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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​By Joe Menchaca


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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that’s good because…?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A slight smile curled her lips.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, like spirits.”

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

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

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

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

“Well…yes, but—”

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

“Generally speaking, yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence.

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

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

Silence.

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

“Your father was probably high on peyote.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ve read Abbey?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Damn, Baltimore.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m hoping,” he muttered.

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

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

“More tricks? Are you a trickster?”

“No. I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did he say?’

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I told you I was sorry.”

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

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

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

“Help me roll this,” Baltimore said.

“That’s not going to stop them.”

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

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

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

“I’m working on it.”

“What? How?”

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

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

“An electrical transformer.”

“Not that. The thing on your wrist.”

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

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

“Baltimore, we—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Roger that. Over.”  

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

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

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

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

“FBI. Freeze!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#    ​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# ​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He responds. “Any problems?”

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

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

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

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

“Roger that. Later.”

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

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

“Anything else?” she asks.

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

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

The beer comes. I drink and watch the customers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, but I mean something nicer.”

“Just what you see.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A journal. I got it. And?”

Again, Kah-Haas keeps me waiting.       

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

My hands feel damp. Kah-Haas is scared.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Goodbye, Agent Cortez. Until tomorrow.”       
          ​

#    ​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A deep bass rumbles. “Lawyers.”

Both men laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I nod, “So, how do we do this?”

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

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

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

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

He looks me straight in the eye.

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

Now for my doctor’s appointment. ​

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

I sit. “Sure… please.”

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

“I wouldn’t turn down some aspirin.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He smiles wider. “Be my guest.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He nods. “Go on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Matias Travieso-Diaz and Eloy Gonzalez-Argüelles

[I want to speak, I want to speak, tell everyone Albertico Limonta is my grandson,
the child of my oldest daughter Maria Elena.]
Don Rafael del Junco’s silent litany in El Derecho de Nacer by Felix B. Caignet

In mid-2047, the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, or CIRT), received a proposal for a revival of the 1948 radio soap opera El Derecho de Nacer (The Right to be Born) by the Cuban radio writer Félix Benjamín Caignet Salomón. At the time, El Derecho, as it was called, swept Cuba by storm, and then spread to all of Latin America in a run that lasted over fifty years. It was regarded as one of the most influential soap operas of all time, and had been the subject of numerous radio, television and movie adaptations. The revival (in the form of a TV series to be aired in Cubavision) was to start in April 2048 to coincide with the centenary of the original radio broadcast.
 
José (“Pepe”) Cubero, a brilliant movie and TV producer and director, was the proponent and strongest defender of the project. He acknowledged that the 1948 soap opera would have to be modified a bit to make it consistent with the culture and politics of twenty-first century Cuba, but felt the changes would be small and well within his creative abilities.
 
The proposal met opposition from some of the most orthodox members of the Communist Party. They claimed that the original story was rife with the type of bourgeois, capitalistic ideology that had been eradicated after almost ninety years of Socialist rule. Other opponents, more practical, pointed to the chronic economic crisis that bedeviled the island with words like these:
 
“Anything we broadcast must encourage the Cuban people to work harder, make sacrifices, concentrate on rebuilding the economy in the face of the heartless Yankee blockade. El Derecho is a frivolous, escapist diversion that would get us sidetracked from our mission. And it will run for many months, compounding the damage.”
 
The matter was kicked upward to land on the lap of Miguel Diaz-Canel, who had been President and First Secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party for almost thirty years. He was in his mid-eighties and getting ready to step down, so he was in no mood to mediate in ideological disputes. He ruled:
 
“Let Pepe Cubero come up with a proposed screenplay and give it to the President of the CIRT and the Minister of Culture. Let those guys decide what changes to the screenplay are required to render it acceptable, make those changes, and run with it. Don’t bother me with this shit again.”
 
The Minister of Culture, Haydée Alonso, who had studied in Paris, quoted Sartre, and prided herself on being open-minded and liberal (within the ideological bounds of the Party), was enchanted with the idea of a revival of El Derecho, so she was inclined to give Cubero a relatively free hand. This was good news to Cubero, although no one else liked Haydée. No one forgave her for her unpatriotic preference for smelly Gauloise cigarettes that stunk up the studio, and that she did so “in the land where the best tobacco in the world used to be grown.”
 
The CIRT President, Danylo López, was an old, dried-up bureaucrat concerned mainly with toeing the Party line and avoiding controversies, and was not amenable to letting Cubero get away with much. Torn between polar extremes, development of the new version of the soap opera proceeded in painful fits and starts.
 
The first bone of contention was the character of Don Rafael del Junco, the villain of the story. Everyone agreed that Don Rafael, a haughty unscrupulous landowner, was a proper embodiment of the pre-Revolutionary capitalistic class. However, at the end of the original 314 episodes, Don Rafael reconciled with his daughter and grandson, and ended up being presented in a somewhat favorable light. “We have to change the ending” argued Danylo. “There can be no redemption for the enemies of the people.” Cubero reluctantly agreed to modify the end of the series so that Don Rafael got his comeuppance. He was hoping against hope that by the time the last episodes were filmed Danylo would have changed his mind.
 
Then there was María Elena, the daughter of Don Rafael and mother of the hero of the series. Again, everyone agreed that she showed courage in refusing to have a late term abortion and insisting on giving birth to her illegitimate child. However, in the original series she sought shelter for her grief in a convent, where the nuns and other members of the community treated her with compassion and understanding. Danylo was loath to include any episodes that praised religious people. “Religion is the opium of the masses, and the State must not condone it in any manner.”
 
