​by Shaiti Castillo

My grandmother would tell me about the little bug people that would roam her garden back in her small pueblo deep in México. This was only when Mamá wasn’t in the room because she’d scold her from spreading tales of brujería in a house that worshipped God. Even as the disease ate away at what was left of my grandmother’s brain, her stubbornness had continued to grow. Rooted deeply within her like an oak tree. I would trade cups of cafecito for tales of the little bug people while Mamá was out running errands.
 
“Who were they?” I would ask in a whisper, as if Mamá would barge in at any moment and catch us exchanging sins.
 
“They didn’t have names. They didn’t speak either.” She would reply. I’d sit there patiently, processing the information before asking another question. Time with her was precious. The more questions I asked, the more lost she seemed to get.
 
“How do you know they weren’t just normal bugs?” I’d ask. She would sit there for a moment and take a small sip of her hot coffee, surely burning her tongue.
 
“Because they looked like people.” The answer was simple, but it wasn’t enough for a curious child like me.
 
“How so?” The slight tapping of my feet against the tile floor exposed my growing impatience. She didn’t seem to notice.
 
“They had faces. Eyes, a nose, a mouth…” She would go on to list general anatomy. I bit my lip.
 
“Bugs have faces.” I interrupted and she stopped speaking. Then a hoarse laugh escaped her thinning lips. It was an unpleasant sound, like tv static. Her childhood spent working in factories had caught up with her lungs.
 
“Smartass,” She said just loud enough for me to hear in her thick accent. It caught me by surprise.
 
“Nana!” It was my turn to scold her. She never cursed, always said it wasn’t very lady-like.
 
“As I was saying,” She paused to let me settle down. “They had faces. But not bug faces. They looked like you and I. Except they were little.”
 
She slightly pinched her fingers together to show me an estimated size of the bug people. I nodded.
 
“They had the body of the bugs, but they all could stand on two feet. Like you and I,” she explained, pushing herself off her seat. I scrambled next to her in case she fell but she swatted my hands away. She set down her mug and proceeded to put her hands on her hips. Stretching her back just a bit to stand proudly. I couldn’t help but giggle at her display.
 
“How’d you find them?” I asked as she slowly sat herself back down. Retreating back to her caffeine.
 
“They were stealing,” She shook her head in a feigned disappointment. “I had planted some sweet grapes for the summer and I caught them in the act!”
 
“Maybe they were hungry, Nana.” I said in defense of the bug people. It’s not a crime to be hungry.
 
“That is no reason to steal.” She sighed. “I forgave them, of course.”
 
“Then what?” I began to grow eager. This was the most I had gotten out of her in a while.
 
“Then we became friends. I would visit them every day after work and bring them whatever I had left over. Even if it was a few beans.” She smiled to herself. “I would make them little chairs and tables out of sticks and leaves I found around the yard. I would sew together little dresses using paper magazines. I left them gifts, and they would leave me some as well.”
 
“What did they bring you?” My hands were resting under my chin. Eyes wide like an owl at midnight.
 
“Random trinkets they would find. Shiny stuff. Sometimes it’d be silverware, sometimes jewelry. Sometimes it’d be a coin or two which made a big difference at the time.” Her smile grew, but stayed closed. Her wrinkles stretched themselves across her face, but the glossiness in her eyes brought a sense of youth.
 
“Then what, Nana? Where are they now?” I jumped up a little in excitement which startled her. She dropped the mug and it shattered across the floor, spilling what was left of the brown liquid. She stayed silent.
 
“I’m so sorry! Be careful and stay there while I clean it up, there’s glass!” I stood up immediately. She sat there, unfazed. I slipped on the sandals that were beneath my chair and stepped out back to grab the broom. When I slipped back inside, Mamá had made her way into the kitchen.
 
“What happened?” She let out a dramatic breath. Throwing the groceries she had carried inside onto the counter. She ripped the broom from my hands and began to sweep. “¿Estás bien, Ma?”
 
There was still no response from my grandmother. She sat there, frozen in time. Her frail hands still shaped around the non-existent mug.
 
“What did you do?” Mamá turned to face me and I stuttered. “Her mind is very fragile right now, you know this.”
 
“I didn’t do anything, I swear! We were just talking.” I aimed to defend myself but the weight of guilt sat itself like rocks, heavy in my stomach. I had asked too many questions. “I’m sorry.”
 
My grandmother spoke a few words for the rest of the day. Simple responses that would please Mamá. I had refrained from speaking to her in fear of only hurting her more. She would trade sweet glances and small smiles with me over dinner. Her way of letting me know things were okay.
 
That night I joined my grandmother in her bed. The window was open and it let a cool enough breeze in that encouraged us to be under the covers. I laid my head on her shoulder, adjusting my weight so as to not crush her feeble body. We laid there in silence as we usually did. There was a full moon out and the sound of crickets chirping lulled us to sleep. As my eyes grew heavy and my breathing became steady, she spoke.
 
“I’m going to die,” She faintly said. My eyes became watery saucers at her sudden statement. When I gained the courage to look at her, she had already fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, thinning lashes falling over her cheeks. Paired with the same small smile she had given me earlier. To her, everything was going to be okay.
 
She didn’t wake up that morning. The doctor said she had died peacefully in her sleep and that in her position it was the best way to go. I stood at the doorway as Mamá wept at the foot of the bed. A blanket had been thrown over my grandmother’s body as we waited for someone to take her.
 
My puffy eyes looked out the open window. The sun was bright and it was a beautiful day. Something that my grandmother would have appreciated dearly. She hated sad events. The sounds of chirping crickets had transitioned into the chirping of sparrows. Light and airy.
 
At the corner of my eye, I noticed a pop of color. I tilted my head in curiosity, walking over to hover over the windowsill. Sitting there were two red grapes. Perfectly ripe and gleaming. I looked up to the sky and smiled.

by Kevin M. Casin

Bran arrived at the cave. The shadows held by the chalky stone frame played with him, shaping into the fairies from his dreams. Maybe they were eating the travelers.
Nic grunted as he climbed onto the shale slab. He rolled and lithely sprung to his elvish feet.

“Why the gods thought to bring us together, I will never understand,” he grumbled. He tossed his loose brown hair. His brown hands brushed charcoal dust from his caramel leather vest and adjusted the bow and quiver on his back. “Bring me to my death, he will. Just watch…”

Bran wrapped a fleshy arm around Nic’s slender shoulders and said “see, it wasn’t so bad!”

“Be careful, Bran,” Nic said. “Your research won’t save up. We slipped past the guards. No one is coming if something goes wrong.”

“Oh, stop worrying. What’s the worst that could happen? We’ll look around and go home.”
​
Bran looked around for bone, carcasses, anything that might show signs of a feast. He found none. If they weren’t eaten, then maybe captured and held against their will?
“Since you’re so worried, I’ll go in first,” said Bran. He took his birch staff into his brown hand and slipped the vine band off his chest. He looked back at Nic with a smirk, “and make sure everything is safe before you come in.” 

Darkness washed the world from Bran’s skin. He held his staff tight with both hands. A tingle entered his fingertips. It felt like magic. Maybe there were fairies. But he wanted to see them. In the shadows, he searched for the portal to their world, the one he had traveled to in his dreams since he was a child. He hoped to find the glass structures that pierced gray clouds.

Was the silver-eyed man there, and his haunting robotic speech? How about the orange man with green tendrils, the one who soothed him?

“Maybe some light will help.” He set his hand over the branches of his staff. He felt them curl under his palm, but he before he could speak the spell, Nic interrupted.

“Bran! Come look at this!” 

Bran rushed to the near end of the cave—he realized was more of a tunnel. Nic gently cupped a pale, orange hermit crab.

“That’s not from the Otherworld!” Bran huffed.

The crab scuttled into its shell, bunched into a fist.

Nic laughed. “They never did like you. Maybe there’s something to learn here. Not everything has to be otherworldly. Sometimes a crab is just a crab, and that’s okay. Pay attention to what’s real, Bran. The rest will always work itself out.”

Bran rolled his eyes. “When did you get so old and wise?”

A chilled breeze knocked Bran’s thick, black curled hair onto his face. The roar of the great sea called to him. He looked out over the cliffs beside Nic.

“What is that?” Bran asked.

Perched on crags, Bran saw a castle. Pointed towers, like fangs biting into unfurling storm clouds. Thick, dreary walls sprouted from the algae-green rocks and stabbed the central tower. An eerie chill seeped into his skin and pinched his nerves. He hated the feeling of insects creeping over him.

A crack came from the cliff behind him. The rock under his feet tore away from the mainland. Nic knocked Bran down, hoping to carry them over the fissure. But he failed. Bran braced for another sensation he hated—the thrill of falling. He waited for the hands juggling his intestines. It never happened.

Bran rose to his feet with Nic’s help and the cliff faded away. Bran realized they were gliding toward the castle. Nothing but air and certain death lay beneath the levitating boulder. Bran balked at the vacuum. He hugged Nic. As he fumbled at the weight, Bran prayed to the fairies, pleading with them to carry them safely over the carnivorous sea.

The cracks aligned perfectly. It hovered in place as Bran and Nic stepped off, then pulled away, drifting back to the cliff.  As they climbed a stone-carved staircase, Bran felt the vibration generated from the thrashing waves crawl up his bones. He peered over the rough edge and realized they were swaying.

Bran glanced back at Nic and said, “I think a good wind will knock this whole place back into the sea. But I guess we’re stuck here for now.”

Bran stood before a wrought iron door with bolts about his size. On its own, the door creaked open slightly. The castle exhaled stale air, like the musk of a thousand-year tomb. The breeze lifted dust from the stone slabs, taking hazy human forms, like meandering ghosts looking for their true home.

“Fairies,” Bran exhaled enthusiastically.

People—some human and others alien—skittered around him with apathetic faces and in clothes outside the custom of Ulamar. Men in long-sleeved tunics with a cloth folded over their chests—"suits,” the word came to him, but its origin was a mystery to him. One of these men strolled up to him.

Bran shuttered. His youthful face carried silver eyes that held the weight of ages. He didn’t seem as scary as he had in his dreams. Bran had power here. He wasn’t going to be intimidated.
​
“I am Bran, protector of Ulamar and heir to the throne. I don’t recognize you, or any of these people as my subject. Where are you from?” Bran assumed a regal voice, dropping his tone by an octave. 

The man opened his arms and said, “welcome to the House of All Worlds. I am ARI: Alternate Reality Integrator.” Though his sentences ended with a flair, his smile was empty and strained. “I am tasked with carrying out our company motto: All things are possible. Is this your first time?”

Bran glanced back at Nic, who surveyed ARI with an incredulous eye.

“Are you…a fairy?” Bran asked, stepping close and examining ARI’s hazy aura.

“Fairies? Oh no, sir. I’m afraid you may be experiencing Envoy sickness. Oh, not good. Must decontaminate quickly. This way, please, right away.”

ARI extended his arm and guided the way into the dilapidated structure.

Bran looked to Nic, whose eyes held worry, but nodded as if to agree the way seemed safe enough and this was there only way out. Their only option was to find a way out that was different from the way they came. Bran walked into the castle, hoping it held some answers.

Though the decay faded as they entered, the gloom never left. Sunlight fell from the ceiling—the only light source—down a well-formed by a spiraling white staircase. Beyond the stairs, glass cages scaled the curved heights. Like an egg, or a gherkin. People scurried around, vanishing behind metal doors that slipped into dark, bland walls.

A lonely banner draped from the far wall with a symbol—a cat sitting on its hind legs, a small “S” on its chest, and a giant “U” behind it.

They reached the center of the space.

“Welcome back to Ulamar. Here, in the House of All Worlds, we can take you anywhere you want to go. With our convenient and affordable prices, we can help you visit any multiverse.” ARI spoke with an unnatural enthusiasm.

Bran considered it strange how the name of this place was the same as his kingdoms, but a nearby man caught his attention. Green roots dangling from his carrot scalp over broad shoulders. A silver uniform intimately shaped his beefy torso. The cat emblem on his peck. A scowl pinched his oily cheeks. He tapped an invisible pane, each yellow symbol vanishing with a flash under his fingers.

The man’s jaw dropped. He recovered quickly and returned to his work.

Bran thought the reaction was strange. And slightly insulting. Bran wasn’t aware of any orange people in Ulamar. He let it go.

ARI guided them through a broad doorway at the back end of the egg-shaped space.

Aisles of glossy, white saucers encased in cylindrical glass sprawled away infinitely.

“What are these?” Bran said.

ARI led them along a corridor, then stopped beside a vessel. He raised a hazy hand.

“The sickness…correct. Memory triggering may help.

“Here we keep out state-of-the-art Quantum Envoys. An array of our safe, proprietary krypton-xenon lasers vaporize customers into elementary particles and funnel them into our Alternative Reality Capacitor. By tapping into the quantum strings, we can digitally recreate you and your loved ones anywhere in the multiverse. Then—thanks to our wonderful technicians, of course—we can bring you right back home with the push of a few buttons.” ARI pointed to an orange-skinned man beside a nearby Envoy.

The same man from earlier. Now with an inquisitive grin.

Bran smiled at the familiar and attractive technician. At twenty, traditionally men in the kingdom found a wife, but he never felt that life suited him. He’d settled the reason on his insatiable need for adventures. Now, as he stared at the man, he reconsidered.

“Could this be some type of magic?” Nic asked. Bran tensed as he approached the Envoy and the technician.

“Yes,” ARI replied, “in this world, I believe the natives would refer to this work as ‘magic’. Ulamar knows this as physics. Are you familiar with Schrӧdinger’s Cat theory? No? Well, never mind then. Now, here are your neural networks from the moment you entered the House…”

With an opaque hand, ARI swatted the air. Lines webbed into circles across a hazy brain. Bran fought back tears, recalling the day his father slaughtered a sheep right in front of him. He wanted to teach his son to fend for himself, to be a man. So, he set the brain in Bran’s hands. Hypnotic green and red waves intensified as they reached the circles and distracted him from the memory.

