by Matias Travieso-Diaz and Eloy Gonzalez-Argüelles

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

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

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

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

by Kevin M. Casin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bran! Come look at this!” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is that?” Bran asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fairies,” Bran exhaled enthusiastically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They reached the center of the space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are these?” Bran said.

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

“The sickness…correct. Memory triggering may help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Obviously magic,” Bran concluded in his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bran snapped back to reality.

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

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

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

“Kids?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​#

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

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

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

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

“Is it security headquarters?” Cisco asked.

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

“Keep trying Gus.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Japovatos?”

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

“How dangerous are they?” Cisco asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey Cisco, you okay?” Gus asked.

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

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

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

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

“He’s gone!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You sound groggy,” Gus said.

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

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

“What about the tracking signal you noticed?”

“It stopped. It was probably nothing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by ​Arnaldo Lopez Jr. ​

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

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

by ​Arnaldo Lopez Jr. ​

Jones set out for Monkey Island the next morning. Cayo Santiago was located off Puerto Rico’s east coast and was accessible only by boat or helicopter. He’d called ahead and was told that a boat would be waiting to take him there.

The boat, operated by a young college intern, took him to a battered dock attached to a small “r” shaped island. He was met at the dock by a trim, studious-looking young man who introduced himself as Andres Benitez; a primatologist.

“Do you mind if we stay out here by the dock?” Benitez asked. “We have several scientists involved in a number of very sensitive studies right now, and it would help if we kept the human presence down to a minimum.”

Jones nodded as he produced his notepad and pen. “Sure, no problem,” he said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

“Great,” Benitez responded enthusiastically. “What little we had in the way of shelter or meeting space was blown out to sea by the hurricane. We have no permanent structures on the island since no one is allowed to stay overnight anyway.”

“And I imagine that’s also to minimize the human footprint here,” Jones said, while writing in his notepad.

“Exactly,” Benitez agreed. “Now, how may I help you officer?”

“Detective, actually,” Jones corrected. “I’m looking for a chimpanzee that I was told was donated to your facility. This was before the hurricane struck.”

“Oh yes, I remember that entire episode quite clearly,” Benitez said, a note of sadness creeping into his voice. “At the time we considered it to be a rescue type of thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well the zoo had literally run out of money, and so was rapidly trying to divest itself of all of its large animals,” Benitez explained. “The last of these was a very large adult chimpanzee that they had acquired as a donation from a lab.”

“So then you guys decided to take the chimpanzee in,” Jones said.

Benitez nodded. “It was a mistake,” he admitted. “The poor ape was severely traumatized and, even though you couldn’t initially tell by looking at him, his overall health had to have been compromised by all of the chemicals and drugs that were coursing through his bloodstream.”

“So where is the chimp now?” Jones asked.

Benitez sighed. “Look, you have to understand,” he said emphatically. “No other facility would take him in. We were hoping to temporarily house him in one of the large steel cages that some of our scientists eat their meals in while observing the monkeys, but he was too big and powerful. He destroyed two of the cages before we were able to sedate him. And even sedation was tricky since he didn’t react as expected, again, probably due to all of the chemicals already in his system.”

“Just how did he react?”

“The normal dose of sedative for an ape his size had no effect on him rather than causing him to become increasingly agitated and belligerent. The doses had to be increased to dangerous levels just to put him out.”

“So where’s the chimpanzee now?” Jones asked again.

“Wait, let me finish,” Benitez said. “The longer the chimpanzee stayed here, the angrier it became, with the vocalizations of the island’s resident monkeys seeming to irritate it. In turn its own screeches and its pounding on the floor and bars of the cages disturbed the monkeys to the point of ruining at least several months’ worth of scientific observation, entries, theories…

“I’m responsible for the 1,000 Rhesus Macaque monkeys that reside here, as well as for the students and scientists that study them.”

“Did the chimpanzee ever hurt any of the people here?” Jones asked. “Did it escape during or after the hurricane? Is it possible that it got out of its cage and swam back to Puerto Rico? Is that what you’re trying to hide here?”

“What? No!” Benitez insisted, before taking out his handkerchief and wiping his face. It had grown much warmer since their meeting started, and standing out in the open didn’t help things. “A chimpanzee’s muscle density would cause it to sink like a stone—it would have drowned.”

“So then where is it now?” Jones insisted.

Benitez sighed. “I gave it to a research lab back in Puerto Rico,” he stated dejectedly.

“I have no idea what happened to him after that, and I didn’t want to know.”

“Give me the name and address of that lab,” Jones insisted, writing it down in his notepad as quickly as Benitez recited it. His heart almost skipped a beat when Benitez told him that the lab was located in Cabo Rojo.

“A few more things,” Jones said still writing in his notepad. “Is a chimpanzee smart enough to erase its footprints from a crime scene? Can it be taught to do that? Can it be kept as a pet and taught to kill people?”

Benitez looked confused for a moment, but then answered the questions. “A chimpanzee is indeed smart enough to cover its tracks, but to answer your second question as well, it wouldn’t normally see the benefits of doing something like that, and so it would have to be trained to do so.”

“And the last question?”

“This reminds me of an Edgar Allen Poe story that I once read in high school, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ where an ape that was being kept as a pet commits murder…”

“So it is possible?” Jones pressed.

“Well, that was a work of fiction of course, but chimpanzees are often kept as pets,” Benitez said. “Unfortunately their owners soon find out that once a chimpanzee reaches adulthood, it becomes too unpredictable and dangerous to be safely kept as a pet any longer. As far as being taught to kill, I honestly don’t know. But a full-grown chimpanzee, and in my opinion especially the chimpanzee in question, is physically more than capable of killing a human being with its bare hands.”

After the short return trip from Monkey Island to the main island of Puerto Rico, Jones received a call from his captain: another headless body had been found in Cabo Rojo.

As soon as Jones pulled up to the crime scene, he was met there by a nearly frantic Sergeant Acosta.

“You seem to be spending more time working homicide scenes than recovering stolen vehicles,” Jones called out as he exited his vehicle.

Sergeant Acosta nodded and wiped his sweaty face with a handkerchief. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “The hurricane has pushed many of us out of our comfort zones.”

Jones clapped the Sergeant on his broad back good-naturedly. “Very true,” he agreed.

