​by ​Gloria Delgado

Saturday, 22 April 1747, dawn is breaking 

It’s early Saturday morning on this market day in the Villa of Aguascalientes in central Mexico. The town’s main plaza quickly fills with campesinos, white cotton-clad farmers and craftsmen leading strings of donkeys or driving high-sided wooden carts filled with baskets of produce or pottery. All head towards the tianguis, the traditional marketplace where, from time immemorial, generations have sold and traded their wares. Other vendors, working together in companionable silence, quickly set up tiendas, awnings made out of the same white cotton manta as their clothing. The canvas tiendas, supported by bamboo poles, will shade and protect their goods and customers from the anticipated afternoon heat. Aside from creaks and groans from wooden wheels and the braying of a recalcitrant donkey or two, the plaza is relatively quiet. After all, the Rev. Dr. don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui sleeps in the rectory nearby, and it would not do to disturb the esteemed pastor’s slumber.
 
Off to the opposite side of the plaza, gleaming pink-gold in the first rays of sunlight, stands the grand church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Our Lady of the Assumption. Even after some twenty-five years of construction, the cathedral still lacks its two bell towers, but that project will have to wait until more funds become available. Regardless, the recently dedicated cathedral is the pride of Aguascalientes. At the moment detritus from several unfinished projects lies in tidy heaps inside the vestibule; outside, some immense elaborately carved wooden doors stand leaning against the walls, waiting to be installed. But everything will be cleared and completed before the celebrations in honor of Our Lady’s feast day in mid-August. The reverend pastor, a very capable administrator, will see to it.
 
Felix, one of the church caretakers, an elderly indio with a crippled leg, sings softly to himself while he sweeps and gathers windblown leaves and debris from the front of the church into a large costal that he keeps propped open with a second equally worn spiky twig broom.
 
Two campesinos, young farmers each leading a string of donkeys burdened with goods for market, pass nearby. In one smooth graceful gesture the men remove battered straw hats, bow respectfully towards the cathedral, cross themselves, replace their straw sombreros, adjust the brims back to the particular jaunty angle each prefers. Only then do they turn to greet the white-haired caretaker in their traditional, formal nahua way. “The light is good, the light is upon us. Buenos días, don Felix. At it already?”
 
Felix lifts his own equally battered sombrero to the two before responding in kind: The light is good, the light is upon us, a beautiful morning, amigos. Yes, I’m always up and about before dawn, just like my tata and his tátarabuelo before him, like all our grandfathers, humble madrugadores, early risers hard at work even as the sun still lies yawning in bed. Well, señores, we are not lazy gentlemen like the sun, just humble indios campesinos, manta-clad men working for our keep every day, any way we can, scrambling to fill our morral, this empty shoulder bag we all carry, with provisions for our families and animals.
 
Yes, you’ll always find me close by, sweeping and cleaning; but these never-ending tasks keep me going, give me a reason to live. I must have worn out dozens of brooms since the good Padre Vicente Preciado de Maldonado first gave me a job here at the cathedral. No one else would hire me after my old patron, that damned gachupín don Visente Diaz-De Leon, had me sacked from his hacienda when I broke my leg and could no longer help care for his precious horses. “If Felix can’t work or earn his keep, he can’t stay here. I’m not about to support the whole world!”​

¡Imagínate! And he the wealthy owner of Peñuelas, the finest hacienda in Aguascalientes! After all the generations my ancestors served his family, worked his fields, cared for his livestock, to be treated like that! It was because I dared talk back to him, I’m sure. But gracias a Dios I was born a free man, and not one of his or Peñuelas’ wretched slaves.
 
I’m grateful there’s so much to do around here at the cathedral. Every day I’m kept busy repairing fences, chasing chickens out of the vegetable garden and young rascals out of the bushes, watering flowers, sweeping the steps and atrium of the church, even burying the dead. When it’s my time, the good padre vows to bury me with this ancient broomstick by my side, and with one of the broomstick’s predecessors as marker. Fine with me, Padre Vicente, I say, as long as you plant me in that far corner under the green-leafed jacaranda that shades the graves of my dear Lupita and our little ones who died from plague or hunger or from only tata Dios knows what. Que en paz descansen.
 
Oh, there’s Padre Vicente waving at me, I must go.  ¡Imagínate! Three funerals already scheduled for today, so there’s much to be done before evening. Later, perhaps, on your way home we can chat, and you’ll give me news of our village? Me voy. ¡Con permiso, hermanos!
  
The same day, near dusk 

¡Muchachos! I’m so glad you stopped to see me before heading home. What’s that? Pos sí, boys, a good guess. It was indeed don Augustín Diaz-De Leon, the son of my old patron, whom we buried today. Don Augustín was the first or second oldest son, I can’t remember right now. Anyway, yes, Padre Vicente saw to don Augustín’s final rites yesterday, with none other than the town’s chief administrator, el alcalde mayor don Fernando Monrroy y Carrillo as witness and executor of the dying man’s last will and testament.
 
My nephew Bitoriano and I prepared the gravesite beforehand, early yesterday evening, so as to avoid the full heat of the day. Even with all the jugs of water we poured over the ground to soften the soil, our shovels had a hard time of it.

“Ay, Tío!” Bitoriano gasped, resting his head on the shovel handle for a moment trying to catch his breath, “Not even the cemetery wants him. You can wrap a corpse in cloth of gold, or in don Augustín’s case, the brown cloak of Saint Anthony of Padua himself, corded sash, wooden cross and all, but that doesn’t transform him into a saint, worthy of being buried in consecrated ground.”

¡Cállate! Somebody might hear you! I scolded my nephew as I passed him the water gourd. But I couldn’t help laughing to myself. Exactly what Bitoriano had against don Augustín I never knew, he never said; but life on the Diaz-De Leon hacienda was not easy for their workers, be they slaves or indios laborios like us. That I do know!

How was the funeral, you ask? Very well attended, very well preached. Padre Vicente did a good job. All the town council was there, even the alcalde mayor don Fernando. After Mass the funeral procession made its grand way to the gravesite for final prayers, with candles, incense, genuflections, singing, weeping mourners and all. Bitoriano and I and two more assistants stood by waiting in the shade of another jacaranda, shovels and sturdy ropes close at hand for lowering the coffin, as Padre Vicente began:

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to honor and lay to rest the body of our dear son and brother, Augustín. We commend his soul to the tender mercies of God - and to the loving care of San Antonio de Padua. As some of you may know, don Augustín asked to be buried in the plain brown cloak symbolic of his favorite saint, that most humble Franciscan friar, Saint Anthony…. ”

Out of the corner of his eye Bitoriano slid me one of his ‘See, I told you so’ looks, which I did my best to ignore. But my nephew didn’t let it go with that. He leaned over to mutter in my ear: “¿Qué te dije, Tío? ¡Ay, pobrecito de San Antonio! He’s probably rolling around in his grave far away right now, about to die, again! from the shame of being mentioned in the same breath as that wretch, that desgraciado!”

I must have choked or something. Glancing our way, Padre Vicente lifted one disapproving eyebrow at us before returning to his sermon. I pretended to stifle a cough, held my tongue and from then on kept a safe straight face. Bitoriano did the same.

​Padre Vicente continued: “Yes, my brothers and sisters, we call upon Saint Anthony to find that which is lost, or for help with desperate causes. But I think our saint is best remembered for his special devotion to the Infant Jesus. San Antonio loved God and in his humility, found the idea of God most accessible, most evident, most alive, in God’s youngest creatures, nuestros parvulitos, our own little children. That’s why San Antonio is always depicted as carrying el niño Jesús, Jesus as a young, innocent child, along with a white lily, symbol of that purity and love.”

Notes for this story:

This story is a work of fiction based on historically documented events. All individuals with surnames, including their children, were real people; those without surnames are fictional.

In Mexico tens of thousands of residents, Indians, mestizos and españoles alike, died from intermittent plagues, smallpox, chickenpox, mumps and measles. At times there were so many deaths that the priests were too overwhelmed to comply with church regulations as to the proper listing of entries in the death records, able to note only the date of death and the names, if known, of victims who were interred on that date.

Don Augustín Diaz-De Leon’s child, Pantaleón, died in December 1747, eight months after the death of his father. Pantaleón was three years old. The youngest child, Augustín Miguel Estanislao, was born two weeks after his father’s death, on 11 May 1747. He survived into adulthood, eventually settling in Sierra de Pinos, Zacatecas, where he and Thadea Josepha Gertrudis Muñoz Tiscareño married.
​
Don Augustín’s widow, doña Maria Antonia Fernandez de Palos Ruiz de Escamilla and el alcalde mayor don Fernando Manuel Monrroy y Carrillo, (witness to the death of don Augustín as well as the executor of his estate) in September 1749 were granted a dispensation to marry. Don Fernando was a widower; his first wife was doña Juana Salvadora Jimenez.

Don Augustín’s father, el alférez (subaltern) don Visente Xabier Diaz-De Leon, was at this time the owner of the Hacienda de Peñuelas. Following the death of his first wife, doña Catharina Acosta, he married and raised another family with his second wife doña María Dolores Medina. Upon his death in April 1754 he left money (including 15 gold Castilian ducats) for his intentions, including 100 masses to be offered for the repose of his soul and for his servants, living or dead.
​
The ex-Hacienda de Peñuelas, still in existence, is one of the oldest haciendas in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes. Established sometime before 1575, Peñuelas predates the foundation of the Villa of Aguascalientes itself. This hacienda consisted of several self-supporting plantation-like communities staffed and farmed by resident Indians and slaves.

The Cathedral Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, originally known as San Ysidro Labrador, was initiated in 1704 and completed in 1738 by don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui, head of the Mitra de Guadalajara. Its northern bell tower was completed in 1764, the southern bell tower not until 1946.
 
Sources
 
All birth and death documents cited are from the following:
 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
FamilySearch.com and other films on line.
 
The entry cited re the infant, the parbulito of this story, is from:
Mexico Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Catholic Church Records
Parroquia del Sagrario, Asunción de Maria
Defunciones 1708-1735, 1736-1748
El Parbulito: Image 530 [Libro quatro de Entierros]
 
Montejano Hilton, Maria de la Luz:
Sagrada Mitra de Guadalajara, Antiguo Obispado de la Nueva Galicia, 1999
 
Rojas, Beatriz, et al:
Breve historia de Aguascalientes, 1994
 
Topete del Valle, Alexandro:
Aguascalientes: Guia para visitar la Ciudad y el Estado, 1973
 
Vázquez y Rodríguez de Frias, José Luis:
Genealogía de Nochistlán Antiguo Reino de la Nueva Galicia en el Siglo XVII según sus Archivos Parroquiales, 2001
 ​

​"Death Eye Dog, Xolotl, cried so much when the last world, the world of the Fourth Sun ended, that his eyes fell out of his sockets."

by Michelle Robles-Wallace
​
"Death Eye Dog" was a runner up in the 2018 Extra Fiction Contest. See here to read the first, second, and third winning entries and stay tuned for this year's upcoming Extra Fiction Contest.

​Mictlán, barren land of darkness and skeletons, the deepest level of the underworld, rests nine worlds beneath our own. The dead take a full four years to journey there; the living never go. At the first level of the underworld, the Mexica dead, if they are lucky, pick up a dog to guide them through the harrowing dangers of the underworld.

​Houses are lonely when they are no longer homes and nightfall makes the emptiness rattle. Raul walks in the night with his dog. He wears too-big, hooded sweatshirts that hide his face in darkness. This part of San Francisco is grey. The fog dampens the cold, streetlights dim the darkness and the smell of urine rises thick from the pavement. The only glitter comes from the glass chips in the sidewalk that shine in the momentary light of passing cars.

