I heard the story of The Children of Llullaillaco, and the thousands that preceded and followed them. I wept for them, though it was hundreds of years ago, and I was angry for their bodies, kept from their families in life, in death, and hundreds of years after. But in between all that, I thought of their mothers.

The mother of El Niño, what she might have felt, when her baby was taken that day. She always knew he was beautiful, from the moment she held him in her arms, he was the most beautiful thing to her, and he would have been even if the elite declared him ugly. But they declared him beautiful. Was it because she looked at him like he was? If that was the reason, would she have taken it all back, treated him as a monster, if just to let him live?

They say that the families of the poor should have been honored, honored that their beautiful peasant children looked like they could be the children of kings, honored that their precious sons and daughters would be sacrificed, to save the true royal blood that graced the earth. How could you not be grateful, they said as they bound the children like slaves, that we get to kill your child?

The mother was not grateful. Another may have been able to lie to their children, to fake a smile until they were out of sight. He is just a child, just a baby, and she cries, she screams and fights even when they beat her into the ground. She knows she might not see tomorrow for her outburst, but she will not let her baby go, no, not without him knowing that this is wrong, that she didn’t want this, that he should have lived and been happy. She will take his place, she will carve out her own heart for the gods, place herself on the altar to appease the wealthy who crave the blood of her son.

El Niño cries, and in a moment, he is gone. His mother is not dead, not yet. But she wishes she was.

In five hundred years she will be called a barbarian by white men who steal from the grave of the child she lost. A woman who knows nothing will call herself El Niño’s protector and mother, and keep him from his true family.

The mother of Llullaillaco will find comfort will be knowing her son died knowing she loved him, and that knowledge made him fight, fight until his very last breath, even as the wealthy dug drugs between his lips and forced him to chew, even as they fed him meat so he felt like a king in those last moments, with the cold unforgiving mountain suffocating him, even with his mind swirling frantically, he knew he had to get back to his mother’s love, that she didn’t want this. He died knowing this was wrong.

There were other children, who died a little more peacefully, perhaps, and there were others who lived safe and sound. I imagine another mother of Llullaillaco, wrapping her arms tightly around her ugly, royal-born child, who would have been sacrificed if El Niño had been ugly too. She does not want to watch, but she does, as El Niño fights for his life, his ribs breaking against ropes that tie him down as he tries to get up.

She does not weep. She will not, until later, when her baby is asleep. She will cry and thank the gods for giving her this ugly child. And deep down, she will hate herself all the same. If ever there is a day her son grows, and is horrified by the altar and the blood on his mother’s hands and the drugs and the ropes, she will scream and beg his forgiveness, tell him she had no choice, that she was a monster, yes, she would be called a barbarian by the white men who dug up bones that didn’t belong to them, but she loved her son, loved him enough to kill another child if it meant keeping him safe.​

by David Estringel

It was 3:21 AM and the main corridor of the Letheville City Asylum’s east wing was silent save the random, faint clacking of an unseen computer keyboard coming from an open doorway behind the nurses’ station counter and the rhythmic ticking of the old, analog wall clock that faced it, which was securely tucked away behind an iron cage, constructed specifically to its dimensions. Slowly, a lone, tall figure in a white, slim-fitting lab coat—Joseph de los Santos, LCSW, the Director of Clinical Services—with a legal pad of the same color (maybe a shade or two duller) tucked securely under his left arm, made its way down to the isolation rooms; the hypnotic clacking of hard leather soles atop the terrazzo floor punctuating the air’s stillness. Loud pounding rolled and echoed down the hallway like distant thunder, increasing in volume and vibration as he approached the magnetic security doors that quivered at the violence contained behind them. He continued on without interruption in volition or gate, as the clamor (from isolation room #2 to be exact) summoned concerned looks from the mental health techs on duty and covert peeks of patients from behind the darkened cracks of numbered doors. Again, again, and again, the pounding continued, each strike more explosive than the next…until Joseph swiped his access card across the wall-mounted reader. Then, silence.
 
Looking through the observation window in the heavy, metal door, Joseph knocked three times, catching the attention of the mental health tech leaning against the wall inside, who kept watch. Tilting his head back in acknowledgment, he pushed himself to a standing position by pressing his back against the hard surface behind him. He was a bald man with a thick, muscular neck and a body to match. His height was average (at least half a foot shorter than Joseph) but seemed shorter due to his stout stature. Breaking the silence, one last pound sounded, seeming to shake the bolted pictures on the walls and the unit clock’s metal grill. “Hey, A.J., quiet night?” Joseph cracked, opening the door—a slight smirk beginning to curl at the right side of his mouth.
 
A.J. chuckled, rubbing his stubby fingers across the smoothness of his scalp. “Yeah, chief, real quiet. We’ve been counting sheep waiting for you to finally get here.” He lumbered over to Joseph, extending a fist bump in his direction in dire need of reciprocation. “Seriously, chief, tonight’s been off the hook! All kinds of crazy shit happening in the unit. All the units, really. And don’t even get me started on this guy,” A.J. confided. “If you have like an hour, I can give you the deets on what went down after you left earlier.” He let out an exaggerated exhale, rubbing his scalp, again, and shaking his head. “Yeah, really crazy shit.”
 
“Literally, I hear.” Joseph quipped. “I got report from the charge nurse when she called me in, and Dr. Sullivan touched base on the drive over.” Turning toward the observation window in door #2, he noticed dripping spit and smears of blood on the glass. “God, I hope that’s spit on that window.” Turning back to face A.J., he saw the tech’s eyes glued to the door over his shoulder, followed by a palpable wince that set Joseph’s eyes squinting.
 
“Yeah, I don’t like the odds on that, buddy.”
 
“Right. Well, how about you keep those ‘eagle eyes’ on me while I am in there, huh?”
 
Exasperated, Joseph approached the door, hearing errant stirs on the other side. A heavy quiet had settled in the air that somehow felt more unsettling than the commotion that heralded his arrival on the unit. Eyes fixed on the filthy, square-shaped glass, Joseph approached the isolation room door with key in hand. He unlocked the door, slowly opening it, preparing for the possibility of the patient’s mad dash for freedom. Sliding his thin frame through the open crack, he scanned the room, registering nothing in his line of sight except a sheetless, plastic-covered mattress on the floor and erratic flickers from the fluorescents overhead. The room was bare but crowded with the competing smells of fading antiseptic cleaner, body odor, and excrement. Hearing a shuffle to the left of him, Joseph turned his head and spied a slouched figure standing in the corner, staring at him, fixedly, through oily strands of black hair with even darker, piercing eyes that latched deeply into him like hooks. “Are you ready to die, Doc?” the soiled form asked in a guttural voice, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring.
 
“Not tonight,” Joseph answered, unflinchingly, closing the door behind him, “and I’m not a doctor, Dante. I’m a psychotherapist; there’s a difference. You keep calling that, and I always correct you.” Moving closer to Dante—just within arm’s length—Joseph observed him. He was unwashed and appeared to have been for some time (probably days), evidenced by his smell and the thin layer of grime that slicked over his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and starkly pronounced by the dark circles that had engulfed them. His face—oddly handsome in its own way—was angular, severe, and drawn. “I wasn’t summoned here in the middle of the night to have my life threatened, Dante. We’re better than that. Aren’t we?” There was no response. “Surely, there are better things you could be doing right now. Maybe, I don’t know…sleep?”
 
“Fuck sleep,” Dante said coldly, his eyes wildly darting up and down Joseph’s form, which stood at the ready before him, clipboard in his left hand and a click pen in his right, jotting down musings and fragments of the current moment.
 
“Essentially, I have; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” Joseph continued scribbling down notes, while talking to him, following the train of his own cognitions along blue lines across the page. “You have gone to great lengths to get our attention. So? We’re listening. What happened tonight? Everything was fine before dinner—or at least quiet—when I left.”
 
A brief period of silence passed. “I’m not getting a shot! The son-of-a-bitch that tries to stick me with that shit will be sorry! I mean it!”
 
Joseph’s hazel eyes, behind a pair of vintage black horn-rimmed glasses, stoically rose
from the surface of his notepad and met Dante’s. “You tore up your room, urinated on your mattress, bit a tech, and defecated in the hall outside your door,” he retorted. “You are getting a shot.” He quickly slid his notepad under his left armpit with a smooth twist of his wrist. “It is, however, up to you how much that process is going to hurt,” Joseph advised, clicking his pen the slipping it into the front breast pocket of his coat. “So, take a moment to check yourself, and don’t make matters worse for the staff…or you.” Or me, he thought to himself.
 
Dante fell silent, averting his eyes from Joseph’s, slowly sliding down the corner to the floor, cupping his sweaty face in his dirty hands. “Fuck sleep,” he sobbed, almost inaudibly, behind trembling fingers. Joseph was intrigued by the sudden shift in Dante’s mood, which was not at all out of character, but its acuity was, revealing a side of him that he had never experienced before.
 
Edging a little closer to Dante, Joseph squatted down before him, instantly struck by the overpowering stench of feces and urine that emanated from Dante’s ripped, paper scrubs. “I think that’s the problem, Dante,” he assured in a neutral tone. “Nursing says you haven’t slept in days. Four, I believe, and you’ve refused to take anything for it. You’re exhausted and things are feeling out of control right now. How could they not be? We can’t, however, help you if you don’t let us.”
 
“Fuck sleep…Fuck me,” Dante whimpered, curling himself up in a tight ball, disappearing into the safety of the darkness of the corner he occupied, finding comfort in the feel of hard, cold plaster against his shoulder and little anywhere else.
 
Joseph calmly observed the defeated heap before him with its back hunched, tangles of black clutched between whitened knuckles. Unsure if he was jolted more by the depth of anguish conveyed by Dante’s tears or persistent stench, Joseph leaned in. “What’s happening here, Dante? This isn’t you.” He waited for a response, but none came. Just sobbing. “Dante,” Joseph said softly, placing his right hand on Dante’s left shoulder, “talk to me.”
 
“Look!” Dante ordered, the dirtied fingers of his right hand swiftly wrapping themselves around Joseph’s wrist. “Don’t give me a shot, man! Don’t make me go to sleep. I’ll die if I go to sleep. I’ll die!” His dark eyes pleaded through the mass of oily curls that obscured his face; the blackness that surrounded them seemed to become more void in the isolation room’s pallid glow, made even more unnerving by the random flickers overhead.
 
Holding Dante’s gaze, Joseph coolly turned his wrist, which was constrained in the tightening grip, upward toward Dante’s fingertips and whipped it outward, stepping backward into a standing position. Looking down at his throbbing hand, he was overcome by the urge to rub it, but the soiled cuff of his white lab coat dictated otherwise. Pulling his notepad from under his left arm, Joseph inched toward the door, flipping and scanning pages. “It’s quite normal to lose control like this when you don’t have adequate sleep, you know. Further complicating matters, you haven’t been quite selective in terms of taking your meds, antipsychotics to be exact. Haven’t for a few days now,” he revealed, pulling his eyes from his notes, and catching Dante’s stare again. “I’m afraid Zyprexa only works if you take it.”
 
Dante turned away and stared at the floor, rapidly rocking back and forth and mumbling.
 
“Dante, if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.”
 
“You can’t help me,” Dante insisted, shaking his head, eyes fixed upon the floor beneath him. “No one can.” He looked back at Joseph, tears streaming down his unwashed cheeks. “I’m going to die here and you’re just going to let it happen.”
 
“Are you telling me that you plan on hurting yourself?” Joseph questioned, concernedly.
 
Dante’s sobs quickly turned to laughter, yet another unsettling shift that rested upon Joseph’s ears. “I am not going to do anything.” Using his arms to support himself, he positioned his back against his obscured corner of the room with his head tilted upwards, the angles of his face exposed as his hair fell backward, highlighted by the play of shadows around his angular features. He extended his legs outward, forming a V-shape, and with a calm voice stated, “I’m not going to do anything.”
 
“But someone else is?” Joseph inquired, not oblivious to the emphasis Dante placed on his previous statement. Dante’s voice was cold, as was the stare that disturbed the darkness of his corner of the room.
 
“Maybe.”
 
“Who then?” Joseph stared, quizzically, at Dante, trying to make sense of what he was saying, playing over previous sessions to find some semblance of sense. Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he began to nod. “Ah,” he ejaculated, “your demon.” Joseph brought his hands behind his back, their fingers clutching his notepad. “Tell me about…him…her…it?”
 
“You know. You know it’s a ‘her.’ I told you so. Many times.” Dante scoffed. “Man, I tell you shit, you write shit down in those fucking notes of yours, but you don’t fucking listen.”
 
“Dante…” Joseph began.
 
“No! You wouldn’t keep asking me this shit if you did!” Dante admonished. “If you did—I mean really did—you wouldn’t keep me trapped here.” Tears began to well in his eyes. “You’re just making it easier for…”
 
“Her.”
 
“No…them.”
 
Lifting his glasses from the bridge of his nose with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, Joseph rubbed the burn of the late hour from the inner corners of his eyes. “Okay, Dante, I feel a bit lost here,” he admitted, pulling his fingertips away, allowing his glasses to drop back down in place. “Them? Who is ‘them’? I thought it was a ‘her.’”
 
“There is a lot you don’t know. Huh, Doc?” he queried in a mocking tone, then after a brief silence, started to chuckle. “Then, again…there’s a lot you do…Huh, Doc?”
 
“Am I to assume that is what they are…she is…telling you?”
 
Slamming his palms on the floor, fingers digging into cold terrazzo, Dante leaned forward and growled, “I don’t need to be told anything.” His eyes glaring and then softening, he pulled himself back into his shadows. “I know things, too, Doc. Seen things. Things that’ll make even your shit turn white.”
 
“I don’t doubt it, Dante,” Joseph responded, volunteering a validating nod, “but I managed to make it out of grad school in one piece, so I’m fairly confident my ‘shit,’ as you say, will be fine.
 
Dante continued to stare at (maybe through) Joseph in complete silence, the slightest hint of a tune lingering around his lips.
 