Acosta led him to the part of the forest that faced the grounds of the Los Morillos lighthouse; known simply as El Faro to the locals. The usually well-kept grounds of the lighthouse were littered with debris left behind by the hurricane. Volunteers armed with little more than hand tools toiled under the hot sun in an effort to clear away the mess. It was one of these volunteers, Sergeant Acosta explained, that had found the body partially hidden under an unruly pile of twigs and branches.

“It is like the others,” Acosta pointed out once they’d reached the body. “It has no head.”

Jones nodded absently as he searched the area near the body for clues—especially footprints.

“Perhaps the gargoyle has taken it?” Sergeant Acosta asked nervously.

Jones sighed. “If you want to remain a part of this investigation, Sergeant, then I suggest that you stop the superstitious nonsense.”

“Yes sir,” the Sergeant answered dejectedly.

Jones pointed at the area around the body. “No clear footprints,” he said. “Just like at the other crime scene, it looks as if they’ve been brushed away.”

Sergeant Acosta took a quick glance around and nodded in agreement.

“Apparently an ape would have no reason to do that on its own,” Jones added quietly as if in afterthought.

“Huh? I didn’t hear you, detective,” Acosta said.

“Never mind,” Jones said. “Arrange for this body to join the others in the refrigerator truck, and see if you can get Dr. Rivera to perform the autopsy.”

“Yes, sir,” the Sergeant said as Jones started walking back to his car. “Where can I say you’ll be if anyone asks?”

“Tell them that I’m with my wife and kids,” Jones said before driving away.

At the hotel where his family had taken refuge after the hurricane, Detective Jones sat on the room’s king-sized bed and used the remote to mute the sound on the television.

“The boys are finally asleep,” Jones’ wife Marisol said as she entered the room. “I wish I had half their energy!”

They laughed quietly as she climbed onto the bed and sat next to him. Jones rubbed her back, and she wiggled her toes in pleasure.

“How’s the house holding up?” She asked.

“About the same,” Jones answered. “I just had to take a break from that hammock!”

Marisol laughed again, “I can imagine,” she said. “Well at least tonight you can get a decent night’s sleep.”

Jones straightened up and put his hands in his lap. “I’m not sure I can sleep anyway,” he said. “This case I’m working on doesn’t make any sense.”

“You mean the gargoyle?” Marisol asked playfully.

Jones groaned and rolled his eyes, and then he sighed. “I hate to say this,” he said. “But I’m starting to wonder whether it is a gargoyle after all.”

Marisol laughed lightly, her eyes sparkling in the dim light. “I was only kidding, Perfe,” she said, using his nickname.

Jones sighed again. “I know,” he said. Then he told her about his search for an elusive chimpanzee that may also be a killer.

“I was so sure about the chimpanzee,” Jones said. “But at both crime scenes it looked like someone had deliberately tried to cover up the footprints there, and I was told that chimpanzees wouldn’t normally do anything like that, they would have to be taught to do that.”

Marisol bit her bottom lip as she processed the information that her husband had just told her. “Is it possible that someone is helping the chimpanzee hide its tracks?”

“I considered that,” Jones said. “But apparently this particular chimpanzee is too aggressive and dangerous to be led around on a leash or trained to do anything.”

Jones rubbed his suddenly cold hands together, “And I kept getting this feeling that I was being watched.”

Marisol placed her hand over both of his. “Like you told me happened to you sometimes during the war?”

Jones shook his head. “No, no. Not like that exactly,” he explained. “It wasn’t just a feeling of being watched—I could feel a terrible anger coming from whoever was watching me from the shadows. I can barely explain it. Actually the feeling may have been closer to hate than anger…it may have even been evil. Look, the hairs on my arms are standing straight up while I’m thinking about it.”

Marisol reached out and gently smoothed the hairs on one of his arms. “You’re tired, Perfe,” she said. “Looking after the house, sleeping on a hammock, this crazy case…you’ll figure it all out soon, you always do. All you need now is a good night’s sleep.”

Then, what started out as a goodnight kiss, ended in sweet lovemaking, and afterward he did have a good night’s sleep.

In the morning, Jones found himself on the road to Cabo Rojo before the sun had fully risen. He drove with the windows open, the air redolent with the astringent scent of the sea. In the distance roosters crowed while the distinct two-tone call of the Coqui tree frogs competed with the trilling singsong of the birds just waking from their nocturnal slumbers.

The drive down to Cabo Rojo was relatively uneventful. Jones nodded appreciatively at the road crews and volunteers still removing debris from the roads or directing traffic around the detours.

The drive through the forest to get to where the lab was located was a different matter altogether. The paved road soon disappeared, replaced by a pitted and rutted disaster that in some places was choked with near impenetrable barriers of hurricane engendered junk and debris. Jones had to backtrack and/or go off-road several times before coming to a well-maintained turn-off that led to a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

Jones continued along the road running alongside the fence until he reached a small, circular clearing and a gate with a callbox mounted next to it.

Jones climbed stiffly from the confines of his vehicle and stretched the kinks out of his back and joints. As he was stretching, he looked around and took stock of his surroundings. The clearing and the entire area as far as his eyes could see, was surrounded by thick forest. Whereas earlier Jones had been able to smell the sea and had been serenaded by birds and frogs, the deep, jungle-like foliage that now surrounded him seemed to have the effect of dampening sound and blocking whatever breeze could have refreshed him, so that it seemed that in this place the day suddenly grew hot, humid and unnaturally quiet.

Jones then peered through the fence at the strange dome-like buildings beyond. The sight was surreal—three large dome-shaped buildings connected by what appeared to be external passageways. At one end of the compound stood what looked like a huge microwave antenna, pointed accusingly at the perfectly azure sky. If it wasn’t for the perfectly normal looking parking lot, the whole thing would have looked like something out of a science-fiction movie.

Perfecto Jones pressed the sole button on the callbox, and after a moment, a woman’s voice answered.

“Lamboi Labs.”

Jones identified himself and then added, “I believe someone from my office may have called you last night to let you know that I was coming?”

Several more moments passed, and just when Jones was about to press the button again, the voice returned.

“Yes, and I remember telling that person that the professor is not accepting visitors at the moment.”