Cubero had to change the script to have María Elena become a sort of hermit, seeking solace from the apparent loss of her child on a deserted shore. That in itself was problematic, since Cuba had implemented an internal passport system that was rigidly enforced. In the new Cuba, there was nowhere to hide. At the end, this discrepancy was allowed as poetic license, hoping it would not be noticed by anyone who had the power to object.
 
In the original El Derecho María Elena leaves her newborn baby boy in the care of her once wet nurse, the black María Dolores, who saves the infant from being slain on orders from Don Rafael, manages to give Don Rafael the false impression that she and the baby are dead, and escapes with the infant to a remote village. There, she raises the boy as her own child, naming him Alberto (“Albertico”) Limonta.
 
One salient and recurring problem was the relationship between “son” and “mother,” due to the fact that María Dolores claimed he was her son, even after his infancy. Yet, the actor chosen by Cubero to play Albertico, Ontario (“Guapito”) Ledesma, was white. Very white. Blondish. On the other hand, the lady portraying María Dolores was black, as stipulated by Caignet in the original soap opera. Coal black. No one seemed to find the discrepancy odd except for Haydée, who said that the role of María Dolores seemed taken out of Gone with the Wind. Her remark was met with a deadpan silence, for nobody in Cuba remembered or cared about old Yankee movies.
 
The racial disparity problem did not fully surface at first, because the boy who played Albertico as a child had a darker complexion that made his relationship with María Dolores more credible. But later on in the show, when Ontario assumed the role of 25-year-old Albertico, María Dolores’ claim that he was her son began ringing hollow. Different suggestions were considered: darkening Ontario’s skin with blackface make-up like Laurence Olivier in Othello, other things of that nature. Haydée opposed them all, because, she said, it was not impossible that Albertico could still be María Dolores’ biological son. So, things were left unchanged. There was one scene, however, when the script called for older Albertico to run up to his mother and say, “Mamá, I love you so” as he hugged the black woman. The scene had to be redone many times because the crew in the studio—and later on, even Albertico and María Dolores—could not control their laughter. In the end, the scene was filmed as it was and prompted sarcastic comments among the viewers once aired.
 
Much was done in the original series to highlight the discrimination and ill treatment that both María Dolores and Albertico endured on account of her race. Danylo liked that and wanted to accentuate the criticism of the racist society that existed in the country before the Revolution, but was opposed by Haydée, who warned not to overdo that aspect of the plot. “Remember, Danylo,” she said, “there are still people left in this country who believe blacks are inferior, although they won’t openly admit to it. There is no point in rubbing their noses on our commitment to equality among the races.” At the end, Danylo carried the day. Albertico, who was white, would be repeatedly abused and discriminated against for having a black mother and being a mulatto.
 
In one scene intended to bring more “realism” to the story, a classmate of Albertico has a fight with him and calls him an “hijo de puta” (a bastard), not an uncommon insult in Spanish. Danylo objected to the use of such foul language, as it was not in keeping with Socialist morality. Haydée replied that this choice of words was used by ordinary people and prude sentiments to the contrary were a bourgeois atavism. A heated debate ensued and, at the end, Haydée seemed to say that the language in the series should not be controlled by a “partido de hijos de puta,” which many people took to refer to the Communist Party. Haydée, however, swore that she had not said “Partido” but “partida,” meaning “bunch” or “group,” without any political connotation. Since no one could produce a definitive argument, the matter was dropped, along with the entire scene.
 
Many episodes later, thanks to María Dolores’ innumerable sacrifices, Albertico manages to make it through the university and becomes a famous doctor. In the original version, Albertico gets to be rich and lives in comfort with his aging “mother.” Both Danylo and Haydée objected to this turn of events. Cubero was required to rewrite that part of the story to have Albertico live modestly, see indigent patients for free, and travel to Haiti to help treat the victims of a devastating earthquake. In the rewrite, Albertico returns to Cuba with a newfound social conscience, alert to the inequities of the capitalist society and committed to fighting them.
 
Later in the series, Albertico is doing night duty at a public hospital’s emergency room when several injured people are brought in after a traffic accident. One of them is an old man who is bleeding to death. The victim’s blood type is AB negative, the rarest type, which is unavailable at the ill-equipped public hospitals of pre-Revolutionary times. Albertico, AB negative himself, gives a transfusion that saves the man’s life. The victim, who is no other than Don Rafael del Junco, recovers and as he convalesces, he invites his savior to come to dinner and meet his family. There Albertico meets Isabel Cristina, daughter of María Elena’s sister Matilde, and a budding romance blooms between the couple, unaware that they are cousins. Danylo was not in favor of retaining potential incest as part of the plot, and Cubero had to add another twist at the end of the story where it is revealed that Isabel Cristina is not the natural daughter of Matilde, but only an adopted one, eliminating another potential offense to Socialist morality.
 
Don Rafael, now fully recovered, is one day taking a stroll near an outside market, when he spots an old black woman that he immediately recognizes as María Dolores, who he had written off as dead many years before. He follows the woman, overtakes her, and confronts her. María Dolores acknowledges that she and Albertico are alive and well, and rebukes Don Rafael for his cruelty. Cubero is asked to add language to the confrontation scene wherein María Dolores lists once again all the aristocrat’s misdeeds and concludes with a stirring pronouncement: “Beware, for your days are numbered. The people soon will hold you accountable for all the crimes you have committed against your family and against society.”
 