Raul walks smooth and towers over most people on the street. His arms are heavy and solid; his eyes are tired and full of unshed tears. He carries arrugas on his face so deep they sometimes appear as folds. He lives alone; even when among friends and family, he resists communion. Solid as his name, stonecold, like a fallen star who has forgotten how to shine. It is as if he wears a cloak, a tangle of scars of loss that hide the glow of his heart.

Passersby slink away from the walking duo.

Death Eye Dog sinks over the horizon with the morning light. Xolotl, the evening star, hangs heavy in the night sky, demands notice as soon as the bright rays of the sun sink beneath the horizon.

Death Eye Dog, Xolotl, cried so much when the last world, the world of the Fourth Sun ended, that his eyes fell out of his sockets.

Blind, Xolotl guided his brother, Morning Star, into the depths of Mictlán after the Fourth Sun ended in flood. The waters washed all the dead to the underworld, returning the people to their spiritual home of darkness. None were left to remake the world of the Fifth Sun anew. Morning Star, Quetzlcoatl, guided by Evening Star, Xolotl, descended to Mictlán, land of darkness and skeletons. Human bones covered the ground. Quetzlcoatl slashed his wrists, anointing the bones with his life-giving blood.

Xolotl, Death Eye Dog, gathered up the bones in his mouth, carried them from the underworld back to the material world to remake mankind in the fifth and final age of the Sun.

Raul knew a different life before this life he lives now. He had a wife, he had a daughter: he had a home. They are as gone now as if the flood of the Fourth Sun had come and washed them away.

Untethered, he never cried, gritted his teeth instead and convinced himself not to feel. Stonecold. Emotion oozes out the cracks though, or explodes in sudden unpredictable bursts. The dog was to take the edge off alone, off loss, off untethered.

His pit bull is rowdy. Rambunctious. They hold the opposite ends of the leash and pull and pull and pull. Neither ever gives in, even when Raul raises his arm up over his head hauling the dog several feet off the ground.

Raul lowers him down, lays his broad hand on the dog’s head. He doesn’t push down but lets its weight be enough to make the dog submit and release the leash.

His submissions are only momentary: he knows who is boss, but only in the practical matters of food and shelter. That pit never stops being his own dog. He mischieves all the time.    

The dog too is big, he is lean and narrow, but tall, taller than pit bulls are expected to be. Raul and the dog’s eyes are the same color hazel, only the dog’s are full of joy and love and play.

A gap begs a bridge between the two, a guided path from the terrible cloak of Raul’s to the dog’s incorrigible joy. Raul ought to be blind with tears by now, instead his eyes hang heavy at the edges, as if carrying a great weight. He goes about now in a darkness as bleak as Mictlán, in a darkness as tight as a straitjacket.

From Mictlán it is possible to rise again as butterfly or bird, to resurrect oneself.
From loss it is possible to rebuild your life.

Winter rebirths spring swells into summer sheds into autumn returns to the barrenness of winter.

Wintertime, darktimes, where it appears that all is lost and nothing moves are crucial times. The earth restores during winter. Its faith never flails at the darkest time of night, during that hour before the sun sets a blood red glow on the horizon, knowing that it must arrive at those dark depths before bursting forth into spring.

Too, to rebirth from the underworld, the dead must first arrive at the depths of Mictlán.

Raul got his dog after he returned from family back to one. Something warm and alive to love in the hardest time of unknowing what next, something to care for when the dawn was nothing to set his cap at, a guide for the darkest parts of night. He lacks the morning star, the blood of life that ushers in a new dawn.

Stonecold, Raul forgets to look for the sun rising, for the red glow on the horizon. He spends his days waiting for it to be night and the night to be day, until the time that will pass, does. He tries to form a new family, one of friends, stopgaps living with partying, something to fill the time and space. The gap between he and the dog becomes an abyss, slowly, like water run through a crevice carves out a canyon.
Raul and his dog walk up 21st street, past the crowded-at-night basketball courts, the stoops where people sit, talking, drinking and hollering out to passersby. He had set out for a walk to take the chill off alone, but the darkness presses tight. They turn onto Mission, head over to a bar where a friend bartends. Raul ties his dog up outside and walks in to where a beer and a shot of tequila are sliding across the bar to him as soon as his shadow fills the doorway.

It is Guillermo’s bar, meaning, the bar where Guillermo works, not a bar that Guillermo owns. The lights are dim and throw a reddish cast to the bar, except for the bright white light that highlights the rows of bottles. There they are, working and playing, all his crew, and Miguel shouts, “Eh, man, where’d you crawl out from. You missed a great party last week, ha! Ask Devon ‘bout it,” then starts laughing maniacally, like a machine gun. Raul asks, and Guillermo sets out a row of shot glasses, fills them with tequila and then everyone reaches in and grabs one, throws them back and then gets back to work on their beers.

Devon launches into a story, “So this girl, I see her and she looks amazing and she’s alone so I give her a lil’ tap, just a tap not even on her ass, but on her hip, and then this guy over on the couch starts glaring at me and comes over and pushes me across the table,” and Guillermo starts laughing, “and I came in and—”
“Dude, shut up, I’m telling the story and—,”

And Raul’s eyes are lit up, anointed by the liquor, “Hey Guillermo, how about another round over here,” because that’s what they do, is keep going until Guillermo calls last call and then the crowd spills out onto the street, leaving just him and his boys and they head into the back and do some lines and their speech becomes sharp like knives and their laughter like metal and they leave, finally, and head over to where Miguel knows somebody spinning and it’s going to be good, man, and they go and they stay, inside in the dark cut with bright pulsating lights even while sun rises, bloodred, spilling dawn over the land. 

Michelle Marie Robles Wallace is working on a collection of short stories set along the borderlands, a memoir and a YA novel. She has published short fiction, CNF and journalism and is particularly interested in themes of healing and borders. She has an MFA and is the recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artists Grant, a Writers' Grotto Writing Fellowship, and hosted the Borderlands Lectura.   ​

We are proud to publish the winning stories submitted by three Chicano writers for 2018 and look forward to another exciting round in 2019. 

We thank Ernest Hogan, considered by all who care for the genre as the Godfather of Chicano ex-fi, who was the judge for this first competition.
​

By Rudy Ch. García of Denver, Colorado, co-founder of and dedicated contributor to La Bloga, perhaps best known for his alternate reality/fantasy novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, which was a finalist in the International Latino Book Awards’ Fantasy/Sci-Fi category in 2013. He has been a longtime proponent of extra-fiction.

Awakening, flexing her three-foot-wide mouth, Tieholtsodi said to herself, “I can’t sense the children, even through the Portal. For some reason, they’re out earlier than usual.” 

Looking over her tentacles for new signs of aging decrepitude, the water-dragon snorted. “Older than the dinosaurs, but at least I’m no fossil.” For eons, she’d talked to herself to counter the loneliness of being the last adult of her kind. 

All yawned out, she scanned the dimness of her sub-lake cavern, located at the bottom of what the humans called Lake Powell. Drawing on spirit-power, she appealed to the super-ascendants. “Blessed Holies, grant us some light.” 

Silence. 

“As usual, they’re responsive as a sacred mountain.” She shot out a tentacle, missing a blue catfish. 

Older and wiser than a mountain, Tieholtsodi hadn’t expected an answer. “So, what good are goddesses who don’t lift a finger to help?” 

Stretching her five tentacles limbered her awake. “I’d pass for a fat octopus with a squashed head, nowhere as impressive as when the Diné first appeared.” She scraped at pill clams nesting on her amber hide. “So much of me fades. If my worshippers saw me now, they’d laugh their little red tails off.” 

Feeling into the dimness, she traced the rock walls. Little had changed in the millennia since she’d excavated the haven for her family. “They’d better return soon. I worry they’ll be caught by men. Or the alien dragons.” 
§ 
Miles away, both of the young creatures had been taught not to venture far. But today the world was filled with wonders. 

Too young to speak, one telepathed to the other, How can we resist? 

Underwater currents carried them, banging them against rocks, dragging them through smooth silt. As if the lake wanted to play-wrestle. Just like Mommy! 

Up ahead, colored lights flashed. But no matter how hard and fast they swam, they couldn’t catch them. 

Oh, and sweet fishies! The waters tasted of burnt trout. 

Might be a present from Blessed Holies, for our achy bellies! 

The aroma lured them on. 

§ 
Rising quickly, Tieholtsodi bumped the spikes running down her back against the ten-foot ceiling. “Gagh! Serves me right. Should’ve taken us to the ocean and found a bigger cavern with scrumptious starfish and octopi. What was I thinking!” 

Necessity, not thought, had landed her family here. Over millennia, the Great Inland Sea had receded, leaving the Colorado River to gouge a path through the rolling hills and desert plains. 

She brushed her rough bristles and sniffed under tentacles. “I’ll have to head mid-lake to rid myself of this bottom-rot smell, after my babies return. 

“Of course,”--she sighed--”first they’ll want to play Pile-on-Mommy.” Pretending interest in something else, the children would attack, knock her down and pummel her with their bodies. 

She chuckled, and checked her talons for splits that might cut the children. “Should’ve been born with an octopus’s suction cups.” She withdrew the talons, like when hugging her young. “Ah, if motherhood were my only responsibility. But, no! Had to be born a tailless, wingless, flameless monster dragon. Fire-breathing would’ve been good, like the Alien Dragons sort of have.” 

Dangling a tentacle into the current, hoping to lure a large fish, she sensed manmade chemicals, the lake’s rising temperature and falling volume. “The big fish disappear, like the red people prophesied.” For a century, the lake had been dying. “Someday we’ll have to find a Portal to the clean, open seas.” 

Teeth latched onto her tentacle, making her pull in the catch. “What!” She exchanged bared fangs with a thrashing, six-foot alligator gar. “The children will be pleased! Haven’t seen one your size in hundreds of moons. Where--” Crunch! But something was wrong. The catch had been too easy. 

“You’re bait! Someone sent you, thinking I’m a stupid monster?” Natives respected her, and other humans dismissed her as a myth. “That only leaves the Alien Dragons.” 

If she’d gorged on the gar, she might’ve missed squeals coming through the Portal. “My babies!” She bashed the fish against a boulder, flung it aside. Flattening herself manta-ray-like, she probed for her young’s auras. “Found them!” Relieved, she radiated an eddy that rolled the boulder onto the gar. 

Still, more was wrong. 

“They’re not in the lake! They entered a far-off river. Blessed Holies, why’d they…. Have to find them before they’re spotted. Or worse.” 

§ 
Commander Brondel mumbled toward his desk, “Soon we’ll be free to conduct more than occasional hunts in the canyons above. Without worrying someone might detect us.” He’d done well selecting this site underneath a desert. Uranium and coal mines, scattered native tribes and occasional tourists weren’t much of a worry. 

He switched off a monitor. “Father, today’s the day. You’ll be proud.” On a desk sat the funereal holo-pic of Father, a fine example of his species, in uniform, tyrannosaurus-like, though with shorter tail and thicker forearms. 

Brondel straightened his tunic, ran claws over his hand’s olive-tinted scales. He saluted the holo-pic. “Almost everything’s ready to complete our dream. I can almost smell it.” He grimaced from inhaling deep--the oil-sodden walls stank of the raw fuel humans had extracted, despite the incessant hum from air-filtration scrubbers. 

Earlier, leveraging his influence with the Council, he’d proposed more surface explorations. As he’d testified, “A four-foot taller species--two hundred pounds heavier, with twice the intelligence and technology of homo sapiens--shouldn’t be denied fresh air!” He’d barely gotten their approval, and received no laughter. 