“This isn’t a ‘visit’, Jones insisted. “And if the professor prefers, I can go back and get a warrant that would then involve more officers and which would also then be much more intrusive, I assure you.”

After a few more moments, the voice came through again. “Please drive up to the main building.”

This last direction was followed by a loud click, and a whirr as the gate retracted. Jones climbed back into his car, drove past the gate, and into the parking lot, where he parked next to the only other vehicle there.

As he exited his car again, Jones was met by a sharply dressed woman carrying a clipboard. “Detective Jones,” he introduced himself with his hand outstretched.

The woman, Jones assumed that she was the same person that he’d spoken with through the callbox, looked at his hand and avoided shaking it by gripping her clipboard even tighter. “Follow me,” she said curtly before turning around and disappearing through the doorway of the building.

Jones lowered his hand, shrugged, and followed her inside.

The inside of the building was much cooler than Jones expected, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. As the woman with the clipboard led him towards a semi-circular receptionist’s desk, Jones looked around at the ultra-modern, almost futuristic, décor.

“How long has this place been here?” Jones asked once they’d stopped at the receptionist’s desk.

The woman that had led him into the building took a seat behind the desk, and placed her clipboard carefully on top of it before answering. “The main building, this one that we’re in, was built six years ago. The other two, and the rest of the compound, were added later on, so the entire complex is relatively new.”

Jones gave a low whistle. “Six years? I never knew that this place existed until recently.”

“The professor values his privacy.”

“I guess so,” Jones said as he pulled out his notepad and referred to the notes he’d taken down during his research earlier. “And that would be Dr. Gustavo Lamboi?”

“Yes. He owns and runs this facility.”

“I see,” Jones said, tapping his pen on the notepad. “And who are you?”

“My name is Anna Vasquez,” she answered. “I’m Professor Lamboi’s personal assistant.”

Jones took a quick look around, “I’d like to speak to Dr. Lamboi,” he said.

“He knows that you’re waiting,” Vasquez said. “He will be joining us momentarily.”

Jones nodded.

“And he prefers to go by the title of professor,” she added.

“Professor of what?” Jones asked.

“Before his accident, he was a professor of spinal trauma and surgery at the medical college,” she answered. “His research led the way to making great gains in the areas of robotic and laser surgeries, not to mention his groundbreaking work in the areas of stem cell implementation, immunology, and micro-surgery.”

Jones stopped writing in his notepad and looked at her. “You really admire the, uh, professor,” he said.

A blush stole its way quickly over face and neck. “Of course I admire him,” Anna said. “He is a great man; a genius! I was his student at the college, and that’s where he first hired me as his research assistant. Once he received the grant to build this facility, he brought me onboard as his personal assistant.”

“That’s a lot of assisting,” Jones said, shutting his notepad and trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Anna Vasquez skewered him with a sharp glance. “What are you implying?” She asked sharply.

“Nothing,” he said casually. “Nothing at all. I, uh, did notice the unique shape of the buildings here…”

“The dome shape of the buildings make them virtually hurricane-proof,” Vasquez explained. “The high winds have nothing to grab onto, and so ensure that damage is kept at a minimum. Each building and exterior passageway also utilizes a mostly gravity-based drainage system that automatically funnels potential flood-water away from the structures and out into the nearby mangroves…”

“Mangroves?”

“Mangrove trees are notorious for their ability to tolerate flooding and even the occasional saturation of seawater, Mr. Jones.”

Surprised, Jones abruptly turned around to see who had just spoken to him.

“I am Professor Lamboi, owner and administrator of this facility.”

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

by ​Arnaldo Lopez Jr. 

​The phone rang 10 minutes before his alarm was scheduled to go off, followed shortly by Blanco the rooster’s energetic crowing.

Perfecto Jones groaned, pushed the button on his battery-powered alarm clock to the off position, and tried to shield his bleary eyes from the brilliant blue sky that shone through what was left of his roof overhead. Somewhere in the back of his still waking mind it occurred to him that the tarp he’d previously covered his roof with must have shifted or blown away during the night.

Jones carefully adjusted his weight on the hammock that he used as his bed and ran his fingers along the floor until his hand closed on his phone. He groaned again after he’d brought the phone to his face and saw who it was that had called him. It was the captain.

“Hello?” Jones said after pressing the answer button. He was wide awake now.

“Jones!” The captain’s voice practically exploded from the cell phone’s tiny speaker.

Jones winced and held the phone a little farther from his ear. It was obvious that the concept of an indoor voice eluded the captain. Blanco the rooster treated him to a hostile glare before hopping off the waterlogged nightstand and wandering off to another part of the ruined home to continue his crowing undisturbed.

“Jones! Are you there?” The captain yelled again.

“Yes sir,” Perfecto replied, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I’m here.”

“Good, that’s good,” the captain stated in a much more modulated tone of voice. “I need you to go down to Cabo Rojo, there’s been a murder.”

Perfecto Jones, homicide detective with the Puerto Rico police department, showered and dressed in record time (a task easier said than done since his indoor plumbing had slowed to a frustrating trickle since the hurricane). He tapped the location the captain had given him into his GPS, and drove at near reckless speeds to the crime scene, avoiding fallen boulders, trees, broken asphalt, and other debris that had been recklessly deposited onto the roads by the hurricane.

When Jones arrived, the local cops had already cordoned off the area and were holding the crowd of locals and tourists at bay. Thankfully, there were no reporters in sight, probably because they were all still reporting on the hurricane’s recent devastation.

“Detective! Detective!”

Jones, who was now walking past the ubiquitous yellow crime scene tape after having parked his vehicle well away from the crime scene, turned towards the voice that was hailing him and spotted a rotund officer from the local police trudging in his direction.

“Sergeant Acosta,” the officer introduced himself as he shook the detective’s hand. “Your captain called and told us to expect you.”

Jones nodded towards the crime scene, “Were you the first officer on the scene?” He asked.

“Oh no,” Acosta replied. “That would be Officer Rivera. He’s back there still working on his report.”

“Any other witnesses?”

Sergeant Acosta shook his head, “Just the two surfers that first discovered the body,” he said. “They’re the ones who reported it to Rivera. We already have their statements, and no one else has been allowed near the crime scene.”