“Obviously magic,” Bran concluded in his head.

“These two quadrants are unlinked,” ARI traced a line between two circles. A black hole broke the currents. “The memory centers of your brain. The informational flow is either impaired or repressed. A common side-effect of the transport. Not to worry. When the brain lingers in another universe it must adapt and form new connections, synapses, like these,” ARI marked another line with intense, red swirls.

A hand rested on Bran’s arm. Nic guided him away and whispered, “I don’t see any way out, but I say we try to make a run for it. I have a bad feeling. We need to go.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you leave in this condition, Nic.”

Nic twitched and held ARI in a deadly glare. ARI stared—his calm, faux-jovial expression unmoved.

“I believe your syndrome is severe,” said ARI. With a wave, a new network appeared.

The map is framed on the memory center. Red waves flowed naturally into the two circles. No black hole.

“Connection found…Memories missing… Deleted. No leaving, I’m afraid.” ARI quieted for a moment. His hollow, silver eyes scanned the network.

The technician stepped away from the Envoy. His pace slowed as he neared Bran.

Suddenly, ARI shot erect. His head thrashed and his voice changed. Like iron rasping a metal drum. “House breached…execute…sterilization protocol.”

The technician wedged between Bran and Nic, then grabbed their arms and said, “we’ve got to go now!”

ARI’s hysteria faded as Bran raced down the corridors, guided by the mysterious technician. He passed through a new door and burst into a hallway. Glossy pale walls with silver lines slicing down the corridor greeted Bran with a meek, yet more lively welcome than the lobby. Here, the light came from strange, luminous ropes in the ceiling corners. The hall curved and as he turned the corner, he clashed with an orange woman.

He knocked down unknown objects from her metallic trays. Bran tried to frown as he swept by her, but he wasn’t sure if she caught it. He heard the objects crack as Nic’s heavy steps smashed against them.

Bran followed the man, who brought them to an elegant staircase of sterile white that coiled around a tiered, crystal chandelier. Lanky creatures with cerulean skin clothed in white silk, beaded with grey pebbles seemed to hover over the steps. 

“Water fairies clad in eroded limestone,” he recalled from the old stories.   

An orange woman in a silver uniform barred their path to the stairs. Bran grinned in fascination, disregarding the odd metal object in her hand and her threatening grimace. The technician yanked him away, through yet another sliding door. This time, Bran came to a cold, metal room.

A terrible place to hide, he knew, but before he could offer his thought, the technician tapped on the wall and the doors closed instantly. They were moving. Almost falling.

“What is going on?” Nic slammed the technician into the wall and held his forearm on his neck. The man didn’t fight back.

“You have to leave. A native can’t be in here. They will kill you.” The words dripped like fresh cream from his lips.

“I’ll kill you first.” Nic drew an arrow and held the sharp edge by his throat. He pressed enough to draw blood.

Bran tensed and threw his arms over Nic, pulling away. The wall caught them, but Bran didn’t let go. The embrace comforted him, and he sensed it helped Nic.

A sea flashed in Bran’s mind. A vision.

Still waters. A weight pinned his hands and body to pearl sand. Passion on his lips. Braids tickled his cheeks. Green. The face. Duran.

Bran snapped back to reality.

“I don’t think he wants to hurt us, Nic. I know him,” Bran whispered. He felt the calm air from Nic as his breath deepened. Bran held onto him. Like he might lose him.

“We do know each other, but more of that later. I’m Duran, Senior Quantum technician. In all my years with Ulamar, no native and customer have bonded so much. Every time Nic looked at you, the map turned red. He was thinking of you, Bran. Your memories together.”

“He’s been my best friend since we were kids.”

“Kids?”

The room jerked to a stop and knocked everyone to the floor. Duran shot up, waved his arm over the wall, and yellow symbols appeared. They faded as he tapped them; replaced by more.

“Damn! They turned off the elevator. Luckily, we stopped just under the 100th floor. We’re close to the tunnel.”

He swatted the characters away and produced a slim rod from his pocket.

“Step aside, guys.” He aimed it at the ceiling and a light beam shot from the tip. Bran watched in amazement—it melted the metal into a ring. It fell with an empty thud.

Duran tucked away the rod. He set his hands on his knees and lunged. “Come on,” he said to Bran.

He sprang through the hole with Duran’s help. He landed in a dark, musky well. He followed a thick chain holding the metal box as it curved along the walls. Nic appeared, startling Bran, then helped Duran. He patted away the dust away. His hands caressed his grey clothes, moving from his chest to his waist. Bran followed with his eyes, memorizing each space.

Still waters. Pearl sand. Passion. Greece. More visions.    

Bran stood before a broad door the exact size of the metal box. He hoped it might open for him, but it didn’t. Was the fairy magic even real? Or did they take it back out of spite for running away?

“Step aside, Bran. I got it.” Duran carved a hole about his height. He nudged the slab and it fell away. Once through, he held out his hand, waiting for Bran to take it. But Nic came between them.

As he drew his bow, he glanced at Bran and said, “Brawns before brains.” He winked and went ahead. Then, he signaled for Bran.

The bright light bathing the glossy walls blinded Bran. Squinting, he scampered down the empty, doorless hallway. No, it had one door, Bran noticed. At the end.

Beyond the door, a rusted staircase descended into a sewer. Footsteps echoed faintly. Bran examined the stairs, hoping to glimpse the source of the noises. The flights curled to a point, like a black hole in the sky.

“Down here, Bran. Just a bit more and we’re out of here,” Duran insisted.

Bran stepped close to Duran. From afar, his face held a spry youth, but now, wrinkles crept into the corners of his eyes. Each line is a story. Piece of Bran’s story.

He met Duran’s emerald irises, consumed by a swirl of anxiety and despair. Yet, peering from behind those emotions, hope. Life. Fairy magic set into his nerves, sparking a bulb. One thought extinguished. Now, teething with new life.

“Duran,” Bran whispered. “I loved you, didn’t I?”

​#

La elotera swung by the brown condos, the ugly ones by the 101 freeway in So Cal, flanked by decaying but still fragrant eucalyptus trees. It was night as she figured that was the best time for her to make a sale. Her shopping cart with dual blue Igloo coolers and a shiny aluminum tamalera pot rising like Medieval towers from its interior squeaked into the noisy complex stifled with chants of playing children and tamborazos of ranchera music.
 
Two squeezes from the rubber ball from the horn attached to her carrito salute the complex and the murky night. A gust of wind quivers the leaves of the eucalyptus trees, making a resonance like a flow of a river. The aromatics of the suddenly alive leaves smell like Vicks VapoRub. It opens the tamaleras nostrils, expands her lungs. She inhales deeply.
 
La elotera opens the lid to the cheap swap meet tamalera pot liberating a vapor of sweet corn scent that swirls and embraces the complex in a heavenly fog like a kiss from the marine layer. The familiar smell of boiled elotes attracts her first customer.
 
A cholo, todo pelón, wearing a Dallas Cowboys E. Smith 22 jersey, with two purple bullet holes to the dome materializes like a Vegas show hologram from aside a dry manzanita shrub embedded in crusty cracking soil. The cholo stagers towards her like a drunk. La elotera sees the entity approach but doesn’t seem frightened. She seems pleased and welcomes the pelón with a smile. Her first sale of the day!
 
“¿En qué te puedo ayudar joven?” the older elotera asks the spirit as she irons her brown checkered mantil with her hands. Pues, she is a classy lady.
 
“I can’t rest. I need something to go to sleep,” complains the cholo with his brains blown out. La elotera can see his tired white eyes floating in a sea of black like lifeboats waiting to be rescued by the Coast Guard.
 
“I have something that will help you rest,” she responds in English. She reaches deep into the tamalera pot, pulls out a steamy white and yellow corn on the cob. The vapor expelled from it swirls and rises to the heavens like a serpent in retreat. The elotera slaters the corn with mayonesa using her wooden pala, sprinkles crumbling white cheese all over that stinks like patas. All while twisting the palito she jabbed at the bottom of the sweetcorn. She then spritzes the corn with artificial neon yellow butter from a farting blue plastic jug, sprinkles earth red chile piquín until the elote is covered with a red furry blanket.
 
“Ya mérito, mijo,” she tells the lost soul. La elotera reaches for a mason jar with a sticker of the Virgen Maria on one side and La Santa Muerte on the other. She tightens the lid with the tiny nail size holes to make sure the valuable greenish-black powder inside doesn’t spill out. She sprinkles some of the unprocessed-looking emerald powder onto the elote and hands it to the cholo ghost. He takes a bite.
 
Three miles away in the neighborhood beyond the tracks, the vatos Sleepy and Chato are sitting in rusted lawn chairs drinking cheap beers and listening to ‘80s style corridos on their ‘80s style boombox. The big grey ones with twin woofers in the front and a cassette deck serving as the hocico. The grease from their too full grease collector on their grill steadily drips grease to the dirt, accumulating into a thick viscous puddle. That is unless the wind carries a rouge drop here and there to the neglected lemonade grass.
 
“Hey, carnal. You’re burning the tri-tip,” warns Sleepy lazily pointing to the flare-up charring the piece of meat. “And you’re going to set the grass on fire, just like the carne.”
 
“What grass foo’?” Chato unzippers his fingers from on top of his head and displays the backyard with a flat hand like a model from the Price is Right. “Y la carne está bien. No pues que you like it well done.”
 
Suddenly the back gate explodes open in a squall of splinters and rusted bolts. “Get the fuck down,” barks a gabacho cop with a nervous trigger finger. He points his Glock at the brothers, nervously alternating between all four of their concha bread eyes. Four more swat officers rush in like Clint Eastwood from Dirty Harry, .40s in hand. One of the police officers tosses the back door breaching a battering ram onto the dirt. It rolls and knocks down the BBQ. The mesquite embers splash out like neon rubies when the asador hits the ground. The tri-tip lays in the yellow and scorched grass like a slaughtered rhino in the African savanna.
 
“We’re taking you guys in for murder,” says the lead swat officer holstering his hand cannon. The brothers get zip-tied by the wrists and are taken away to an idling Ford Explorer police car. The detectives that figured out who were the perps watch from their Crown Vics a block away. Cigarette smoke rises from the half-open windows like a grey aura. It gets swept up by a gust.
 
Back at the brown complex, the cholo is finishing his corn. He is so into it; he doesn’t notice the white goo building up in the corner of his mouth like yeso. He takes his last bite of the corn.
 
“Man. That was the best corn I’ve ever had,” he says yawning widely like a lion that has cemented his future cubs with his pride of pussies. “I feel sleepy now,” he tells la elotera. He raises his arms into the heavens, begins to stretch his thin torso. El cholo begins to fade and turns into dust. His powder conforms to the laws of the wind and is swept up in the gusty breeze. La elotera sees his purplish blueish particles fly between the dancing eucalyptus trees, twisting and dodging bug-eaten leaves. His hue shoots into heaven like blue smoke from a vape.
 
“Ojalá que ya puedas descansar, mijo,” la elotera whispers starring at the crescent moon. She sees her next customer materialize from under the stairs of the crumbling second floor of the complex. An older lady, not too old, with a cord around her stretched-out neck, a swinging plancha at the end of it like a pendulum, walks up to la elotera. Her tight black leather pants let go of a chirrido every step she nears la ex curandera turned corn entrepreneur. Her round and too big for her small frame tits hit her chin like dribbling basketballs.
 
“Hola Doña.” She kisses la elotera’s bony, spotted brown, and loose-skinned hand. “¿En qué le puedo ayudar?”
 
“Mi marido. Ya no me quiso and cheated on me. Look at my clothes.” She raises her arms and whirls like a slutty amateur ballet dancer. The plancha almost bangs la elotera in the hips when she twirls. “He wanted me to dress like this. Like a hoochie. He stopped looking at me the same way. He didn’t touch me the same. Y yo ya estaba harta y cansada.” She cups her hands, places them on her face, and wails into them like an Irish banshee.
 
“No llores, criatura,” says la elotera. “Eres preciosa. You should never have to change who you are. Y menos por un puerco.” Like an ‘80s homicidal movie killer, she busts out with a huge chef’s knife from underneath the shopping cart and the blade shimmers like platinum in the sharp moonlight. She reaches into the pot; pulls out a sweaty elote, begins shaving the kernels of the cob with the blade too big for a viejita. The kernels tumble into a short but wide Styrofoam bowl. She wields her trusty wooden pala in the direction of the mayonesa jar and drops a big spoonful of the white oily condiment into the white bowl. She farts out artificial butter again from the farting blue bottle. Following her method to a tee, she sprinkles stinky pata cheese on top. But this time reaches for a Ziplock baggy containing crushed red hot-Cheetos. She sprinkles some of the jagged neon-red rocks on top. One last ingredient. She sprinkles some of the emerald powder gingerly on top of the esquite she lovingly constructed for the older fox. Wha-la, her pièce de résistance.
 
“Tome,” she says handing the resented lady her esquite. She takes it in her right hand, grips the plastic fork with her left, tight. The nails on her thumb and index finger bleach to white from the death pinch she has on the fork. She begins to scarf down the esquite like she hasn’t eaten a meal in a lifetime.
 
Meanwhile on the other side of town, at a grimy motel where the rate could be paid by the hour or the day, lays her husband on a lumpy mattress with its fitted sheet unfitted. His half-naked mistress sits on the edge of the bed with her arms behind her back hooking her bra back up.
 
“That felt incredible,” says the cheater laying with his hands behind his head as an extra pillow layer. “When can I see you again?” The sancha gets up and sparks up a cigarette next to the window overlooking the freshly repaved parking lot. She stares at a rouge cheeseburger wrapper kite in the gusty wind.
 
