 “The Mothers of Llullaillaco”by Julia Aguirre I heard the story of The Children of Llullaillaco, and the thousands that preceded and followed them. I wept for them, though it was hundreds of years ago, and I was angry for their bodies, kept from their families in life, in death, and hundreds of years after. But in between all that, I thought of their mothers. The mother of El Niño, what she might have felt, when her baby was taken that day. She always knew he was beautiful, from the moment she held him in her arms, he was the most beautiful thing to her, and he would have been even if the elite declared him ugly. But they declared him beautiful. Was it because she looked at him like he was? If that was the reason, would she have taken it all back, treated him as a monster, if just to let him live? They say that the families of the poor should have been honored, honored that their beautiful peasant children looked like they could be the children of kings, honored that their precious sons and daughters would be sacrificed, to save the true royal blood that graced the earth. How could you not be grateful, they said as they bound the children like slaves, that we get to kill your child? The mother was not grateful. Another may have been able to lie to their children, to fake a smile until they were out of sight. He is just a child, just a baby, and she cries, she screams and fights even when they beat her into the ground. She knows she might not see tomorrow for her outburst, but she will not let her baby go, no, not without him knowing that this is wrong, that she didn’t want this, that he should have lived and been happy. She will take his place, she will carve out her own heart for the gods, place herself on the altar to appease the wealthy who crave the blood of her son. El Niño cries, and in a moment, he is gone. His mother is not dead, not yet. But she wishes she was. In five hundred years she will be called a barbarian by white men who steal from the grave of the child she lost. A woman who knows nothing will call herself El Niño’s protector and mother, and keep him from his true family. The mother of Llullaillaco will find comfort will be knowing her son died knowing she loved him, and that knowledge made him fight, fight until his very last breath, even as the wealthy dug drugs between his lips and forced him to chew, even as they fed him meat so he felt like a king in those last moments, with the cold unforgiving mountain suffocating him, even with his mind swirling frantically, he knew he had to get back to his mother’s love, that she didn’t want this. He died knowing this was wrong. There were other children, who died a little more peacefully, perhaps, and there were others who lived safe and sound. I imagine another mother of Llullaillaco, wrapping her arms tightly around her ugly, royal-born child, who would have been sacrificed if El Niño had been ugly too. She does not want to watch, but she does, as El Niño fights for his life, his ribs breaking against ropes that tie him down as he tries to get up. She does not weep. She will not, until later, when her baby is asleep. She will cry and thank the gods for giving her this ugly child. And deep down, she will hate herself all the same. If ever there is a day her son grows, and is horrified by the altar and the blood on his mother’s hands and the drugs and the ropes, she will scream and beg his forgiveness, tell him she had no choice, that she was a monster, yes, she would be called a barbarian by the white men who dug up bones that didn’t belong to them, but she loved her son, loved him enough to kill another child if it meant keeping him safe.  Julia Aguirre is a 24-year-old woman living in Texas. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University. She majored in English and received a minor in Spanish. Her focus as a student was on creative writing, and she hopes to one day be a full-time novelist and part-time writing professor for university.
Julia Aguirre is part Mexican, part Native American, and part white. Her bisabuela immigrated to the US with her parents when she was very young. With each generation, the love and traditions in the family continues to live on, and Julia has found more ways to reconnect with her ancestors through her writing. This is her first submission to a magazine. She plans to attend graduate school to receive her MFA in creative writing. Until then she will do what she does best- write until the ink runs out.
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 “When A Flower Blooms In Hell”by J.R. Rustrian Dear Nicon, It was so good to read your last letter and even better to see the care package you’ve sent me. I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten my stash of sulfur and bones at home. I hope the latest paycheck is enough to pay for at least two months’ rent. We can’t afford to get evicted from yet another place and our latest landlord is just waiting for a chance to kick us out. It’s been an interesting time here at the Lake of Fire Recreational Area. I have to admit, I was nervous when I first started here, but I feel like I’m starting to settle into a routine here. My co-workers are much younger than I am, as most of them are barely starting their university training. It can be difficult to relate to them because most of the time they are sharing gossip about who is dating whom and what parties to attend that weekend. You know me, Nicon, I’d rather be at home with a good book of satanic spells, drinking an aged cup of blood. I spend most of my time here working alone, struggling to keep up with the younger, stronger demons. The work of a Recreational Assistant takes a certain amount of effort and I often find myself falling behind everybody else. I’ll tell you something, Nicon, loading meat wagons full of rotting and flailing human carcasses is tiring work. My coworkers make it look easy, and I suspect they don’t like to work with me because of that. I’ve found it easier to just go off by myself, clean up charred human bones and remind myself that the money here is much better than what could be made back home. Thoughts like that keep me company when I’m out in the field working, or else I’d throw myself into one of the lava pools with the rest of the damned souls. On the third day, they put me to work moving and re-staking the Impalement Gardens. It’s tough, messy and tedious work. The impaled souls wail in torment as you lift up the stakes and reposition them, leading the eyes of relaxing demons and fallen angels square on you. I’ve never been one for the limelight, and so I try to finish my work as quickly as possible so I can run back into the safety of the recreational center. Days like those make it tough to not call it quits and come home, but then, I’m reminded of our struggles. The meager rations. The ragged clothes. The long days of begging. Yeah, I’m not eager to go back to that. If that means I have to work endless days physically eviscerating every single damned soul that crosses the lake, then so be it. Don’t let that be a sign of despair, Nicon, but rather just thinking about if I had chosen a different path in this afterlife. I’m writing to you during my break so I better wrap this up. My supervisor, a peppy demoness not too much older than myself, is going to show us the latest in skinning and flailing technology and I have to say, I’m not the least bit interested in relearning something I learned in grade school. Take care, brother. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, The days have started to blend together. I wake up every hellish morning to the swirling maelstrom above and frown. It takes me back to our days off from school, when we would try to entertain ourselves in the empty poison mounds near our home. We would stare up at the gaping hellmouths above and try to count the endless human souls falling to their doom, before falling asleep to the sound of mortals suffocating from the toxic sludge around us. Those were better times, brother. It brings me some comfort in the lonely, tiring days here. Lately, they’ve been working me to death on the torture racks, which require resetting after the body breaks apart. I must’ve reset the same soul over fifty times yesterday. The other demons don’t seem to mind it, but it’s just so repetitive and dull. It makes me wonder whether or not I was meant for this. Or am I even meant for anything at all? The days would be pure torment if it wasn’t for this demoness I met here named Scarlett. She’s a funny demon, older like myself and also only here for the paycheck, a result of having two little bundles of despair at home and a fallen angel who refuses to work. It’s a relief to meet someone here that admits how boring and soul-crushing the work is. Despite all of that, she still exhibits a good attitude and even excels at fielding questions from the public and wrangling stinging insects for the diseased souls near the playground. I’m glad that I’m not alone here, but I’m never one for demonic interaction. I try to stay away from the groups of vacationers, health fanatics and families who come to see human souls try to balance their way across a scorching sea of pure fire. Their questions can be annoying and never-ending and keeping kids from touching the suffering masses without proper protection is the worst torture one can endure around here. There’s one great part here, however, and that’s the foothills towards the back end of the park, away from the frolicking crowds, near the river of boiling blood which flows down into the lower levels of the Inferno. It’s secluded, quiet and, best of all, a great place to take a break from the tedium of punishing the damned. In the days since my last letter, I’ve often found myself sitting near one of the many alcoves, watching the swirling vortex of fire and brimstone above or just listening to the babbling creek beside, watching the violent damned boiling in torment. I wonder how my life got here. We should’ve been elsewhere by now, either enjoying ourselves on the shores of the Styx, enjoying paid torments in the city of Dis or vacationing near Limbo. It makes me wonder why I even went to university and wasted my time in learning skills that I am not even putting to use here, such as those studies into mortal culture and physiology. Either way, brother, I have to believe that we will come out stronger. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Things have been getting interesting to say the least here at the Lake. Workwise, the job has been getting vicious as my instructor has started myself and Scarlett on the vivisection field renovations. I couldn’t tell you the many hours of shifting operating slabs, wiping down viscera and strapping down flailing souls that it took to complete that project. Poor Scarlett, as dynamic and chipper as she is, would nurse her aching hooves each moment she had to herself. The little patch near the alcove became my refuge, my safe place, my second home, if you would call it that. Picture the yard in our old home. Try to remember the gnarled oak trees covered in screaming faces, feel the hot gravel underneath your claws and hooves, taste the burning ash in the air and you might get some semblance of the tranquility that this little piece of Hell had to offer. It was like playing hide and go seek in our younger years again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hint of green. I was never a superstitious demon and I chalked it up to my own exhaustion, but the green stayed there, never straying from my vision. Curiosity got the better of me. I lumbered over towards the alcove and froze in my tracks. It was unbelievable what my eyes fell upon, almost bordering on the horrifying. It was tiny, no taller than four inches and so fragile even a gentle breeze could knock it over but radiated a feeling of terror so absolute it was difficult to look at. The thin, oval petals, overbearingly white and circling the fluffy yellow center, were supported by a thin, green stem from which small, green leaves poked out at random intervals. It was what the humans called a “flower.” The ground seemed to fall beneath my feet as I stumbled back from the sight. What was a flower doing here in Hell? What sort of unmerciful God would allow such an abominable sight such as this? The flower swayed in the hellish wind, taunting me with its mere presence. Fear overcame me, paralyzed by indecision. My first instinct was to stomp on it and forever be rid of its welcoming presence. It’s possibly what any normal demon would’ve done, but there was something about it that was…enticing. Something attractive. Something beautiful. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I caught myself before I examined it more and so, out of fear, I ran away back to my duties of punishing the human damned. All day, my co-workers asked about my agitated state. I lied to them and told them that a park patron had been aggressive towards me, even when Scarlett asked. She smirked at me when I told her. I wondered if she was able to see through my lie. I’m at a loss of what to do. Should I go back and stamp out the infestation? Should I alert my instructor and let them know what has invaded the Lake of Fire? Either way, sleeping is going to be difficult. The small plant is still out there, laughing and taunting me, slithering into my dreams and mutating them into happy thoughts. Keep me in your thoughts, Nicon. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, The days have rushed by since my last letter. Out there near the foothills was that little piece of the mortal world, sitting there and taunting me with its presence. I haven’t dared go back to check on it, for fear its power would overcome me. Or maybe it already has, since I can’t stop thinking about it. The flower has invaded my dreams ever since I first found it, causing me nights of restless sleep and making me even less popular among my peers in the dormitory. Not even the wailing of the damned has been able to help. I’ve had memories of our time in school creeping back into my mind, like when we would write notes on scraps of human skin and pass them to each other during torment lessons. I only remember because our teachers would try to drill into our heads about how dangerous the world above was. Stay away from anything mortal, they would tell us, they have an effect on demonic things and are strictly banned because of this. Our teachers likened objects from the land of the living like pieces of radiation, affecting any demon or anything that came near with an invisible, unseen effect. As to what, they never really said. We always thought it was just fluff from teachers trying to scare us away from earthly things. I remember the urban legends about wayward demons stumbling onto objects from above, such as the one about the kid who found a piece of a human building that had mysteriously appeared out near the Stygian wastes. Story had it that the kid had gone insane, trying to rescue damned souls from their torment and then was never seen again. I shuddered the first time I heard it and I shudder even as I’m writing it to you. Could you possibly imagine losing your mind and, even worse, trying to rescue the damned? I hope you can forgive me, bro, as I wasn’t strong enough to keep this secret to myself and entrusted it to my new friend Scarlett. I approached her yesterday as we were setting up chains and hooks for the newly arriving damned. Something got into me and I started whistling a strange tune. She turned to me and gave me a disgusted look as no self-respecting demon would be caught dead whistling at work. I looked at her and, for a second, thought that I shouldn't reveal the existence of the flower. Scarlett already had so much going on, and this would just burden her even more. There was also the mere fact Scarlett would turn me in like a good demon should. I was petrified at the thought. Losing this job Then, she sneered at me, and that’s when I realized that she had noticed me keeping this from her. “You found something, didn’t you? Over by the foothills?” she asked much to my amazement. “I think it’s best if I showed you.” I said. Before I knew it, we had hiked to the foothills along the blood river. My whole body trembled as we approached the site, like if we were trespassing into the personal domain of the Devil himself. Scarlett let out a holler as we both stumbled back. It was worse. It was far worse than I remembered. Scarlett had been promised a solitary white flower, and what we happened upon was a tiny garden of the horrible creatures, surrounded by a patch of green grass. The smell was overpowering and pleasant; the colors bright and cheerful. It almost made me vomit. We stared at the sight for a bit, keeping a distance, before Scarlett took her first, careful steps towards it. I would have asked what was wrong with her, if I hadn’t also been stepping closer to the garden. The flowers, so told to us as dangerous and deadly to the underworld, sat there idle and unassuming. “This…this isn’t a dream…is it?” she asked me. I shook my head. We were awake and lucid. A garden had somehow sprouted in Hell. The urge to touch a flower overcame me and I reached out to touch the original flower. Its petals were soft and fluffy and its stem was rigid and fuzzy. For all intents and purposes, it was harmless, at least for now. “Aza, come!” I heard Scarlett call to me. “There’s something going on here!” I looked up and found her inspecting the small alcove itself. She reached out and waved in the air at the entrance and then pulled it back as if something had whipped her fingers. I asked her what was the matter. “It’s…cold. Like in Cocytus, but that shouldn’t be, should it?” she asked. I walked over the alcove and confirmed the cold. What was it doing so high up? There was something off about that alcove, brother. Fear got the better of us and we dashed away before something inside that place reached out and slaughtered us. As I’m writing this, Scarlett is sitting across from me, her eyes dashing back and forth. There’s something in her mind, trying to process the mysterious place. Maybe she thinks it’s haunted, or is some sort of holy place where we shouldn’t be trespassing. I’ll ask her tomorrow. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Anxiety kept me up most of the night, as the thought of the illegal garden was too much for me to bear. As the next shift came, I searched out Scarlett near the female dormitories, only to be told that she had started her work early. A chill went up my spine and into my horns. There were only two places she would go to right now: to our instructor to turn me in for not reporting the flower garden, or to the alcove itself. I wrestled with which one would be the most preferable. I gingerly walked along the blood river, swatting away the wailing souls that attempted to climb out. My heart pumped. What I wouldn’t give to be one of those souls in the river right now. I secretly prayed that the alcove was just some figment of my imagination, that it was just a lucid dream that I thought in my lowest moments. Then, I found Scarlett sitting near the garden, smiling and gazing into the mysterious alcove. I approached cautiously, as if whatever this was had a hold on her. She patted the ground next to her and invited me to sit, not taking her eyes off of the void. “It’s a portal,” she said, “to above.” “A portal to where?” I asked her. “To the mortal realm, Aza. To Earth.” I took my gaze off of her and turned it into the alcove and, suddenly, it all became clear. The cold, the flowers, the grass. It was all coming out from this alcove, spilling into our little park. “How do you think it happened?” she asked me. I shrugged and told her about rumors of demons playing around with forbidden rituals to see into the living world, as some of the urban legends went. She then told me about a rumor about a special day of the year where the boundaries of the afterlife and mortal realms weaken, letting us see into their world. “Or maybe it was just a huge mistake.” I said, “Either way, it’s dangerous and we oughta let somebody know about this.” “True. If we’re caught sitting here, we’ll get fired, or banished from the Inferno. These things from above, they’re not supposed to be here. They can mess up the ecosystem here or something, at least, that’s what I learned in school. But, just look at them, they aren’t really doing anything. Just existing.” “We’re probably the only two demons who have ever seen an actual flower in the flesh. It’s starting to be an interesting day, don’t you think?” Whatever the reason was, Scarlett and I continued to stare into the portal in silence, trying to commit the feeling into memory. I glanced over at her, and noticed her standing there with her black eyes transfixed on the garden and a gentle smile on her face. There wasn’t a trace of fear or anxiety to be found within her, only a level of confidence that I’ve been chasing my entire life. She had an entire family to support at home, I thought, how was she able to be so close to something that could potentially get ourselves in trouble, or worse? It was nice to just sit there, however, away from the hustle and bustle of the park, away from our financial problems, away from the burden of having to figure out what to do with your life. The fear of the invasion from above was gone for a moment, replaced by a strange serenity that I had never experienced before, something that other demons would want to pay to experience. Then, an idea hit me like a spear. Other demons would absolutely pay to see this. Forgive me, brother, as I am writing this, Scarlett and I are working up a plan to present this to our instructor. I’ll write with more news as soon things are put into place. Wish me luck that the next time I write, I’m not wrapped in chains. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Sorry for the lack of communication. There’s so much happening at the Lake of Fire as you can imagine. So many things have changed here and it’s all thanks to our incredible idea. I wondered, instead of being so scared of the flower, why not replace it with curiosity? So Scarlett and I got to work putting together a proposal about turning the flower into an attraction. People love sideshows, after all, and so did our supervisors. They could see the gold coins spilling out of their pockets and immediately approved it. Scarlett had experience in negotiating contracts, as, at one time in her life, her career pointed her towards creating contracts for demons to use when they make deals with mortals for their eternal souls. It sounds boring to me, but to each their own. You should’ve seen her when we presented our idea to our bosses. It made me, well, jealous, I guess you could say? If she’s so talented in contract negotiations, then what would be my talent? It took a few days, but after confirmation, the other Recreational Assistants and I got to setting up the attraction to complement what the Lake of Fire already had to offer. We called it the “Vision of the Living World Exhibit” and it's already attracted dozens of demons, shades and fallen angels of all walks of life to our little park. The whole place feels like a carnival with families and other onlookers milling about the length of the park. We even have food stalls and souvenir stands to boot. That’s not even the craziest thing, Nicon. Yesterday, as if the flower wasn’t enough, we discovered six more flowers budding from the small patch of cursed soul. They aren’t as majestic as the main specimen, but are certainly a sight to behold. The crowds are increasing every day and it’s getting harder to corral everyone into a place where they can get a good look. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people not blink at the same time. Demons are entranced by the living world. For eons, we could only speculate at what it might be like up there, save for what possessor demons would report back in secret. We could always ask a damned soul, but how would we even make out what they’re saying from all their wailing and despairing? This is the closest anyone of us will ever get to getting a complete picture. I’ve found myself inspecting the garden and grass around the alcove very closely. Scarlett laughed at me as we were setting up the attraction. She commented that I looked like an investigator hard at work. I answered back that I merely wanted to make sure that everything was going to plan. No need to get too invested in the human world, but it’s very interesting to say the least. I miss you very much, bro. Was the checkup to your standards? It’s a negotiated fee for one week’s worth of work! Can you believe it? It feels like things are certainly looking up. Make sure you put that money to good work, like our debts and bills, but also treat yourself to something nice. You deserve it considering you’ve been holding our home together. Can’t wait until I see you. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Something odd is happening around here that I don’t quite understand. It’s as if some unknown, invisible force is stalking us and we’re unable to do anything about it. I woke up in the middle of the night to a deserted park, save for the tortured souls who so deserve to be here. It’s a different place when there are no other demons around. Maybe I’m just so used to the crowds that visit our lake that it’s bizarre to see this level of inactivity. The presence was so thick that I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to take a walk. I wandered over to the back where our precious money-making alcove was, scared that it may have disappeared or collapsed. What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks. A tree. An honest-to-badness tree. Not some gnarled oak, twisted and bent into familiar horrific shapes but a tall, majestic evergreen which seemed to pierce into the hellish sky. Its leaves were a brilliant green, wide and full of life. Its bark was full and healthy with a verdant moss growing in patches across its surface. The entire trunk swayed as if it had just conquered a foreign land. So taken was I with its height that I almost neglected to see the numerous bushes that dotted its feet like demon children surrounding their mother. Each one of these leafy monstrosities supported numerous red berries with green stems. Now, I’ve never known you to judge me in any capacity, but I have to confess that the urge to taste one of these berries was overwhelming. And so, I did. The taste was sweet, sour and juicy, unlike the bitter herbs or raw flesh we feast upon. I gorged myself on several, eating until the shame was too much to bear. Paranoia flooded inside me and I stepped back, taking in the true scale of the site. Scarlett and I’s little garden was growing. As to how much, I didn't know. What’s happening here, bro? I feel as if I stepped into something I don’t fully understand. Were they right to tell those stories in school? I would hope not. I’ll write later and, hopefully, these feelings will dissipate. Keep a look out for those checks. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Nicon, Scarlett roused me out of my slumber with excitement dripping out of her fangs. She dragged me over to the exhibit to be greeted with a veritable grove of evergreen trees, large berry bushes and several gardens surrounding the mysterious alcove. Yes, the site was growing, but that could be managed. I asked her what she was so worked up about. “No, not the ground! Look up!” she said, raising a singular claw to the green canopy. I couldn't believe what my eyes had seen. There, among the branches and leaves, was a solitary, white bird. A dove, as the mortals call it. It sat there, tweeting and singing its love song. The sound was grating and annoying, like a horrifying whisper of love. “This is going to put us on the map, Aza!” Scarlett said to me “There’s probably a whole nest of them up there!” A chill went up my spine. A whole nest of them? What does that even mean? But Scarlett’s excitement was too infectious and quickly overcame my concerns. I eagerly went to my posts, coming up with a way to introduce our new dove companions to the visiting crowds. Once word had spread, the park filled to capacity, with demon families trying to get a closer look at the visitor from the world above. It was as if time had been robbed from me, because the next memory I have is walking back to the dormitory, laughing and cheering our success with Scarlett. I think she might have noticed it too, since we immediately stopped and went our separate ways. It was a strange thing to have happened. Demons aren’t usually known for laughing and cheering at successes. We do it whenever we cause mayhem to those who deserve it, as our Creator intended. I fear that this alcove, this portal to the living world, is having an effect on us. I’m too sure, brother, but maybe I’m just overwhelmed with my duties today. Besides, this exhibit is putting the park on the map and making us known for more than just throwing sinners into burning brimstone pools. For the first time, my name is known outside of our family. People ask for me whenever they come to the park. You should see their faces light up when they set their eyes on the gardens and trees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Scarlett happier than when we first started working here. Things are definitely looking up. Let me know how things are at home. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Brother, This was never what I wanted. The Lake of Fire…isn’t what it is anymore. The authorities are watching me with a keen eye. Out of mercy, they allowed me a quill and paper to write this letter to you. They think I’m a madman after what happened today. Let me explain to you so you’ll get my side of the story. I trudged out of bed this morning, with an energy that I didn't possess when I first arrived here at the Lake of Fire. We expected a large crowd today, and I didn’t want to miss a second of showing them all the wonderful sights and sounds. All around me, there was the sound of laughter, playing and cheering, but it was a strange sort of joy that I’d never heard before. The cheering came from my left and I quickly realized that I was standing next to the Impalement Gardens. I looked up and saw, to my horror, that the laughter was coming from the damned on the stake. A wide grin greeted me, even though the soul’s innards were spilling out into a pile of mush. It was as if he were enjoying the punishment. Terror overcame me. I looked around and spied smiling, happy families vacationing on our little piece of Hell. Patches of grass and flowers, accompanied by small, harmless insects covered the landscape. A chill raced up my spine. I rushed to the exhibit, where Scarlett had begun setting up for the day. She smiled widely and waved me over. “Beautiful day, Aza! I can’t wait to start our shift!” she called out, sending me a friendly wave. I surveyed the area. Gone was the steaming hot gravel and broken bones, replaced by lush green grass and flowerbeds. Trees covered the foothills surrounding the alcove like boils on a plague-ridden soul, replacing barren ground with verdant, rolling knolls. I couldn't be sure, but I was certain that I could see white clouds forming in the skies directly above me. The demons and fallen angels eagerly awaiting the exhibit laughed and played with one another, calling out, “Good Day!” to the supposedly punished souls in the blood river, who answered back in kind. The sound of human voices, free from the sound of torment, chilled me. Why couldn’t anybody see what was happening? It was wrong. It was all wrong. Our twisted, evil home was turning into a wonderland of smiling faces and chipper tunes right before my eyes. Whatever the alcove had unleashed was bringing…hope, corrupting not only the land, but the people as well. Their laughter was unnatural and not of this world. I’d had enough. I needed to put a stop to it, immediately. What happened next was my only choice and rumors will go around of what happened, but don't pay any attention to any of it. They’ll say I went nuts and attacked the trees, stomped the gardens and slaughtered the birds which had made their homes in the green canopies. I will admit the thought had crossed my mind, but in order to rid us of this infestation, I had to stop it at the source. The alcove needed to be destroyed. I rushed past the exhibit, nearly colliding into several visitors, and stopped at the alcove’s entrance. The cave is twice as tall as I am and made of solid brimstone. Inside, the earthen ceiling was sandy and gravelly, like the ground outside. It was soaked in blood flow from eons of the lake flooding and receding. That’s when I got the idea of collapsing the chamber as there was no way such an unstable feature could withstand a concentrated blow from a mature, strong demon like myself. I spied an executioner’s axe near one of the food booths, used for chopping wood and human body parts, all of which went into the vendor’s pots and fryers. I “borrowed” it and savagely attacked the ceiling of the alcove, screaming and frothing at the mouth as if I were Cereberus feasting on the slothful. The crowd around me stopped celebrating and turned their attention towards me. Scarlett, who was entertaining a small group of demon children, realized what I was doing and attempted to stop me. She was too late, however, as the ceiling of the cursed alcove collapsed in on itself. Seconds later, the cave was no more than a pile of brimstone and hot sand. I stared at the pile, satisfied that my task had been done, before a pair of security guards grabbed me by my arms and dragged me away. As of writing this, I sit inside one of the recreational center’s meeting rooms under close watch. I can hear my superiors outside whispering in voices, discussing what is to be done with me. I feel like a prisoner awaiting their execution or…maybe a human soul waiting to be judged by King Minos. The irony isn't lost on me, brother. Is this empathy I feel? Or is the alcove still having some sort of effect on me? I’m tired. Very tired. Like my life has been drained from my body. At this point, I don't really care about what happens to me. What matters is that terrible influence is finally purged from the park. Keep me in your mind, Nicon. Take care of yourself. I most likely won’t be there to do it for you. Hellishly yours, Aza *** Dear Brother, It’s a miracle! Yes and, in Hell, of all places. They let me sleep my mania off as there was too much to do regarding the cleanup surrounding the alcove. The night, despite the events of the day, finally let me rest and the nightmares of the world above were finally silenced. It was the most restful sleep I’ve experienced in weeks. The morning brought more good news. My supervisors decided that flogging and flaying would not be necessary, as the park began to return to normal and any trace of the mortal infestation was nearly gone. Everybody could feel the spell’s influence on their minds weaken with each passing minute. Upon returning to normal, the destruction of the mortal world exhibit began in earnest. I have never seen so many demons chop down so many trees and churn up mounds of dirt. No flower petal was left standing when they were done with it. Scarlett eventually settled down into her normal, terrifying self. She was a bit sad that all of our hard work was destroyed in the span of an afternoon, as was I. It took all of our courage to go up to our superiors and get the ball rolling in the first place, after all. In the end, I think she was just glad that we weren’t going to be flailed, skinned alive or drowned in pitch. I think the relief gave her a sense of purpose, as she decided several hours ago that she would return to her home to her family. We had earned more in these past couple of days than we had in the past month and that would at least buy a week or two of time with her loved ones. I congratulated Scarlett and encouraged her to find something in the business field. If she could cook up something like the exhibit in our tiny park in a week’s time, imagine what she could do at a major company! I expect her future to be a bright one. “What are you planning on doing?” she asked me. I shrugged. Staying at the Lake of Fire was probably not the best course of action, but what else was there to do? At that moment, I lamented that I had gone back to square one. “You know a lot about the human world, Aza. People would kill to get the knowledge you have. There’s courses that can help you.” Scarlett waved goodbye to me. I bid her a safe trip and watched the maintenance demons finish off whatever remained of the cursed alcove. Her words still bounce in my head. I had never considered going back to school but now it seems like it’s within reach. If Scarlett and you think so, then it's very much possible. I’ll be returning home soon on the next train out of here. There’s so much about the living realm to learn and there are places that will accept somebody with my caliber of knowledge. For the first time in a long time, there is actually a hope in Hell. Hellishly yours, Aza  J.R. Rustrian is a Latino writer of speculative fiction living and working in Southern California. When not writing, you can find him cooking, hiking and playing video games. You can find his work in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Hispanecdotes, and Etherea Magazine.