“Good job,” Jones acknowledged, relieved to know that no one had tampered with the crime scene. “Have you had much experience with homicides, Sergeant?”

“Not really,” Sergeant Acosta answered breathlessly as he and the detective ducked under the crime scene tape. “I’m actually with the Stolen Vehicles Division.”

Jones wasn’t surprised. The chaos created by Hurricane Maria forced a lot of cops (him included) to go home, if home was more or less still standing, in order to take care of their family and property. Some went so far as to abandon what was left of their home to get their family to the relative safety of the mainland U.S.A. So vital services, including law enforcement, were scarce on the island right now.

Jones squatted carefully by the body, shooed away the flies, and took a look at the corpse. The most obvious thing about it was that its head was missing. Behind him, the sergeant made the sign of the cross and muttered a quick prayer.

Detective Jones ignored him and continued his cursory examination of the body.

“The victim appears to have been a pretty big guy,” he said. “So I’m guessing that the killer or killers either caught him by surprise, or were at least as big and powerful as the victim.”

Sergeant Acosta nodded, and covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. Jones noticed that the Sergeant’s complexion had paled somewhat. Then the sergeant mumbled something into his handkerchief.

“I couldn’t understand you with your face covered like that,” Jones said as he stood up. “What did you say?”

Acosta removed the handkerchief from his face and repeated what he’d said, “I said that it looks like the gargoyle got him.”

Jones gave the sergeant a look that started out as incredulous, but that then quickly changed to annoyance.

“A gargoyle? Next you’ll be blaming it on a chupacabra,” he said. “Try to remember that you’re a police officer Sergeant, we don’t have time to waste on superstitions.”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant said, sounding chastened but not totally convinced. “But ever since the hurricane, people say that they have seen a gargoyle flying around at night.”

“People say a lot of things,” Jones said. “Has the Medical Examiner been notified?”

“There is no Medical Examiner,” Acosta replied. “His home and his lab were destroyed during the hurricane, so he relocated with his family to the U.S. mainland.”

“Damn,” Jones said as he searched his brain for a solution. After a moment he turned back to the sergeant. “Get a doctor, any doctor,” he said. “He’ll have to be our temporary M.E.”

Sergeant Acosta nodded from behind his handkerchief.

“And find a refrigerator truck, commandeer it if you have to,” Jones continued. “We’ll load the body into the truck and park it somewhere with a big generator—like a hotel parking lot, or a hospital, whatever.”

The sergeant nodded again and, once reasonably sure that no other orders were forthcoming, hurried away to carry out the ones he’d been given.

Jones stood there with his hands on his hips, backlit by a beautiful blue sky that merged almost seamlessly with the sea. A sailboat serenely plied the distant waves, while even farther out, a charter fishing boat ferried tourists out for a day of deep-sea fishing. It all seems so beautiful, so peaceful, Jones thought as he let his eyes follow the gulls and terns that wheeled about over the azure waters. In the distance stood the reddish cliffs and salt flats that gave Cabo Rojo its name. Yet, even here, violence and death seemed to intrude with impunity.

“First the hurricane, and now this,” Jones sighed. Maybe he should forget about what was left of his house and belongings, pack up his family, and head to Florida…or New York.

A faint smell of death and decay broke into his reverie, and he immediately blamed the body at his feet as being the culprit. He dismissed that idea as he realized that he had not smelled that level of putrefaction while he was kneeling closer to the body, and so even in the subtropical heat and humidity, the body in question had apparently not reached the extent of decay that would have been responsible for the acrid smell that had just assailed his nostrils.

Jones turned back towards the beach—a breeze from that direction usually carries the salty tang of the sea. A Capitán bird, its yellow epaulets contrasting sharply with the glossy black feathers on the rest of its body, flashed by, reminding Jones of the proximity of the wildlife refuge. He looked now at the greenish line of trees and other shrub-like vegetation a little over 100 yards away that marked the entrance to the area’s lowland forest. Another faint breeze from that direction, a breeze that would normally carry with it the scents of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and green, growing things, instead accosted his senses yet again with the smell of death…and rot.
With one last look in the direction in which Sergeant Acosta disappeared, Jones headed towards the forest.

Detective Jones trudged up the slight incline that led to the forest, his shoes gouging deep prints in the sandy soil. He was almost at the forest’s edge when he noticed other tracks in the dirt. He stopped and looked back in the direction he’d just come from, taking note that those other tracks seemed to diminish before abruptly disappearing entirely about 10 yards away. It seemed to Jones that someone may have tried to hide their tracks.

Jones turned back towards the forest and crouched down, brushing dead leaves and other debris from a spot where the ground appeared recently disturbed. He could make out what may have been a handprint, but otherwise there were no discernable foot or shoe prints. It might be nothing, but he used his phone to take several photos from several different angles anyway.

Then—there it was again—that smell of rot and decay…

Jones stood up, brushed off his hands, and looked around. The hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck were standing on end.  Slowly, almost without realizing it, he brought his hand to his gun. He felt as if he were being watched—it was the same feeling that had saved his life more than once in Afghanistan, only it was different this time…this time it was not just a feeling of being observed, but also an unmistakable feeling of malevolence, of pure hatred, that also carried with it an otherworldly sense of sadness, loss, and madness.

The cascade of emotions almost overwhelmed the detective, and he staggered slightly as he shook them off. Jones then unholstered his weapon, and walked into the forest.
Jones noticed almost immediately that the air in the forest was hotter and dryer than it was closer to the beach, with cacti and several species of succulents growing at its fringes. The hurricane had stripped away most of the forest’s canopy, and the unfiltered sun glared unrelentingly at the detritus of its passing. Broken tree limbs, fencing, wooden boards, roofing tiles, plastic bottles, and a multitude of other odds and ends littered the area and blocked his path.

As he detoured around a battered washing machine that was lying on its side, a wad of colorful clothing spilling from the shattered glass of its door, the stench of decomposition hit him again, this time accompanied by the loud buzzing of flies. For a brief moment he’d almost convinced himself that the smell and the flies were the result of livestock or pets that had been killed by the storm. Then he saw them…arms akimbo, legs twisted in broken, unnatural positions, they were tangled up in the brush as if tossed angrily or carelessly away. More bodies.