Brondel checked that his milled-rock desk appeared orderly. Brushing lint off his tunic, he was ready for his Second-in-command. “Father, I expect he’s taken care of everything. But you always said eye-to-eye is the only way to gauge loyalty.” He massaged his belly, hoping for good news. Especially about the little monsters. 

§ 
At the river’s mouth, the young ones turned upstream, chasing the tasty morsels and funny lights. 

We’re close! 

Later, Mommy might be mad, but they were just babies, as she called them. 

What’s a kid supposed to do, anyway? 

§ 
Hearing excited cries, the shaman Tomás halted his spring-cleaning. At the doorway of the adobe cabin, he lowered his head, wiping his hands on worn overalls, and scanned the horizon, thinking, The noise came through a Portal, miles away. He’d blocked off the one in the cabin, well enough. 

Sangre de Cristo winds washed him, cooling his toughened skin, sweeping wavy, black locks about his ebonied face. 

Tomás couldn’t determine the species he’d heard. They were young, possibly in danger. He inhaled deep. “Nada. Except wildlife and toxic soot from the Four Corners’ power plants.” The locals gossiped about how the shaman-hermit talked to himself, as if communicating with unseen spirits. 

During the centuries separated from his colleagues, he’d heard other gritos of distress. But his job of Sentinel took precedence, leaving no time for a wife or family. Ever since the ancient Aztecas discovered the Dragones, one shaman dedicated his extended life to defending the Portal openings, keeping the aliens shuttered underground. Mysteriously, and luckily, they couldn’t dig their way out; the Portal was their only exit. Their science could access it but was inferior to shaman magic, so few snuck by Tomás. 

“I could check on those little niños if I had my Superman cape.” He chuckled, glanced at the mesquite cabinet holding his depleted cape. “Too bad cleansing couldn’t remove the dragons’ acidic sangre.” Alien blood eroded his gear and weaponry. 

“At least my macquahuitl sword”--hanging from a cottonwood viga above--”the gift from Moctecuzoma I, still shines pristine.” By the tip of its blade, he spun it. 

“I suppose there’s una chansa in a million the Holies will answer those niños. Sí, señor, the day brujo-witches learn to fart red rosas!” He resumed his housework and dampened reception of the shrieks. They’d hurt more than his ears. 

§ 
Overheated from traversing the lake, Tieholtsodi coasted. A message came through the Portal. “The Dragons took my babies! Why? We’ve all lived hidden in our caverns for eons.” Heady breezes dried her exposed hide while she considered the message. 

“They want me to kill the Sentinel? That means their powers are fading and they’re ready to…. They learned nothing about disturbing the Balance.” Like when their shipwreck exterminated the monstrous dinosaurs. 

Tieholtsodi too was a monster, but one who never killed sapients. Diné legends attributed murders to her, from drowning victims she ate. Those weren’t her doing; she simply took advantage of the accidental deaths. Except to save herself or her young, murder was abomination. However, the message left no doubt. 

“Blessed Holies, if I don’t kill him before nightfall, I’ll never see my babies, again.” 

Sinking, she drifted, not righting herself against currents, nor worrying what direction she drifted. “I can’t let--” 

Deep-lake gars took chunks out of a tentacle. She barely sensed the teeth, or much else, and sank into colder depths. The gars fled. 

“I must--” She hit silt-bottom, her torso spreading, preventing sinking. Words blubbered out of her jagged mouth, “Must save them, without committing murder. Oh, Holies--how?” 

Unanswered, an hour later she’d figured it out. Rising from the ooze, she swam to meet her motherly responsibilities. 

§ 
Ready for his meeting, Brondel punched his toned-as-rock abdomen, wishing more than vacuum-dried seafood was behind it. “Like pumas or cattle the scouts bring back, huh, Father? Good thing hunting’s still in the cadre’s blood.” 

Normally, the genetically engineered “perfect” soldiers were tasked to assist and protect the scientists and their research. 

“Not hunters, only chaperones for the study of the universe,” he said sarcastically. “Grumph!” 

But after a wormhole had swallowed their vessel, they lost contact with their home planet. The crippled ship entered this solar system, crashing in the cataclysmic Impact that created a sulfuric-acid deluge exterminating nearly all dinosauria. 

Brondel actuated a holoscreen that flickered from bad connections and jerry-rigging, legacies of the Impact. Besides technological losses, the crew barely held onto principles of non-intervention regarding the humans’ civilization. Faith in the original mission faltered. On his deathbed, Father had predicted imminent colony-collapse. To salvage their species, he’d raised Brondel, special. 

“Cadre’ve needed new goals like I need a bloody steak. Confinement’s ruined them.” Brondel flipped between holoscreens. “Father, you trained me to lead us out of our cages and into hunting grounds of our choosing. We’re warriors, not worms.” Grumbling, he checked the monitors--of the shaman, the Diné monster, and its offspring. 

“The Council suffers from senility. But if they discover our plan, I’ll be arrested…. Today, everything must go perfectly.” 

The door was ajar, and his Second-in-command caught him off guard. 

“Sir!” 

“Your report, soldier?” 

“We captured and locked up the two creatures.” He gestured toward the holoscreen. “Your idea of bright lights and cooked fish worked. They followed them straight into our trap.” 

“Excellent. Does their birth-mother understand our demands?” 

“The observation team reported as much.” He gave his superior a curt grin, without looking him in the eye. 

Brondel tried smiling. Military Code dictated it unwise to show emotions around cadre, but he wanted rumors about his optimism to spread. Troop morale and loyalty must center on ME! One great smile from their leader today could sway the doubters. The kidnapping was the first step; the next ones would test every soldier. 

I was smart to promote this one. He’d only have been more perfect if he’d been born my ... son. “Keep track that the freak does as told, or she’ll never see her offspring again. Even though we’re limited in getting that shaman, she’s not.” Brondel’s stomach rankled with hunger, for raw meat. “Go.” 

Second glimpsed the monitor. The young ones jumped off walls, wrecked furniture and crushed containers. Their squealing reminded him-- 

“That is all!” 

Second returned the fist-salute, spun, tripped and exited. Brondel moved from the plump dragonlings, to the holo of a co-opted satellite. “All, until we take over,” he mumbled. The blue planet overshadowed the gunmetal-gray walls. 

“I’ll finally deal with the damned shaman who escaped your attempts on his life.” Grimly, he swore, “Your son will yet rid us of this meddlesome priest.” 

He double-checked the door and let loose his cackling. He loved the humans’ literature. Who knew? One day his soldiers might give him a new title. “King Brondel might have a thread of truth to it, Father. The future holds ... possibilities.” He gazed at the youngsters. “Including some delectable ones….” 

§ 
To reach the Blessed Holies’ ethereal realm, pleas and prayers skipped across dimensions of space and Past-Time, avoiding pulsars or disturbing other supernaturals. This involved no luck, so most requests arrived. 

As super-ascendants, the Nine Holies sculptured island volcanoes or splatter-painted the heavens with mosaics of comets. However, they seldom answered mortal prayers; wise, maternal guidance demanded minimal meddling. 

They’d heed recent pleas because the blue planet’s Balance might be disrupted. 

Instantly and nova-bright, the Holies converged on an exoplanet and sat, rimming a crater with a necklace of auras. The Holy, Grand Ultramarine, began. “We heard from our old friend, Tieholtsodi.” 

Sky Blue winked and cocked her head sideways. 

“Also, from others. I sense we yearn to involve ourselves.” 

Everyone nodded sparkles. 

“So we shall talk, bearing in mind our original commitments.” The Holies had forsaken mortality to acquire the powers to begin a new world, as any female would have. Still, deep in their auras, memories of their mortal pasts glowed. 

“You mean I cannot make ‘a heav’n of hell?’ Sky Blue mischievously raised her eyes. “Shake ‘the lowest bottom of Erebus?’” she giggled; she loved watching Earth life. 

Drawing back, she held a plasma bolt, spear-like. “Merely once, I’d relish casting down a lightening--” 

Choking, she flushed purple, teetering. 

Everyone gasped; no Holy was shielded from fading under space-time. Her brethren streamed over, stabilizing her with their energy. 

Grand Ultramarine rolled her lips. “These prayers link to planet-wide conflict that would disturb the Balance. The scenario’s intricate, complicated.” The Holies depended on tiny conjurings to influence reality, otherwise, never moving one wisp. 

Calmed, Sky Blue acted less pixyish. “Fate hangs by a thread not of everyone’s making. We have one day to decide.” So they talked. Debated. Pondered. Nuanced. For thousands of instants of time. And reached consensus. 

Grand Ultramarine smiled. “This method will prove effective.” Nods all around. “With the lightest touch.” 

Pleased with their decision, they chorused, dancing across asteroids. Their merriment rustled dark matter out of a black hole. Three Holies soared over, one saying, “I never tire of these chores.” They nurtured the material back to sleep. 

§ 
Out front of his place, Tomás added spruce logs to his rock-lined fire pit. “The Portal stinks of demonios, hate and fear. Like datura-drunk bruja-witches at a bloodletting ceremony marking the vernal-equinox ending of a fifty-two-year cycle. It’s that crazy! 

“But, Holies, it is no brujos--it’s my nemesis, the Alien Dragones. Duty calls, and not the Hispanic kind.” He entered the cabin. 

The young ones were likely pawns in a plot, their cries auguring an impending encounter. “Hopefully, I have time and,”--he patted pockets--”prepared enough.” 

Suddenly, moss-like fog spurted from walls, spread, choking the interior. “Chingau! Those pinches Dragones!” The fog cemented his feet, quickening his breath. Attempts to dislodge himself made him sweat more than move. 

“Bueno, Holies, first a conditioning-spell to free myself, and one to protect my home. Something comes….” 

§ 
Second stood stiff-straight by the desk. “Commander, the creature’s entered the Portal, heading for the shaman. We neutralized him so he’ll be helpless when it arrives. With equipment malfunctions, we don’t know how long it will last.” The word malfunction reminded him he wore a locket with images of his children, draped underneath, on his neck. Really, a minor violation. 

“Excellent. Now, what news about our … contingencies?” Brondel was disappointed Second gazed at the screen of the offspring. Removing weak females from our species strengthened us. But this one wavers, probably because of his children. Brondel hadn’t sired any chips-off-the-old-tale; that might’ve ruined Father’s dream. Still, men are more dependable when they believe their family’s threatened. Better deal with that. 

“Yes, Commander, the … contingencies. The vault’s stocked, but it was the only place to confine the ... creatures. Whenever you say, we’ll remove them and, after it’s replenished, we’ll escort the Council inside.” He averted the holoscreen. 

Brondel loosened his jaw, staunched his anxiety. “Something bothers you; that’s expected. You were raised to protect elders, not lock them up.” 

Second checked clawing his locket; it would’ve disappointed his superior. 

“We cannot eliminate the Council. That would go completely against Code.” Brondel’s firm tone and step-forward forced his underling to look him in the face. 

The green-pupils stare made Second shiver. “I know, Sir.” He scratched his hip, to relax. Strings he loosened floated; one, vacuumed into the rickety, circulation system. A presage of the Council’s fate. 

To ease his man, Brondel snapped a smile. “If you haven’t guessed, it’s no contingency; it’s our great leap. Always was. Before, our antiquated, non-interference principles held us back, but they never should’ve applied to a shipwrecked crew. Tieholtsodi eliminates the shaman, the Portal’s wide open.” Brondel cleared his throat; Second tightened his posture. 

“Once groundwork is completed, we’ll prepare the invasion. To freely walk the planet, again, to live as superior, sentient beings, inhaling atmosphere, not,”--his arm swept the room--”stank, recycled air…. Your offspring’s’ health suffers here. Imagine how they’ll thrive outside, without fear of humans.” He flushed from perfectly targeting the man’s emotions. 