“Hey. Is that your S-Class on fire?” she casually blurs out pointing at a car engulfed in flames with her smoldering menthol frajo. She takes a long puff of her cigarette como si nada pasara.
 
“What!” the cheater roaringly shouts out. He lunges the sheets clinging to his sweaty body like saran wrap, jumps up from the bed as if a compressed spring on the mattress was liberated from the weight bearing down on it from above. He runs to the window. He sees red-orange and blue flames ravaging his interior. The flames flicker with tormented life. “My car!” he yells gripping the last few hairs he’s got on his head with his shaky fists. He pulls them out. His sancha takes another menthol drag, como si nada pasara.
 
The cheating husband runs out of the motel room tying his robe to make sure his wrinkled balls don’t make an appearance. He stops dead in his tracks upon walking outside to the parking lot. He can’t believe what he’s seeing. Between red flashes and the buzz of a neon sign advertising vacancy, he sees his adult son holding a red plastic gas tank. His daughter hugs numerous road flares. She waves to him with a road flare. The S-class blows up in a spectacular release of kinetic and chemical energy behind them. The bubbling hood lands in front of the cheater. A tire rolls by minding its own business.
 
“That’s for mom,” says his son with savage eyes. They are more alive than even the fire.
 
“I hate you,” spews his daughter with a scowl. “Mom killed herself because of you. You bastard!”
 
Meanwhile, in the complex’s courtyard the fork the neglected fox was holding falls through her grip. It lands in the dirt. The mayonnaise and butter concoction on the fork is like a magnet to the pebbles of dirt que se comportan como nails. The lady with the plancha around her neck begins to dematerialize. Her aura turns into floating spheres that in-ribbon la elotera for a moment, go over her head like a flyover from the Blue Angels at a ball game, and disperse into the heavens.
 
La elotera has enough time to check her cell phone when a señor walks up dragging his feet. He’s wearing a tan cocodrilo suit ready for the baile. He floats through a tirade de empty beer bottles and decomposing couches and mattresses with yellow stains left for dead in the complex and trash.
 
“Señora,” he cries bringing his hands together as if rezando El Padre Nuestro. “I need your help. I can’t stop thinking about my daughter’s quince and the father daughter dance I’m going to miss.”
 
“Ya ya, joven,” responds the old lady to the ghost of a gordito, ya middle-aged señor. His chaleco can barely contain his Mexican beer belly.
 
“I will give you something to calm your thoughts and guide you to the light.” La elotera fixes up an elote, but not a normal elote. A blue one. She puts the usual fixings on it but instead of putting chili powder on it how she usually does on corn on the cobb, she dredges it with crushed Taquis. She sprinkles some of her emerald powder on it but this time before handing the specter the mouthwatering elote, she hands him a pickled jalapeño. A dark green veiny mean-looking motherfucker. Cosa de maravilla!
 
“Toma,” she says handing him the jalapeño. Then the elote. “Take a bite of the chile first. Then the corn.” She turns her back on the ghost in the cocodrilo suit, begins rearranging her messy carrito, confident the elote will do the trick.
 
“Oh, shit this thing is hot,” dice el specter, fanning his hand towards his burning mouth trying to induct oxygen from the cool night. He makes duck lips, sucking in air like a vacuum.
 
“It’s supposed to be hot. To get all the endorphins going,” says the elotera leaning on her now organized carrito with her elbows.
 
Dela is nervous about her quinceañera dance. Her dad was her pillar of granite, her cheerleader, her guiding light. Y ya no está. “You were supposed to be here to dance with me, dad. You promised me,” she mutters starring into her glossy eyes in the mirror. A door bursts open from behind her. A lady wearing a purple ruffled cocktail dress sticks half her body into the dressing room. Dela wipes the tears from her cheeks and chin. Sniffs a little.
 
“We’re ready for you, mija” the lady with the ruffled dress announces to the down quinceañera. She shuts the door gingerly. Dela pulls down her white princess dress that keeps riding up. She takes in a deep breath, grudgingly gets up. She heads for the door of the salón’s dressing room, steps out, and shuts the door behind her.
 
“Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen,” announces the spiky orange-haired DJ. “Your aplausos to the pista, por favor.” The chatter fades to a whisper. The lights go black except for a spotlight in the middle of the dance floor. “Tennesse Whiskey” bumps out of the JBL speaker set up by the DJ. Dela and her chambelán, her older brother, begin their choreographed walk towards each other, like marching soldiers. The fog machine makes them look like they’re floating on wispy clouds. They reach each other and Dela’s brother takes the lead. He holds her by the hips, she puts her arms around his neck. She begins to cry.
 
“No llores, Delita. I’m here like I promised.” Dela lets go of the hold she had on her brother’s neck and shoves him in the chest.
 
“You mother fuc...,” she begins saying but is unable to continue her tongue-lashing because before her eyes are not her skinny brother but her deceased thick father in the tan cocodrilo suit they had picked out together for her day of transformation from a girl to a woman. “Apa,” she half whimpers. She rushes to her dad and hugs him; he picks her up and spins her around as he used to when she was only to his knees.
 
“Un aplauso para la quinceañera y su hermano, por favor,” the obvious DJ advises the uncaring crowd. “Que bonito. ¡Que bonitas memorias!” Dela rests her head on her dad’s shoulder.
 
A beam of light resembling the glare from the transporter in Star Trek begins to dematerialize the man in the cocodrilo suit enjoying his elote. A police officer rushes into the courtyard with a beaming flashlight that punctures the dark of the night like a knife versus skin. What was left of the spirit gets skewed away by the coned LED light of the flashlight. The half-eaten elote falls to the floor.
 
“What are you doing here?” the jura questions la elotera with the tenacity of a junkyard guard dog. He shoots his beam of LED light at her face. Then without letting her respond, illuminates her shopping cart with Medieval towers. “This place is off-limits. This is a crime scene. Can’t you see the crime tape up?” He shines his light on a unit with yellow crime scene tape tacked to the door. “What are you doing here? This place has been abandoned for years.”
 
The elotera grips the rubber handle to her carrito tight. The playing children’s laughter and cries and the tamborazos of music fade like a distant memory.
 
“No hablo pitinglish,” she says, looking into the blue of the cop’s eyes.
“Well, it don’t matter. This place is off-limits. Get your cart and get out of here before I give you a ticketo,” he acts like he’s filling out a phantom ticket in his phantom ticket book with his phantom white right hand,” for not having a seller’s permit.”
 
“Sí, sí,” the elotera responds, shaking her head up and down like a bobblehead. She begins to push away from the center courtyard. She looks around the complex and there are broken windows and tagged-up walls and empty syringes and sliver spider webs and a few abandoned rusting shopping carts with tall grass growing from between their steel mesh. The cop finds the half-eaten elote and holds it from the palito. He looks at it, scrutinizes it.
 
La elotera stops at the end of the abandoned property. She looks back at the brown condo complex. She sees the bouncing white light from the cop disappear and reappear behind the corners of the dead complex. She takes one last deep Vicks breath and mumbles, “All cops are assholes.”​

​Chicano. Lisiado. Storyteller. Enrique C. Varela hails from Oxnard, California, the land his parents immigrated to from the state Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico. He holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Writing minor to accompany it like a solid friend. Two of his short stories have been published in Chiricú Journal & The Acentos Review, respectively. His upcoming memoir, twisted: Tales from a Crip(ple) is slated to be published by Between the Lines Publishing in the coming year. He is beyond excited. His ethnic background is Mexicano. Though his skin pigment tells another story. 

​Heading into Los Angeles, Cisco activated the channel to Gus. “Gus, what do you have for me? I’m fifty miles east of downtown Los Angeles.”

“Nada. I don’t have an exact address yet, but I’m working on it. The old area is setup weird with common garages on the street,” Gus responded. “I know it’s near Sunset and Echo Park. The area will be like Old Town. They can still drive on tires there.”

“Traffic is crazy. I’ve had some weird looks from people. This ranfla sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“Oh yeah, something you need to know. I’m getting cross-reference blips from some source I think is trying to track you. I can’t get to the source because it keeps moving around, but will keep trying,” Gus continued sounding a bit worried.

“Is it security headquarters?” Cisco asked.

“No. It is some other source, a low-level old-fashioned scanner. I can’t isolate it.”

“Keep trying Gus.”

The news that someone was tracking him was not a surprise, however it made him uneasy. When Comsys alerted him to his destination, he descended from the aeropath and found himself hovering over the dilapidated baseball stadium. The open air baseball stadium with blue seats sat in a large ravine surrounded by an empty parking lot. A weathered large blue and white sign was still legible as Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers were big rivals for the Chihuahua Cubs and Cisco had seen them play at the Chihuahua stadium numerous times. Apparently, this was the old stadium and no longer in use.

Flying west, Cisco caught his first view of the older area of Echo Park. Surprisingly, he found it hilly with lots of green vegetation. Small houses dotted the tree covered hills. Circling the area again, Cisco looked for a place to touch down. He got lucky and a spot opened near a busy eatery. Parking the red car not too far from the Pioneer Chicken Ranch on the corner of Sunset Blvd and Portia Street, he sat watching lines of people waiting at the restaurant for their food.

The gaudy neon lights of the Chicken Ranch were lit even though it was daytime. Reflections from the neon lights sparkled on ranflas parked around it. They all had a similar style, though very different than the red one he drove. Six or seven ranflas were parked near the restaurant and dozens of young men dressed in an unusual style were standing nearby.
 
Arturo and his gang tailed Cisco into Los Angeles, keeping close as they followed the blip from the red car. They saw him park near a busy corner, but they had to park around the corner and down several streets.

“Flaco, go keep an eye on him,” Arturo demanded. The area worried him. Perhaps the driver had brought the red ranfla to L.A. to sell.

Flaco jumped out quickly, heading in the direction of the red car parked several blocks away. The intersections were busy with people, and he was surprised by functioning traffic signals for both pedestrians and ground-level vehicles.
 
Sitting in the red car Cisco activated the Pcom and heard Gus pick up immediately. “What’s the matter?” Gus asked.

“I hope you got something for me, cause it is not good here.”

Gus had told him the area was rough, though this was not what Cisco expected. The Chicken Ranch seemed a hangout for gangbangers and lowriders. Small groups of young men gathered at the corner whistling and yelling at passing cars and flashing hand signs. A row of decked-out motorcycles were parked near each other and several men in heavy boots and jackets stood near them. They were definitely Hispanic and all wore the same color bandana tied around their foreheads.

Another group of young men were dressed in karate-style clothes. Two were pushing each other, while several others egged on a fight. The situation made Cisco cringe. When Gus said it made Old Town look like Disneyland, he was making an understatement.

“I’m in the middle of a biker and lowrider convention and it doesn’t look good for me,” Cisco said.

“Oh, those must be some of the gangs that control that area. During the financial collapse of the United States, gang wars started in most of the large cities. Los Angeles was overrun by several ethnic gangs who sectioned off the city, running drugs, and taking protection money. The gangs or locals invented names for themselves. The bikers are the Mayans, if they are Hispanic,” Gus explained.

“Yes. I can see that name on one of the biker’s jacket. The lowriders look different. They look more Asian to me,” Cisco said.

“Those may be the Kudo kai, a minor arm of the Japanese Yakuza syndicate. Lots of people just refer to them as japovatos.”

“Japovatos?”

“The Japanese word for mixed is japa, so the locals just started calling the downtown Asian gangs, japovatos. Mostly they are a mixed race of Hispanic and Japanese families who have lived in the area for ages,” Gus explained. “They speak some weird mixed Spanish and Japanese slang.”

“How dangerous are they?” Cisco asked.

“The Mayans are more dangerous. The japovatos can cause trouble, but now the gangs in Los Angeles are more like our Old Town gangs and most of it is show. They usually don’t make serious trouble outside of their area,” Gus told him.

“Well I hope not, because here comes four of them.” Cisco terminated the call.

Cisco watched four japovatos approaching quickly. They wore skin tight shorts with gray silk tops that resembled karate tops. Two wore an orange silk belt wrapped around their waists, another one wore blue, while the man in front had a black sash.

Cisco briefly thought about lifting off and leaving, then decided to get out of the car to meet them instead. In an instinctive move, he removed the Chihuahua Cubs baseball cap.

“Ano, ese, doko vienes?” the black belted japovato asked Cisco as he walked up. His speech was deep and guttural. He pulled at Cisco’s t-shirt saying something else to his friends and laughed. Cisco figured they wanted to know who he was and where he came from. The one wearing a blue belt walked around the red ranfla nodding his head up and down.

“Española, New Mexico,” Cisco lied, forcing a wide grin. At least the car was from Española.
 
As Flaco rounded the last corner, the neon sign of the Pioneer Chicken Ranch blazed in the afternoon sun. Parked on one side of the restaurant was a line of motorcycles. Bikers dressed in leather jackets and black boots stood nearby. On the other two sides, odd looking ranflas gleamed in the sunshine. They were nothing like the lowriders of Española or Old Town Dublán. These were sleek and streamlined. Young men wearing tight-fitting outfits milled nearby. Four of them were talking to the driver of the red car. Turning around, he walked quickly back to where Arturo had parked.

Leaning in the window he said, “Crazy shit, ese. There are crazy-looking ranflas. Some of their gang are talking to the vato. This is not so good. We need to get out of here.”

“You’re a culón,” Arturo called Flaco a chickenshit. “Go back and keep an eye on him,” he growled.

“I’m telling you, we got to get out of here. There is a biker gang and a bunch of weird looking ranflas. There are four of them talking to the driver of your car.”
 
Blackbelt’s dark slanted eyes turned into long slits. “Nani ases koko?” He demanded to know why Cisco was here, making hand gestures when he spoke. Cisco noticed calloused formations on the first two knuckles of each hand.

As Blackbelt continued to express his displeasure at Cisco’s presence, his three cohorts walked around the car making comments and touching it. Cisco was not sure if they liked it or thought it was weird.