Jones turned away as his stomach violently emptied itself of his breakfast.

Later that day the bodies were removed and meticulously placed in a refrigerated truck provided by Sergeant Acosta. The truck was then driven to the parking lot of a nearby hotel where it was hooked up to one of their two working generators and isolated from the other vehicles in the parking lot by a perimeter of traffic cones and police tape. Sergeant Acosta acted as security after being temporarily reassigned by the superintendent himself at Detective Jones’ request.

The next day, Doctor Carmen Rivera, a pediatrician from the nearby town of San Germán, was the only doctor they could find that was willing and able to perform emergency autopsies on the bodies. Unfortunately, many other doctors, including those certified as medical examiners, had either fled the island or were overwhelmed with the task of caring for the thousands of victims of Hurricane Maria.

Now, with the autopsies over, Detective Jones, Sergeant Acosta, Captain Fuentes (Homicide), Superintendent Ramirez (Major Crimes), and representatives from the mayor’s and governor’s offices sat in a conference room of the hotel and listened as the doctor divulged the results of her autopsies.

“Four of the victims were male and one female,” the doctor said. “They all appeared to have been in general good health prior to their demise and in the case of the female victim there was no indication of sexual assault.”

“Please hurry this along,” the representative from the governor’s office interrupted while looking at his watch. “I still have a lot of work to do related to this hurricane and the recovery efforts…for all we know these so-called ‘murder’ victims are simply just more victims of the hurricane!”

The mayor’s representative, as well as the other people in the room, glared at the man from the governor’s office before turning back and looking at the doctor expectantly.
“Well,” Doctor Rivera said while straightening her glasses. “All of the bodies exhibited varying degrees of blunt force trauma, some of which could certainly be attributed to the hurricane, but I’m not an expert…”

The governor’s representative threw his hands up in the air in a dramatic show of exasperation, “That’s the problem right there—she’s not even an expert!”  
     
Dr. Rivera straightened her glasses again, and continued. “I may be a doctor, but forensics is not my area of expertise,” she said, a hint of anger adding an edge to her voice.

“We understand, Doctor,” the superintendent said diplomatically, “And we appreciate your assistance during these very trying times. Please continue.”

“Very well,” the doctor said. “Even though all of the bodies suffered some sort of trauma, my opinion is that the massive soft-tissue damage incurred is consistent with the victims having suffered a particularly savage beating prior to their deaths, rather than just having suffered the kinds of injuries consistent with damage caused by the hurricane.”

“I –I’m confused,” the mayor’s representative spoke out. “A beating? Are you saying that these poor people were attacked by some sort of gang?”

“There is no way for me to ascertain the number of assailants involved,” Dr. Rivera answered. “However, some of the bruises do appear to have been caused by a fist or fists, but due to lividity issues, and the various stages of decomposition, not to mention the lack of proper equipment…it’s impossible for me to be sure. As it is, I’ve taken photographs, along with calibrated measurements, and forwarded them to the F.B.I. field office here in Puerto Rico.”

Jones, having already read this in the preliminary reports, waited to see the reactions of everyone else in the room when they heard what the doctor had to say next.
“And then there is the matter of their heads,” the doctor finally said. “They’re missing.”

The majority of those gathered in the room immediately erupted with shouted questions and accusations. Perfecto Jones and Dr. Rivera, already aware of the headless condition of the corpses were the only ones that remained relatively unfazed.
The governor’s representative jumped to his feet and pointed an accusatory finger at the doctor, “I am tired of your unprofessional theatrics!” He yelled. “You’re no doctor, you’re a charlatan!”

The shouting continued unabated until Jones slammed his hand down on the conference room table. The resultant sound was as loud as a gunshot, and had the desired effect of shocking everyone into quiet.

“I think it would be prudent of us to listen to what this kind doctor, who has done us a great favor during this very trying time of tragedy and uncertainty, has to say,” he said evenly. Then after looking around the room, he gave Dr. Rivera a nod. “Please continue, Doctor,” he said.

The doctor, somewhat flustered, nevertheless cleared her throat and after readjusting her glasses, continued.

“As well as the trauma inflicted on each of the patients, uh, victims,” she said. “Each of the victims had also been decapitated.”

A collective gasp went around the room.

“So we’re basically looking for a deranged man armed with a machete,” Captain Fuentes said, turning in his chair so that he could address Perfecto Jones directly. “Has a murder weapon been found?” He asked.

“No sir,” Jones answered. “After the bodies were removed there was a thorough search of the area, but no murder weapon was found—nor any of the missing heads.”
“My God,” the mayor’s representative said quietly.

“I don’t think you’ll find a murder weapon,” Dr. Rivera said, capturing everyone’s attention again. “At least not in the sense that you’re thinking, the victim’s heads were not cut off…they were literally torn off their bodies.”

The room threatened to erupt into pandemonium again until Jones held up a hand and called for quiet. Although he had read the preliminary reports, he had been under the impression that the heads had been cut from the victim’s bodies.

“Torn off?” He asked. “How is that possible?”

Dr. Rivera nervously adjusted her glasses again. “It should be impossible,” she said. “As far as I know, it is beyond the physical ability of anyone to forcibly remove someone’s head without the use of some kind of tool. It’s simply not human.”

“Oh my God—the gargoyle!” Sergeant Acosta blurted out as he made the sign of the cross.

Jones was surprised to see several others in the room follow suit in making the sign of the cross. He shook his head slowly, “Well,” he said. “I don’t have the luxury of believing in gargoyles, or any other myths or superstitions. I have a killer or killers to catch.”

After the meeting, Dr. Rivera approached Jones so she could speak to him alone. “Detective Jones,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything supernatural going on. It’s just…well, you saw the bodies.”

Jones dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” he said. “And you’re right, I did see the bodies, but I assumed that the heads had been hacked off of those unfortunate folks—probably with a machete like the captain said earlier – but now this is something completely different.”

“I imagine that it must be,” the doctor agreed quietly.

“Dr. Rivera,” Jones said. “You’ve done a fine job; in fact you’ve done us all here a great service, especially in light of this national emergency. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“I wish that I could more,” she said sincerely.