“So, there is more than one thing now, one demon?” Joseph asked, as Dante chuckled. “So, you’ve been seeing more than one? Hearing them?” The chuckling continued. Sensing the beginnings of a fluster, Joseph gave his neck a slight pull to the left to give it a crack. “Have you heard or seen her recently?”
 
Dante smiled as if the corners of his mouth were being pulled to the back of his head, pushing what there was of his hollow cheeks upward, narrowing his eyes into blackened slits. “I always hear her, man...It’s always been her,” he admitted, his voice divulging hints of an unholy union of longing and fear.
 
“Do you hear her now?
 
Dante nodded with an unwavering stare.
 
Pulling his pen from his coat pocket, Joseph gave it a quick click, bringing his notepad to the ready in front of him. “What is she saying?”
 
“Nothing.”
 
Bemused, Joseph looked at Dante. “Nothing? Hmph. No news is good news, I suppose.”
 
“She isn’t saying anything,” Dante countered, as tears began to stream down his cheeks. “She’s humming…like shit’s gonna go down and she’s just gonna watch or something. I don’t like this, Doc. Hearing this isn’t good. It can’t be good!”
 
“Is that normal for her…you?” Joseph questioned.
 
“No, it’s not, I said! Man, this isn’t right. It’s not right!”
 
Lowering the tone of his voice, Joseph slowly assured, “You are safe, Dante. You are safe here. Alright? Just focus on me. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.” Joseph searched Dante’s eyes for a sign that his message hit home. Dante quickly nodded that he understood.
 
“Well, when was the last time she did talk to you?
 
“After bed check earlier tonight.” Dante wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his right hand, then ran its fingers backward through his dampened hair, revealing a pale face that seemed ravaged by fear and exhaustion. “Look,” he started, clearing his throat, “I’m good now. I’ll be good. Just no shot, okay?”
 
Joseph brought his pen to the breast pocket of his lab coat, giving it a solid click before it vanished. “I know you’re good, Dante, but that’s not up to me. In the doctor’s hands, you know? I’ll talk options with him, but I can’t make any promises,” he assured as Dante nodded, silently. “First, though, I would like for you to tell me what she said to you earlier to set you off.”
 
“She said…” Dante began, looking downward, wiping more tears from his eyes, “…if I sleep, I die. It’s the same. Every night.”
 
Looking at Dante directly, Joseph felt a softening in his chest. He had worked with the man suffering before him for months now and, while Dante’s moments of decompensation had always been challenging to manage, it was always clear that Dante was cognizant and hyperaware of the ever-shifting and terrifying world that was happening around him—one he could never seem to escape. No escape. “I see how this is affecting you, Dante. How scared you are. Believe me when I tell you that nothing is going to hurt you here. A.J. is literally on the other side of this door and can be in here in a second if you need him: he’ll be watching you every minute. I promise. I really do feel like things would be so much better for you if you could get some rest. Tomorrow can be completely different if you would just let us help you.”
 
“Man, you don’t get it! Nothing you guys do can keep them…she is always with me, you see, whether you or A.J. are here or not!”
 
Holding out his palms, Joseph stepped forward. “Alright. Alright. No one is trying to upset you here. Look, you have been with us for almost nine months, now. Your bipolar disorder was wildly uncontrolled when you got here and your psychosis quite acute. The voice you heard—I assume it’s the same one—convinced you your wife was trying to kill you, even convinced you to stop eating. Remember that?”
 
“She was trying to poison me! That shit was everywhere…in everything. My food. The coffee cups. Toothbrush. Everything was poisoned.”
 
“And this voice…she told you your wife was doing this?”
 
“To protect me.”
 
“Help me understand this,” Joseph insisted, scratching the top of his head. “This voice
threatens you every night, progressively making you more and more unstable, causing you to be restrained and locked up—here—in isolation, but she wants to protect you? I’m sorry, Dante, but that just doesn’t register.”
 
“Then, fuck you, Doc!”
 
“What I think,” Joseph started, inching his way to the door, “is that these thoughts of yours, these things you are hearing and seeing, have become too overwhelming for you, too much for one brain to handle. Now it’s hard for you to determine what is real and what isn’t—so much so that it’s too hard to keep things straight.”
 
Dante scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
 
“Explain it to me, then. Neither of us is going anywhere any time soon, so we have plenty of time to paint a picture here.” Joseph could feel himself becoming weary of the absurdities and contradictions laying out before him, noticing the smell of his sarcasm starting to compete with what Dante had to offer. Grounding himself, “What comes from holding onto this idea of a demon, Dante? How can something that wants to hurt you, hurt your wife, be good? How could it want to protect you at the same time? Do you see how that doesn’t—can’t—make sense?”
 
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Dante screamed, repeatedly slapping his palms against his ears. “God dammit! Shut up!”
 
Two knocks sounded from behind the door, as a head with a thick neck peered through the observation window. “Everything alright in there? Do I need to go in there?”
 
Dante stopped hitting himself, keeping his palms firmly pressed against his ears, seemingly to drown out something. “No, A.J., I think we are good here. We’ve just been talking, and things got intense, but they are good now. Nothing to see.” Turning to Dante, Joseph asked, “Right?” Silently, Dante nodded in acknowledgment.
 
“Alright…if you say so, chief. Sorry…psychotherapist…Kinda falls with a ‘thud’ on the ears, doesn’t it?” A.J. finished, disappearing from the square glass into a cloud of muffled laughter.
 
Addressing the window, Joseph humorlessly answered, “Thanks, A.J. We are good.” He turned to face Dante, a smirk already beginning to stretch across his face. “Keen timing, that one. Let me tell you.”
 
As a smirk started across his face, Joseph looked over at Dante, who was now, somehow, sitting upon the plastic-lined mattress on the other side of the room, his back to the wall, legs straight out, feet rolling outward and inward. His hair was pulled back, tucked behind his ears as if in a humble attempt at grooming. His face was emotionless like the hollowness of his eyes. His smirk dissipating, Joseph could hear the distant squeaking of metal-on-metal creep into the room, possibly from a passing medication cart in the main corridor, making its early morning rounds. “Sorry about that. He was just concerned, but I’m sure you can understand why.” Joseph approached Dante, feeling as if a shift had occurred in the room. Somewhere. Standing just a few feet from the long edge of the mattress, he continued, “What did you hear just now? What made you so upset?”
 
Dante leaned his head back onto the wall behind him and closed his eyes, bringing his hands up to his head then sliding them down his face, pressing his fingertips deeply into his flesh. “She’s still humming. She won’t stop.”
 
“Help me understand this, Dante. Why do you think she is doing this?” A sudden chill took over the air in the room, making its way through Joseph’s coat. Crossing his arms, he looked about for an offending air vent. Spotting it, he realized that he heard nothing to indicate that the HVAC was blowing.
 
“She’s angry that I am still here. We’re no good to each other here.”
 
“As opposed to out there?” Joseph pointed to the windowless wall to his right at the theoretical world outside. “We know what you have been capable of ‘out there.’ You hurt a lot of people, Dante, especially your wife, who—may I add—is lucky to be alive. I don’t think the city streets are quite ready for you yet.” Joseph scanned Dante’s face for any semblance of remorse (or even a reaction) but identified none. “Is that what you wanted, Dante? Want? What she wanted?”
 
“I told you,” Dante grumbled coldly, “that bitch was trying to kill me, so…I did what needed to be done. Would have ended things—right there and then—if the damned bitch hadn’t screamed so fucking loud.” A glint seemed to stir in his black eyes, as he cocked his head. “I just hate leaving a mess behind.” That painful grin now stretched, coldly, across his face.
 
Put off by his patient’s cavalier attitude, Joseph, rubbing his arms with his crossed hands, admonished, “Is that so? Well, it appears you have no idea what a favor she did for you—the both of you. If things hadn’t worked out the way they did, you would be in jail right now, not in here. If you ask me, the chances of getting out of here are far, far better. That won’t happen, however, if you don’t get better.”
 
“I didn’t ask…Doc.” Dante’s smile had disappeared. “We need to be out of here, now. I can’t be who I am supposed to be locked up in here with your useless doctors and useless talk that change absolutely…fucking…nothing!” The hollowness of his eyes had returned.
 
“And what is it, exactly, that you are supposed to be?”
 
Dante jutted his chin outward toward Joseph. “Check your papers. I’m not repeating myself, man. You are wasting…my…time.”
 
“Humor me,” Joseph challenged, digging his heels into the floor.
 
“A brujo, man. I’m a brujo,” Dante bragged, extending his arms outward, “a witch of the likes you’ve never seen.”
 
“And she’s…”
 
“Mine.”
 
Joseph walked toward Dante, stopping a few feet from the mattress’ edge, squatting down, and resting his arms on his knees. “So,” he started, “we’re back talking about this?” Nodding, he brought his fingers up to his chin and gave it a rub. “I must admit, I didn’t see that one coming.”
 
“Well, you know,” Dante leaned inward as if to say something in confidence, “I hear that, after so many years, you people—therapists and the like—start to lose your touch. You know… apathy…fatigue…bitterness. That final realization that no one cares that you are a martyr because no one fucking asked you to be in the first place.” Dante tilted his head to the left, bringing his right index finger upward, pressing it into his cheek, adopting a pensive yet mocking expression. “I believe they call it ‘provider decay.’” Straightening his head and leaning further forward, he warned, “No coming back from that, I am afraid. Guess your kudos will have to wait for the afterlife.” Dante slinked backward toward the wall, not releasing his gaze from Joseph’s, the tip of his tongue clamped between his front teeth.
 
“Really now?”
 
“Yes, asshole. Crack a fucking book.”
 
Joseph’s eyes scanned Dante’s form, noticing a rigidness had set in that was not there before, as if he were ready to pounce at any moment. He chuckled, “You know, I do remember you talking about your being a witch, Dante. You have talked about a lot of things since you have been here but, frankly, not all of them have stuck.” He turned and walked toward the door, waiting for a response, but he got none. “But the subject has come up again, so let’s discuss. Shall we?” Turning around to face him, Joseph saw Dante lying flat on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. “What does she have to do with it?”
 
Dante turned his head toward Joseph and yawned, rolling his eyes. “Power, man. It’s all about power. Power to do what you want. Power to get what you need…Power to break out of the fucked-up script that was written for each of us by a fucked-up God that has no alternate ending.” Dante licked his lips, raising himself on his elbows. “I make her happy…she makes me happy: that’s the deal.” He lowered himself, again, resuming his vigil of 12x12 inch ceiling tiles—a tear rolling down his left temple.
 
“Alright. I can understand how being here for so long can make you feel like you are powerless. I get it, but you have more control than you think or even know. Not the kind, however, that you have been exerting as of late, tonight.  That tack will just result in you being here—in a room like this one—having discussions you don’t want to have like this one with me.” Joseph moved toward the door, then leaned back against it. “I do need you to remember, though, that all of us are here to help you, regardless of what you feel, see, hear…or think about the efficacy of the treatment you receive here.”
 
“I need to get out of here! None of you can do shit for me!”
 
“And I’m telling you that you can’t look down your nose at the treatment you receive here if you cheek most of the meds we give you and hide them in your shoes.” Dante glared at him, hostilely, with a clenching in his jaw that transformed, slowly, into a knowing glance, which Joseph returned. “So, I have asked you this before and you never really given me a clear answer: Why don’t you use these powers you say you have to get out of here? I assume your demon has them as well, or you get them from her. Why doesn’t she set you free?” The squeaking of metal wheels reached Joseph’s ears again, disturbing the tension in the air that had filled the room.
 
A cold silence fell. “We are not here to dance for you. You are nobody to challenge us like that. I will leave here when the time is right, and she will pave the way; I just have to bide my time, that’s all. But, when the time comes, it won’t be nice, and it won’t be tidy like you all want…You’ll see.”
 
“You keep saying ‘she.’ Does this ‘she’ have a name? Surely, you have to call her something.”
 
“Nothing you need to know,” Dante countered, fingering a rough patch of paint on the plastered wall. After a few seconds, he turned to face Joseph with a look of resolve on his face. “but I will tell you.”
 
“That’s very forthcoming of you, Dante, and a bit curious. Why now after all this time?”
 
Dante, starting to grin, revealed, “Because she will be leaving soon.”
 
“And you with her, I assume.”
 
Dante sat up on the mattress, staring at his feet that were rolling inward and outward. “No, no…I’m needed here…for a little while longer at least…Things are just starting to get…interesting.”
 
“Seems curious that this demon of yours would just up and leave you just like that. That’s strange, no? I mean, you make your relationship with her sound so…intimate.”
 
Pulling his attention away from his feet, Dante turned to face Joseph. “I’m not going to be alone, Doc,” he stated, shaking his head. “No…no.” Dante turned back to his feet, nodding and biting his lower lip. “Nope. Don’t you worry…about that.”
 
A sense of discomfort sunk into Joseph’s stomach, hearing those words come from Dante’s mouth. While there was very little that was appropriate in what Dante had to say up to that point, there had been few times with Dante—or any other patient, really—where he had sensed a threat to his own safety. Yes, he had been verbally and physically threatened before, but this was the first time he had ever entertained the idea—even though for just a split second—that he might not be able to handle it. “And her name?”
 
“Six.”
 
“Six? Six. That is a very unusual name. Thanks for sharing that with me. We both know you didn’t have to…So, Six is going and something else will be taking her place?”
 
Shaking his head, Dante answered, “No. She is just stepping back for a while.”
 
“What for?” Joseph asked.
 
“Someone has business here and they are eager to be done with it.” Dante pulled his head to the left, peering over his shoulder, seeming lost in thought. “He’s been a long time coming, actually, from what I hear…Elusive like quicksilver,” Dante raised his palms up into the air and wiggled his fingers, “through your fingers…Tricky. Tricky. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick.”
 
Unsure of what he had just witnessed, Joseph squinted as if that action alone would clear his mind of the motley questions flying around in the dark. “So, it’s a ‘he’ then. At least we know that…What is he called?” he asked, stoically.
 
Dante just laughed, rolling his eyes back in delight. “Why don’t you tell me, Doc?”
 
