 “When A Flower Blooms In Hell”by J.R. Rustrian Dear Nicon, It was so good to read your last letter and even better to see the care package you’ve sent me. I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten my stash of sulfur and bones at home. I hope the latest paycheck is enough to pay for at least two months’ rent. We can’t afford to get evicted from yet another place and our latest landlord is just waiting for a chance to kick us out. It’s been an interesting time here at the Lake of Fire Recreational Area. I have to admit, I was nervous when I first started here, but I feel like I’m starting to settle into a routine here. My co-workers are much younger than I am, as most of them are barely starting their university training. It can be difficult to relate to them because most of the time they are sharing gossip about who is dating whom and what parties to attend that weekend. You know me, Nicon, I’d rather be at home with a good book of satanic spells, drinking an aged cup of blood. I spend most of my time here working alone, struggling to keep up with the younger, stronger demons. The work of a Recreational Assistant takes a certain amount of effort and I often find myself falling behind everybody else. I’ll tell you something, Nicon, loading meat wagons full of rotting and flailing human carcasses is tiring work. My coworkers make it look easy, and I suspect they don’t like to work with me because of that. I’ve found it easier to just go off by myself, clean up charred human bones and remind myself that the money here is much better than what could be made back home. Thoughts like that keep me company when I’m out in the field working, or else I’d throw myself into one of the lava pools with the rest of the damned souls. On the third day, they put me to work moving and re-staking the Impalement Gardens. It’s tough, messy and tedious work. The impaled souls wail in torment as you lift up the stakes and reposition them, leading the eyes of relaxing demons and fallen angels square on you. I’ve never been one for the limelight, and so I try to finish my work as quickly as possible so I can run back into the safety of the recreational center. Days like those make it tough to not call it quits and come home, but then, I’m reminded of our struggles. The meager rations. The ragged clothes. The long days of begging. Yeah, I’m not eager to go back to that. If that means I have to work endless days physically eviscerating every single damned soul that crosses the lake, then so be it. Don’t let that be a sign of despair, Nicon, but rather just thinking about if I had chosen a different path in this afterlife. I’m writing to you during my break so I better wrap this up. My supervisor, a peppy demoness not too much older than myself, is going to show us the latest in skinning and flailing technology and I have to say, I’m not the least bit interested in relearning something I learned in grade school. Take care, brother. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, The days have started to blend together. I wake up every hellish morning to the swirling maelstrom above and frown. It takes me back to our days off from school, when we would try to entertain ourselves in the empty poison mounds near our home. We would stare up at the gaping hellmouths above and try to count the endless human souls falling to their doom, before falling asleep to the sound of mortals suffocating from the toxic sludge around us. Those were better times, brother. It brings me some comfort in the lonely, tiring days here. Lately, they’ve been working me to death on the torture racks, which require resetting after the body breaks apart. I must’ve reset the same soul over fifty times yesterday. The other demons don’t seem to mind it, but it’s just so repetitive and dull. It makes me wonder whether or not I was meant for this. Or am I even meant for anything at all? The days would be pure torment if it wasn’t for this demoness I met here named Scarlett. She’s a funny demon, older like myself and also only here for the paycheck, a result of having two little bundles of despair at home and a fallen angel who refuses to work. It’s a relief to meet someone here that admits how boring and soul-crushing the work is. Despite all of that, she still exhibits a good attitude and even excels at fielding questions from the public and wrangling stinging insects for the diseased souls near the playground. I’m glad that I’m not alone here, but I’m never one for demonic interaction. I try to stay away from the groups of vacationers, health fanatics and families who come to see human souls try to balance their way across a scorching sea of pure fire. Their questions can be annoying and never-ending and keeping kids from touching the suffering masses without proper protection is the worst torture one can endure around here. There’s one great part here, however, and that’s the foothills towards the back end of the park, away from the frolicking crowds, near the river of boiling blood which flows down into the lower levels of the Inferno. It’s secluded, quiet and, best of all, a great place to take a break from the tedium of punishing the damned. In the days since my last letter, I’ve often found myself sitting near one of the many alcoves, watching the swirling vortex of fire and brimstone above or just listening to the babbling creek beside, watching the violent damned boiling in torment. I wonder how my life got here. We should’ve been elsewhere by now, either enjoying ourselves on the shores of the Styx, enjoying paid torments in the city of Dis or vacationing near Limbo. It makes me wonder why I even went to university and wasted my time in learning skills that I am not even putting to use here, such as those studies into mortal culture and physiology. Either way, brother, I have to believe that we will come out stronger. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Things have been getting interesting to say the least here at the Lake. Workwise, the job has been getting vicious as my instructor has started myself and Scarlett on the vivisection field renovations. I couldn’t tell you the many hours of shifting operating slabs, wiping down viscera and strapping down flailing souls that it took to complete that project. Poor Scarlett, as dynamic and chipper as she is, would nurse her aching hooves each moment she had to herself. The little patch near the alcove became my refuge, my safe place, my second home, if you would call it that. Picture the yard in our old home. Try to remember the gnarled oak trees covered in screaming faces, feel the hot gravel underneath your claws and hooves, taste the burning ash in the air and you might get some semblance of the tranquility that this little piece of Hell had to offer. It was like playing hide and go seek in our younger years again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hint of green. I was never a superstitious demon and I chalked it up to my own exhaustion, but the green stayed there, never straying from my vision. Curiosity got the better of me. I lumbered over towards the alcove and froze in my tracks. It was unbelievable what my eyes fell upon, almost bordering on the horrifying. It was tiny, no taller than four inches and so fragile even a gentle breeze could knock it over but radiated a feeling of terror so absolute it was difficult to look at. The thin, oval petals, overbearingly white and circling the fluffy yellow center, were supported by a thin, green stem from which small, green leaves poked out at random intervals. It was what the humans called a “flower.” The ground seemed to fall beneath my feet as I stumbled back from the sight. What was a flower doing here in Hell? What sort of unmerciful God would allow such an abominable sight such as this? The flower swayed in the hellish wind, taunting me with its mere presence. Fear overcame me, paralyzed by indecision. My first instinct was to stomp on it and forever be rid of its welcoming presence. It’s possibly what any normal demon would’ve done, but there was something about it that was…enticing. Something attractive. Something beautiful. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I caught myself before I examined it more and so, out of fear, I ran away back to my duties of punishing the human damned. All day, my co-workers asked about my agitated state. I lied to them and told them that a park patron had been aggressive towards me, even when Scarlett asked. She smirked at me when I told her. I wondered if she was able to see through my lie. I’m at a loss of what to do. Should I go back and stamp out the infestation? Should I alert my instructor and let them know what has invaded the Lake of Fire? Either way, sleeping is going to be difficult. The small plant is still out there, laughing and taunting me, slithering into my dreams and mutating them into happy thoughts. Keep me in your thoughts, Nicon. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, The days have rushed by since my last letter. Out there near the foothills was that little piece of the mortal world, sitting there and taunting me with its presence. I haven’t dared go back to check on it, for fear its power would overcome me. Or maybe it already has, since I can’t stop thinking about it. The flower has invaded my dreams ever since I first found it, causing me nights of restless sleep and making me even less popular among my peers in the dormitory. Not even the wailing of the damned has been able to help. I’ve had memories of our time in school creeping back into my mind, like when we would write notes on scraps of human skin and pass them to each other during torment lessons. I only remember because our teachers would try to drill into our heads about how dangerous the world above was. Stay away from anything mortal, they would tell us, they have an effect on demonic things and are strictly banned because of this. Our teachers likened objects from the land of the living like pieces of radiation, affecting any demon or anything that came near with an invisible, unseen effect. As to what, they never really said. We always thought it was just fluff from teachers trying to scare us away from earthly things. I remember the urban legends about wayward demons stumbling onto objects from above, such as the one about the kid who found a piece of a human building that had mysteriously appeared out near the Stygian wastes. Story had it that the kid had gone insane, trying to rescue damned souls from their torment and then was never seen again. I shuddered the first time I heard it and I shudder even as I’m writing it to you. Could you possibly imagine losing your mind and, even worse, trying to rescue the damned? I hope you can forgive me, bro, as I wasn’t strong enough to keep this secret to myself and entrusted it to my new friend Scarlett. I approached her yesterday as we were setting up chains and hooks for the newly arriving damned. Something got into me and I started whistling a strange tune. She turned to me and gave me a disgusted look as no self-respecting demon would be caught dead whistling at work. I looked at her and, for a second, thought that I shouldn't reveal the existence of the flower. Scarlett already had so much going on, and this would just burden her even more. There was also the mere fact Scarlett would turn me in like a good demon should. I was petrified at the thought. Losing this job Then, she sneered at me, and that’s when I realized that she had noticed me keeping this from her. “You found something, didn’t you? Over by the foothills?” she asked much to my amazement. “I think it’s best if I showed you.” I said. Before I knew it, we had hiked to the foothills along the blood river. My whole body trembled as we approached the site, like if we were trespassing into the personal domain of the Devil himself. Scarlett let out a holler as we both stumbled back. It was worse. It was far worse than I remembered. Scarlett had been promised a solitary white flower, and what we happened upon was a tiny garden of the horrible creatures, surrounded by a patch of green grass. The smell was overpowering and pleasant; the colors bright and cheerful. It almost made me vomit. We stared at the sight for a bit, keeping a distance, before Scarlett took her first, careful steps towards it. I would have asked what was wrong with her, if I hadn’t also been stepping closer to the garden. The flowers, so told to us as dangerous and deadly to the underworld, sat there idle and unassuming. “This…this isn’t a dream…is it?” she asked me. I shook my head. We were awake and lucid. A garden had somehow sprouted in Hell. The urge to touch a flower overcame me and I reached out to touch the original flower. Its petals were soft and fluffy and its stem was rigid and fuzzy. For all intents and purposes, it was harmless, at least for now. “Aza, come!” I heard Scarlett call to me. “There’s something going on here!” I looked up and found her inspecting the small alcove itself. She reached out and waved in the air at the entrance and then pulled it back as if something had whipped her fingers. I asked her what was the matter. “It’s…cold. Like in Cocytus, but that shouldn’t be, should it?” she asked. I walked over the alcove and confirmed the cold. What was it doing so high up? There was something off about that alcove, brother. Fear got the better of us and we dashed away before something inside that place reached out and slaughtered us. As I’m writing this, Scarlett is sitting across from me, her eyes dashing back and forth. There’s something in her mind, trying to process the mysterious place. Maybe she thinks it’s haunted, or is some sort of holy place where we shouldn’t be trespassing. I’ll ask her tomorrow. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Anxiety kept me up most of the night, as the thought of the illegal garden was too much for me to bear. As the next shift came, I searched out Scarlett near the female dormitories, only to be told that she had started her work early. A chill went up my spine and into my horns. There were only two places she would go to right now: to our instructor to turn me in for not reporting the flower garden, or to the alcove itself. I wrestled with which one would be the most preferable. I gingerly walked along the blood river, swatting away the wailing souls that attempted to climb out. My heart pumped. What I wouldn’t give to be one of those souls in the river right now. I secretly prayed that the alcove was just some figment of my imagination, that it was just a lucid dream that I thought in my lowest moments. Then, I found Scarlett sitting near the garden, smiling and gazing into the mysterious alcove. I approached cautiously, as if whatever this was had a hold on her. She patted the ground next to her and invited me to sit, not taking her eyes off of the void. “It’s a portal,” she said, “to above.” “A portal to where?” I asked her. “To the mortal realm, Aza. To Earth.” I took my gaze off of her and turned it into the alcove and, suddenly, it all became clear. The cold, the flowers, the grass. It was all coming out from this alcove, spilling into our little park. “How do you think it happened?” she asked me. I shrugged and told her about rumors of demons playing around with forbidden rituals to see into the living world, as some of the urban legends went. She then told me about a rumor about a special day of the year where the boundaries of the afterlife and mortal realms weaken, letting us see into their world. “Or maybe it was just a huge mistake.” I said, “Either way, it’s dangerous and we oughta let somebody know about this.” “True. If we’re caught sitting here, we’ll get fired, or banished from the Inferno. These things from above, they’re not supposed to be here. They can mess up the ecosystem here or something, at least, that’s what I learned in school. But, just look at them, they aren’t really doing anything. Just existing.” “We’re probably the only two demons who have ever seen an actual flower in the flesh. It’s starting to be an interesting day, don’t you think?” Whatever the reason was, Scarlett and I continued to stare into the portal in silence, trying to commit the feeling into memory. I glanced over at her, and noticed her standing there with her black eyes transfixed on the garden and a gentle smile on her face. There wasn’t a trace of fear or anxiety to be found within her, only a level of confidence that I’ve been chasing my entire life. She had an entire family to support at home, I thought, how was she able to be so close to something that could potentially get ourselves in trouble, or worse? It was nice to just sit there, however, away from the hustle and bustle of the park, away from our financial problems, away from the burden of having to figure out what to do with your life. The fear of the invasion from above was gone for a moment, replaced by a strange serenity that I had never experienced before, something that other demons would want to pay to experience. Then, an idea hit me like a spear. Other demons would absolutely pay to see this. Forgive me, brother, as I am writing this, Scarlett and I are working up a plan to present this to our instructor. I’ll write with more news as soon things are put into place. Wish me luck that the next time I write, I’m not wrapped in chains. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Sorry for the lack of communication. There’s so much happening at the Lake of Fire as you can imagine. So many things have changed here and it’s all thanks to our incredible idea. I wondered, instead of being so scared of the flower, why not replace it with curiosity? So Scarlett and I got to work putting together a proposal about turning the flower into an attraction. People love sideshows, after all, and so did our supervisors. They could see the gold coins spilling out of their pockets and immediately approved it. Scarlett had experience in negotiating contracts, as, at one time in her life, her career pointed her towards creating contracts for demons to use when they make deals with mortals for their eternal souls. It sounds boring to me, but to each their own. You should’ve seen her when we presented our idea to our bosses. It made me, well, jealous, I guess you could say? If she’s so talented in contract negotiations, then what would be my talent? It took a few days, but after confirmation, the other Recreational Assistants and I got to setting up the attraction to complement what the Lake of Fire already had to offer. We called it the “Vision of the Living World Exhibit” and it's already attracted dozens of demons, shades and fallen angels of all walks of life to our little park. The whole place feels like a carnival with families and other onlookers milling about the length of the park. We even have food stalls and souvenir stands to boot. That’s not even the craziest thing, Nicon. Yesterday, as if the flower wasn’t enough, we discovered six more flowers budding from the small patch of cursed soul. They aren’t as majestic as the main specimen, but are certainly a sight to behold. The crowds are increasing every day and it’s getting harder to corral everyone into a place where they can get a good look. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people not blink at the same time. Demons are entranced by the living world. For eons, we could only speculate at what it might be like up there, save for what possessor demons would report back in secret. We could always ask a damned soul, but how would we even make out what they’re saying from all their wailing and despairing? This is the closest anyone of us will ever get to getting a complete picture. I’ve found myself inspecting the garden and grass around the alcove very closely. Scarlett laughed at me as we were setting up the attraction. She commented that I looked like an investigator hard at work. I answered back that I merely wanted to make sure that everything was going to plan. No need to get too invested in the human world, but it’s very interesting to say the least. I miss you very much, bro. Was the checkup to your standards? It’s a negotiated fee for one week’s worth of work! Can you believe it? It feels like things are certainly looking up. Make sure you put that money to good work, like our debts and bills, but also treat yourself to something nice. You deserve it considering you’ve been holding our home together. Can’t wait until I see you. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Something odd is happening around here that I don’t quite understand. It’s as if some unknown, invisible force is stalking us and we’re unable to do anything about it. I woke up in the middle of the night to a deserted park, save for the tortured souls who so deserve to be here. It’s a different place when there are no other demons around. Maybe I’m just so used to the crowds that visit our lake that it’s bizarre to see this level of inactivity. The presence was so thick that I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to take a walk. I wandered over to the back where our precious money-making alcove was, scared that it may have disappeared or collapsed. What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks. A tree. An honest-to-badness tree. Not some gnarled oak, twisted and bent into familiar horrific shapes but a tall, majestic evergreen which seemed to pierce into the hellish sky. Its leaves were a brilliant green, wide and full of life. Its bark was full and healthy with a verdant moss growing in patches across its surface. The entire trunk swayed as if it had just conquered a foreign land. So taken was I with its height that I almost neglected to see the numerous bushes that dotted its feet like demon children surrounding their mother. Each one of these leafy monstrosities supported numerous red berries with green stems. Now, I’ve never known you to judge me in any capacity, but I have to confess that the urge to taste one of these berries was overwhelming. And so, I did. The taste was sweet, sour and juicy, unlike the bitter herbs or raw flesh we feast upon. I gorged myself on several, eating until the shame was too much to bear. Paranoia flooded inside me and I stepped back, taking in the true scale of the site. Scarlett and I’s little garden was growing. As to how much, I didn't know. What’s happening here, bro? I feel as if I stepped into something I don’t fully understand. Were they right to tell those stories in school? I would hope not. I’ll write later and, hopefully, these feelings will dissipate. Keep a look out for those checks. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Scarlett roused me out of my slumber with excitement dripping out of her fangs. She dragged me over to the exhibit to be greeted with a veritable grove of evergreen trees, large berry bushes and several gardens surrounding the mysterious alcove. Yes, the site was growing, but that could be managed. I asked her what she was so worked up about. “No, not the ground! Look up!” she said, raising a singular claw to the green canopy. I couldn't believe what my eyes had seen. There, among the branches and leaves, was a solitary, white bird. A dove, as the mortals call it. It sat there, tweeting and singing its love song. The sound was grating and annoying, like a horrifying whisper of love. “This is going to put us on the map, Aza!” Scarlett said to me “There’s probably a whole nest of them up there!” A chill went up my spine. A whole nest of them? What does that even mean? But Scarlett’s excitement was too infectious and quickly overcame my concerns. I eagerly went to my posts, coming up with a way to introduce our new dove companions to the visiting crowds. Once word had spread, the park filled to capacity, with demon families trying to get a closer look at the visitor from the world above. It was as if time had been robbed from me, because the next memory I have is walking back to the dormitory, laughing and cheering our success with Scarlett. I think she might have noticed it too, since we immediately stopped and went our separate ways. It was a strange thing to have happened. Demons aren’t usually known for laughing and cheering at successes. We do it whenever we cause mayhem to those who deserve it, as our Creator intended. I fear that this alcove, this portal to the living world, is having an effect on us. I’m too sure, brother, but maybe I’m just overwhelmed with my duties today. Besides, this exhibit is putting the park on the map and making us known for more than just throwing sinners into burning brimstone pools. For the first time, my name is known outside of our family. People ask for me whenever they come to the park. You should see their faces light up when they set their eyes on the gardens and trees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Scarlett happier than when we first started working here. Things are definitely looking up. Let me know how things are at home. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Brother, This was never what I wanted. The Lake of Fire…isn’t what it is anymore. The authorities are watching me with a keen eye. Out of mercy, they allowed me a quill and paper to write this letter to you. They think I’m a madman after what happened today. Let me explain to you so you’ll get my side of the story. I trudged out of bed this morning, with an energy that I didn't possess when I first arrived here at the Lake of Fire. We expected a large crowd today, and I didn’t want to miss a second of showing them all the wonderful sights and sounds. All around me, there was the sound of laughter, playing and cheering, but it was a strange sort of joy that I’d never heard before. The cheering came from my left and I quickly realized that I was standing next to the Impalement Gardens. I looked up and saw, to my horror, that the laughter was coming from the damned on the stake. A wide grin greeted me, even though the soul’s innards were spilling out into a pile of mush. It was as if he were enjoying the punishment. Terror overcame me. I looked around and spied smiling, happy families vacationing on our little piece of Hell. Patches of grass and flowers, accompanied by small, harmless insects covered the landscape. A chill raced up my spine. I rushed to the exhibit, where Scarlett had begun setting up for the day. She smiled widely and waved me over. “Beautiful day, Aza! I can’t wait to start our shift!” she called out, sending me a friendly wave. I surveyed the area. Gone was the steaming hot gravel and broken bones, replaced by lush green grass and flowerbeds. Trees covered the foothills surrounding the alcove like boils on a plague-ridden soul, replacing barren ground with verdant, rolling knolls. I couldn't be sure, but I was certain that I could see white clouds forming in the skies directly above me. The demons and fallen angels eagerly awaiting the exhibit laughed and played with one another, calling out, “Good Day!” to the supposedly punished souls in the blood river, who answered back in kind. The sound of human voices, free from the sound of torment, chilled me. Why couldn’t anybody see what was happening? It was wrong. It was all wrong. Our twisted, evil home was turning into a wonderland of smiling faces and chipper tunes right before my eyes. Whatever the alcove had unleashed was bringing…hope, corrupting not only the land, but the people as well. Their laughter was unnatural and not of this world. I’d had enough. I needed to put a stop to it, immediately. What happened next was my only choice and rumors will go around of what happened, but don't pay any attention to any of it. They’ll say I went nuts and attacked the trees, stomped the gardens and slaughtered the birds which had made their homes in the green canopies. I will admit the thought had crossed my mind, but in order to rid us of this infestation, I had to stop it at the source. The alcove needed to be destroyed. I rushed past the exhibit, nearly colliding into several visitors, and stopped at the alcove’s entrance. The cave is twice as tall as I am and made of solid brimstone. Inside, the earthen ceiling was sandy and gravelly, like the ground outside. It was soaked in blood flow from eons of the lake flooding and receding. That’s when I got the idea of collapsing the chamber as there was no way such an unstable feature could withstand a concentrated blow from a mature, strong demon like myself. I spied an executioner’s axe near one of the food booths, used for chopping wood and human body parts, all of which went into the vendor’s pots and fryers. I “borrowed” it and savagely attacked the ceiling of the alcove, screaming and frothing at the mouth as if I were Cereberus feasting on the slothful. The crowd around me stopped celebrating and turned their attention towards me. Scarlett, who was entertaining a small group of demon children, realized what I was doing and attempted to stop me. She was too late, however, as the ceiling of the cursed alcove collapsed in on itself. Seconds later, the cave was no more than a pile of brimstone and hot sand. I stared at the pile, satisfied that my task had been done, before a pair of security guards grabbed me by my arms and dragged me away. As of writing this, I sit inside one of the recreational center’s meeting rooms under close watch. I can hear my superiors outside whispering in voices, discussing what is to be done with me. I feel like a prisoner awaiting their execution or…maybe a human soul waiting to be judged by King Minos. The irony isn't lost on me, brother. Is this empathy I feel? Or is the alcove still having some sort of effect on me? I’m tired. Very tired. Like my life has been drained from my body. At this point, I don't really care about what happens to me. What matters is that terrible influence is finally purged from the park. Keep me in your mind, Nicon. Take care of yourself. I most likely won’t be there to do it for you. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Brother, It’s a miracle! Yes and, in Hell, of all places. They let me sleep my mania off as there was too much to do regarding the cleanup surrounding the alcove. The night, despite the events of the day, finally let me rest and the nightmares of the world above were finally silenced. It was the most restful sleep I’ve experienced in weeks. The morning brought more good news. My supervisors decided that flogging and flaying would not be necessary, as the park began to return to normal and any trace of the mortal infestation was nearly gone. Everybody could feel the spell’s influence on their minds weaken with each passing minute. Upon returning to normal, the destruction of the mortal world exhibit began in earnest. I have never seen so many demons chop down so many trees and churn up mounds of dirt. No flower petal was left standing when they were done with it. Scarlett eventually settled down into her normal, terrifying self. She was a bit sad that all of our hard work was destroyed in the span of an afternoon, as was I. It took all of our courage to go up to our superiors and get the ball rolling in the first place, after all. In the end, I think she was just glad that we weren’t going to be flailed, skinned alive or drowned in pitch. I think the relief gave her a sense of purpose, as she decided several hours ago that she would return to her home to her family. We had earned more in these past couple of days than we had in the past month and that would at least buy a week or two of time with her loved ones. I congratulated Scarlett and encouraged her to find something in the business field. If she could cook up something like the exhibit in our tiny park in a week’s time, imagine what she could do at a major company! I expect her future to be a bright one. “What are you planning on doing?” she asked me. I shrugged. Staying at the Lake of Fire was probably not the best course of action, but what else was there to do? At that moment, I lamented that I had gone back to square one. “You know a lot about the human world, Aza. People would kill to get the knowledge you have. There’s courses that can help you.” Scarlett waved goodbye to me. I bid her a safe trip and watched the maintenance demons finish off whatever remained of the cursed alcove. Her words still bounce in my head. I had never considered going back to school but now it seems like it’s within reach. If Scarlett and you think so, then it's very much possible. I’ll be returning home soon on the next train out of here. There’s so much about the living realm to learn and there are places that will accept somebody with my caliber of knowledge. For the first time in a long time, there is actually a hope in Hell. Hellishly yours, Aza  J.R. Rustrian is a Latino writer of speculative fiction living and working in Southern California. When not writing, you can find him cooking, hiking and playing video games. You can find his work in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Hispanecdotes, and Etherea Magazine.
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 “Brujo”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.
 “Lechuza” 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
 “Death and the Santa Ana Winds”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.
 “SOE: The Sword of the East”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.
 “The Collaborator” by M.R. Subias The battered taxi up ahead weaves around a red mini and I know our guy’s spotted us. I stomp on the Mustang’s gas so our perp, Eddie Mears, can’t pull away from our headlights and lose us. I glance right. Kah-Haas my seven-foot-tall Slitha partner, knees jammed up under his scaly chin in a seat built for humans, calls dispatch for backup. If our target keeps going straight, maybe some other feds will cut him off, if any are around. The local cops here in L.A. always take just a bit too long to assist. They don’t want other humans to think they’re too eager to collaborate with our alien masters. For them, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator. The taxi heads straight at a slow scooter but before it hits, swerves a hairpin left. A couple holding hands in the middle of the crosswalk freezes in the headlights. The taxi fishtails on wet pavement and skids forward. A pedestrian goes down. A woman screams. Kah-Haas tells dispatch to send an ambulance. In a better world, maybe I’d stop and help, but that’s not the one I get to live in. I slow a little, barely enough to turn clean and miss the pedestrians, then pull straight again. I’ve fallen back, but still see our target. Our perp makes a sharp right, but I’m ready and take it fast enough to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my partner’s long, green fingers on his gun, but he doesn’t draw it. These days, Kah-Haas values human life enough not to shoot from a moving car and endanger bystanders. And, if the tip we got is good, we need to take this guy alive. Seems our quarry is trying for a secret escape route for people running from the law. And the same source told us somebody skipped town that way a couple weeks ago, carrying something the Slitha badly want to get back. We’re gaining on the taxi and our guy brakes hard. The taxi fishtails again, skids, then rear-ends a parked truck. A second later, the driver’s door flies open. I can tell from the broad shoulders the guy who jumps out is Mears. He hits the ground running, into the January darkness swallowing the UCLA campus. We pull up behind the dead taxi. I don’t wait for Kah-Haas, just get out and run after Mears. My partner needs extra time to pull himself out of a car made for smaller beings, but his long legs always help him catch up. I run down the walkway, trying not to lose the perp in the darkness. A minute later, Kah-Haas’s voice crackles painfully loud from my earbud. “I see you. Do you have eyes on the suspect? Over.” “Roger that. Over.” The campus hasn’t completely shut down since the Slitha invaded fifteen years ago, but there’s more dark than light here. The glow from inside a three-story building outlines our man when he opens the door to go in. The perp ducks inside. “Kah-Haas, I’ll go in. You go around. Over.” I jerk the door open and see movement at the end of the long hallway. I run past a few humans talking. They do a double take when I run by yelling, “FBI, stop right there!” The door at the far end of the building closes. A human leg disappears into the stairwell. I run to the end of the hallway, but Kah-Haas’s outside so I take the stairs up. I get to the second floor and draw my Glock. I see a bathroom and hear something inside. I bolt for the door, shove my way in, and raise my gun. “FBI. Freeze!” In front of me, the rust colored Slitha facing the mirror over the sink does just that. A couple seconds later, the loose skin under the sides of his jaw puffs out and flushes red. It turns around, slowly. The alien’s huge, yellow-green eyes with their black slit pupils look down on me. I lower my Glock and swallow the lump in my throat. “Sorry, sir. I’m in pursuit of a criminal.” The alien lightly brushes long, sharp black nails down a tweed jacket tailored to his eight-foot height. “Allow me to introduce myself.” The alien speaks perfect English. “I am Professor Sath-Osh.” He sneers down at me. “And there are few crimes greater than a human threatening a Slitha with a gun.” I pull my earbud out and crank up the volume so we can both hear Kah-Haas arresting Mears. I smile the practiced, professional smile I always use for our masters. “Please, sir, my apologies. My senior partner is of the Race and I’m only following his orders - Kah-Haas can explain why I overreacted. After all, humans must obey their Slitha superiors, and I was just doing my best.” His smile is cruel. If Kah-Haas can’t smooth things over, being out of a job will be the least of my problems. *** Work ends and I head home. Leticia and the boys are asleep. I grab a glass and a cheap bottle of bourbon and sit by the front window cradling my Glock. I drink, look into the darkness, and wait. Slitha Internal Security could be here any time. I feel the cold metal in my hand and think about who I’ll shoot when they finally come for us. Or just me, if I’m lucky. Our masters would consider eating a bullet honorable compensation for failure if one of them did it. But they look down on humans, so from me it’d just be the act of a coward. And a mortal sin. At least that’s what they told me when I was a kid. I look down at the Glock, then towards the back of the house where my family sleeps. How far would I go to keep Leticia and the boys from dying by inches in a Lizard concentration camp? I holster my Glock, fill my glass, take another drink, and wait. Dawn opens its eyes and Internal Security still isn’t here. Maybe pointing a gun at one of our conquerors