Second visualized he and his young running through grassy, flowered, sunny fields. Suddenly the vision fluctuated to the cold, rocky underground where they played chase-hunts. My commander’s smart and bold, he thought. But did things have to go this far? He set his jaw. Can’t show doubts. 

Brondel wanted Second join in the dream. “We could enjoy something better than stinking seafood or reconstituted dino meat! Thick, bloody steaks. Like, The Great Brontosaurus Banquet!” He howled, gnashed his thick tongue. Following their shipwreck, soldiers discovered that surviving dinosauria made great hand-to-hand adversaries. And delectable game. Rumors about the quasi-cannibalism drove some men insane. 

Second scoffed; hardly anybody believed the Banquet feeding-frenzy anecdotes. 

Brondel gripped Second’s shoulder, their shared hilarity, done. He worried he might’ve sounded too-- “What do you think, Soldier?” 

“No--I mean … yes, Sir!” 

“Excellent. Keep me updated on the monster, plus, the shaman.” He glanced at that screen. “He already regained consciousness?” 

Second lowered his eyes. “I thought we’d delay--” 

“Forget it; the monster will dispense with the old pest. Also, have Comm provide me real-time surveillance of all cadre, to make certain my orders are followed.” 

Tensing, Second raised his chin. “And the ... children?” He sighed, imagining his own. 

§ 
If they’d known what was planned for them, the youngsters might’ve found their strange cell, less delightful. But it was more fun than cages the dragons had locked them in. 

What’s this do? 

This place had wood and metal stuff great for playing with. 

This one tastes no good and is no fun! They’d nearly run out of ideas for new games. 

When’s Mommy coming? 

§ 
“Whatever the fate the shaman meets,”--Brondel cracked knuckles--”you have your orders about the little monsters. If their parent dies, we definitely don’t want revengeful orphans on our tail. Even young claws and teeth shouldn’t be underestimated.” He patted Second’s back, urging him out. 

The dark walls curbed Brondel’s rising spirits. He could use larger quarters. “How propitious--the Council won’t need theirs!” He laughed, not hearing Second outside the slowly shutting door, stopping to scrape his boots. 

“Father, perhaps the officers should celebrate. Hmmm, is little monster as tangy as fresh baby bronto you described? They’re not enough for a feast, but they’d work as appetizers. That don’t stink of fish. Some tender, young--” He wiped spittle. Never do that in front of cadre; they’d think I’m weak. 

Nor could Brondel see his aide scurrying off with scrunched brow and eyes. 

§ 
At the bottom of a waterfall, Tieholtsodi faced the Portal that would transport her into the shaman’s home. She sensed he’d blocked it, but not to stop her. From doing what she must. “If my babies knew what I’m going to do, would they forgive me?” 

As ominous as her next task, the Portal glared, beckoning. Swimming in, Tieholtsodi broadcast a final appeal to the Holies. 

§ 
Tomás knew that freeing myself had been too loco-simple. “Dragones’ science is usually more difficult to undo. They weaken. So what else will they use?” 

He began stripping the cabin of native rugs, hand-hewn furniture, eventually setting everything outside. “No sense letting my stuff getting chingado-ed.” Items only hung from stuccoed walls and the wood-latias ceiling. “Now we can cumbia!” 

Outside he knelt by the fire pit, hoping gathering clouds weren’t a threat. The Dragones had thrown everything imaginable at him. “And a few, unimaginable.” Like a pewter figurine that tried hypnotizing him, eroding his spirit and will. 

“Luckily, true magic imagines more than unearthly science.” Burning sage for a cleansing, he wafted it toward the cabin. Done, he scanned the valley. 

“What mierda is next? Dragones with ray-guns? Híjole! Better go for my own blaster--some mestizo ambrosia.” His feet scattered cabin dust. “Where did I leave that half-full botella?” 

Suddenly, an amber fog flowed from cracks in the walls. 

“No more games. They’re fumigating for something bigger than ratas--me!” The fog blinded him. He rubbed his eyes into tears. 

Through clouded vision, from the farthest corner, log-thick tentacles rose, blue talons flexed hungrily. Deep growls curdled his hair and heart. Overhead, mounted tools and weapons shook from a huge advancing, lumbering form. 

Somehow, the Dragones send Tieholtsodi against puny me. “Qué quieres, Ancient One?” 

No answer. 

Must even up the weight, if not the odds. 

Tomás lowered his palms, sucked life-force from the flooring and underlying earth, infusing his body with mass. And charged, a bison bull at full-run. Floorboards rippled, rusted nails screeched. 

§ 
Salivating about the outcome, Brondel watched his intended victim duel the assassin-monster. “That shaman was a character, not that he’s dead yet.” 

On-screen, makeshift translations streamed underneath. Not totally intelligible, coupled with the man’s swift gestures, they amused Brondel. 

“Father, we’ll never enjoy chase-hunting him; the shaman soon goes dark.” Licking drool, he switched the monitor to full-view, leaned into his creaking seat, cackling. 

§ 
Beefed up to nearly a ton, Tomás hoped his enchanted mass would at a minimum stun Tieholtsodi. Reverberations from their collision cracked windows. Ricocheting him like a steel spring off his cast-iron, tortilla comal. 

Tieholtsodi scratched her itching belly where she’d been hit. She telepathed Tomás, I’m sorry! 

Slammed against the wall, his vision clouded. I harmed the creature not one chiquitito bit. He needed a weapon. Pointing bunched fingers at a thrusting-spear, he charmed it to drop into his hands. He swung at groping tentacles. Phoot! Two sagged, lopped half-off. 

“Grraah!” Tieholtsodi rolled onto her wounded side, grasped a doorway and a beam. The shaman heard, You’re as formidable as a century ago. But I cannot fail-- 

“A dissipation spell may convince you to leave.” Tomás drew bundled datura twigs from his pocket. Cast them and sang in Náhuatl, “Xotla cueponi!” They grew as commanded, enchanted twigs turning steel-hard, penetrating Tieholtsodi’s spine. 

“Grraah!” 

Tentacles buckled like serpents; the creature removed what it could, broken splines waving. Resin seeped in, sapping its fury and strength. In Tomás’s mind, she screamed, I have no choice! Tentacles raised and yanked him close. 

Fetidness flooded him, almost making him faint. He turned, fangs gashing his earlobe. “Hijo de su--!” Spotting a bottle behind the creature, he mumbled in Náhuatl, “Igualaz.” Flames darted from his twitching fingers, bursting the bottle into igniting. 

The Mexican Molotov-cocktail rocketed toward Tieholtsodi. 

“Grrrr!” Fire flared up and down her back. She staggered, fell, smothering the flames. And dropped Tomás. 

Before she recovered, Tomás formed his arms into a circle. Green lightening shot out, energizing the Portal. 

Still stunned, Tieholtsodi latched onto walls and fought the Portal’s suction. Tentacles screamed--steel on glass--keeping her in position. A tentacle knocked Tomás over and wrapped onto a beam. Cabin walls buckled tremor-like. 

The obsidian-studded macquahuitl rattled. Dropped with a whoosh from its hefty weight. Cleaving Tomás’s thigh. A slab of bloody, red meat flapped open-closed. 

“Ya no con tus pinch--” Screaming horrific, he barely heard Tieholtsodi’s challenge. Of suicidal sacrifice. 

§ 
Bored playing with stuff, the youngsters sighted something new. A metal-green string flew by, exciting them. 

Let’s get it! 

Their squeals echoed down the corridors and out into the glistening Portal. 

§ 
Breathing fast, in agony Tomás gritted teeth and pulled the sword. 

But it was stuck. 

Again he jerked. A head-slap sent him tumbling. But at least his grip-lock freed the sword. 

Standing, shaking, he raised it, chanted, empowering it with blood-spirit. As he launched it at the creature’s head, the two opponents half-heard the wails coming from the Portal. 

Tieholtsodi jerked her head. The sword hit. “Graah!” She writhed back and back out the Portal. That blurred, then silenced. And disappeared. 

Tomás collapsed. Breathed. Checking wounds, he fingered the gashed thigh. “Demonios! Just what I needed--more clean-up.” Hobbling, he found the fishing tackle. After three quick tragos of mezcal, he sewed away with hook and line. 

§ 
Tieholtsodi’s final roar ruptured Brondel’s speakers, static multiplying. Half of his plan evaporated when the wounded creature left possibly to die elsewhere. 

“Worthless. Unholy. Fish bait!” He killed the monitor, yelled, “Lights!” 

Brondel had allowed for this. Now he’d resort to claw-sized explosives used to map underground formations, shelved since homo sapiens appeared. The Council wouldn’t be around to stop him. “Father, even shaman magic melts under a hypertronic detonation.” 

“It will alert the earthlings, but we’ll strike before they can. Victories will ease doubts about my decisions. With cadre, anyway.” 

Wham! His tail-thump shattered a chair. 

“Hah! I’ll claim we had to pre-empt them. First, better check the soldiers that needed watching. Really hate worrying about Second, but he’s a father. 

“If he doesn’t see to the meaty imps, maybe I’d better do it. Then, I’ll check on the Council. Lastly, incinerate that shaman. Into cosmic dust.” 

§ 
On his porch, breezes dried mezcal droplets from Tomás’s lips. “Qué bueno I found anesthetic.” He chuckled, tying off the fishing line. “Chíng-- ... Now, something about Tieholtsodi wasn’t right.” He’d never meant to slay the creature, especially after matching her voice-signature to the young ones. “Maybe its attack involved their welfare.” 

As he’d launched the sword, he and Tieholtsodi heard the children howling. Triggering Tomás into instinctively twist his wrist at the moment his slashed leg gave way. His spear had bounced off her front fangs, instead of piercing the skull. 

He doused the wound with mezcal. “Hí--jo--lé!” 

Taking a snip, he said, “Blessed Holies, did its niños make Tieholtsodi duck or did you make us both flinch? Otherwise, I might’ve slain her.” 

Tomás wished the Holies would send a clue about the future. The Dragones must’ve observed the battle and would adjust. “Holies, do I wait or enter the Portal, into their cavernas?” Slapping the bottle on his palm, he wondered if he’d just taken his final drink. 

§ 
Holding his breath, Brondel watched Second, on-screen, wandering, hesitating, speeding down the wrong hallway. “My underling acts female-ish.” Brondel dreaded that his favorite might falter. “Must I ... remove him, Father?” The mumbling he heard didn’t allay his fears. 

He’d anticipated even this disappointing betrayal. “Father, his emotions could ruin everything.” He contacted another soldier, giving him special orders. 

§ 
Shivers dogged Second’s every step down the hallway. Disobedience would end more than his career. Warning the Council endangers my children. Whatever his reasons, Code required termination of his bloodline. 

But children are children, even the creature’s. His guts wrenched with indecision. Committing infanticide, I could never look at mine without remembering ones I’d slain…. “Shouldn’t have followed his insanity!” 

He’d free the creatures, notify the elders, then try not worrying about his young. Code dictated his suffering would be short. 

Hurrying, he cursed something stuck to his boot. And didn’t see a soldier turn the corner, drawing a weapon. 

§ 
The thought of blood about to flow aroused the assassin. Training had nurtured a cruel streak that earned him the position. 

He raised his blaster, guessing he couldn’t miss notwithstanding the dimness. He tried ignoring childish whimpers coming from somewhere. They could be his next assignment! His trigger finger trembled. 

§ 
“Damned thread!” Even busy, Second wanted his uniform neat. Not stopping, he stooped to clean his boot, lost hold and tripped. Too clumsy when I’m hurrying. 