Jones thought for a moment. “Actually, there is something more that may help my investigation,” he said. “Earlier, you mentioned that a person lacks the physical strength needed to have torn those people’s heads from their bodies. You said that it isn’t humanly possible, right?”

“Right,” the doctor agreed.

“So could maybe a tiger or a lion have the power to do something like that?”

The doctor thought it over. “In the sense of raw power, I suppose so,” the doctor replied cautiously. “But there were no claw or bite marks on the bodies…and why remove the heads?”

Jones tossed these questions around in his head for a moment before answering. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m not an expert, but I know where I can find some.”

The next morning, Blanco the rooster woke him up bright and early with several rounds of overly exuberant crowing. Jones groaned, shut off his now unnecessary alarm, and dialed his wife at the hotel room where his family had taken refuge after the storm had nearly demolished their home. After a few minutes of small talk, he gave the boys his blessings, and got ready for work.

The otherwise uneventful drive to the town of Mayagüez was complicated by a huge sinkhole that had opened up in the highway, causing traffic to slow down to a crawl. Luckily, cleaning crews had cleared away much of the debris that had been deposited on the road by the hurricane.

Perfecto Jones pulled into the nearly empty parking lot, where a lone security guard informed him in bored tones that the zoo was closed. Jones flashed his shield, and the security guard directed him to the main building and gave him the name of the person he should see.

As Jones walked to the main building, he noticed that all of the animal enclosures he passed were empty except for a few stray strands of hay. The main building was dim and cool inside, and he suddenly realized that despite being born and raised in Puerto Rico, he’d never been to the zoo before.

“Hello?” He called out, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous room.

“Hello!”

Jones was startled by the sudden appearance of an overly cheerful young lady in the uniform of a zoo employee.

“My name is Carmen! Welcome to El Parque Nacional Zoológico de Puerto Rico,” she continued effervescently. “May I help you?”

Jones quickly regained his composure and looked around in an attempt to figure out where she’d come from.

“Unfortunately we’re closed right now,” Carmen said jubilantly. “But if there’s anything I can do…?”

“Uh, yes,” Jones replied, producing his shield again. “I’m detective Jones, and I’d like to speak to the person in charge please.”

“Of course!” Carmen chirped happily. “That would be our general manager, Adriana Ruiz-Cordero. Follow me please!”

Carmen then led the detective to a nearby door and knocked twice before opening it just wide enough to stick her head through.

“The police are here to talk to you Adriana,” she said cheerfully, before ushering Jones inside and shutting the door behind him.

General Manager Ruiz-Cordero sat goggle-eyed behind a modest desk cluttered with books, papers, pens, pencils, coffee mugs, animal figurines, and an open laptop computer.

“The police!” She said.

“Yes, indeed,” Jones acknowledged with a flourish of his badge. “Detective Jones of the Homicide Division.”

Ruiz-Cordero paled. “Oh my God! Homicide! Was someone hurt? Is everyone okay?”
Jones gestured for her to stay calm. “No, no—I mean yes! But as far as I know, nothing has happened to anyone at the zoo.”

“Then why are the police here? What’s wrong?”

“May I sit down?” Jones asked, motioning to one of the chairs positioned across the desk from Ruiz-Cordero; who nodded her consent.

Jones sat down, took out his notepad and pen. “I’m going to take notes,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Again, Ruiz-Cordero nodded her head.

“I’m investigating several deaths that may have been caused by a large animal,” he said.

“But you said that you’re a Homicide detective,” Ruiz-Cordero said.

“Yes, well, this is an unusual case,” Jones admitted. “I noticed on my way here that there are no animals in the enclosures. Did any of your large animals, like tigers or lions, escape from the zoo during the hurricane?”

The zookeeper shook her head. “No, none at all,” she said. “In fact, due to budgetary reasons, the zoo had already donated all of its large animals to other zoos or institutions. The hurricane destroyed the aviary, so all we currently have left are some small to medium-sized animals, and the butterfly exhibit.”

Jones leaned back in his chair and snapped his notepad shut in disappointment. This had turned out to be a dead end.

“Okay, well,” he said. “I’m not accusing you or this organization of not being truthful, but I’d like a list of the animals you donated and where they were sent.”

“Of course,” Ruiz-Cordero said as she got up and walked over to one of several file cabinets. “At one point things got so bad that we could barely feed the animals,” she said as she rummaged through the files. “There were unflattering articles in the newspapers and even protests! At first that’s what I thought you were here about.”
Ruiz-Cordero retrieved a file and brought it back to detective Jones. “You know,” she said reflectively as she returned to her seat. “We did have one unusual case—a chimpanzee.”

“A chimpanzee?” Jones asked doubtfully.
​
“Yes. He was donated to the zoo after being rescued from a lab. He was already an adult when we got him, and quite belligerent—even dangerous. We tried everything we could to rehabilitate him, but his condition was made even worse by all of the drugs and chemicals flowing throughout his bloodstream. Finally, for the safety of our employees and of the chimpanzee himself, we in turn donated him to the primate research station at Cayo Santiago​--Monkey Island.”

End Part I

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

​As Rogelio woke that December morning, Grandpa Ludovico hobbled through the door. He removed his grime-stained mask and wiped the sweat from his brow. His shoulders hunched forward as he sniffled and wiped snot from his nose. He’d returned home early from his shift at the saw mill. He moaned and slogged his way toward the dining table, his eyes accumulating a thin layer of moisture like a child about to cry.

“Good morning, Mijo,” he said, nestling into his seat. He rubbed his eyes and let out a deep sigh.

“Good morning, Abuelito,” Rogelio said smiling. He approached the table and sat beside his grandfather. The man smelled of sweat, coffee, sawdust, and all the scents that came with manhood. “How was work today?”

“Besides having this lingering flu, it was fine,” he said. “I just hope it’s not La Corona.”

Grandpa Ludovico looked outside the window, gazing upon the town as it began to stir awake. People scrubbing clothes and hanging them on clotheslines. Children without masks chasing hens in the narrow alleys.