hasn’t earned me an all- expense paid trip to a Slitha concentration camp. Or the security goons might just be giving me time to sweat. I leave while my family still sleeps. *** First thing that morning, Kah-Haas and I are standing in Deputy Director Curtis Booker’s office. Our boss’s snarling grimace tells me he’s furious and that his ulcer’s on fire. “Listen up, you miserable excuse for federal agents, you caught your suspect but thanks to you, the Bureau’s in a whole new world of hurt.” He shakes his head. Booker rubs his temples, scowls at me, then shoots a frown up at Kah-Haas. “Let’s take this from the top. You apprehended Eddie Mears, a suspect one of our informants told us was planning on going underground. He’s our only lead in finding out where at least a dozen other fugitives have disappeared to over the last three years.” Booker glares at me. “But you’re supposed to catch little fish like Mears with no problem – not cause new ones doing it.” Deputy Director Booker pulls a crusty bottle full of something pink out of his desk and takes a slug. “You clowns just had to turn a simple arrest into a train wreck.” His hand shakes a little as he taps a form on his desk. For the first time in years, I see fear in his eyes, from a man who was still fighting against the Slitha invasion after most of the human race had laid down its guns. Kah-Haas nods. “You speak of Professor Sath-Osh, the Slitha at whom Agent Cortez aimed his firearm.” The Deputy Director won’t glare at a Slitha, not even Kah-Haas, so he just winces and nods. My partner picks up the form and reads it. “This is a serious situation, but one which may yet be weathered.” We look at Kah-Haas, waiting for the good and the bad news. “This individual is a professor of Slitha studies. Professor Sath-Osh teaches the Slitha language, proper behavior for humans in the company of our race, and history presented in a manner suitable for earth’s inhabitants.” The loose skin under the sides of Kah-Haas’s jaw tightens up for a couple of seconds, so I know he thinks something’s funny. “I have made inquiries with others of my kind. While Professor Sath-Osh is of The Race and thus may never be spoken of with disrespect, he was assigned his teaching position on earth due to behavior in a military campaign which ‘failed to achieve the level of valor expected of a Slitha warrior against the empire’s foes.” Booker and I look at each other. He’s not as angry as a minute ago, but his eyes still remind me of a kid roasting ants with a magnifying glass. Kah-Haas’s mouth tenses again. “While no human should ever suggest that a member of my race lacks courage, were the fact that you pointed your weapon at the Professor to become common knowledge, some Slitha would speculate that Professor Sath-Osh felt considerable fear when this occurred. In fact, his complaint fails to mention a firearm at all, but insists only that Agent Cortez burst in and behaved with great disrespect toward a Slitha. It also suggests that my junior partner is a bumbling incompetent and that I have failed the Race by allowing my human underling to operate without sufficient supervision.” Kah-Haas’s eyes move back and forth, so I know he’s nervous and that the Professor’s still trouble for us. The Deputy Director Booker nods. “I have to route this complaint up the chain, to Slitha Internal Security. Maybe it isn’t as bad as the Professor accusing Cortez of threatening him with a gun, but it’s still a time bomb. We’re all looking at demotion or worse.” My gut punches me and I almost ask Booker for a slug of that nasty, pink stuff. Booker looks at me, then up at Kah-Haas. He points at the complaint on his desk. “I can move this slow. Nobody who’ll give you trouble will see it in less than a week.” He nods at us. “Close this case. Do that, and things should calm down.” He nods. “Get out of here and find out what Mears knows.” *** Eddie Mears sits in a metal chair, chained to a steel table, in the sweltering interrogation room, right over the floor grate hot air rises up from. Sweat pours down his face. We’ve been running him through our good cop, bad cop routine for two hours. Even though he’s not a hardcore Human Defense Force terrorist or even a tough repeat felon, he hasn’t cracked. Still, I see the signs. I walk around behind him. “So, Eddie. You managed the spaceport fuel depot and set up a racket stealing gas and selling it on the black market. You took bribes from hungry people desperate for jobs and got a fat cut from every paycheck. There’s even talk you sold wakeup drugs to spaceport workers so they could stay sharp during double shifts. We have a witness who’s talked and more we’re going to talk to. What you did was illegal, but not exactly murder. For me, this isn’t personal.” I nod at Kah-Haas. My partner leans down and spreads scaly, long-fingered hands on the table. He stares at Mears with big, slitted, orange-red eyes. “I, on the other hand, see your actions as violations of the trust the Race put in you. I take the acts of traitors very personally.” Our perp looks away. Kah-Haas grabs his face, leans in close, and forces Mears to meet his alien eyes. Nails like black spearheads dig into pale cheeks. “I shall have you exiled from earth for the rest of your life to mine fire opals below twin suns on the desert moon of Zath-Hassa.” The first time Kah-Haas used that line on a prisoner, I broke out laughing. I’d been studying the language and the culture and knew Zath-Hassa was from a Slitha children’s story. You might as well threaten to send somebody to Mordor. Mears doesn’t know that, closes his eyes, and sobs. Kah-Haas glances up at me quick and juts out his jaw, pretty much winking. I move next to Mears, put a hand on Kah-Haas’s shoulder, and pretend pushing him back is hard. Eddie sits up a little. I look our perp in the eye. “Eddie, my partner cares about something more than missing gas or some bribes or a few pep pills, something an informant told us you were trying to get to. You help us with that, I’m pretty sure he’ll agree to ask for a reduced sentence, maybe even just a year or two in a regular work camp. How does that sound?” Eddie looks at both of us, eyes half-tough, half-hopeful. Kah-Haas and I wait. Then my partner glowers, clenching his fists. “There may be truth to Agent Cortez’s words.” I look at Mears. “Do you know something that might calm my partner down?” Mears talks fast. “There’s a pipeline to get away and get a new identity. It’s expensive. A couple of guys, Human Defense Force, I think, they told me to give it a shot if things got hot.” Kah-Haas pulls back his glower a notch. I nod to Mears. “Keep going.” South of UCLA, in Westwood. You’re supposed to ask around for good luggage, say you can pay a lot for it. Then somebody contacts you. His eyes give me a sad, hungry look. “That’s where I was headed when you popped me.” *** Two days later I’m walking slow through a warm drizzle in Westwood. I keep my shoulders hunched and pull the old, black baseball cap’s brim down close to my face. I’ve got a small, brown suitcase, and phony papers inside my jacket that say I’m Eddie Mears. My weight and height are close to his, and my hair’s been lightened to match. Eddie’s still in solitary, in a dry cell, while I’m getting rained on. Not that I’d want to change places. Of course, if we don’t find our missing man and whatever it is he took, I could soon be joining Mr. Mears. Every neighborhood in L.A. has gone downhill since the invasion, and with most UCLA classes closed down, Westwood’s worse than most. Student housing turned into cheap motels and seedy apartments. Crowded coffee houses and pricey stores are now mostly cheap bars and second-hand stores. Lots of storefronts stand empty, staring out at me, broken windows for eyes. Paint peels from the walls of once-prized homes. Here and there sit empty lots covered with blackened wreckage, squatter-set fires gone out of control. I’m old enough to remember a better time, when humanity thought it was alone in the universe. I glance up at a brick wall. One of those big signs stares down at me—the alien metal glows with a rippling inner light. It shows a Lizard, one hand up, fingers spread out, holding up a tiny earth. Written above him in glowing Slitha letters and below in English, the sign says, “Peace and Order.” Our masters started putting up signs like that right after the invasion. Within a week, every one that wasn’t in a high-security area got tagged, usually with something obscene. The Slitha switched to ones with a frictionless coating. The tagging stopped. It isn’t that people like the new signs any better. Paint just doesn’t stick to them. A few rounds of public executions didn’t hurt either. Worn-down women with hungry eyes lean against walls. A pale blonde with a chipped tooth smiles at me. “I’ve got a place around the corner,” she says, then sneers when I shake my head. There are no Slitha around. It’s not that they’re afraid rebels might be hiding here. There’s just nothing here our alien masters want. Cheap Rooms is a bottom-of-the-barrel motel. I go into the office and breathe the musty carpet smell while I study the prices on the wall. I slide one night’s worth of cash across the dirty counter. I’ll pay tomorrow if I need to stay another night. The old man with dandruff-spotted, slicked-back grey hair slides over the key. “Checkout’s at eleven and there’s no cooking in the room.” I frown. The idea of eating in this place makes me want to swear off food forever. I head up the badly lit stairs. The room’s small, but the door’s solid, evidence of long-gone, better times. A solid door’s mostly why Kah-Haas and I chose this place. I lay on the bed, then pull out my half-dollar-sized comm unit and call Kah-Haas. He picks up and I start talking. “I’m settled in and about to go out.” He responds. “Any problems?” I scratch a suddenly itchy scalp. “Not unless you count the valiant efforts of the bedbug resistance.” Kah-Haas’s quiet for a couple seconds, so I can tell he liked that one. I smile before he talks again. “You’re starting with the leads we got from Mears?” I study a vent on the wall. “Unless something changes.” “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll continue to find out what I can at my end and let you know what I learn.” “Roger that. Later.” I hang up and look at the vent again. Too obvious. I lift the bed and quietly drag it away from the wall. I draw the black-bladed folding knife I keep clipped inside my waistband, flick it open, then use the four-inch, half-serrated black blade to work the edge of the worn carpet loose from the floor. The floorboard pries up easy so I stash my holster and Glock and the comm unit in the space underneath. I open the suitcase. The cash goes in the hole, along with the collection of gleaming, pre-invasion Rolexes. The cash is almost-perfect counterfeit, but the Rolexes are real, part of Eddie Mears’ stash. Anyway, this juicy haul makes the story about being a rich criminal willing to pay to escape believable. Once everything’s hidden and the bed’s back where it belongs, I leave the room, stopping to stick a hair between the door and the jam. If it falls off, I’ll know someone’s gotten into my room. *** I walk out into the night. Light shines from scattered homes and struggling businesses and the street people’s trashcan fires. Among the clusters of people warming themselves, men and women with intelligent eyes in deeply lined faces hunch together. I wonder how many had teaching positions before the Slitha decided a new narrative needed to be taught. I look away from the lost souls. No good comes from thinking like that. First stop is The Noodle Bar. I grab a little table in a corner and study the menu. A skinny waitress drags her feet over, tired as my soul. Her nametag says “Maria.” I order a cheap bowl of ramen and a beer. “Anything else?” she asks. I ask just loud enough for people at nearby tables to hear and pitch my voice just a little anxious. “Know where I can score some quality luggage? A friend of mine who passed through bought some around here.” Normally I’d be more subtle, but we’ve got to solve this mess before the Professor’s complaint makes its way to Slitha Internal Security. Maria flashes a bored smile. “Quality Pawn’s around the corner.” She heads off. The beer comes. I drink and watch the customers. The noodles aren’t bad. I take my time eating, order another beer and grab a copy of the Los Angeles Times somebody left on the next table. Newspapers made of real paper were pretty much dead when I was a kid. They’ve made a comeback since our occupiers shut down most of the Internet and new computers are rare and expensive. Tame reporters write stories about how good things are under the occupation and how they’d be even better if humans cooperated more with our masters. Still, you can find classified ads and weather forecasts and stories about what local music scene’s still around. Somebody