Joseph crossed his arms, legs slightly apart and firmly planted, letting out a small chuckle. “There is nothing to tell, sir. There are no demons, Dante. No witches. No conspiracies. Certainly, no games. Not in this mind.”
 
Dante sat, erectly, then swung his legs around over the edge of the mattress and faced
Joseph. He opened his mouth to speak but found himself unable to form words. He felt the icy trailing of what felt like razor blades sliding up both sides of his back, then crawling over his shoulders, stopping at his chest, where stabbing sensations dug their way into his skin. Despite the frigid grasp that had taken over him, he felt an intense heat at the back of his neck, as he heard a voice whispering into his ear from behind. He smelled a stink of death and rotting meat that seemed to cut its way through the room like a hot blade. Dante’s eyes seized with terror but found the will to cast them Joseph’s way in a silent plea; his voice still failing him.
 
“Dante? You okay?” Joseph asked, moving closer. “What’s happening? Talk to me.”
 
Dante, staring wide-eyed, slowly turned, again, to his left but never lost sight of Joseph. He began to nod, mustering up a “Yes” just under his breath, then nothing else. Dante remained silent, never pulling his eyes from Joseph; however, his thoughts appeared to be elsewhere. For a few minutes more, the two occupied the vacuum in the room, until…
 
“Well, it looks like you are done talking, Dante, so we will wrap this up for now.” Joseph slowly stepped backward toward the door. “I’ll talk to the doctor about your shot. I don’t think chemical restraint is what you need right now, but you do need an emergency dose of your scheduled antipsychotic; it’s what you normally take by mouth, so don’t worry about that. Okay?” Just as Joseph turned to go for the door handle, he saw Dante sneeze. “Bless you,” he said.
 
Dante closed his eyes, which were tearing now. “Can’t you hear him whispering?” he asked. “He’s behind me, just whispering…whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering.” Intermittently, his eyes would veer off to the left—a smile starting to slowly creep across his cheeks.
 
Intrigued, Joseph pulled his hand away from the door handle, then brushed his right index finger across his nostrils to address a nagging itch. “Excuse me?” he questioned.
 
The smile continued to grow.
 
“No, Dante. Like I said before, I don’t hear anything. You are hearing these whispers, now?” Joseph inquired but with no response, as Dante turned, again, to his left and began to nod. “Alright then. I am going to leave now. The nurses will be here in a second with your injection. Just take it and don’t fight them, okay? We will talk more later today.” Joseph grabbed the door handle and gave the window three taps with the knuckle of his right index finger, nodding to A.J. to open the door, so he could leave.
 
“Before I can tell you what he said?” Dante suddenly teased. “What fun is that? We need to make sure your trip down here was worth your while. Come,” he insisted, extending his left arm, rapidly curling his fingers inward. “Surely, you have time to humor a patient, just this once.”
 
Motioning to A.J. to hold off on opening the door, Joseph stepped forward. The air seemed to disappear, as the leering figure before him continued to beckon and smile. “I really think we are done here, Dante. We’ll talk later.”
 
“No!” Dante bellowed. “Time for you to listen,” he managed to say calmly, recomposing himself.
 
“Just for a bit. Then, you can go.” He motioned, again, for Joseph to come closer.
 
“I’m fine here, actually,” Joseph assured. “So…talk.”
 
“Not one for foreplay, are you?” Dante reproached, goadingly clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “All work and no play…Fine. Have it your way.”
 
“And?”
 
“Well, for starters, it is quite disappointing to see how you’ve ended up,” Dante declared, looking Joseph up and down. “So much promise, such a fine mind, and all those…gifts: all wasted in a place like this, day in, day out. I mean, you’re at what, twelve…fourteen hours a day? Here? What are you avoiding, Joseph? What are you running from?” Dante began to laugh a laugh that was distinctively different than before—one that was much deeper, more spiteful. “Such the hypocrite. I mean, really, Doctor…heal thyself.”
 
Exasperated, hands on his hips, Joseph shook his head. “I think that’s enough, Dante. Verbal abuse is not on the menu tonight, especially from someone who can’t seem to remember their toileting skills.” Too far. Recollecting himself, Joseph knew he had overstepped a boundary.
 
Dante laughed even harder than before. “Now, now…professionalism feeling a little tight in the crotch, is it? No matter. It’s doing me a world of good to finally see a crack in that austere veneer of yours. There’s always a chink in the armor. Isn’t there?” The two stared at each other, motionless and silent. “Shame on me. I’m losing sight of why we’re here…What happened to you? The world was yours for the taking and this is the path you choose?”
 
“I have no complaints.”
 
“Having no complaints and not complaining are two very different things, Joseph. So, so sad to see how you have given up.”
 
“Hardly. I am doing exactly what I want to do and helping those who want it in the process. I am sure that is within your capacity to understand, despite whatever this is that you are doling out right now. So, if there is nothing else…” Joseph turned to leave.
 
“Dante raised his left index finger, “Oh! Just one thing…Mom sends her best.” Dante’s grin stretched from ear to ear.
 
“Does she now?” Joseph challenged, using all his effort to maintain a cool exterior.
 
“Oh…have I offended?” Dante sarcastically inquired. “An even sadder case, if you ask me.”
 
“No one did.”
 
The grin continued. “Poor thing. Ignored by her parents. Abandoned by her father. Saddled with raising a sad nothing like you. Her youth, stripped away by one cruel twist of fate after another. Well, no matter…we have our own plans for her.”
 
The dull ache in the pit of Joseph’s stomach turned into a stab, shaking his resolve to the point of making his legs start to tremble. It had been less than a month since he had gone to South Texas for his mother’s funeral, and the void he felt—inside and out—had been more than he ever thought he would ever have to deal with. Homing in on Dante’s repugnant smile, he said, “And this is supposed to be frightening, I suppose? Eh, Dante? Cause this scene, here. It’s been done before and much better. Trust me, knowing about her death is hardly something to be impressed by; I was gone for almost a week, which the entire unit was aware of. So, you will pardon me if I am not laid to waste by this sad attempt to reduce me to jelly. Now, as I said, I am going.”
 
Dante, looking down at his chest, felt the piercing fire of black claws sinking into his pectorals, as large, black, leathery hands tightened their grip. Letting out a gasp, he raised his eyes toward the ceiling, noticing a dark form rise from behind him in his peripheral vision. Staring him down with eyes even blacker and colder than his, the large figure towered over him, smiled, and then began to growl through bloody, yellow teeth, as its attentions were slowly pulled across the room to Joseph.
 
Knocking once more on the observation window, Joseph signaled to A.J. that he was ready to leave. A key from the outside unsecured the lock with Joseph beginning to step through as the door opened—a familiar chill clawed at his back, trying to pull him back in. Turning around, he saw Dante with that agitating grin.
 
“‘Til we meet, again…sweet meat.”
 
Shaking his head, Joseph turned back around and walked out, just as he heard another
sneeze from behind. Hesitating, a “Bless you!” escaped his lips. He heard soft sobbing in the background.
 
“Joseph.”
 
Outside the door, hand on the external lever, Joseph looked in. “Yes. What is it?”
 
“That wasn’t me.” Dante’s smile was gone, replaced by a look of shame and disbelief in his eyes. Tears began to well and stream down his cheeks, as he shook his head. “It wasn’t me.”
 
Joseph stared at the man crumpled on the mattress and closed the door, pulling at the door handle to make sure it was secure after he heard the lock catch. He walked down the corridor, which was dark save the dim glow of overhead fluorescents; the sound of his hard leather soles sounding down the recently mopped floor, reverberating off the unit’s pale grey walls. The heaviness in his stomach lingered, as the sound of Dante’s sobbing grew more and more faint as he got closer to the nurses’ station. Looking for a nurse to leave a message for the doctor, he found no one. Rounding the corner, he made his way to the medication window, which was closed. Pulling out his mobile phone, he texted a message to Dr. Sullivan, supporting the recommendation for the administration of emergency medications for Dante, suggesting continued one-to-one observation at least until the treatment team could meet later that afternoon.
 
The time on the wall clock registered 5:06 AM and the unit rang silent save the occasional stirring of patients in their rooms. He continued down the corridor, flanked by a symmetry of numbered doors that disappeared into his periphery; the clacking of his soles seemed to fade as the sound of humming perverted the air’s stillness—a humming from isolation room #2.
 
Entering the men’s room at the end of the corridor to the right of the elevator, he approached a line of five white, porcelain sinks under a large expanse of mirrored plexiglass. Stopping at the middle one, he rested his clipboard on the sink to his right, then turned on the faucet before him, throwing cold water upon his face to jolt himself out of the dizziness that was starting to overcome him from a lack of sleep and hunger. Heal thyself. The water was invigorating on his skin, taking a portion of his breath away with every splash. Grasping a greedy clutch of brown paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, he buried his face deep within his palms, absorbing the moisture that stung his bloodshot eyes and nostrils, holding his head still for a moment. Pulling his face away, he crumpled the damp mass in his hand and tossed it in the dispenser’s depository. Leaning forward with his hands on the sink, he stared into the makeshift mirror to center his thoughts and ground his body. His reflection revealed a tired man who, tonight, looked older than he was with an emptiness in his eyes that he had put great effort into in the past to avoid encountering again. So much promise wasted in places like this...What happened to you? He was snapped out of his reverie as the fluorescents overhead flickered, casting glares on the plexiglass that seemed to make his reflection look hepatic, distorted, almost alien. With a long exhale, he released the lip of the sink and turned to leave, his reflection seeming to linger a split second longer than it should to watch him walk away.
 
Exiting the elevator on the fifth floor, Joseph walked down a corridor of treatment rooms, then toward his office in a separate suite that was separated from the rest of the unit by magnetic doors. Before he could grab his access card to swipe the door open, the squeaking of metal wheels made their way closer and closer, creeping up behind him. Turning, he saw an older woman, probably in her sixties, dressed in an unshapely beige custodian’s uniform. Her hair was long and grey hair, pulled back into a bun. Her face was plump—but haggard-looking—with a single, remarkable feature—two sunken eyelids, where her left eye used to be. “Long night?” she questioned with a slight but noticeable Spanish accent, as she drew closer, the rhythmic squeaks of her mop bucket punctuating the silence in the corridor.
 
“You could say that,” Joseph answered, managing to muster up something that looked like a smile. “I haven’t seen you before. Joseph de los Santos,” he said, extending his right hand, “…and you are?”
 
“Luz,” she responded, giving his hand a firm shake. “And, yes, I just started a couple of weeks ago.” She rested the handle of her mop, which also functioned like a steering wheel, against the wall. “Strange night, no? Not right at all. On the units, I mean…Oh, I’m sorry! You have to be here so late…or is it early?” She looked up at Joseph, as she was considerably shorter than him (at least by a foot and a half).
 
“Both, actually. A long night has turned into an early start. Goes with the territory, I am sad to say.”
 
She stepped closer toward him with the muffled, familiar sound of glass beads and metal—chains and charms—clicking against each other beneath her uniform. “I tried to clean your office, but my master key doesn’t work on your door,” she curiously stated, sounding more like she had asked a question.
 
“No. I supposed it doesn’t,” Joseph confirmed. “Lots of confidential papers on my desk.
 
You know…Everywhere, really. It can be quite a mess in there, actually. Better that I tidy up myself.”
 
“Of course.” Luz grabbed the mop handle. “I am here if you decide otherwise. People need people, especially when things get really…messy. But you can handle your business. I’ll bet you can do whatever you set your mind to. Surprise yourself sometimes, too, no?” She smiled at Joseph and shuffled her way back down the hall. Turning around, she ended, “Don’t let tonight shake you. You are a smart man. You know what to do. I’ll be around, though…if you need a hand,” then disappeared into a treatment room.
 
Joseph looked musingly down the hall, taken aback by such a new and unusual face. Using his access card, he entered the office suite and made his way to his office, which was as dark as pitch save the desk lamp he always kept on. Closing the door, he took off his lab coat and hung it on a hook that was fastened to its back, then unbuttoned the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt, rolling them up to his elbows, exposing curious glyph-like tattoos of varying sizes on the undersides of his forearms. Locking the door and leaving the lights off, he headed toward his left next to a bookcase that was overly stuffed with diagnostic manuals and old textbooks from his university days. Just past it, he paused at a large, wooden door with a crucifix above its frame. He reached into his right trouser pocket and pulled out a key, then, clutching the doorknob, took a deep breath and unlocked it. Sweet meat…sweet meat… sweet meat. Finding himself dwelling on why those words seemed to affect him so, he shook his head, as if to shake off a bad dream, and entered the room. He was surrounded by a cool darkness and echoes of lavender and smoke. Feeling the door at his back, he leaned into it, letting out a deep exhale through his knows. Worry settled on his brow, as he felt the hint of tears wanting to well up in his eyes. He brought up his right index finger and his thumb up beneath his glasses and rubbed his eyes, restraining the jumble of emotions that he could feel expanding within his chest. Fumbling forward in the dark, the smell of candle wax and cold wicks teased his nostrils. Reaching back into his right pant pocket, he withdrew a white disposable lighter and lit a flame, casting a dim, warm glow upon the walls of the room. Against the wall across from him was an old wooden table, draped with a black linen cloth that was topped with a censer with a new charcoal block, scattered bits of charred herbs, and a visibly used black candle with hardened drips of wax that was positioned on the tabletop’s center. Quickly, he lit the wick before the lighter’s metal guard got too hot.
 