 “Brujo”by David Estringel It was 3:21 AM and the main corridor of the Letheville City Asylum’s east wing was silent save the random, faint clacking of an unseen computer keyboard coming from an open doorway behind the nurses’ station counter and the rhythmic ticking of the old, analog wall clock that faced it, which was securely tucked away behind an iron cage, constructed specifically to its dimensions. Slowly, a lone, tall figure in a white, slim-fitting lab coat—Joseph de los Santos, LCSW, the Director of Clinical Services—with a legal pad of the same color (maybe a shade or two duller) tucked securely under his left arm, made its way down to the isolation rooms; the hypnotic clacking of hard leather soles atop the terrazzo floor punctuating the air’s stillness. Loud pounding rolled and echoed down the hallway like distant thunder, increasing in volume and vibration as he approached the magnetic security doors that quivered at the violence contained behind them. He continued on without interruption in volition or gate, as the clamor (from isolation room #2 to be exact) summoned concerned looks from the mental health techs on duty and covert peeks of patients from behind the darkened cracks of numbered doors. Again, again, and again, the pounding continued, each strike more explosive than the next…until Joseph swiped his access card across the wall-mounted reader. Then, silence. Looking through the observation window in the heavy, metal door, Joseph knocked three times, catching the attention of the mental health tech leaning against the wall inside, who kept watch. Tilting his head back in acknowledgment, he pushed himself to a standing position by pressing his back against the hard surface behind him. He was a bald man with a thick, muscular neck and a body to match. His height was average (at least half a foot shorter than Joseph) but seemed shorter due to his stout stature. Breaking the silence, one last pound sounded, seeming to shake the bolted pictures on the walls and the unit clock’s metal grill. “Hey, A.J., quiet night?” Joseph cracked, opening the door—a slight smirk beginning to curl at the right side of his mouth. A.J. chuckled, rubbing his stubby fingers across the smoothness of his scalp. “Yeah, chief, real quiet. We’ve been counting sheep waiting for you to finally get here.” He lumbered over to Joseph, extending a fist bump in his direction in dire need of reciprocation. “Seriously, chief, tonight’s been off the hook! All kinds of crazy shit happening in the unit. All the units, really. And don’t even get me started on this guy,” A.J. confided. “If you have like an hour, I can give you the deets on what went down after you left earlier.” He let out an exaggerated exhale, rubbing his scalp, again, and shaking his head. “Yeah, really crazy shit.” “Literally, I hear.” Joseph quipped. “I got report from the charge nurse when she called me in, and Dr. Sullivan touched base on the drive over.” Turning toward the observation window in door #2, he noticed dripping spit and smears of blood on the glass. “God, I hope that’s spit on that window.” Turning back to face A.J., he saw the tech’s eyes glued to the door over his shoulder, followed by a palpable wince that set Joseph’s eyes squinting. “Yeah, I don’t like the odds on that, buddy.” “Right. Well, how about you keep those ‘eagle eyes’ on me while I am in there, huh?” Exasperated, Joseph approached the door, hearing errant stirs on the other side. A heavy quiet had settled in the air that somehow felt more unsettling than the commotion that heralded his arrival on the unit. Eyes fixed on the filthy, square-shaped glass, Joseph approached the isolation room door with key in hand. He unlocked the door, slowly opening it, preparing for the possibility of the patient’s mad dash for freedom. Sliding his thin frame through the open crack, he scanned the room, registering nothing in his line of sight except a sheetless, plastic-covered mattress on the floor and erratic flickers from the fluorescents overhead. The room was bare but crowded with the competing smells of fading antiseptic cleaner, body odor, and excrement. Hearing a shuffle to the left of him, Joseph turned his head and spied a slouched figure standing in the corner, staring at him, fixedly, through oily strands of black hair with even darker, piercing eyes that latched deeply into him like hooks. “Are you ready to die, Doc?” the soiled form asked in a guttural voice, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring. “Not tonight,” Joseph answered, unflinchingly, closing the door behind him, “and I’m not a doctor, Dante. I’m a psychotherapist; there’s a difference. You keep calling that, and I always correct you.” Moving closer to Dante—just within arm’s length—Joseph observed him. He was unwashed and appeared to have been for some time (probably days), evidenced by his smell and the thin layer of grime that slicked over his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and starkly pronounced by the dark circles that had engulfed them. His face—oddly handsome in its own way—was angular, severe, and drawn. “I wasn’t summoned here in the middle of the night to have my life threatened, Dante. We’re better than that. Aren’t we?” There was no response. “Surely, there are better things you could be doing right now. Maybe, I don’t know…sleep?” “Fuck sleep,” Dante said coldly, his eyes wildly darting up and down Joseph’s form, which stood at the ready before him, clipboard in his left hand and a click pen in his right, jotting down musings and fragments of the current moment. “Essentially, I have; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” Joseph continued scribbling down notes, while talking to him, following the train of his own cognitions along blue lines across the page. “You have gone to great lengths to get our attention. So? We’re listening. What happened tonight? Everything was fine before dinner—or at least quiet—when I left.” A brief period of silence passed. “I’m not getting a shot! The son-of-a-bitch that tries to stick me with that shit will be sorry! I mean it!” Joseph’s hazel eyes, behind a pair of vintage black horn-rimmed glasses, stoically rose from the surface of his notepad and met Dante’s. “You tore up your room, urinated on your mattress, bit a tech, and defecated in the hall outside your door,” he retorted. “You are getting a shot.” He quickly slid his notepad under his left armpit with a smooth twist of his wrist. “It is, however, up to you how much that process is going to hurt,” Joseph advised, clicking his pen the slipping it into the front breast pocket of his coat. “So, take a moment to check yourself, and don’t make matters worse for the staff…or you.” Or me, he thought to himself. Dante fell silent, averting his eyes from Joseph’s, slowly sliding down the corner to the floor, cupping his sweaty face in his dirty hands. “Fuck sleep,” he sobbed, almost inaudibly, behind trembling fingers. Joseph was intrigued by the sudden shift in Dante’s mood, which was not at all out of character, but its acuity was, revealing a side of him that he had never experienced before. Edging a little closer to Dante, Joseph squatted down before him, instantly struck by the overpowering stench of feces and urine that emanated from Dante’s ripped, paper scrubs. “I think that’s the problem, Dante,” he assured in a neutral tone. “Nursing says you haven’t slept in days. Four, I believe, and you’ve refused to take anything for it. You’re exhausted and things are feeling out of control right now. How could they not be? We can’t, however, help you if you don’t let us.” “Fuck sleep…Fuck me,” Dante whimpered, curling himself up in a tight ball, disappearing into the safety of the darkness of the corner he occupied, finding comfort in the feel of hard, cold plaster against his shoulder and little anywhere else. Joseph calmly observed the defeated heap before him with its back hunched, tangles of black clutched between whitened knuckles. Unsure if he was jolted more by the depth of anguish conveyed by Dante’s tears or persistent stench, Joseph leaned in. “What’s happening here, Dante? This isn’t you.” He waited for a response, but none came. Just sobbing. “Dante,” Joseph said softly, placing his right hand on Dante’s left shoulder, “talk to me.” “Look!” Dante ordered, the dirtied fingers of his right hand swiftly wrapping themselves around Joseph’s wrist. “Don’t give me a shot, man! Don’t make me go to sleep. I’ll die if I go to sleep. I’ll die!” His dark eyes pleaded through the mass of oily curls that obscured his face; the blackness that surrounded them seemed to become more void in the isolation room’s pallid glow, made even more unnerving by the random flickers overhead. Holding Dante’s gaze, Joseph coolly turned his wrist, which was constrained in the tightening grip, upward toward Dante’s fingertips and whipped it outward, stepping backward into a standing position. Looking down at his throbbing hand, he was overcome by the urge to rub it, but the soiled cuff of his white lab coat dictated otherwise. Pulling his notepad from under his left arm, Joseph inched toward the door, flipping and scanning pages. “It’s quite normal to lose control like this when you don’t have adequate sleep, you know. Further complicating matters, you haven’t been quite selective in terms of taking your meds, antipsychotics to be exact. Haven’t for a few days now,” he revealed, pulling his eyes from his notes, and catching Dante’s stare again. “I’m afraid Zyprexa only works if you take it.” Dante turned away and stared at the floor, rapidly rocking back and forth and mumbling. “Dante, if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.” “You can’t help me,” Dante insisted, shaking his head, eyes fixed upon the floor beneath him. “No one can.” He looked back at Joseph, tears streaming down his unwashed cheeks. “I’m going to die here and you’re just going to let it happen.” “Are you telling me that you plan on hurting yourself?” Joseph questioned, concernedly. Dante’s sobs quickly turned to laughter, yet another unsettling shift that rested upon Joseph’s ears. “I am not going to do anything.” Using his arms to support himself, he positioned his back against his obscured corner of the room with his head tilted upwards, the angles of his face exposed as his hair fell backward, highlighted by the play of shadows around his angular features. He extended his legs outward, forming a V-shape, and with a calm voice stated, “I’m not going to do anything.” “But someone else is?” Joseph inquired, not oblivious to the emphasis Dante placed on his previous statement. Dante’s voice was cold, as was the stare that disturbed the darkness of his corner of the room. “Maybe.” “Who then?” Joseph stared, quizzically, at Dante, trying to make sense of what he was saying, playing over previous sessions to find some semblance of sense. Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he began to nod. “Ah,” he ejaculated, “your demon.” Joseph brought his hands behind his back, their fingers clutching his notepad. “Tell me about…him…her…it?” “You know. You know it’s a ‘her.’ I told you so. Many times.” Dante scoffed. “Man, I tell you shit, you write shit down in those fucking notes of yours, but you don’t fucking listen.” “Dante…” Joseph began. “No! You wouldn’t keep asking me this shit if you did!” Dante admonished. “If you did—I mean really did—you wouldn’t keep me trapped here.” Tears began to well in his eyes. “You’re just making it easier for…” “Her.” “No…them.” Lifting his glasses from the bridge of his nose with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, Joseph rubbed the burn of the late hour from the inner corners of his eyes. “Okay, Dante, I feel a bit lost here,” he admitted, pulling his fingertips away, allowing his glasses to drop back down in place. “Them? Who is ‘them’? I thought it was a ‘her.’” “There is a lot you don’t know. Huh, Doc?” he queried in a mocking tone, then after a brief silence, started to chuckle. “Then, again…there’s a lot you do…Huh, Doc?” “Am I to assume that is what they are…she is…telling you?” Slamming his palms on the floor, fingers digging into cold terrazzo, Dante leaned forward and growled, “I don’t need to be told anything.” His eyes glaring and then softening, he pulled himself back into his shadows. “I know things, too, Doc. Seen things. Things that’ll make even your shit turn white.” “I don’t doubt it, Dante,” Joseph responded, volunteering a validating nod, “but I managed to make it out of grad school in one piece, so I’m fairly confident my ‘shit,’ as you say, will be fine. Dante continued to stare at (maybe through) Joseph in complete silence, the slightest hint of a tune lingering around his lips. “So, there is more than one thing now, one demon?” Joseph asked, as Dante chuckled. “So, you’ve been seeing more than one? Hearing them?” The chuckling continued. Sensing the beginnings of a fluster, Joseph gave his neck a slight pull to the left to give it a crack. “Have you heard or seen her recently?” Dante smiled as if the corners of his mouth were being pulled to the back of his head, pushing what there was of his hollow cheeks upward, narrowing his eyes into blackened slits. “I always hear her, man...It’s always been her,” he admitted, his voice divulging hints of an unholy union of longing and fear. “Do you hear her now? Dante nodded with an unwavering stare. Pulling his pen from his coat pocket, Joseph gave it a quick click, bringing his notepad to the ready in front of him. “What is she saying?” “Nothing.” Bemused, Joseph looked at Dante. “Nothing? Hmph. No news is good news, I suppose.” “She isn’t saying anything,” Dante countered, as tears began to stream down his cheeks. “She’s humming…like shit’s gonna go down and she’s just gonna watch or something. I don’t like this, Doc. Hearing this isn’t good. It can’t be good!” “Is that normal for her…you?” Joseph questioned. “No, it’s not, I said! Man, this isn’t right. It’s not right!” Lowering the tone of his voice, Joseph slowly assured, “You are safe, Dante. You are safe here. Alright? Just focus on me. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.” Joseph searched Dante’s eyes for a sign that his message hit home. Dante quickly nodded that he understood. “Well, when was the last time she did talk to you? “After bed check earlier tonight.” Dante wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his right hand, then ran its fingers backward through his dampened hair, revealing a pale face that seemed ravaged by fear and exhaustion. “Look,” he started, clearing his throat, “I’m good now. I’ll be good. Just no shot, okay?” Joseph brought his pen to the breast pocket of his lab coat, giving it a solid click before it vanished. “I know you’re good, Dante, but that’s not up to me. In the doctor’s hands, you know? I’ll talk options with him, but I can’t make any promises,” he assured as Dante nodded, silently. “First, though, I would like for you to tell me what she said to you earlier to set you off.” “She said…” Dante began, looking downward, wiping more tears from his eyes, “…if I sleep, I die. It’s the same. Every night.” Looking at Dante directly, Joseph felt a softening in his chest. He had worked with the man suffering before him for months now and, while Dante’s moments of decompensation had always been challenging to manage, it was always clear that Dante was cognizant and hyperaware of the ever-shifting and terrifying world that was happening around him—one he could never seem to escape. No escape. “I see how this is affecting you, Dante. How scared you are. Believe me when I tell you that nothing is going to hurt you here. A.J. is literally on the other side of this door and can be in here in a second if you need him: he’ll be watching you every minute. I promise. I really do feel like things would be so much better for you if you could get some rest. Tomorrow can be completely different if you would just let us help you.” “Man, you don’t get it! Nothing you guys do can keep them…she is always with me, you see, whether you or A.J. are here or not!” Holding out his palms, Joseph stepped forward. “Alright. Alright. No one is trying to upset you here. Look, you have been with us for almost nine months, now. Your bipolar disorder was wildly uncontrolled when you got here and your psychosis quite acute. The voice you heard—I assume it’s the same one—convinced you your wife was trying to kill you, even convinced you to stop eating. Remember that?” “She was trying to poison me! That shit was everywhere…in everything. My food. The coffee cups. Toothbrush. Everything was poisoned.” “And this voice…she told you your wife was doing this?” “To protect me.” “Help me understand this,” Joseph insisted, scratching the top of his head. “This voice threatens you every night, progressively making you more and more unstable, causing you to be restrained and locked up—here—in isolation, but she wants to protect you? I’m sorry, Dante, but that just doesn’t register.” “Then, fuck you, Doc!” “What I think,” Joseph started, inching his way to the door, “is that these thoughts of yours, these things you are hearing and seeing, have become too overwhelming for you, too much for one brain to handle. Now it’s hard for you to determine what is real and what isn’t—so much so that it’s too hard to keep things straight.” Dante scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Explain it to me, then. Neither of us is going anywhere any time soon, so we have plenty of time to paint a picture here.” Joseph could feel himself becoming weary of the absurdities and contradictions laying out before him, noticing the smell of his sarcasm starting to compete with what Dante had to offer. Grounding himself, “What comes from holding onto this idea of a demon, Dante? How can something that wants to hurt you, hurt your wife, be good? How could it want to protect you at the same time? Do you see how that doesn’t—can’t—make sense?” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Dante screamed, repeatedly slapping his palms against his ears. “God dammit! Shut up!” Two knocks sounded from behind the door, as a head with a thick neck peered through the observation window. “Everything alright in there? Do I need to go in there?” Dante stopped hitting himself, keeping his palms firmly pressed against his ears, seemingly to drown out something. “No, A.J., I think we are good here. We’ve just been talking, and things got intense, but they are good now. Nothing to see.” Turning to Dante, Joseph asked, “Right?” Silently, Dante nodded in acknowledgment. “Alright…if you say so, chief. Sorry…psychotherapist…Kinda falls with a ‘thud’ on the ears, doesn’t it?” A.J. finished, disappearing from the square glass into a cloud of muffled laughter. Addressing the window, Joseph humorlessly answered, “Thanks, A.J. We are good.” He turned to face Dante, a smirk already beginning to stretch across his face. “Keen timing, that one. Let me tell you.” As a smirk started across his face, Joseph looked over at Dante, who was now, somehow, sitting upon the plastic-lined mattress on the other side of the room, his back to the wall, legs straight out, feet rolling outward and inward. His hair was pulled back, tucked behind his ears as if in a humble attempt at grooming. His face was emotionless like the hollowness of his eyes. His smirk dissipating, Joseph could hear the distant squeaking of metal-on-metal creep into the room, possibly from a passing medication cart in the main corridor, making its early morning rounds. “Sorry about that. He was just concerned, but I’m sure you can understand why.” Joseph approached Dante, feeling as if a shift had occurred in the room. Somewhere. Standing just a few feet from the long edge of the mattress, he continued, “What did you hear just now? What made you so upset?” Dante leaned his head back onto the wall behind him and closed his eyes, bringing his hands up to his head then sliding them down his face, pressing his fingertips deeply into his flesh. “She’s still humming. She won’t stop.” “Help me understand this, Dante. Why do you think she is doing this?” A sudden chill took over the air in the room, making its way through Joseph’s coat. Crossing his arms, he looked about for an offending air vent. Spotting it, he realized that he heard nothing to indicate that the HVAC was blowing. “She’s angry that I am still here. We’re no good to each other here.” “As opposed to out there?” Joseph pointed to the windowless wall to his right at the theoretical world outside. “We know what you have been capable of ‘out there.’ You hurt a lot of people, Dante, especially your wife, who—may I add—is lucky to be alive. I don’t think the city streets are quite ready for you yet.” Joseph scanned Dante’s face for any semblance of remorse (or even a reaction) but identified none. “Is that what you wanted, Dante? Want? What she wanted?” “I told you,” Dante grumbled coldly, “that bitch was trying to kill me, so…I did what needed to be done. Would have ended things—right there and then—if the damned bitch hadn’t screamed so fucking loud.” A glint seemed to stir in his black eyes, as he cocked his head. “I just hate leaving a mess behind.” That painful grin now stretched, coldly, across his face. Put off by his patient’s cavalier attitude, Joseph, rubbing his arms with his crossed hands, admonished, “Is that so? Well, it appears you have no idea what a favor she did for you—the both of you. If things hadn’t worked out the way they did, you would be in jail right now, not in here. If you ask me, the chances of getting out of here are far, far better. That won’t happen, however, if you don’t get better.” “I didn’t ask…Doc.” Dante’s smile had disappeared. “We need to be out of here, now. I can’t be who I am supposed to be locked up in here with your useless doctors and useless talk that change absolutely…fucking…nothing!” The hollowness of his eyes had returned. “And what is it, exactly, that you are supposed to be?” Dante jutted his chin outward toward Joseph. “Check your papers. I’m not repeating myself, man. You are wasting…my…time.” “Humor me,” Joseph challenged, digging his heels into the floor. “A brujo, man. I’m a brujo,” Dante bragged, extending his arms outward, “a witch of the likes you’ve never seen.” “And she’s…” “Mine.” Joseph walked toward Dante, stopping a few feet from the mattress’ edge, squatting down, and resting his arms on his knees. “So,” he started, “we’re back talking about this?” Nodding, he brought his fingers up to his chin and gave it a rub. “I must admit, I didn’t see that one coming.” “Well, you know,” Dante leaned inward as if to say something in confidence, “I hear that, after so many years, you people—therapists and the like—start to lose your touch. You know… apathy…fatigue…bitterness. That final realization that no one cares that you are a martyr because no one fucking asked you to be in the first place.” Dante tilted his head to the left, bringing his right index finger upward, pressing it into his cheek, adopting a pensive yet mocking expression. “I believe they call it ‘provider decay.’” Straightening his head and leaning further forward, he warned, “No coming back from that, I am afraid. Guess your kudos will have to wait for the afterlife.” Dante slinked backward toward the wall, not releasing his gaze from Joseph’s, the tip of his tongue clamped between his front teeth. “Really now?” “Yes, asshole. Crack a fucking book.” Joseph’s eyes scanned Dante’s form, noticing a rigidness had set in that was not there before, as if he were ready to pounce at any moment. He chuckled, “You know, I do remember you talking about your being a witch, Dante. You have talked about a lot of things since you have been here but, frankly, not all of them have stuck.” He turned and walked toward the door, waiting for a response, but he got none. “But the subject has come up again, so let’s discuss. Shall we?” Turning around to face him, Joseph saw Dante lying flat on his back, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. “What does she have to do with it?” Dante turned his head toward Joseph and yawned, rolling his eyes. “Power, man. It’s all about power. Power to do what you want. Power to get what you need…Power to break out of the fucked-up script that was written for each of us by a fucked-up God that has no alternate ending.” Dante licked his lips, raising himself on his elbows. “I make her happy…she makes me happy: that’s the deal.” He lowered himself, again, resuming his vigil of 12x12 inch ceiling tiles—a tear rolling down his left temple. “Alright. I can understand how being here for so long can make you feel like you are powerless. I get it, but you have more control than you think or even know. Not the kind, however, that you have been exerting as of late, tonight. That tack will just result in you being here—in a room like this one—having discussions you don’t want to have like this one with me.” Joseph moved toward the door, then leaned back against it. “I do need you to remember, though, that all of us are here to help you, regardless of what you feel, see, hear…or think about the efficacy of the treatment you receive here.” “I need to get out of here! None of you can do shit for me!” “And I’m telling you that you can’t look down your nose at the treatment you receive here if you cheek most of the meds we give you and hide them in your shoes.” Dante glared at him, hostilely, with a clenching in his jaw that transformed, slowly, into a knowing glance, which Joseph returned. “So, I have asked you this before and you never really given me a clear answer: Why don’t you use these powers you say you have to get out of here? I assume your demon has them as well, or you get them from her. Why doesn’t she set you free?” The squeaking of metal wheels reached Joseph’s ears again, disturbing the tension in the air that had filled the room. A cold silence fell. “We are not here to dance for you. You are nobody to challenge us like that. I will leave here when the time is right, and she will pave the way; I just have to bide my time, that’s all. But, when the time comes, it won’t be nice, and it won’t be tidy like you all want…You’ll see.” “You keep saying ‘she.’ Does this ‘she’ have a name? Surely, you have to call her something.” “Nothing you need to know,” Dante countered, fingering a rough patch of paint on the plastered wall. After a few seconds, he turned to face Joseph with a look of resolve on his face. “but I will tell you.” “That’s very forthcoming of you, Dante, and a bit curious. Why now after all this time?” Dante, starting to grin, revealed, “Because she will be leaving soon.” “And you with her, I assume.” Dante sat up on the mattress, staring at his feet that were rolling inward and outward. “No, no…I’m needed here…for a little while longer at least…Things are just starting to get…interesting.” “Seems curious that this demon of yours would just up and leave you just like that. That’s strange, no? I mean, you make your relationship with her sound so…intimate.” Pulling his attention away from his feet, Dante turned to face Joseph. “I’m not going to be alone, Doc,” he stated, shaking his head. “No…no.” Dante turned back to his feet, nodding and biting his lower lip. “Nope. Don’t you worry…about that.” A sense of discomfort sunk into Joseph’s stomach, hearing those words come from Dante’s mouth. While there was very little that was appropriate in what Dante had to say up to that point, there had been few times with Dante—or any other patient, really—where he had sensed a threat to his own safety. Yes, he had been verbally and physically threatened before, but this was the first time he had ever entertained the idea—even though for just a split second—that he might not be able to handle it. “And her name?” “Six.” “Six? Six. That is a very unusual name. Thanks for sharing that with me. We both know you didn’t have to…So, Six is going and something else will be taking her place?” Shaking his head, Dante answered, “No. She is just stepping back for a while.” “What for?” Joseph asked. “Someone has business here and they are eager to be done with it.” Dante pulled his head to the left, peering over his shoulder, seeming lost in thought. “He’s been a long time coming, actually, from what I hear…Elusive like quicksilver,” Dante raised his palms up into the air and wiggled his fingers, “through your fingers…Tricky. Tricky. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick.” Unsure of what he had just witnessed, Joseph squinted as if that action alone would clear his mind of the motley questions flying around in the dark. “So, it’s a ‘he’ then. At least we know that…What is he called?” he asked, stoically. Dante just laughed, rolling his eyes back in delight. “Why don’t you tell me, Doc?” Joseph crossed his arms, legs slightly apart and firmly planted, letting out a small chuckle. “There is nothing to tell, sir. There are no demons, Dante. No witches. No conspiracies. Certainly, no games. Not in this mind.” Dante sat, erectly, then swung his legs around over the edge of the mattress and faced Joseph. He opened his mouth to speak but found himself unable to form words. He felt the icy trailing of what felt like razor blades sliding up both sides of his back, then crawling over his shoulders, stopping at his chest, where stabbing sensations dug their way into his skin. Despite the frigid grasp that had taken over him, he felt an intense heat at the back of his neck, as he heard a voice whispering into his ear from behind. He smelled a stink of death and rotting meat that seemed to cut its way through the room like a hot blade. Dante’s eyes seized with terror but found the will to cast them Joseph’s way in a silent plea; his voice still failing him. “Dante? You okay?” Joseph asked, moving closer. “What’s happening? Talk to me.” Dante, staring wide-eyed, slowly turned, again, to his left but never lost sight of Joseph. He began to nod, mustering up a “Yes” just under his breath, then nothing else. Dante remained silent, never pulling his eyes from Joseph; however, his thoughts appeared to be elsewhere. For a few minutes more, the two occupied the vacuum in the room, until… “Well, it looks like you are done talking, Dante, so we will wrap this up for now.” Joseph slowly stepped backward toward the door. “I’ll talk to the doctor about your shot. I don’t think chemical restraint is what you need right now, but you do need an emergency dose of your scheduled antipsychotic; it’s what you normally take by mouth, so don’t worry about that. Okay?” Just as Joseph turned to go for the door handle, he saw Dante sneeze. “Bless you,” he said. Dante closed his eyes, which were tearing now. “Can’t you hear him whispering?” he asked. “He’s behind me, just whispering…whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering.” Intermittently, his eyes would veer off to the left—a smile starting to slowly creep across his cheeks. Intrigued, Joseph pulled his hand away from the door handle, then brushed his right index finger across his nostrils to address a nagging itch. “Excuse me?” he questioned. The smile continued to grow. “No, Dante. Like I said before, I don’t hear anything. You are hearing these whispers, now?” Joseph inquired but with no response, as Dante turned, again, to his left and began to nod. “Alright then. I am going to leave now. The nurses will be here in a second with your injection. Just take it and don’t fight them, okay? We will talk more later today.” Joseph grabbed the door handle and gave the window three taps with the knuckle of his right index finger, nodding to A.J. to open the door, so he could leave. “Before I can tell you what he said?” Dante suddenly teased. “What fun is that? We need to make sure your trip down here was worth your while. Come,” he insisted, extending his left arm, rapidly curling his fingers inward. “Surely, you have time to humor a patient, just this once.” Motioning to A.J. to hold off on opening the door, Joseph stepped forward. The air seemed to disappear, as the leering figure before him continued to beckon and smile. “I really think we are done here, Dante. We’ll talk later.” “No!” Dante bellowed. “Time for you to listen,” he managed to say calmly, recomposing himself. “Just for a bit. Then, you can go.” He motioned, again, for Joseph to come closer. “I’m fine here, actually,” Joseph assured. “So…talk.” “Not one for foreplay, are you?” Dante reproached, goadingly clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “All work and no play…Fine. Have it your way.” “And?” “Well, for starters, it is quite disappointing to see how you’ve ended up,” Dante declared, looking Joseph up and down. “So much promise, such a fine mind, and all those…gifts: all wasted in a place like this, day in, day out. I mean, you’re at what, twelve…fourteen hours a day? Here? What are you avoiding, Joseph? What are you running from?” Dante began to laugh a laugh that was distinctively different than before—one that was much deeper, more spiteful. “Such the hypocrite. I mean, really, Doctor…heal thyself.” Exasperated, hands on his hips, Joseph shook his head. “I think that’s enough, Dante. Verbal abuse is not on the menu tonight, especially from someone who can’t seem to remember their toileting skills.” Too far. Recollecting himself, Joseph knew he had overstepped a boundary. Dante laughed even harder than before. “Now, now…professionalism feeling a little tight in the crotch, is it? No matter. It’s doing me a world of good to finally see a crack in that austere veneer of yours. There’s always a chink in the armor. Isn’t there?” The two stared at each other, motionless and silent. “Shame on me. I’m losing sight of why we’re here…What happened to you? The world was yours for the taking and this is the path you choose?” “I have no complaints.” “Having no complaints and not complaining are two very different things, Joseph. So, so sad to see how you have given up.” “Hardly. I am doing exactly what I want to do and helping those who want it in the process. I am sure that is within your capacity to understand, despite whatever this is that you are doling out right now. So, if there is nothing else…” Joseph turned to leave. “Dante raised his left index finger, “Oh! Just one thing…Mom sends her best.” Dante’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “Does she now?” Joseph challenged, using all his effort to maintain a cool exterior. “Oh…have I offended?” Dante sarcastically inquired. “An even sadder case, if you ask me.” “No one did.” The grin continued. “Poor thing. Ignored by her parents. Abandoned by her father. Saddled with raising a sad nothing like you. Her youth, stripped away by one cruel twist of fate after another. Well, no matter…we have our own plans for her.” The dull ache in the pit of Joseph’s stomach turned into a stab, shaking his resolve to the point of making his legs start to tremble. It had been less than a month since he had gone to South Texas for his mother’s funeral, and the void he felt—inside and out—had been more than he ever thought he would ever have to deal with. Homing in on Dante’s repugnant smile, he said, “And this is supposed to be frightening, I suppose? Eh, Dante? Cause this scene, here. It’s been done before and much better. Trust me, knowing about her death is hardly something to be impressed by; I was gone for almost a week, which the entire unit was aware of. So, you will pardon me if I am not laid to waste by this sad attempt to reduce me to jelly. Now, as I said, I am going.” Dante, looking down at his chest, felt the piercing fire of black claws sinking into his pectorals, as large, black, leathery hands tightened their grip. Letting out a gasp, he raised his eyes toward the ceiling, noticing a dark form rise from behind him in his peripheral vision. Staring him down with eyes even blacker and colder than his, the large figure towered over him, smiled, and then began to growl through bloody, yellow teeth, as its attentions were slowly pulled across the room to Joseph. Knocking once more on the observation window, Joseph signaled to A.J. that he was ready to leave. A key from the outside unsecured the lock with Joseph beginning to step through as the door opened—a familiar chill clawed at his back, trying to pull him back in. Turning around, he saw Dante with that agitating grin. “‘Til we meet, again…sweet meat.” Shaking his head, Joseph turned back around and walked out, just as he heard another sneeze from behind. Hesitating, a “Bless you!” escaped his lips. He heard soft sobbing in the background. “Joseph.” Outside the door, hand on the external lever, Joseph looked in. “Yes. What is it?” “That wasn’t me.” Dante’s smile was gone, replaced by a look of shame and disbelief in his eyes. Tears began to well and stream down his cheeks, as he shook his head. “It wasn’t me.” Joseph stared at the man crumpled on the mattress and closed the door, pulling at the door handle to make sure it was secure after he heard the lock catch. He walked down the corridor, which was dark save the dim glow of overhead fluorescents; the sound of his hard leather soles sounding down the recently mopped floor, reverberating off the unit’s pale grey walls. The heaviness in his stomach lingered, as the sound of Dante’s sobbing grew more and more faint as he got closer to the nurses’ station. Looking for a nurse to leave a message for the doctor, he found no one. Rounding the corner, he made his way to the medication window, which was closed. Pulling out his mobile phone, he texted a message to Dr. Sullivan, supporting the recommendation for the administration of emergency medications for Dante, suggesting continued one-to-one observation at least until the treatment team could meet later that afternoon. The time on the wall clock registered 5:06 AM and the unit rang silent save the occasional stirring of patients in their rooms. He continued down the corridor, flanked by a symmetry of numbered doors that disappeared into his periphery; the clacking of his soles seemed to fade as the sound of humming perverted the air’s stillness—a humming from isolation room #2. Entering the men’s room at the end of the corridor to the right of the elevator, he approached a line of five white, porcelain sinks under a large expanse of mirrored plexiglass. Stopping at the middle one, he rested his clipboard on the sink to his right, then turned on the faucet before him, throwing cold water upon his face to jolt himself out of the dizziness that was starting to overcome him from a lack of sleep and hunger. Heal thyself. The water was invigorating on his skin, taking a portion of his breath away with every splash. Grasping a greedy clutch of brown paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, he buried his face deep within his palms, absorbing the moisture that stung his bloodshot eyes and nostrils, holding his head still for a moment. Pulling his face away, he crumpled the damp mass in his hand and tossed it in the dispenser’s depository. Leaning forward with his hands on the sink, he stared into the makeshift mirror to center his thoughts and ground his body. His reflection revealed a tired man who, tonight, looked older than he was with an emptiness in his eyes that he had put great effort into in the past to avoid encountering again. So much promise wasted in places like this...What happened to you? He was snapped out of his reverie as the fluorescents overhead flickered, casting glares on the plexiglass that seemed to make his reflection look hepatic, distorted, almost alien. With a long exhale, he released the lip of the sink and turned to leave, his reflection seeming to linger a split second longer than it should to watch him walk away. Exiting the elevator on the fifth floor, Joseph walked down a corridor of treatment rooms, then toward his office in a separate suite that was separated from the rest of the unit by magnetic doors. Before he could grab his access card to swipe the door open, the squeaking of metal wheels made their way closer and closer, creeping up behind him. Turning, he saw an older woman, probably in her sixties, dressed in an unshapely beige custodian’s uniform. Her hair was long and grey hair, pulled back into a bun. Her face was plump—but haggard-looking—with a single, remarkable feature—two sunken eyelids, where her left eye used to be. “Long night?” she questioned with a slight but noticeable Spanish accent, as she drew closer, the rhythmic squeaks of her mop bucket punctuating the silence in the corridor. “You could say that,” Joseph answered, managing to muster up something that looked like a smile. “I haven’t seen you before. Joseph de los Santos,” he said, extending his right hand, “…and you are?” “Luz,” she responded, giving his hand a firm shake. “And, yes, I just started a couple of weeks ago.” She rested the handle of her mop, which also functioned like a steering wheel, against the wall. “Strange night, no? Not right at all. On the units, I mean…Oh, I’m sorry! You have to be here so late…or is it early?” She looked up at Joseph, as she was considerably shorter than him (at least by a foot and a half). “Both, actually. A long night has turned into an early start. Goes with the territory, I am sad to say.” She stepped closer toward him with the muffled, familiar sound of glass beads and metal—chains and charms—clicking against each other beneath her uniform. “I tried to clean your office, but my master key doesn’t work on your door,” she curiously stated, sounding more like she had asked a question. “No. I supposed it doesn’t,” Joseph confirmed. “Lots of confidential papers on my desk. You know…Everywhere, really. It can be quite a mess in there, actually. Better that I tidy up myself.” “Of course.” Luz grabbed the mop handle. “I am here if you decide otherwise. People need people, especially when things get really…messy. But you can handle your business. I’ll bet you can do whatever you set your mind to. Surprise yourself sometimes, too, no?” She smiled at Joseph and shuffled her way back down the hall. Turning around, she ended, “Don’t let tonight shake you. You are a smart man. You know what to do. I’ll be around, though…if you need a hand,” then disappeared into a treatment room. Joseph looked musingly down the hall, taken aback by such a new and unusual face. Using his access card, he entered the office suite and made his way to his office, which was as dark as pitch save the desk lamp he always kept on. Closing the door, he took off his lab coat and hung it on a hook that was fastened to its back, then unbuttoned the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt, rolling them up to his elbows, exposing curious glyph-like tattoos of varying sizes on the undersides of his forearms. Locking the door and leaving the lights off, he headed toward his left next to a bookcase that was overly stuffed with diagnostic manuals and old textbooks from his university days. Just past it, he paused at a large, wooden door with a crucifix above its frame. He reached into his right trouser pocket and pulled out a key, then, clutching the doorknob, took a deep breath and unlocked it. Sweet meat…sweet meat… sweet meat. Finding himself dwelling on why those words seemed to affect him so, he shook his head, as if to shake off a bad dream, and entered the room. He was surrounded by a cool darkness and echoes of lavender and smoke. Feeling the door at his back, he leaned into it, letting out a deep exhale through his knows. Worry settled on his brow, as he felt the hint of tears wanting to well up in his eyes. He brought up his right index finger and his thumb up beneath his glasses and rubbed his eyes, restraining the jumble of emotions that he could feel expanding within his chest. Fumbling forward in the dark, the smell of candle wax and cold wicks teased his nostrils. Reaching back into his right pant pocket, he withdrew a white disposable lighter and lit a flame, casting a dim, warm glow upon the walls of the room. Against the wall across from him was an old wooden table, draped with a black linen cloth that was topped with a censer with a new charcoal block, scattered bits of charred herbs, and a visibly used black candle with hardened drips of wax that was positioned on the tabletop’s center. Quickly, he lit the wick before the lighter’s metal guard got too hot. Grabbing a corked bottle, a vial, and a shallow dish from a cabinet underneath the table that was hidden by a flap of the black cloth, his lips began to move. He placed the items on the table, then used the back of his right hand to wipe sweat from his now furrowed brow. Uncorking the bottle, he tipped it over the dish, tapping clumps of powdered eggshell onto it. He opened the vial, emptying a dram of holy water on top of it, then used his right index finger to swirl the mixture into a thick paste. Around the candle, he drew motley glyph-like symbols in a spiral fashion with the white compound, his moving lips now producing soft murmurs. He thought about how much he regretted taking call that night and everything he saw and heard in the unit (the isolation room…and the men’s room). He thought about all the years, wasted, that he had to pretend to be blind and deaf to the ‘other’ world around him: all for the sake of not attracting attention, for staying safe. Instinctively, he quickly gave thanks to his spirits for the privacy of his alter room and the spell that shielded it (and him) from prying eyes—human or otherwise. If one knows your name, they all do, his mother used to say. They are not a threat if they think you don’t believe. He thought of the burden the legacy of brujería and kitchen witchery his mother (and her kind) left behind and all it had taken from him. He thought of his own weakness in dropping his guard, which ultimately betrayed him. That wasn’t me…It wasn’t me. Joseph grasped the knife handle with his right hand, flipped open the sheath’s snap, and used his thumb to push the leather covering off, revealing the gleam of silver peeking through the murk. Holding up the blade high, as if making a command to the heavens, Joseph extended his left arm before him with his palm facing upward. His mumblings (now audible) charged the room: Black to black, a devil I attack!...Black to black, a devil I attack!...Black to black, a devil I attack! With immovable intention, he brought the knife’s edge down with a slice (not too deep nor too shallow) letting trickles of hot, red blood splash and drip down the candle’s black, waxy surface. Continuing to chant (now in a whisper), Joseph’s awareness—and acceptance—that his masquerade was over grew along with the burning in his palm. His mother’s fight was now his own; he only hoped that he would fare better in the end. Black to black, a devil I attack…Black to black, a devil I attack…Black to black, a devil I attack.  David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications like The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, DREICH, Somos en escrito, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and Drunk Monkeys. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published April 2019, followed Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House (2022, little punctures (2023), and Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (scheduled for late 2023). David has also written six poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, Golden Calves, Sour Grapes, Blue, and Brujeria (coming soon). Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.
 “Call Me Toco””by Matias Travieso-Diaz A beautiful Taíno maiden was once seized and imprisoned by a band of marauding Carib warriors. Overcome by grief over her captivity, she took her own life. However, Atabey, the goddess of fertility, calm waters, and the moon, took pity on the young suicide victim, returned her to life in the form of a bird, the tocororo, and set it free to roam forever throughout Cuba’s vast woodlands. Taino legend Humans, those flightless creatures that overflow the surface of my homeland, call me “tocororo” because of my peculiar staccato call, which their perception organs translate into something like “toco-toco-tocoro-tocoro.” It is an inaccurate description of how I sound, and I would just rather be called Toco. I have frequently noticed how humans observe me attentively when they see me perched on a tall palm tree or watch me hover across the skies. I care not about humans, but they appear to be very interested in me. Perhaps they are looking for similarities between their kind and mine. For that reason, I will describe myself in some detail, leaving it to others to draw any differences and similarities that may exist between my kind and the humans. In size, I am slightly larger than those bright elongated fruits that hang in clusters from the tops of thick, wide-leaved trees. I am small by comparison with many of the other types of feathered animals that fly above this land; however, I take pride in my coloring, which is more distinctive than that of most other creatures, feathered or not. My back is the color of dark pine fronds, my crown is like the late twilight sky, my throat and the upper part of my chest are as light as sea foam, while my lower belly disolays a vivid, contrasting hue, like the blood of an injured ground animal. I often groom myself, and it seems that most humans I encounter groom themselves carefully and cover their bodies with weavings of striking colors. Also, certain large weavings that hang outside the humans’ nests are of the same hues as my feathers. When I referred to my call, I neglected to mention that it was loud. It resonates throughout the forest as I sing, perched on a tree or in midflight. Although my hearing is not as keen as my eyesight, I often become aware of the presence of humans by how loud their calls are. Their calls do not follow any pattern that I can discern, except that the ending of every burst of sound they emit is louder than the rest of the phrase: it is as if they were letting each other know they were finished. However, often two or more humans issue their calls simultaneously, so their sounds overlap and seem to cancel each other. They also often move their upper limbs and other parts of their bodies when they sing, which is something I never do. Those feathered animals that prey on others living creatures always fly alone; by contrast, tocororos like me often travel above ground in amiable bands of three or four, a behavior that humans imitate, for they gather in congenial groups, often emitting a particular type of short call that, once issued by one human, is repeated by its companions. They place themselves outside their nests and remain there, issuing calls to one another, for long periods of time. When they are together, humans make wide gestures with their upper limbs and often touch each other’s bodies. They always seem inclined to maintain close physical contact with one another. Those of my kind feed by using our long, curved beaks to forage for food, sallying from a perch or hovering at foliage to reach the fruit. We eat mostly insects, fruit, and flower buds, but also feed small scurrying animals to our young. I have often observed humans leaving food for us and other feathered creatures to enjoy, choosing things we like instead of the ones they favor. That behavior can perhaps be attributed to the abundance and quantities of the foods humans consume, although in my flights above human habitations I have recently noticed that the foods available for them to partake seem to be getting scarce. Some feathered animals are feared because they steal eggs from nests or attack other living creatures. Although I have seen instances of humans engaging in that type of behavior against each other, I have never spotted humans doing such things to us, feathered animals. Tocororos build their nests in tree cavities, often in old palm trunks or dead branches. Humans also dwell in cavities they build above ground. Their building of such cavities, which they do in clusters of many units, is an aspect of their behavior that is detrimental to us, because to make room to build their nests they often clear wide areas of the forest, depriving us and other animals of places to live and diminishing our sources of food. Humans also remove trees to plant shrubs or smaller vegetables, which they turn into their food or use for other purposes, thus forcing us to relocate to inaccessible areas, which are starting to disappear as well, making life difficult for us. Another peril that we face from humans is their attempt to capture us. Sometimes they do this in order to kill us and collect our feathers. They seldom succeed in this because we are skilled fliers, capable of swift and agile movements, and elude capture by darting in and out of the forest canopy. Worse perhaps are the attempts that some humans make to capture and imprison us in small enclosures within their dwellings. We cherish our freedom, the ability to roam unimpeded, with no bounds other than the seas that surround this land. In captivity, we languish and soon die. Humans should know better than to do this to us, because they themselves appear to enjoy their freedom and perhaps would also decline if kept in captivity. From time to time, I have seen large flying objects move high in the air, sometimes traversing our territory, others moving away to cross the seas that surround us, going towards unknown destinations. Such objects probably contain humans, and if they do, this would indicate that humans, like tocororos, enjoy moving across long distances and want to be able to do so. For freedom is the most precious gift available to all of us.  Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Over one hundred of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in paying anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books and podcasts. A first collection of his stories, The Satchel and Other Terrors is available on Amazon and other book outlets.