Staggered by these revelations, Don Rafael returns home, where he promptly suffers a stroke (“derrame cerebral”) (a common mishap in soap operas) and falls into a coma. In the original version, Don Rafael stays in a coma for many months, burning with desire to impart the crucial news of the existence of his missing grandson to his wife and daughter, but is paralyzed and unable to speak. Here, however, science rather than politics interferes with the progress of the story. By 2047, a process had existed for years by which an artificial intelligence (AI) could accurately decode words and sentences from brain activity. Using only a few seconds of brain activity data, the AI can guess what a person is trying to say and translates it into a voice recording. The AI was commonly used throughout the world, including Cuba, to help people unable to communicate their thoughts through speech, typing or gestures.
 
The existence of the AI technology rendered a crucial portion of the original version of El Derecho vulnerable to ridicule by the viewing public. There was no way Don Rafael could linger, speechless, for several months. Cubero and his creative team struggled with the problem for weeks and finally had to come up with a lame solution: Don Rafael suffers a “derrame cerebral,” but recovers almost immediately and, instead of bringing the existence of his grandson to the attention of everyone, has a change of heart and continues to cover up his earlier nefarious crimes by accusing María Dolores of theft and charging Albertico with complicity in the black woman’s schemes.
 
Isabel Cristina, whose love for Albertico has not been diminished by Don Rafael’s accusations, alerts her boyfriend before the police can seize him, and Albertico escapes to a bitter exile in Tampa, where his mulatto identity subjects him to additional discrimination and mistreatment at the hands of the American imperialists. Meanwhile, María Dolores lingers in jail and ultimately dies of sorrow.
 
From that point on, the plot of the revival diverges entirely from the original radio show. Albertico becomes a revolutionary hero and travels back to Cuba to take up arms in the mountains against the corrupt government. He alerts Isabel Cristina of his whereabouts and she joins him to continue, together, their fight for justice. Through one of his comrades, who knew Isabel Cristina’s parents, it is revealed that Isabel Cristina and Albertico are unrelated, whereupon the couple is chastely married in a civil ceremony conducted by a rebel leader. They are enjoying a brief honeymoon when they learn that Don Rafael has been killed in a terrorist attack against the Presidential Palace, where he was attending a reception. Albertico and Isabel Cristina kiss and hug each other, relieved at the evildoer’s death, and the series ends.
 
As the first six episodes were filmed, José Cubero had increasing misgivings about the product he was going to set before the public. Technically, the series was as good as he was capable of putting together: photography, score (instrumental renderings of Cuban ballads going back to the 1800s), sound effects, customs, editing, were all first class. He had assembled a cast of experienced actors and actresses, with a famous Spanish TV personality in the role of Don Rafael. Much of the series was shot in locations selected for their beauty or historic interest.
 
Artistically, though, Cubero felt he was doing a disservice to—actually, betraying—Caignet’s original work and regretted all the compromises he had been forced to make to get the project approved. As a way to hide his guilt, he made sure of the destruction of all copies existing in Cuba of the audio, TV and movie versions of the series, be they from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela or Mexico. Cuban censorship saw to it that no written materials describing the 1948 series were available to the public.
 
Since there was nobody alive who had listened to the original broadcast, Cubero felt confident that he would not be confronted by critics of the savaging he had been forced to perform on the original. Still, he went to bed the night of Tuesday, March 31, 2048 with a heavy heart, in anticipation of the premiere of the series the following evening. He tossed and turned in bed all night and, in the few minutes of actual sleep, was accosted by the image of a dapper slim man sporting a trim moustache and a mane of black pomaded hair, who appeared and disappeared before him making menacing gestures and repeating incessantly a single word: “Why!!?”
 
The first episode of the new rendering of El Derecho de Nacer was shown on Cubavision at 9 p.m. on April 1, 2048. The show ran, Monday through Saturday, for 310 episodes, the last one playing in the spring of 2049. While initially garnering much public attention, interest in the series wore off quickly, so that the last episodes were seen by almost nobody. Many concluded that much of what was shown and said in the series was predictable and no different, except for its excessive duration, from other political indoctrination efforts by the government.
 
José Cubero finished producing the last package of ten episodes and sought and was granted permission to take a short vacation abroad to recover from his massive effort. He was last spotted taking an Iberia plane bound for Madrid on April 15, 2049.
 
He was never seen again.

Matias Travieso-Diaz was born in Cuba and migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. He retired and turned his attention to creative writing. Seventy of his stories have been published or accepted for publication in paying short story anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books and podcasts. Some of his unpublished stories have also received “honorable mentions” from a number of publications. A collection of some of his short stories, The Satchel and Other Terrors, is scheduled for publication in February 2023.

Eloy González Argüelles was born in La Habana, Cuba, and came to the United States in 1961. His studies culminated in a PhD in Romance Languages at the Ohio State University. He taught at Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts) and the University of Massachusetts (Harbour Campus) before moving to Washington State University (WSU), where he taught Spanish literature and literary criticism for 38 years. For ten of his last twelve years before retirement he was Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at WSU. His output includes a novel, a book on the chivalric novel, and articles in scholarly journals and conference presentations. Upon retirement he became an Emeritus Professor at WSU.

by Angela Acosta

Humanity’s voyagers always came on ships, back when Sol was the closest star and home stayed within the ecliptic. They came from the places the maps would no longer show as star charts guided them towards lands where Terra would be but a distant memory. With skin colored from equatorial sunbeams and languages forged from centuries of cultural contact and strife, they were ready when the Exodus finally occurred, and generation ships whisked them away across a sea wider than the Atlantic.

Marcela tore her eyes from the screen that displayed the full weight of generations of ship born ancestors when a thin stream of light coming from the hallway alerted her of Zamora’s presence.