A heat-blast cut into his shoulder. Clothes and hide steamed and hissed. Momentum carried him forward, and he rolled hard, curled into crouching, pulled and shot his weapon. 

Decapitating the attacker who crumpled. Blomp! 

Brondel sent this assassin. No doubts now! He swooned, gushing blood. “Aahh! Gotta get to … wallcomm.” 

§ 
Brondel never believed in the ethereal or luck. Heading out from his room, he mumbled, “I prevail because of your genes, Father, training, and my T-rex mind-set. Don’t need any luck.” 

For no reason though, he grabbed his ceremonial sidearm. Several hallways later, his reflexes sparked--Second rising when the man should’ve been dead. Brondel fired, gouging a pit in Second’s back, knocking him flat. “Shit! A kill-shot. Couldn’t help … myself” 

He swayed, his eyes turning inky, till he saw the shoulder wound. “Guess the assassin tried…. Second, did you foul up anything else? Sorry. Plus, your offspring will pay.” He wiped sweat from his aide’s brow. 

“Uhhh!” 

“Would you’ve been faithful if I’d been your….” Brondel skirted him, kicking the assassin’s head, hard. 

He ground molars. If the Council knows, my plans are worm bait. Otherwise--he licked lips--I have time to check the little snacks. The slight detour would make him feel better, maybe erase Second from his mind. 

§ 
Barely stirring, given his wound’s size Second knew death approached. But Brondel had left him an out. “Deliberately? Can slow ... bleeding. Maybe save ... my….” 

He tuned his weapon to low-setting, used it on himself. “For both of my...!” Drawing on love for his children, he baffled his screams to not alert Brondel. Heat-spurts cauterized the hole. Drenched in tears and sweat, Second dragged himself across gravel toward the wallcomm, nearly fainting with every tug. 

§ 
Trapped for hours, they knew Mommy would soon come to their rescue. 

We’re hungry! 

How she’d laugh when she found them. 

Then, tasty fish or serpents! They hoped she’d show soon; they were so hungry, they could eat a dragon. 

§ 


Clutching the wallcomm, Second grimaced, but he’d warned the elders. “The tide turns. Faster than … I bleed out.” His self-triage had given him time, but cut blood flow to vital organs. “At least the children….” 

According to Code, self-sacrifice overrode disobedience; his corpse would exonerate him. He gasped from a torturing chuckle. 

And Code guaranteed a hero’s children bright futures. “If I wasn’t. Grotesque. Would’ve called for them ... what a father--” 

His corpse slumped onto the chilled gravel. 

§ 
“Excellent.” Brondel assumed men guarding the vault had gone for the Council. A monitor showed the out-of-control creatures inside--hyper, hungry as him? He smacked the wall. It didn’t matter; they were plump enough. This won’t take long. 

Tapping the bolt-release, he envisioned taking them out, right to left. He set his blaster to medium. Just lightly toasted. 

The children sensed something. 

Wait, what’s that? Mommy! Run, hide! 

They huddled by the entrance. 

He couldn’t accidentally kill them, like Second. Remembering his aide’s ghastly face, he bit his lip clean through. To erase the painful image, he yanked the door, leapt in, positioned low, to fire. He slipped on gummy saliva, or worse. 

Get him! 

Their bodies blocked his view. Crushed his throat. He lost the sidearm. Floundering for it, he knocked it outside. “N--ooo!” 

§ 
Mommy might’ve sent the strange dragon. So, they’d both withdrawn their talons to not harm it, much. That would’ve taken the fun out of it. Mother had shown them that the day she taught them to never chase or eat dragon. 

Hopping off the strange one, they scampered into the hallway. 

Find Mommy! 

The last one out playfully slammed the door. 

§ 
“Father, the verdict will be swift.” Brondel cleaned off shredded cushions. “Code justice won’t even allow me makeshift lighting, like after the damned Impact.” 

Tearing insignias off, he blotted at small wounds. “Why’d the little scoundrels not inflict more damage? They’ve got the claws for it.” He hadn’t anticipated deviousness from such young things. “They weren’t playing games, Father. Must’ve been survival instincts.” 

Brondel couldn’t appeal to the Council. “Sensory deprivation is mandated for our crimes.” He flared nostrils, as if they’d capture light for the future. 

To survive isolation, Brondel had only his genes. Despite no light or sound, tech would keep the vault livable. “Father, this is home, now.” He fist-saluted the imagined holo-pic. “Worse than being buried under a sacred mountain.” 

Fluffing cushions, he sat, fearing the approaching silence. “Even a shaman would’ve made for decent company.” He’d never again hear anyone. 

The droning, air-filtration system drove something into his eye. Dampers engaged, drowning out what might’ve been his first sobs. 

§ 
The fire pit’s wavering flames sucked at Tomás’s eyes. “It’s over. No more of their meddlesome mugre, today.” With a piñon switch, he toppled clumped, melting glass, its glowing emerald fading. 

He could rest. The Portal, almost silent, the Dragones’ banter, eerily absent. The Balance, maintained. 

“Some hero I’ve been--big shaman defeats Diné monster in great battle!” He scattered coals. “Guess the bebés are safe. Or were they just playing war? Quién sabe.” But he did know where some special buds were curing. Maybe he’d use some as an offering to the Holies, just in case. 

§ 

On a comet’s tail, the Holies shrouded their gathering, facing center. “We do not celebrate ourselves,” said Ultramarine, “no reverting to mortal emotions. We shaped happenstance, with no beings aware that we did it.” Concurring, the others pulsed crimson. 

Observing the little creatures scurry to their parent, every Holy held her breath, geysers frozen, mid-blast. Tieholtsodi’s family hugged and their love enveloped the Holies in pulsating turquoise, like from a birthing star. 

Someone yelled, “Look, she’s losing her--” 

Sky Blue’s form and color fluctuated. Into dank blue. 

“Everyone, stabilize her!” Ultramarine pled. 

But in stages, Sky Blue’s aura thinned, she choked, spasmed, from pining for her antediluvian family, surrendering to rejoin them. Eight Holies’ froze, silent, unable to save her. 

And Sky Blue fell. 

Into Earth’s atmosphere. She transmuted into a meteor that burst into gold dust sprinkling over land and sea. Much of her settled within Tieholtsodi’s grotto. 

The Eight Holies gripped palms, chanting, “We laud Sky Blue and her final act.” They embraced. “We reaffirm our decisions made at the Beginning.” Grand Ultramarine plugged a tear. 

The Holies regrouped to consider new prayers. Ultramarine said, “The consequences are obvious. So, what tweak might we imagine for this?” Chatter ceased when she added, “Or would we interfere with the beginning of the Fourth World?” Quizzical looks flickered on and off for some time. 

§ 
Ignored her bleeding from the children’s tiny spikes, Tieholtsodi crushed her babies. “My aching hide glows amber from holding you two.” New gold dust brightened their home, and she could see better. “Now our grotto’s perfect!” 

Her heart beat gently about how things had turned out. “I’d never have murdered the shaman.” The children stared at her. “I’d have let him slay me and prayed they released you two later. Risky, but all I came up with.” Wiping tears of joy, she flinched from her lacerated cheek. 

“The shaman cast his spear like a born hunter.” Tieholtsodi had turned so it only pierced her cheek, but observers might’ve thought it fatally struck her. “Did he deliberately miss?” Not understanding her, the children scattered. “Or did the Holies intervene?” 

Howls stopped her musings, but it was nothing--the children fruitlessly pushing the boulder to get at the gar. They couldn’t hurt themselves, so let them play. 

“Blessed Holies, I’d never hover or obsess. Not only males possess that wisdom.” Rolling back, she laughed, teasing her babies into attacking. Until the time for some delicious gar. 

§ § § 
​

Sunlight beamed through the frayed blinds onto faded pictures of forgotten musicians and concerts. He paused, sipped coffee then turned his eyes onto a shelf where a specific tape reel was filed. Lettering on the slim box had faded since the last Great War but he was able to make out the letters that had been written by a steady hand. On most boxes there were song times, titles, studio location, band personnel and a few even had the time of day when the song was recorded. The box that held his attention listed a florid name. Each letter leapt beyond the top and bottom margin of the frame labeled: Notes. The first letter, C, swirled at the top and at its base flowed into the next letter, A, that bloomed and quickly melted into an R. It was at the third letter where he usually paused to sip water or take a deep breath. Before tracing the last three letters, he retraced the first three letters as though confirming the pen strokes then continued. The R became a vine that crept into an M that sprouted into a sudden but neat, E. Then after tracing the last letter N. He whispered it, imagining the pen in singer’s soft hands as she wrote her name: Carmen.

Perhaps the box rested on a music stand as she wrote her name with one hand holding a cigarette while writing with her other hand? Or it might have been after a concert in a Texan ballroom? He conceived scenarios in which Carmen was circled by fans or responding to radio host questions or standing alongside her sister as they warbled into microphones with a band roaring behind them.

It was a December afternoon. He was shelving records and cassettes when he turned his ear to a faint doorknob click. He stepped softly along the short hallway and peered around the corner. Dion scribbled on labels, shuffled paperwork and wedged notes into a clipboard.

“What record label are you archiving now?” Dion asked as he flipped through pages, waiting for an answer.

“I’m on Ideal.” He hoped Dion would be satisfied with his answer and return to the front office.

“Hmm…. Ideal? Okay,” Dion looked around aghast. “Well…can you please keep this place clean? Geez,” he muttered. His boots hammered on stairs as he bounded back to his office.

Alone again, he returned to the archiving station and pulled a reel box from the shelf. He lifted the tape gingerly, nested it in the supply column then clicked an empty reel onto the opposite side. He unwound a length of tape from the supply reel to thread it along the tape path into the capstan’s rubber pinch roller and plunged it into the playback head then guided the tape into a slot inside the playback reel base. A tiny bulb flickered green as it powered on. He turned a knob that made bulbs glow orange. Needles in two faded VU meters skittered with every knob click. He skimmed the tape box for scribbles or notes made by studio personnel. A tan note lay inside the box. 

“It must be a musician list or suggested song sequence,” he thought. 

Studios often included invoices, jukebox sales distribution numbers or musician names with the reels. A deep crackle filled the room; slow breathing from a singer, preserved for 50 years, erupted into a barrage of coughs, clearing their throat. He closed his eyes and imagined the guitarist plucking muted strings for harmonics while the drummer tapped on a drumhead tightening the snare slowly. 

A raspy voice counted down, “Uno, Dos…,” accordion strikes revved slowly until lightning fast accordion melodies drove the band as the guitar strummed staccato chords. With eyes closed, he could see studio lights gleaming above, power cords lay tangled across the floor, and tube amplifiers glowing. The archivist memorized every note and between songs he eavesdropped on conversations whispered near microphones. Near the end of the tape, musicians chatted about who was driving the truck on Friday night. Someone asked the guitarist to pluck an F note. 

He sat frozen between two eras observing the tension to keep the tape from stretching. He exhaled quietly to keep from missing faint whispers or instrument clicks. Vocalists counted down each take with: “Cut One” or “Cut Two.” Often times it was just a breath before the band roared life into the room where he sat. He couldn’t remember when the recordings absorbed him but he remembered the moment when Carmen’s voice first reached out to him from 1952.


In the spring, a new guy waltzed into the office spouting off music trivia and concert dates. It irritated the archivist when he’d stroll into the archive waxing on about a multi-track recording method, a singer’s peccadillos or launch into a lecture about song lyrics. At the last company meeting, the archivist noticed the new guy had an eye tremor before rattling off the gist of an obscure Chicago blues documentary or Delta slide guitar style. The archivist noticed the youngster’s effort to impress others with sidebars lifted from books sleeves and conversations. Once alone in the archiving room, he felt embarrassed. Not for the new guy but for the young guy he was who also did the same chirping concert dates and liner notes at parties. To have spent so much time preoccupied impressing strangers rather than feeling the warm afternoon sun on his face, sip a glass of wine and be free from the weight of opinions.