 “SOE: The Sword of the East”by Robert Martin The homies always told her “Trouble Man” couldn’t be her favorite song because she wasn’t a man. Whenever they said that, she gave them the finger, laughed, and answered, “Yeah, but I’m still Trouble.” And she was, Trouble from East Side Belvedere, or at least she would be if the Belvedere still let in girls. “Carmen!” She ignored the first yell, and rolled over on her couch bed, pressing the headphones she wore close to her ears, the song, “Trouble Man” on repeat, drowning out the heavy knocks on her door. “Carmen! Don’t fucking make me go in there.” The knocks came again, this time hard enough to shake her wooden door. What time was it? Trouble asked herself, the adobe walls of her room keeping her cool and hiding her from the day. “Carmen…” Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her Tía Huera standing over her. Tía Huera never called her Trouble, saying that type of drama was before Trouble’s time and that she had no business getting involved. “I know you can hear me, Carmen…” Rolling over to face her, Trouble greeted her aunt, “Good morning Tía.” Annoyed, Tía Huera answered, “Morning, it’s 1 o’clock and I need you today.” “Need me?” Trouble feigned confusion. Tía Huera snatched the headphones off Trouble’s head, “Yeah, I need you, I got a big order due, so come on.” “I was listening to something,” Trouble protested. “I don’t care, now the shop, let’s go.” “You said I was too young.” “I said that when you were eight, you’re sixteen or did that mota you smoke make you forget?” “But you said I’m too clumsy, that I break things.” “I’m going to say you’re fucking lazy, and I just need you to quench.” Trouble’s confused look returned, “Quench?” “Keep acting dumb...” “I’m going, I’m going, shit,” Trouble sat up on her couch, her thin blanket falling to the floor. Tía Huera smiled, “Thank you, Carmen,” and started to leave, stopping at the door, “Don’t make me wait,” then leaving her to dress. Pulling the plug of her headphones so the music could play out loud, Trouble found her pants, black khakis, she slid them on and clasped her belt with a B on the buckle. Baggy, cuffed, and creased, they suited her as did her black and white shoes. Chuck Taylors, sold cheap and mass produced, everyone in the barrio had ‘em, their design even older than her favorite song. Trouble picked out a shirt she stole from her brother, choosing a black and white plaid button up that draped down to her knees. Putting on dark sunglasses, also stolen from her brother, she ran her hand over her short hair. Not many homegirls had the heart to go bald or pelón like the homeboys, but she did. Not fully shaven, her black hair was crew cut, and to protect her from the sun she wore a black fedora she took off some hyna from the Low Bottoms Barrio, still a little bent from the altercation. In Old Los Angeles, everything was a thousand years old and practically ancient. Everything that was new was reserved for the gringo colonies up in space. Earth and its old cities were only good for their resources, the poor and their labor included. In 2992, Raza like her did what they could to survive, and from the Raza history she knew, it had always been like that. Tía Huera’s shop was built into the back of their adobe house. In the Chicano barrios of Old L.A., the houses were adobe, with no access to gringo building materials, la Raza returned to the ways of their ancestors. Walking to the shop, Trouble could hear her aunt working without her, slamming her hammer down on layered steel, forming what would soon be a sword. Trouble had heard stories of ancient times, when barrios used to shoot each other up with cuetes, but that was back before anyone alive could remember. Ever since the world became a ghetto there hadn’t been a gun on the planet, even the gringo Corporation and its goons had to use swords, spears, or axes. “What happened to you? Getting all dolled up for your vato?” her Tía teased her, still hammering away. “Chale! I don’t get dolled up or nothing for no one,” replied Trouble. All the boys in the barrio were from the Locos clique of Belvedere, that meant they were her brother’s friends, and she’d be damned if she went with one of them. “Don’t be like me, Carmen.” “Why not, Tía, you're firme, you got your own shop, you make your own coin, you were a Belvedere Loca, you kick ass.” “I’ll kick your ass if you keep talking that homie shit with me, now take this and…” Knowing what her aunt wanted, Trouble pulled on a heavy glove and took the heated steel and quenched it in a bucket of oil. Fiery, she held it and then pulled it as soon as it was ready. The sword was going to be a gladius. A short sword with a blocky guard and rounded pummel, it was also cheap. Unlike other swords like sabers or claymores, the gladius required little skill, just slash or stick ’em with the pointy end. This made them popular in the streets because, as her brother always said, “too many homies are too lazy to train.” Thinking of him, she asked, “Hey Tía, where’s Hugo?” “He’s not here, keep working,” her Tía replied, showing her another sword that needed quenching. A dozen quenched swords later and Listo, a youngster from Belvedere, strolled into the shop, bald headed, with a white tee and his button up folded over his shoulder. “You’re too sexy to be working, how come you don’t let me sweep that ass, my bad, I mean sweep you off your feet?” Trouble caught her Tía rolling her eyes, answering him, she snapped, “Nobody fucking cares, Listo.” “Trouble, you’re breaking my heart,” Listo, the neighborhood player, pressed a finger beneath his eye then dragged it down his cheek like a teardrop. “Nobody fucking cares, Listo,” she said again, “Now what the fuck you want?” “To tell you that your brother is good.” “Good? What the fuck happened?” “Corpses in the barrio, you know what it is, homegirl.” Trouble hid her anxiety, Corpse was a diss name for the Corporation and the Corporation was not to be messed with. They were the gringos that controlled the valley and raided the barrios to the East and South like vikings. “Don’t trip, the corpses are gone,” Listo pulled a cigarette he kept tucked behind his ear and started to smoke, “They might come back though.” Tía Huera interrupted, “Ey! You want to talk that bullshit, then take it out of my shop!” “Outside,” Trouble shot her hand with a pointed finger outwards directing Listo to the street. “Whatever,” Listo turned and walked out. Once alone, Troubles asked, “Are you sure, Tía? I could keep helping you if you want.” “You remind me of the old days sometimes, I swear, now go, you’re clumsy like you said anyway.” Stepping out into the street and leaving her Tía to her work, she saw that Listo had already left. In school, her teacher had told her that all the streets in Old L.A used to be paved, even the river, but that was ancient history. The streets, now dirt roads, flooded nasty, with centuries of trash lining them like curbs and broken gravel sidewalks. All except for the gringo valley run by the Corporation, they kept everything like it was or even better, or so she was told. Chicanas like her weren’t allowed in the valley. The Belvedere Barrio wasn’t very big, not like the Willowbrook or Hollenbeck, but it was theirs. It had a park that they had taken over and a corner store that sold liquor and smokes. When she was a little girl, her big brother would walk her to get candy, sour worms and chili powder. She would never go alone, even now, Trouble still didn’t like walking around by herself. Other barrios knew who she was and could catch her slipping, running her down and stabbing her up, not that she’d ever admit to fearing for her life. Walking first to her homegirl’s house, another flat-topped adobe, she knocked on the door and called out, “Muñeca! Muñeca!” The door opened and it was Ms. Rodriguez, Muñeca’s mom, “Letty is busy, studying.” That was a lie, Muñeca had dropped out with Trouble last year. “I said she’s studying, so leave.” “Ms. Rodriguez…” “I wish you’d forget my daughter lived here, you’re trouble.” Trouble smirked, “I know I am.” Ms. Rordguez stood firm at the door as if to hide all that was behind her. “Mom, it’s just Carmen,” said Muñeca, squeezing herself past her mother and outside. “She just said she was trouble.” “She’s my friend Mom, I’ll be back,” Muñeca leaned back towards her mother to give her a hug, one her mother reluctantly accepted. Close to her daughter, Ms. Rodriguez whispered in her ear, “Don’t be out all night.” Muñeca gave her mother a kiss goodbye without agreeing to anything, then joined Trouble outside, dressed similarly only she kept her hair in a long single braid that went down her back and her shirt was solid blue not plaid. “Your mom doesn’t like me,” said Trouble, walking with her best friend. “It’s cuz you’re a crazy bitch,” teased Muñeca. “Fuck you,” Trouble teased back. Exchanging shoves until Muñeca, the smaller of the two, fell into the street. Together they met their homegirl, Bashful, the oldest of the three and sporting a big blue sweater and dyed red hair. The homegirls, occupying the sidewalk, walked shoulder to shoulder in search of Trouble’s brother and the vatos from Belvedere. As expected, her brother had the homeboys training. Not every barrio trained, a lot of barrios didn’t even have swords for all their homies. Belvedere was different, her brother didn’t let no one in unless they had a blade, and when all the other barrios were out drinking and getting high, he had them working, learning techniques, and practicing their footwork. The homies hated him for it, until they got in a scrap and survived using what he taught them. When Trouble was a little girl, a viejo with some money built a rancho. He raised animals and planned to sell their meat, eggs, and milk in the barrio, but he forgot about the Corporation. The corpses sold their own fake meat, eggs, and milk, and they wouldn’t suffer any competition, so one night they killed the viejo and burned everything he had down to the ground, animals too. Since then, her brother and Belvedere took over, burying the viejo’s body, and using the remains of his rancho to train at. The Locas were a clique, a subset of Belvedere that had been all Chicana, and once upon a time they trained with the Locos and fought with them against rival barrios, but that had all ended after her Tía Huera’s generation. Now the Locos thought the homegirls were only good for polishing their swords. But the homegirls didn’t care, they marched up to the wooden fence of the old animal pen the homeboys were training in and peered over. The Locos were deep, twenty of them sitting on the floor crossed legged around the rectangular pen. The homeboys mostly went bald, some wearing fedoras, they all wore baggy pants and Chuck Taylors and white tees under button ups. Their shirts, plaid or a solid dark color, worn extra long to conceal the swords at their waist. Just ahead of them in the middle sat her brother, a legend at twenty, they called him Dreamer from Belvedere. Hair slicked back with pomade, Dreamer’s plaid shirt was blue and white, worn open allowing his sword, slung at his side to peek out. A katana, Japanese steel in Chicano hands, it was hard to get and dangerous to use. A vato could just as easily cut off their own hand by accident than fighting the enemies. To wield it, made him feared and respected, even by Belvedere’s rivals like Calle Eastern. And his ability as a barrio warrior earned him the title, the Sword of the East. At the center, stood two homeboys, Listo from earlier and another homeboy called Shorty. Both were holding training swords made of wood, stepping awkwardly they exchanged blows, neither very skilled. Trouble could tell Shorty was intimidated and it made him skittish. Listo, overly confident, took too many risks and swung wildly. “Aagh!” cried out Listo, charging Shorty at full speed and making the mistake of running into the point of Shorty’s wooden sword. Seeing him fall, groaning and cursing in pain, Trouble laughed loudly, getting not only Listo’s attention but all of Belvedere. “Who let the hoodrats watch?!” questioned a vato her brother’s age named Stretch, a gigantic homeboy from Belvedere. From the floor, Listo made his excuses, “You all saw that shit, I got distracted by them sexy ass hynas.” Shorty scowled, “Fuck that, I beat your ass, them hynas saw it too,” shifting towards Trouble and her homegirls, “Who gonna give me a victory kiss?” Trouble hated when the homies acted stupid, even more so she hated the way Shorty was looking at Muñeca and when Listo started to give her the same look, she snapped, “What victory? You got lucky Shorty, and Stretch, call me and the homegirls hoodrats again and I’ma fuck you up.” The homeboys erupted in laughter, embarrassing Shorty and Listo, and making Stretch angry, “I don’t fight hynas, but I’ll consider your ugly ass a vato,” he then stood up aggressively. Muñeca and Bashful couldn’t stop her in time, Trouble, hopping the fence and shouting, “You want to fight, motherfucker!” Trouble didn’t have the voluptuous bottle shape the Locos were into and they punished her for it, teasing her at every opportunity. Having what her Tía called a warrior’s build, she was lean and well-muscled, with calloused hands and a broken nose. Taking offense at being called an ugly hoodrat, she pressed the issue, “You big son of a bitch!” Stretch, leaving his real weapon, a cross guarded longsword, he picked up a wooden one. Shirtless, Belvedere tattooed across his chest, he stepped into the center of the pen. “This is going to be bad,” said Shorty as he helped Listo to his feet. Listo, grinning, exclaimed, “Ooo, Trouble, your ass is going to get it now!” “Shut the fuck up, Listo,” called out Bashful, and leaning over the fence, Muñeca taunted, “Fuck ’em up, Trouble don’t let Stretch get away with that shit!” Happy that her homegirls had her back, Trouble stepped further into the pen, “I need a training sword, who got one I can use?” All the homies from Belvedere turned to her brother Dreamer, silently asking if they could give her one, none of them moving without his say. Her brother pretended to think it over, eyes hidden behind his own dark sunglasses. Rising to his feet, “The homie Stretch vs Trouble,” he declared, “that’s not a fair fight.” Stretch protested, “What the fuck you mean?” Dreamer let slip a sly smile beneath his thin mustache, “Listo, Shorty, will join Stretch in fighting my sister.” Shorty choked, “What?!” “I said you three versus my sister.” “Nah, that’s fucked up, we’d beat the shit out of her,” Listo argued. “Sure about that?” warned Dreamer, walking over to his sister with his wooden training sword. Handing it to her, he said in a low voice, “Don’t embarrass me.” Taking the wooden sword from him, Trouble replied, “You taught me everything I know, it’s your fault if I lose.” The fighters took their positions, Trouble standing across from the homeboys with Stretch in the center and Listo and Shorty on his right and left. Dreamer, retaking his seat, waited till he had all of their attention before saying, “Alright go.” “Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle, I don’t want nothing to happen to that pretty face,” taunted Listo. Rushing her, his wooden sword raised above his head, he screamed a bird-like battle cry and was taken down with one swift blow. With an instantaneous switch of stance followed by the delivery of a well-timed strike, Trouble left Listo dazed in the dirt. “I yield!” Shorty fell to his knees and raised his wooden sword above his head as if to offer to her. “Leva,” muttered Stretch, knocking Shorty over as he passed him to take on Trouble. When Stretch charged, Trouble couldn’t believe how fast the big man was moving, the strike she had planned became a dodge as she pivoted out of his way. Frustrated at missing her, he whirled himself back at her in a long sweeping motion, but she ducked and felt her fedora take the hit that was meant for her head. Kneeling, she stabbed and missed. Regaining control of his weapon, Stretch brought it down on her like a hammer, but sensing the attack coming, she rolled out of the way. Back on her feet, Trouble skipped backwards to put distance between them and for a moment they caught their breaths then went at it again. Raising her wooden sword to meet his, his strength made blocking his attacks difficult. After an exchange that left her hands pulsating in pain around the grip of her weapon, she slowed down and used herself as bait. Thinking she was tired, Stretch hoped to make an example of her in front of her homegirls, still anxiously watching from the sidelines. Bringing his wooden sword up over his head, poised to bring down on her, he put all his force into it only to see her roll away at the very last moment. Too late for him to stop his attack, he hit the dirt floor of the pen so hard his wooden sword snapped and splintered. Trouble, catching Stretch exposed and stunned by his miss, swung and cracked him at his right knee. The strike brought Stretch down, but not completely, so with another roll, she struck at his left knee, this time bringing him all the way down to her level. Refusing to give up, Stretch smacked the broken end of his wooden sword into the side of her head, dizzying her and making her bleed. Stabbing in response, Trouble hit Stretch in the chest and took the air from his lungs. I’ve got you now, you big motherfucker, she thought to herself. Leveling her wooden sword, she meant for one final attack that would bust his head wide open, making an example of him to all the other Locos. “Ya Estuvo!” her brother called out to her. Hearing her brother’s voice, mid strike, Trouble stopped herself a hair’s length from Stretch’s head, letting the wooden sword slip harmlessly from her hands. “You’ve won,” Dreamer paused as Stretch fell over and stared down all of Belvedere, “All you vatos better have learned something.” Trouble beating Stretch in front of the whole barrio had changed the atmosphere, although Stretch, when revived, was gracious in defeat, the other homeboys weren’t. Calling for a meeting to discuss an issue that the homie Roach conveniently remembered allowed the Locos to demand Trouble’s exit and for her to take Muñeca and Bashful with her. Her brother couldn’t help her this time, and she understood, hated it but understood. Only homies from Belvedere were allowed in meetings and no matter who she beat, she still wasn’t from it. Catching a sigh on her brother’s face, she nodded, showing him that she didn’t blame him. “That’s fucking bullshit!” yelled Muñeca over the fence. “You’re all mad cuz she smacked up your homeboy!” followed Bashful. “Fuck ’em,” shouted Trouble, giving Belvedere the finger. Not all the Locos wanted Trouble and the homegirls out, and those that didn’t laughed and poked fun at their homeboy for his defeat and praised her for her victory. “What happened, Stretch?” “Stretch got rocked by the homegirl Trouble!” “The homegirl Trouble got hands!" Walking to her brother, still seated, Trouble’s bent down and gave him a hug, “See you.” Dreamer returned her hug, “Don’t let them get to you, they're stupid.” “I know,” Trouble backed away and started towards the fence. “Carmen!” her brother called out to her. Stopping, embarrassed by the use of her given name, “What, Hugo?” “Trucha!” Dreamer warned her. Trouble rolled her eyes, her brother could be so paranoid, “Always,” she replied, and hopped the fence back to her homegirls. With Muñeca and Bashful, she left the viejo’s rancho and the Locos in their pen, together they walked down the street, quiet and mad. “The homies are fucking haters,” Muñeca declared. Bashful looked over her shoulder before speaking, “They don’t want us there because they know Trouble makes them look bad.” “Yeah, you fucked up Stretch, and he’s like the biggest one, chale, that shit fucking intimidates them,” Muñeca reasoned. Exhaling in frustration, Trouble snapped, “Yeah, but what the fuck you want me to do about it?” Muñeca and Bashful didn’t know what to say, the homeboys didn’t want another Locas click, only a Locos. “Ey, let’s get something, I got coin on it.” Bashful’s tone had changed and was now excited, reaching into her front pocket she produced a handful of coins. “If you got drink, I got smoke,” Muñeca said, reaching into her pocket and retrieving a sack of mota. Trouble appeared defeated, “I don’t got shit.” Both homegirls put a hand to her shoulder, “You don’t need shit, we got you,” said Bashful. Muñeca, already laughing at the recent memory, followed, “Yeah, you deserve a party for what you did to Stretch.” “I fucked him up?” Trouble asked humbly. “You laid him out!” “Yup, right on his humongous dumbass.” The Little Store was a liquor store and served the Belvedere barrio since Tía Huera was a kid, it was owned and operated by the Corporation so it wasn’t adobe. Corpse funded, it was a small square building made of concrete with a steel door and a reinforced glass window. Bashful knocked on the window, “Wake up or I’ma leave.” An elderly gringo came to the window, he was new, none of the homegirls recognized him, “What can I get you?” “Pack of Red Seven frajos, a big bag of…” The man interrupted Bashful's order, voice trembling, “Excuse me, what are frahoes?” The Corporation owned The Little Store and stores just like it in every barrio, employing old gringos in debt for no pay. Most of them had never been out of the valley before and all of them were scared of anyone Black or Brown. “Cigarettes,” replied Bashful, seeing the man nod, she went on, “a big bag of Green Chili Chips, and three Old…” Bashful stopped, interrupted now by Muñeca, “The blunt, get a blunt.” “Right,” Bashful nodded, then finished her order, “A pack of Murrieta Cigarillos and three bottles of Old Hispanic.” It took the old man working the store unbearably long to get their items but when he retrieved them all, Bashful paid him with her coins, sliding them through a small slot cut into the glass. Counting them, he slid their things through another larger slot on the opposite end of the store. Leaving, Muñeca spilled the tobacco guts from the cigarillo and started to roll the blunt, and Trouble could smell Bashful’s frajo. She held her Old Hispanic out in front of her, studying its conquistador logo before taking a swig. The brand was the Corporation’s attempt to market its liquor to Raza, suddenly she dropped the bottle and paid no attention to it shattering at her feet. In front of her, moving at a fast pace were three Tolucas, riding on their motorcycles coming toward them. “Ah shit!” shouted Muñeca, dropping the mota and the blunt and starting to run. Bashful, still smoking, took a drag, and followed. “Hey! Get the fuck back over here!” yelled a Toluca, seeing them in their headlights. Racing at them, they were surrounded by three Tolucas, one in front of them, one behind, and another at their side forcing them against the side of a tall adobe building. “Where the hell do you little ladies think you’re going?” said the Toluca at their side, stopping his bike. The Tolucas, or Toluca Rangers, were one of the many security groups that the Corporation contracted with to keep the so-called peace in Old Los Angeles. All gringo, they wore nothing but blackened leather with a lot of fringe and they kept their hair blonde, bleached if not natural, styled with product that made it stand and shine. “The fuck you want with us?!” shouted Trouble, but she knew it was a stupid question, Tolucas like all the security groups tortured and robbed anyone they caught who wasn’t rich or gringo. The Toluca in front of them stepped off his motorcycle, “Whatever you got to give us.” “We don’t got shit,” Muñeca tried to hide her worry but her homegirls could hear it. “Oh, I’m sure you got something,” said the Toluca behind them, stepping off his bike and retrieving the short spear all Tolucas carried on their back. The Tolucas to their front and side, following the last’s example, pulled their spears, wooden shafts with sharp leaf shaped points, and started to stab at the homegirls. Forcefully batting the spear away with her hand, not caring if it cut her, Trouble yelled, “Fuck, Corpse.” “Ladies,” the last Toluca raised his hand and the others stopped their poking, “Let’s start over, I’m Steve, that’s Tony,” he gestured to the Toluca at their front, “and that’s Bruce,” he gestured to the Toluca at their side, “Now either you girls cough up some coin or we start getting to know each other.” “You ain’t getting to know nobody, you fucking corpse!” Bashful pulled the gladius she kept concealed beneath her baggy blue sweater. She was the only one of the homegirls to own a sword, having taken it from a vato from Westside Westlake. Like alarms the Tolucas went off. “She’s got a fucking sword!” “Model Gladius!” Steve got the last word, “Bad move.” The Tolucas all at once lunged at Bashful. Overwhelmed by the three, they speared her to death. “Bashful!” screamed Muñeca, watching her homegirl’s body stabbed and pinned and bleeding against the adobe building. Trouble thought and felt only vengeance; the Tolucas had come into her barrio and took her homegirl’s life. Like she was nothing, how dare they! she raged in her mind. Dropping, she grabbed Bashful’s gladius, fallen by her feet, and brought it upwards into the jaw and through the head of Tony. She left no time for the Tolucas to react; pulling it, she slashed at Bruce, cutting him at the belly and spilling his guts. Her momentum was stopped by Steve, who pulled his spear from Bashful, finally letting her body drop, and stabbing it into Trouble’s shoulder. Muñeca swung as hard as she could and yelled, “Fucker!” Steve turned his head to meet her coming first, the punch giving her the precious seconds needed to pick up Tony’s spear. Steve, still tearing at the eye and bleeding from the nose, Muñeca charged him, running him through with the spear and toppling him over. Holding the place where she’d been stabbed, Trouble locked eyes with Muñeca, looking back at her from skewering the Toluca, then they both looked at Bashful's body. Both homegirls stuck between sadness and relief. They didn’t have too much time to think, a voice on the radio of one of the dead Toluca’s motorcycles echoed, “Boys? You there, boys? Steve? Bruce? Listen. If you’re alive? Help is coming, if you’re dead, expect revenge, the Corporation is sending in the Blue Eyes.” The Blue Eyed White Knights were known as the white axe of Corporate, they left the valley and cut down anything or anyone that dared to stand up. Hearing the engines of their motorcycles, the homegirls huddled together their backs to the adobe building. Needing heavy motorcycles to carry them, the White Knights kept their faces hidden behind snow white pig face helmets, worn atop blued plate armor and carried double sided battle axes, snow white like their helmets with blue steel blades. Reaching the homegirls first and stepping off his bike, a White Knight came towards them, his white axe at the ready. “Belvedere!” yelled Muñeca, charging the White Knight she jammed her spear into his chest, but it uselessly deflected off his armor. “ Muñeca, run!” shouted Trouble. Too late, the White Knight’s axe came down, taking both of her homegirl’s arms off with one chop, severing them right below the elbow. Teetering backwards in shock, Muñeca fell, but Trouble rushed in to catch her. “Pendeja,” she mumbled woefully, looking up to see the White Knight already bearing down upon them. Thinking she was distracted by her wounded friend, the White Knight raised his axe high for one massive attack. Trouble, seizing the opportunity, let go of Muñeca, and took hold of Bashful's sword, slashing up at the neck and in between the knight’s armor. Stepping away from the homegirls as if suddenly disinterested, the White Knight turned to face his fellow Blue Eyes and fell, his head rolling away from his body when he landed. “Cute,” echoed one of the Knights, and three, almost on command, unseated their bikes and pulled their axes. That was when Trouble heard the roaring engines of her salvation, Barrio Belvedere was coming. Dreamer and the Locos fixed their motorcycles to be fast, and that made them loud, shaking windows as they flew in from the side opposite of the Blue Eyes. Swarming, they protectively wedged themselves between the homegirls and the White Knights. Her big brother had come, but Trouble’s pride wasn’t going to let her call it a rescue. Riding with Dreamer were Listo, Roach, and Stretch. Already pulling their swords, Roach and Stretch started facing down the knights. “They got Bashful! ” called out Listo, then running to Muñeca, “They fucked up the homegirl pretty bad, she needs help.” Dreamer, off his bike, ordered, “Stretch, get Muñeca, get her out of here,” “But fucking Corpses, the fucking Blue Eyes…” he started to argue but Dreamer stopped him, “I said get her and go!” “Fuck it,” Stretch hated his orders but still followed them, sheathing his longsword and taking Muñeca in his arms and carrying her to his bike. As Stretch and Muñeca sped off, Dreamer turned to Listo but before he could give him orders, his attention was called to Roach. One of the Knights was inching their way towards Roach. Alarmed, he shifted his stance and shouted, “Get the fuck back!” The White Knight, picking up on his fear, came at him with his axe. Roach carried a thin bladed rapier, failing to block, the white axe broke his sword in half and embedding in his chest in one hard chop. “Roach!” yelled Listo, his homeboy falling over and bleeding out. “Listo!” Dreamer got his attention, “Get my sister, and go.” Trouble, her voice stricken with pain, protested “Dreamer let me fight with you.” Dreamer smiled in admiration of his little sister’s courage, “Chale.” “Dreamer?” It was the knight who had called Trouble’s beheading of his fellow Blue Eyes cute. “I’m Dreamer from Belvedere,” he answered, placing a hand on his katana. The White Knight sneered through his snow white helmet, “Known as the Sword of the East?” “I am,” Dreamer followed with the unsheathing of his katana and directing it towards the knight. Seeing the katana wielded by her brother, Trouble remembered the legends every youngster in the Chicano L.A learned coming up. Only the oldest barrios had a katana, the Belvedere katana dating all the way back to 1942, when it was used by the first vato from the barrio to learn the way of the sword. Since then Belvedere katana was always passed down to the Sword of the East. “Excellent,” the condescending voice of White Knight had a piercing tone, “I’ll have them put your head on display. I’m William, Lord Percy to you and Captain of the Blue Eyes.” The three Knights, including the one that killed Roach, all attacked Dreamer, thinking it by surprise, but with three strikes much faster than theirs he took them all down, their bodies piling in a heap of bleeding armor. “Fools,” Lord Percy had started with a dozen Knights, eight now with those just cut down, he directed the rest to attack Dreamer all at once. “Trouble, go with Listo!” Dreamer yelled to his sister as the rest of the White Knights left their motorcycles and pulled their white axes. “No, don’t make me!” pleaded Trouble. “Listo!” Hearing his big homie, Listo grabbed Trouble, and helped by her weakness from her wound, he was able to pull her onto his motorcycle. Held by Listo and speeding away, Trouble looked back and saw her brother engage the Blue Eyes. Dreamer waded into the White Knights like water, his katana dipping into the gaps in their armor and cutting them to pieces. None of the Knights made it past him, falling one by one and losing limbs and heads on their way down. What was left of them lay scattered, turning the dirt road beneath them into a blood soaked mud. When Dreamer was through, only he and Lord Percy were standing. Getting smaller as Listo took her farther away, a bump made Trouble bounce and gaze further out and into the distance. There, she saw the snake of headlights slithering towards her brother from the valley. More White Knights, all of the Blue Eyes it seemed, were coming to put down the Sword of the East. She couldn’t let him die, not over her, telling her homeboy, “Dispensa,” and barely hearing his confused, “What?” Trouble reverse headbutted Listo, breaking his nose, making him swerve and struggle not to crash. Letting her go, she fell from the motorcycle, rolled and felt bones break. So she crawled until she willed herself up into a limp, all to get back to her brother. But Trouble was too late. Tripping, she caught herself on her knees and elbows, scraping them both. Finding the legs that tripped her she saw that they were plate armored and missing the rest of their body. Panic straightened her back and turned her melodic limp into a run, and she next found the body belonging to the legs, its armor dented and crusted with bloody dirt. A Chicano barrio warrior defeated a White Knight, and when she stumbled upon Lord Percy’s severed head, his helmet hacked off, the look on his face told her he died shocked. Where was her brother? The nervous thought gripped her mind and Trouble called out, “Hugo! Dreamer!” “Carmen!” She heard her brother's voice and followed it. Dreamer was laying on his back, arms and legs spread like a fallen star, the blade of the White Knight’s snow-white axe broken off into his chest and stomach. Trouble ran to him, “What the fuck do I do?!” “Trouble,” he started to speak but his voice failed. Hearing their engines, she saw the snake of lights coming their way, “Dreamer,” she said his name like a warning then she started to drag him, “Chale,” Dreamer stopped her, gripping his sword one last time, then pushing it into his sister’s hands. When Trouble took hold of it, he pulled her to him and whispered. She laid her brother to rest and did as he said, taking the katana of Belvedere and running, his last words echoing to her as she made her escape, “Trouble from Belvedere must live, she’s the Sword of the East now.”  Robert “Wizard” Martin is a Chicano writer, whose work is influenced by his experiences growing up in Los Angeles and his activism. Through his stories he seeks to counter mainstream narratives and assumptions by calling into question what is “canon” or “orthodox” through the historized placement of Chicano/a/xs in roles and spaces from which they have long been erased or excluded. His themes include Chicano Noir, Chicano Futurism, and Alternative Chicano History.