“¿Tienes chisme?” Zamora asked, sauntering into the room like only a little sister could.
​
Marcela relaxed her stiff shoulders and let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding in.  She’d tracked enough of the gamma lineage for this wake cycle. With the lights back on, she started reshuffling the notes she printed out on carbon copies that littered her desk.

“Yeah, turns out they meant to put you on the Calabaza ship and got the paperwork mixed up,” Marcela smirked, waving one of her notes in the air.

“No way! You know I can’t even cook frijoles right; I don’t belong on a restaurant ship. Unless, you know, I got to be the engineer and eat up all those delicacies.”

“You wish!” Marcela nudged Zamora with her elbow.

“So, made any progress today?”

“Five generations of lineage gamma from three centuries ago found in the data sent by laser from the Prerromano ship, no está mal,” Marcela shrugged and looked back at the data in front of her.

She continued, “It’s strange, really. There seem to be fewer lineages than active ships. I can’t find us in all the data. You know even Tía Flora gave up ages ago on this project.”

“¿A qué te refieres con lo de ‘find us’? I thought this was about the ancestry of the whole fleet. What do we have to do with anything? What does our ship’s history matter?”

“It means everything! I know I’m supposed to be collaborating on this project for the good of the fleet, but you know I’ve been doing some research on the side.”

“But they’re always telling us that we’re all siblings and that race doesn’t exist anymore, that we’re all homo sapiens. Somos de la raza…”

“Cósmica, literalmente. Pues ya lo sé, pero es un mito, uno de esos que vinieron con los primeros cohetes.”

Having just finished her own school lessons for the day, including a lecture on how the old ways no longer applied, Zamora was utterly perplexed. She perched herself on a free corner of Marcela’s desk and took a closer look at the branches of the family tree, thinning out as they got closer to the present moment of year 534 of the Exodus. 

“Mira Zamora, where is our family in this?” Marcela zoomed into a patch only a few years removed from Zamora’s birth in year 523. 

“It doesn’t matter…”

“Humor me.”

“¿A quién le importa?”

“Pues a nosotras, a todos los del Arbolito. Look, before I crunched in the data for gamma lineage, I already noticed some irregularities from the beginning. They’re telling us we’re doing something meaningful by putting together these lineages, that it’s for the good of the fleet and our history. It’s just busy work, Zamora.”

“Fine. I don’t know who all our family is, but Marcela tengo haaaaambrreeee. Can we pleaseeeee go the mess hall now? I heard Tío José is making pupusas and I want one that isn’t spicy.”

“Ya vamos, but I still want to learn more about this. Maybe I can bug Tía Flora about the genealogy research after dinner.”

Sure enough, Zamora piled her plate high with pupusas and maíz, freshly made from their onboard hydroponics garden. Marcela, ever the apprehensive about her research, took a smaller portion of food and joined the other kids and teenagers huddled around a game of dominos made from scrap cardboard. Zamora enjoyed the camaraderie but couldn’t wait to finally talk to some adults. For some reason they always stayed quiet about what they knew of their families, and though they praised her for her research, they never asked many questions or gave her any good leads. She always had to look elsewhere, like taking chances asking the Prerromano ship with a complicated array of laser networks to reach them five lightyears away.

Tía Flora was watching her favorite zero g handball game and knitting. Approach with caution, Marcela thought to herself. She sat herself next to her only biological aunt and engaged in the requisite small talk. By the second half of the game Marcela had steeled herself for the conversation.

“Tía, you know I’ve been doing a lot of work on the lineage, and I don’t need to bore you with it, but…”

“Mi’ja, I’m glad you’re doing that research project, but it doesn’t interest me anymore. What are you doing, hunting down lineage omega or something?”

“I’m working on lineage gamma now actually; I have five more generations worked out. In fact, I’ve already sorted out adopted and biological parents and have some diagrams for the research team I’m going to send by laser tomorrow…” Marcela needed to stop herself before she lost sight of what she came to talk to her aunt about. Tía Flora had already focused back on the game, the clinking of the knitting needles in synch with the pace of the game.

“Sorry, force of habit. Tía Flora, I want you to tell me about us. ¿Quiénes somos los del Arbolito? ¿De dónde venimos?”

Tía Flora finally perked up and cracked a smile, “It took you seventeen years to ask me that, eh? It took my friend Adriana over twenty and she quickly became disinterested again.”

Marcela relaxed in her chair and tucked herself into the story Tía Flora was inevitably going to launch into. Tía Flora switched to Spanish, as she was wont to do when talking about the past, but her tone of voice changed, and it was as if she saw herself somewhere else. The youth proudly tout the fact that the past was light minutes away and wholly unreachable while elders grieve that chasm of memories.

“Hace ya treinta años, Adriana me preguntó sobre nuestros antepasados. Y, a pesar de la falta de información que tenía, yo sabía que había que compartirla con cualquier persona que tenía el mismísimo deseo. Me imagino que hasta la Zamorita sabe recitar las historias oficiales de quienes somos, ¿cierto?”

Marcela smiled, “Justamente me las estaba contando según lo que va aprendiendo en la escuela.”

“Pues, la Adriana me dijo una frase que nunca jamás saldrá de mi mente. Me dijo basta con esas historias del Éxodo con las ramas de los árboles y que ‘I don’t want your tender history, give me the truth’. So I did.”

“Tender history, huh? Is it, though? Now that I really think about it, es un cuento de hadas. I’ve always wondered about how the data was received on these family trees and why I couldn’t ever find myself on them. You know, I always thought I was different for asking about my own heritage. Pero, there’s something they’re not telling us and it’s going to be bittersweet.”