Grabbing a corked bottle, a vial, and a shallow dish from a cabinet underneath the table that was hidden by a flap of the black cloth, his lips began to move. He placed the items on the table, then used the back of his right hand to wipe sweat from his now furrowed brow. Uncorking the bottle, he tipped it over the dish, tapping clumps of powdered eggshell onto it. He opened the vial, emptying a dram of holy water on top of it, then used his right index finger to swirl the mixture into a thick paste.  Around the candle, he drew motley glyph-like symbols in a spiral fashion with the white compound, his moving lips now producing soft murmurs. He thought about how much he regretted taking call that night and everything he saw and heard in the unit (the isolation room…and the men’s room). He thought about all the years, wasted, that he had to pretend to be blind and deaf to the ‘other’ world around him: all for the sake of not attracting attention, for staying safe. Instinctively, he quickly gave thanks to his spirits for the privacy of his alter room and the spell that shielded it (and him) from prying eyes—human or otherwise. If one knows your name, they all do, his mother used to say. They are not a threat if they think you don’t believe. He thought of the burden the legacy of brujería and kitchen witchery his mother (and her kind) left behind and all it had taken from him. He thought of his own weakness in dropping his guard, which ultimately betrayed him. That wasn’t me…It wasn’t me.
 
Joseph grasped the knife handle with his right hand, flipped open the sheath’s snap, and used his thumb to push the leather covering off, revealing the gleam of silver peeking through the murk. Holding up the blade high, as if making a command to the heavens, Joseph extended his left arm before him with his palm facing upward. His mumblings (now audible) charged the room: Black to black, a devil I attack!...Black to black, a devil I attack!...Black to black, a devil I attack! With immovable intention, he brought the knife’s edge down with a slice (not too deep nor too shallow) letting trickles of hot, red blood splash and drip down the candle’s black, waxy surface. Continuing to chant (now in a whisper), Joseph’s awareness—and acceptance—that his masquerade was over grew along with the burning in his palm. His mother’s fight was now his own; he only hoped that he would fare better in the end.
 
Black to black, a devil I attack…Black to black, a devil I attack…Black to black, a devil I attack.

​David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications like The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, DREICH, Somos en escrito, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and Drunk Monkeys. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published April 2019, followed Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House (2022, little punctures (2023), and Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (scheduled for late 2023). David has also written six poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, Golden Calves, Sour Grapes, Blue, and Brujeria (coming soon). Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.

by Carmen Baca

I took my usual route home. Or started to, anyway. The blowout changed everything. My car slid on the snow-packed road until the bar ditch swallowed the right front tire. The car tilted and hit bottom. The motor died, taking the warmth from the heater with it. I turned the key, but the car was deader than dead. I reached for my phone, cursing myself when I remembered it was still on the charger at my folks’ house.

I looked out at the slush turning to ice. I’d left before dusk, but the overcast skies made the sun vanish over the mountains quicker than usual. I had to walk or freeze. Maybe a car might come by, who knew? Granted, I was on a dirt road in a rural area, but people lived in small communities up ahead. I put my parka and gloves on, grabbed my flashlight, and exited through the passenger door since it was closest to the ground. I took a big breath and set off.

I didn’t know how long it was before I noticed crunching behind me. I turned in a circle with the light sticking straight out. There was no one, not even the otherworldly glow of animal eyes. I listened for a bit and then kept going. Four-footed creatures didn’t concern me much; I’d had my share of encounters with deer, elk, even bobcats a couple of times. But I also watched true crime. Those are some of my favorite podcasts, too, so my traitorous brain turned to serial killer or rogue murderer. Meeting either one out here would end with me dead. The steps had stopped when I slowed anyway, so I kept walking—what choice did I have? The road was in the middle of a llano—a plain with few bushes and piñon trees not big enough to offer a hiding place. I walked faster, searching for something I could use as a weapon.

The crunching started up again. The steps matched mine in speed but sounded uneven. My imagination took another unwelcome detour to the shuffling walk of Frankenstein’s monster. Houses up ahead gave me hope. Some were abandoned, but several had cars and trucks in front. The nearest one had lights on. I covered the next stretch of road at a jog, acutely aware the steps behind me quickened, too. When I got winded, I stopped and turned around fast, ready to face whoever followed. A pair of shiny eyes made me take a deep breath to yell. And then I exhaled in relief. It was an owl. It was still a ways behind me, but I could see the dark silhouette shuffling nearer. The shape was unmistakable.

“Oh, hey, why didn’t you call out?” I laughed to stave off the hysteria which had been building up ready to explode. I took a few steps toward it. It stepped back.

“I’m going over there, wanna come?” I pointed to the house just as whoever was inside turned out the lights. I could see the progression through windows from one room to the next as each went dark. “Oops, not that one.”

I took off again, spotting another house with a light. The owl’s steps joined mine. I sped up. It was a bird, and I no longer felt real danger like I had for a panicked moment. But my thoughts started their winding journey through my mind again, and the apprehension remained. Why would an owl follow me? I remembered my grandmother, a Sioux, believed the owl was a messenger for evil creatures, though I forgot the name. It was a legend though, wasn’t it? Yeah, my dark mind supplied, but don’t some legends come from truth?

Either way, an owl followed me on a deserted road, something I didn’t think was normal unless it wasn’t an owl. Really? You would think about that now. It’s just a curious bird, geez. I talked myself down from another panic and kept an eye on the road. That was when I noticed the light had gone out at the house I’d been walking to as if fate didn’t want me to reach help.

“What the—,” I blurted. “They barely went to bed. They can’t fall asleep that fast.” I took those final steps to the entry. I banged on the wrought iron screen door, the reverberation making a racket I was sure the nearest neighbors, not just the resident, would hear. I rang the doorbell a few times, but no one came. I shouted a couple of times, too. Not a peep.

“What now?” I couldn’t camp out on the threshold. I’d freeze by morning, and the homeowner would find me a corpse on his doorstep. If the owl turned into something else that attacked me, I’d damn well fight back. I knew enough to leave evidence like scratches on attackers. It would wear my bite marks, too, pájaro o no.

I started off again, searching some more for something I could use to defend myself if I had to. My pal still traveled behind me, keeping the same distance. I wondered why it didn’t fly. I was more concerned about the question, is it just an owl? repeating in my head.

I never did find a weapon, not even a stick. I hadn’t thought to look for a rake or something back at that house. I climbed a small rise, and on the other side was the village of Los Tecolotes, The Owls, since it boasted a healthy population of them. “Is that where you live?” I threw over my shoulder at my companion, keeping my eyes on the cluster of houses and hoping to see lights. Granted, more owls than people probably claimed this place as their home. I quickened my speed. I walked so fast I got shin splints and limped along for a while, just like in nightmares where I ran in slow motion from danger and snapped awake when I was about to get caught. That’s how it felt.

My flashlight dimmed. I gave it a whack, and it brightened. “That’s all I need,” I muttered. The moonless night wasn’t as dark as it would be with no snow, but if I didn’t stay on the road, I knew I would jeopardize my already concerning situation. The light finally gave out after a while.

“Whadda say?” I yelled to the owl. “Can we go to your place?” I turned to look back at the bird without stopping. The image of me cuddled with an owl somewhere was so absurd I burst into laughter. After a while, I snorted when I couldn’t catch my breath and made myself laugh harder. I don’t know when it turned to hysteria and sobs, but it did, and I stopped. Stood there with tears running down my cheeks until I yelled at myself again. Covered my freezing face with my gloved hands and made myself quit. I glanced at the tecolote, wondered what it must think of me—a madman who talked to himself.

I shouted, “C’mon then. Keep moving.” I repeated the last phrase in a mantra with each step. After a while, I glanced up again. A house on my left made me blink. A light went on, propelling me forward. The bar ditch conspired against me again. I stepped right into it and fell face-first. The sharp pain in my left wrist from landing on my palms made me groan out loud. “Dammit.” Probably just a sprain, I didn’t know, but I cursed myself for not having looked first before taking that step.

I got to my feet, cradling my wrist. The light went out. I took care as I approached. In the pitch black of the porch, I felt my way along the wall of the adobe house until I found the door. “Help!” I called, pounding on it. Surely, whoever shut off the light hadn’t gone to sleep that fast.

I yelled loud enough to wake the dead. The thought made me laugh again, and as I slid with my back down the wall, once more my laughing became hysteria.  

The owl was gone. Before I could think about its absence, the click of the lock made me rise so fast I saw stars and wobbled like a drunk. The night’s vibes, the owl, and now—these weird clicks and menacing hisses coming from inside—gave off “get out of here fast” warnings. I took off again and ran until I couldn’t, and then I fast-walked and jogged and ran some more. Nothing followed that I could see. Other than my noisy footsteps and my heavy breathing, quiet ruled the frosty winter night. Numb with cold and spent, I would have probably found a place where I could hide and try my chances at surviving until morning if I hadn’t seen approaching headlights.

The attack came from behind. A weight landed on my back and shoved me forward. I would’ve fallen but for something clamping my shoulders. When the pressure turned to pain, I reached up and back, my fingers sinking into something soft as sharp claws fought for better purchase. With a pop, what felt like blades penetrated my down-filled jacket, clothes, and my skin. 

I screamed then. My feet left the ground, and I rose about a yard. The headlights swept over the rise of the road at that moment. The driver must’ve slammed on the brakes because the car fishtailed and careened straight for me. I kicked my feet and punched at the creature’s torso and claws, right, left, right, left. It tightened its grip when my legs crashed onto the windshield and then let go. The car stopped when it hit a mound of snow, and I slid down the hood like a chunk of melting ice. I hit the road feet first and leaned over the car for balance.

“Oh, hell! I hit you! Did you break anything? Are you hurt? Answer me, dammit!” I heard all this as my friend Tony got out of the car.

“Behind you!” I pointed at a huge owl about seven feet tall—I could see it now—big and black in the taillights—as it took a step forward with wings outspread.  

Tony turned and bent over almost in one movement. Then he stood up, holding a chunk of snow-packed ice, and threw it at the beast. The direct hit to the head resounded with a crack before the owl screeched loud enough to hurt my ears. It advanced and then rose into the air, whooshing over our heads, and disappeared.

Tony slid right past me on the icy road. I heard his “What the hell was thaaaat” as he passed.  

“Get back over here,” I yelled, watching him stop a few feet away. He returned in short, sliding steps. I stood, holding onto the hood with one hand and reaching out for him with the other. When he clutched my glove, I felt Tony’s tremors like they were my own. The night had gotten downright terrifying.

“I hit it. Did you see? I got it.”

“I did,” I replied. “But did you kill it or only wound it? And will it be back?”

Tony looked at me with a face so filled with horror I got the chills. I had never felt such fear even when the bird had me in the air. My thought at that moment had been escape. My body had felt nothing but the pain and my response to danger: fight for my life.

If we weren’t still filled with terror, we would’ve laughed at ourselves slipping and
sliding, arms windmilling, short gasps and yells as we struggled to reach the car doors. I couldn’t dispel the feeling that every second we moved toward safety wouldn’t be fast enough. The owl would catch one of us this time for sure. But we got inside. I said a silent prayer of thanks when the engine turned over and heat blasted on high from the vents.

“What the hell, Marty!”
​
“I know, I know,” I said through chattering teeth. “Get us out of here.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying.” Tony’s shaking made his foot fall from the clutch twice before he got the car moving. After a while, he found space to make a careful U, and we headed back to town. “Your mom called me around eleven. You never called her when you got home, and she was worried. She called your phone, and it rang in her kitchen. What happened? Where did you come across that thing? It was a lechuza, wasn’t it?”

“I—I guess. Perfect timing, dude, thanks.”

“What’re superheroes for? Mickey to the rescue.” He opened his coat and in the light of the dash, I saw his Mickey Mouse PJs. I chuckled despite the close call of a few minutes before. My shivers subsided as I told Tony about my night up until he found me.

“If you hadn’t come by when you did…” I couldn’t finish with the mental pictures of my being eaten alive by the raptor.

“Damn.” Tony shook his head. “At first, I didn’t see any bird. I just saw you rising into the air like you’d grown wings, and then you slammed into my car. When you yelled at me to watch it, I saw the lechuza. And then I just reacted.”

“I’m glad you did, look,” I pulled at my jacket, showing him the rips in my shoulders.
“Son of a—!”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. “I woulda been a goner for sure.”

Tony changed the subject, asking, “Where’s your car?”

“I don’t know exactly. It’s halfway in a ditch. Can you take me to get it tomorrow? I want to find that house again, too.”

When Tony gasped, I explained, “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what we’ll find there? As far as I know from the legend, the lechuza is a witch who turns into an owl. Maybe that was her following me all along, or maybe she was hiding inside. Somebody turned a light on to get me there. I wonder if I was supposed to be supper.” I shivered again. “I want to see her in human form. Meeting a real live lechuza—no one’s ever done that and lived.”

Tony threw a look at me, a mix of disbelief and dread. “Did you just hear yourself? Either way, if she was your owl escort or if she was at the house, she’ll know who you are. She’s gonna want to get rid of witnesses. Hell, if she recognizes me, I’m a goner, too.”

“But it’ll be two against one.”

“Well, yeah—two against a monster bird with razors for talons and a carving knife for a beak.”

Tony got me home safe and somewhat sound. When I opened my door, he reached over and plucked something from my hair. “A black feather,” he said, holding it between his fingers. “There’s more,” he nodded, pointing to my clothes.  
We made plans to go for my car around ten, hoping the sun might melt some of the ice by then. I silently thanked my old-fashioned landlord for leaving a phone line and called my mother. I retold my story, omitting the sensational details and assuring her I was fine. I tended to my wounds which were less serious than they felt, threw myself into bed, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

In the morning after we pulled my car from the ditch and changed the tire, I made a mental note to equip my trunk with survival gear. Lesson learned. We got back on the road, and I kept an eye out for anything familiar to show me that spooky casa. I drove until a small adobe house came into my line of sight. Two state police, a coroner’s van, and the sheriff’s cruiser were parked helter-skelter in front. I slowed to a crawl, Tony right on my tail. It was definitely the house. A deputy waved at me to keep moving, so I did. Tony followed.

“Was that it?” He asked from his car as he rolled by my apartment. “What d’you
think that was about?”

“Yeah. Nothing good,” I answered.
           