“We cleared a few more acres from the forest,” he said. “And we were able to finally scatter that tribe from their grounds. They’d been holding up production for months. We had no choice. You know how bad the gringos want our lumber. You remember all the wildfires in Australia? Or in the United States this summer? They have no more wood!” He shook his head. “Anyway, the foreman says at the rate we’re clearing the trees, we’re sure to make our bonuses by the end of the year.” His grandfather rubbed his thumb and index finger together as he smiled and said, “Más lana. More money.”
​
“Oh, how wonderful,” Grandma Clara said coming out of the kitchen holding a tray containing two bowls of chicken soup. “I’m so happy. Finally, some good news this year.”

Grandpa Ludovico nodded. “It’s been a dreadful year, yes. As soon as this flu goes away, I’ll be back on those bulldozers in no time instead of barking at those new kids we hired. They couldn’t fell a tree if—” Suddenly, the old man’s face contorted while he fought off an oncoming sneeze. Grandma Clara set down the steaming bowls of soup beside Ludovico and squeezed her husband’s shoulder, rocking it gently like a cradle.

“Ludovico, try to hold it in,” Grandma Clara pleaded. She gripped her rosary, bowed her head, and uttered a prayer under her breath.

“I can’t fight it anymore,” Ludovico said, worry in his tone. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back.

“What is it, Grandpa?” Rogelio asked jumping out of his chair.

“Mijo,” Grandpa said, crinkling his nose, his lips quivering, “it’s time you knew the truth. Every time we sneeze, we create an entire universe. Every speck of spit and snot houses a galaxy, and in seconds, entire life cycles go by, until the mist dissipates, and then—”

“Achooo!” Ludovico sneezed, shooting a violent spray of moisture and phlegm into the air like a geyser.

“Look, Mijo,” he said pointing at the cluster of haze spiraling over the table. The mist swirled and expanded. The specks of moisture hung on a beam of sunlight emanating from the kitchen window. “That’s a whole world you’re witnessing. You see, time is relative to everything. Even now as we speak life has probably evolved somewhere in here. Perhaps they are working out the basis of civilization at this very moment.” He pointed to a speck lingering in the air. “Somewhere in there people may be marching for their rights as they learn to coexist with one another. Maybe they even have their own plague to deal with. And now,” he said with a bit of excitement, “some species may very well be travelling along the drops, exploring the entirety of their creation. Isn’t it wonderful?”

The cluster began to slow its expansion. The droplets scattered in the wind and settled gently on the table and floor. A few droplets landed on Grandpa Ludovico’s arm and evaporated instantly on his wrinkled skin.

“We get older and sicker,” Ludovico said solemnly at the dissolving mist. He hung his head and removed his hardhat, placing it over his heart. “I’ve destroyed so very much over the years. How many civilizations have I annihilated? Impossible to say.”

Rogelio didn’t know what to say or do to comfort his grandfather. It was all so much information to take in. He felt like he’d stumbled upon some ancient truth kept secret from mortal ears. It was both wonderful, and terrifying. “Bless you, Abuelito,” he said warmly at last, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezing it as his grandmother had. It was all he could offer his grandfather and he hoped it would be enough.

“Thank you,” said Ludovico with a warm smile. Then his brows furrowed as he regarded the moisture on the table with eyes of contempt. “Now get me a handkerchief. What a damn mess.”
​
As Rogelio turned to reach for a box of tissue, the wallpaper began to peel into tiny flakes as they scattered in the air like ashes. Next, the wood on the wall dissolved in a storm of millions of individual particles. Then, came the roof, and the floor, and his hands, and his grandparents, until darkness at last settled neatly into all the empty spaces that had been their world.

​“I love it!” Conchita cried when she placed la corona on her head. “I feel like royalty. Someday, Marguerite, someday, I’ll wear a real one with genuine diamonds, and everyone will wait on me hand and foot,” she added, turning from the mirror to hug her prima Marguerite on the day before she joined the convent. She secretly wanted to jump for joy. She had coveted that crown the entire night her cousin had worn it. She loved Marguerite genuinely, and she would never have asked for the prized jewels herself, but she was ecstatic when her cousin decided to give it to her. 

“You know what they say,” Marguerite replied, quiet and serious in her demeanor. “Be careful what you wish for. You might just get your heart’s desire, but it will come with a price. If you don’t believe that, think of me and what my vanity brought. It will serve as a reminder to keep you humble.”

“Oh, Marguerite,” Conchita cried. “Don’t think like that, you—”

Marguerite shushed her prima, adding, “Hey, let’s not part arguing. If I know you, you’ll make your wish come true and wear a crown of real jewels one day if that’s what you want. And you’ll get it through pure determination.”

After her cousin left, Conchita turned to the mirror to admire her new possession. The jewels were fake, of course, but that didn’t matter. The paste diamonds still shone as brightly as any real ones, especially in the light. The tiara was small enough that it didn’t look pretentious but beautiful enough that she could wear it to dances and other events as an accessory without feeling self-conscious. Too bad she couldn’t wear it to work, she thought. It would make what she did more enjoyable at least.

Employed by a wealthy businessman’s wife as housekeeper, Conchita was forced to wear a uniform which included a cap on her head. At work, she kept her hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. But she hated having to confine her waist-long wavy brown hair which was her pride and joy, and she wore it down when she wasn’t at work.

She could tell her boss, la Señora Benson, was envious of her hair and of her young, lithe body. Hell, the woman coveted her youth, period, Conchita thought. She was twenty-one, just beginning to live, saving every penny she didn’t spend on clothes so she could move to the big city when she turned twenty-five. That was her plan, anyway. Either Albuquerque or Denver, maybe even El Paso, she didn’t know yet. All she knew was she had to get out of the small town of Pajarillo, or she’d die an old maid here, alone and stifled. She spent her weekend evenings out with Sally and Patricia and the rest of the gang. She used to go out with Marguerite and Viola, but the first was already committed to the cloister and the latter was so smitten with her new boyfriend, Allen, she rarely went out with them unless he came, too. Though Conchita was in no hurry to become involved, she would’ve liked to have more variety of male companions and escorts to go out with on real dates.

The problem with Conchita was her taste, which ran to men who could eventually become husband material. Her choices were limited in the places she frequented. The guys at the area’s night spots were either laborers or college students. She had no desire to become involved with a laborer; she wanted a man who would keep her in the riches and luxury she didn’t have. The college boys were no better, still sowing their oats and wanting female companions for partying and a good time, not potential sweethearts and wives. So even though she went out on weekends with the gang, it was more for the purpose of having a great time with her buddies and to show off her beautiful hair and clothes. She knew she wouldn’t find a man until she moved away.
 