comes in and plays guitar for tips. I nurse my beer and work the Times’ crossword puzzle. When my drink is done, I give Maria money and ration slips, then head back to my room. Outside, I feel eyes on me and stop at an unbroken shop window to look at the reflection, but it’s too dark to see if anyone’s following me. A car comes this way, so I move fast and cross just before it gets here. Across the street is a big dark shape. Could be a man. Could be nothing. No need to risk getting jumped to find out. *** Next day, I check in with Kah-Haas. No new leads. I hide the comm unit under the floorboard again. I think about the dark shape and almost take the Glock but decide against it. The noodle place stays open all day, so I sit at the bar and get dishwater coffee and a dry, tasteless roll. A pale, young guy with a metallic-red ponytail works the counter. I read his nametag and meet his eye. “Morning, Roy. I’m Eddie.” He wipes the counter. “What do you need, my man?” “I’m taking a trip and need some high-quality luggage. You know where I can score some?” Roy stops wiping and looks at me for a long second, then nods. He points at a cork board on the far wall with ads on it. I finish my roll and take my coffee over and look. No one’s advertising secret escape routes for fugitives, but people are selling just about everything else. I grab a three by five card that says “Best Luggage for Sale” with a phone number, then fold it in half and stick it in Mears’ wallet by some lawyer’s business card. Another cork board ad shows a picture of a crystal ball and proclaims that Madam Sabina can provide “all life’s answers.” Don’t I wish. I pull out Eddie Mears’ cheap burner phone and make the call. A mechanical voice tells me to leave a message. “A friend of mine came this way and said somebody could hook me up with quality luggage.” I pause, talk a little faster. “I want to take a trip right away and I can pay.” *** It’s a slow walk down the street to Quality Pawn. I push the buzzer and an older, Asian woman in tidy jeans and a faded Metallica t-shirt comes to look. Her sharp eyes peer through the glass and her head leans to one side. She buzzes open the door. “Good morning. Let me know if you need any help.” I go in and look around. The place is clean and well-kept, like every store back before the invasion. A smiling, gold cat by the register waves mechanically. I browse and keep up my trying not to be afraid act. “Do you have any luggage? I’m looking for something nice.” I say this even though I’ll look stupid, since I already saw shelves with luggage on them. The woman looks at me like somebody must have once dropped me on the head, but I need to make sure she knows what I’m looking for. She points at the obvious row of waiting suitcases. “Yes, but I mean something nicer.” “Just what you see.” I ask a few questions about the luggage and who pawned it. She brightens at the possible sale but gives me only vague answers while trying to get me to buy something. I leave empty-handed. *** The rest of the day, I check out other places we think fugitives visited. Evening comes. I walk back to the room, go in, and lock the door. I pull out the comm unit. “Kah-Haas, you there? Over.” My partner speaks with a quiet, serious voice. “I am here, agent Cortez. What have you found? Over.” “No breakthroughs yet. I’m waiting for a couple of leads to develop.” Kah-Haas says nothing. I look at the time, then the power light on the comm unit. Still green. I wonder what’s causing the holdup. “I have called in favors and learned exactly what it is we seek.” Kah-Haas’s hissing accent lowers in pitch. “It is a journal.” “A journal. I got it. And?” Again, Kah-Haas keeps me waiting. Finally, my he speaks. “Someone stole this and passed it to a fugitive who fled two weeks ago.” He pauses. “Agent Cortez, you can never reveal to anyone what I am about to tell you.” My hands feel damp. Kah-Haas is scared. “There are Slitha who keep such journals, and a senior officer of the fleet who did so was slain in battle. His possessions were recovered with the intention of delivering them to his heirs on our home world. Someone stole the journal and passed it on to one of our missing fugitives.” That’s when I know my partner wouldn’t tell me about the journal unless he thought it was the only way to crack this case. Kah-Haas’s also warning me that learning too much about this journal could get both of us disappeared. I barely hear him speak. “This senior officer wrote extensively about the course of the war. He documented certain embarrassing defeats our fleet has suffered which have, as you humans say, been hushed up. Such details, should they come to light, could ruin the careers of several of our top political and military leaders and bring chaos to the empire.” No wonder the Slitha want this back. Somebody might read it and figure out how to contact the aliens the Lizards are fighting, maybe even recruit them as allies against our occupiers. This journal could be a goldmine for the resistance, maybe even give humanity the political leverage to make the Lizards stop grinding their boot on our necks. No wonder our alien masters want it back so badly. “I have said too much, Agent Cortez. If anyone should learn what I have told you, our lives would be forfeit.” “If anyone asks, all I know is that we’re looking for a journal written in Slitha, but that I don’t know who wrote it or what’s in it. If it comes to that, I’ll also tell them that my Slitha isn’t that good.” Kaah-Haas responds. “You’re clever—for a human—Frank Cortez.” “You’re not too slow for a big lizard either.” “Goodbye, Agent Cortez. Until tomorrow.” *** I try to sleep before going out into the night but thinking about the journal keeps me up. The rain’s ended by the time I head into the darkness. I walk to Rocco’s Tavern, a dark wood and brick bar where a now-dead informant spotted two Human Defense Force bomb makers before they disappeared. I do the same drill and ask about luggage and friends who came through here. The waiter gives the same useless answers. I feel something in my gut and look around the room. A man walks up to the table. He limps just barely enough I can see it. He’s got coal-dark skin and a buzz cut and wears an oversized military coat. The guy sits down and pulls a plastic case out of his pocket. He opens it with gloved hands. The open cover hides its contents from passersby. Inside is what looks like a sniffer for finding bugs. Seems like leaving the comm unit in the room was a good call. He pulls an earbud out of one of his pockets and plugs it into the sniffer and his right ear. Some kind of West Indian accent comes out. “Let’s see the phone.” I pull Eddie Mears’ cheap, burner phone out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Password?” I tell him. He uses it and hooks the phone to the sniffer. I’ve made some calls consistent with being the fugitive I’m impersonating. I watch the crowd, drink my beer, and let him work. He finishes, slides the burner back, then puts away his gear. “Call me Sharp. You’re looking for a way out and can pay.” I could ask how he knew, but Sharp probably wouldn’t tell. He’d probably think I was stupid for asking. I ask a different question. “How do I know I can trust you?” We shut up while a waiter stands by the next table for too long. Then he talks. “Lester Moore, Bill Carson, Libby Schultz, Ignacio Salazar.” I let the smile spread out. Two of those are aliases used by the Human Defense Force explosive experts who went missing. The others were criminals who also disappeared around here. Sharp probably figures I know at least one of those names. No common thief or con artist would have that information. Sharp pulls a shapeless dark green beanie out of a pocket. “Wait ten minutes. I’ll be out back. Keep your distance and follow me.” His expensive gear and what he knows tells me he’s no common criminal. Just in case, I say something to protect myself. “What I have that’s valuable isn’t on me.” Stifling a laugh, Sharp gets up and leaves. Ten minutes later, I settle my tab and follow. *** I get to the alley behind Rocco’s. There’s a human shape at the far end of my vision that looks like it’s probably Sharp. It starts moving. I follow. I listen to night noises. A loud argument from an open window. Atonal Slitha classical music, just loud enough to hear. A cat’s rising yowl. Something big breaks loose from the shadows. A fist the size of a small ham flies at my face. I drop down and raise my left arm. My forearm moves the punch off-line, just barely, but huge knuckles scrape my skull and rock my head. I drive my right fist at the center of mass. My punch lands solid, but there’s barely a grunt and my hand feels like I drove it into a side of beef. The big man steps to my right so I circle to keep us face to face, left shoulder forward. My left hand stays up while the right drifts low and close. I’ll be on the ground if this monster lands a solid punch. The big man shuffles forward, hands up like a boxer. I move back. He throws a jab, then a cross. I slip to my right, just in time to keep from ending up on the ground. He pulls back his next cross and I step in fast and whip my open left hand at his face. One of my fingers hits his eye. The big man curses. Before he can do anything, I pull the knife from inside my waistband with my right and I flick out four inches of steel. The big man backs up a few feet and raises his hands. Smart move. I’m about to tell him to run when I hear a gun’s hammer pull back. Behind me, I hear a slight Jamaican accent. “Drop the knife.” I do what Sharp says, slowly, then raise my hands. The big man lifts a hand and rubs his angry eye. Sharpe says more. “My friend and I have a proposition.” Somehow, I don’t think they’re really giving me a choice. These guys are smart and cool-headed, and no common criminals. I’d bet my badge they’re Human Defense Force. The big man slides over to my side. I tense my stomach, ready for a revenge gut punch. Instead, he pulls out a little flashlight, turns it on, and gently searches my pockets. I get my first clear look at him. Male Caucasian just under six feet, huge chest, thick arms and legs, bearded blond, but bundled up too much for me to see more. He finds my fake papers, reads them, and puts them back. He digs out Mears’ wallet, takes out the business cards, looks at them, shows one to Sharp. A deep bass rumbles. “Lawyers.” Both men laugh. The big man keeps looking through the wallet, “And Doctor Delaveau’s luggage.” Silence follows. The bearded man gives me back the wallet and puts away his little light. Sharp says something I half expected. “You’ve been asking around. My friend and I are also unpopular with the Lizards and need the escape route you’re looking for.” I start to speak but one big hand grabs the back of my head and the other covers the half of my face my mouth is on. The big man squeezes, and lifts and my feet leave the ground. My head feels like it’s in a vice. The big man could break my neck without trying. I sweat, but don’t do anything stupid. “The man who left this card, Doctor Delaveau, he controls part of this escape route. You need to make contact and find out if he can get us out.” He pauses. “Now you can talk.” The big man puts me down and takes his hands away. Now I understand why these two jumped me. They needed to know how I act under pressure, if I could walk into a dangerous situation without falling apart. “Why don’t you two just go in there yourself?” “Things are not always what they seem. Who knows? Maybe Delaveau’s working with Lizard Internal Security and they’re sending anyone who looks for help to some concentration camp.” I take my first relaxed breath in days. These guys have given me my big break. And if this Doctor Delaveau is a stooge for Slitha Internal Security, doing what Sharp wants is just going to help me close this case faster. The journal Kah-Haas and I need is probably still sitting on the doctor’s desk or maybe waiting to get processed in some backlogged Internal Security property room. This wouldn’t be the first time two law enforcement agencies worked the same case from different ends without either one knowing about it. I make my voice tremble but add a note of defiance. “So, I could end up in a concentration camp?” “We don’t consider it likely, but, as I said, no need to take chances… at least on our end.” I nod, “So, how do we do this?” Sharp’s quiet for a few seconds even though I know he already has a plan. “My friend will walk you to your stash. Then you’ll make contact with Doctor Delaveau.” “How do I know your big friend won’t put my head through a wall and take everything I’ve got?” Sharp grabs my right shoulder and turns me around. His black, snub-nosed revolver is leveled at my right eye. I take a deep breath. Sharp lowers the pistol and presses it into my hand. He looks me straight in the eye. I flip open the cylinder. It holds five, .357 rounds. I check