Three days later we found out. The resident had been discovered frozen just outside her front door. Evidence pointed to foul play. Shoe prints in the snow, feathers strewn around the body, and a deep gouge in her head might’ve revealed the identity of the killer, but the person who discovered the body confessed he’d stepped into the mess to check on the woman’s condition. Too bad for law enforcement. They tried to shut down any gossip of her having been a lechuza, but the believers kept the conjecture alive. Equally bad was the feather incident in the laboratory when the evidence bag was unsealed. It was empty.
Tony and I breathed easy when we heard. We agreed never to tell anyone the señora had indeed been a lechuza. No one would believe we killed a shapeshifter in self-defense, not when so few thought such anomalies exist at all. Instead, we’d be found guilty of her murder. After that night, I didn’t doubt others outright when they shared their incredible stories of strange sightings. Neither Tony nor I had believed lechuza was real until the night we faced her down. I didn’t like to think why she’d gone after me, I just figured she’d thought I’d been convenient prey. Good thing I wasn’t an easy victim, thanks to Tony’s timely rescue. We counted ourselves lucky to have escaped. The price for our silence we paid for with our internal and lifelong struggle with guilt. But we never jeopardized our freedom for a truth we could never prove. We made a vow the night we burned the feathers.

Carmen Baca taught high school and college English for thirty-six years before retiring in 2014. Her debut novel El Hermano, published in April 2017, was a 2018 finalist in the NM-AZ book awards program. Her third book, Cuentos del Cañón, received first place for short story fiction anthology in 2020 from the same program. To date, she has published five books and close to fifty short works in online literary magazines and anthologies. Her goal to make her mark on New Mexico literature comes from her desire to pass on elements of her Hispano culture which have disappeared almost entirely since she was a child. She believes we should embrace our culture, cherish our roots, and remember our elders to prevent losing important facets of our identities as Hispano people

by Salvador Ayala

When Robbie Austin carelessly flicked his cigarette butt into the side of a hiking trail in the Los Angeles National Forest, he could not have known that he would bring a day of bloodshed and terror to a fiery close.

Nor could Elisa Martinez have anticipated that her plan to seek revenge for her grandparents would receive help from an unexpected quarter.

Elisa was the only one in her family who still made time every Sunday to drive Abuela to church and then take her out for brunch before returning her to the cramped apartment in the senior living community. Abuela could be thorny and never minced words, but Elisa didn’t mind. When Elisa’s parents had thrown her out of the house at sixteen for daring to have a boyfriend, Abuela had welcomed her with open arms. When Elisa spent a weekend in jail for breaking a beer bottle over her abusive brother-in-law’s head, everyone else tut-tutted, but Abuela gave her a long hug and said, with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, “I’m glad you rearranged that puto’s face.”

So, when Abuela sunk into a dark depression, Elisa was the only one who noticed and cared. It took three Sundays for Elisa to get even a hint out of her, with Abuelita simply muttering, “It’s just something I saw on Facebook.” It took another three Sundays for her to finally reveal what was bothering her.

“It has to do with Camp Bava.”

Those two words were forbidden in the house when Elisa was growing up, but everyone in the family knew the broad strokes of the story. In 1971, Abuelita’s boyfriend had snapped and killed eleven teenagers at a summer camp. She was the only one who survived the slaughter. At first, Abuela had insisted that he was innocent, that someone else had done it. The police ignored her pleas because they were more than happy to pin the crime on a convenient scapegoat. That that scapegoat was some pesky-ass Brown Beret was icing on the cake. To make matters worse, her parents refused to believe her account of events and later disowned her when they discovered she was pregnant with a murderer’s baby. Abuela went on to have other children and the semblance of an ordinary life, but she shut down whenever anyone mentioned the summer of 1971, so her family learned to stop bringing it up. Over the years, she refused interviews from curious reporters and bloggers, many of whom painted her out to be an accomplice.

“You want to talk about it?” Elisa asked.

“No. Not if you’re going to make fun of me like everyone else.”

“Come on. You know me better than that.”

“Fine. Here goes. Lalo and I were camp counselors. It was supposed to be a way for all these Chicano kids who couldn’t afford Boy Scouts to get this nice camping experience. We were there less than three days when campers started to disappear. On the fourth day, we found one of the missing girls. You should have seen her. All shriveled up. The poor thing looked like a dried apricot. That’s a detail the cops never released, you know? It didn’t fit their story. After we found her, we packed up to leave. We were all trying not to panic, and Lalo kept us levelheaded. He was always a natural leader. Sometimes I wonder where he would have ended up if...” Elisa could see the tears beginning to well up in her grandma’s eyes. Her mother always said that Abuela was a cold, unfeeling woman, but Elisa knew there was a deep reservoir of feeling beneath the surface.

“Anyway,” Abuela continued and gulped down what might have been the start of a sob. “This is the part the cops refused to believe. Everyone tried to convince me I imagined it, that I had tried to make sense of the trauma by making up some boogeyman. I didn’t. I never stopped believing in what I saw. We were about to get into our bus when one of the campers screamed. Standing between us and the bus was that thing. He was a stringy-looking guy, all dried up, almost like that poor girl we found. He was dressed funny, you know? In a kind of tux. The kind you imagine those people in old, black-and-white Hollywood movies wear. Except the tux was all torn up and eaten away at parts. Probably the worst was his face, especially the eyes. They glowed red even in broad daylight. And the glow only got stronger when he grabbed hold of the screaming camper and started to feed.”

“Feed? Like a vampire?”

“No. No un vampiro. I mean, it attacked us in the middle of the day. But…I don’t even know if feeding is the right word. I just remember it taking hold of Rocky—that was the camper’s name—and Rocky screaming and then not screaming because it was like the thing had drained all the life out of him. That was the only time I saw it feed. When it came after the rest of us, it just attacked us with its bare hands.”

“How did you survive?”

“I got lucky. El Dandy. That’s what I remember calling it ‘cause of the way it was dressed. El Dandy cornered me and Lalo and the last surviving camper at a dock off the lake.”

She paused, and Elisa noticed a flicker of pride in Abuela’s eyes. “I don’t think that monster was expecting a fight. We had a little bit of combat training. We were going to be the revolutionary vanguard, after all. Lalo came at it with an axe. The one we used to chop wood for the campfire, I think. But the monster caught him by the neck, and Lalo dropped the axe. It was choking the life out of him. I had to do something, so I grabbed the axe and swung. Managed to hack off the arm just beneath the elbow. Here’s the messed up thing, mija. No blood came out. Nothing. Como si nunca le hubiera corrido sangre entre las venas. It looked surprised and then angry, and it swatted me away. It was so strong. It sent me flying into the lake.”

Abuela began shivering as if telling the story was purging her of years of fear, anger, survivor’s guilt, all sorts of bad feelings that had coagulated inside her. “Broke a couple of my ribs. Never really healed right. Sometimes, I have a hard time breathing.”

“You don’t have to keep telling me this,” Elisa said, “Not if it’s too much for you.”

“I have to.” Abuela sighed, “I don’t know why it didn’t come after me. I sank and then washed up on a far corner of the lake, and then I passed out from the pain of my broken ribs. When I came to, some cops were wrapping a blanket around me. They’d question me later, but I don’t know why they bothered. They found the last camper, Bennie. I remember his name now. They found him bleeding out right next to Lalo. The thing had buried the axe in Lalo’s chest and returned to wherever it came from. From there, it was easy for the pigs to piece together what happened. Lalo snapped, they said. Bennie had died defending himself and ended Lalo’s rampage—supposedly. My mind, unable to recognize that my boyfriend was a psycho, had concocted this whole monster story. They closed the case and shut down the camp, and everyone moved on.”

“But you didn’t.”

“How could I? Lalo was the love of my life. No disrespect to your other grandpa—que en paz descanse.”

“What happened with the monster?”

“El Dandy is still out there. I’ve kept tabs on missing people over the years. A hiker or two every decade or so. Nothing big enough to draw anyone’s attention, but I know he’s still out there. And then there’s this.”

She showed Elisa what had sent her into a spiral so many weeks ago. It was a Facebook ad from an up-and-coming True Crime podcast. It read:

Join Ethan and Karlie, hosts of THE MURDER BUDDIES podcast, for a weekend of chills! We’re doing a live recording at the site of the 1971 Eduardo Velez murders! Bring your graham crackers and marshmallows and bug spray! Join us for a spooky good time at Camp Bava! CLICK HERE FOR PRICING. VIP PACKAGES AVAILABLE.

“Fucking gringos,” Elisa muttered darkly. “A bunch of brown kids get hacked to pieces, and they turn it into a sleepover party.”

“I’m not mad about that. I mean, I am. But I’m also not. You live as long as I have, and you get used to this sort of thing. Our suffering don’t matter to them. I’m just worried for these people. If they go through with it, that demon out there is going to tear right through them. I feel so…powerless.”

But Elisa didn’t feel powerless. Abuela had basically raised her and imparted on her these words of wisdom from an early age: “You can be a lot of things, mija. You can be smart. You can be successful. You can be a bitch. But what I never ever want you to be is a victim.” As soon as she was old enough for it, Elisa enrolled in several self-defense classes. In high school, she gained a reputation for clobbering bullies and racists, much to her mother’s chagrin. Elisa later enlisted and started a business training stunt actors for filming fight scenes with weapons. She would not be caught unprepared for a fight.

The Murder Buddies didn’t deserve her protection, but she couldn’t let history repeat itself. She hoped that she could discourage them from recording their episode. Part of her hoped El Dandy wouldn’t show up at all. But a larger part of her wished he would. Nothing would make her happier than ending his reign of terror. El Dandy robbed her grandmother of her youth, joy, and health. He had killed Elisa’s grandfather, who was never properly mourned and had his name dragged through the mud. El Dandy had to be stopped, and the circle of her grandmother’s tragic story had to be closed.

That is why she bought a VIP package and a small but sturdy axe and drove up to the ruins of Camp Bava on a hot, windy September afternoon.

On the drive up, she listened to the episode on the murders. The hosts, bubbly and irreverent, floated theories about Lalo’s mental breakdown in between ads for mattresses and food delivery services. They pointed out that he came from a broken home, that his best friend was killed by police, that mental illness ran in his family. There was barely any mention of his activism and no mention at all of Abuela’s account of events.

Since she was listening to The Murder Buddies, she missed a very important announcement about precautionary evacuations that were underway in response to a sudden wildfire in Porter Ranch.

By the time she marched up to the fire pit at the center of the camp, she was ready to give the podcast hosts a piece of her mind. The festivities were already well under way. Everyone gathered around a crafts table with all kinds of summer camp inspired treats: deconstructed PB & J sandwiches, sloppy joes on buttered brioche, chocolate martinis lined with graham cracker crumbs, and so on. No expenses had been spared.

All the other guests were dressed appropriately, sporting cutesy backpacks, tiny shorts, and their complementary CAMP MURDER BUDDIES t-shirts. The dilapidated cabins encircled the communal fire pit, looming over the proceedings like creaking, rotten grave markers. The sun glared down on the campers without a single cloud in the sky to shield them from the intense rays. The breeze that occasionally passed through the dry, brittle tree leaves brought no relief from the heat. Somewhere in the distance was a thin plume of smoke, but everyone including Elisa was too busy milling about to notice it. Elisa set down her knapsack, which contained her axe, and began trying to locate the podcast hosts. Sweat stung her eyes, and she could feel the sun block she hastily applied already starting to melt away. She heard some rustling down the trail but assumed it was another latecomer like her.

As she milled about trying to find Karlie and Ethan, she picked up snatches of conversation.

“…yeah, I totally think the girlfriend was in on it…”

“…okay, but it’s weird that those three people went missing like four years later…”

“…I heard she said that Bigfoot did it, but the cops didn’t believe her…”

“…the real hero of all this. I’m such a Bennie stan…”

Elisa grimaced. Here was her family’s suffering transformed into a decades-long game of telephone.

She heard the Murder Buddies before she saw them. Karlie, a conventionally attractive white woman in her early thirties, was haranguing her cohost. Elisa wondered how Karlie managed to keep her makeup looking impeccable in the unbearable heat, and her eyes drifted down to Karlie’s semi-exposed upper thigh, which bore a detailed tattoo of a rose. Ethan stood by scowling as Karlie pointed angrily in his face. Their show made them out to be cheerful and spontaneous, but the reality was far from that. As Elisa got closer, she heard what they were arguing about.
“We’re already here, and we already blew all this money.”

“They’re evacuating people, Ethan!”

“A few cities over! Let’s record the episode at least. They’re too busy to even notice. Besides…” But he didn’t finish his sentence because he saw Elisa approaching. It was like a switch flipped inside his head, and Ethan’s glower immediately transitioned into a jovial grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hey there!” he said almost too cheerfully as he scanned and failed to locate Elisa’s name tag. “What can we do for you?”

“We need to leave,” Elisa warned.

“Shit! I told you someone would find out! We should have…” Karlie’s complaint was cut off by Ethan, whose face was mirthless again.

“I’ve got this,” he said through gritted teeth. “You can leave if you want, but if you check the purchase agreement, you’ll see you that you get no refund. It’s just a small fire.”

“Fire?” Elisa said. “No! That’s not what this is about.”

She was about to continue when a loud cheer erupted over by the campfire pit. The assembled hipsters whooped and hollered at a lanky figure that emerged from the forest. It looked just like Abuela had described, though a little worse for the wear given the passage of time. Its tuxedo, which was probably last pristine when Citizen Kane still played in theaters, was frayed. Holes in the pants and shirt gave everyone glimpses of desiccated flesh the color of a spoiled Bartlett pear. As Elisa expected, it was missing most of one of its arms. At some point between 1971 and now, it had tied what looked like a railroad spike to the ruined flesh of its stub. Bits of skull peered from the places where its scalp had rotted off. Even in broad daylight, its eyes glowed red as if someone had placed a crimson-tinted flashlight inside its skull.

El Dandy. 

Elisa had promised to take her grandmother seriously. On the drive up, she secretly wished that this cadaverous nightmare had really been a figment of Abuela’s imagination. No such luck. An unforgivingly arid gust of wind accompanied El Dandy as he shambled towards the assembled true crime fans. Abuela always said that los vientos de Santa Ana brought not only forest fires but violence and hatred with them. Elisa doubted her less than ever.

“You hired an actor?” Karlie squealed in delight.