“Mi primo vive aquí en Echo Park, ese,” Cisco told him he was he here to visit his cousin. Very slowly he slid his right hand down to the side of his pants and felt for the tiny laser in his pocket. “¿Ese, tienes problema con eso?” he asked calmly if that was a problem. He tried to speak in street slang like a lowrider and made no threatening moves.

Blackbelt’s lips tightened and his right hand retracted to his side into a fist. “Anata wa koko no eres bienvenido aquí debes irte,” he hissed in his lingo near Cisco’s ear. The odd mixtures of Spanish and Japanese slang told Cisco he was unwelcome and should leave, now.

“No problema,” Cisco assured him, “I’m just visiting my cousin, ese. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Horale mishiranu hito,” BlackBelt hissed. “¡Ano ne, vamonos!” Blackbelt called to his friends to leave.

As the four japovatos strode away, Cisco watched them jump into a sleek silver and black aerorider. It lifted and headed west above Sunset Boulevard. He got back in the red car and sank low into the seat. Slowly he breathed in and out, trying to relax after the encounter with the strange japovatos. He activated the channel to Gus.

“Hey Cisco, you okay?” Gus asked.

“Yes, so far. The japovatos spoke in a mix of Japanese and Spanish, good enough for me to understand. They told me to leave now. I need a place to go.”

“The car is still parked on Echo Park Ave. I just can’t figure out for sure which house they might be in. I’m searching the utility records and stuff like that to try to figure it out. Is there a shopping center or parking lot where you could chill for a while?” Gus asked. Cisco thought and remembered the empty Dodger Stadium parking lot and told Gus about it.

“Good. Go there and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Cisco started the ranfla and drove ground level on Alvarado Street. Staying on ground level seemed like a good idea with the japovatos patrolling the sky. Shortly, he found Stadium Way and wound toward the stadium parking lot. The parking area’s gate was ripped from the hinges and hung as a twisted reminder of a bygone time. The asphalt was cracked with humps of pavement buckled in a long ridge across a wide area. Weeds and small bushes pushed up through the cracks. Cisco wondered why the old stadium had not been demolished. Parking in the shade of a large tree, he opened the windows and stretched out his six-foot frame as much as possible and tried to relax.
 
Flaco headed back toward the corner of Sunset and Portia. He was a block away when he realized the red car was gone from the parking space. “Mierda,” he cursed. Running back to Arturo, he was out of breath when he jumped into the blue car.

“He’s gone!”

Arturo glanced at the scanner, which had not blipped. “Fuck, he’s on the ground. You fucking let him get away you idiot,” Arturo cursed.

“He can’t be far, ese, he’s tire level. We’ll find him,” Flaco whined.

Arturo lifted the blue car and headed down Sunset Blvd hoping to spot the red car driving on ground level. The hand held scanner showed nothing. Not a very powerful scanner, it could only locate the beacon if it was airborne and within about ten miles. He crisscrossed Echo Park Lake, flew back over the Chicken Ranch, and hovered over a large park. The red car was nowhere. Arturo lifted higher and flew off west on Sunset Blvd.

A sleek black and silver ranfla came up behind him and one of the passengers made hand signs. Arturo knew the signals were not friendly, but there was no way he was leaving without finding his red car.

“Hey,” Flaco said. “I saw that ranfla at the chicken place. It’s the same guys that talked to the pinche vato.”

Flying above street level, the late afternoon traffic was getting heavy, forcing Arturo’s car to slow down. The silver and black ranfla was on his tail. After several blocks, Arturo grinned when he saw Comsys light flash red to indicate an impending stop. Accelerating, he deliberately flew through the intersection and made a sharp left turn. The traffic infraction set off an alarm on his Comsys. The black and silver ranfla tried to follow, but was stopped in the middle of the intersection.

“With luck the police will get them and not us,” Arturo said hoping the traffic control police were the same here in Los Angeles as most of the rest of the Jalapeño Republic. With any luck, the traffic police would assume the local gang was the source of the problem. Arturo circled another corner and landed on a street not too far away.

It did not take long for the LAPD’s traffic control officers to recognize a familiar ranfla stopped in an intersection. The LAPD officers forced the Comsys of the black and silver car to land. The japovatos were not surprised by the turn of events. They knew the procedure well.

“Baka, pinche vatos, los mataré,” the driver swore, vowing to kill the fucking vatos in the blue car.
 
Cisco groaned bumping his knee on the dashboard as his body stretched on the uncomfortable seat. Disoriented, his brain thought he was back on Mars in his small sleeping pod. The single bed in the pod was barely enough for his large frame and how he and Monica managed to have sex took a bit of contortion. Dozing off again, he pictured Monica’s face, but it quickly morphed into Vivian’s. Images of stripping the rose-colored bodysuit from Vivian’s firm body were etched in his brain. Her body had only aged in a good way from when they were teenagers. Her breasts and hips slightly plumper, while her body tone was tight and muscular.

Suddenly the Pcom chirped him out of his visions. “Shit,” he cursed shaking his head as he opened the channel on the Pcom. It was after 6:30 PM and deep twilight shadows cut across the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

“Did you have a nice sleep?” Gus asked and laughed. “I was going to wake you, but not much is happening, so thought I’d let you sleep.”

“You got the address for the sedan yet?” Cisco asked trying to shake the sleep from his brain.

“The car is parked in a single garage on Echo Park Avenue between 2225 and 2227 on the west side of the street,” Gus answered. “It’s moved twice today, but always comes back. I checked the satellite records. The satellite signal from 2227 had 97 calls for 245 minutes, 2225 had one. My guess is that’s the house, but you’ll have to check it out from the ground.”

“You sound groggy,” Gus said.

“Still a little space weary, I guess. Have you picked up anything from security headquarters?” Gus had told Cisco he would monitor the secure channels of the Republic for any chatter about the case or anything he thought odd.

“No. Nothing much. They sent out two operatives in opposite directions, maybe as subterfuge or maybe on legit assignments. Not sure. I saw your report to headquarters go through. The beacon is not working, so they are most likely confused.”

“What about the tracking signal you noticed?”

“It stopped. It was probably nothing.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you when I get to the location. I just want to get the girl and get out of here.”

Starting the car, he lifted from the old Dodgers Stadium parking lot and turned northwest. Flying low he told Comsys the address and let it map the route. According to Gus, it should not be far.
 
Arturo had almost given up finding the red ranfla. It was like finding a needle in a haystack without the use of the scanner. They had been cruising for several hours and the rush hour traffic was getting crazy and busy.

“This is stupid, Chingon,” Oso whined. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Flaco chimed in. “Drop me off and I’ll pick up some chicken. That place on the corner is always busy, so it must be good.”

Turning back toward the Pioneer Chicken Ranch, Arturo landed nearby and Flaco jumped out. About ten minutes later, he returned with three bags and sodas.

“Damn this is good,” Oso said as he devoured the crispy chicken. The breading of the fried chicken had a spicy kick.

Suddenly the scanner chirped. A blip was moving and it was nearby. Throwing his bag of half-eaten chicken on the seat, Arturo lifted the blue car and headed toward the blip. “I got you now vato,” he grumbled.

​Robert Alvarado is a native of Phoenix Arizona. His award-winning saga, The Young Pistolero Series, won several first place finishes in The Latino Author top-ten list and the International Latino Books to Movie Award. Three of his recent works, Jalapeño Republic, Just Vanished and The Spanish Sword were finalists for an International Latino Book award in several categories. He holds an Engineering Degree from Arizona State University, although spent most of his career representing a large computer company throughout Latin America. Proud of his ancestry, Alvarado’s passion radiates in his writing of stories from a Hispanic perspective.

by Samir Sirk Morató

​I was thirteen years old when Daniel “Ardilla” Peña and Sonia Peña asked us to cure the germinating lovesickness of Martín Green. Ardilla was Martín's lifelong best friend, but he had just produced a colicky baby with Sonia, so he couldn't tend to his friend for longer than a few days. Ardilla was just shy of twenty-three and eons away from good handwriting, but abuela and I could read his note well enough:

Martín was bedridden beneath a love enchantment. Because of his wife and baby, Ardilla could not take care of Martín. He needed us to step in. Could we come right away?

Though the handwriting was Ardilla's, I sensed Sonia's presence in the correct spelling of “enchantment,” the pointed mention of a wife and baby, and the bloody fingerprint on the paper's edge. But her strange one-sided hatred of Martín carried concern now. That stirred my curiosity. If Sonia was worried about Martín, something was very wrong.

Let's go, mija, Abuela said.

It was early summer then, and the brittle outlines of the desert softened beneath evening yucca blooms and fine combs of cholla spines. Abuela bundled me onto her horse with grave urgency. She packed her satchel with a sage bundle, a candle, a novena card, a rosary, and a scarlet Santa Muerte figurine before handing it to me, then leaping onto our horse. We trotted off in a tizzy. A half chewed sunflower seed still stuck in my cheek. I spat its shell into the dusty road as we set off.

Though I longed to step into abuela's boots in every way possible, and I duplicated her twin braids, spells, voluminous shawls, and gruff, tobacco-stained ways of wording, I did not understand the stress that gnarled abuela's time-tanned hands. Some girl had enchanted Martín. So what? That concept seemed sweeter to me than the tin of bonbons abuela had packed in her skirt pockets; the perfume of it bathed my nose and excited my imagination.

A secret sliver of me wished that I had cast the love spell instead. If Martín Green loved me, it would mean endless trinkets, stupid bromas, piggyback rides on a broad back, and pounds of Mexican wedding cookies at our union. I wouldn't need to share him and his nice lashes with the rest of the kids in the pueblo; I wouldn't need to turn in early like a little girl or obey older Señoras. As Mrs. Gata Constanza Green, I'd know my magic was strong and my husband was kind and I'd get to wear an old wedding ring the way abuela did.

But Martín always laughed and ruffled my hair when I sat on his shoulders and I proclaimed that I was grown, and I couldn't do more than purify rooms, beg Santa Muerte for guidance, and bless herbs, so it was some other, older girl who had slipped the snare around Martín's ankle.

As our nag kicked up piñon dust, I toyed with the cracker jack ring hung around my neck. I loathed that we were on our way to vanquish a dusk-soft spell that did not need vanquishing. Any small envies I carried drowned beneath my fondness for Martín. Now that the veil of grief had lifted from his shy face and deft, clay golden hands, he seemed ready for love. But we were about to steal it from him. That was no way to repay the generosity of someone I adored.

Why are we going to ruin this spell? Martín should be happy someone shot one at him. He's got no family. He's lucky a girl wants him this bad. Ardilla acts like he's dying.
Because he is, mija.

Abuela jammed her ancient, crimson cowboy boots into the stirrups. The nag's crooked back swayed, as did the junipers cloaking us. My own red boots, now a size too small, squeezed my feet. I chewed at my lip and vowed to keep telling abuela they fit. No other pair in the zapatería right now looked as similar to hers.

He can't be dying. It's just a love spell.

Abuela shook her head.

You're too young to understand how agonizing love can be, especially in the hands of a lonely bruja. Power in empty hands makes tears the choice from love, which makes it poison. This is not one of your schoolyard crushes, Gata. But you're about to learn.

We rode until the gnarled woods turned to brush, to sunset-streaked sand and the fallen leftovers of barbed wire fence crushed into sagebrush, until the lechusas called from the mountains and the Green's adobe hut came into view. It squatted on the desolate ground, laid low by pain. Even when Señora Green had been alive a year ago, the house had always looked that way. The sagging barbed wire fences and chicken scratch scabs around it caked the house in a lonely sort of leprosy. Nothing but the Greens had grown here. I thanked Niña Dorada that the house abuela and I had radiated hope from its slanted stoop and garden, that our footsteps gave the adobe a heartbeat instead of haunting its walls. More than anything, I felt sad for Martín.

Ardilla waited for us in the yard. He flew to us the instant abuela's toe touched the ground. His twisting hands fluttered around him. Sweat pinned a loose curl to his forehead. It stained all the crevices of his shirt too. Fascinated fear pricked me. I had never seen a man so aged by his own wetness. Whatever spell had Martín in its grips was squeezing his life juice out for the desert to drink.

I'm glad you're here, doña. Martín is doing poorly.

Did you do as I asked? Do you know who cast their eye on him?

Ardilla shook his head. No. I wish I did. But--

But what?
​
Martín wasn't close to many people. Ardilla swept a wet curl off his forehead. Not besides me.

What a lie! I was close to Ardilla! All of us pueblo brats were. Maybe Ardilla was too out of his mind to realize he was being self-centered. Something about the way he tucked his hair back reminded me of the many ways hands arrowed and looped between Martín and Ardilla when they were drunk on warm beers and talking so close it verged on conspiracy, but I couldn't place what. I just knew that Sonia would have hated it. Tension continued wringing my guts.

Do you know who did it? Ardilla rasped. Do you have any idea, doña?

He continued juddering around her until he saw me watching, then hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and tried to straighten. I almost told him not to puke. The close presence of his friend and the distant beacon of his family stretched him across coals. Abuela hmm'd.

I have an inkling. He's close to Trina Sanchez, isn't he?

Ardilla looked as if she had named a bug. I didn't know why she was mentioning Trina either. Trina Sanchez barely held space in my mind. She was a twiggy loner with a big bust, a sun-stained migrant grape and cherry harvester that cycled through with the seasons, always living in shacks outside of town and tending to a reclusive grandmother who spoke no Spanish. Trina was a clumsy girl with thin, piercing eyes and sandpaper palms. We all knew Martín; none of us knew Trina.

His mother hired her. Sure. He worked near her. That's it. But that kind of woman… can't love.

Ardilla looked like he wanted to spit out a word that he couldn't. Not in my presence. Abuela restrained a flex of her jaw and cast the bonbons from her pocket into my awaiting palms.

So we have nothing then. Come, mija. We must try and work.