“Yes, but I have no doubt you are as ready as you’ll ever be to hear it. Éramos muchos durante los primeros cohetes y hemos venido desde zonas muy lejanas de la tierra. Había gente de los ríos, de la selva llamada la selva amazónica, de islas y grandes continentes. Había de todo.”

“Pero nos han dicho que han venido todos de la península de Florida y que allí empezó la migración.”

“Que no, que la península solo tenía las bases de lanzamiento.”

Marcela muttered to herself, “that sure does make more sense…”

Tía Flora stared at the screen transfixed in thought, as if recalling the very thread of the ancestors she was to spring forth from her mind like Athena.

She continued in English, “I found…a packet of data. I was going through some of the earliest data sent about the different lineages and I found a diary. It was a real book too, scanned of course, but I hope somewhere those pages are still preserved. I had half a mind not to tell anyone about it and keep minding my business, especially since it’s not mentioned anywhere in the ever-expanding literature on Exodus genealogy. It was the diary of someone named Hortensia from the beginning of the exodus. She talked about several ships we still have in the fleet, la Calabaza, el Ateneo, el Dominicano, however there was something greater I learned that day. People who couldn’t afford passage on the Exodus fleet sold the only thing they had left. It confused me, because I know those people were so connected to their plastic items and chucherías.” The clicking of her knitting needles reminded Marcela of the noise of plastic toys her sister played with.

“But you figured it out, right?”

“Mi’ja, they had nothing left to give, no currency or valuable metals and they could barely even secure a kilo in the bulkhead, so they sold their names.”

“¿Qué dices? Ya tenemos todos los nombres. Nos han nombrado a todos nosotros.”

“Pero tú y yo solo tenemos un solo nombre, la María Victoria tiene dos, pero así son todas las Marías.”

“But we each have a name, tía. I still don’t understand.”

Tía Flora put down her knitting needles and beckoned Marcela closer. Parting her wavy dark hair, she began making a large braid.

“Nos han dicho que nosotros del Arbolito somos latinos. Somos de distintas regiones del continente de las Américas y todos hablamos español e inglés. There are at least five other ships like us with slightly different accents and facial features, and they make us believe we’re all the same.”

“We come from Terra, there’s no difference, is there? The skin color is just from the different melanin produced in sunnier, warmer places compared to colder ones.”

“Eres muy inteligente, you know there’s more than that. Yes, these colors used to define us and now we think more logically, but the Exodus took away our names and our culture. We had special foods, and, while I know most aren’t religious anymore, there were special ceremonies and festivals just for us. We gave that up the moment we named ourselves part of the fleet.”

Left, right, middle, Tía Flora’s fingers made quick work of Marcela’s hair. Marcela thought the braid felt odd, a bit lopsided, but she didn’t want to criticize her aunt. It’d be easy enough to readjust later.

Tía Flora secured the bottom of the braid with an elastic band and Marcela went in search of a mirror and finally saw what her aunt had so lovingly knitted into her hair. Her thick hair had been carefully sectioned into different braids, all coming together to form a larger braid that ran down the right side of her head.

“Mira, ¡qué bonita!” Tía Flora exclaimed, admiring her work.

“Thank you, tía. It’s your best creation yet. Where’d you learn to do something like this? We almost never wear our hair in braids. We’re supposed to keep it tied neatly away from our face with a ponytail or bun.”

“I got the idea from our ancestors. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors, the ones with wavy hair, textured hair, and hair dark as the hulls of our ships wore braids as a source of cultural identity. They wove patterns into braids to chart maps towards the homes they left behind just as we leave drawings as marks of each ship in the fleet.”

“That’s really beautiful,” Marcela reflected. She felt a tightness welling up in her chest and a newfound appreciation for the ancestors from Terra bloomed within her. Not even when conducting her research did she ever truly feel the full weight of the bygone generations who attempted to pass their knowledge to her. She was the product of dozens, if not hundreds of generations of sentient homo sapiens who kept humanity moving forward without forgetting their roots.

“It suits you well, your ancestors would be proud of you.”

“Thank you, tía. I have to ask; did you ever figure out any of the names they gave away?” Marcela was suddenly anxious, knowing she’d remember this moment for years to come. This was to be the moment when everything clicked, when she no longer was one of a multicultural fleet, but the daughter of people from countries she could find on the old globe.  

Tía Flora harrumphed, ostensibly at the terrible play that had finally ended the handball game, but Marcela knew it was really meant for her.

“Pues, ya te lo conté, we gave them up centuries ago. We tucked our braids into our helmets and some of us were smart enough to use the braids to spell our histories in Nahuatl, like the Calabaza ship. They’re the Xolapa from México. But us, we weren’t so lucky.”

“But couldn’t we take a DNA test? Contact other ships for information that might’ve been overlooked in the existing lineage. We could…”

“It’s too late for that. We’re never going to have their names or the certainty of knowing who our ancestors truly were, but I do have something you might want to see.” Tía Flora turned off the projector and sent her off to find Zamora. She needed to see this, too.

The chefs had already gone off duty and the sisters and Tía Flora huddled under the dimmed light of the mess hall. Zamora looked unsure of herself as she shuffled her feet in place, and Marcela wished the photons from the nearest star system could illuminate the dark portholes but they were once again too far in the black.

Tía Flora flipped through a few recipe books and finally settled on the one that looked the most battered and full of stains from centuries of moles and salsa.

“Pues mira. Ni el dedo de Colón podría apuntar a lo que está escrito aquí. Zamora, can you read for us?” Tía Flora put her hand on her shoulder in encouragement.

Zamora twisted her face like she’d just eaten a lime. “It’s in Spanish?”