That night, he pulled out a box of 78 records and sat snuggly close to the record player. One after the other, he listened to each side and every note. He closed his eyes and drifted on arpeggios from accordions, dulcimers, violins and fell into a deep sleep. He awoke in a watermelon field and it felt like a fiery summer and his clothes were covered in fine dust. A man standing on a flatbed truck glared at him and screeched an order. The archivist was dizzy from the heat. His heart raced. He needed… water!

“¡Agua! ¡Agua!” scraped up from his throat.

He thought of cracking open a watermelon and rolled the closest melon to his lap, then lifted it to his waist. A hand jerked his belt and tipped him over. The fruit fell and rolled to a stop beside him.

“¿Que haces? ¡Te cobran la sandia!” A whisper scolded him. 

A short man handed him a metal canteen. His heartbeat and breathing calmed.

“Where am I?” He asked the short man.

“Well, let me put it this way. You’re Emperor Moctezuma out for a walk.” The short man chuckled. “Sit, the sun can make you imagine things.” The short man waved a signal to the truck driver whose face contorted then punched a frustrated uppercut.

The archivist squinted into the distance. Work songs from the crew rose on the heat haze. He wiped a dam of sweat from his eyes then braced to ease up to his knees and slowly got on his feet. 

“¿Que haces? Wait! You’ll…!” The short man snapped.

The short man saw his legs buckled and feet shuffle a puff of red clay. The archivist felt the crimson sun on his cheeks. A faint smile glimmered across his face as he fainted into a knot of watermelon vines. The watermelon patch faded.


Even though it had been a week since he dreamt the field and he could still feel the searing thirst. It was late afternoon when he paused to follow a sliver of sunlight inching across the wall. The beam stretched into the recesses of the room. Cracked glass from a picture frame reflected a rainbow across the room on a picture collage. The archivist walked over and stood at the collage for a moment. There were photos of buildings, storefronts, kids playing and in the last photo, a man smiled coyly. 

He had unbuckled his belt in the restroom when a memory flashed. In seconds, the archivist huffed at the collage, “It’s him!” It was the short man from his dream! But how? Scribbled on the photo was a year and two faded words: “1942.” He found the archive box where it had been stored. There were receipts, expense lists and invoices. In a large envelope, he found someone’s personal collection of Polaroid’s and negatives. In other photos the short man crooned into a microphone while someone adjusted soundboard levels behind him. He founds photos of the short man playing the accordion and recording in a kitchen. Photos of the short man smiling along with two men while a worker loaded sound equipment behind them. Bold white lettering on the truck door read, “Discos Ideal.”

Was it really him?! 

But how? 

It was! 

He knew it! 

There was Armando and Paco and Beto! 

He had to step out for air. From the door, the archivist drank water and scanned the sparse tree canopy that protruded from slim yard pads that hugged bungalow homes. He stepped back inside, washed his cup and dried his hands by running them through his hair. It was mid afternoon and he decided to call it a day. He had the feeling someone was watching him and couldn’t help glancing at the picture from time to time. 

Once home, the archivist made tea and sat in his living room. A pocket radio on the kitchen counter rattled the news. He put the cup on a side table, reached for records and thought of Carmen. He found an empty record cover but couldn’t remember where he left the record. On the cover, a concert photo of Carmen on the sleeve caught his eye. With a puff, he opened the sleeve and found a blue paper inside. It looked new. He placed it on the table. News rattled in from the kitchen. He sipped warm tea then opened the note, it read: 

Gracias por el apoyo. 

¡Nos vemos en San Antonio! 

-Siempre, Carmen

The curl of the C was like the one the tape box! How could he not have seen the note before? He slid the note into the sleeve and placed the cover on the record stack. Finding the note filled him with wonder. It was nearing sunset and he decided to take a walk. The faces in the picture frame flashed in his memory as he moved along the sidewalk. Across the street, teenagers roared with guffaws, smiling and hugging each other at times. Their joy felt familiar. Dusk fell with a warm breeze just as he made it back home. In the kitchen, he remembered the note while washing the teacup and decided to the see Carmen’s writing one more time. He dried the cup. Why did the note say San Antonio? Could that concert have been the reason why the men were loading equipment in the photo? He picked up the sleeve and with a quick puff parted the sleeve. He reached in and unfolded the note. It was folded differently and had a hint of perfume. He read the note, paused and looked out the window bewildered. It read:

Saludos amigo, Gracias por el apoyo

¡Nos vemos en Laredo!

–Siempre, Carmen

The archivist examined the cover for other notes. Nothing. He examined the outside of the sleeve along the edges just in case any notes were glued behind the paperboard. Nothing. Maybe the photo paper wasn’t glued right? Nothing.

That night he flipped through an atlas for a map of Texas and traced the path from San Antonio to Laredo. Concert tour dates on the cover listed San Antonio and Laredo. He grabbed a pen and ripped a page from a notebook. After San Antonio, a recording was scheduled at a dance hall in Laredo. Jokingly, he took a piece of paper and wrote: 

Gracias por el disco, soy técnico de sonido

Let me know if you need help in Mcallen –A


Had anyone caught him placing the note inside, he would have blushed. The note slid into the LP cover followed by a long sigh. A talk show crackled in the kitchen. A lone bulb lit the back of the living room in the evening. He lifted his feet onto a small footstool and dozed off.

A booming thump on his door jolted him awake. Was it morning already? Had someone dropped a refrigerator on his door? He opened the door and looked down the hallway but didn’t see anyone. Laughter from people walking along the avenue filtered through the old windows. He poured some water and looked across the counter. 

“The note,” he thought and paused in the narrow hallway to consider whether he ought to give in to childish curiosity and pull the note from the sleeve for some cosmic message. Just then, someone walked into the building and the heavy metal gate slammed with the usual clang. It was settled. He’d wait until morning to check the note. That night, the archivist sat in bed thinking about the concert tour, Carmen, and the strange knock on the door. So many thoughts whirled that he didn’t notice when he fell asleep.

Air streaming in between the window gaps chilled the room in the morning. The archivist eased out of bed and warmed yesterday’s coffee on the compact stove. The cup warmed his fingers. What about the note? He brushed away the idea of checking the note when he checked the time. He got ready for work instead and decided to bring some of his records to the archive. There were times between reels that he was able to look up details on LP’s in the vast archive. The train ride was uneventful as usual. Once at the archive he began by sorting and inspecting reels. It was almost noon when the intercom rang. Dion asked if he would join the office staff for lunch. Without pausing, he said he was in mid reel. Dion responded with a twanged “OK” before clicking off the line. 

While rewinding a reel, the archivist puttered about the room counted magazines, inspected a photo hanging over a door, meandered to a cassette station and skimmed a recording log. Nothing on the charts stood out. He reached for the LP carrier and found the sleeve from last night. He paused when the archiving machine clicked and tape flicked round and round. He placed the cover on the desk and turned the knob to “Standby.” He stood up to shuffle through the archive box. There were faded invoices, studio musician lists and receipts. Inside a folder, pinned between receipts, he found a blue note. It was like the blue paper from last night. It was a list of names. All were familiar except for one, “Archy? Was it the comic? Was there someone on the crew named Archibaldo? 

“Now that’s a real name,” he thought.

On the train home, he thought of the picture, the blue note and… the LP sleeve was on the desk! Once at home, the note was nowhere to be found. He made tea and retraced every step. Nothing. Before sunset, he crossed the avenue to walk along the lake. It felt familiar to let his shoes sink into the soft ground under the grass. Seabirds rested on scraggly roosting islands far from barreling joggers and an occasional inebriated stumbler. A heron’s marble eye burned an amber filament as it tracked him from atop a whirring power box. Warm evening gusts jostled Live Oaks. A beehive tucked in the eave of a municipal building buzzed faintly as he listened to the water lap against the rocky shore before going home.

Soon, he stood in the narrow kitchen, the pocket radio crackled Santo and Johnny. He wrapped himself in a blanket to muse over Carmen and didn’t notice when he fell fast asleep. A loud thump roused him to his feet.

“Its that thump again,” He thought, rubbing his eyes, stumbling to the door. This time he was going to catch whoever it was! He felt warm air around him and he dropped the blanket. He opened his eyes and someone thumping from inside a truck cab. Was it Paco? It was late afternoon and he stood on the back of a loading truck. Three men were also loading speaker cabinets onto the truck. They motioned for him to place them up near the cab.

“¡Sonríe!” a woman exclaimed then a flash bulb lit the back of the truck and he was able to see into the truck. There were chrome microphones and a box of record cutting needles. 

“Put the wires ON that cabinet,” a muffled voice yelled through the cab window, startling him. 

“Arriba!” An arm mimed a flustered motion from inside the cab.

The men stood at the foot of the truck, looking at him. 

“Pues, en que trabajas que no sabes subir cabinetes?” One man asked jokingly.

The archivist looked down at the tangled wires.

“Soy archivista,” he said while winding a long cable.

“No te canses, hay mas que subir,” another man joked and surprised him with a firm pat on the back that made him stumble forward. 

“¡Ay, que este archivista!” 

He helped the three men load the last of the sound equipment then impressed them by winding the cables between his elbow and left purlicue paying close attention to direction the wire twisted.

“You’re a magician! The recording from Laredo is impeccable. Thanks for your help.” Armando dug into his pocket for truck keys. 

“We’re cutting a full record tomorrow night. We’re lucky to have you around.” Armando said while jumping into the cab. The archivist saw him turn to Paco and say, “Carmen ya va en camino. Dijo que nos vemos con su tía.”

Armando fired up the truck, clicked a stubborn shifter into gear and heaved the machine onto the road. In the back of the truck, he improvised a snug bed of blankets. That afternoon, the truck glided along the Texas highway as the sky became a dazzling starlit panorama right before his eyes.
​

​1.
After her mother’s death, Dorota, nine years old, dreams of a dragon. Scintillating scales sway like an ash tree with glowing orange leaves. At the funeral she wears a short black dress covered in white dots reminding her she is only a white speck in the universe of the great dragon.

2.
Year after year she draws the creature’s leaf-like scales. Each pen stroke closes hollow spaces, trapping both her and the dragon in a shell of memories.

3.
Her mother’s ghost stands very still in the doorframe. Orange light ripples beneath her blue skin. “Turn off the light,” her ghost-mother says.

4.
Eighteen now, Dorota sits against the wall of her bedroom, opposite the hanging round lantern with the broken bulb. Her moleskin journal rests on the floor. She opens it and begins to draw, using the nightlight her mother Eleadora gave her.

5.
Eleadora’s ghost accompanies Dorota to the tea garden in San Jose. They ride the train around the storybook maze. Dorota knows if she tries to touch her shimmering form Eleadora will leap off the train. Eleadora points out the strangers:
“You see that old man. He has the flat face of a dog with no snout. You see that boy on the bridge staring at koi? His profile resembles a fish and his arms are short like fins.” She points out fairytales too. “This one’s a rabbit. That one’s an aardvark. She’s cake frosting. Let’s go eat cake.”
And so Dorota does.