them one by one. None are blanks. Sharp must think whatever valuables Eddie Mears has are worthless compared to a chance for freedom. He also believes I’m smart enough to understand that. I nod and slip the gun into my right coat pocket and pick up my knife. Of course, he and his friend might try to rob me later. But with any luck, Kah-Haas and I will arrest them first. The big man, who I’ve decided to call Silent, walks with me through the dark. We reach Cheap Rooms and head up the stairs. The fight’s adrenaline rush fades. I’m tired and my head throbs where Silent’s fist rocked my skull. I open the door and we walk in. The big man stops just inside the room and shuts the door. I put the suitcase on the floor, pull the bed from the wall, and kneel on the carpet. My body blocks Silent’s view. I glance over at him with my peripheral vision. The counterfeit bills and the Rolexes go in the case. I leave the Glock and the comm unit. I can’t talk to Kah-Haas with Silent here and, if I take it, Sharp might run another scan and figure out I’m a cop. I replace the board, carpet, and bed. Now for my doctor’s appointment. *** Silent walks me most of the way, but I go alone the last block to Dr. Delaveau’s house. Homes and yards are big, though not like the Beverly Hills mansions a couple miles east. Thick-leaved trees line the street and create a sense of privacy. My head aches from when Silent hit me and my left forearm throbs where it blocked his punch. Maybe the Doctor can do something about that. Before I go up to Delaveau’s house, I hide the suitcase by the bottom of the stone steps leading to his door, back behind a black, wrought-iron bench mostly hidden by sweet-smelling lavender. I climb the steps to the two-story house. Before the invasion, doctors didn’t work from home. Now, many do. I hammer the front door with the tarnished brass knocker. A tiny metal hatch opens near the top of the thick door. An eye examines me. A man speaks. “Is there an emergency?” “My name’s Mears. Someone said I could buy luggage here.” A pause. The man has a slight French accent. “Do you have references?” I name a criminal who told the real Mears about the escape route before he disappeared. I hear a bolt slide. The door swings open. Male Caucasian with a medium build, just under six feet, with swept-back iron-grey hair. He wears a loose, grey jacket and keeps his right hand in his pocket. Light shines from inside and he looks me up and down. “I’m Doctor Delaveau. Please come in. But don’t make any sudden moves.” I walk in with my hands by my sides. We head down the hall to a dining room. “Please sit. Would you like coffee?” I sit. “Sure… please.” He returns with two cups. There’s cream and sugar on the tray, but neither of us use it. He gestures towards me. “You’re injured. Is it anything serious?” “I wouldn’t turn down some aspirin.” Delaveau gets up. “Please excuse me.” He leaves the room. I look around and drink up, hoping coffee will fight my fatigue. The rich, smoky, dark-roasted flavor is like heaven. Twelve years of alien occupation and food rationing hasn’t cramped the doctor’s style. I see expensive furniture and shelves heavy with leather-bound books and beautiful crystal sculptures. If this is a Slitha sting, the doctor left to call his bosses. After they show up, I’ll identify myself. Then, maybe we can figure out where the journal went. The doctor comes back with aspirin and an ice pack. I swallow the pills and hold the ice pack to my head. “Thanks.” “I enjoy taking care of my guests.” He smiles. “And speaking of that…” He takes our empty cups and comes back a few minutes later with fresh ones, and a pot on the tray. “You may wonder how I came to provide the service you seek.” I stay quiet and drink. Delaveau’s the kind who likes to talk. “I lived well before the Slitha arrived, though their arrival made maintaining my lifestyle difficult. But strange as it seems, the invasion improved my life. As with others, events forced me to live by my wits in a way I never would have otherwise. Consider the black market. Everyone uses it, and by so doing, all become lawbreakers. And those who survive best are the ones who have become exceptional criminals. So, while I still practice medicine, my humanitarian sideline supports a fine lifestyle and gives me the pleasure which comes with being exceptionally clever.” I finish my coffee. He pours me a new cup. Delaveau talks about how humanity had become soft and how the Slitha occupation sharpened our dulled minds and put us in touch with our primal instincts. The doctor barely lifts his cup as I suck down my coffee, instead going on and on about how the invasion was some kind of great gift. I yawn, too wide. “Can I use the bathroom?” “Of course.” He smiles. “In the hallway.” I nod, get up, use the bathroom, throw water on my face. I step back in the hallway, but decide to lean against the wall, just for a second. As I slide down, I think about how Doctor Delaveau kept talking and talking after he finished his first cup of coffee while I drank deep. My head feels fuzzy when my eyes open. I see a ceiling, but not in the hallway. I try to get up but can’t. I look down. Three heavy, canvas straps pin me to a stainless-steel table with a raised metal rim. One goes across my chest, the second crosses my upper forearms and lower stomach. The third holds down my legs, just above the knees. My jacket’s gone. Shoes too. I blink and look again. My head feels fuzzy. I laugh. At least I’ve still got my socks. I shake my head and look around. This room’s bigger than the dining room. There’s an incinerator in one corner, probably for medical waste. By that, gas cans. Between my feet, not far off, I see a metal door with a heavy bolt. I turn my head to the right. There’s a desk maybe five feet away. Spread out on the top are Eddie Mears’ identity papers, his wallet, the burner phone, and Sharp’s revolver. Other IDs sit in an “in” basket nearby. Next to that is a thick, yellow folder and a big book with the black, metallic cover Slitha like to use. Slitha words glow in silver on the black book’s tall spine. I shake my head and make myself focus. Chronicles of a Time of War. I exhale slowly. I’ve found what Kah-Haas and I need, but I might not live long enough for it to do us any good. I notice something else. Next to the desk sits a row of mismatched suitcases. Above those, on hooks, hang backpacks, a few purses, and a single, lonely baby carrier. I fight my bonds and arch my neck. Fifteen feet from my head, I see a normal-looking door. Much closer sits a tray of medical instruments, heavy on knives and the surgical saws. Directly above my scalp, built into the table, is a drain. My throat goes dry. I know where all the fugitives have gone. Piece by piece into Doctor Delaveau’s incinerator. I listen for an opening door but Delaveau is taking his time. When the Doctor stripped off my jacket, he pulled the bottom of my shirt loose from my pants. I reach under the loose fabric for the knife clipped in my waistband. One finger touches the handle, but the strap pinning my arms keeps me from doing more. I inhale deep, then exhale everything. The bonds still feel tight, but not as bad as before. I keep my lungs empty for a couple of seconds, just long enough to grab the bottom end of the knife handle between two fingers. I draw the folder, breathe in, get a solid grip, then flick it open with my thumb. I lay the edge under the strap holding my forearms, inhale to make a tiny bit of extra room, then saw away with the serrated half of the blade. Just when I’ve cut the strap a little over halfway, the doorknob rattles. The strap doesn’t feel as tight as before. I slip the knife inside my waistband, flip some loose fabric from my shirt over the cut I made, and move my hand back by my side. The door opens, Doctor Delaveau walks in, wearing green surgical scrubs. His medical mask is down, and he has a clear, plastic visor ready to be lowered. The final touch is a white, plastic apron. He’s right over me and I see his quiet smirk. “My dear Mr. Mears, you had a bit of a fall, so I decided you needed to lay down.” “Doc, I’m feeling a lot better. I think I can get up now.” He smiles wider. “Be my guest.” I can tell he likes the banter, so I shut up. Doctor Delaveau frowns. “I see you’ve discovered my escape route.” I keep quiet. His smirk turns into an icy frown. “I’m disappointed in you Mr. Mears. I found nothing of value on you.” I get an idea. “I’m not a fugitive.” His frown gets bigger. I talk faster. “Just hear me out.” He stares. “I was hired to recover an item. What you do for criminals isn’t of interest to me. There’s a big reward.” He nods. “Go on.” “A collector wants that black book on your desk, no questions asked.” Delaveau purses his lips, then smiles. “Though far from fluent, I am a student of the Slitha language. Over the past weeks, I’ve had few patients, and been translating this diary in order to further my education. The contents is quite fascinating.” He pauses, as if he wants me to say something, maybe to beg. Maybe to tell him how smart he is. I can tell Delaveau isn’t interested in my offer, so I stop talking again. The doctor raises his voice. “Do you know what, Mr. Mears? Like more than a few of my clients, I believe you hid your ill-gotten wealth before you came to my door.” He watches my face. “Some who come to me in search of sweet freedom hide their valuables in one of my neighbors’ yards, or even my own.” He shakes his head and smiles again. “Please excuse me for a moment.” Delaveau walks to the desk and picks up Sharp’s revolver. “As you’ve just learned, one can never be too careful.” He flips open the cylinder, smiles, and closes it again. “Never fear. I’ll be back soon.” The door closes behind him and I attack my bonds again. Seconds later, I cut through the middle one. Now my arms are free. That’s when I hear the first gunshot. I jerk my legs, trying to pull them out from under the strap that holds them down, but it’s too tight. Two more shots go off; one close, the other farther away. I start cutting the strap over my chest. Voices echo through the house. More shots ring out. I tell myself Kah-Haas could be out there, but I’m lying to myself. None of those shots came from a Slitha weapon. My chest is free. I sit up, but whatever drug Delaveau gave me makes my head spin. Only the strap over my legs keeps me from falling off the table. My knife saws at the last strap. A gunshot again, just on the other side of the door. I cut too fast and slice my leg. The last bond splits. I stand up. My legs buckle. I grab the edge of the table to keep from falling. Another gunshot cracks down the hall. I take a breath and stumble towards the door. I reach out to lock it. Before I can, it starts to swing open. I see part of a plastic visor and red-spattered white apron. Another shot pops. A muzzle flash lights up the hallway. A dull, wet slap sounds on the other side of the door. I fall against it, turn the lock, take another deep breath. It looks like Human Defense Force has come to avenge their murdered friends. My legs almost feel steady. I walk to the desk fast, stuff the burner phone in one pocket and grab the journal. I rush to the back door and yank the bolt. The other door crashes wide open. A gunshot cracks and a bullet slaps the wall by my head. I shove the back door open and run into the night. When I’m sure no one’s following, I stop, get my breath back, and flip through the journal. My fingers smooth pages passed hand to hand across years and lightyears. Flowing Slitha cursive documents fleet logistics and weapons systems. Tables list kills and casualties. Star maps show enemy positions and battles. I wish I had the time to sit down and read it. Finally, I use Eddie Mears’ burner phone to call Kah-Haas for backup. I got the journal, but maybe Sharp and Silent will find Doctor Delaveau’s partial translation. They might escape before Kah-Haas arrives with reinforcements. The resistance could get the leverage it needs to become a force for real political change. And now that we’ve got the thing back, I doubt our masters will pay much attention to complaints from some puffed-up Slitha night-school teacher. I could have grabbed Delaveau’s notes when I took the journal. It would have been easy. But I didn’t. I need to return the journal to my alien masters to keep my family safe. But the Slitha don’t know about the Doctor’s notes and I don’t have to tell them. Like I always say, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator.  Long-time science fiction fan and longer-time Chicano, M.R. Subias prowls the frontiers of the imagination, seeking strange beauty. As part of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, he founded the speculative fiction critique group Westside Weird and ran it for more years than he can remember. He’s currently editing Intrusion Zone, a hopeful YA cosmic horror novel set at the end of the world.