“Claro, mi’ja. Así fueron escritos todos los libros de nuestros antepasados.”

“Pero solo hay una lengua escrita, el inglés,” Marcela chimed in.

“Pues me parece otra ridiculez de esa escuela…obvio que todos los seres humanos podían escribir con pluma. ¿Creen que los latinos iban a escribir sus historias en el idioma de otro contiente? Sound it out, you’ll figure out what it says pretty quickly.”

Zamora began, “Las galletas de Elisa. Se preparan con…con sus ingredientes favoritos. A ella…le gustaba hornearlas para días festivos como…como los cumpleaños y las quinceañeras.”

Looking over Zamora’s shoulder, Marcela read the recipe to herself and said, “It’s a cookie recipe, but it’s telling us about someone named Elisa. And the one on the page next to it says ‘Los pasteles de tío Oswaldo’. What is this, tía?”

“Girls, when they sold their names and left Terra with the Exodus, they made these recipe books to share their favorite dishes. They turned recipe books into the ancestors they couldn’t take with them. These are their obituaries.”

“But there’s hardly anything about Elisa in this…” Marcela protested.

“You must read the whole book; each recipe gives you a little more about each person’s story. I’ve been piecing together when people were born and that sort of thing.”

“So we can finally put together this lineage?”

“No, so we can read about their lives. We can honor them even without the branches on the Arbolito all filled out. Many of these people likely aren’t related to us anyway.”
“Marcela, basta con your research. Tía, have you ever made these recipes?” Zamora interrupted.

“We still make some of them, but without the animal products they had access to on Terra they probably don’t taste the same.”

“Can we still try?”

Tía Flora chuckled to herself, “I’d thought I’d never see the day when you’d want to try to bake something. Sure, tomorrow morning you don’t have any lessons so why don’t you bring some of your friends to the kitchen and we’ll whip something up.”

The next day, Zamora and a few of her friends were busily churning out cookies under the careful watch of Tía Flora using ingredients rationed for those who weren’t on the team of cooks. Notwithstanding Zamora’s occasional clumsiness and trepidation around the oven, the lunch rush was ecstatic to try something new. A few of the adults even petitioned to add the sugar cookies to the dessert menu, the highest honor for the young bakers. Zamora later tearfully told Marcela that it was all her fault if they ship her off to the Calabaza ship now that she can properly bake.

Marcela sometimes wished she were as capricious as her younger sister, but age and her research kept her curious. She wanted to beam to everyone else on the research team that it was just a project to keep people busy. They were fed packets of data and crunched the numbers all day long so the ships with the most resources could continue chasing after habitable planets and building new spaceports. Those very families must have taken her own ancestors’ names hostage centuries ago.

Indignant, Marcela clenched her hands and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply, imagining a warmth spreading through her body as if she were spirited away to her ancestors’ hot and humid homelands.

She closed out some of the programs she had been running with the ancestry data and set aside a data packet for herself to send to a few trusted friends she had on the Arbolito and other ships. Speaking clearly into the monitor in front of her, she spoke a language she hoped to one day be able to write.
​
“Soy Marcela, del Arbolito. Créeme cuando les explico que nuestros antepasados tenían nombres para sus familias. Mi tía me dice que sus nombres fueron vendidos a los que controlaron el Éxodo y que fueron tirados como basura de plástica. Ya no quiero repetir esa historia, así que quiero que nos nombren. Hasta que tengamos anclados a los linajes todos los nombres, me llamaré Marcela Nombremos. Puede que parezca contra los deseos de la flotilla, pero quiero identificarme como persona con una historia. Cualquier interesado puede usar este nombre. No lo daré a mis hijos si los tenga. Es un nombre a alquiler, un nombre que declara su intención. Espero que les sirva.”

​Angela Acosta is a bilingual Mexican American writer and Ph.D. Candidate in Iberian Studies at The Ohio State University. She won the 2015 Rhina P. Espaillat Award from West Chester University, and she was recently nominated for Best of the Net. Her speculative writing has or will appear in On Spec, Eye to the Telescope, Radon Journal, 365tomorrows, and Shoreline of Infinity. Her work has been featured in Latinx magazines like Panochazine, Somos en escrito, and Latinx Audio Lit Mag. She is author of the speculative poetry collection Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Books 2022) and chapbook Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (Dancing Girl Press 2023). She enjoys rock climbing and biking in her free time.

by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

There’s more Aliens out there—the franchise has put out more video games, comics, and books—but it's the connected Predator franchise movie Prey that has people talking about Native women characters and representation in sci-fi lately.
 
There's already been a famous bad ass brown woman in sci-fi—Jeanette Vasquez from the 80s movie Aliens. Some might point out the actress who played her wasn't a Chicana and the writer wasn't either. I recall some claiming she was a chola stereotype.  My rewatch of Aliens as an adult showed the character was capable, brave, and dealt with typical racism despite her not being written or depicted by a Mexican American. Yet the character needed more.
 
V. Castro in Aliens: Vasquez gives Jeanette Vasquez a Chicana soul and a past and goes beyond a plastic sheen of culture. The story pulled me in hard on the life Jeanette Vasquez and then her daughter Leticia living on Earth and as tough Chicana marines in space. Not only does the character from the movie Aliens get a real deal Chicana soul in this book, the Aliens franchise gets a Chicano outlook. The way Vasquez sees the world, how she lives, and how she fights xenomorphs is filtered by who she is. She is a brown woman who is connected to a chain of warrior women, particularly the Soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution, whose coiled hairstyle was famously borrowed by Princess Leia.
 