 “The Collaborator” by M.R. Subias The battered taxi up ahead weaves around a red mini and I know our guy’s spotted us. I stomp on the Mustang’s gas so our perp, Eddie Mears, can’t pull away from our headlights and lose us. I glance right. Kah-Haas my seven-foot-tall Slitha partner, knees jammed up under his scaly chin in a seat built for humans, calls dispatch for backup. If our target keeps going straight, maybe some other feds will cut him off, if any are around. The local cops here in L.A. always take just a bit too long to assist. They don’t want other humans to think they’re too eager to collaborate with our alien masters. For them, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator. The taxi heads straight at a slow scooter but before it hits, swerves a hairpin left. A couple holding hands in the middle of the crosswalk freezes in the headlights. The taxi fishtails on wet pavement and skids forward. A pedestrian goes down. A woman screams. Kah-Haas tells dispatch to send an ambulance. In a better world, maybe I’d stop and help, but that’s not the one I get to live in. I slow a little, barely enough to turn clean and miss the pedestrians, then pull straight again. I’ve fallen back, but still see our target. Our perp makes a sharp right, but I’m ready and take it fast enough to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my partner’s long, green fingers on his gun, but he doesn’t draw it. These days, Kah-Haas values human life enough not to shoot from a moving car and endanger bystanders. And, if the tip we got is good, we need to take this guy alive. Seems our quarry is trying for a secret escape route for people running from the law. And the same source told us somebody skipped town that way a couple weeks ago, carrying something the Slitha badly want to get back. We’re gaining on the taxi and our guy brakes hard. The taxi fishtails again, skids, then rear-ends a parked truck. A second later, the driver’s door flies open. I can tell from the broad shoulders the guy who jumps out is Mears. He hits the ground running, into the January darkness swallowing the UCLA campus. We pull up behind the dead taxi. I don’t wait for Kah-Haas, just get out and run after Mears. My partner needs extra time to pull himself out of a car made for smaller beings, but his long legs always help him catch up. I run down the walkway, trying not to lose the perp in the darkness. A minute later, Kah-Haas’s voice crackles painfully loud from my earbud. “I see you. Do you have eyes on the suspect? Over.” “Roger that. Over.” The campus hasn’t completely shut down since the Slitha invaded fifteen years ago, but there’s more dark than light here. The glow from inside a three-story building outlines our man when he opens the door to go in. The perp ducks inside. “Kah-Haas, I’ll go in. You go around. Over.” I jerk the door open and see movement at the end of the long hallway. I run past a few humans talking. They do a double take when I run by yelling, “FBI, stop right there!” The door at the far end of the building closes. A human leg disappears into the stairwell. I run to the end of the hallway, but Kah-Haas’s outside so I take the stairs up. I get to the second floor and draw my Glock. I see a bathroom and hear something inside. I bolt for the door, shove my way in, and raise my gun. “FBI. Freeze!” In front of me, the rust colored Slitha facing the mirror over the sink does just that. A couple seconds later, the loose skin under the sides of his jaw puffs out and flushes red. It turns around, slowly. The alien’s huge, yellow-green eyes with their black slit pupils look down on me. I lower my Glock and swallow the lump in my throat. “Sorry, sir. I’m in pursuit of a criminal.” The alien lightly brushes long, sharp black nails down a tweed jacket tailored to his eight-foot height. “Allow me to introduce myself.” The alien speaks perfect English. “I am Professor Sath-Osh.” He sneers down at me. “And there are few crimes greater than a human threatening a Slitha with a gun.” I pull my earbud out and crank up the volume so we can both hear Kah-Haas arresting Mears. I smile the practiced, professional smile I always use for our masters. “Please, sir, my apologies. My senior partner is of the Race and I’m only following his orders - Kah-Haas can explain why I overreacted. After all, humans must obey their Slitha superiors, and I was just doing my best.” His smile is cruel. If Kah-Haas can’t smooth things over, being out of a job will be the least of my problems. *** Work ends and I head home. Leticia and the boys are asleep. I grab a glass and a cheap bottle of bourbon and sit by the front window cradling my Glock. I drink, look into the darkness, and wait. Slitha Internal Security could be here any time. I feel the cold metal in my hand and think about who I’ll shoot when they finally come for us. Or just me, if I’m lucky. Our masters would consider eating a bullet honorable compensation for failure if one of them did it. But they look down on humans, so from me it’d just be the act of a coward. And a mortal sin. At least that’s what they told me when I was a kid. I look down at the Glock, then towards the back of the house where my family sleeps. How far would I go to keep Leticia and the boys from dying by inches in a Lizard concentration camp? I holster my Glock, fill my glass, take another drink, and wait. Dawn opens its eyes and Internal Security still isn’t here. Maybe pointing a gun at one of our conquerors hasn’t earned me an all- expense paid trip to a Slitha concentration camp. Or the security goons might just be giving me time to sweat. I leave while my family still sleeps. *** First thing that morning, Kah-Haas and I are standing in Deputy Director Curtis Booker’s office. Our boss’s snarling grimace tells me he’s furious and that his ulcer’s on fire. “Listen up, you miserable excuse for federal agents, you caught your suspect but thanks to you, the Bureau’s in a whole new world of hurt.” He shakes his head. Booker rubs his temples, scowls at me, then shoots a frown up at Kah-Haas. “Let’s take this from the top. You apprehended Eddie Mears, a suspect one of our informants told us was planning on going underground. He’s our only lead in finding out where at least a dozen other fugitives have disappeared to over the last three years.” Booker glares at me. “But you’re supposed to catch little fish like Mears with no problem – not cause new ones doing it.” Deputy Director Booker pulls a crusty bottle full of something pink out of his desk and takes a slug. “You clowns just had to turn a simple arrest into a train wreck.” His hand shakes a little as he taps a form on his desk. For the first time in years, I see fear in his eyes, from a man who was still fighting against the Slitha invasion after most of the human race had laid down its guns. Kah-Haas nods. “You speak of Professor Sath-Osh, the Slitha at whom Agent Cortez aimed his firearm.” The Deputy Director won’t glare at a Slitha, not even Kah-Haas, so he just winces and nods. My partner picks up the form and reads it. “This is a serious situation, but one which may yet be weathered.” We look at Kah-Haas, waiting for the good and the bad news. “This individual is a professor of Slitha studies. Professor Sath-Osh teaches the Slitha language, proper behavior for humans in the company of our race, and history presented in a manner suitable for earth’s inhabitants.” The loose skin under the sides of Kah-Haas’s jaw tightens up for a couple of seconds, so I know he thinks something’s funny. “I have made inquiries with others of my kind. While Professor Sath-Osh is of The Race and thus may never be spoken of with disrespect, he was assigned his teaching position on earth due to behavior in a military campaign which ‘failed to achieve the level of valor expected of a Slitha warrior against the empire’s foes.” Booker and I look at each other. He’s not as angry as a minute ago, but his eyes still remind me of a kid roasting ants with a magnifying glass. Kah-Haas’s mouth tenses again. “While no human should ever suggest that a member of my race lacks courage, were the fact that you pointed your weapon at the Professor to become common knowledge, some Slitha would speculate that Professor Sath-Osh felt considerable fear when this occurred. In fact, his complaint fails to mention a firearm at all, but insists only that Agent Cortez burst in and behaved with great disrespect toward a Slitha. It also suggests that my junior partner is a bumbling incompetent and that I have failed the Race by allowing my human underling to operate without sufficient supervision.” Kah-Haas’s eyes move back and forth, so I know he’s nervous and that the Professor’s still trouble for us. The Deputy Director Booker nods. “I have to route this complaint up the chain, to Slitha Internal Security. Maybe it isn’t as bad as the Professor accusing Cortez of threatening him with a gun, but it’s still a time bomb. We’re all looking at demotion or worse.” My gut punches me and I almost ask Booker for a slug of that nasty, pink stuff. Booker looks at me, then up at Kah-Haas. He points at the complaint on his desk. “I can move this slow. Nobody who’ll give you trouble will see it in less than a week.” He nods at us. “Close this case. Do that, and things should calm down.” He nods. “Get out of here and find out what Mears knows.” *** Eddie Mears sits in a metal chair, chained to a steel table, in the sweltering interrogation room, right over the floor grate hot air rises up from. Sweat pours down his face. We’ve been running him through our good cop, bad cop routine for two hours. Even though he’s not a hardcore Human Defense Force terrorist or even a tough repeat felon, he hasn’t cracked. Still, I see the signs. I walk around behind him. “So, Eddie. You managed the spaceport fuel depot and set up a racket stealing gas and selling it on the black market. You took bribes from hungry people desperate for jobs and got a fat cut from every paycheck. There’s even talk you sold wakeup drugs to spaceport workers so they could stay sharp during double shifts. We have a witness who’s talked and more we’re going to talk to. What you did was illegal, but not exactly murder. For me, this isn’t personal.” I nod at Kah-Haas. My partner leans down and spreads scaly, long-fingered hands on the table. He stares at Mears with big, slitted, orange-red eyes. “I, on the other hand, see your actions as violations of the trust the Race put in you. I take the acts of traitors very personally.” Our perp looks away. Kah-Haas grabs his face, leans in close, and forces Mears to meet his alien eyes. Nails like black spearheads dig into pale cheeks. “I shall have you exiled from earth for the rest of your life to mine fire opals below twin suns on the desert moon of Zath-Hassa.” The first time Kah-Haas used that line on a prisoner, I broke out laughing. I’d been studying the language and the culture and knew Zath-Hassa was from a Slitha children’s story. You might as well threaten to send somebody to Mordor. Mears doesn’t know that, closes his eyes, and sobs. Kah-Haas glances up at me quick and juts out his jaw, pretty much winking. I move next to Mears, put a hand on Kah-Haas’s shoulder, and pretend pushing him back is hard. Eddie sits up a little. I look our perp in the eye. “Eddie, my partner cares about something more than missing gas or some bribes or a few pep pills, something an informant told us you were trying to get to. You help us with that, I’m pretty sure he’ll agree to ask for a reduced sentence, maybe even just a year or two in a regular work camp. How does that sound?” Eddie looks at both of us, eyes half-tough, half-hopeful. Kah-Haas and I wait. Then my partner glowers, clenching his fists. “There may be truth to Agent Cortez’s words.” I look at Mears. “Do you know something that might calm my partner down?” Mears talks fast. “There’s a pipeline to get away and get a new identity. It’s expensive. A couple of guys, Human Defense Force, I think, they told me to give it a shot if things got hot.” Kah-Haas pulls back his glower a notch. I nod to Mears. “Keep going.” South of UCLA, in Westwood. You’re supposed to ask around for good luggage, say you can pay a lot for it. Then somebody contacts you. His eyes give me a sad, hungry look. “That’s where I was headed when you popped me.” *** Two days later I’m walking slow through a warm drizzle in Westwood. I keep my shoulders hunched and pull the old, black baseball cap’s brim down close to my face. I’ve got a small, brown suitcase, and phony papers inside my jacket that say I’m Eddie Mears. My weight and height are close to his, and my hair’s been lightened to match. Eddie’s still in solitary, in a dry cell, while I’m getting rained on. Not that I’d want to change places. Of course, if we don’t find our missing man and whatever it is he took, I could soon be joining Mr. Mears. Every neighborhood in L.A. has gone downhill since the invasion, and with most UCLA classes closed down, Westwood’s worse than most. Student housing turned into cheap motels and seedy apartments. Crowded coffee houses and pricey stores are now mostly cheap bars and second-hand stores. Lots of storefronts stand empty, staring out at me, broken windows for eyes. Paint peels from the walls of once-prized homes. Here and there sit empty lots covered with blackened wreckage, squatter-set fires gone out of control. I’m old enough to remember a better time, when humanity thought it was alone in the universe. I glance up at a brick wall. One of those big signs stares down at me—the alien metal glows with a rippling inner light. It shows a Lizard, one hand up, fingers spread out, holding up a tiny earth. Written above him in glowing Slitha letters and below in English, the sign says, “Peace and Order.” Our masters started putting up signs like that right after the invasion. Within a week, every one that wasn’t in a high-security area got tagged, usually with something obscene. The Slitha switched to ones with a frictionless coating. The tagging stopped. It isn’t that people like the new signs any better. Paint just doesn’t stick to them. A few rounds of public executions didn’t hurt either. Worn-down women with hungry eyes lean against walls. A pale blonde with a chipped tooth smiles at me. “I’ve got a place around the corner,” she says, then sneers when I shake my head. There are no Slitha around. It’s not that they’re afraid rebels might be hiding here. There’s just nothing here our alien masters want. Cheap Rooms is a bottom-of-the-barrel motel. I go into the office and breathe the musty carpet smell while I study the prices on the wall. I slide one night’s worth of cash across the dirty counter. I’ll pay tomorrow if I need to stay another night. The old man with dandruff-spotted, slicked-back grey hair slides over the key. “Checkout’s at eleven and there’s no cooking in the room.” I frown. The idea of eating in this place makes me want to swear off food forever. I head up the badly lit stairs. The room’s small, but the door’s solid, evidence of long-gone, better times. A solid door’s mostly why Kah-Haas and I chose this place. I lay on the bed, then pull out my half-dollar-sized comm unit and call Kah-Haas. He picks up and I start talking. “I’m settled in and about to go out.” He responds. “Any problems?” I scratch a suddenly itchy scalp. “Not unless you count the valiant efforts of the bedbug resistance.” Kah-Haas’s quiet for a couple seconds, so I can tell he liked that one. I smile before he talks again. “You’re starting with the leads we got from Mears?” I study a vent on the wall. “Unless something changes.” “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll continue to find out what I can at my end and let you know what I learn.” “Roger that. Later.” I hang up and look at the vent again. Too obvious. I lift the bed and quietly drag it away from the wall. I draw the black-bladed folding knife I keep clipped inside my waistband, flick it open, then use the four-inch, half-serrated black blade to work the edge of the worn carpet loose from the floor. The floorboard pries up easy so I stash my holster and Glock and the comm unit in the space underneath. I open the suitcase. The cash goes in the hole, along with the collection of gleaming, pre-invasion Rolexes. The cash is almost-perfect counterfeit, but the Rolexes are real, part of Eddie Mears’ stash. Anyway, this juicy haul makes the story about being a rich criminal willing to pay to escape believable. Once everything’s hidden and the bed’s back where it belongs, I leave the room, stopping to stick a hair between the door and the jam. If it falls off, I’ll know someone’s gotten into my room. *** I walk out into the night. Light shines from scattered homes and struggling businesses and the street people’s trashcan fires. Among the clusters of people warming themselves, men and women with intelligent eyes in deeply lined faces hunch together. I wonder how many had teaching positions before the Slitha decided a new narrative needed to be taught. I look away from the lost souls. No good comes from thinking like that. First stop is The Noodle Bar. I grab a little table in a corner and study the menu. A skinny waitress drags her feet over, tired as my soul. Her nametag says “Maria.” I order a cheap bowl of ramen and a beer. “Anything else?” she asks. I ask just loud enough for people at nearby tables to hear and pitch my voice just a little anxious. “Know where I can score some quality luggage? A friend of mine who passed through bought some around here.” Normally I’d be more subtle, but we’ve got to solve this mess before the Professor’s complaint makes its way to Slitha Internal Security. Maria flashes a bored smile. “Quality Pawn’s around the corner.” She heads off. The beer comes. I drink and watch the customers. The noodles aren’t bad. I take my time eating, order another beer and grab a copy of the Los Angeles Times somebody left on the next table. Newspapers made of real paper were pretty much dead when I was a kid. They’ve made a comeback since our occupiers shut down most of the Internet and new computers are rare and expensive. Tame reporters write stories about how good things are under the occupation and how they’d be even better if humans cooperated more with our masters. Still, you can find classified ads and weather forecasts and stories about what local music scene’s still around. Somebody comes in and plays guitar for tips. I nurse my beer and work the Times’ crossword puzzle. When my drink is done, I give Maria money and ration slips, then head back to my room. Outside, I feel eyes on me and stop at an unbroken shop window to look at the reflection, but it’s too dark to see if anyone’s following me. A car comes this way, so I move fast and cross just before it gets here. Across the street is a big dark shape. Could be a man. Could be nothing. No need to risk getting jumped to find out. *** Next day, I check in with Kah-Haas. No new leads. I hide the comm unit under the floorboard again. I think about the dark shape and almost take the Glock but decide against it. The noodle place stays open all day, so I sit at the bar and get dishwater coffee and a dry, tasteless roll. A pale, young guy with a metallic-red ponytail works the counter. I read his nametag and meet his eye. “Morning, Roy. I’m Eddie.” He wipes the counter. “What do you need, my man?” “I’m taking a trip and need some high-quality luggage. You know where I can score some?” Roy stops wiping and looks at me for a long second, then nods. He points at a cork board on the far wall with ads on it. I finish my roll and take my coffee over and look. No one’s advertising secret escape routes for fugitives, but people are selling just about everything else. I grab a three by five card that says “Best Luggage for Sale” with a phone number, then fold it in half and stick it in Mears’ wallet by some lawyer’s business card. Another cork board ad shows a picture of a crystal ball and proclaims that Madam Sabina can provide “all life’s answers.” Don’t I wish. I pull out Eddie Mears’ cheap burner phone and make the call. A mechanical voice tells me to leave a message. “A friend of mine came this way and said somebody could hook me up with quality luggage.” I pause, talk a little faster. “I want to take a trip right away and I can pay.” *** It’s a slow walk down the street to Quality Pawn. I push the buzzer and an older, Asian woman in tidy jeans and a faded Metallica t-shirt comes to look. Her sharp eyes peer through the glass and her head leans to one side. She buzzes open the door. “Good morning. Let me know if you need any help.” I go in and look around. The place is clean and well-kept, like every store back before the invasion. A smiling, gold cat by the register waves mechanically. I browse and keep up my trying not to be afraid act. “Do you have any luggage? I’m looking for something nice.” I say this even though I’ll look stupid, since I already saw shelves with luggage on them. The woman looks at me like somebody must have once dropped me on the head, but I need to make sure she knows what I’m looking for. She points at the obvious row of waiting suitcases. “Yes, but I mean something nicer.” “Just what you see.” I ask a few questions about the luggage and who pawned it. She brightens at the possible sale but gives me only vague answers while trying to get me to buy something. I leave empty-handed. *** The rest of the day, I check out other places we think fugitives visited. Evening comes. I walk back to the room, go in, and lock the door. I pull out the comm unit. “Kah-Haas, you there? Over.” My partner speaks with a quiet, serious voice. “I am here, agent Cortez. What have you found? Over.” “No breakthroughs yet. I’m waiting for a couple of leads to develop.” Kah-Haas says nothing. I look at the time, then the power light on the comm unit. Still green. I wonder what’s causing the holdup. “I have called in favors and learned exactly what it is we seek.” Kah-Haas’s hissing accent lowers in pitch. “It is a journal.” “A journal. I got it. And?” Again, Kah-Haas keeps me waiting. Finally, my he speaks. “Someone stole this and passed it to a fugitive who fled two weeks ago.” He pauses. “Agent Cortez, you can never reveal to anyone what I am about to tell you.” My hands feel damp. Kah-Haas is scared. “There are Slitha who keep such journals, and a senior officer of the fleet who did so was slain in battle. His possessions were recovered with the intention of delivering them to his heirs on our home world. Someone stole the journal and passed it on to one of our missing fugitives.” That’s when I know my partner wouldn’t tell me about the journal unless he thought it was the only way to crack this case. Kah-Haas’s also warning me that learning too much about this journal could get both of us disappeared. I barely hear him speak. “This senior officer wrote extensively about the course of the war. He documented certain embarrassing defeats our fleet has suffered which have, as you humans say, been hushed up. Such details, should they come to light, could ruin the careers of several of our top political and military leaders and bring chaos to the empire.” No wonder the Slitha want this back. Somebody might read it and figure out how to contact the aliens the Lizards are fighting, maybe even recruit them as allies against our occupiers. This journal could be a goldmine for the resistance, maybe even give humanity the political leverage to make the Lizards stop grinding their boot on our necks. No wonder our alien masters want it back so badly. “I have said too much, Agent Cortez. If anyone should learn what I have told you, our lives would be forfeit.” “If anyone asks, all I know is that we’re looking for a journal written in Slitha, but that I don’t know who wrote it or what’s in it. If it comes to that, I’ll also tell them that my Slitha isn’t that good.” Kaah-Haas responds. “You’re clever—for a human—Frank Cortez.” “You’re not too slow for a big lizard either.” “Goodbye, Agent Cortez. Until tomorrow.” *** I try to sleep before going out into the night but thinking about the journal keeps me up. The rain’s ended by the time I head into the darkness. I walk to Rocco’s Tavern, a dark wood and brick bar where a now-dead informant spotted two Human Defense Force bomb makers before they disappeared. I do the same drill and ask about luggage and friends who came through here. The waiter gives the same useless answers. I feel something in my gut and look around the room. A man walks up to the table. He limps just barely enough I can see it. He’s got coal-dark skin and a buzz cut and wears an oversized military coat. The guy sits down and pulls a plastic case out of his pocket. He opens it with gloved hands. The open cover hides its contents from passersby. Inside is what looks like a sniffer for finding bugs. Seems like leaving the comm unit in the room was a good call. He pulls an earbud out of one of his pockets and plugs it into the sniffer and his right ear. Some kind of West Indian accent comes out. “Let’s see the phone.” I pull Eddie Mears’ cheap, burner phone out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Password?” I tell him. He uses it and hooks the phone to the sniffer. I’ve made some calls consistent with being the fugitive I’m impersonating. I watch the crowd, drink my beer, and let him work. He finishes, slides the burner back, then puts away his gear. “Call me Sharp. You’re looking for a way out and can pay.” I could ask how he knew, but Sharp probably wouldn’t tell. He’d probably think I was stupid for asking. I ask a different question. “How do I know I can trust you?” We shut up while a waiter stands by the next table for too long. Then he talks. “Lester Moore, Bill Carson, Libby Schultz, Ignacio Salazar.” I let the smile spread out. Two of those are aliases used by the Human Defense Force explosive experts who went missing. The others were criminals who also disappeared around here. Sharp probably figures I know at least one of those names. No common thief or con artist would have that information. Sharp pulls a shapeless dark green beanie out of a pocket. “Wait ten minutes. I’ll be out back. Keep your distance and follow me.” His expensive gear and what he knows tells me he’s no common criminal. Just in case, I say something to protect myself. “What I have that’s valuable isn’t on me.” Stifling a laugh, Sharp gets up and leaves. Ten minutes later, I settle my tab and follow. *** I get to the alley behind Rocco’s. There’s a human shape at the far end of my vision that looks like it’s probably Sharp. It starts moving. I follow. I listen to night noises. A loud argument from an open window. Atonal Slitha classical music, just loud enough to hear. A cat’s rising yowl. Something big breaks loose from the shadows. A fist the size of a small ham flies at my face. I drop down and raise my left arm. My forearm moves the punch off-line, just barely, but huge knuckles scrape my skull and rock my head. I drive my right fist at the center of mass. My punch lands solid, but there’s barely a grunt and my hand feels like I drove it into a side of beef. The big man steps to my right so I circle to keep us face to face, left shoulder forward. My left hand stays up while the right drifts low and close. I’ll be on the ground if this monster lands a solid punch. The big man shuffles forward, hands up like a boxer. I move back. He throws a jab, then a cross. I slip to my right, just in time to keep from ending up on the ground. He pulls back his next cross and I step in fast and whip my open left hand at his face. One of my fingers hits his eye. The big man curses. Before he can do anything, I pull the knife from inside my waistband with my right and I flick out four inches of steel. The big man backs up a few feet and raises his hands. Smart move. I’m about to tell him to run when I hear a gun’s hammer pull back. Behind me, I hear a slight Jamaican accent. “Drop the knife.” I do what Sharp says, slowly, then raise my hands. The big man lifts a hand and rubs his angry eye. Sharpe says more. “My friend and I have a proposition.” Somehow, I don’t think they’re really giving me a choice. These guys are smart and cool-headed, and no common criminals. I’d bet my badge they’re Human Defense Force. The big man slides over to my side. I tense my stomach, ready for a revenge gut punch. Instead, he pulls out a little flashlight, turns it on, and gently searches my pockets. I get my first clear look at him. Male Caucasian just under six feet, huge chest, thick arms and legs, bearded blond, but bundled up too much for me to see more. He finds my fake papers, reads them, and puts them back. He digs out Mears’ wallet, takes out the business cards, looks at them, shows one to Sharp. A deep bass rumbles. “Lawyers.” Both men laugh. The big man keeps looking through the wallet, “And Doctor Delaveau’s luggage.” Silence follows. The bearded man gives me back the wallet and puts away his little light. Sharp says something I half expected. “You’ve been asking around. My friend and I are also unpopular with the Lizards and need the escape route you’re looking for.” I start to speak but one big hand grabs the back of my head and the other covers the half of my face my mouth is on. The big man squeezes, and lifts and my feet leave the ground. My head feels like it’s in a vice. The big man could break my neck without trying. I sweat, but don’t do anything stupid. “The man who left this card, Doctor Delaveau, he controls part of this escape route. You need to make contact and find out if he can get us out.” He pauses. “Now you can talk.” The big man puts me down and takes his hands away. Now I understand why these two jumped me. They needed to know how I act under pressure, if I could walk into a dangerous situation without falling apart. “Why don’t you two just go in there yourself?” “Things are not always what they seem. Who knows? Maybe Delaveau’s working with Lizard Internal Security and they’re sending anyone who looks for help to some concentration camp.” I take my first relaxed breath in days. These guys have given me my big break. And if this Doctor Delaveau is a stooge for Slitha Internal Security, doing what Sharp wants is just going to help me close this case faster. The journal Kah-Haas and I need is probably still sitting on the doctor’s desk or maybe waiting to get processed in some backlogged Internal Security property room. This wouldn’t be the first time two law enforcement agencies worked the same case from different ends without either one knowing about it. I make my voice tremble but add a note of defiance. “So, I could end up in a concentration camp?” “We don’t consider it likely, but, as I said, no need to take chances… at least on our end.” I nod, “So, how do we do this?” Sharp’s quiet for a few seconds even though I know he already has a plan. “My friend will walk you to your stash. Then you’ll make contact with Doctor Delaveau.” “How do I know your big friend won’t put my head through a wall and take everything I’ve got?” Sharp grabs my right shoulder and turns me around. His black, snub-nosed revolver is leveled at my right eye. I take a deep breath. Sharp lowers the pistol and presses it into my hand. He looks me straight in the eye. I flip open the cylinder. It holds five, .357 rounds. I check them one by one. None are blanks. Sharp must think whatever valuables Eddie Mears has are worthless compared to a chance for freedom. He also believes I’m smart enough to understand that. I nod and slip the gun into my right coat pocket and pick up my knife. Of course, he and his friend might try to rob me later. But with any luck, Kah-Haas and I will arrest them first. The big man, who I’ve decided to call Silent, walks with me through the dark. We reach Cheap Rooms and head up the stairs. The