6.
Dorota is biracial. Her white father, James, knocks on the bedroom door, asks about her boyfriend.
She wants to tell him that her boyfriend Albert is like a moon. Grey. Lost. A distant dead planet. A piece of rock that wants to found. Albert hovers in the candy dish of her solar system.
Her father stands in the doorway where Eleadora also hovers. “Why were you in the city?” he asks.
“To draw and read.” Dorota knows he just wants to be a part of her life. She tells him about an orange-and-yellow skirt she saw in a downtown window. She doesn’t really want it.
Her father slips a letter out of his back pocket. “I’ve been holding onto this for nine years,” he says.
It’s been nine years since her mother died.
Nine years since she was nine years old.
He sets the letter on her desk. The paper glows muddy grey in the dark.

7.
Albert holds a photo of Joanna he’s been carrying for several weeks. He tucks it in Jeet Thayil’sNarcopolis, his favorite book. He read Dorota the prologue, “Something For The Mouth,” over and over.

8.
Dorota tries not to get jealous of Joanna. It isn’t like Albert knows her. Dorota thinks he’s put Joanna onto some phantasmal pedestal where Dorota will never be unless she becomes a missing fantasy too.

9.
Albert found the photo of the missing woman nailed to a lamppost in the Mission District. Now he carries Joanna everywhere. Her narrow black face shines at them.
Dorota wants to hold the photo.
She can’t bring herself to beg, let alone pry the photo from Albert’s fingers. She knows she can. When they have sex she doesn’t mind his effete thrusts.

10.
Dorota asks, “Do you think you know where Joanna is?”
Albert sips bourbon. He turns the glass as if he doesn’t want to drink from the same rim twice.
            Dorota thinks about how always she acts like such a little girl around her father. She’s sick of herself, sick of home, sick of her mother’s ghost following her around yet not wanting to be touched.
By the time Dorota is aware, the bartender is climbing on a chair, reaching for the lower lip of a mounted moose head, shot in 1897 by a hunter named Robert Smith Heffernan, whose own black-and-white photo is less life-like than the head of this creature.
The bartender is being directed by Albert, who points upward.
“The mouth!” Albert’s voice is shrill, audible. “There’s something in the mouth!”

11.
The bartender is beautiful in the red light, eyes like dark stars, neutrons sucking in the light. Dorota is glad the bartender hasn’t fallen as she reaches in the taxidermal mouth, pulling out a white slip of paper.
Albert explains they’re on the trail of a missing woman named Joanna. He shows the bartender the photo from the lamppost. Has she seen her? Maybe she’s a regular customer?
A hint of light flicks in the bartender’s eyes. “No.” She shakes her head. “Is this a game?

12.
Dorota isn’t about to give up. “I’m down for Z & Y if you tell me what that was all about back there.”
“We just ate,” Albert says. “It’s a note.”
“I can see that. From who?”
“Okay. Let’s get to BART,” Albert says. “I’m freezing.”
Dorota uses a felt pen she keeps in her purse to sketch his silhouette in the alley, face half-lit, long puddles stretching around his feet. She pays close attention to his hunched shoulders. She draws a line of continuation up to the corner of a fire escape where plants drip water from the recent rain. Then she follows the line to reflections of walls, windows and neon, blurring the thin layer of oily water. Finally, she draws a sheet hanging wet from rain along with graffiti markings on the wall: KULTURKAMF and PARADISE NOW.

13.
A dragon towers in the alley, pulsating, lit from inside, a giant lantern of scales.
Dorota imagines the beast and considers going back home. Her father wanted to talk about the letter. She’s not ready to confront the blood on the page.
“What are you doing?” Albert asks.
“I told you,” she says, drawing again. “I’m chronicling your mystery.” She knows he’s just another set of abstractions. She can draw that.

14.
“The Geheimnisse,” Albert’s muffled voice echoes through his gas mask.
Dorota has seen the stencil lining walls in both the Oakland and San Francisco Chinatowns. She first saw it near the side entrance to the Furnace of Beautiful Writing. She likes to read there because so many books have been incinerated in its oven.

15.
Albert babbles about the experiment in the tower, the threat of implants, Kulturkamf. Mysterious calls at coffeehouse phone booths. She picks up a French novel about memory and wonders if a copy had ever been burned here.

16.
The day they bought the gas masks they watched experiments with sound through oscillators. Sound-field characteristic studies, chaotic oscillators, sound-bending, embeddable tech implants. Sound benders and biohackers showed off their scars, using their implants to make digitized sound react to gyrating around wildly like some kind of fucked up cyber-ravers. Every smart phone went crazy. In the middle of it was Professor Piot. He said the Geheimnisse was something tangible. Dorota half expected Eleadora to appear.

17.
Albert is an apologetic bug in his gas mask. Dorota’s headlamp lights up a wall. Around her feet an inch of water trickles past. She thinks she sees a salamander or a frog. Its body is dragon-like, flaming. She’s far in the tunnel, having squeezed through the grate on the side of a hill mostly covered with pine trees at an abandoned water station. She studies the creature, draws gestures of it in her journal.

18.
Q & A with Professor Rudolph Piot. Interviewed by Marion Little for Health & Rumor Magazine, Oct. 13, 2027.

Health & Rumor: You’ve launched an experimental course. You’re calling it Sessions in Augmented Reality: Blending Realism & Fantasy. There are no course materials. Is this class a sort of game?

Piot: I don’t call education a game. Not at all. One of our national leaders recently said, “Life as you know it on Earth is at risk.” I think we all feel this fear in some way. What happens if we’re forced to go out into the world and confront contextual boundaries? What happens when we learn from society by putting our hands in the fire? People slip into augmented realities every day, aware that fiction and fantasy are already a part of their communication.”

Health & Rumor: Do you worry about your students?

Piot: That they would discover the truth? The people participating suggest there’s a reality that is more than convincing than everyday life. They’d rather be led down a rabbit hole than into a NIKE store. Is that bad? Just because some of the people searching for answers are connected to me through the university doesn’t mean there isn’t validity to what’s happening.

Health & Rumor: What is the Geheimnisse?

Piot: Quite literally it means “secrets.” Layers upon layers of realities are being peeled away by some of the most brilliant young minds of the city.

19.
Sirens race the paved hills as Dorota pins a drawing to a bulletin board with a grey tack. There’s no telling which street they’re wailing their shrill songs. She inspects the spaces between buildings. Could there be winged creatures atop Coit Tower? She imagines beautiful women luring ships from the deep black Pacific while at the same time warning of fatal lethargy.
Dorota has drawn the man with an African accent they saw on BART surrounded by passengers in masks and gloves. He’s pleading. Crying. His child is crying too, begging for daddy to make all the people stop looking at her.
“Will you all please stop this madness,” he cries.  
Dorota wants everyone to see the drawing, to know the panic on the faces of the transit passengers. She licks the wetness from her bottom lip as if frozen by the ghostly presence of Eleadora running her blue fingers along the sheets.

20.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- A hoax story about San Francisco State professor Rudolph Piot dying in a Bay Area tunnel on Saturday has duped internet users, city officials, and media sites who reported on the professor’s death.
A group of urban explorers alleged that Professor Piot was found dead in a storm drain tunnel made popular by the Suicide Club in the 1970s.
San Francisco police officials cite a popular augmented reality game as the culprit.
“We are certainly not aware of anyone dying in a tunnel,” said Officer Donny Youngfellow. “But there are Hispanic gangs we’re clamping down on this moment spreading disease and lies among Californians. Not only them. Immigrants are swarming the tops of Amtraks in the middle of the night, clinging to trains flying eighty-five miles per hour, trying to escape San Diego up the Pacific coast.”
Officials claim the professor was found grading exams at his home in Oakland.

21.
Dorota thinks of her drawings now pinned to a downtown San Francisco bulletin board. Will rain disintegrate the paper? Wash away the colors? She wonders if this is Joanna’s fate. Will she altogether disappear from both present and past?
“The note says to go to the tunnel again,” Albert says over dinner.
Dorota drops her spoon, pushes the bowl away. She thinks of the letter again, wonders if Eleadora will crawl from it, pale and blue, heaving herself solid into this world, like some kind of hybrid from the experimental meat farms.

22.
The smell of burnt fish crashes into Dorota’s nostrils. Charred remains coat the sink. Eleadora could cook fish, unlike her father who burns it every time.
Dorota remembers the mouthwatering kind of tilapia tacos that filled her with love and energy before she scooted out the door to school as a child.

23.
Dorota wonders if she will ever see dragon fire emanate from the mouth of her ghost-mother.
She hasn’t gone to her college classes the past two days. It’s all about Joanne. Everything. Even sex with Albert has somehow been about the missing girl. His thrusts have become harder as if Joanne is in her, as if he’s trying to break down the barrier between them.
Dorota darts past the kitchen into her room, afraid that reality is something even darker than Albert’s game. She pulls the dress straight over her head, tosses it to the floor. A bright white knee-length dress with purple orchid print lies on her bed. It’s not the one she told her father about but she puts it on anyway.
Why do mothers die so young? To leave behind stubborn girls who take themselves to the brink of hopelessness just to spite them?
Opening a blank page, the whiteness is like an opaque scale. Realizing she lives inside the Furnace of Beautiful Writing she wonders if all her journals will burn.
The comforter bunches between her fingers like some kind of skin, some kind of paper that’s been placed inside the incinerator.
Has she been a ghost herself for nine years?
Somewhere in the room is the dried eye of the fish.
There is no dragon here. Only the scent of the dead as she waits for her mother’s blue skin to appear in the doorway.