The Aliens franchise has thematically been about women fighting patriarchy, dealing with the monstrousness of reproduction, sexuality, parenthood and inheritance of roles. As we all know Vasquez doesn't make it in Aliens, though tough to the end, and the book eventually hands her story off to her daughter, who also aspires to be an elite marine. Her corporate ladder climbing twin brother and she eventually meet up again on a mission involving the heads of the Weyland-Yutani corporation on a planet little is known about. 
 
The life of these two women, Jeanette and her daughter, is a struggle against the system, a patriarchy like many stories in Aliens, but compounded by poverty and racism. Chicano culture comes through as they honor Santa Muerte in xenomorph constructions and make ofrendas and a native weapon, a macuahuitl out of xenomorph bodies.
 
The author V. Castro knows Aliens. There are allusions to other Aliens media throughout the book, some characters are ancestors, some places get mentioned. This is Jeanette and Leticia’s story, as much as Alien was Ripley’s story. Jeanette and her daughter have more against them, they are working class Chicanas, but they are tough, they inspire and finally represent in the way Chicanos want. 
 
Aliens: Vasquez isn't Aliens with taco sauce packets. It's a Chicana story that everyone can appreciate. This is more than representation, this novel is one of our stories, both in space and on Earth, in the future, something us brown sci-fi nerds always want. Of course, I want more and want to see sequels of Aliens: Vasquez and more from V. Castro. 
​
 

Scott Duncan-Fernandez a.k.a. Scott Russell Duncan’s fiction involves the mythic, the surreal, the abstract, in other words, the weird.  He is Indigenous/Xicano/Anglo from California, Texas, and New Mexico and is senior editor at Somos en escrito Literary Magazine.  In 2016 he won San Francisco Litquake’s Short Story Contest. His piece “Mexican American Psycho is in Your Dreams” won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest. His debut novel will be published with Flowersong Press in 2023.

​
​V. Castro was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Mexican American parents. She’s been writing horror stories since she was a child, always fascinated by Mexican folklore and the urban legends of Texas. Castro now lives in the United Kingdom with her family, writing and traveling with her children.

Excerpt from The Nope Game and Other Stories by Javier Loustaunau

As all my fans should know, my biography came out last week, chronicling my early days as a line cook all the way up to owning a small chain of restaurants before the TV show and all the cookbooks. Still this book is incomplete without me leaking this unpublished chapter against the wishes of my editor and my publicist. They refused to let me put it in the book, as it would ‘harm my credibility’ and ‘ruin my image’ but I swear this story is true, it is the last thing I think about when going to bed and often the first thing that comes to mind when I sip my coffee in the morning.

It is the reason I became vegan, the reason I eventually opened a vegan restaurant, and the reason I am an ambassador for veganism as both as a lifestyle and as a political statement. This is a story about the last time I ate meat, and some of you will see it as a metaphor, a lark, a publicity stunt, or a strange flight of fancy. Some of you will think it is some punk rock burst of creativity, brought to you by the guy who created the ‘smoked vegan brisket’. On brand with my weird TV show and my weird sense of humor. “I wonder what he was on when he dreamed this up?”. However, you choose to view this, know that I believe it is the literal truth.For context, this takes place in the mid 90’s, when I was a fresh graduate from the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) and every day I was applying to and being rejected by some of the hottest or most prestigious restaurants in New York. Intellectually I was interested in French Cuisine, but my heart was not really into it, I honestly did not know what I wanted to do with my life beyond cooking. To make ends meet I took a job at a Mexican place, not a mom-and-pop burrito shop but an actual honest attempt at fine dining before anyone really knew what Mexican food was except for Rick Bayless and Diane Kennedy.

Shit, I had no idea what to expect. I only applied because I figured it would involve opening cans of beans and stirring big batches of chili con carne. I’m not embarrassed to say I did not take the cuisine seriously because back then nobody did. The place was actually very popular, and the Chef went on to have some success of his own. I will refer to him as El Patron for the remainder of this chapter. I know in a book full of name-dropping it is odd that I do not mention who he is; but he does not want to be associated with this story. It is the reason he fired me and has not spoken to me in years.

He did hire me for my first professional job though, to help out in his restaurant. After a month of washing dishes and performing menial tasks like carrying boxes and cleaning up, he said I was ready to do prep work. This involved showing up at the crack of dawn and breaking down and cleaning all our meats, peeling and chopping all our vegetables and getting several stations set up for the day. I had no idea how to make Mole or Pipian or any of the sauces that made this place popular, for now my job was just to slice and dice and clean.

One morning I nearly had a heart attack when I opened the walk-in freezer. Hanging from a chain in the middle of the tiny, refrigerated room there was a skinless goat, staring at me with two big round eyes. It was horrifying for some reason. I had gutted and cleaned endless fish, shucked oysters, broken down chickens and butchered sections of pigs but… God damn that goat game me a fright and it did not go away either. I looked away from it as I reached half my body into the freezer grabbing for a large crate of vegetables. I heard the chain creak softly and when I looked next to me the whole goat had rotated slightly, meeting my eyes with it’s own dead eyes again.