 Un jardín de claveles blancosPor Alex V. Cruz El chico de boca rosada le mordió los labios mucho antes de conocerlo en persona. Ocurrió en un sueño, pero Lucas no lo comprendió hasta el siguiente día que, mientras caminaba con la boca sabor a sangre coagulada, lo vio andar los pasillos de la universidad Utesa, recinto Moca, como si nada hubiera ocurrido. Lo conoció por sus labios, largos y delgados como orugas de polilla, y por la manera en que caminaba, pecho alto y espalda recta como si llevara la torre Eiffel metida por el culo. Sus ojos las aguas azules del mar mediterráneo, y su pelo carbón carecía la textura característica de pelo malo. Se llamaba Mateo, y Lucas lo supo por las olas de bochinches en la que navegaban las chicas que lo veían caminar por los pasillos ardientes de la pequeña universidad cibaeña. Lucas, con la punta de su lengua, pasó el día jugando con los agujeros que dejaron los dientes de Mateo en el adentro de su boca. Ya no sentía el dolor naufragante de la mañana, pero aún estaba ahogado en el sabor metálico cliché de la sangre. Cuando terminó su día universitario, se acostó en uno de los bancos por el jardín principal de aquella institución, donde podía ver las nubes oscuras contemplar cómo y cuándo arruinarían el día de los jornaleros diarios. “Nos conocemos,” Lucas escuchó a alguien decir, y no tuvo que moverse para saber que era el chico español que traía a todos locos. Sus eses agudamente pronunciadas y el intercambio de la ce por la ze lo delató casi instantáneamente. “No creo,” dijo Lucas, sentándose en el banco y mirándolo a los ojos, porque de que otra manera iba a explicar que lo conoció en un sueño, que todavía lleva el sabor de su boca y sus dientes marcado bajo sus labios. En lo profundo de sus entrañas, en un lugar cerquita al corazón, cuyo latía como locomotora del siglo XIX, llevaba la memoria de la humedad de su piel. “Sabes,” dijo Mateo, “eres muy atractivo…” Lucas perdió el contacto con los ojos de Mateo. Sus cachetes sonrojaron bajo la melanina diluida de su piel. “… para ser dominicano.” Mateo continuó por su camino, el viento jugando con su pelo y sol adorándolo. Lucas, aún sentado en su banco, vio como un chico, quien él conocía de cara, pero no de nombre, caminaba con su mochila a medio hombro, y su camisa ensangrentada en el pecho. La porción inferior de su boca totalmente devorada, y su espalda sudada. “Ese seré yo mañana,” dijo Lucas. Las primeras gotas del diluvio de esa noche se encunaron en el pelo crespo de Lucas, y supo que era hora de echar camino a casa, donde su madre, con sus huesos de osteoporosis, lo estaría esperando con la comida servida en la mesa, y con el orgullo de ver a su hijo universitario plasmado en su cara. *** Se esperaba el tercer huracán de esa temporada, y Lucas se aseguró de llevar en su mochila la sombrilla que no podría usar por los fuertes vientos. También encontró la bufanda olvidada de su primo americano y la envolvió en su cuello bastante veces para cubrir la sangre que caía por la falta de toda su mandíbula y parte de su cuello. No quería ensangrentar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas que tenía esa mañana. Ya el maestro se las traía con él y no quería darle más pretexto para que le reprobara la clase. Lucas llegó tarde a clase. El carro público de infinita capacidad que tomó esa mañana se averió a muchas cuadras de la universidad. Entre los fuertes vientos que amenazaban hacer volar esa bufanda teñida de sangre y el agua percusionista, Lucas pasó por el puertón principal sin despertar el guachimán que protegía la universidad para que nadie la atacara en sueños. Los pasillos ya estaban vacíos y solo quedaba el mal olor de almas y cabello mojado. Se encontró con Mateo, nariz perfilada y pelo brilloso, que lo miraba por debajo de sus pestañas. “Quiero más,” él dijo, y fue en ese momento que Lucas reconoció que Mateo lo estaba esperando. La sangre hecha para el sonrojo brotó por la carne desgarrada de donde debía estar la mandíbula, enchumbando aún más la ya pesada bufanda. Lucas desenvolvió la bufanda poco a poco hasta revelar su labio superior y brotes de sangre fresca y coagulada. Mateo se le acercó y, con su lengua larga y puntiaguda, lamió la cara de Lucas por la frente y bajo las sienes hasta encontrar en su cuello un pedazo de piel aún no destripada por sus dientes y empezó a comérselo a mordidas, deleitándose de su piel morena. Una chica, que salió de un salón de clases, gritó y se desmalló al ver tanta pasión entre los chicos. A Lucas no le quedaba nada en el cuello ni en la parte superior de las clavículas más que esa poca carne rosada y obstinada que no quería desprenderse de los huesos blancos. La bufanda ya no podía cubrir su cuello completo y temía que sus compañeros pensara que parecía zombi de una película de terror. Decidió tomar el día libre. De todas maneras ya era muy tarde para tomar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas, así que regresó a la parada de carros para ir a casa, pero los choferes, al ver el derroche de sangre por todo su cuerpo, le negaron la entrada y no tuvo mas que irse caminando entre el viento, que soplaba tan fuerte que levantaba los vehículos y los hacia llegar rápido a sus destinos. *** En casa, donde Lucas puso sus libros abiertos en la mesa coja para que secaran, su madre lo esperaba mientras revolvía el sancocho de tres días en la gran paila de aluminio. “Mira la televisión,” dijo ella, apuntando con los labios al televisor que usaba de antena un paraguas para desviar el gotero del techo de zinc. “El ojo llega hoy y va acabar con todo.” Lucas temía que cancelaran las clases. Temía que no iba a poder ver a Mateo. Temía que no iba a sentir sus labios sobre su carne cruda. Esa noche, entre las fuertes ráfagas de viento, la inagotable lluvia, y los macos escabulléndose entre las tablas de madera buscando refugio, Lucas soñó de nuevo con el chico blanco de la escuela. Este le devoró el pecho y el brazo izquierdo dejándolo en huesos y tendones. Lucas despertó, solo su habitación quedaba en pie. El resto de la casa y su madre se los llevó el huracán y nunca fueron encontrados. “Maldición,” dijo Lucas. “Casi no me queda nada que ofrecerle a Mateo.” Lucas, sin nada mejor que hacer en aquel pedazo de casa que espantar las incansables moscas, se puso su mejor ropa, la que le enviaban los primos y tías de Nueva York, y le envidiaban sus compañeros. Perfumó las llagas que cubría la carne mal comida de su cuello sintiendo el breve picor del alcohol tocando sus heridas y emprendió camino hacia la universidad con la esperanza de ver a Mateo, porque aunque no hubiera clases por la destrucción que dejó el huracán, tenía más oportunidades de verlo en las calles de Moca, que en su pequeño y aburrido pueblo. Lucas llevaba su cabeza en alto, balanceada en casi los huesos cervicales, y con una sonrisa solo en lo que le quedaba de labios, navegaba los obstáculos dejado por el huracán. Ni los postes y cables eléctricos, ramas y árboles, hojas de zinc y cuerpos moribundos pudieron borrar su buen humor. Tenía el presentimiento de que no solo encontraría a Mateo en la universidad, pero que ese día el chico de pelo bueno terminaría el festín que era su cuerpo. Entrarían a un salón vacío y por fin Lucas y Mateo serían uno en un mismo cuerpo. Le tomó horas llegar a la universidad. Su ropa toda sudada y ensangrentada. Limpió el banco, donde tuvo ese corto dialogo con Mateo, de las hojas lloradas por los árboles que aún quedaban en pie. Se sentó y esperó y esperó hasta que anocheció. Mateo nunca llegó. Lucas amaneció sentado, espalda recta, en el mismo lugar donde esperaba a Mateo. No durmió, no soñó, solo esperó. Esa mañana, con la salida del sol, llegaron las moscas fastidiosas que le serenaban constantemente sus oídos. Lucas estaba cubierto de ellas, quienes lamían su carne y ponían sus huevos. Él no podía espantarlas, su columna dorsal estaba tiesa, no podía mover ni siquiera su cuello. Pero por fin lo vio. Mateo, el único en la universidad, llego a verlo. La perfecta nariz de Mateo se arrugó al acercarse a Lucas, quien parecía carne seca al sol. Lucas intento sonreír con lo que le quedaba de labios, pero era difícil al ver la cara de disgusto de Mateo. “Que patético eres,” dijo Mateo. “Me das asco.” Lucas miró como el joven europeo tomaba su alrededor, el desastre dejado por el huracán. Él vio como Mateo nunca perdió de su cara la revulsión que sentía por lo que veía, por la tierra que pisaba. Lucas entendió que ya este sitio lo aburria. Ya la gente le molestaba. Lucas sabía que Mateo iba hacer lo que los mismos dominicanos no podía. Iba a tomar sus cosas e irse a otro lugar por otras aventuras. Buscaría a otro que devorar. Lucas no pudo moverse de ese sitio. Allí quedo como monje en meditación. Los compañeros le traían flores y le hicieron una tumba. Cuando sus huesos se hicieron polvo, fabricaron alrededor del banco un jardín de claveles blancos. White Carnationsby Alex V. Cruz The slender-nosed figure sunk his teeth into Lucas’s lips before their first encounter. It happened in a dream, and Lucas could not fully grasp what had occurred until the following day. He wandered about with the lingering taste of clotted blood when he noticed the guy strolling the hallways of Utesa University without a care in the world. Lucas recognized him by how he strode along, chest puffed and back straight as though the Eiffel Tower were lodged up his ass. His eyes, waters of the Mediterranean Sea. His sultry lips were like long, thin caterpillars. His charcoal hair lacked the texture of “bad” hair. Lucas learned through the undulating waves of gossip that swept through the university that his name was Mateo. The news propagated and intensified with each new flock of girls and guys that gawked from afar as he navigated the sweltering hallways of that small Cibao university. Lucas traced