​Excerpt with illustrations from the 2018 new edition of 
Smoking Mirror Blues

By Ernest Hogan

​"Oh, Caldonia, look over there!  Such a cute guy!" said Phoebe.
It was Tezcatlipoca.
"Yeah, I guess he is."  Caldonia pouted.  "For a guy.  Chingow! Why do you always want to talk about guys?  I'm certainly not in the mood for guys – not tonight!  I was hoping you wouldn't be either, especially after the way that xau-xau Beto treated you."
"Oh, Caldonia!"  Phoebe took her friend's hand.  "You know I love you.  I guess you're right.  That guy is probably xau-xau too. He even looks a little like Beto."
"Yuck!"
The two women kissed, and walked back to the scooter with their arms around each other.
                                                                                    *
The ghosts carried Xochitl through the streets of University City. Two figures in ragged costumes through which body armor could be seen carrying a kicking and screaming, nightgown-clad woman just wasn't anything unusual.
A lot of the National Autonomous University of Mexico students were getting into the Dead Daze phenomenon.  They were out in force in an array of bizarre costumes: jackal-headed cowboys, chicken-footed dancing devils, ambulatory mermaids, heroic masked wrestlers in artificial muscle suits, women with five serpent heads each, Aztec warriors in animal-head helmets, people of all ages and sexes in skirts that looked like they were made of living snakes, life-sized papier-mâché skeletons in all manner of attire, Art Deco robots, antique sci-fi space creatures, Hollywood horror apparitions and things spawned of unique imaginations.  It looked as if Hell and several Aztec heavens had broken loose.
It did make getting to wherever the ghosts wanted to take Xochitl difficult.  A crowd like a giant amoeba dancing to the frenetic beat of Xuxo Ben-Xuxa's "Macumba Mutation Mambo" flowed around them and pulled them against their path as it digested them.  When the ghosts tried to force their way against the flow, the members of the crowd reacted as if it was the latest type of roughhouse, martial-arts dancing.
The force of the "Macumba Mutation Mambo"-driven crowd was overwhelming.
                                                                                 *
Follow the group – the ones dressed like some kind of ghosts with robot-type paraphernalia underneath – you know, the ones carrying the girl who's doing a good job of acting like she's trying to get away from them.  There.  Good.  The big crowd collided with them.  Some bashada dancing has broken out.  Excellent!  I was hoping to catch some of that.  Bashada is very popular right now; could be a selling point for this mondomentary.  "Bashada on the Day of the Dead" – could make a good title.  Anyway, stay with the ghosts and the girl, and try to get some closeups – she doesn't have any underwear on and there may be the chance for some nudity, which always ups the salability.  Ah, yes, one of her breasts has popped out – be sure to get as close as you can, and in focus!  Oh, the ghosts have lost their grip and she's running away, out of the crowd.  How dramatic!  This will really be a hit at the Lasha Mondo Festival!
                                                                                 *
Tezcatlipoca was seeing and being seen as he strutted down Hollywood Boulevard.  He liked it.  It was overwhelming.  Now and then he had to check with the phone on his wrist to find out something that wasn't directly accessible through Beto's mind – all he had to do was look and his soul made the computer flash the desired information at the speed of light.
He soon felt that he should be doing more than just walking along as part of the parade.  He was a god – the Great Trickster who dared go beyond anything the ancient coyote god ever dreamed of.  He was new, now – not at the beginning of time!  He was young manhood riding at the peak of its powers on hormones and black magic.
His fingers tapped the teponaxtle, and the wooden drum with the strange electronic attachments made pleasing sounds.  His feet turned his strut into a dance.  Music – it was in him, and now he had to let it out: some wild, magical Tezcatlipoca/trickster music that would allow him to take this world for his own.
He walked out to the middle of the street that Beto's mind associated with vehicles that breathed poisonous fire, but that was now filled with pedestrians.  It seemed that the machines, automobiles, cars were destroying the very sky – how his brother Quetzalcoatl in his Ehécatl, God of the Winds, guise would have hated that! – so they weren't allowed in the heart of this city that spilled over the horizon.  He sat down, placed the teponaxtle down in front of him, realized that he had to turn it on and did so, took the sticks in hand and started beating out the feelings that were writhing around in his borrowed heart and computerized soul.
The electronic accent that the drum put on its wooden sound took a little getting used to, but as a trickster and wizard he was used to adjusting to new things.  Soon it became his new accent, the way Beto's voice became his voice.  His music became the music of this place  –  Hollywood, Los Angeles/El Lay, SoCal; a place with many names, names with many places.  It mixed with and infected the musics that other people carried with them.  All those marching, strolling feet began to dance to Tezcatlipoca's driving beat.
                                                                               *
Ralph didn't realize he was dreaming.  He thought he was still in the throws of insomnia, so he got up, and drifted toward his workstation.  Suddenly there was a frantic pounding on the front door, which burst open, revealing blinding, Phoenician mid-day sun, even though it was night inside, just like a Magritte painting.  Beto staggered through the door, his clothes were ripped to shreds, and his body was covered with black, swollen welts that gave off blue smoke.  He had something in his hands that he gave to Ralph, just before falling to the hardwood flood and disintegrating into a pile of black goo that gave off more blue smoke.  What he had handed to Ralph was a human heart that didn't have a speck of blood on it – yet it was still beating.  Ralph put it down next to his computer.  Blood-red wires wormed out of the heart's venal and arterial openings and, with crackling sparks on contact, worked their way into Ralph's computer.  The monitor flickered, then flashed with the detonation of a nuclear blast.
He whimpered as the image of a mushroom cloud the size of the Arizona sky filled his brain.
His wife, Norma, her blonde hair mussed from sleep, shook him awake.
"Wake up, dear," she said, "you're having a nightmare."
"I was dreaming about Beto," he said.
"It figures."  She smirked, and got that familiar look of disgust in her blue eyes.
                                                                               *

​"Oh look Caldonia," Phoebe said as the motorcycle came to a stop.  "That cute guy – the one that looks a little like Beto – he sat right down in the middle of the street and he's playing music.  Hey, I think Beto has a drum like that . . ."
"Don't be xau-xau, Phoebe.  He's just like all the rest, and you really don't want to pay any attention to him if he reminds you of Beto.  You should have some fun with me."
Phoebe squeezed Caldonia's hand.  "But I am having fun with you."
Caldonia pulled something out of one of her bandoliers and slipped it into Phoebe's hand.  "I mean have Fun with me, Phoebe-babe."
Phoebe looked at the stubby Fun stick in her hand.  "Oh!  Have Fun with you!  How sumato!  You mean right here on the street?"
"It's Dead Daze, we can get away with anything."  Caldonia put a Fun stick between her lips, flicked it on, and sucked it off.  Phoebe opened the mouth of her mask and did the same.
                                                                                  *
Hey!  Two girls sucking Fun at five o'clock!  Zoom in.  Good.  Our viewers love glimpses of blatant illegality.  Uh-oh.  Time for a station I.D.
(The Sumato Channel logo slides across the screen.)
                                                                                  *
"Oh!" said Phoebe.  "Feels so good and sumato!"
Caldonia smiled, put an arm around Phoebe, and grabbed one of her breasts.  "Now that we've had some Fun, maybe we can go back to my place and have fun."
                                                                                  *
You get the best Dead Daze coverage on the Sumato Channel, so stay tuned for more!
                                                                                  *

​"Oh look Caldonia," Phoebe said as the motorcycle came to a stop.  "That cute guy – the one that looks a little like Beto – he sat right down in the middle of the street and he's playing music.  Hey, I think Beto has a drum like that . . ."
"Don't be xau-xau, Phoebe.  He's just like all the rest, and you really don't want to pay any attention to him if he reminds you of Beto.  You should have some fun with me."
Phoebe squeezed Caldonia's hand.  "But I am having fun with you."
Caldonia pulled something out of one of her bandoliers and slipped it into Phoebe's hand.  "I mean have Fun with me, Phoebe-babe."
Phoebe looked at the stubby Fun stick in her hand.  "Oh!  Have Fun with you!  How sumato!  You mean right here on the street?"
"It's Dead Daze, we can get away with anything."  Caldonia put a Fun stick between her lips, flicked it on, and sucked it off.  Phoebe opened the mouth of her mask and did the same.
                                                                                    *
Hey!  Two girls sucking Fun at five o'clock!  Zoom in.  Good.  Our viewers love glimpses of blatant illegality.  Uh-oh.  Time for a station I.D.
(The Sumato Channel logo slides across the screen.)
                                                                                   *
"Oh!" said Phoebe.  "Feels so good and sumato!"
Caldonia smiled, put an arm around Phoebe, and grabbed one of her breasts.  "Now that we've had some Fun, maybe we can go back to my place and have fun."
                                                                                   *
You get the best Dead Daze coverage on the Sumato Channel, so stay tuned for more!
                                                                                   *

​Did you get that?  In closeup?  Great!  Of all the sumato luck!  I can't chingow believe this!  It's great!  We caught a SoCal citizen exercising his legal right to kill a certified gangster in self-defense!  Every network on the planet will want it!  We gotta move fast – plug into the mediasphere, let the world know what we got and start taking bids . . .
                                                                                  *
Tezcatlipoca licked the blood off the drumsticks and didn't flinch from the mild electric shock.  The crowd went wild.  Soon he was riding its many shoulders down Hollywood Boulevard.
                                                                                  *
Phoebe looked over at Tezcatlipoca riding the crowd.  "He sure is sumato, even if he does look like Beto," she said, then kissed Caldonia before she could react.
                                                                                  *
Eventually, Xochitl made her way to her father's house.
"My daughter," the bespectacled, grey-haired man asked, "what happened?"
"All Hell's breaking loose, Papa.  Evil spirits are coming to get me through my computer.  My work has gotten me into big trouble."
He looked confused.
"The god-simulating program, Papa."
He shook his head.  "I didn't think it was possible."
"It may not be – I haven't worked out all the details yet, but that doesn't seem to matter to all the crazy people in the world."
"Let me get you something to wear.  Sit down, my daughter."  He pointed her to a chair and walked over to the closet.
"No, Papa, I think I need to use your phone.  Who knows what they did to my place."
She punched in her number, then the code to play her messages, hoping to find a clue to what was going on.  The first few were of the "Miss Echaurren, we want to talk to you about the program you have been working on," variety; whoever wanted the program, they were willing to go to extremes to get it.  Then Beto's voice came in through some long distance static, singing, in English:
"Oh, Mama, can this really be the end?
to be stuck outside Tenochtitlán,
with the Tezcatlipoca blues, again!"
Then he switched to his heavily accented Spanish: 
"Well, maybe not the end, Xochitlita.  Maybe it's the beginning, a new beginning, far from Tenochtitlán, where we're going to be singing a brand new kind of Tezcatlipoca blues as soon as I run through the program of yours that I just had to make an unauthorized clone of.  Sorry I couldn't come out and ask you for it, baby, but you were being so xau-xau cautious, worrying about all those control elements.  You can't control gods, Xochitl; if you could, they wouldn't be gods.  Zero hour will be when Dead Daze kicks off.  I'll let you know what happens, or maybe the world will tell you first.  Later, baby."
Xochitl said, "Oh my God!" and didn't listen through the next three renditions of "Miss Echaurren, we want to talk to you about the program . . ."
                                                                                  *
Tezcatlipoca saw Phoebe in the distance.  Recognizing her caused a violent reaction in Beto's mind.  Beto was repulsed.  This interested Tezcatlipoca.  It was a chance to see who was the master here.
"That metal-faced woman!"  Tezcatlipoca pointed to Phoebe.  "I want her!"
                                                                                  *
Xochitl's father brought a large bathrobe.  "Here, my daughter, put this on."
She did.  Like a glass-eyed zombie.
"Could it possibly be that bad?" he asked.
"Worse than I thought.  Not only are some fanatics after the program, but that North American I met a few months ago, Beto . . ."
"The one from California."  He shook his head, sorrowfully.
"Yes, he's trying to use the program to evoke Tezcatlipoca.  And the version he cloned doesn't have any of my control elements."
"Why, if it works it could be a catastrophe."
"It may have already happened!"
"Well, don't worry, my daughter, you can stay here as long as you need to."
"Ay!  I can't do that!  I called my place on your phone!  They could have traced it!  They might be on their way here already!  How could I have been so stupid?"
He put his arms around her.  "So, where can you go to be safe, Xochitlita?  I'll do whatever I can to help you."
"Oh – I don't know.  There may not be any safe place."
"Then sit down.  Relax.  Think."  He led her back to the chair.
                                                                              *
Phoebe broke the kiss, and pushed Caldonia away.
"That cute guy," Phoebe said, "I think he means me."
She looked.  Tezcatlipoca was grinning at her.
"He does mean me!"  She pushed her way to him.
Caldonia growled.
                                                                              *
Xochitl jumped up.  "I've got to leave the country!  Now.  Tonight.  Can you lend me some clothes and money?"
"Of course, but the program, is it where the fanatics can get it?"

​She reached into the bodice of her nightgown.  "I hope it didn't fall out.  No, here it is.  I jammed it into a seam."  She pulled out an ant-sized nanochip.  "They saw me dressed like this and didn't think to search me – not very imaginative, I guess.  If they had just pointed their software sniffers at me . . ."
"I'll do what I can to help you.  Where do you think you should go?"
"Los Angeles."
He frowned.  "California?  Where that Beto fellow lives."
"I know, I know, it's crazy – almost as crazy as he is, but I have to.  And at least it will get me out of here, away from whoever it is that's after me, and allow me to stop him, or try to undo any damage he's done."

​Ernest Hogan, a six-foot tall Aztec leprechaun, was born in East L.A. and he grew up in West Covina, which he considered one of the most boring places in California. Monster movies, comic books, and science fiction, he says, saved his life. The author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter, he is considered the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, though there hasn’t been any kind of DNA test. His short fiction has appeared in Amazing Stories, Analog, Science Fiction Age, and many other publications. Recently discovered by academia, his “Chicanonautica Manifesto” appeared in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies.

Illustrations by Ernest Hogan