fight’s adrenaline rush fades. I’m tired and my head throbs where Silent’s fist rocked my skull. I open the door and we walk in. The big man stops just inside the room and shuts the door. I put the suitcase on the floor, pull the bed from the wall, and kneel on the carpet. My body blocks Silent’s view. I glance over at him with my peripheral vision. The counterfeit bills and the Rolexes go in the case. I leave the Glock and the comm unit. I can’t talk to Kah-Haas with Silent here and, if I take it, Sharp might run another scan and figure out I’m a cop. I replace the board, carpet, and bed. Now for my doctor’s appointment. *** Silent walks me most of the way, but I go alone the last block to Dr. Delaveau’s house. Homes and yards are big, though not like the Beverly Hills mansions a couple miles east. Thick-leaved trees line the street and create a sense of privacy. My head aches from when Silent hit me and my left forearm throbs where it blocked his punch. Maybe the Doctor can do something about that. Before I go up to Delaveau’s house, I hide the suitcase by the bottom of the stone steps leading to his door, back behind a black, wrought-iron bench mostly hidden by sweet-smelling lavender. I climb the steps to the two-story house. Before the invasion, doctors didn’t work from home. Now, many do. I hammer the front door with the tarnished brass knocker. A tiny metal hatch opens near the top of the thick door. An eye examines me. A man speaks. “Is there an emergency?” “My name’s Mears. Someone said I could buy luggage here.” A pause. The man has a slight French accent. “Do you have references?” I name a criminal who told the real Mears about the escape route before he disappeared. I hear a bolt slide. The door swings open. Male Caucasian with a medium build, just under six feet, with swept-back iron-grey hair. He wears a loose, grey jacket and keeps his right hand in his pocket. Light shines from inside and he looks me up and down. “I’m Doctor Delaveau. Please come in. But don’t make any sudden moves.” I walk in with my hands by my sides. We head down the hall to a dining room. “Please sit. Would you like coffee?” I sit. “Sure… please.” He returns with two cups. There’s cream and sugar on the tray, but neither of us use it. He gestures towards me. “You’re injured. Is it anything serious?” “I wouldn’t turn down some aspirin.” Delaveau gets up. “Please excuse me.” He leaves the room. I look around and drink up, hoping coffee will fight my fatigue. The rich, smoky, dark-roasted flavor is like heaven. Twelve years of alien occupation and food rationing hasn’t cramped the doctor’s style. I see expensive furniture and shelves heavy with leather-bound books and beautiful crystal sculptures. If this is a Slitha sting, the doctor left to call his bosses. After they show up, I’ll identify myself. Then, maybe we can figure out where the journal went. The doctor comes back with aspirin and an ice pack. I swallow the pills and hold the ice pack to my head. “Thanks.” “I enjoy taking care of my guests.” He smiles. “And speaking of that…” He takes our empty cups and comes back a few minutes later with fresh ones, and a pot on the tray. “You may wonder how I came to provide the service you seek.” I stay quiet and drink. Delaveau’s the kind who likes to talk. “I lived well before the Slitha arrived, though their arrival made maintaining my lifestyle difficult. But strange as it seems, the invasion improved my life. As with others, events forced me to live by my wits in a way I never would have otherwise. Consider the black market. Everyone uses it, and by so doing, all become lawbreakers. And those who survive best are the ones who have become exceptional criminals. So, while I still practice medicine, my humanitarian sideline supports a fine lifestyle and gives me the pleasure which comes with being exceptionally clever.” I finish my coffee. He pours me a new cup. Delaveau talks about how humanity had become soft and how the Slitha occupation sharpened our dulled minds and put us in touch with our primal instincts. The doctor barely lifts his cup as I suck down my coffee, instead going on and on about how the invasion was some kind of great gift. I yawn, too wide. “Can I use the bathroom?” “Of course.” He smiles. “In the hallway.” I nod, get up, use the bathroom, throw water on my face. I step back in the hallway, but decide to lean against the wall, just for a second. As I slide down, I think about how Doctor Delaveau kept talking and talking after he finished his first cup of coffee while I drank deep. My head feels fuzzy when my eyes open. I see a ceiling, but not in the hallway. I try to get up but can’t. I look down. Three heavy, canvas straps pin me to a stainless-steel table with a raised metal rim. One goes across my chest, the second crosses my upper forearms and lower stomach. The third holds down my legs, just above the knees. My jacket’s gone. Shoes too. I blink and look again. My head feels fuzzy. I laugh. At least I’ve still got my socks. I shake my head and look around. This room’s bigger than the dining room. There’s an incinerator in one corner, probably for medical waste. By that, gas cans. Between my feet, not far off, I see a metal door with a heavy bolt. I turn my head to the right. There’s a desk maybe five feet away. Spread out on the top are Eddie Mears’ identity papers, his wallet, the burner phone, and Sharp’s revolver. Other IDs sit in an “in” basket nearby. Next to that is a thick, yellow folder and a big book with the black, metallic cover Slitha like to use. Slitha words glow in silver on the black book’s tall spine. I shake my head and make myself focus. Chronicles of a Time of War. I exhale slowly. I’ve found what Kah-Haas and I need, but I might not live long enough for it to do us any good. I notice something else. Next to the desk sits a row of mismatched suitcases. Above those, on hooks, hang backpacks, a few purses, and a single, lonely baby carrier. I fight my bonds and arch my neck. Fifteen feet from my head, I see a normal-looking door. Much closer sits a tray of medical instruments, heavy on knives and the surgical saws. Directly above my scalp, built into the table, is a drain. My throat goes dry. I know where all the fugitives have gone. Piece by piece into Doctor Delaveau’s incinerator. I listen for an opening door but Delaveau is taking his time. When the Doctor stripped off my jacket, he pulled the bottom of my shirt loose from my pants. I reach under the loose fabric for the knife clipped in my waistband. One finger touches the handle, but the strap pinning my arms keeps me from doing more. I inhale deep, then exhale everything. The bonds still feel tight, but not as bad as before. I keep my lungs empty for a couple of seconds, just long enough to grab the bottom end of the knife handle between two fingers. I draw the folder, breathe in, get a solid grip, then flick it open with my thumb. I lay the edge under the strap holding my forearms, inhale to make a tiny bit of extra room, then saw away with the serrated half of the blade. Just when I’ve cut the strap a little over halfway, the doorknob rattles. The strap doesn’t feel as tight as before. I slip the knife inside my waistband, flip some loose fabric from my shirt over the cut I made, and move my hand back by my side. The door opens, Doctor Delaveau walks in, wearing green surgical scrubs. His medical mask is down, and he has a clear, plastic visor ready to be lowered. The final touch is a white, plastic apron. He’s right over me and I see his quiet smirk. “My dear Mr. Mears, you had a bit of a fall, so I decided you needed to lay down.” “Doc, I’m feeling a lot better. I think I can get up now.” He smiles wider. “Be my guest.” I can tell he likes the banter, so I shut up. Doctor Delaveau frowns. “I see you’ve discovered my escape route.” I keep quiet. His smirk turns into an icy frown. “I’m disappointed in you Mr. Mears. I found nothing of value on you.” I get an idea. “I’m not a fugitive.” His frown gets bigger. I talk faster. “Just hear me out.” He stares. “I was hired to recover an item. What you do for criminals isn’t of interest to me. There’s a big reward.” He nods. “Go on.” “A collector wants that black book on your desk, no questions asked.” Delaveau purses his lips, then smiles. “Though far from fluent, I am a student of the Slitha language. Over the past weeks, I’ve had few patients, and been translating this diary in order to further my education. The contents is quite fascinating.” He pauses, as if he wants me to say something, maybe to beg. Maybe to tell him how smart he is. I can tell Delaveau isn’t interested in my offer, so I stop talking again. The doctor raises his voice. “Do you know what, Mr. Mears? Like more than a few of my clients, I believe you hid your ill-gotten wealth before you came to my door.” He watches my face. “Some who come to me in search of sweet freedom hide their valuables in one of my neighbors’ yards, or even my own.” He shakes his head and smiles again. “Please excuse me for a moment.” Delaveau walks to the desk and picks up Sharp’s revolver. “As you’ve just learned, one can never be too careful.” He flips open the cylinder, smiles, and closes it again. “Never fear. I’ll be back soon.” The door closes behind him and I attack my bonds again. Seconds later, I cut through the middle one. Now my arms are free. That’s when I hear the first gunshot. I jerk my legs, trying to pull them out from under the strap that holds them down, but it’s too tight. Two more shots go off; one close, the other farther away. I start cutting the strap over my chest. Voices echo through the house. More shots ring out. I tell myself Kah-Haas could be out there, but I’m lying to myself. None of those shots came from a Slitha weapon. My chest is free. I sit up, but whatever drug Delaveau gave me makes my head spin. Only the strap over my legs keeps me from falling off the table. My knife saws at the last strap. A gunshot again, just on the other side of the door. I cut too fast and slice my leg. The last bond splits. I stand up. My legs buckle. I grab the edge of the table to keep from falling. Another gunshot cracks down the hall. I take a breath and stumble towards the door. I reach out to lock it. Before I can, it starts to swing open. I see part of a plastic visor and red-spattered white apron. Another shot pops. A muzzle flash lights up the hallway. A dull, wet slap sounds on the other side of the door. I fall against it, turn the lock, take another deep breath. It looks like Human Defense Force has come to avenge their murdered friends. My legs almost feel steady. I walk to the desk fast, stuff the burner phone in one pocket and grab the journal. I rush to the back door and yank the bolt. The other door crashes wide open. A gunshot cracks and a bullet slaps the wall by my head. I shove the back door open and run into the night. When I’m sure no one’s following, I stop, get my breath back, and flip through the journal. My fingers smooth pages passed hand to hand across years and lightyears. Flowing Slitha cursive documents fleet logistics and weapons systems. Tables list kills and casualties. Star maps show enemy positions and battles. I wish I had the time to sit down and read it. Finally, I use Eddie Mears’ burner phone to call Kah-Haas for backup. I got the journal, but maybe Sharp and Silent will find Doctor Delaveau’s partial translation. They might escape before Kah-Haas arrives with reinforcements. The resistance could get the leverage it needs to become a force for real political change. And now that we’ve got the thing back, I doubt our masters will pay much attention to complaints from some puffed-up Slitha night-school teacher. I could have grabbed Delaveau’s notes when I took the journal. It would have been easy. But I didn’t. I need to return the journal to my alien masters to keep my family safe. But the Slitha don’t know about the Doctor’s notes and I don’t have to tell them. Like I always say, there’s a fine line between doing the job and being a collaborator.  Long-time science fiction fan and longer-time Chicano, M.R. Subias prowls the frontiers of the imagination, seeking strange beauty. As part of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, he founded the speculative fiction critique group Westside Weird and ran it for more years than he can remember. He’s currently editing Intrusion Zone, a hopeful YA cosmic horror novel set at the end of the world.
 “Cambalache”by Diego Alejandro Arias Here they were, sitting in a car. Miguel looked over at John. He was slapping a hand on the steering wheel. The fingers long, crooked, their skin wrapped around his joints and fingers like rawhide on a drumhead. John held on to the steering wheel and pressed into the black leather. He squeezed it and tightened it against his bones. They cracked. Miguel grimaced when the bones and leather crunched against each other. There was an Elvis song on the radio. Miguel was a huge Elvis fan, often fascinated by the 1968 comeback special that revived his career. Miguel was all about revivals and reawakenings. Like his Abuela, he believed the dead could speak to us, bring us back from the nothingness, career nothingness, relationship nothingness, political nothingness, even the nothingness that people say you can never come back from while you are alive, the sort of nothingness that buries you in Black Mollies or Toe Tag Dope or massive depressive episodes. Miguel had been spending most of his days in and out of drunken stupors trying to stay awake in law school classes and legal aid seminars. He periodically experimented with prescription drugs and other controlled substances when the nothingness took over, when the world outside of his own skull emitted a low-frequency white noise assembled out of fingers on keyboards and vitriolic social dynamics. In a Race and the Law class, where he sat next to several students who argued companies had the right to fire black employees on pure racial grounds, Miguel tended to pop back two or three Percocets just to stomach the professor nodding his head at these types of arguments. John moved his finger towards the radio. “Let it play,” Miguel said. “You like Elvis?” he asked. “Everyone likes Elvis. You’d have to be a fucking numbskull to dislike him.” John smiled nervously. “He put out three gospel albums. I mean, you gotta like a guy like that, right?” Miguel said. He smiled, revealing big white teeth underneath a black, manicured beard. Miguel enjoyed the uncomfortable silences he inspired in his classmates. They saw this big, brown Dominican with a gold chain around his neck as thick as a double braided docking line, dressed in black clothing and white Jordans, and he knew they immediately felt like something didn’t quite mesh. Most of the other Latinos in law school dressed and acted like they were preparing for a diplomatic bilateral between Henry Kissinger and the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance; and Miguel wasn’t with that nonsense. But who was he to hate them? He was nothing but a backpack rapper with a law school scholarship and a literature degree focused on Middle English symbolism. He wasn’t even a first-generation college student, so he didn’t have anyone to blame but himself for his lackluster grades from the previous semester. “You like ‘em, right?” Miguel asked. “Of course, of course,” he replied. “You got a favorite song?” “Uh, yeah, what’s the one song, ‘Hound Dog.’ I always liked that one.” “Yeah, that’s early Elvis, back when he hadn’t made all those ridiculous soundtrack albums. I like the more mature, adult Elvis. Don’t get me wrong, bro, ‘Hound Dog,’ ‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ those are some of the best songs ever recorded, ever written. But my favorite Elvis song is ‘Big Boss Man.’ He covered that one in Clambake. It’s not his. It’s an old Jimmy Reed blues song. I just like the take Elvis has on that song.” “I never heard it.” “Give it a shot. It’s as close to socialism as Elvis ever came. It’s a song about hating your boss, quitting your job, and questioning the employer-employee relationship.” John laughed. He wasn’t so bad, Miguel thought. John was a small guy, the type of kid that wore khaki pants with white socks and polo shirts, a sort of Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues type of pariguayo. A pariguayo is a stiff, a square, a guy with no game and no swagger. The term comes from the Dominican Republic. The Dominicans picked it up during the first U.S. military invasion of Santo Domingo. Miguel knows this because he spent an entire semester researching U.S. abuses in the Dominican Republic for a Latin America and Foreign Policy seminar hosted by a professor from Harvard with a stringy beard that always reminded his pupils that President Obama, who he had gone to school with, was not that great of a student. Miguel even had the school pay for a trip to East Santo Domingo where he researched municipal records in a dusty Caribbean basement that detailed gruesome, blood-stained accounts of his people’s persecution. Miguel had originally known some Dominican history because his Abuela had been a scholar of constitutional law in Santo Domingo, but some of the shit he read sounded like war crimes straight from The Hague, like the shit he saw coming out of Ukraine day after day after day. He wondered if the Latin kids at his law school interning at large firms or if guys like John had a fraction of an idea that this sort of nonsense had gone down? That maybe these were the reasons why 10% of the Dominican Republic’s population currently lives in exile, mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Spain. Some of these texts were straight bananas. Bonkers bullshit like Rear Admiral William Caperton, with full support from the Secretary of State and President Woodrow Wilson and their corporate buddies at the National City Bank of New York, threatening to bomb the shit out of an entire country if the Dominican government didn’t comply with U.S. demands. Miguel read through these old archives, using his best legal Spanish and consulting with Abuela when he returned to The Jaragua Hotel in the Malecón, to review his notes and seek some guidance. “Tienes que mejorar el castellano, hijo. No quiero un gringo que se olvida de su cultura haciendo quedar mal a la patria quisqueyana. No te olvides tu sangre, la sangre nunca miente,” Abuela would say. Miguel dived headfirst into that research paper. For his effort, he was rewarded with an A-, keeping his grades close enough to the grade point average needed to maintain his meager scholarship at Newark Law School. The war itself was a personal one for Miguel, one that forever changed his family’s history, altering their trajectory, changing las vidas de todos. That’s how his Abuela’s dad, his great-grandfather Braulio Hernandez, went from being a farmer in Dajabon, a city on the Haitian border, to a bearded guerilla taking shots at invading gringo soldiers from the Cordillera Central mountain range. This was years before Cuba, decades even. Castro was still a toddler shitting his diapers when his great-grandfather was organizing military campaigns across the Dominican Republic. As a result of Braulio’s heroism, the family carried down war stories for generations, sometimes with ghosts appearing in dreams or living rooms or pool halls filled with sweaty tígueres and de los míos to fill in parts of history that had been lost to time, death, or vows of secrecy. Abuela often visited and talked about American jazz and neo-American slavery arriving in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. She once told Miguel her inspiration to become a lawyer happened when she learned from her militant father that the U.S. had created a modern slavery system to subdue Haitian resistance to the invasion. Incredible, Miguel thought. Does the law school ever teach that sort of shit to its happy recruits? According to Abuela, who observed Río Ozama and the Caribbean Sea from the window of Miguel’s hotel room, lots of words and concepts got mixed between the clash of cultures. “Eran tiempos diferentes, incluso esto hijo, el Malecón, esto era diferente. Es lindo ahora, aunque lo fue lindo en aquellos tiempos también, cuando los patriotas defendieron nuestra tierra,” she said. Abuela spoke at length about what she called the first insult, the first attack on Quisqueya’s sovereignty. White supremacism from Marines and fox trot and jazz played out in nightclubs across the country, along with marginal economic stability accompanying U.S. military elimination of free press and radio on the island. Local Black girls dated White soldiers plucked from Tennessee and Alabama and brought to Puerto Plata to shell the living daylights out of poor, Black rural communities. That’s where and how pariguayo came about, when the American soldiers would make fun of the guys who stood on the sidelines during parties and didn’t know how to talk to women. They called those guys “party watchers,” except the Dominicans mispronounced it and the mutated Dominico-American term stuck. Sounds better in Dominican, anyway. You don’t want to be called a pariguayo, trust me, it’s a high-line insult for anyone, criollo or gringo. But John was most certainly a pariguayo. He had clammy skin and freckles across his nose and cheeks like God had just dipped his big ‘ole hand in roasted cacao and opened his fist violently in this guy’s face, splashing all these marks on his big Italian head. He had a short, cropped cut and a hair line that was disappearing at twenty-three. He wore thick tube socks underneath chunky New Balance sneakers, and t-shirts big enough to make his arms look like dried semolina spaghetti. Back in the car, Miguel looked out of the window. He observed the street’s congestion, its inhabitants, its humid breath just mushing about in the atmosphere, the thick heat rolling around in the ghetto, suffocating the construction workers holding on to jackhammers and scaffolds and public employees picking up litter and tossing black bags into big white trucks that gobble up an entire civilization’s quisquiliarum every morning. Out there, in the naked American summer, beads of water ran down the arms of Indian convenience store owners. Puerto Rican bodegamen sat outside their shops with their hair stuck to their head and damp blotches inking through their shirts, the salt forming through the edges of their sweat marks. Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe sang tracks from Asalto Navideño on stereo speakers, the music filling up the street like an East Harlem summer in 1972. “Vamos a bailar la murga, la murga de Panamá, los muchachos se alborotan cuando la ven caminar…” A large, ginger cat licked his paws and turned around on his back, and a young boy with shaggy hair outside of a Dominican colmado scratched the white tufts on his belly. On a street corner, a shirtless drifter with long hair panhandled and asked a fearful mother to surrender a wrinkled up, wet Washington. She placed a greenback in his hand and turned away. He smiled and bowed to her. She held on to a blue carriage and hurried along. Miguel watched the young mother make her way down Broad Street. She reached a bus stop and stood in line with the rest of the folks waiting for the #59 bus en route to Washington Park in Newark. Miguel pressed his back against the passenger seat’s wrinkled leather. He sighed. “We’re almost there,” John said. “This is awful, dude,” he said. “Why?” “You have no air conditioner. It’s hot as shit.” “It’s bad, but bearable. We’ll make it to Newark in about half an hour.” “I’m suffocating, dog. I feel like I’m being cooked alive, like a Nathan’s hot dog flung onto a grill somewhere in some dude’s backyard.” “Damn, I’m sorry, didn’t know it was that bad.” John avoided taking the New Jersey Parkway to Newark using the excuse that tolls were costly and unnecessary. Miguel knew it was because he had had his car window smashed up during a recent break-in while he had been at a New Brunswick bar. The naked door was still threatening and jagged with little pieces of glass flying off at violent speeds. Miguel could still see small glass nuggets on the floor near his feet, a reminder that John was a hell of a law student but shit for brains when it came to getting his life together. The broken window had other uncomfortable consequences. Going too fast on a highway caused vibrations in their ears. The car had been like that for over two months. It had been broken into once more several days after the black bag was placed over the window. The thieves took a bookbag out of the car and dumped it near a river in Edison. The police tracked John down when they found his mail inside. They returned the bookbag, covered in dirt and river water, on a Saturday afternoon when he was studying for an eminent domain seminar. Inside the bookbag, ironically, there were only some books on constitutional theory and criminal law. “Ey John, maybe we could stop and grab something to eat,” he said. John looked at the clock in front of him. He quickly read the blue numbers in the middle of the car’s touchscreen. “Yeah, we have some spare time. If we eat something now, we’ll have five hours to prepare for this exam.” Miguel had varying opinions on his law school classmates, and they ranged from quiet avoidance to outright disgust at the sort of nonsense they engaged in regularly. Maybe he should have listened to his father, who had passed away while he was still in college, and pursued graduate school instead of his sorry ass attempt at being a lawyer. What he had expected from the legal field was everything he never found, and instead had forced himself to accept that many of his fellow Brown brethren had little to no interest in dismantling the system that had held them back for generations. Lots of kids were just normal students looking for a six-figure salary. None of them felt this weight on their shoulders, this painful, piercing reminder that people still suffered a couple of miles away, in housing projects in Newark, in dilapidated homes in Camden, or in public schools that were falling apart academically and structurally. There was little interest in making a difference in these people’s lives, and Miguel had come to understand that his way of looking at the world did not coincide with the socio-economic interests of his classmates or the lawyers that they admired. These kids just wanted to clerk for a judge that would hook them up with a first-year associate position at a white shoe office. Sometimes they would throw in a gala where someone gave a speech on the need for diversity at law firms and at Fortune-500s. Then they would return to overlook the waiters in the room that could barely afford to send their kids to college, or the guys who would go on to clean up the gnawed-up chicken bones and empty champagne bottles at the end of the “40 Latino Lawyers Under 40” annual awards ceremony. In his class there were plenty of Johns, working-class or middle-class White kids who were trying their best to sort their lives out and kept their distance from people of color out of an unspoken fear that they did not belong or should not belong to ethnic social circles. Miguel didn’t mind these students so much. What are ya gonna do?, he often thought, they’re just a product of their parents’ social-mobility fears. They think they’re being left behind, and they must catch up because life is harder for them now. The modern Western economy has eliminated their union jobs, their high-paying factory gigs, so they blame others when they should be blaming the system that forced them into a grotesque grind-culture, where the American being with three full-time jobs is hoisted upon a pedestal as some sort of king rat, a hero, a modern-day Beowulf suffering from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and frequent aural migraine headaches. Miguel pitied them, but he didn’t hate them. But there were others who just wore him down. Miguel thought of one young White woman at his law school who had run for vice-president of the Black Law School Student Association. What on earth was she thinking? Why do they do shit like that? What gave her the idea to run for that sort of student government office? “This is to assuage our conscience, darling,” Allende once wrote. But it’s no different in Chile than in Montclair or Hoboken or Portland or Santo Domingo or Bogotá or Tegucigalpa. “Así son todos,” his grandmother, who had introduced him to Gabriela Mistral’s poetry and Isabel Allende’s prose, used to frequently say whenever they discussed politics, life, and empanada recipes. “Acuérdate que el propio Cristo fue víctima del chisme, de los chivatos, los vendepatrias, y peor!, los extranjeros que solo buscaban terminar con la palabra del todopoderoso!” she once said to him. And year after year, Abuela’s words became like prophetic passages he would come to revere. They would drink Santo Domingo coffee and she would make quipes and sweet plantain mangú. Hours and hours would go by, stories weaved together from testimonials and passages and confessions. The dead once again bringing him back to reality, reviving his rebellious spirit, his guerilla heart, appearing before him with messages of revolution and legislative advocacy still undone, still waiting to reverse the decades, the centuries, of exploitation. If he could only put the whiskey down long enough to concentrate, he’d be on to something. If only the painkillers and cocaine didn't make everything feel so goddamn bearable. He felt so lonely, spread so thin across classes on property law and trust and estates seminars, shit he had no interest in reading about for hours and hours and hours. It seemed to him that the school’s administration had placed all their eggs into a select number of students’ baskets. Deans and professors had become cheerleaders for aspiring lawyers they had designated as future success stories. Miguel, a drunk, a drug addict, a crazy liberal, was just an eyesore getting in the way of the school’s rising rankings in U.S. World and News. The only reason the school couldn’t get rid of him was because he still maintained enough concentration, as thin as Tencel paper but still enough, to pass all his exams and even score an A and B+ here and there. One of his classmates, the son of a senior U.S. senator, joined the school’s Minority Student Program for disadvantaged pupils his first week at law school. “I’m half-Irish and half-Cuban!” he said out loud, in a surfer dude accent, during an orientation meeting where the professors seemed more interested in the twenty-three-year-old aspiring congressman’s opinions than their own lesson plans or sense of self-worth. Surfer Dude was about as Cuban as a Hawaiian shirt-wearing Al Pacino in 1983 Miami. And he was as disadvantaged as, well, as a U.S. senator’s son sitting in a room full of working-class Latino and Black students trying to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Miguel thought about the way his colleagues brushed off subjects like Brown children in immigration detention centers, families permanently torn apart by men on horseback flashing a CBP badge in frightened refugees’ faces, de facto racially segregated schools, and then the juxtaposition of these issues alongside their frequent racial justice seminars, pro-bono advocacy, and other pat-yourself-on-the-back-for-being-a-good person pendejadas they usually floated around his law school. “This is to assuage our conscience, darling,” Allende once wrote. “Got damn, dog, it’s hot. Let’s pull into this parking lot over here, and grab some McChickens or something over there on the corner,” Miguel said. “Yeah, I got you man.” He felt sweat drip down his neck. His shirt was stuck to his chest. He was too large for