Ardilla loped behind us as I loaded Abuela's bags upon my back. He wanted to grasp us in his terrified talons, but we were Martín's sole help and his wife needed him. That made halting us unbearable. Out here, there was only him, Martín, and the hot wind. Martín's cracked doorstep had not felt another tender foot for years beyond his mother's, or maybe Ardilla's. Ardilla licked his lips as Abuela and I strode towards the door.

Are you really going to take your granddaughter in? A child shouldn't see someone like this.

She won't be a child much longer. Abuela swept her skirts around her with finality. Dignity. As a curandera and a woman, she'll have to learn how to deal with these things. With me, she can take it.

Ardilla shuddered. My heart trembled in trepidation as he fell away, leaving us to march into Martín's tiny home.

Take care of him! Ardilla called, small and far away.

The adobe walls funneled us through a paltry living room, then to two closed bedroom doors. I smelled prickly pear, sickly cloying and sweet, outside the first one before we even stopped there. The fragrance turned my stomach. Abuela cast me a look to exorcise my fidgeting.

Whatever you see, no matter what happens, you must behave. Be strong. Be good. Loving skins us all, especially when it's malformed. Don't humiliate Martín while he is in great pain. We have all been fools like this. 

Sí, abuela.

I imitated her even tone, but I didn't understand. In her eyes, I saw that she knew I didn't. But I was here today to learn. Abuela knocked on the door. It creaked open. Together, we entered.

Martín Green was gigantic, a teenage farmer meant for wrestling disobedient burros and slinging six-foot ristras over his shoulders without them brushing the sand – a man in my eyes, back then – but when I saw him that day, he was a fallen pillar. A huffing, sweating boy that lay crumpled in sheets. He took up such little space horizontally.

Abuela limped to his bedside, her heels clacking. Martín's hazy pupils followed her. His shirt lay open across his breast. An expanse of bruises littered his collar in bright, swollen knots. Stiff, vertical needles swayed on Martín's chest with every one of his ragged inhales. I couldn't understand. Had he fallen into a cactus patch? Were those chest hairs?

You're in trouble today, Martín. Abuela palmed his forehead. Your father's good looks may be the death of you.

Martín chuckled. The sound emerged wet: the sound of skinned nopal petals squishing together. His breathing seesawed. As I watched, another needle popped through his skin. Again, the smell of sweet, rotten prickly pear clogged the room. My guts twisted. I fumbled to unpack abuela's bags and set up the Niña Roja altar for her on Martín's barren nightstand.

Nothing new there.

Abuela's hand drifted to his trembling wrist. She pinched his pulse between her fingers, frowning. I wished the sage smoke I spread around the room would stop clouding my vision. In another sense, I was grateful. The purified curtain it cast around me kept me from seeing the tall boy who bought me candies and glass bottle sodas laid low the way he was.

Martín, do you know who cast this on you?

Martín closed his eyes. His gurgled breathing continued. I finished my cleansing prayer and hurried to put Niña Roja and candles on the new altar.

Yeah. I do. Lied to Ardilla about that. Didn't want him to get in a fight or nothing. Sonia's stressed enough.

Who bewitched you?

Can't tell you.

This is a serious spell. Abuela pointed to his chest. It's not just taken root in your body, it's blooming. The Peñas should've sent for me a week ago. If you don't tell me who did this, you may die. Is your tongue tied?

Not by magic.

Martín.

As I unpacked the bonbons for Niña Roja, I struggled not to ogle Martín. Agony stifled every heave of his chest. It toyed with the twitching joints of his fingers. How could the boy who did not cry at being spurred by a rooster or turning his ankle in a topo's hole look this way now? His diminished presence was a crime against nature.

Trina did this, Martín confessed. Was partially an accident. She didn't mean to cast something this mean.

I bit on the surprise between my teeth. It tasted of copper. Abuela's expression stayed unchanged.

Don't hurt Trina. Please. We grew up together. She and her grandma always stayed with us during the harvest season. Trinita helped me bury mamá. I helped her feed her grandma. We shared wages and secrets and chicle ever since we were seven. I love her.

His sigh was a rustle of rain-soaked cholla rattling together. Tears glossed his lashes.

I don't want the town to punish Trina. She's got no one now. It'd kill her. Don't hurt her, doña. I'm begging you.

Gata, start praying, Abuela commanded.

I swallowed my fragile trepidation, took the rosary and novena into my hands, then slid to my knees. My overalls did not cushion my bones from the floor. Martín quivered now, sinking deeper into the bed.

Oh Niña Roja, I murmured, my elegant, lovely Sister, you hold the powers of passion and hatred in your heart, and death and deliverance in your hands...

Abuela assessed Martín.

If you succumbed to this spell, it would save your life, she said. All you need to do is confess your love to Trina and have it reciprocated. Obviously, she'd accept your confession. Then your lungs would clear. Why die instead of marrying and producing children with her? Is she married? Is it because she's an immigrant? A migrant? I know how your mamita felt about those.

Prayer and sticky breathing rattled against the adobe walls. I climbed to the next rosary bead. Monsoon season came and went before Martín whispered a reply.

I don't want to say it while Gatita's in here. I don't want her to think of me differently.

I faltered in my second prayer. Tears threatened to ruin my vision. Martín was everyone's gentle, goofy favorite. I owed him all my summer entertainment. He was the pueblo's primo. If he confessed to murder right now, I wouldn't adore him any less. I did not want whatever horrible power I had over him that made him look so small, so scared. Abuela's glare was unneeded.

I won't think differently of you, Martín. I promise. I fumbled with my rosary, pulse whining in my ears, hot and urgent. I promise on the cracker jack ring you gave me last summer.

That ring stuck like a burr between my shirt and overalls. It burned against me. Martín lingered in his silence longer than a drought before he spoke, tender and fragile.

I don't love women the way Trina wants me to love her.

Abruptly, I thought of Ardilla and Martín loading bags of feed into their boss' truck together, both slick with evaporating sweat and laughter, their dark eyes and dark hair brimming with sunlight, only four years between them. Sonia had watched from the soda fountain stairs then, a distant shadow. It had taken years for her to get closer. Abuela took Martín's quavering hand.

She didn't know. What's done is already done. Trina's the only person I have left. I won't hurt her.

You'll hurt her and Daniel alike if you die.

That's a price we'll all need to pay. Martín heaved. They'll bury me before I do what Ardilla did. I'm not marrying someone to hide; I'm not making another Sonia out of anyone. My mamá didn't. I won't either. I'd be worse than dead if I did that.

My gasp broke my third prayer to Niña Roja. The candle extinguished. No one had offended her into abandoning Martín, but there was nothing more she could do. In his last soaking breath, Martín bloomed. A riot of blossoms exploded from his mouth in an incoming tide, then his cleft throat: yellow prickly pear blossoms, tall-stemmed sotols, pink wildfires of cholla, globs of scarlet gilia. They mounted higher than Sierra Blanca then kept climbing.

Martín's breast split across his heart to free the next flood of flowers. Bone-white fleabane, fat-and-bruise-colored feather dalea, enamel-shiny white peppergrass, vein blue penstemon, and tender-flesh globe mallow all burst from his body, all covered in a filmy shroud of birth, cloaked Martín's bed. They swayed in the wind of his final breath, beautiful, fresh, and glimmering with bloody life. Offal stench blended into their perfume.

I could not cry, or shield my eyes, or clean the blood flecks from Niña Roja or my cheeks. I didn't have time to. The desert blossoms when watered – never slowly, never gently, always after a passionate downpour – and it had done the same here, too. My sole blessing was that I couldn't see Martín beneath all he had grown. Love, in its truest form, was fertile soil.

Abuela wiped my face. When my shock came down from the high, high tower of flowers, she held me while I sobbed.

***

Cherry season had failed to come this year. So had the rain. The land stayed as hard as the shriveled fruits on orchard trees. It bore elk ivory and brown grass at the sky as dry pits peered from slits in desiccated cherry skin. Abuela warned me not to be hasty, but I still crept out of my room at the witch hour and took off for the low skeletons of the orchard.

The loose ends of Martín's death all became candle wicks in my belly, burning from every fray, forcing me to walk. I threaded through coyote song and centipede-laden rocks to reach the cherry trees. All the while, I prayed to the Niña Negra figurine in my pocket for vengeance and counted off prayers on my rosary. The sixth prayer hallowed my lungs as the orchard came into sight. Trina Sanchez would explain her crimes to me even if it killed her.

I found Trina sprawled in a thistle patch on the outskirts of the orchard, her hair tangled around her neck, her torn shirt around her shoulders. When I saw the moonbeam sliding off her stung, sunburned nape, I slowed. My anger curdled into fear. She looked no more alive than the round headstone beneath her hands.

Minutes or hours passed through the thistle murmurs around us. I wasn't sure which. The thistles towered above us at Martín's height. Trina spoke about the time I realized I couldn't.

This is no place for a little cat.

Hearing Martín's nickname for me in Trina's mouth reignited my ire.

I'm not a little cat, or a girl. I'm a woman and a witch. But not like you. I clenched my fists. You murderer.

Trina arched, a snake trying to step from the ground on feet it did not have, before her weight fell on the headstone again. She twisted to face me. I loathed the tear tracks I saw on her cheeks as much as the lacerations on her skin and the purple petals tangled in her hair. I would not feel sorry for her. How could she grieve like this after murdering Martín? She was no self-flagellating saint.

I know that Martín's death is my fault. I'm sorry for it. I'll be sorry for the rest of my life.

Sweat beaded on the rosary in my hand. I was ready to pray my seventh prayer to the Niña Negra in my pocket, ready to chew black licorice for her and beg for Trina's expulsion from the pueblo at the end of a pitchfork or exorcism, but when I looked at crumpled Trina I could not do it. Not for Martín or abuela.

How did you mess up this badly? I thought you loved him!

I do.

Prove it. I bet you know nothing about him.

Sonia's proud voice echoed through my head, describing Ardilla's favorite candies and little gestures to conceal the pathetic emptiness under her collection of baubles. Despite Martín's rambling, I bet that Trina was the same. If she really loved and knew him, she couldn't have done this. I sucked air through my teeth to cool the flush plaguing my face.

Trina studied me from where she lay. As weak as grief kept her, it did not sap the corded muscle from her arms, or vanish the hard pears of her calves. All of Trina's softnesses beyond her breasts stayed tucked away under bars of overworked flesh. She had a body meant for caging itself. If Trina wanted to break me against a trunk of a cherry tree she could. She glared at me. I glared back at her. Inside, I trembled. On the outside, I stood tall. Constanzas were always supposed to stand tall.

Trina's gaze broke. Its shattered halves slid into the thistle and vanished from sight. She wrapped her arms around the headstone in a hollow cradle.

Martín isn't even cool yet, but you're already asking for his innards. Are you vultures ever satisfied?

Before I could explode, Trina began whispering.

Because I love Martín Green, I know that until he was sixteen, he had nightmares unless I slept on the floor next to him and held his hand. I know he worried that his violent conception had tainted him, so he was always kind, even when he didn’t want to be. Martín bandaged my scrapes for years but never mocked me for tripping. He held me behind the cholla while I cried over my grandmother’s worsening mind, or the attention drawn to my horrible, ripening body. He sent me letters when I was traveling. He encouraged my brujería. He taught me how to defend myself.

Trina’s splintered nails combed at her locks. I fought the horrible confusion thrashing in my heart. Now Señora Green’s shape hung heavy in there too, moaning in pain from the invisible wounds in her mind, casting worried, hateful looks at any outsiders who dared to enter her home. Trina’s unseen abuela writhed in her shadow.

Together, Martín and I held our rage deep inside of us so neither of us destroyed our ill, broken old women. We whispered about our guilty longing to let their languages die in revenge for the ways they hurt us. We unearthed each other’s ugliest roots. That’s what love is, Gata Constanza. Love was me nursing Señora Green for Martín while she cursed me. Love was Martín comforting me when he couldn’t bear me. Love is a merciless yoke you choose to carry.

I did not want to look at Trina. She knew what Martín looked like naked, but I hadn’t, and she had undressed Martín in front of me. All of these bleeding secrets shamed me. Trina’s lips curled back, showing her daffodil teeth. Her self-evisceration reeked of victory. The headstone crouched beneath her in silent judgement.

You may be a witch, but you're no woman.

That’s enough!

By now, I gripped Niña Negra in one hand and my plastic ring in the other. I held on for dear life.

This still doesn’t make sense. You were all Martín had and he said he was all you had, the way my abuela is all I have. You don't kill people you love like that by accident! You’re lying about something!

Yelling doesn't change what happened. You're still too young and wrapped in a homeland that cares for parts of you to fully understand how I loved Martín. Trina's voice dropped to a stinging mutter. You haven't felt a thousand embers under your skin when someone's eyes light on you. You know nothing of being the last pine cone under a blighted tree, waiting for wildfire hands to open you, to caress you into a different shape so you can take root. Love like that is desperate. It breaks. It tears. It binds.

Trina tipped her chin up at me and rested it on the headstone, the hunger in her destroying her all the while.

The blooms told me you prayed to Niña Roja. I bet you know little of the things she oversees beyond love in a trinket ring.

My face flushed with tears and humiliation. I didn't know which was hotter. All that Trina alluded to sounded filthy and forbidden. They felt even more so because of my partial understanding. The shame that my ignorance fueled raged above my fury, then far above Trina, who stayed shattered on the earth. Her sorrow kept her so low I couldn't even spit on her. She looked girlish to me – even younger than Martín. But all those sordid words had still sprung from her lips. Confusion wracked me.

You should've told your flowers to stop when Martín mentioned... men. Or were you going to force him to marry you anyway?

Trina's howled laugh made me trip backward. I bristled in terror. Trina smashed a fist into the carpet of thistle heads around her, spiking lacy sprawls of cuts into her hand.