the wounds on his lips with the tip of his tongue, no longer plagued by the agonizing sting of Mateo’s bite. Still, he was intoxicated by the rusty taste of blood. After an exhausting day of classes, he lay on a hard concrete bench by the school’s central garden, peering at the sky as the dark clouds brooded over the ideal time to ruin the life of the daily commuters. “We’ve met,” Lucas heard his voice, and without a glance, he knew it was the Spaniard speaking—the one that caused the entire academy to spawn in a frenzy. The way he pronounced the “S’es” and substituted the “ce” sound for “ze” immediately gave him away. “I don’t think so,” responded Lucas—sitting up on the bench to face him directly—because how could he explain that they had already met in a dream and he could still savor his lips? Deep within his pulsating heart, he suppressed the memory of Mateo’s damp skin, which throbbed to the cadence of a nineteenth-century steam engine. “You know what,” said Mateo. “You’re handsome…” Lucas eluded his gaze, finding refuge in passers-by. His cheeks reddened under the diluted melanin of his skin. “…for a Dominican.” Mateo continued on with his day. Lucas was engrossed by how the wind tousled his hair, and the unforgiving sun chose only to caress his delicate pale skin. He fixated on his swaggering stride until the Spaniard was entirely out of sight. A group of chattering students exited the school and Lucas recognized a class peer. His backpack carelessly hung loose off his shoulder, and his disheveled clothing belied his usually compulsively neat attire. His shirt was bloodied and torn near the chest area. Remnants of his jawbone, freshly nude of flesh, glistened like ivory, and his entire chin and lower lip were gone. Lucas felt a strong pang of jealousy but was comforted by the anticipation: “That’ll be for tomorrow.” Lucas hesitated to leave where he and Mateo first engaged, but raindrops began to penetrate his spiraled locks of hair. It was time to go back home where his mother would surely be anticipating his return with a hot meal set on the table for her college son, pride plastered on her face. *** The third hurricane of the season was approaching. Lucas packed an umbrella and rummaged through his chest of drawers until he found the old, forgotten scarf belonging to his cousin in America. He shrouded his neck as crimson excretions oozed from his shredded skin and absent jaw. Lucas didn’t want to stain the Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas exam the professor had prepared for class. The small and rickety public car broke down on the side of the road mere blocks from the academy. Lucas squeezed passed the other passengers and pressed on, his back hunched against the battering winds and hailing rain droplets, a warning that the hurricane would soon anchor. He reached the main gate, where the watchman slept through the howling storm, fiercely safeguarding the school in his dreams. The stench of decaying souls and damp hair permeated the empty halls. Thin-nosed Mateo, with glistening hair, leaned against the wall and gazed directly at him from underneath his thick lashes. “I want more,” he said. Lucas realized that Mateo was waiting for him. The blood intended for the blushful reddening of desire gushed from his missing mandible and torn flesh, saturating the scarf. Mateo unwrapped Lucas’ scarf unveiling the vestiges from the previous night’s feast. Mateo pressed closer and, with the tip of his tongue, caressed Lucas’ face around his forehead to his temples, exploring down the untouched skin near his collar. Mateo’s mouth widened, his teeth scathing Lucas’s flesh, and with firm pressure, tore a mouthful. An approaching schoolgirl shrieked and fainted at the sight of such passion. Lucas felt for his flesh, his fingers encountered but a stubborn thin layer coating his white bones. His scarf was deemed useless and forgotten on the dirty floor of that school to later become the most beautiful red rose. Already too late to take the exam, and with the professor fixed on failing him, Lucas embarked on the long journey home. *** At his house, he set his soaked books on the flimsy table. His mother stirred the sancocho in the large aluminum pot. “Look at the news,” she pointed with her puckered lips. “The eye of the hurricane will hit tonight and destroy everything.” Lucas panicked at the thought of classes being canceled, fearing he would miss Mateo’s lips all over his raw flesh. Lucas dreamed of him that night, sleeping through the blustering gusts of winds, endless rain, and the macos that squeezed between the wooden planks of the house and searched for shelter. In his dream, Mateo devoured his chest and left arm, and left only bones and tendons. That morning, Lucas awoke to the house and his mother swept away by the powerful gust, never to be found; only his room standing. “Shit!” said Lucas, discovering what was left of his body. “I have nothing left for Mateo.” With nothing better to do than swat tireless flies, Lucas laid out his finest clothes, the ones sent by his aunts from Nueva York, envied by classmates and others. He poured cologne on the exposed ribcage held together by the half-eaten flesh, indulging in the brief sting of the alcohol infiltrating his wounds. Classes were suspended due to the destruction of the hurricane. Still, his chance to see Mateo walking the streets of Moca was better than staying in his lifeless town. His head held high, balanced on bare bones, and a contrived smile with what he had left of his upper lip, Lucas navigated the remnants of nature’s wrath—electricity poles and cables, branches and trees, and corrugated metal and corpses. He was confident he’d see Mateo and was convinced the thin-nosed slick-haired man would continue feasting on his body. They would stow away in an unlocked room and become one in the same body. After hours of trekking to the academy, Lucas’s clothes were a spectacle of sweat and blood. With his one hand, he swept away the leaves on the bench and sat down as best as his weak body would allow. Lucas spent the night on the bench, his back stiffened by dry flesh. Refusing to sleep, to dream, he simply waited. Mateo never showed. With the sunrise, a legion of flies arose, competing for a nip of rotting flesh and repulsive enough to lay their eggs. His body hardened like meat hung to dry. But finally, just as Lucas was beginning to lose hope, he came. His perfect nose wrinkled as he neared Lucas. With the few teeth he had left, Lucas tried to smile but quickly became disheartened as he caught the look of disgust on Mateo’s face. “Patético,” said Mateo. “You sicken me.” The young man skimmed his surroundings and the devastation left behind by the hurricane. Steadfast and beyond reproach, Mateo’s revulsion never faulted; Lucas now understood that this place bored him, the people pestered him, and he was repelled by the soil he stepped on. With deep, inconsolable grief, Lucas knew Mateo would do that one thing Dominicans themselves could not; he would search for adventure in unexplored lands and find himself new flesh to consume. Lucas froze at that moment and never moved again. The world around him retook its rhythm. Classes resumed and Lucas's fellow college mates purchased a tombstone and planted white carnations around the rustic bench where his bones turned to dust.  Alex V. Cruz es un escritor dominicano de ficción especulativa nacido en la ciudad de Paterson, Nueva Jersey. Él es graduado con honores de la Universidad de Columbia en la ciudad de Nueva York con licenciatura en Escritura Creativa y Estudios Hispanos. Actualmente está trabajando en su master de la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU). Alex ha asistido a los prestigiosos talleres de escritura Clarion West 2022 y Tin House 2021. Alex comparte su conocimiento sobre la publicación de cuentos con su comunidad de escritores dominicanos impartiendo clases gratis en la plataforma de Asociación Dominicana de Escritores (@dominicanwriters). Sus cuentos pueden ser encontrados en las revistas SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, y pronto en Azahares. También él cuenta con un cuento en Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology. Pueden encontrar a Alex en las redes sociales Instagram, Twitter, y Threads usando @avcruzwriter.
Alex V. Cruz, a Paterson-born speculative fiction writer with Dominican roots, writes short fiction in both English and Spanish. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University, he holds a degree in Creative Writing and Hispanic Studies. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU. Notably, Alex is an alum of Clarion West 2022 and a member of Tin House's 2021 Young Adult Workshops. His works have been published in notable online magazines such as Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology, SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, with two forthcoming stories in Azahares. He is an active member of the Dominican Writers Association, passionately supporting fellow Dominican writers by teaching free publishing classes. Alex is dedicated to sharing his knowledge and empowering his community of writers. Join him on Instagram, Twitter, and Threads using the handle @Avcruzwriter.  Excerpt from Sordidez |
 | Joe Menchaca is an emerging Latino/Native writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. Joe’s writing is marked by an unpretentious and gritty yet lyrical style. Unflinching in his examination of self, literature, and culture, his distilled style reflects a sensitive and perceptive exploration of life. His poetry can be found in Dissident Voice and Somos En Escrito. Joe currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his lovely wife of nearly forty years and Tiny, their Chihuahua. |
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