the car, way too large for this car. He felt he would grow even larger if he stayed in the Maxima, suffocating until a door opened and he floated out of the car and just flew across the city like a big, sweaty vulture, the gold chain sparkling in the sky like bursts of yellow diamonds. At 6’5, Miguel was a big Dominican. He had muscular, hairy arms, giving him a big enough wingspan to fly across Pico Duarte all the way to Labadee Beach without getting tired. Despite being a child of the Caribbean, Miguel was not designed for intense heat. According to his Santiago de Los Caballeros operating manual, he had been specifically manufactured for air conditioning. Inside the car, he felt he was sitting in an oily, leathery tarp. He looked over at John. The brown beard turned to him briefly and smiled his bright red steak grin. “Diañe, que vaina,” Miguel said. “What’s wrong, bro? Everything alright?” “The heat, bro, the heat.” The McDonald’s was on the corner of Broad and Rahway. Rinky-dinky shops and municipal buildings surrounded it. The Union County Courthouse and the Elizabeth Public Library were across the street. It was a busy section and people came in and out of the place every couple of seconds. John and Miguel walked towards the front entrance. John looked around as he made his way to the door, observing the patrons exiting and entering the building. He looked bewildered. Miguel hovered over him, making it look like he was some sort of local narc hosting a deputy regional officer investigating a new fentanyl lab in the area. This was Elizabeth, one of the oldest cities in America, but also one of its most violent. In the 1770s, George Washington himself had marched across Elizabeth, with a bear fur on his back and a racoon hat covering his white hair, looking to collect the scalps of Royalists and change the course of human history. And now, immigrant families from Central America and Cuba called this land their home. In Elizabethport, the airport community considered by U.S. media as the most lawless two-mile strip in all of America, Ecuadorean and Puerto Rican kids played basketball and baseball in the parks. People like John only came out here if they had a meeting at the Union County Courthouse or at the City Hall Municipal Building to argue in front of some petty judge or to grease the hands of the Irish-American mayor that always seemed to get reelected in a town full of Black and Brown people. New Jersey has more Irish-American politicians representing Brown and Black people than exits on the Parkway. Inside the McDonald’s, they stood in line to order. Next to them, Miguel spotted a young woman standing across from him. She had silver loop earrings and a blue and white top. Her shirt had an exposed midriff, and her hair was long, thick, and white, down to the middle of her lower back. The hair was magnificent, ethereal, something unlike, something not here. It draped over her shoulders as if Jean de La Huerta had carved each strand himself. She turned and looked at Miguel. Her eyes, large and dark and taking up half of her face, glistened. She smiled and turned her attention back to the employee in front of her. “Wow,” John said. Miguel looked over at him. John had become a man stuck somewhere alien, somewhere unexplored. He was off in the Antarctic, 990-pound polar bears and Mirounga elephant seals gathered around him at a watering hole. “Yeah, man, she seems like a nice person,” he responded. Had John been released into the ghetto for the first time in his life? Was this his first experience right here, knee deep in the heart of Latino Jersey, where Cardi B songs play outside of restaurants and Omega’s “Tú Si Quieres, Tú No Quieres” blasts out of black BMWs on their way to Little Colombia over on Morris Avenue? Had he been thrown into the belly of the beast with no parachute? Was he just hurtling, at full speed, towards the bright colors, the Salvadorean flags, the cold horchata drinks like sweet ambrosia at 11:00 a.m. in July, the Puerto Rican salsa filling the air with the smell of pollo guisado and café con leche? Was John seeing this for the first time in his life? Did White people ever visit this part of New Jersey? “Come on, Big Boss Man, let’s sit down over here,” Miguel said. They took their trays and sat down in the center of the McDonald’s dining area. As they ate, a group of panhandlers entered the McDonald’s. They rolled in one by one in an organized line, a sports team on their home turf, looking around the room, sizing up the competition. One of them was an older, handsome man. He was tall, shirtless, and had on a pair of torn shorts. He had broad shoulders and a muscular chest. His hair was pushed back with curls covered in gel and running down his bronzed skin. His hairline began at the edges of his forehead, and he had a carefully trimmed handlebar moustache. He looked about forty, but the other three men accompanying him looked older, perhaps sixty or more. The older ones had a similar appearance. They wore jeans and white shirts that were long and stained with grass and red clay from construction sites. Miguel recognized the younger one as the same shirtless drifter that had been walking down Broad Street. The same man that had asked the mom with the blue stroller for a dollar bill. “Is everything okay?” John asked. Miguel smiled. He finished chewing on some chicken and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Everything is okay, baby. Have you not been in Elizabeth before?” “Not like this. I haven’t been in this part of the city.” “It’s okay, just be cool, be cool. No one is going to do anything to you. This is a community, that’s all.” Miguel took another bite of the sandwich. “Big Boss Man, how old are you?” “I’m twenty-two.” “What part of Jersey are you from?” “I grew up in Howell. Down in Monmouth County.” “Ah you’re not too far from the beach.” He paused for a couple of seconds. “Well, welcome to Elizabeth, man.” John smiled and sipped from his fountain drink. He looked over at the young woman with the white hair and the big, almond eyes. “You don’t mind me calling you Big Boss Man, do ya?” “Not at all! Unless you’re calling me a fascist employer. Then we might have a problem.” They laughed. “Of course not,” Miguel said. “How’d you get into Elvis?” “My dad, when he was growing up in the Dominican Republic, he thought Elvis personified the American Dream. He was big into his music, his life, his whole story. Even the eagle suit he designed and danced around like a chicken in during the final days of his thunder. I never met a Dominican so much into Elvis, but that was my dad, he thought if a poor country boy from the Deep South could make it in America, then so could a poor country boy from the DR.” “I think a lot of people feel that way about him,” John said. Miguel had been raised in Elizabeth. He knew the way the people stood outside the front entrance of this McDonald’s and asked for change. He knew that the doors to the bathroom were now locked to keep the homeless from going inside and urinating, shitting, bathing, or paying for blowjobs from local prostitutes. He knew this because he had witnessed all four practices inside of the Broad Street McDonald’s as a teenager. One day, while eating lunch, he met a homeless man that had recently been released from prison. “I paid a lawyer and he fucked up my case. He didn’t give a shit about me. I took some plea deal and ended up in the joint for ten years, brah. So, I studied in there and filed my own appeal, and I learned the law the same way that lawyer learned the law. I read all those free books. I filed my own appeal, man.” Walking alongside Broad Street Elizabeth, Miguel encountered all sorts of characters. Doomed souls with no clear path to sanity, drug addicts looking for the next big score, young students trying to make it out of Elizabeth and join the upper ranks of the occidental middle-class, and working dads and moms who came to America because their countries were overtaken by false prophets and charlatans from the Andes and the Pampas and the Malecón. In the McDonald’s bathroom, the urinating and shitting he saw no problem with, except that the drifters weren’t buying food and the restaurant could reasonably argue that they were loitering. This was particularly concerning to the management when the weather was either too hot or too cold and the drifters refused to leave the place. The bathing had surprised him. At 15, he saw a man enter the bathroom and begin to undress. He was startled. He then saw him enter the stall and close the door, locking it with a violent click. The man hung his clothes over the stall’s white metallic door and Miguel could see the water splashing down onto the tiles. He saw it expand towards the rest of the bathroom, mixed with suds of brownish foam. The man shook his body after each splash of cupped water from the toilet. He wet his hair, slicked it back, and walked out. “What’s good, young blood?” he asked Miguel as he made his way back out into Elizabeth. The blowjobs were another story. That was something dark and primal and carved into his memory for many, many years. He was in his senior of high school, using a urinal, and he saw a young tattooed White man behind the metal door leaning his head back in ecstasy. The sounds of slurps and suction filled the room. The man moaned and cursed. This was an obvious violation of McDonald’s bathroom privileges. While Miguel cleaned his hands, a father opened the door and took off running with his son. Miguel heard his muffled screams after the door closed. He dried his hands and left the bathroom. The manager came running towards the lavatory and banged on the door. “Please get out! Please no do that here!” After the incident, McDonald’s locked the doors, and to use the bathroom, management had to buzz people in. And to be buzzed in, prospective bathroom users had to order from the restaurant. This limited the number of people using the restaurant for other purposes besides standing in line and ordering McSomethings. No more blowjobs at McDonald’s. The golden days at the golden arches had come to an end. “What was it like to grow up here?” John asked. “Interesting,” he responded, “You try your best to be a good student. But there are limits. I can’t really complain though, I made it to law school, and some of my teachers, friends, they’re all a part of that.” “You’re a hard worker. I used to think I’d never leave the farms and the one-bedroom house I grew up in.” “Howell feels like another country from all the way up here,” Miguel said. The drifters walked around and asked people for money. The manager behind the counter looked over as they panhandled customers. She signaled to the other employees working the cash registers. She pointed at the drifters with two fingers and then back at her own two eyes. She did this twice. Towards the right-hand corner of the seating area, the young woman with the white hair grimaced as the men came to her table. “Hey sweetie, you got twenty-five cents?” the man in the middle asked. She clutched her tray and rose from her chair. She walked over to the back of the restaurant and sat by the windows that faced the sidewalk. John looked at the men. They came up, individually throughout the McDonald’s, and asked patrons for twenty-five cents. Separated across the room, they worked different corners and asked for the same amount. The twenty-five cents were, according to the men, necessary for them to make up for the missing train fare needed to go to Newark. It took about five minutes before someone gave up a quarter. “Thank you, lady. God bless.” After placing the coin in his pocket, the drifter walked over to John and asked him for another quarter. “See I’m short 25 cents. And I got to get to Newark…” “Sure man, take a dollar.” The man bowed and held his fist out in front of John. They bumped knuckles. “You alright man, you alright,” the man said. “Oye, mi pana, y tú que vas a hacer con eso?” Miguel asked. “Vamo’ a comer un poco, ¿qué má’?” the drifter responded. He laughed and Miguel handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Bueno, bueno, que Dio’ lo bendiga joven.” While all three men laughed together, they saw the manager make her way over to the table. She came up to the group and tapped the man on the shoulder. He jerked his body and turned around. He stared the uniformed woman in the eyes. She was shorter than him. She had a tight buttoned shirt and a pair of brown pants. She spoke with a heavy accent. “Sir, you cannot talk to my customers that way. I’m going to have to ask you to leaf.” “To ‘leaf’? The hell that mean?” The man asked. His tall frame shadowed the woman. “To leaf, to leaf. I am asking you to leaf.” Half an hour later, Miguel placed his books and folders on the backseat of the Maxima as the car started towards the exit of the parking lot. The Jersey sky was beginning to change from blue to the color of a pale purple wine. As they stopped at a red light, Miguel looked over at the corner of the McDonald’s. A group of people had gathered and were singing. They swished their hands and snapped their fingers to a heavy, chilled beat. There was no electronic music — that was coming from the radio station that John was bouncing his fingers to on the steering wheel. It was just the singing of several pordioseros gathered around in a huddled mass of heat and sweat. Some of them were sitting down, looking at the sidewalk but attentive to the voices. Others were standing around joining the crowd as they moved their arms and held their faces out to the words. There was a joy in their song, a tender calm that kept them still. “John, you think we’re gonna ace this test or what?” “I think we got a good shot.” “It’s goin’ to be a long night. Lots of outlines, lots of cases, lots of fact patterns and product liability analysis.” “We got this, Miguel. I feel this Mickey D’s kicking in, and I think we’re gonna rock this exam.” “I’m happy you came out here. That you saw the beauty in this neighborhood.” John smiled. He gave him one of those I-think-we-shared-a-bonding-moment kind of smiles and looked back ahead of the road in front of him. Miguel continued to look over at the people gathered outside of the McDonald’s. They had felt so far away for so many years, and now they were here, in front of him. He could feel hot stinging tears forming around the edges of his eyes. “Dímelo Colombia!” a young woman with cornrows in the crowd shouted. A skinny man entered the middle of the circle and started bopping his head and upper body, initiating the sacred ceremony, entering the holy cypher’s center stage. “En mi barrio soy el hijo de la lucha, del concreto, doy todo por mi cucha, por mi texto, por la santa cruz de mi señor, no hay objeto más sagrado que la luz y el honor. Vengan, come, come on, vamos, vamos parceros!” Miguel looked over at the men and pressed a plastic button upwards, lifting the windowpane. The four homeless men from before were there. Two of the grass-stained wanderers had their backs against the building, moving their heads to the skinny songster’s raspy Spanish. His face was stretched out speaking to the violet sky, the sun falling into the Earth, the faded glow of the moon appearing over the clouds in Elizabeth. As John drove and made his way towards the border in Newark, about twenty minutes from the Law School’s Center for Legal Justice and Constitutional Theory, Miguel grabbed a bookbag from the backseat of the car, opened it, and started looking for a black paper folder with a blank cover. He opened the folder and pulled out some documents. He took a paper out of the folder and tore it in half, then tore the halves in half, and then the halves of the halves in half until all that was left were law school resignation forms turned to black and white confetti. John looked over at him, but then turned and kept his eyes on the road. A Newark police officer mounted on a large horse strode next to them at a red light. “Can you pull over here, real quick?” Miguel asked. “You mean, right here, on Bleeker? There’s no parking.” “Put your hazards on, it’ll be quick.” John stopped the car and parked on the side of the street near a bus stop. He waited until the police officer on the horse crossed the street; and turned his hazards on. Miguel opened the door to the car and ran over to a trash can near a small Portuguese bakery. He threw the torn shreds of paper inside and watched them all fall to the bottom of the container. He took a bottle of pills and dumped them all inside. Miguel could hear it, feel it, in his skull, in his heart, buried deep in there, coming from Abuela, her voice piercing through the nothingness, inviting the dead and their thoughts and their grievances, reminding him of the many voiceless whose flames no longer burn. Before him, in the middle of Newark, he could see them all turning a corner, dead men with bullet wounds in their shirts, their faces bludgeoned by machetes and rifles, naked women with their throats sliced open by military issued knives, children holding hands, wearing charred hats. They carried their scars, their words, their memories kept long secured in graves, mouthing messages to him about bones that never saw the light of day, of all the ones that never made it out because their freedoms were extinguished by the hatred, by the fear, and by the feckless nihilism of human apathy. Miguel took a deep breath. “Abuela, aquí estoy, no me abandones.” He thought about his professors, his deans, the Cuban Surfer Dude. He thought about Braulio Hernandez perched atop a mountain with a rifle taking men out as they ran across the hills. He thought about the coming week, the coming test. He was gonna rock that shit, he fucking knew it, he fucking had to.  Diego Alejandro Arias is a Colombian-born writer from New Jersey. He is a civil rights attorney, former U.S. diplomat, and member of the Latino Coalition in Monmouth County, New Jersey. He served three tours of duty in The Dominican Republic, China, and Costa Rica. He was awarded meritorious honors by the United States government for his part in evacuating Americans from China in 2019, and for a small part in aiding negotiations with the Taliban to liberate Afghanistan families during the 2021 evacuation. His work has been published in the U.S., the U.K., and Colombia. He is a lifelong advocate for civil rights in both the United States and Latin-America, and speaks Italian, Chinese Mandarin, and Spanish.
 “Mother's Day”by Robert G. Retana The card was made of white construction paper and had a small flower on the front drawn with crayons. Each petal was a different color, and “Happy Mother’s Day” was neatly written across the top of the card. The handwriting was that of a child but neat and precise, nonetheless. Inside the card, the words “from Victor” were written in blue ink. Victor brought it home from school right before Mother’s Day and showed it to his Aunt Dolores. “Can I send this to my mother?” he said. His words pierced Dolores’s heart because she knew how much pain this poor child carried around and how much he would suffer for the rest of his life for things he had no part in. “Yes, you can send it to her,” Dolores responded. “We’ll find an envelope for it and mail it tomorrow morning. She should get it in a few days.” “When can I see her?” Victor asked. “We can go for a visit soon. But she is in Chowchilla, a long way from here, and I don’t know how soon we can take a trip there.” “When can she come home?” “Baby, she might never come home,” Dolores responded. “But she thinks of you every day, and you can visit her there. It’s far, and we can’t go that often to see her. My car gives me a lot of trouble, and it takes forever if we take the bus.” Dolores hugged him, and he hugged her back. Then he went upstairs to change his clothes and play video games before he had to do his homework. Dolores wondered whether she would have it in her to heal this child’s heart or whether the pain he felt would become rage, and he would wind up in prison like his mother. She prayed he would not change and that God would help her know what to do to make things better. Dolores had her own two children and never expected to raise a third. But now that he was hers, she could not help but want to take care of him. No one should start off in life with so much pain and sadness. She looked at the framed picture of herself and Marisa, her younger sister, and Victor’s mother, which she kept on the living room wall. It was taken when they were little girls, four and five years old. They were clinging to their mother, who looked so happy and beautiful. She had long, brown, wavy hair and large expressive eyes, just like Marisa. Both girls were smiling and holding on to their mother for dear life. Behind them stood their father, a tall, handsome, nicely dressed man with thick black hair combed back and a neat mustache that framed his broad smile. Little did they know that soon after this picture was taken, their father would leave home and never return. People said he had another family in Mexico and decided to return there. Others said he was spotted wearing a fancy suit in the bars with a new woman by his side. Whatever the story was, they never saw or heard from him again. It was too much for their mother to take, and soon after he disappeared, she killed herself, overdosing on sleeping pills. Marisa was sent to live with her grandmother, who was too old to control her, and just prayed a lot for her salvation. Dolores went to live with an aunt who took good care of her but could not afford to take them both. The girls cried for weeks when they were separated. Although they kept in close contact, they went their separate ways in terms of lifestyle. Marisa always had boys chasing her, but she never found a healthy relationship. Men just brought her more problems. Dolores was more serious and had a stricter parental figure in her aunt. She could not run with the same crowd or tag along when Marisa skipped school or got a fake I.D. to go nightclubbing even though she was underage. Marisa quickly learned that any shyness or awkwardness she felt would go away when she had been drinking and doing drugs, and her self-esteem was boosted by the attention she got from men, even if it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. There was always room at the parties for a pretty girl who liked to have a good time. The pain of losing their mother and father and then being separated from Dolores never seemed to lessen for Marisa. She lied, made everything seem great, and gave Dolores expensive gifts and clothes that she could not afford to buy for herself, never explaining how she got them. Marisa could never look her sister in the eye and tell her everything she was caught up in. People said she used men and women to get what she wanted. Marisa would always drive nice cars but never had a job that would allow her to afford them. She dressed in nice, new clothes and always had her hair and nails done. She looked vivacious, but when she drank, the sadness in her eyes was unmistakable. When she visited Dolores, she sometimes slurred her words like she was high but denied she had a drug problem. Dolores begged her not to use drugs when she became pregnant and feared the baby would be born with birth defects. Luckily, he was born a healthy baby boy. Marisa never said who the father was and gave the baby her last name. She named him Victor, after their father, which surprised Dolores since Marisa always said she hated him. “At least this Victor will never leave me,” Marisa explained. “He will always be mine.” Marisa cared for Victor as a baby, but as soon as he could walk, she started partying again. She would leave him with friends and family as often as she could. She would ask Dolores to watch him for a few hours and then not pick him up for a week. Marisa’s heart was not right, and having a baby did not change that. She always showed up with money, a nice toy for Victor, and a long story. Dolores knew Marisa was headed for trouble; however, she never imagined how much trouble was ahead. *** The drive home that night began in the Mission District of San Francisco. Marisa and her husband, Rob, had dinner on Valencia Street. When she took the driver’s seat of their new, black BMW 525i, she made a quick call on her cell phone and then hung up when the call was answered without saying a word. “Who are you calling?” Rob asked. “I want to see if my friend is coming over tomorrow to take me to apply for a job. But I didn’t realize how late it was, so I’ll call her in the morning,” Marisa responded. “Okay. You don’t need to work, but if you want to, if that makes you happy, then you should do it.” About half a mile away, Marisa stopped the car and said the check engine light had come on. “Don’t stop the car here,” Rob said. “This is not the best neighborhood; we can still make it home with that light on.” Just then, a car pulled up behind them. A man quickly approached the vehicle’s passenger side and told Rob to get out. He held a gun pointed at Rob. “Just do what he says,” Marisa told him. He got out of the car and tried to cooperate, not wanting any harm to come to him or his wife. Seven shots were fired as soon as he was out of the car. Three bullets pierced his skull while the rest entered and exited his chest. When the police arrived, Marisa was crying, saying that Rob was her husband and that someone tried to carjack them and they shot Rob. But the car was still there, her purse was still inside, and she was still wearing the expensive diamond wedding ring Rob gave her. Marisa said she had no idea what the suspect looked like or what kind of car he was driving. She had no bruises, although she claimed the suspect hit her and pushed her to the ground so he could take the car. Her demeanor was also strange in that she did not ask about her husband’s condition or come close to his body, maintaining her distance from the crime scene instead. At the police station, she seemed confused and a little bit disinterested. She gave a vague statement to the police but became impatient when pressed for more details. The police did not believe her from the start but had no basis for placing her under arrest. The facts, however, did not match up, as the route she took home was not the most direct route to the freeway entrance, which would lead them to the Bay Bridge and then to their home in the Oakland Hills. Something was up, and Marisa was not a persuasive grieving widow. Rob died from gunshot wounds in the ambulance on the way to San Francisco General. When Marisa was told about his death, she did not cry. She looked more dazed than sad and said she wanted to go home. The police wound up notifying Rob’s family. They would soon learn that he was a 45-year-old executive at a software company in San Jose. He was a shy bachelor for most of his life and never dated much until he met Marisa. He met her at Golden Gate Park one day, where he was walking his dog. She approached him to pet his cocker spaniel. The dog seemed to like her, and Rob let her play with him for a while so he could get a closer look at her. She had long brown hair that was pulled off her face. She was petite, had curves in all the right places, and knew how to show them off. She was someone that people noticed. She was at ease with herself and struck up a conversation with him that flowed in a way his conversations with women never did. Before he knew it, she had given him her phone number, and they agreed to meet for a drink. A drink led to her moving in with him quickly and then getting married in a civil ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco three months later. Rob bought a house in the Oakland Hills for them and gave her use of his credit cards, which she had no problem using. She bought expensive clothes, never worked again, and had frequent calls on her cell phone that she had to take in the other room. He never pressed for details of how Marisa spent her time or his money to prevent her from getting upset. In his eyes, she was a very emotional person with a strong personality and a quick temper, but also capable of moments of great tenderness. Lonely nights alone at home in front of the television with fast food seemed worse to him than putting up with her mood swings. “Everyone can think you’re successful,” he would say, “but when you end the day at home alone, it sure doesn’t feel that way.” His family warned him about her, and she hated his family, saying they thought they were too good for her. Rob tried to keep the peace and wanted to make things work no matter what. He ignored her drinking and tried to bond with her son, hoping that being a good stepfather might score some points with her. It never did. He never knew she was still seeing her old boyfriends, even after their marriage. Nor did he know or want to know who she brought to the house when he was at work. She partied with friends and lovers at home, impressing them with how she lived and telling them that she did not love Rob and would divorce him and collect alimony. They laughed and partied with her, had sex with her, but never imagined how far she would go. The pain and abandonment she felt as a child and the men who used her along the way and then discarded her had caused a change in her. She was once a sweet, sensitive girl looking for someone to love her. Now, she only cared about partying and easy money. An expensive dress, nice jewelry, and money in her pocket validated her in a way that she never felt validated by other people. The pain she felt due to repeated abandonments made her do whatever was necessary to lessen the toxic energy she carried around inside despite the party girl vibe she projected. She had no safety net, so she was not afraid to use any means necessary to get what she wanted. The drugs and alcohol eased the pain but blurred her sense of reality. Her old friends included several shady characters who fancied themselves as con artists and criminals who had gotten away with a lot, even if they wound up doing time for some of it. They would tell stories of schemes that had been successful and large amounts of money that could be made with the right planning and execution. When she told them she did not love Rob and was using him for his money, they encouraged her to get rid of him and cash in, as they were eager to keep her interested so she would continue to supply drugs and alcohol. When she was high, it all seemed to make sense, and she had a feeling of invincibility that a sober Marisa would not have. She just needed to figure out how to get rid of him without getting caught. She spent many hours thinking about how to get it done. When an attorney told her that if she divorced him, she would not be entitled to very much, given the short time they had been married, she began to think that there was no other way to cash in but to kill him. She was not leaving this marriage empty-handed. She would not return to her old life with nothing to show for the time she was married to Rob. Eventually, she persuaded Rob to agree to purchase life insurance policies and mortgage insurance for the house, with her as the beneficiary. Then, before she knew it, the drunken conversations about hiring someone to kill her husband and collect the insurance proceeds turned into a plan of action. Her ex-boyfriend, Alex, who left her several times for other women, was back in her life and was seeing her at her house when Rob was working. She seemed to forget all the times he abused her and left her without explanation. She needed his approval, even after everything he had done to her. His return meant he was wrong when choosing someone else over her. At least, that is the story she told herself each time she took him back. Each knew that even though they both