If Martín had confessed that to me, I would have let him go. I would've eaten my heart and let the flowers bind us as siblings. He would have lived. But my flowers need to hear words in my ears to stop, and Martín's mother had him convinced that all other people do is steal. That they could give, but no one else could, so they needed to guard themselves. I was stupid. I believed Martín thought I was different.

Trina pointed a broken finger at me.

Your people instilled that fear in her when they drove her tribe into school tombs and onto broken bits of land. When they took from her even as they planted Martín in her. I bet your abuela didn't tell you that. You do work with death.

My people! All I knew was that "my people" spoke Spanish; that my people made bridges of their bodies. Uncertainty twisted my nerves. Abuela had never mentioned such hereditary intricacies to me. But she would never keep such a thing secret. Would she? My trust in her turned me inside out.

At least my grandmother is here! I cried, frightened of Trina's accusations, frightened of my inability to call her a liar. Where's yours, huh?

Trina cupped the headstone. All at once, her wild gaze sobered. It looked like a dark joke had fallen on her shoulders. The moon bled onto us.

My grandmother is dead. An unwilling smile yanked at Trina's mouth. If she could see me now she would feel vindicated. I worked myself raw at orchards, vineyards, and altars to feed us, but whenever I cursed or consecrated anything, she always said the same thing. 'Oni mo jiu-kachi azami no hana.' Even a devil is pretty at eighteen.

I thought of the rough, leering men that worked the orchards, and how developed Trina Sanchez had been as long as I'd known of her. I thought of Señora Green resentfully supping on out-of-season poppies and yarrow to soothe the unseen sickness in her, and the strength it took to heal a beloved who hated you. In that moment I saw Sonia in Trina's face, and how far away the men they loved stood, even when they were together. Against my will, I convulsed in pity.

When Trina rose from the ground with immense effort, no longer broken onto her belly, I clutched Niña Negra close and hung back. I did not want to learn more about love from Trina. Nor did I want to hurt her. Even if I despised her.

Are you going to die too?

Trina's wretched expression and raw, grief-eaten body scared me. What if she died before Martín's funeral? What if she didn't come at all? I couldn't bear the idea of the Peñas attending Martín's wake while looking seventy miles away. At least Trina's love would keep her on the canyon rim between Martín and us. At least she would stand next to me there.

Trina pushed back a stream of her hair. Her fingers left bloody streaks on her temple. The moon dressed her wounds.

No. I want to die, but I won't. It would be a waste of Martín's memory. He wouldn't have me in death anyway. I must carry him with me. Trina smiled, almost alive. I'll see you when the cholla blooms, little cat. Don't look for me.

Before I could say that I knew Martín would have her, even if it wasn't the way she wanted to have him – because all of the tender desert blooms proved it, because I knew what love looked like, even if I wasn't grown myself – Trina was gone. The dead orchard took her shape and broke it into pieces of lonesome, scattered light. Then there was only me, Niña Negra, and the moon-kissed thistles, whispering the last secrets among themselves that I didn't understand.
​
I was no longer thirteen.
​

​​Samir Sirk Morató is a mestize scientist and artist. Their recent field season in New Mexico made a big impression on them. Some of Samir’s work can be found in The Hellebore Issue #5, Catapult Magazine, and The Sandy River Review 2020 edition. They are on Twitter @bolivibird and on Instagram @spicycloaca.

by Javier Loustaunau
​
​People have asked me a bunch of times why an industrial engineer like myself would move to the USA and become a custodian. I think life is just more predictable here, the laws seem a lot more settled. When I say the law is looser in Mexico, I’m not just talking about bribing your way out of a parking ticket. The laws of physics, metaphysics, reality… they seem less predictable. You might stop at an amazing restaurant late at night while drunk and then never find it again after you sober up. People all over are getting “limpias” or aura cleanses to break streaks of bad luck. Don't even get me started on stories about Smurf dolls that bite children, which seems really funny until you are alone with one.
 
That is the way these urban legends work I guess, they all seem really funny when you first hear them but then when you are alone they are creepy as hell. That is in part why I moved… I was spending too much time alone, creeped out while working overnights, praying under my breath. Our country is very catholic, even if the government is not supposed to be. That's me, engineer on the outside, a dozen candles with saints and the Virgin Mary burning inside me. We are surrounded by progress yet we continue to see the devil in all aspects of our lives. He makes food spoil by tasting it if you leave it unattended. He dances with gorgeous young women at parties until they realize he has one foot like a goat and another like a rooster. He shows up as a huge dog and trashes your business. Most stories are mischievous and end with him being scared off by prayer, these stories are ultimately empowering to believers.
 
One day I heard a story I really did not like, especially since it took place on the highway from Los Mochis to Topolobampo which I drove through alone at night for work. Back then I worked at the oil refinery. I mostly ran around fixing leaks and sensor errors. I was fresh out of college and really grateful to instantly get a job in my field which would likely set me up for life with a series of small and evenly spread out promotions. In a few years I would be a supervisor, then in a few years a daytime supervisor, and finally I would have my own office and working nights would be a distant memory. But I never made it to my first promotion, because of that god damned road and a scary story.
 
I had been at a party which was kinda low key, nobody had brought beer, we were really just snacking and drinking soft drinks and telling scary stories. Then somebody asked me, “You take the road to Topo, don't you, to the refinery? I heard a really scary story about that road.” And they told me the story, about a ghostly baby that appears in the seat next to you and tries to get you to look at it’s teeth, but if you do it will lunge for your throat, so you have to ignore it while it repeatedly says “mira mis dientitos.” “Look at my little teeth.” My friend laughed. All my friends laughed. I pretended to, but deep inside I was actually really angry. I knew a seed had been planted in my head and now my drives to work would be really creepy.
 
For the next few weeks I would feel my chest tightening on my way to work, driving at night with banda or corridos playing. I could no longer nap at work, and after my morning drive it would take me a while to really relax. Sleeping during the day is weird, you listen to so much traffic, so many honks and car alarms. Dogs bark more, birds chirp. But it was usually the sound of children playing that would wake me up from a dead sleep. I could not make out what they would say but I was primed to hear the voice of a kid next to me, insisting I look at him. I was a wreck for a while, and I drank a lot of coffee to make sure my car did not end up a wreck, too.
 
Finally one night I’m on my way to work around 11:30 to start at midnight. There is a whole lot of nothing along that part of the road, just dried brush, billboards and occasional exits to farms or small towns. Then I felt the presence before I even heard it, my whole body just kind of cramped up and I felt an intense chill. There was also a smell, it smelled like fireworks, mold and earth. It was not pungent enough to make it hard to breathe, but it was certainly menacing. And then I heard the voice, childlike and casual saying, “Señor, mira mis dientitos.” “Sir, please look at my teeth.” It was the moment I had been dreading for the last month, suddenly every muscle in my body contracted and ached all at once.
 
It could not be real though, obviously I was just super tired, super primed, super obsessed with this one event so my mind was playing tricks on me. But then again, a little louder I heard, “Sir, please, look at my teeth.” I wheezed as all the air escaped me, and I fought to catch my breath but my lungs took a second to respond. It was actually happening after all that time dreading it, but I was not about to acknowledge it. I ignored the voice and kept driving. That is when I realized that my music had turned off, I went to raise the volume but for some reason it was not playing. I turned the knob all the way and nothing happened. “Sir, don't ignore me, all I want is for you to look at me.” I was alone with that thing in silence, so I kept my eyes forward and watched the road.
 
“Sir, please why are you ignoring me?” it said, sounding more desperate, more frustrated, more like a child who needed help. “Sir, please!” I continued to ignore it, the drive was short and I knew I would make it to the parking lot if I could hold out 15 more minutes. “Sir, look at me! I promise I don’t bite…” There was a hint of malice in that last statement, I could almost hear a smirk. Involuntarily, my peripheral vision turned just a little, just to confirm that it was smugly toying with me, and then my vision darted back to the road. I had seen a shape, black and gray, like something burnt and buried and dug up again. I saw no eyes, no reflections, just darkness. But it was not an object, not a corpse, it was swelling and deflating in big breaths and its arms had been moving when I caught that glimpse. I felt light headed, my hands swerved a little but I quickly righted them and fixed the steering wheel in their tight grip. I wanted to cry I was so scared, and so angry that this was happening to me, that this possibility had even been planted in my head in the first place. But I did not sob or scream, I started to pray.
 
“Padre nuestro, que estáas en el cielo, santificado sea tu nombre.” As I muttered under my breath the presence grew more agitated, with more urgency in its voice. “Señor, mira mis dientes!” it cried. “Señor… señor… stop praying and fucking look at me!” it growled. Between each phrase it yelled at me, I could hear it’s teeth snapping shut, like a trap that opened to spit curses and closed again. “Señor, you rude piece of shit, you won’t even fucking look at me, shut the fuck up and look at me!” I kept praying and fought the urge to have my vision stray into the seat next to me… but it did, I did not want it to happen but I was seeing so much agitated movement, I could not avoid looking. It was small, but not baby small. It’s limbs were gaunt, not chubby and cherubic. It was coiled like a cat about to pounce. Its features were all gray but it reflected no light so the shadows on it were extremely harsh. Its eyes were just two bottomless holes and finally it’s teeth, the one god damned thing I should have never looked at, were terrifying. Lip less, snarling, framed by swollen and infected gums, they were impossible to miss. Two rows of pointy yellow fangs, with the occasional normal looking tooth in between. They were sharp and deadly, and they were coming at me. I freaked out, I swerved and my car started to spin. I can't explain the physics of it but somehow the thing that was in the air coming for me ended up flying sideways into the back seat, and my car flew off the road.
 
When I awoke I was being pulled out of my upside down vehicle, radio at full blast. I flailed my arms and fought the paramedics who yelled at me to calm down, that I was OK. I mean obviously I was not OK, I ended up in the hospital with a concussion. The police showed up and told me I had fallen asleep at the wheel, and I did not argue with them. My friends and family visited and asked me what happened, so I also told them I had fallen asleep at the wheel. I had no interest in telling people the truth. I had no interest in telling myself the truth. I did not want to think about what happened or plant that seed in anyone else's head. I spent a few extra days at home recovering, working up the courage to go back to work. Then I got a Mexpost from the insurance adjusters. It was a box and an envelope… I opened the envelope first and there was a letter that said, “We were able to recover the following from your car: your registration, a pair of broken sunglasses, one thermos, one rosary, 4 air fresheners, 1 broken animal tooth charm.”
​
I did not know what they meant by an animal tooth charm. I did not want to know. I never opened the box. Instead I submitted my two weeks’ notice and decided to get far away, I went to live with an aunt and uncle across the border. Finding work on a tourist visa was hard. Keeping a low profile when that visa expired was harder. Becoming a US citizen was extra hard. But it was all predictable, a series of milestones on a long straight road. It was the furthest thing from the dark road to Topolobampo with its sudden twists and unexpected turns. I only travel that road in dreams now, and I’ve heard the voice next to me a few times… but it only gets so far as the word Señor and I wake up with my heart pounding. I remind myself that stuff like that does not happen here, I say a prayer, and I try to go back to sleep.

​Javier Loustaunau was born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa where he lived until his 21st birthday. Shortly after 9/11 he decided to move to the US to work for a while, taking a break in his studies as a biochemical engineer. Instead he worked his way up from restaurants to banking, from banking to operations and is now a data analyst in the HRIS and Insurance field. He is a published author of poetry and prose, specializing in short scary fiction. You can find his work on the NoSleep podcast and in the anthology Monsters We Forgot. 

by Carmen Baca

#
​

The double doors of the capilla closed, pulled shut by the hands of el Hermano Mayor, the lock clicking into place before he removed the key. The interior lay in the muted sunlight coming in through hand-made curtains with crocheted hems. I came to awareness there in an atmosphere of silence meant for introspection and devout prayer. I stood to the right of the entry beside a large bin of wood filled and ready to feed the box stove in the center of the space between door and pews. A wide aisle between two columns of wooden pews led to the altar. Saints, crosses, candles, and statues of Mother and Child, Mother holding dying Son, and various other religious relics stood in no particular pattern. The rustic simplicity pleased me. There was a sacredness to the place, a peace I missed from when I towered atop the mountain.

The day I was brought down, I ascertained I was now at the bottom in the valley I had viewed every day. Day after day, the young man laid his hands on me in one way or another, with a small ax and wood carving tools, sandpaper, a soft cloth. His confident touch gave me no apprehension. I knew whatever he did to me would be pleasing to the eye. The young carpenter spoke to me as he worked. I knew from his fastidious attention to detail and his scrutiny of his handiwork I was intended for a special purpose. I tried to make him feel the joy he gave me by exuding a warmth from deep within me.

Day after day, I looked forward to seeing my visage in the reflection of his eyes. Where before I had been a round trunk of great size, then transformed into long blocks of wood, I was changed again into a cross, some symbol the people seemed to associate with their beliefs in the same power as I. The someone, the all-powerful who created us all. That realization gave me gratification deep in my heart, what was left of me. From a giant of a tree, I emerged as a thing of beauty, intricate carvings adorning my exterior, while the inside of me remained unchanged. I had been grateful to be alive in the shell I had been given and in that place where I spent the first century of life. I was now overjoyed to be of service to man as a symbol of hope for them for however much time I had left.

The heart of me which had been carved by the young man’s hands rejoiced for myself. But my keen sense of empathy allowed me to read into his eyes. They revealed an internal conflict I hoped perhaps to influence into giving him the spiritual awakening he so craved. I had to try; we were bound, he and I. There was no putting it off. It was time for his evolution as it had been mine from the moment he had cut me down. ​

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Much time passed as I grew old and weathered. The delicate carving of biblical scenes on my crosspiece had faded with the constant touch of los Hermanos’ hands over the many, many trips of the sun and the moon. While I stood against the back wall of the prayer room in the morada for long periods, I was taken out for special ceremonies. I was the centerpiece of the brotherhood’s attention during a time they called la Cuaresma, Lent. I came to understand when the morada’s doors and windows remained open and the fresh spring breeze blew through the three rooms for that duration, and my core throbbed with renewed energy from the excited noise of the men, women, and children of the community.

