted down from wearing a hat, which almost made him look like a newborn baby that was just taken from their mom’s womb. He was sucking on his long neck bottle of Corona.
 
“¿A dónde fuisteis?” He took a sip of his beer.
 
“Fui a la iglesia, pero no estaba abierta.”
 
“¿A la iglesia? Pero no es el fin de semana.”
 
“Ya sé.”
 
Her husband said nothing, just took another sip of his beer.
 
“¿Qué hiciste de comer?”
 
“Albóndigas.”
 
She walked to their room. While she was taking her block heels off and putting them under her bed, she asked him, “¿Pensé que ibas a llegar a las once de la mañana?”
 
“Yo pensé que iba a llegar en ese tiempo, pero los chinos querían que hiciera otro trabajo, y los acaparadores también me pidieron que hiciera otra cosa.”
 
“¿Por qué no les dices que no puedes, pero que lo puedes ser para otro día.”
 
“Pues, es que no quiero quedar mal con la gente. Es importante que les diga sí, o no sería capaz de hacer más dinero.”
 
He reached into his pocket to get his black worn out wallet and took out four twenty dollar bills and showed them to Maria. When she saw the bills, this did little to nothing to change the indifferent expression on her face.
 
“Gané ochenta dólares hoy. Y todavía hay dos personas que no me han pagado.”
 
“¿Son las mismas personas que no te pagaron la última semana?
 
“Uno sí. Es el blanco.”
 
“Deberás parar de trabajar por él. Nomás se está haciendo tarugo.”
 
“Ya sé, ya sé. A lo mejor sé.”
 
“¿Ya quieres comer?”
 
“Sí, dame.”
 
Maria walked to the kitchen to heat up the pot of albóndiga soup and got the griddle to heat some tortillas. Miguel took his time drinking his beer and then slowly walked over to the small kitchen. Once he sat down on a chair, Maria asked him “¿Cuántas horas trabajastes?”
 
“No más de cinco horas.”
 
“¿No más cinco horas?”
 
Miguel, unsurprised at his wife’s reaction, chuckled.
 
 “Cinco horas no es mucho.”
 
“Y te aseguro que no descansaste.”

“Los hombres no se cansan,” he said.
 
“Ya para diciendo eso. Los hombres pueden sentirse cansados,” she said with her face hardened, tired of the joke.
 
Miguel laughed, his head bouncing up and down, and said, “Okay, okay.”

​Once the albóndiga soup was hot enough, Maria got a bowl from the cupboard and started pouring the soup into the bowl. As she was pouring the soup and albóndigas into the bowl she was holding, Miguel asked her “¿Por qué fuistes a la iglesia a hoy?”
 
“Pues, no más se me ocurrió.”
 
Her husband, suddenly serious, didn’t immediately answer.
 
“No creo que sea necesario ir a la iglesia hoy.”
 
“Ya sé, pero me gusta ir a la iglesia cuando puedo.”
 
Maria placed the bowl of albóndiga soup in front of him. He didn’t eat more than one albóndiga when he asked: “Deberías enfocarte en lo que ser en la casa en vez de pensar en la iglesia.”
 
“No había nada que hacer aquí. Terminé todo.”
 
“¿Y no te vas a cansar mucho yendo a la iglesia durante la semana?”
 
“Si vamos a hablar de quién se cansa más, vamos a hablar de ti.”
 
Her husband laughed.
 
“¿Por qué te rías?”
 
“Okay, pero yo me canso por una buena razón,” he said with a grin on his face.
 
For the first time, she laughed, too, out of impatience for the way her husband spoke to her.
 
“De verdad tienes un problema. No más quieres trabajar, trabajar y trabajar. Dices que trabajas de necesidad, pero te pasas, como si no tuvieras dinero. Algunas veces, en el momento que vienes del trabajo, ya te quieres pelar para trabajar otra vez, no comas muy bien o no me dices que ya te vas a ir. Y cuando–—no me callas, deja mi de hablar–—llegas de tus otros trabajos a la casa, estás irritado, te enojas cuando los niños o yo no te ayudamos rápidamente a bajar todas tus herramientas del camión. Tú solo te haces infeliz por hacer algo que es de necesidad.”
 
“¿Qué quieres que haga? Si trabajo mucho, me canso, pero tengo dinero. Si no trabajo mucho, no estoy cansado, pero voy a tener poco dinero. Si realmente quieres que trabaje menos, ¿por qué no me ayudas o encuentras un trabajo?”
 
“Miguel, tú ya sabes que no puedo ser eso.”
 
“¿Por qué no? Creo que puedes hacer la mayoría de lo que no haces ahora y seguir trabajando.”
 
“¿Qué estás diciendo? ¿Que no trabajo?”
 
“¿Piensas que estar sentado casi todo el día es trabajo?” he said and laughed a mocking laugh, which made him appear like a child.
 
“Ya me estás ofendiendo.”
 
“Pues, no te mates.”
 
“¿No me mato? ¿Tú piensas que pudieras tener un trabajo y llevar a las niños a la escuela, comprar y hacer de comer, llenar la botella de agua, llevar los platos, limpiar la casa, lavar la ropa, tirar la basura, juntar a los niños de la escuela, y dar atención a los niños?”
 
“Todo lo que dijiste son trabajitos que se pueden hacer rápido.”
 
“No se puede prestar atención a los niños rápido, solo se puede hacer lentamente y con paciencia.”
 
Fed up with her arguing, he got up and left.
 
“¿A dónde vas?”
 
“Voy a regar el zacate.”
 
She was going to say more to him, but she knew when to stop talking, because at some point, in the middle of an argument, her husband would eventually start to tune out everything she said, even when she did have a point. She noticed he had barely eaten anything from his bowl. From where she was sitting at the small kitchen table, she could hear him in the backyard getting the hose to water the front lawn. She didn’t know what to do. After sitting in silence for a few minutes, she got up to get her wooden rosary from their room, and started to pray once again.