looked good, their days of trading off their looks were ending, and they needed a score to set them up. Rob’s family began to ask questions about Marisa and told him to divorce her before it was too late. Rob’s demeanor towards her changed, and she found out that his parents had arranged a consultation with a divorce attorney. The end was coming, and she needed to act quickly. Marisa and Alex agreed to kill Rob on a dark street in the Mission District and make it look like a carjacking. Marisa would keep the house and the car and most of the insurance. She would give Alex one thousand dollars and the proceeds of one of the life insurance policies Rob had purchased. *** As they rode the bus to Chowchilla, Dolores and Victor tried to keep cool in the sweltering heat. It took several hours to reach the Central Valley. As the bus exited Highway 99 and went east on Avenue 24, Dolores was glad the trip was almost over. Victor needed to use the restroom, and she needed to get this over with. Some things needed to be said, and she hoped she had the strength to say them without making things worse. The bus was filled with families of prisoners who seemed anxious to get there. However, their collective enthusiasm was tempered by the realization that they were headed to prison. Above the almond trees, they could see the large complex, Valley State Prison for Women. It looked almost like a campus if it were not for the razor wire. It took them an hour and a half to work their way to the front of the line so they could be “processed.” As they passed through the metal detector, they removed their shoes and were searched by prison guards. Dolores almost did not believe they would search Victor, an eight-year-old boy, but figured they had seen it all and had no reason to trust anyone. They were assigned a visiting table, and when Dolores first saw Marisa, she was shocked. Her hair was cut short and combed back off her face like a man’s. The baggy orange pants and top were in stark contrast to the stylish way Marisa dressed on the outside. All the make-up and embellishments she thought she needed were gone, yet the beauty of her bare face was still unmistakable. “Mom!” Victor shouted when he first saw her, apparently not noticing the change in her appearance. She hugged him awkwardly and sat him right next to her. Marisa was happy to see her son and sister but was ashamed that they would see her like this. Marisa asked Victor about school and his friends and whether he was minding Dolores. He then asked her, “When will you come home?” After a long pause, Marisa responded. “I don’t know, mijo. Not for a very long time.” “Why do you have to stay here so long?” Marisa froze for a minute, not knowing what to say. When she was arrested, Victor was being cared for by a friend. Although he had visited her in county jail and had been to Chowchilla once before, she never explained why she was incarcerated. She never asked what Victor had been told by family and friends. She tried not to think about it and prayed that one day she would find a way to explain to him why she had been sent to prison. “It’s complicated,” she told him. “They said I did some bad things, and I’ll be here until the situation gets straightened out.” Tears began to fall from Victor’s eyes as he listened to his mother. He knew what she had done because the neighborhood kids had no problem telling him, having heard about it on the news. He knew Rob was dead and that his mother was the one who had him killed. He heard it many times from various people but never told anyone that he knew. This caused bouts of sadness and anxiety which made him introverted. “People say bad things about you, but I don’t care what they say,” Victor told Marisa. His voice was trembling. “I want you to come home so we can be together like before. I miss you.” Marisa did not know what to say. She hugged him until she was told to stop by a prison guard. Here, visitors may briefly embrace their loved one upon greeting and again upon exiting the visiting room. Anything more was deemed “excessive.” After a long silence, Dolores told Victor to get some food from the vending machines. She gave him several dollar bills to buy junk food, the only thing available to the prisoners and their visitors. “Bring your mom something to eat,” she told him. When he ran to the vending machines, a small line of people was waiting their turn. Dolores hoped this would occupy him for a little while so she could say what needed to be said. “He misses you so much.” “I know he does,” Marisa responded. “He writes to you and makes cards for you, and you never respond.” “You know I was caught up in the trial. Then I was sent to the reception center for ninety days to be evaluated. Then they sent me here. I had to get used to being here. It’s not easy for me. Don’t make it worse by coming here to give me head trips.” “You’re his mother,” Dolores responded. “You didn’t think about him when you were scheming with Alex. You just thought about yourself and all the things you wanted. Now those things are gone, and all you have left is a little boy that misses you.” Marisa remained silent, not knowing how to respond. “Listen, I am not here to give you a hard time. You know you can count on me to care for him and be good to him like he was my own son. But I’m his aunt, and he still needs his mother.” “What good am I to him behind bars?” “I don’t know what to tell you, but you can’t keep trying to take the easy way out. He’ll grow up angry and hate you if you keep ignoring him. You have to be a mother to him from inside here because you may never come back out. I am telling you this so your son can know who his mother really is. He’ll find newspaper articles when he gets older, and, as you heard him say, people will tell him what happened. Is that what you want him to know about you?” “But I told you, I didn’t kill him.” “Marisa, it doesn’t matter; you were mixed up in it, and Rob is dead. You were convicted. Alex testified against you to save himself. Things might have turned out differently if you had spent more time taking care of Victor instead of looking for your next score. Have any of your friends visited you?” “No,” Marisa responded. Tears began to flow from Marisa’s eyes, and she began to look at the floor. “You were the lucky one,” Marisa told Dolores. “My aunt loved you and took good care of you. My grandmother didn’t want to raise me. She did it because she had to. She always wanted to be in church. She never talked to me. She just kept telling me to get saved and accept Jesus. You have no idea how many times I have been abused. I finally decided I wanted to be the one to take advantage of others. It all made sense to me when I was using. But I know I was wrong, and I’m paying for what I did.” “I didn’t come here to make you feel bad,” Marisa responded, “but being a mother to Victor is more than just tattooing his name on your chest. He needs to know you love him and care how he is.” “I just don’t know how. My mother wasn’t around, so I never learned how.” “Well, you have plenty of time on your hands to learn,” Dolores said. Victor came running back, his hands filled with bags of potato chips, candy bars, and soda. “Mom, here are some Cheetos for you. I know you like them.” “Thanks.” “Why are you crying?” “I’m crying because I am happy to see you.” “Did you get my card? “Yes, it made me very happy. It made me have a nice Mother’s Day even inside this place.” “My teacher said I’m a good artist.” “You are. Thanks for thinking about me. It’s hard for me to write to you because I sometimes don’t have much to say. Nothing good happens here. But I will try to write to you. Send me some pictures of you when you have a chance.” “I will, Mom.” Dolores looked around the visiting room and saw several inmates who seemed to be visiting with their children and other family members. Some kids were younger than Victor; others looked like teenagers, almost ready to become adults. She thought about the amount of hurt that gets passed down from one generation to the next. She often wondered how intense the pain must have been for their mother when she swallowed the sleeping pills and made her two daughters orphans. Had she known that one of those daughters would wind up in prison for life, would she have found the strength to survive? Would she have continued to be a mother to her daughters and keep them on the right track? She wondered if Marisa had considered all the pain and sadness that Victor would endure, would she have stopped herself from getting caught up in a man’s murder? Marisa had a lot of time to think about these things while behind bars. She realized that she had left her son without a mother, much like what happened to her when she was a young girl. It was the last thing she would wish on anyone, much less her own son. Love, it seemed to Marisa, was transitory. You can’t count on it from one day to the next. Victor was the exception to that rule, yet she had ruined his life with her actions and did not know how to make it right. The guilt for what she had done to Rob and Victor was almost unbearable. Just then, Dolores saw Marisa peering at her through the brown eyes she had always used to her advantage. She was stripped of all embellishments now, and all that was left was a battered soul in prison clothes. Next to her was a little boy who looked a lot like her. His happiness at being with his mother would be replaced by tears when he was in bed tonight, knowing that his mother would probably never come home. The three of them sat silently for a few minutes, not knowing what to say. They heard the loud voices and chatter of the other inmates and visitors around them. They all seemed to know what to say and could be heard carrying on. But the three of them sat there and looked at each other, unsure how to relate to each other under these circumstances. When it was time to leave, they hugged each other tightly, and Victor did not want to let go. “Thanks for bringing him and coming to see me,” Marisa said. “Of course,” Dolores responded. “Let’s take this one day at a time. Un día a la vez.” Dolores took Victor’s hand and walked toward the exit. The Central Valley’s overwhelming heat was waiting for them outside. She wiped the perspiration from Victor’s forehead. The heat was nothing compared to all the pent-up emotions in the visiting room. “Don’t worry mijo,” Dolores said to Victor. “If there is anything this family knows how to do, it’s getting through hard times.”  Robert G. Retana is an attorney living and working in San Francisco. He is Chicano, originally from the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, as well as a Tribal Member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. He lives with his husband, Juan Carlos, and their faithful companion, Tigre, a dachshund mix. Robert’s short story “Leaving Boyle Heights” was published in the Latino Book Review Magazine in 2021. He is a fan of the arts and currently serves as a Board Member of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. As a writer, he seeks to tell stories from marginalized communities that are often left untold.
 Matchmaking and Taxesby Russ López “Watch out,” my sister Elena warned me, “Abuelita Marisol has decided you are too old to be single. She’s hired Señora Alba to fix you up with a suitable young man.” Grandmother wasn’t the only one who thought I needed a partner. My mother gently told me last month, “I keep looking for a saint we could ask to help you find a novio.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the chances of the Catholic Church creating a patron saint of queer relationships was infinitesimally small. It didn’t matter who or what you were, my family thought no one should be single. My Aunt Davida kept pushing me to go out and meet guys. “Sleep around until you meet one you like,” was her advice. “That’s the best way to find true love.” This from a woman who married my uncle when she was sixteen and was still blissfully with him nearly fifty years later. One cousin suggested I should sign up for a dating service, not knowing all the apps I had on my phone, and another told me it was time for me to think about children. “You aren’t getting any younger,” he admonished. They preferred I meet a nice Mexican man, of course, or at least someone Latino. But that wasn’t necessary. Everyone just wanted me to be with someone. I had four siblings, all of whom had at least embarked on a long-term relationship even if they didn’t last. It was my turn, if only to give everyone something to gossip about. “I’m sure there is someone wonderful out there for you,” Elena promised me. “And we will all talk behind your back about why he puts up with your annoying habits.” I was twenty-six, out of school, and living on my own. I had graduated with a business degree and was an independent adult gainfully employed. On paper at least, it was time I acted like an adult. While my family was otherwise proud of me, Mom still had a picture of my league champion soccer team from my high school up in the hallway, they thought that being single made me incomplete. On the other hand, I felt like I was just starting out in life. Despite the low-cost education I received from the California State University system and living at home my first two years, I graduated with huge student loans I can barely make the payments on. I drive an old car that embarrasses me and live in a studio apartment my brother Mike calls the smallest in Silicon Valley. I have far too much Indian blood in me to pass for anything but Mexican so if that isn’t a guy’s taste, I am out of luck. An accountant for a real estate company, my only luxury is my gym membership. Now that I think about it, maybe I was too dull to be marriage material. If you want to hire a matchmaker, Señora Alba is a great choice. Not only is she a well-respected bruja, she also dabbles as a curandera, and during tax season prepares returns for half the neighborhood. Thus, she knows everyone: the good, the bad, the broke, and the single. In my family alone, she found Uncle Rodrigo his second wife, cured my cousin Manuela of hiccups by brewing a special herbal tea, and helped Elena straighten out her 401(k) roll over. “You weren’t too proud to go running to Alba to have your taxes done,” Elena taunted me. “What makes matchmaking so different?” Still, the idea of Alba assessing my physical, emotional, and financial strengths and weaknesses disturbed me. And though Alba has excellent taste in men, her love life is legendary, I was put off by her meddling. Angry that they thought I was a pathetic loser at romance, I vowed to Elena, “I am going to reject anyone that Alba picks out for me.” Childish, but they had hurt my feelings. The next evening at the gym, I found out my humiliation had gone public when Mike and his buddy Alejandro teased about the matchmaking going on all around me. “No ring yet,” Michael reported to Alejandro as he held my hand up. “I’ve heard Alba has interviewed over a hundred men in three languages and none have agreed to woo my hermanito.” “It’s his baby face,” Alejandro suggested as he pinched my cheek. “He’s cute in that muchacho next door kind of way but dating him would be like going out with a puppy dog. That’s not everyone’s taste.” Michael and Alejandro laughed while I turned red. They were best friends, having met when they started working at Mayfair High School where Mike taught Drama and Alejandro ran the ESL program. Though Alejandro was handsome and gay, I never paid much attention to him because he never expressed any interest in me. However, he had the key as to why Abuelita had made my love life her priority. “Last Saturday, your grandmother was at Pancho González and Julian Chávez ‘s wedding. You should have been there, it was spectacular,” he explained. “They wore matching tuxedos and arrived in separate coaches drawn by white horses. There was a sit-down dinner at eight prepared by a chef from Oaxaca, and a midnight buffet that featured sushi and a taco bar. They had a band inside rocking the best norteño music I’ve ever heard, and a DJ blasting party tunes out on the patio. Your grandmother danced for hours. Everyone did. Sometime after her third glass of champagne, Abuelita told me you were her only chance to have an over-the-top gay wedding in the family.” I was doomed. Over the next several days, I kept my eyes out for a setup, but nothing happened until Friday when Abuelita asked for a favor. “I bought a new television online and didn’t want it stolen off my porch, you know how bad the crime is on my street. So I had them deliver it at Santiago’s Market where I need you to pick it up for me. When you get there, see Tony, Santiago’s son. He’ll help you get the TV into your car and then come over with you to bring it up the stairs to my apartment. I arranged it all.” This was so obvious that I had a hard time not laughing. Still, if Abuelita asks me to do something, I do it. Again, my humiliation was public and there was a crowd at the market when I got there including my mother, two aunts, my brother, and Alejandro. It was as if someone had sold tickets. “This is too entertaining to pass up,” Alejandro said, smiling. To punish him and to thwart Alba’s machinations, I asked Alejandro to help me with the television. I admit I was tempted by Tony. He was mad handsome and still as built as he had been during his high school wrestling days when I had drooled over him. But I was determined not to let Grandmother run my love life and refused Tony’s offer to help. Abuelita must have been surprised when Alejandro and I carried her television into her apartment, but she didn’t say anything. I had won the first round in this war, but I didn’t gloat. Afterwards, Alejandro and I went out for burgers to dissect the setup. “You know Alba would lead with a Dominican, she loves their music,” he teased. “Let’s face it, your family could use some outside blood.” That was true. Just about everyone in the family had married someone from Coahuila. Abuela had married a second cousin from her little village while Mom and Dad had lived across the street from each other growing up. My family never went too far afield to find our mates. “Nothing against Tony, I’d have a roll in bed with him anytime.” I wondered why we had never hooked up. Maybe I was too timid to act on my crushes. “But he has no ambition beyond running his father’s store. I want someone who wishes he could go to Mars, even though he knows it will never happen,” I told Alejandro. “I want a guy who lives in his dreams. Tony is too literal.” “Dang, you are tough,” he replied. “I’m lucky that Alba isn’t pushing me on you.” We both laughed. Thanks to Alba, I started getting all sorts of strange requests. A guy I barely knew wanted me to be his date at his sister’s quinceañera party, a one-night trick from two years ago suddenly resurfaced to ask me to dinner, and a man at the gym invited me to go home with him. “You’re hot as hell, bro,” he said as he stood next to me in front of one of the wall mirrors by the free weights. “I want it right now.” Fortunately, Mike and Alejandro didn’t see us leave together. Gym guy was not one of Alba’s setups, however. Though I had a good time, it turned out he had a boyfriend. The hits kept coming. A guy on Grindr texted me that he was “Grandmother approved” while a bartender asked me how the matchmaking was going as he slipped me his phone number. “I am exhausted from all this,” I complained to Alejandro the next evening at the gym. “Cheer up,” he said as he hugged me. “Now you know everyone wants your hot body.” His arm around my shoulder felt good. The next Thursday, everyone went to see Mike’s students perform Romeo and Juliet. With a party of thirty in an open seating auditorium, it was chaos with people trying to figure out where to sit. At the very last second, Alba ordered Kyle Moon, a gym coach, to take the seat next to me. This may have been innocent, but with Alba in action, I suspected everything. As far as I knew, Kyle was straight and I was pretty sure that Abuelita would prefer me to date a Latinx guy, but under the circumstances, I was annoyed by this blatant setup. To make matters worse, Alejandro was sitting on the other side of Kyle, rather than next to me, and by this point, I was convinced that he should be the one I go out with. But of course, he wasn’t anyone’s idea of a proper boyfriend for me. Keeping my anger hot, Abuela and Alba sat behind me, and before the play started, they loudly assessed the romantic potential of every young man in the audience. I seethed. The family had found out I was gay ten years ago when I stupidly left a Valentine’s Day card from a classmate on the kitchen counter. Billy Martínez was a dream and had worked for a week to create a giant card that opened up into a three-dimensional football stadium with our names in a pink heart at the fifty-yard line. My parents were cool, though I was mortified when they put the card up on the mantle to show off. Elena helped me through that time. “Be grateful,” she told me. “Mom is trying to tell you the family loves you more than anything.” Not everyone was nice about my being gay. Aunt Julia’s boyfriend is always making crude jokes, and a cousin pointedly told me that I was never allowed to be near her kids. There were guys at my high school who threatened to kill me, and a group of girls nicknamed me mariposa rosa and painted pink butterflies and obscene drawings on my locker. I was happy to get out of there alive. Watching the doomed romance unfold on stage, I kept wondering why I was single and ultimately decided I was too shy. There were several men that in hindsight would have loved to become involved with me, but nothing ever happened because I was too scared to initiate a relationship. When this matchmaking ended, I vowed, I would go out there and act on my feelings. Then I decided not to wait. I abruptly asked Alejandro to go on a date as we walked out of the auditorium. “Sure, if you want,” was his response. I didn’t find that reassuring. Regretting my spontaneity and fearing more public humiliation, I said, “Please don’t tell anyone about this. You know how everyone is watching me.” He agreed to keep it quiet. Alejandro is so handsome, he makes me nervous. He is two inches taller than me with a perfectly proportioned body, well-muscled arms, and a widow’s peak that draws attention to his big sparkling eyes. We are about the same dark shade of brown and he has a way of talking with his hands that I find irresistible. Three years older than me, he was much more grounded than I could ever be. Though he likes to laugh and is always full of jokes, he is serious while I am all giggles. Thus, I didn’t have high hopes for us going forward. I figured he was only going out with me out of pity. It turned out to be the best date I had ever been on. We were blissfully happy and totally in sync with each other. At one point I was suppressing the urge to laugh and tell him I was having a great time because I didn’t want him to think I was a gushy romantic when Alejandro leaned back, laughed, and said, “This dinner with you is so wonderful, I don’t want it to end.” I was hooked. He spoke a lot about his family. “As the youngest, I am the only one with status; everyone else stays in the shadows so they don’t get picked up. From the start, I had to interpret for them and represent them when we faced the outside world.” I felt all of my privilege for being born in the US, but I also knew the pushes and pulls he had experienced. “We all have to work together to protect the most vulnerable of us,” I told him. “A lot of folks are here without documents. We live intertwined together, we share our lives. If we lost any one of them, we all would suffer,” I felt helpless as I always do when the topic is immigration. “I teach ESL to help the kids who are like me when I was young,” Alejandro told me. “There is so much pressure to get ahead, yet at the same time, their families so depend on them that they can’t keep up.” Mike had told me how Alejandro’s students adore him and how he is always helping them navigate the bureaucratic mess that ensnares non-citizens. “I know how our families frame our lives,” I said. “My father wouldn’t let me become a social worker or a community organizer. No. I had to major in something practical like business. ‘We gave up your brother to teaching to help our people. You have to look for other ways to make something of yourself,’ he told me. You’ve met my father. I couldn’t ever go against his wishes.” “I understand. We are all still trying to figure out our way between our families and the world,” Alejandro nodded. He still lived at home, though Mike told me he wanted to move out. “I’m always second guessing myself. I wonder if teaching is the right way to go. Sometimes I think I should run for office to change things. My father thinks that I am crazy when I talk about that, but I like to aim high.” I just stared into Alejandro’s eyes, lost in their possibilities. After a brief silence, Alejandro said, “When you give me that cute puppy dog look, I have to ask if your apartment is really as small as your brother says it is.” “It is pretty cramped,” I answered. “When I have a guy over, we have to be on top of each other all night long.” I let that sink in as I explained, “I moved out of my parents’ place when my sister and her three kids came to live with us. I was too old to sleep on a couch every night.” Then I took another bold step. “Want to come back with me?” When Alejandro looked around my tiny apartment, he smiled and said wistfully, “You are so lucky. I wish I had a place like this.” Then he pushed me down on the bed. Within a week Alejandro was spending every night with me. By the end of the month, he had moved in. We alternated Sunday dinners, one with his family, one with mine, and we did everything together: the gym, soccer, and knocking on doors to get our candidate elected to the city council. Still, as far as I knew no one had a clue we were seeing each other, and I was happy I had outsmarted Alba. I wanted to keep things quiet but the news of our relationship began to leak out. Elena saw Alejandro’s car parked in front of my apartment early one morning, and Mike caught us sharing a drunk sloppy kiss after our soccer team went out to celebrate a big win. He confronted us when he saw me wearing Alejandro’s beat up Mayfair High tee shirt at the gym. “Listen up, lovebirds. Either you go public, or I am going to tell everyone. I can’t keep a secret.” It is hard to overstate the status of Mexican grandmothers. Fathers may love us to pieces, but they always have unreasonable expectations. We have to have perfect in every way. My father even had an opinion on what car I should drive. “Get a dark sedan. Cops always pull over a Mexican driving a red SUV.” Daughters have it even worse. Mexican fathers’ primary role in life is to make their daughters miserable by being overprotective. They hate every boy who even glances at their virginal little girls. Mexican mothers are similarly ambiguous. They will fight to the death to protect us, but they also feel it is their duty to wheedle, threaten, prompt, and cajole their sons to do what they think is right. It drove my mom to madness if I left the house in a wrinkled shirt, for example. “If the teachers see you disheveled, they will blame me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks at the thought of the humiliation. Again, Mexican daughters have it worse because their mothers try extremely hard to prevent them from making the same mistakes they did. Daughters are too much like their mothers to get along. Grandmothers, however, are the warm source of unconditional love. There are never any fights, never an argument or raised voice, and they never hurt our feelings. Abuelita would slip me cookies when my parents weren’t looking, and she let me stay up late to watch spooky movies when she babysat me. I admit to being annoyed when she made me say the rosary with her, and I grew bored the hundredth time she told me how bad things were in Mexico before she left. But those were minor quibbles. Abuelita was the tough matriarch of our family. Denied the opportunity to go to school, she had taught herself how to read and write Spanish and after she moved to California, learned it all over again in English. She organized everyone to come to the United States, and when the window to citizenship opened up in the eighties, she had everyone apply. She and Abuelito raised seven children, and thanks to their force of will, none of their children or grandchildren succumbed to gangs or drugs. After a lifetime of hard work cleaning hotel rooms, Abuelita was at last retired, but only because her children demanded she rest. We all did whatever we could to please her. Imagine my fright that I was going to confront her, perhaps the first time since the time of the fifth sun—the Aztec creation myth says we are in the fifth world—a grandson was going to directly contradict his grandmother. But I owed it to her. I couldn’t let her keep spending her money finding me a match. My opportunity came while we were at Tía Agueda’s house. Alejandro was out back teaching Mike’s four-year-old and the other kids how to merengue; by now he had spent so much time with my family that if I showed up someplace without him, everyone asked where he was. My parents and their siblings were playing cards around the dining table while arguing over who was responsible for the latest defeat of the Mexican National Soccer Team. Abuelita and I were cleaning up in the kitchen. She is a tiny woman; I could easily lift her up over my head. Her short hair had turned gray before I was born; now it was mostly white, which made her dark skin glow. While she talked about her volunteer work at the parish, I kept looking at her to assess her mood. But she is as undecipherable as a marble statue. No one knows what Abuelita is thinking, but we always know what she wants. And here I was about to go against her wishes. Surprisingly, it went very well. “Alejandro is a good boy. His family is very proud of him.” That is the greatest complement Abuelita has for anyone. “Es muy guapo,” she added. “Though both of you need to put on some weight.” “No hard feelings?” I asked. “I am so sorry you were worried about me. I apologized for making you go through all this.” It was heartfelt. “Pues, it was worth a try. I only wanted to help,” she said with a smile. I offered to reimburse her for Alba’s fee, but she refused. “This is a business transaction between the Bruja and me. Don’t go poking into it.” I backed off and put it out of my mind because I was excited that I was in a full blown, open, happy relationship with Alejandro. And I was with him on my own, without anyone pushing us together. My sister finally told me what happened. “You really are a fool,” Elena rolled her eyes at my innocence. “No one can outsmart a bruja. It’s impossible to stop an abuela when she sets her mind to do something. Everyone knows that Alba planned to set you up with Alejandro from the beginning.”  Russ López is the author of six nonfiction books as well as book reviews and journal articles. After an extensive career of community organizing and social justice advocacy, he is the editor of LatineLit, a magazine that publishes fiction by and about Latinx people. “Matchmaking and Taxes” is part of a planned collection of short stories tentatively titled, The Lesser Saints of Silicon Valley. Originally from California, López has degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and Boston University. He currently divides his time between Boston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
 Prologue: Saturday, October 4, 2003; |
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