Each Lent I looked forward to a special day they called Jueves Santo when an Hermano carried me at the front of a procession from the morada to the capilla, the campo santo, and then back again. I was the center of every eye on this day, and I sensed my importance more, but not in a self-aggrandizing way. It was a deep honor to be a part of the community. I knew I  symbolized something great, something beyond my ken.

But this afternoon, with Matías now an old man at the edge of passing into the afterlife, carrying the cross despite his brothers’ protests, I sensed this day would end unexpectedly. The old Hermano bore the brunt of my weight on his shoulders and upper back, but it was made more bearable by his brothers. They shuffled along close by, shifting one out for the other after every Station of the Cross when they stopped to kneel in the dirt and pray. In this manner, each brother held the cross, three at a time beside and behind Matías, and all shared the burden of man’s sins as they walked.

A short rest after they returned to the chapel preceded the brothers finishing the procession to the morada where they ate their last supper together and prayed behind the locked doors. I had seen the Verónicas who came when the men rested earlier to leave pots kept warm on the stove and dishes filled with food, the table laid, and the rooms spotless. The women’s society—the wives, mothers, sisters of los Hermanos—served as an auxiliary to the brotherhood with their own leader and rules of conduct. They were freer in their discourse around me than the men when they cleaned the prayer house, and I was privy to their thoughts more than those of los Hermanos.

They and the rest of the community members were invited to attend the final ceremony

marking Christ’s last day on earth. The people walked by lantern from their homes to the morada. I remember seeing this display of bobbing illuminations from the mountain top. Groups and lines of lights traveled winding paths, single shining dots joined them at junctures, and the large body of lights made its way to the morada where I stood at the front of the altar with Santa Muerte to my left. The carved effigy sat perpetually poised in a small picket fence enclosure with an arrow pointed at any who stood before her. She faced me across the room every day since my usual location was against the opposite wall from her.

In the darkest hour of the night, the ceremony began with the lighting of thirteen candles placed along a triangular-shaped candelabra about five feet long standing on a four-foot-high pedestal. The candles, symbolic of Christ and His twelve apostles, illuminated the room with a soft, deceptive peace. We all knew the flames would be extinguished one by one, plunging us into the deepest black both physically and spiritually, evoking a most intense personal penance.

This was the most horrible and holy of nights, Las Tinieblas, the Earthquake Ceremony. It took us all back in time to listen and to participate in our own ways. Each attendee, whether Hermano, a Verónica, or layperson, chose the method best for them to experience with most poignancy the night of Christ’s death. Following each prayer, the mournful chanting of the alabados, like dirges, sent chills up our spines. 

“Mother Mary, look at Your Son…see the cross on His shoulders…His body bathed in blood…His head crowned with thorns…His final day has come…”

I felt the human pain as I envisioned the scenes of that day in the flickering of the candles on the walls. As though they cast shadows of those acts so many years before on the night of Christ’s death, those humans felt the pain of culpability which they projected toward me, the physical cause of their Maker’s mortal suffering.

Since my evolution, I had felt revered by the community. Only on the nights in all those years of performing Las Tinieblas was I made to feel abhorrent. I deflected their pain, accepting the reverence they also felt deep inside. I was a symbol of death, but also of the redeeming Passion and resurrection. I stood tall as after each alabado, a candle was extinguished. The act brought more darkness into the room as though it physically and slowly wrapped a shawl over us all or perhaps a death shroud, I ascertained after this night.

By midnight, we would experience His descent into hell when the last candle went out. The complete and utter darkness of the shuttered room, cloying with the scent of wax and incense, stifling with the fifty or sixty people crammed into the rooms—all contributed to the atmosphere of hell. The human wails and swift whooshes of whips, snapping and striking skin, the rapid turning of the multiple and different sized matracas, the noisy clackers, made the ears hurt. The cacophony symbolic of the chaos that is hell lasted only minutes, but always, always penetrated my heart, the heart of the tree I once was.

Our internal pain made worse by the doleful alabados, sung by los Hermanos, sent many of the women into tears. The children cried because their mothers did, and I thought perhaps they too sensed the solemnity of the ritual in their own ways. Then by some unspoken signal I didn’t understand, all quieted. One by one, the candles’ flames brought light and peace into the room, kerosene lanterns were lit, children quieted at mothers’ shushes, and deep breaths restored life to the prayer house. Quiet conversation, some with nervous, shaking voices, commenced.

Usually, no one lingered. The rooms were straightened out, the fires banked, candles and lanterns extinguished for the last time that night. The Hermano Mayor locked the door, and the humans left me alone again in the dark with la Muerte on her stool directly across from me.

This night was an anomaly I hope I never witness again. Bittersweet with great sadness and joyful rejoicing, the end of another beginning had started sometime during our clamorous man-made hell. Matías had evolved for the final time. Santa Muerte had aimed and penetrated the heart of the old man. But it was I who caused his death. Although it pained me greatly to know I played a crucial role in transforming him, I acknowledged our connection had been inevitable.
​
He had changed me for good, and I had repaid him by transforming him into something better. The wailing and the praying commenced. The fast preparations for the wake of the long night ahead ensued. I observed from my place in back of the prayer room, but I knew only the shell of the man remained. I knew Matías had already emerged from the morada with wings. 

Carmen Baca retired in 2014 from teaching high school and college English for thirty-six years. Her command of English and use of her regional Spanish dialect contribute to her story-telling style. Her debut novel El Hermano published in April of 2017 and became a finalist in the NM-AZ book awards program in 2018. 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 5 books and close to 50 short works in literary journals, ezines, and anthologies. She and her husband live a quiet life in the country caring for their animals and any stray cat that happens to come by.

​​by Arnaldo Lopez Jr. 
​
"The Beat of Cabo Rojo" appeared earlier this year in Somos en escrito.  We enter any Extra Fiction regularly published into that year's contest.

Read:
Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three. 

by ​Toni Margarita Plummer
 
The dermatologist lifts the gown as she needs to, checking my limbs, my stomach, my back. Her hands are pleasantly cool, and she speaks intermittently of the various marks and spots on my body.

“This is fine.”

“I’m not worried about this.”

When she is finished, I sit up on the crinkly tissue paper and pull the gown closed over my chest. Dr. Baer is attractive, with blond hair, fair skin, and a wide face that needs no makeup. I detect a very slight accent. Maybe Eastern European. She hardly smiles, and I wonder if she thinks Americans like me smile too much.

I first met her two years ago, when I felt something buried in my right palm. She numbed my hand, dug out the mass while I looked away, and stitched me up. When I returned later to have the stitches removed, the nurse praised the perfectly even sutures. Now Dr. Baer has opened up her own office.

“If you come back this month, we’re giving facials half off with all skin cancer screenings.”

I am used to getting my facials done at a salon under the 7 train where a woman threads my eyebrows in quick, heated licks and squeezes the pores on my nose until I want to curse, all for $20 and a tip. Rather than ask the price of the discounted facial, I say, “That’s okay.”

“Just call if you change your mind.” Dr. Baer zeroes in on my face. “I see some extractions I could make.”

I nod politely, sure I will not call. The word “extraction” takes me back to geology class, where we learned about removing things from the ground, usually valuable things.

“What about these?” She catches me off-guard, her hand moving to my neck. “Have you thought of removing them?”

My hand follows hers, finding the familiar nubs. It had not occurred to me to ever ask a doctor about my longtime skin malady.

“Insurance wouldn’t cover it because it’s cosmetic, but I could remove them for $100. I’d freeze them off. You have a lot so we could do it over two visits.”

I have not been keeping up with my neck situation, and the idea of having someone else take care of it is appealing. I agree, and she finally smiles.
 
                                                                        ***
 
I don’t remember when they first appeared. But one day I must have noticed them. Then I noticed the necks of my great aunts, which were spotted with dark pouches of skin, some quite plump and shiny like rubber. Las tías were sedentary women, keeping to the shade during family parties, sometimes erupting into cackles over a joke in Spanish I did not understand. I spoke little to them, my mother serving as the link between generations by handing me clothes they had crocheted for my dolls and telling me to say gracias.  

Mamá’s neck was also afflicted, but I learned she had a way of dealing with it. She began sitting me down at the kitchen table every several months. She would pull out a long, dark hair from her hairbrush and make a slipknot. I’d tip my head back, exposing my neck like a supplicant of Dracula, and she would slip the hair-lasso over one of the little sacs and pull until it stung. I was always happy to feel that sting. It meant she’d caught one. She’d pull more hairs from the brush and tie up the rest, whichever ones were not too small and close to the skin. And then she’d take the scissors and snip the ends of the hairs so they wouldn’t hang so long. Out in public, I would cover my neck, and over a few days the strangled sacs would harden, go dark. It was easy then to pinch them off. Sometimes I would drive my nail through their centers and feel them come apart like earth.

Some might call them skin tags. A date I had in college called them growths. You could even call them tumors, technically. But I always preferred my mother’s word for them—las quetas. Short for etiquetas de la piel. I led a mostly English life, but that was one of the words I did not translate.

I accepted las quetas as my inheritance, like my dark, straight hair and long eyelashes. They were passed down through generations of women. Women of Mexican extraction.
 
                                                                        ***
 
Mamá did not want me to move out. She thought I should live with her until I got married, whenever that might be, like my engaged brother was. But I was eager to be out on my own. In my new apartment, I tried to do what my mother did and tend to my quetas like weeds in a garden. But I did not know how to do a slipknot. Foolishly, I double-knotted my ties, an inferior method. The hairs came undone before I even got in the shower. Most of las quetas were impossible for me to grab hold of in the first place, because of the incompatible angle of my hands and neck. I’d stand in front of the mirror, frustrated at another failed attempt, longing for Mamá’s hands at the same time I cursed this trait. I was reluctant to ask her for help. The ritual tying of las quetas was never scheduled. It was just something that happened when we were both home at night. She would gather her supplies and beckon me, “Míramos tus quetas.” And the reason I was not home at night anymore was because I had chosen to leave, against her wishes.

The proliferation of las quetas weighed on me. I would find myself tugging on them. They itched. I considered simply cutting them with scissors. But when I raised the blades to my skin, I imagined a fount of blood pouring out my neck, saw myself passed out on the floor, my unsympathetic landlord standing over my body and telling himself he would keep my deposit.

My brother’s wedding was in a few months, and he had cruelly informed me that las quetas could not count as my anonymous plus one. So Dr. Baer’s offer was well-timed. That is what I thought at first.
 
                                                                        ***
 
For the first round of cryotherapy, Dr. Baer approaches me with a pressurized metal can. She aims the little straw pointing out of it like a gun. “Ready?”

She said we were freezing them, but it burns. It burns like hell. I am grateful I won’t have to endure the scorching of them all in one visit. My neck on fire, my mind turns to thrift. There doesn’t seem to be much technique involved. I try to sneak glances at the lettering on the can. Is this something I can buy myself and enlist a twisted friend to wield?

“All right. You’re all set. You can make the next appointment a few weeks from today.”

“Will there be scaring?” It’s a silly question coming after the fact, but I can’t help myself.  

“There shouldn’t be. But if there is, I can take care of that too.”

Back in the waiting room, I see myself in the mirror. The red-hot riot of my neck. Mamá’s tying was a gentle smothering by comparison. This is something different. It is chemical warfare. It is cigarette burns. My neck is inflamed, but the result is the same. Over a few days, las quetas harden and fall off. A smooth neck is within reach.
 
                                                                        ***
 
The second visit begins like the first. It is no less painful, and I find it hard to believe there are still so many left.

Finally Dr. Baer steps back. “One more to go.” She hands me a mirror and points at the brown spot just below my collarbone.

“Is that one of them?” I ask, feeling the familiar bump. The skin is slightly raised there, the spot shaped like a cameo. It is nothing like the ones on my neck. There is no stalk, nothing to pull.

Dr. Baer nods, her blue eyes boring into mine.

I imagine how the burn will feel there, on my chest, but I also think of that mark missing. It’s the mark I see in the mirror every day, in pictures of myself. For it to disappear… “No thank you, I need to keep that one.”

She watches me, and I instinctively finger my remaining queta, protective.
​
At last she sighs, as though she is the one who has been getting her neck singed the past fifteen minutes, and sets the can back on the counter. “You’re all done.”
 
                                                                        ***
 
I know my future sister-in-law’s favorite color is red, but a red bridesmaid dress strikes me as tacky. Make it red tulle on red satin, and you have something unholy.

The dresses are sleeveless, so we wear tulle shawls to cover our bare shoulders during the church ceremony. In the church restroom, I remove the itchy fabric, glad to be free of it. But my relief vanishes when I see my neck has broken out in some kind of rash. It must be the cheap fabric of the shawl. We’re about to take group photos, so I have but little choice to redon the offensive garment. A rashy neck would not be tolerated.

We arrive at the reception hall for cocktail hour, and my neck is flaming. I don’t want to remove the shawl though. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I flee to the restroom, certain I am breaking out in hives. There I see it’s worse than I feared. I am bright red, and not just that, but I see something small, something brown on my neck. It can’t be, I think. They were all gone. But it’s there, and as I watch it, it grows.
​
I think I must be seeing things. But la queta is there, and it is becoming too big to be imagined. Panicked, I run into a stall and sit on the toilet seat. Someone knocks on the door.

“Estás bien?” My eardrums are pounding with blood, and I can’t even make out the voice.

“Sí! I’m fine!” I am not fine, but what can I say? I nuked my quetas and now they are returning to exact revenge?

La queta continues to balloon. I can feel it. I will die here, I know. I will die a virgin sitting on a toilet in an unbecoming dress. La queta will grow until it absorbs me, the lesser lifeform.