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie! I don’t get why it’s a zombie though. But whatever.” The wheels turned inside Karlie’s head. “Wait!” she added furiously, “Is this why we’re over budget?!”

“Get away from him!” Elisa cautioned.

But she was too late. Already the podcast crowd, some of whom shrieked with amused faux terror, were surrounding El Dandy and snapping pictures with their smartphones and commenting on the excellent makeup work. The more squeamish fans shrunk away in real fear. A tall fan who had already cut the sleeves off his camp t-shirt, swung his arm around the ghoul’s neck.

“Let’s take a selfie, bro!”

El Dandy turned to stare at the man’s cell phone, tilted its head in mild confusion, and then put its arm around the man’s neck.

“Ooooh! Cool pose!”

Just as he said this, a malevolent smile came over the creature’s face, revealing less than a handful of black, rotten teeth. It dug its scraggly fingers into the flesh of the man’s neck and then violently ripped a patch of skin right off, soaking the surrounding podcast enthusiasts with arterial spray.

The selfie-taker dropped to his knees and then collapsed face-first in the dirt, staining the ground around him a sickly maroon shade. A few campers stood rooted to the ground in disbelief, perhaps some of them even entertaining the notion that this, too, was part of an act, that these were just exceptionally well-executed special effects. This might have been what a young woman in a neon-blue miniskirt was considering when El Dandy rammed its spike straight through her chest. As her body went limp, he casually tossed her aside and set his sights on Elisa and the podcast hosts.

Before he could go any further, though, a burly man put the creature in a sleeper hold. Elisa recognized him as the one who had proclaimed himself a Bennie stan.

“You killed my girlfriend! You fucker! You killed her!” he howled at the inhuman thing, spittle flying out of his grieving, enraged mouth.

Elisa took advantage of this momentary distraction and made a beeline towards her knapsack. As she scrambled to pull the axe out of her bag, she noticed the unmistakable smell of smoke hanging in the air. 

El Dandy was at a disadvantage trying to pluck the man of its back. Even for a preternaturally strong fiend, it would have been no easy feat, and trying to do so with one working arm made it even harder. Still, brute strength and evil cunning won out. El Dandy grabbed hold of the man’s lower jaw and squeezed tight enough for Elisa to hear the crunch of bone even several feet away. In one fluid motion, it yanked the boyfriend’s jaw right off its hinges. The man’s grip slackened, and he dropped off El Dandy, writhing and gurgling until he grew still. The creature carelessly hurled the ruined jaw aside and turned to look at Elisa. She stood before him, defiant and wielding an axe.

Having “lived” as long as it had, its memories tended to flow into one another, years of stalking, killing, and sleeping coalescing into one big, dark ocean. Only a handful of events stuck out in El Dandy’s mind like lighthouses dotting a midnight shore. Though it didn’t always remember which memories were months, years, or even decades apart, it still clung to these with the same tenacity that a drowning man clings to a board when adrift at sea. It remembered when it was still a man who used to hold séances and sell crystals and other mystical items to all the gullible transplants, all those times reading the fortunes of impressionable young starlets thinking they’d be the next Katharine Hepburn. It remembered the night a gunrunner didn’t take too kindly to getting conned. It remembered the resulting gutshot even if pain was now a concept alien to it. It remembered the long car ride, jammed in someone’s trunk, and then the fall off the side of a cliff, seeming to hit every rock on the way down. It remembered the voice in its head, older than the hills, predating the boosters that came out to Los Angeles to make it the next big thing, predating even the Serrano and Cahuilla tribes. It remembered the voice’s offer: Kill on my behalf, spill blood for me, and you will never have to die.

Most of all, it remembered the greaser bitch that had hacked off its arm. It remembered her fury, which had caught it off guard. It remembered its annoyance and then the satisfaction of killing her boyfriend. Its hatred and prejudice burned brightly in the shriveled lump of meat that was now its heart. For a second, El Dandy confused the past with the present. But then a realization dawned in its decrepit head. This wasn’t her standing before El Dandy right now. Not exactly. But she had the same eyes. A descendant most likely. An opportunity to tie up loose ends across time. The thing that used to be Gregory the Mystic and who had long ago lost the power of speech communicated its rage through a long, baleful hiss.

“This is for my grandparents, you ugly piece of shit,” Elisa hissed right back at it.

She swung the axe in a downward arc, hoping to bury it in the wight’s head and end the fight early, but it reacted quickly and blocked the swing with its weaponized half-arm. Steel rang on rusted iron, and Elisa’s attack at least managed to sever some of the ropes keeping the spike in place, and it dropped onto the ground with a clang, still covered in ichor and with some slats of the creature’s flesh clinging to it.

But a one-armed El Dandy was still dangerous. He swung at her with his remaining arm, and she rolled out of its way and buried the axe in his back. El Dandy turned to face her and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her several feet in the air. She struggled to free herself and fruitlessly flung kicks his way. His grip tightened. Soon he would snuff her out.

And then several shots rang out. Few of them managed to hit anything, but one of them blasted right under El Dandy’s collarbone, spraying Elisa with bone shards and whatever it is that passed for blood in that monstrous body.

El Dandy dropped Elisa to face his new attacker, a flustered Karlie struggling to reload her gun.

“Why do you have a gun?!” her cohost stammered.

“We do a show about serial killers who kill women, Ethan. Why the fuck wouldn’t I have one?”

“Please. You live in Bel Air,” Ethan answered and then hid behind her.

El Dandy marched resolutely towards them. It had decided to save the Mexican girl for later, maybe even drain her lifeforce to replenish its own. The two podcasters broke into a run deeper into the forest.

Good. It loved a chase.

Meanwhile, Elisa struggled to draw air back into her lungs and spent several minutes trying to normalize her breathing. Her throat felt raw. He had almost gotten her, and she considered calling it a day. Let these two dorks get what was coming to them. But she couldn’t do that. She staggered to her feet and saw that her axe was nowhere to be found. It was still stuck in El Dandy’s back, so she picked up his fallen spike and followed down the trail after them.

The sunlight seemed to dim somewhat. By now, the fire must be completely out of control. Flecks of ash whirled lazily in the reddening sky. The event should have been canceled.

“Those irresponsible bastards.” Elisa’s seething was interrupted by the sound of more gunshots. They weren’t far ahead.

When she finally caught up to them in a clearing, she could see the blaze snaking down a hillside towards her. In the center of the clearing, El Dandy had its claws dug into Karlie’s shoulders. Her eyes were rolling in the back of her head, and a strange, reddish glow emanated from both their bodies. A few feet away lay Ethan, his head a bloody ruin and Karlie’s gore-encrusted gun resting right next to the mushy mess. In the end, the firearm had been worse than useless.

Elisa prayed that the spike would be more help and rammed it into the back of El Dandy’s skull as it fed. It dropped what was left of Karlie and let out an ear-piercing shriek.

“Now it ends,” Elisa said gravely.

Except it didn’t.

El Dandy turned to face her, the pointed end of the spike protruding right through one of his eye sockets. He pulled out the spike and contemptuously threw it over his shoulder. Elisa stared in shock at the hole in the creature’s face through which the orange, smoke-choked sunlight shone. It was unclear what actually kept the abomination going, but Elisa realized, to her dismay, that it certainly wasn’t his brain.

She had exhausted her options, and the fire from the hillside now approached the clearing at an alarming speed. She turned towards a path to her right and retreated, pursued by both monster and fire, two equally unrelenting forces. The path she followed took her to the dock where her grandparents faced down El Dandy all those years ago.

“Everything comes full circle,” she whispered to herself. “I die here, or he does. Or we both do.” The flames caught up to her before El Dandy did, encircling the lake and creating a blazing arena for the combatants. Black smoke started to blot out the sun’s harsh rays as El Dandy shuffled menacingly towards her, taking his sweet time despite the conflagration surrounding them.

Elisa figured that she could lop off his head if she could just free that axe from El Dandy’s back. It was a long shot, but a hope in hell was all that she had left.

She raced towards El Dandy and ducked under a swing of his claw. She could feel victory in her grasp as she dislodged the axe, but this feeling was short-lived. With unnatural agility, El Dandy grabbed her wrist. Her bones groaned and splintered in his hand, and her grasp failed—her weapon and hopes now both out of reach.

Then El Dandy began to “feed.” The pain in Elisa’s wrist was replaced by a coldness she could feel throughout her entire body. She felt more tired than she had ever felt. “I’m sorry, Abuela,” she whispered hoarsely and looked up, hoping that Heaven, if nothing else, would intervene to save her. As she did, she saw through the hole in El Dandy’s head that the tree behind them had a charred branch hanging on by a knotty thread. With one final burst of energy, she wailed a primal scream and shoved El Dandy as hard as possible into the path of the collapsing, blazing branch. El Dandy seemed to humor her efforts and mockingly grinned at her, but his arrogant sneer was soon replaced by bewilderment when the branch snapped and collapsed on top of the pair.

El Dandy caught most of the branch’s impact, and Elisa rapidly crawled backwards, not even noticing that her left pants leg had caught fire. She was having an easier time than the undead killer, who was now pinned down by the flaming branch. It writhed and screeched and grew blacker and smaller until it stopped moving. A pale, red light snaked out of where its mouth used to be and was swallowed up by the flames.

She was so caught up in watching El Dandy’s death throes that she failed to notice the fire on her leg, but the pain snapped her out of her stupor, and she furiously swatted at her jeans with her working hand. When she finally put the flames out, she looked around with weary eyes. There was no way to get back to her car. No way to go anywhere, really.

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

She stood on the edge of the dock, expecting El Dandy to spring back to life any moment, but the threat of that nightmare had passed.

Elisa allowed herself a brief smile before sliding gingerly into the waters awaiting her. The sound of her splash was met by the steady roar of the flames eating away at the wooden dock.
​
Somewhere above her, the buzz of helicopters and the howling of los vientos de Santa Ana fought to decide the forest’s fate.

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

by Robert Martin

The homies always told her “Trouble Man” couldn’t be her favorite song because she wasn’t a man. Whenever they said that, she gave them the finger, laughed, and answered, “Yeah, but I’m still Trouble.” And she was, Trouble from East Side Belvedere, or at least she would be if the Belvedere still let in girls.
 
“Carmen!”
 
She ignored the first yell, and rolled over on her couch bed, pressing the headphones she wore close to her ears, the song, “Trouble Man” on repeat, drowning out the heavy knocks on her door.
 
“Carmen! Don’t fucking make me go in there.”
 
The knocks came again, this time hard enough to shake her wooden door. What time was it? Trouble asked herself, the adobe walls of her room keeping her cool and hiding her from the day.
 
“Carmen…”
 
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her Tía Huera standing over her. Tía Huera never called her Trouble, saying that type of drama was before Trouble’s time and that she had no business getting involved.
 
“I know you can hear me, Carmen…”
 
Rolling over to face her, Trouble greeted her aunt, “Good morning Tía.”
 
Annoyed, Tía Huera answered, “Morning, it’s 1 o’clock and I need you today.”
 
“Need me?” Trouble feigned confusion.
 
Tía Huera snatched the headphones off Trouble’s head, “Yeah, I need you, I got a big order due, so come on.”
 
“I was listening to something,” Trouble protested.
 
“I don’t care, now the shop, let’s go.”
 
“You said I was too young.”
 
“I said that when you were eight, you’re sixteen or did that mota you smoke make you forget?”
 
“But you said I’m too clumsy, that I break things.”
 
“I’m going to say you’re fucking lazy, and I just need you to quench.”
 
Trouble’s confused look returned, “Quench?”
 
“Keep acting dumb...”
 
“I’m going, I’m going, shit,” Trouble sat up on her couch, her thin blanket falling to the floor.
 
Tía Huera smiled, “Thank you, Carmen,” and started to leave, stopping at the door, “Don’t make me wait,” then leaving her to dress.
 
Pulling the plug of her headphones so the music could play out loud, Trouble found her pants, black khakis, she slid them on and clasped her belt with a B on the buckle. Baggy, cuffed, and creased, they suited her as did her black and white shoes. Chuck Taylors, sold cheap and mass produced, everyone in the barrio had ‘em, their design even older than her favorite song.
 
Trouble picked out a shirt she stole from her brother, choosing a black and white plaid button up that draped down to her knees. Putting on dark sunglasses, also stolen from her brother, she ran her hand over her short hair. Not many homegirls had the heart to go bald or pelón like the homeboys, but she did. Not fully shaven, her black hair was crew cut, and to protect her from the sun she wore a black fedora she took off some hyna from the Low Bottoms Barrio, still a little bent from the altercation.
 
In Old Los Angeles, everything was a thousand years old and practically ancient. Everything that was new was reserved for the gringo colonies up in space. Earth and its old cities were only good for their resources, the poor and their labor included. In 2992, Raza like her did what they could to survive, and from the Raza history she knew, it had always been like that.
 
Tía Huera’s shop was built into the back of their adobe house. In the Chicano barrios of Old L.A., the houses were adobe, with no access to gringo building materials, la Raza returned to the ways of their ancestors. Walking to the shop, Trouble could hear her aunt working without her, slamming her hammer down on layered steel, forming what would soon be a sword.
 
Trouble had heard stories of ancient times, when barrios used to shoot each other up with cuetes, but that was back before anyone alive could remember. Ever since the world became a ghetto there hadn’t been a gun on the planet, even the gringo Corporation and its goons had to use swords, spears, or axes.
 
“What happened to you? Getting all dolled up for your vato?” her Tía teased her, still hammering away.
 
“Chale! I don’t get dolled up or nothing for no one,” replied Trouble.
 
All the boys in the barrio were from the Locos clique of Belvedere, that meant they were her brother’s friends, and she’d be damned if she went with one of them.
 
“Don’t be like me, Carmen.”
 
“Why not, Tía, you're firme, you got your own shop, you make your own coin, you were a Belvedere Loca, you kick ass.”
 
“I’ll kick your ass if you keep talking that homie shit with me, now take this and…”
 
Knowing what her aunt wanted, Trouble pulled on a heavy glove and took the heated steel and quenched it in a bucket of oil. Fiery, she held it and then pulled it as soon as it was ready.