I shut the walk in and just felt sick and panicked. The adrenaline from being startled was not wearing off, it was instead intensifying, into a full-blown panic attack. My heart was racing, and I had to repeat to myself “it is just meat” in order to stop being paralyzed and start moving about the kitchen again. I had been successful in retrieving my first case of veggies so I started to prep them, trying not to cut my trembling hands in the process. Every few seconds I would get a flash of that goat’s skinless face in my head, with it’s deep dark eyes staring right at me. It had a ghastly smile, probably the result of being all muscle without lips or skin. The whole thing just haunted me.As I finished dicing up the last of the carrots, a certain dread overtook me… I realized I had to go back into that walk in. I laughed a little, it was silly how scared I was of the damn thing, and then I realized El Patron might be expecting me to break it down. I felt a sudden chill go through my body… there was no way I was butchering that thing. I reached into the walk in for another crate of veggies, barely seeing anything through my squinted eyes. My arm touched the cold flesh of the goat and I recoiled, then panicking I snatched the veggie crate and shut the door spilling several zucchinis and onions inside the walk in and on the floor of the kitchen.

As I sliced up onions, I felt my whole-body jerk in reaction to a loud thump in the walk in, surely a vegetable I had left behind rolling off the shelf and onto the floor. There were a few more loud thumps over the next minute, and then a loud CLANK of something hard hitting metal. CLANK! And I was startled again, almost cutting myself. It was unsettling, but I just really did not want to open the walk in unless I had to. A few more clanks interrupted my work, and I was finally ready to move onto cleaning chicken and trimming steak so I worked up the courage to open the walk in freezer again.

It took a couple of tries to actually move my arm, to actually turn that handle and get it open… and when I did there where vegetables strewn about the floor and a couple of sauce containers were on their side and leaking… but the goat was completely gone. Only the chain was left behind, swinging gently, reminding me that I really had seen what I had seen earlier. I just crumpled, sitting on the floor dumbstruck, staring into that walk in unable to do anything. A million explanations raced through my mind: it is a prank, I have lost my mind, my drink last night was spiked, somebody moved it while my back was turned, I am not alone here…

CLAK CLACK CLACK CLACK. I heard hooves on tile, somewhere near the restrooms or the front of the restaurant. I hid behind my prep station, with a knife in each hand. In my head, I was mocking myself for being so afraid of something so implausible, so surreal. The clickety clack would come and go, appearing and disappearing in different parts of the restaurant, but never in the kitchen. I steeled myself, and slowly peered from the side of my station.

My gaze was met by two deep black eyes, staring back at me from a skinless face. Its tongue hung limply from one side of its mouth, and it was perfectly able to stand on its four skinless legs. I freaked the fuck out; my knives went flying and by the time I heard them clang onto the ground I was already taking shelter inside the cramped walk-in freezer. This situation was not much better though, it was pungent with leaking chili sauce and cold and cramped and dark and I knew I could not last long in here. The smell made my eyes well up with tears and those tears felt cold, like they could turn to little icicles. When I heard the beast slowly clickety clack away into the seating area and I sighed relief.

I left the walk in slowly, surveying my messy surroundings but I saw no sign of the goat. Once again, I retrieved my knives and prepared myself to escape out of the back of the restaurant. My feet would slip and slide as I left footprints of chili sauce like dark drying blood. I was moving as slowly as I could, all the while clutching my knives and listening for any movement. I made it past the sinks and was almost out the back door, but I looked, and the goat was in the corner across from me. I screamed “What the fuck are you?!” at it. It made a grunt that turned into a sort of loud screech and it came at me, full force.

I held my blades before me, eyes closed, trying to swing at the beast. It must have leapt because I felt a strong punch right in the gut, and it sent me backwards falling and knocking over a trash can. It’s face was inches from my face, and I distinctly heard it say in a low growling voice “Yo soy el Nagual” before everything faded to black.

I would awaken at the hospital that evening, panicking until a couple of nurses held me down and one came running with a syringe. “No, stop, I’m OK now, I’m OK” I yelled and they backed off, giving me some space to breathe. Fragments of what happened that morning came rushing back to me, at least what I could remember, whatever I was able to jot down later would eventually turn into what you are reading now. At that moment, I was just experiencing an intense euphoria, of knowing I was safe. As you might imagine they said I had experienced some sort of psychological event, likely a nervous breakdown from stress and lack of sleep. I had been partying a lot, and I had been broke, but honestly stress never really factored in, at that age I felt invincible.Then El Patron came in and stared at me in silence for a minute as he composed something in his head. Finally, he said: “I’m glad you are OK, I really was worried. I also hope you understand that you can’t come back to my restaurant, I could forgive you but the doñas who actually make the sauces and tortillas would never feel safe again with some crazy person or drug addict around. I just pay the bills, the doñas really run things and they are scared of you. But I did bring you something, because hospital food sucks. It is birria.”

He poured some warm broth and meat out of an insulated container into one of the bowls we use at the restaurant and from a second container he added some diced onions, oregano and a couple of lime wedges. When chefs are concerned but do not know what to say, they communicate with food. I am the same way, even now. I slurped some broth and it was amazing, I instantly realized I had not eaten since the previous day. I devoured the food almost crying in gratitude and relief and sopped up the remaining chili tinted red grease with a tortilla.
​
“This is possibly the best thing I’ve eaten, what is it?” I asked. “Birria is goat stew, with chilies and clove” he replied. Just like that, I felt it coming back up, and for a second time that day I humiliated myself before el Patron by making a mess. That really was the last time we ever spoke to each other, even though we would often get booked by the same shows filming back to back episodes. I developed a revulsion and full on phobia to meat, and that fear and disgust fueled my desire to innovate in the space of vegan cuisine. It is why you have never seen me as a judge on shows; I tell them I have too many food allergies to be a judge. It is why I was able to ignore the bad reviews and bad press while I built up my career, those things never scared me. Bankruptcy never scared me. Scandal never scared me. The only thing that ever scares me anymore are the memories of having to take animals apart, and thinking of El Nagual.

​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. Purchase The Nope Game and Other Stories.

​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?”

​#