But the stall door bursts open. There stand las tías, and by their faces I can tell they mean business. Without hesitation, one punctures the giant queta with her crochet needle while another ropes it with a loop of yarn and the rest of the women yank. I think I am going to pass out from terror when there is a deafening pop and blood splatters us all. Grasping my neck, I look down to see the severed queta lying on the floor.

My mother steps out from behind las tías and looks at it on the tile. “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”

“How did you know?” I ask, gasping, incredulous.

Tia Meche, the eldest, scoffs. “Mi’ja, tú eres una de nosotras. No necesitas decir nada.”
​
Mamá pulls me out of the stall and holds my hands out to the sides. “At least the blood blends in with your dress.” Las tías start to cackle.
 

Toni Margarita Plummer was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant mother and white father. She is the author of the story collection The Bolero of Andi Rowe, won Honorable Mention for the 2019 Reynolds Price Prize in Fiction given by the Center for Women Writers, and was a finalist for the inaugural Tomas Rivera Book Prize. A Macondo Fellow and graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, she is a contributor to the anthologies East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte and Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity. Plummer lives in the Hudson Valley.

by ​Arnaldo Lopez Jr. ​

The man who had just introduced himself sat in a motorized wheelchair, his index finger rested on the small joystick near his right hand. His large dark eyes and dark hair were in stark contrast to his pinched, pale features. He wore a lab coat, and was covered from the waist down by a thin, white blanket. White gloves covered his hands, and a white scarf was wrapped around his neck.
 
“It’s good to finally meet you, Professor,” Jones said, extending his right hand. “And it’s Detective Jones by the way.”
 
Lamboi glared at the proffered hand until Jones put it away. “I wish that I could say the same,” he said. “I’m not used to the police barging into my facility and questioning my employees.”
 
Lamboi turned his formidable glare on his assistant before whipping his chair around and soundlessly scooting away. “Follow me,” he said as he rolled down one of the corridors.
 
Annoyed, Jones hurried to catch up. “I didn’t just barge into your facility,” he said once he’d caught up to the professor and his chair. “I’m here on official police business.
 
Lamboi ignored him and continued past the doors of what were obviously offices and meeting rooms.
 
“Why don’t we just stop at one of these offices?” Jones asked. “What I need to ask should only take a few minutes. And, by the way, I have to admit that I’m impressed at how quiet that chair is, it makes absolutely no noise.”
 
“The offices are the domain of my assistant and the other drones,” Lamboi answered dismissively. “I prefer to conduct my business in the labs.”
 
Lamboi ignored the detective’s observation about the chair.
 
They passed through two sets of double-doors that opened automatically into what the professor described as the main lab. Then he spun the chair around so that he now faced Jones.
 
“So what business is it that brings the police to my facility unannounced and unwelcome?” Lamboi asked.
 
Jones hid his annoyance and sighed inwardly. “I apologize for the intrusion, Professor,” he said. “But I’m here investigating a series of murders…”
 
“And what does that have to do with me?” the professor asked shortly.
 
“Have you heard about the recent killings that have taken place right here in Cabo Rojo?” Jones asked.
 
“I’m a very busy man, I don’t have time for television or newspapers,” Lamboi sneered, “Or the garish goings-on of the internet.”
 
“I understand,” Jones said as he glanced around at the rows of stainless steel and plastic contraptions that filled the enormous lab. “Well it appears that these killings may have been committed by a very powerful creature—an ape in fact.”
 
Lamboi rolled his eyes, “There are no apes here,” he said.
 
Jones took out his notepad and flipped through the pages. “According to a Mr. Benitez, your facility received a donation of a large, adult chimpanzee…”
 
“Oh yes, that creature,” Lamboi sniffed. “I accepted that animal mostly as a favor to the desperate young man that runs that particular facility, but once I’d received it—and after a thorough examination—I’d concluded that the creature was far too damaged to be of any use to me.”
 
“So where is it now?” Jones asked.
 
Lamboi smirked. “Follow me,” he said as he spun his chair around and headed to the far end of the lab.
 
Jones followed.
 
Lamboi stopped his chair in front of a bank of stainless steel racks filled with glass containers of various sizes. “There’s your ape,” he said, indicating one of the large containers with a thrust of his chin.
 
Jones looked and was immediately repulsed and sickened. Floating in the fluid that filled one of the larger jars was an ape’s head, its face frozen in a perpetual scream.
 
“What happened to it?” Jones asked once he’d composed himself.
 
“I euthanized it, of course,” Lamboi said matter-of-factly. “As I said, it was far too damaged for it to be of any use to me.”
 
“Where’s the rest of it?”
 
“What’s left of its body is a pile of ashes in our on-site crematorium,” Lamboi said. Then he added with another smirk, “Feel free to take its head with you if it will help with your investigation.”
 
“No thanks,” Jones said, irritated with the professor’s condescending attitude.
 
“Very well then,” Lamboi said as he spun away and headed towards the doors through which they’d entered the lab. “In that case, I assume that our business here is finished.”
 
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Jones said as he snapped his notepad shut and put it away.
 
Lamboi led Jones back to the lobby where he and his personal assistant, Anna Vasquez, watched Jones exit through the front door and go out to the parking lot. Lamboi then turned his chair towards Anna Vasquez, his face twisted in rage.
 
Detective Perfecto Jones stepped out into the parking lot and walked the short distance to his car. The day had become overcast and Jones could hear the boom of thunder in the distance. The incoming weather matched his mood—this path of his investigation had basically come to an end—his theory, as crazy as it was, of a rogue ape being somehow involved in the killings in Cabo Rojo had ended in a pile of ashes, and a pickled head in a jar…
 
Suddenly a terrified scream came from inside the facility, followed closely by a loud thud and an even louder inhuman shriek that made the hairs on the back of Jones’ neck stand on end.
 
Jones yanked his pistol from its holster and ran back into the lobby of the facility…and into a nightmare!
 
Anna Vasquez’s body lay on the tiled floor in a rapidly spreading pool of her own blood. Her head was missing. Crouched over her, his gloved hands covered in blood, stood Professor Lamboi—his wheelchair lay on its side.
 
“Hold it right there, Professor!" Jones yelled. “Don’t move!”
 
Lamboi slowly turned his head, looking first at Jones’ raised gun, and then directly into Jones’ eyes. He smiled. “It was your fault, you know,” he said calmly. “She knew how I value my privacy. She knew better than to allow the police to come nosing around in my business.”
 
Outside, thunder rumbled and announced the approaching rainstorm with a dramatic series of bass drumrolls. Inside, the two men ignored it and kept their eyes locked together.
 
“It was only a matter of time before you were caught, Professor,” Jones said evenly.
 
“Don’t you want to know why? Or how?” Lamboi asked.
 
“I can find all of that out once I have you cuffed and in a cell,” Jones answered. “Right now what I want is for you to lay face down on the floor right there.”
 
Professor Lamboi glanced down at the slowly congealing pool of Anna Vasquez’s blood. “That can be quite messy,” he said.
 
Jones quickly took a glance at the blood too, just as a sharp crack of thunder exploded outside.
 
Lamboi leapt at the detective, reaching for the pistol in Jones’ hand. Jones squeezed the trigger but at this close range he couldn’t tell if he’d hit Lamboi or not. As the two men struggled over the gun, Jones was able to fire off two more shots but they went wide; the bullets burying themselves in the fancy receptionist’s desk. Lamboi then succeeded in knocking the gun out of Jones’ hand, nearly breaking the detective’s wrist in the process.
 
The thunder, now accompanied by brilliant flashes of lightning and the staccato sound of rain, continued to boom outside even as the two men inside savagely fought for the upper hand.
 
Jones, although he was larger than the professor and trained in hand-to-hand combat by the military, could tell, to his horror, that he was losing the fight. He latched onto the professor in a futile bid to wrestle him to the ground, but Lamboi managed to knock his hands away and shove him back. Jones sprawled onto his back, tearing away the professor’s blood-spattered lab coat as he fell.
 
Jones quickly raised himself up onto his elbows; the lab coat still clenched tightly in his hand, and looked around wildly for the professor.
 
At first, Jones’ mind was incapable of processing what he was seeing, and he just sat there propped up on his elbows trying to will his eyes to see reason. But his eyes betrayed him, because what they insisted on seeing was the professor’s head attached to the thickly muscled body of an ape!
 
“Like it?” Professor Lamboi asked, puffing out his chest and standing a little straighter. “Quite by accident I found that the amalgamation of chemicals in the ape’s body not only negated its natural ability to reject foreign tissue while maintaining a more or less uncompromised immune system, but the ape’s physiology was such that it seemed to welcome and even embrace multi-tissue interfaces while still remaining capable of fighting off the typical microbial invaders that cause infection. I considered it a miracle that this animal found its way to my facility. Due to my unfortunate disability, I’d already conducted a massive amount of research on the probability of performing a successful head transplant, and after that it was a matter of programming my surgical robots to perform the surgery.”
 
Jones stood up on legs that felt like rubber, and tried to keep his hands from shaking. “I have no idea what you just told me,” he said. “But is all that the reason you killed those people—for some kind of research?” Jones inched his way to the door as he spoke.
 
“Oh no,” Lamboi said. His eyes, feverish and shiny, followed Jones’ every move. “Even though the surgery was a complete success, I’d made one slight miscalculation…I had opted to keep the ape’s brain stem intact, it’s the reptilian part of the brain that controls base functions such as breathing. Unfortunately this eventually had the effect of somehow transferring the creature’s substantial, and for the most part, uncontrollable rage to me. In essence, its madness became my madness.”
 
Jones could make out a viscous line of drool leaking from the professor’s mouth and making its way down to his chin. When he looked back up to the professor’s eyes, all he could see were the dizzying depths of his insanity. In desperation Jones threw the lab coat at Lamboi and ran out into the storm.
 
The wind and rain lashed at his face, blinding him. He fumbled for his car keys, but his trembling hands wouldn’t cooperate and he dropped them on the ground. Jones heard the building’s door open behind him, and he turned to see the monster that used to be Professor Lamboi framed in the open doorway. Lamboi tore the gloves from his hands and flexed his powerful fingers.
 
“Your head will make a fine addition to my collection, Detective!” Lamboi called out before bursting into maniacal laughter that ended in a series of ape-like hoots and shrieks.
 
“My God no!” Jones gasped before turning and running across the parking lot and out through the still open gate.
 
At first Jones ran along the road, but then he heard the beast that had been Professor Lamboi gibbering and shrieking insanely behind him, and he plunged into the darkening forest in a panic.
 
Jones soon lost his bearing as he crashed through the trees and underbrush, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He had hoped to somehow get to the lighthouse, with its promise of shelter and people, but now he had no idea where he was going and he was too afraid to care. All he knew was that every instinct, every sense, indeed every fiber of his being screamed at him to get away!
 
Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, burning the image of the forest into monochromatic relief before his eyes, and revealing the glint of water in its strobe. Jones stumbled towards it.
 
He’d almost made it when he was forced to stop short. He thought that he had been headed towards a beach and the possibility of more people, but instead he now found himself standing on a muddy knoll that abruptly ended right in front of him. The hurricane must have washed away a chunk of the land here, and created a ragged outcropping that jutted out about ten feet above the water.
 
Jones searched the immediate area desperately as he tried to figure out which way to go, but it was no use—he was trapped.
 
Jones turned towards a blood-curdling shriek that came from the forest behind him just as a bolt of lightning silhouetted the nightmarish figure of the professor hurtling towards him!
 
Professor Lamboi barreled into the detective, wrapping his long, powerful arms around his torso as both men flew off the knoll and into the water ten-feet below.
 
The shock of hitting the cold water caused Lamboi to loosen his grip on the detective who, despite having the wind knocked out of him, managed to kick and flail his arms until he found himself free and swimming towards the surface.
 
Once he’d broken through to the surface and had filled his lungs with air, Jones nervously scanned the surrounding water for any sign of Lamboi.
 
A few moments later, sputtering and coughing, the professor surfaced about three feet away from where Jones was effortlessly treading water. The detective could see that Lamboi was having trouble staying afloat.
 
“Help me you fool! Help me!” The professor coughed.
 
Jones could only stare.
 
Professor Lamboi let out a terrible shriek and reached out with one of his long, monstrous arms in an effort to grab Jones, but the sudden movement only caused him to momentarily sink beneath the water. He soon returned to the surface again, his dark eyes wide with fear. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “I can’t stay afloat!”
 
“An ape’s muscle-mass is too dense for it to swim,” Jones recited, remembering being told this earlier in his investigation. “It would just sink.”
 
“No!” Professor Lamboi spluttered past a mouthful of seawater, his arms beating frantically at the water around him. “Save me! You must save me-e-e…” And then he sank beneath the waves one last time, his pale face still visible for several feet under the sea’s covering before disappearing into the depths.
 
Jones looked away, noticing for the first time that the storm had passed. He saw lights and heard distant music coming from a strip of beach about 50 yards away and tiredly made his way in that direction. Back to the world of comparative normalcy, and away from the final watery resting place of the Beast of Cabo Rojo.

Arnaldo Lopez Jr. was born of Puerto Rican parents, and raised in Brooklyn, NY.  He’s sold articles to Railway Age magazine, The Daily News magazine, Homeland Defense Journal, and Reptile & Amphibian magazine; scripts to Little Archie and Personality Comics; and short stories to Neo-Opsis magazine, Lost Souls e-zine, Nth Online magazine, Blood Moon magazine, The Acentos Review magazine, Feed Your Monster e-zine, Fangs and Broken Bones horror anthology, Swallowed by the Beast horror anthology, Trembling with Fear horror anthology, Monsters Attack horror anthology, Mythic horror & Sci-fi anthology, and the A reflection of Me: An AAMBC Anthology.   He was also editor of Offworld, a small science fiction magazine that was once chosen as a "Best Bet" by Sci-Fi television. His first novel, Chickenhawk, is the winner of two International Latino Book awards.