The sword was going to be a gladius. A short sword with a blocky guard and rounded pummel, it was also cheap. Unlike other swords like sabers or claymores, the gladius required little skill, just slash or stick ’em with the pointy end. This made them popular in the streets because, as her brother always said, “too many homies are too lazy to train.”
 
Thinking of him, she asked, “Hey Tía, where’s Hugo?”
 
“He’s not here, keep working,” her Tía replied, showing her another sword that needed quenching.
 
A dozen quenched swords later and Listo, a youngster from Belvedere, strolled into the shop, bald headed, with a white tee and his button up folded over his shoulder.
 
“You’re too sexy to be working, how come you don’t let me sweep that ass, my bad, I mean sweep you off your feet?”
 
Trouble caught her Tía rolling her eyes, answering him, she snapped, “Nobody fucking cares, Listo.”
 
“Trouble, you’re breaking my heart,” Listo, the neighborhood player, pressed a finger beneath his eye then dragged it down his cheek like a teardrop.
 
“Nobody fucking cares, Listo,” she said again, “Now what the fuck you want?”
 
“To tell you that your brother is good.”
 
“Good? What the fuck happened?”
 
“Corpses in the barrio, you know what it is, homegirl.”

Trouble hid her anxiety, Corpse was a diss name for the Corporation and the Corporation was not to be messed with. They were the gringos that controlled the valley and raided the barrios to the East and South like vikings.
 
“Don’t trip, the corpses are gone,” Listo pulled a cigarette he kept tucked behind his ear and started to smoke, “They might come back though.”
 
Tía Huera interrupted, “Ey! You want to talk that bullshit, then take it out of my shop!”
 
“Outside,” Trouble shot her hand with a pointed finger outwards directing Listo to the street.

“Whatever,” Listo turned and walked out.
 
Once alone, Troubles asked, “Are you sure, Tía? I could keep helping you if you want.”
 
“You remind me of the old days sometimes, I swear, now go, you’re clumsy like you said anyway.”
 
Stepping out into the street and leaving her Tía to her work, she saw that Listo had already left. In school, her teacher had told her that all the streets in Old L.A used to be paved, even the river, but that was ancient history. The streets, now dirt roads, flooded nasty, with centuries of trash lining them like curbs and broken gravel sidewalks. All except for the gringo valley run by the Corporation, they kept everything like it was or even better, or so she was told. Chicanas like her weren’t allowed in the valley.
 
The Belvedere Barrio wasn’t very big, not like the Willowbrook or Hollenbeck, but it was theirs. It had a park that they had taken over and a corner store that sold liquor and smokes. When she was a little girl, her big brother would walk her to get candy, sour worms and chili powder. She would never go alone, even now, Trouble still didn’t like walking around by herself. Other barrios knew who she was and could catch her slipping, running her down and stabbing her up, not that she’d ever admit to fearing for her life.
 
Walking first to her homegirl’s house, another flat-topped adobe, she knocked on the door and called out, “Muñeca! Muñeca!”
 
The door opened and it was Ms. Rodriguez, Muñeca’s mom, “Letty is busy, studying.”
 
That was a lie, Muñeca had dropped out with Trouble last year.
 
“I said she’s studying, so leave.”
 
“Ms. Rodriguez…”
 
“I wish you’d forget my daughter lived here, you’re trouble.”
 
Trouble smirked, “I know I am.”
 
Ms. Rordguez stood firm at the door as if to hide all that was behind her.
 
“Mom, it’s just Carmen,” said Muñeca, squeezing herself past her mother and outside.

“She just said she was trouble.”
 
“She’s my friend Mom, I’ll be back,” Muñeca leaned back towards her mother to give her a hug, one her mother reluctantly accepted.
 
Close to her daughter, Ms. Rodriguez whispered in her ear, “Don’t be out all night.”
 
Muñeca gave her mother a kiss goodbye without agreeing to anything, then joined Trouble outside, dressed similarly only she kept her hair in a long single braid that went down her back and her shirt was solid blue not plaid.
 
“Your mom doesn’t like me,” said Trouble, walking with her best friend.

“It’s cuz you’re a crazy bitch,” teased Muñeca.
 
“Fuck you,” Trouble teased back.
 
Exchanging shoves until Muñeca, the smaller of the two, fell into the street. Together they met their homegirl, Bashful, the oldest of the three and sporting a big blue sweater and dyed red hair. The homegirls, occupying the sidewalk, walked shoulder to shoulder in search of Trouble’s brother and the vatos from Belvedere.
 
As expected, her brother had the homeboys training. Not every barrio trained, a lot of barrios didn’t even have swords for all their homies. Belvedere was different, her brother didn’t let no one in unless they had a blade, and when all the other barrios were out drinking and getting high, he had them working, learning techniques, and practicing their footwork. The homies hated him for it, until they got in a scrap and survived using what he taught them.
 
When Trouble was a little girl, a viejo with some money built a rancho. He raised animals and planned to sell their meat, eggs, and milk in the barrio, but he forgot about the Corporation. The corpses sold their own fake meat, eggs, and milk, and they wouldn’t suffer any competition, so one night they killed the viejo and burned everything he had down to the ground, animals too. Since then, her brother and Belvedere took over, burying the viejo’s body, and using the remains of his rancho to train at.
 
The Locas were a clique, a subset of Belvedere that had been all Chicana, and once upon a time they trained with the Locos and fought with them against rival barrios, but that had all ended after her Tía Huera’s generation. Now the Locos thought the homegirls were only good for polishing their swords. But the homegirls didn’t care, they marched up to the wooden fence of the old animal pen the homeboys were training in and peered over.
 
The Locos were deep, twenty of them sitting on the floor crossed legged around the rectangular pen. The homeboys mostly went bald, some wearing fedoras, they all wore baggy pants and Chuck Taylors and white tees under button ups. Their shirts, plaid or a solid dark color, worn extra long to conceal the swords at their waist. Just ahead of them in the middle sat her brother, a legend at twenty, they called him Dreamer from Belvedere.
 
Hair slicked back with pomade, Dreamer’s plaid shirt was blue and white, worn open allowing his sword, slung at his side to peek out. A katana, Japanese steel in Chicano hands, it was hard to get and dangerous to use. A vato could just as easily cut off their own hand by accident than fighting the enemies. To wield it, made him feared and respected, even by Belvedere’s rivals like Calle Eastern. And his ability as a barrio warrior earned him the title, the Sword of the East.
 
At the center, stood two homeboys, Listo from earlier and another homeboy called Shorty. Both were holding training swords made of wood, stepping awkwardly they exchanged blows, neither very skilled. Trouble could tell Shorty was intimidated and it made him skittish. Listo, overly confident, took too many risks and swung wildly.
 
“Aagh!” cried out Listo, charging Shorty at full speed and making the mistake of running into the point of Shorty’s wooden sword. Seeing him fall, groaning and cursing in pain, Trouble laughed loudly, getting not only Listo’s attention but all of Belvedere.
 
“Who let the hoodrats watch?!” questioned a vato her brother’s age named Stretch, a gigantic homeboy from Belvedere.
 
From the floor, Listo made his excuses, “You all saw that shit, I got distracted by them sexy ass hynas.”
 
Shorty scowled, “Fuck that, I beat your ass, them hynas saw it too,” shifting towards Trouble and her homegirls, “Who gonna give me a victory kiss?”
 
Trouble hated when the homies acted stupid, even more so she hated the way Shorty was looking at Muñeca and when Listo started to give her the same look, she snapped, “What victory? You got lucky Shorty, and Stretch, call me and the homegirls hoodrats again and I’ma fuck you up.”
 
The homeboys erupted in laughter, embarrassing Shorty and Listo, and making Stretch angry, “I don’t fight hynas, but I’ll consider your ugly ass a vato,” he then stood up aggressively.
 
Muñeca and Bashful couldn’t stop her in time, Trouble, hopping the fence and shouting, “You want to fight, motherfucker!”
 
Trouble didn’t have the voluptuous bottle shape the Locos were into and they punished her for it, teasing her at every opportunity. Having what her Tía called a warrior’s build, she was lean and well-muscled, with calloused hands and a broken nose. Taking offense at being called an ugly hoodrat, she pressed the issue, “You big son of a bitch!”
 
Stretch, leaving his real weapon, a cross guarded longsword, he picked up a wooden one. Shirtless, Belvedere tattooed across his chest, he stepped into the center of the pen.
 
“This is going to be bad,” said Shorty as he helped Listo to his feet. Listo, grinning, exclaimed, “Ooo, Trouble, your ass is going to get it now!”
 
“Shut the fuck up, Listo,” called out Bashful, and leaning over the fence, Muñeca taunted, “Fuck ’em up, Trouble don’t let Stretch get away with that shit!”
 
Happy that her homegirls had her back, Trouble stepped further into the pen, “I need a training sword, who got one I can use?”
 
All the homies from Belvedere turned to her brother Dreamer, silently asking if they could give her one, none of them moving without his say. Her brother pretended to think it over, eyes hidden behind his own dark sunglasses. Rising to his feet, “The homie Stretch vs Trouble,” he declared, “that’s not a fair fight.”
 
Stretch protested, “What the fuck you mean?”
 
Dreamer let slip a sly smile beneath his thin mustache, “Listo, Shorty, will join Stretch in fighting my sister.”
 
Shorty choked, “What?!”
 
“I said you three versus my sister.”
 
“Nah, that’s fucked up, we’d beat the shit out of her,” Listo argued.
 
“Sure about that?” warned Dreamer, walking over to his sister with his wooden training sword.
 
Handing it to her, he said in a low voice, “Don’t embarrass me.”
 
Taking the wooden sword from him, Trouble replied, “You taught me everything I know, it’s your fault if I lose.”
 
The fighters took their positions, Trouble standing across from the homeboys with Stretch in the center and Listo and Shorty on his right and left. Dreamer, retaking his seat, waited till he had all of their attention before saying, “Alright go.”
 
“Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle, I don’t want nothing to happen to that pretty face,” taunted Listo.
 
Rushing her, his wooden sword raised above his head, he screamed a bird-like battle cry and was taken down with one swift blow. With an instantaneous switch of stance followed by the delivery of a well-timed strike, Trouble left Listo dazed in the dirt.
 
“I yield!” Shorty fell to his knees and raised his wooden sword above his head as if to offer to her.
 
“Leva,” muttered Stretch, knocking Shorty over as he passed him to take on Trouble.
 
When Stretch charged, Trouble couldn’t believe how fast the big man was moving, the strike she had planned became a dodge as she pivoted out of his way. Frustrated at missing her, he whirled himself back at her in a long sweeping motion, but she ducked and felt her fedora take the hit that was meant for her head. Kneeling, she stabbed and missed. Regaining control of his weapon, Stretch brought it down on her like a hammer, but sensing the attack coming, she rolled out of the way.
 
Back on her feet, Trouble skipped backwards to put distance between them and for a moment they caught their breaths then went at it again. Raising her wooden sword to meet his, his strength made blocking his attacks difficult. After an exchange that left her hands pulsating in pain around the grip of her weapon, she slowed down and used herself as bait. Thinking she was tired, Stretch hoped to make an example of her in front of her homegirls, still anxiously watching from the sidelines. Bringing his wooden sword up over his head, poised to bring down on her, he put all his force into it only to see her roll away at the very last moment. Too late for him to stop his attack, he hit the dirt floor of the pen so hard his wooden sword snapped and splintered.
 
Trouble, catching Stretch exposed and stunned by his miss, swung and cracked him at his right knee. The strike brought Stretch down, but not completely, so with another roll, she struck at his left knee, this time bringing him all the way down to her level.
 
Refusing to give up, Stretch smacked the broken end of his wooden sword into the side of her head, dizzying her and making her bleed. Stabbing in response, Trouble hit Stretch in the chest and took the air from his lungs.
 
I’ve got you now, you big motherfucker, she thought to herself. Leveling her wooden sword, she meant for one final attack that would bust his head wide open, making an example of him to all the other Locos.
 
“Ya Estuvo!” her brother called out to her.
 
Hearing her brother’s voice, mid strike, Trouble stopped herself a hair’s length from Stretch’s head, letting the wooden sword slip harmlessly from her hands.

“You’ve won,” Dreamer paused as Stretch fell over and stared down all of Belvedere, “All you vatos better have learned something.”
 
Trouble beating Stretch in front of the whole barrio had changed the atmosphere, although Stretch, when revived, was gracious in defeat, the other homeboys weren’t. Calling for a meeting to discuss an issue that the homie Roach conveniently remembered allowed the Locos to demand Trouble’s exit and for her to take Muñeca and Bashful with her.
 
Her brother couldn’t help her this time, and she understood, hated it but understood. Only homies from Belvedere were allowed in meetings and no matter who she beat, she still wasn’t from it. Catching a sigh on her brother’s face, she nodded, showing him that she didn’t blame him.
 
“That’s fucking bullshit!” yelled Muñeca over the fence.
 
“You’re all mad cuz she smacked up your homeboy!” followed Bashful.
 
“Fuck ’em,” shouted Trouble, giving Belvedere the finger.
 
Not all the Locos wanted Trouble and the homegirls out, and those that didn’t laughed and poked fun at their homeboy for his defeat and praised her for her victory.
 
“What happened, Stretch?”
 
“Stretch got rocked by the homegirl Trouble!”
 
“The homegirl Trouble got hands!"
 
Walking to her brother, still seated, Trouble’s bent down and gave him a hug, “See you.”
 
Dreamer returned her hug, “Don’t let them get to you, they're stupid.”
 
“I know,” Trouble backed away and started towards the fence.
 
“Carmen!” her brother called out to her.
 
Stopping, embarrassed by the use of her given name, “What, Hugo?”
 
“Trucha!” Dreamer warned her.
 
Trouble rolled her eyes, her brother could be so paranoid, “Always,” she replied, and hopped the fence back to her homegirls.
 
With Muñeca and Bashful, she left the viejo’s rancho and the Locos in their pen, together they walked down the street, quiet and mad.
 
“The homies are fucking haters,” Muñeca declared.
 
Bashful looked over her shoulder before speaking, “They don’t want us there because they know Trouble makes them look bad.”
 
“Yeah, you fucked up Stretch, and he’s like the biggest one, chale, that shit fucking intimidates them,” Muñeca reasoned.
 
Exhaling in frustration, Trouble snapped, “Yeah, but what the fuck you want me to do about it?”
 
Muñeca and Bashful didn’t know what to say, the homeboys didn’t want another Locas click, only a Locos.
 
“Ey, let’s get something, I got coin on it.” Bashful’s tone had changed and was now excited, reaching into her front pocket she produced a handful of coins.
 
“If you got drink, I got smoke,” Muñeca said, reaching into her pocket and retrieving a sack of mota.
 
Trouble appeared defeated, “I don’t got shit.”
 
Both homegirls put a hand to her shoulder, “You don’t need shit, we got you,” said Bashful.
 
Muñeca, already laughing at the recent memory, followed, “Yeah, you deserve a party for what you did to Stretch.”
 
“I fucked him up?” Trouble asked humbly.
 
“You laid him out!”
 
“Yup, right on his humongous dumbass.”

The Little Store was a liquor store and served the Belvedere barrio since Tía Huera was a kid, it was owned and operated by the Corporation so it wasn’t adobe. Corpse funded, it was a small square building made of concrete with a steel door and a reinforced glass window.
 
Bashful knocked on the window, “Wake up or I’ma leave.”

An elderly gringo came to the window, he was new, none of the homegirls recognized him, “What can I get you?”
 
“Pack of Red Seven frajos, a big bag of…”

The man interrupted Bashful's order, voice trembling, “Excuse me, what are frahoes?”
 
The Corporation owned The Little Store and stores just like it in every barrio, employing old gringos in debt for no pay. Most of them had never been out of the valley before and all of them were scared of anyone Black or Brown.
 
“Cigarettes,” replied Bashful, seeing the man nod, she went on, “a big bag of Green Chili Chips, and three Old…”
 
Bashful stopped, interrupted now by Muñeca, “The blunt, get a blunt.”
 
“Right,” Bashful nodded, then finished her order, “A pack of Murrieta Cigarillos and three bottles of Old Hispanic.”
 
It took the old man working the store unbearably long to get their items but when he retrieved them all, Bashful paid him with her coins, sliding them through a small slot cut into the glass. Counting them, he slid their things through another larger slot on the opposite end of the store.
 
Leaving, Muñeca spilled the tobacco guts from the cigarillo and started to roll the blunt, and Trouble could smell Bashful’s frajo. She held her Old Hispanic out in front of her, studying its conquistador logo before taking a swig. The brand was the Corporation’s attempt to market its liquor to Raza, suddenly she dropped the bottle and paid no attention to it shattering at her feet.
 
In front of her, moving at a fast pace were three Tolucas, riding on their motorcycles coming toward them. “Ah shit!” shouted Muñeca, dropping the mota and the blunt and starting to run. Bashful, still smoking, took a drag, and followed.
 
“Hey! Get the fuck back over here!” yelled a Toluca, seeing them in their headlights.
 
Racing at them, they were surrounded by three Tolucas, one in front of them, one behind, and another at their side forcing them against the side of a tall adobe building.
 
“Where the hell do you little ladies think you’re going?” said the Toluca at their side, stopping his bike.
 
The Tolucas, or Toluca Rangers, were one of the many security groups that the Corporation contracted with to keep the so-called peace in Old Los Angeles. All gringo, they wore nothing but blackened leather with a lot of fringe and they kept their hair blonde, bleached if not natural, styled with product that made it stand and shine.
 
“The fuck you want with us?!” shouted Trouble, but she knew it was a stupid question, Tolucas like all the security groups tortured and robbed anyone they caught who wasn’t rich or gringo.
 
The Toluca in front of them stepped off his motorcycle, “Whatever you got to give us.”
 
“We don’t got shit,” Muñeca tried to hide her worry but her homegirls could hear it.
 
“Oh, I’m sure you got something,” said the Toluca behind them, stepping off his bike and retrieving the short spear all Tolucas carried on their back.
 
The Tolucas to their front and side, following the last’s example, pulled their spears, wooden shafts with sharp leaf shaped points, and started to stab at the homegirls.
 
Forcefully batting the spear away with her hand, not caring if it cut her, Trouble yelled, “Fuck, Corpse.”
 
“Ladies,” the last Toluca raised his hand and the others stopped their poking, “Let’s start over, I’m Steve, that’s Tony,” he gestured to the Toluca at their front, “and that’s Bruce,” he gestured to the Toluca at their side, “Now either you girls cough up some coin or we start getting to know each other.”
 
“You ain’t getting to know nobody, you fucking corpse!” Bashful pulled the gladius she kept concealed beneath her baggy blue sweater. She was the only one of the homegirls to own a sword, having taken it from a vato from Westside Westlake.
 
Like alarms the Tolucas went off.

“She’s got a fucking sword!”
 
“Model Gladius!”
 
Steve got the last word, “Bad move.”
 
The Tolucas all at once lunged at Bashful. Overwhelmed by the three, they speared her to death.
 
“Bashful!” screamed Muñeca, watching her homegirl’s body stabbed and pinned and bleeding against the adobe building.

Trouble thought and felt only vengeance; the Tolucas had come into her barrio and took her homegirl’s life. Like she was nothing, how dare they! she raged in her mind.
 
Dropping, she grabbed Bashful’s gladius, fallen by her feet, and brought it upwards into the jaw and through the head of Tony. She left no time for the Tolucas to react; pulling it, she slashed at Bruce, cutting him at the belly and spilling his guts. Her momentum was stopped by Steve, who pulled his spear from Bashful, finally letting her body drop, and stabbing it into Trouble’s shoulder.
 
Muñeca swung as hard as she could and yelled, “Fucker!”
 
Steve turned his head to meet her coming first, the punch giving her the precious seconds needed to pick up Tony’s spear. Steve, still tearing at the eye and bleeding from the nose, Muñeca charged him, running him through with the spear and toppling him over.
 
Holding the place where she’d been stabbed, Trouble locked eyes with Muñeca, looking back at her from skewering the Toluca, then they both looked at Bashful's body. Both homegirls stuck between sadness and relief.
 
They didn’t have too much time to think, a voice on the radio of one of the dead Toluca’s motorcycles echoed, “Boys? You there, boys? Steve? Bruce? Listen. If you’re alive? Help is coming, if you’re dead, expect revenge, the Corporation is sending in the Blue Eyes.”
 
The Blue Eyed White Knights were known as the white axe of Corporate, they left the valley and cut down anything or anyone that dared to stand up. Hearing the engines of their motorcycles, the homegirls huddled together their backs to the adobe building.
 
Needing heavy motorcycles to carry them, the White Knights kept their faces hidden behind snow white pig face helmets, worn atop blued plate armor and carried double sided battle axes, snow white like their helmets with blue steel blades. Reaching the homegirls first and stepping off his bike, a White Knight came towards them, his white axe at the ready.
 
“Belvedere!” yelled Muñeca, charging the White Knight she jammed her spear into his chest, but it uselessly deflected off his armor.
 
“ Muñeca, run!” shouted Trouble.
 
Too late, the White Knight’s axe came down, taking both of her homegirl’s arms off with one chop, severing them right below the elbow.
 
Teetering backwards in shock, Muñeca fell, but Trouble rushed in to catch her. “Pendeja,” she mumbled woefully, looking up to see the White Knight already bearing down upon them.
 
Thinking she was distracted by her wounded friend, the White Knight raised his axe high for one massive attack. Trouble, seizing the opportunity, let go of Muñeca, and took hold of Bashful's sword, slashing up at the neck and in between the knight’s armor. Stepping away from the homegirls as if suddenly disinterested, the White Knight turned to face his fellow Blue Eyes and fell, his head rolling away from his body when he landed.
 
“Cute,” echoed one of the Knights, and three, almost on command, unseated their bikes and pulled their axes. That was when Trouble heard the roaring engines of her salvation, Barrio Belvedere was coming.
 
Dreamer and the Locos fixed their motorcycles to be fast, and that made them loud, shaking windows as they flew in from the side opposite of the Blue Eyes. Swarming, they protectively wedged themselves between the homegirls and the White Knights.
 
Her big brother had come, but Trouble’s pride wasn’t going to let her call it a rescue. Riding with Dreamer were Listo, Roach, and Stretch. Already pulling their swords, Roach and Stretch started facing down the knights.
 
“They got Bashful! ” called out Listo, then running to Muñeca, “They fucked up the homegirl pretty bad, she needs help.”
 
Dreamer, off his bike, ordered, “Stretch, get Muñeca, get her out of here,”
 
“But fucking Corpses, the fucking Blue Eyes…” he started to argue but Dreamer stopped him, “I said get her and go!”
 
“Fuck it,” Stretch hated his orders but still followed them, sheathing his longsword and taking Muñeca in his arms and carrying her to his bike.
 
As Stretch and Muñeca sped off, Dreamer turned to Listo but before he could give him orders, his attention was called to Roach.
 
One of the Knights was inching their way towards Roach. Alarmed, he shifted his stance and shouted, “Get the fuck back!”
 
The White Knight, picking up on his fear, came at him with his axe. Roach carried a thin bladed rapier, failing to block, the white axe broke his sword in half and embedding in his chest in one hard chop.
 
“Roach!” yelled Listo, his homeboy falling over and bleeding out.
 
“Listo!” Dreamer got his attention, “Get my sister, and go.”
 
Trouble, her voice stricken with pain, protested “Dreamer let me fight with you.”
 
Dreamer smiled in admiration of his little sister’s courage, “Chale.”
 
“Dreamer?” It was the knight who had called Trouble’s beheading of his fellow Blue Eyes cute.
 
“I’m Dreamer from Belvedere,” he answered, placing a hand on his katana.
 
The White Knight sneered through his snow white helmet, “Known as the Sword of the East?”
 
“I am,” Dreamer followed with the unsheathing of his katana and directing it towards the knight.

Seeing the katana wielded by her brother, Trouble remembered the legends every youngster in the Chicano L.A learned coming up. Only the oldest barrios had a katana, the Belvedere katana dating all the way back to 1942, when it was used by the first vato from the barrio to learn the way of the sword. Since then Belvedere katana was always passed down to the Sword of the East.
 
“Excellent,” the condescending voice of White Knight had a piercing tone, “I’ll have them put your head on display. I’m William, Lord Percy to you and Captain of the Blue Eyes.”
 
The three Knights, including the one that killed Roach, all attacked Dreamer, thinking it by surprise, but with three strikes much faster than theirs he took them all down, their bodies piling in a heap of bleeding armor.
 
“Fools,” Lord Percy had started with a dozen Knights, eight now with those just cut down, he directed the rest to attack Dreamer all at once.
 
“Trouble, go with Listo!” Dreamer yelled to his sister as the rest of the White Knights left their motorcycles and pulled their white axes.
 
“No, don’t make me!” pleaded Trouble.
 
“Listo!”
 
Hearing his big homie, Listo grabbed Trouble, and helped by her weakness from her wound, he was able to pull her onto his motorcycle.
 
Held by Listo and speeding away, Trouble looked back and saw her brother engage the Blue Eyes. Dreamer waded into the White Knights like water, his katana dipping into the gaps in their armor and cutting them to pieces. None of the Knights made it past him, falling one by one and losing limbs and heads on their way down. What was left of them lay scattered, turning the dirt road beneath them into a blood soaked mud.
 
When Dreamer was through, only he and Lord Percy were standing. Getting smaller as Listo took her farther away, a bump made Trouble bounce and gaze further out and into the distance. There, she saw the snake of headlights slithering towards her brother from the valley. More White Knights, all of the Blue Eyes it seemed, were coming to put down the Sword of the East.
 
She couldn’t let him die, not over her, telling her homeboy, “Dispensa,” and barely hearing his confused, “What?” Trouble reverse headbutted Listo, breaking his nose, making him swerve and struggle not to crash. Letting her go, she fell from the motorcycle, rolled and felt bones break. So she crawled until she willed herself up into a limp, all to get back to her brother. But Trouble was too late.
 
Tripping, she caught herself on her knees and elbows, scraping them both. Finding the legs that tripped her she saw that they were plate armored and missing the rest of their body. Panic straightened her back and turned her melodic limp into a run, and she next found the body belonging to the legs, its armor dented and crusted with bloody dirt. A Chicano barrio warrior defeated a White Knight, and when she stumbled upon Lord Percy’s severed head, his helmet hacked off, the look on his face told her he died shocked.
 
Where was her brother? The nervous thought gripped her mind and Trouble called out, “Hugo! Dreamer!”
 
“Carmen!” She heard her brother's voice and followed it.
 
Dreamer was laying on his back, arms and legs spread like a fallen star, the blade of the White Knight’s snow-white axe broken off into his chest and stomach. Trouble ran to him, “What the fuck do I do?!”
 
“Trouble,” he started to speak but his voice failed.
 
Hearing their engines, she saw the snake of lights coming their way, “Dreamer,” she said his name like a warning then she started to drag him,
 
“Chale,” Dreamer stopped her, gripping his sword one last time, then pushing it into his sister’s hands. When Trouble took hold of it, he pulled her to him and whispered.
 
She laid her brother to rest and did as he said, taking the katana of Belvedere and running, his last words echoing to her as she made her escape, “Trouble from Belvedere must live, she’s the Sword of the East now.”

Robert “Wizard” Martin is a Chicano writer, whose work is influenced by his experiences growing up in Los Angeles and his activism. Through his stories he seeks to counter mainstream narratives and assumptions by calling into question what is “canon” or “orthodox” through the historized placement of Chicano/a/xs in roles and spaces from which they have long been erased or excluded. His themes include Chicano Noir, Chicano Futurism, and Alternative Chicano History.

by M.R. Subias

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by Robert G. Retana

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

***

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

***

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

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

by Armando Gonzalez

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

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

by Jacob “Jake” Teran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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