#
 
“Un peso por tus pensamientos,” Diego almost shouted, tapping her temple twice with his forefinger. The music at El Cantinero was so loud they could barely hear each other speak though they were seated across the dance floor from the band.

“Ha,” Enrique scoffed. “You don’t have a dollar to your name, fool. How are you going pay her for her thoughts?”

“I do too have a dollar, more than a dollar. Today was payday at the ice plant.”

“Oh, good, you can pay for the next round then,” Enrique proposed, motioning to the waitress from the booth where the three sat.

“I’m thinking that if I didn’t come out on the weekends with the two of you and the others sometimes, I’d have no fun in my life at all.”

“That’s true,ˮ Enrique laughed. “Sad, but true.”

She punched him and Diego did the same on the other side. “I can’t wait until I move away from here, you know? I feel like I’m just existing from day to day, not living. I want to live!”

“Well, come on then! Let us live!” Enrique pulled her out and up onto the dance floor and swung her every which way to the beat of the salsa number until she was dizzy.
She ended up accepting dance offers from a number of young men after that, and the night turned into a fun one once Conchita quit allowing herself to think depressing thoughts.

She chastised herself for her selfishness and remembered the fun-loving Gloria. Life was too short to spend on “what if” or “I wish” thinking. She crossed herself and blessed Gloria, and that night she made a pact with herself to think only positive thoughts, even at work. She began to imagine that the three story house was her own, and she began to take pride in each task. She couldn’t wait to have a home like her employer’s for herself, but she could use it as practice for how she would keep her own sparkling and clean and make her future husband proud.

Living in a five room casita on the wrong side of the tracks with her parents, Rubel and Josie Paiz, and her four siblings, Conchita was tired of her older sister’s and her friends’ hand-me-downs and tired, too, of scrounging for everything. Making seventy-five cents an hour and giving almost half of her earnings weekly to her mother for groceries, Conchita knew moving out wasn’t in her immediate future. But as long as she kept up her positivity, she also knew the opportunity would be hers for the taking before too long.

“Don’t forget to scrub the oven today, Conchita,” Mrs. Benson started with the list of what she wanted done while she was out at her morning charity meeting, luncheon with the library association, and afternoon tennis lesson and cocktails at the club afterward. Between washing the downstairs windows inside and out, polishing the silver, and about seven other chores the woman had already gone over with her, Conchita knew she wouldn’t have a moment to spare, earning her daily pay with chafed hands and sore muscles. Tomorrow she’d have another lengthy list to complete, and the day after that, and… She stopped herself and entered her world of pretend where everything in the house belonged to her and she took pride in keeping it spotless.

Before, she had felt like a Hispanic Cenicienta, the Cinderella from the fairy tale. But for her there was no fairy godmother to take her away from it all. She had only herself to rely on to make enough dinero and get the heck out of town as soon as she was able. So she cleaned and kept up her daydreams, the hours passed, and before Conchita knew it, the lady of the house returned and brought reality with her.

 She went over every inch of what Conchita had done. The windows were spotless, the silverware gleamed, the linens and carpets smelled fresh and new—every detail of every job she performed that day she did to the best of her ability. Mrs. Benson took note as she usually did and nodded her approval as she handed over her payment for the day.

The singular concession the woman made to Conchita when she hired her was that she pay cash at the end of the day; Conchita had insisted just in case the día came when she had enough. When she had first taken the job, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to contain herself with her servile employment or her employer. She expected the occasion would arise when she would tell the woman to stuff her hoity toity attitude up her very long narizota since she held it up in the air so high. Conchita was five, two, but the older middle-aged woman was five, seven, so when Conchita had to stand before her for her instructions or for her wages, the dark, elongated nostrils were about the only thing she saw from her vantage point. But the woman wasn’t that bad, after all. Yes, she considered herself above Conchita and people she considered servants, but she was fair and kind. And she always paid what she promised.

For the next few months after Marguerite had given Conchita the crown, she wore it the moment she got home and visualized a future where she would have a real one and be waited on by others. One morning as she got ready, she put her tiara on as she did her make-up and talked herself into wearing it at work. She tucked it into her purse and caught a ride with her father to the rich part of town where her employer lived. After Mrs. Benson left for the day, Conchita donned her crown and set off to do the laundry.

She remembered the first time her employer had taken her to the mudroom and shown her the bright, white washer. Conchita had never used one before and studied the knobs on top and looked inside with both awe and confusion. Mrs. Benson explained how to use it, and now Conchita looked forward to laundry days since all she had to do was hang the clothes outside in the back yard when the machine had finished the heavy work. She had told her mamá about the wondrous machine, and Josie began saving two dollars a week to get one of her own. The wringer washer on the back porch lost its reputation as a modern convenience the day she heard about the new appliance at the casa of la ricacha, the rich one.

Conchita was scrubbing the downstairs wood floors when the back door opened and her employer walked in. “Hi, there, Conchita. The city council meeting ended early, and I didn’t have any plans, so I thought I’d…”

Conchita had sat back on her haunches and looked up at the woman in surprise. Too late, she realized she was wearing the crown. She yanked it off and tried to hide it beneath her hands and felt her face reddening with embarrassment.

“May I see it?”

Conchita handed it over without saying anything. What could she say? I’m over twenty but I still play pretend? Working for you makes me feel like Cinderella? She waited with her eyes focused on the hangnail she was trying to yank off. Knowing the soapy water would sting when she continued her scrubbing, she figured it was a small penance she deserved for trying to be something she was not.

Mrs. Benson handed the tiara back. “It’s lovely, I remember I had one similar when I was about your age.”

Yeah, but yours was probably real, Conchita thought but said nothing.

“I remember I was so happy when my mother presented it to me,” the woman added. “But I found out a few days later it was fake when she yanked it from my head and threw it out my upstairs bedroom window. I saved the shattered pieces in my jewelry box for years to remind myself of…of certain things,” she finished with a small smile. “Go ahead, put it back on. Lord knows it looks so much lovelier on you than mine ever did on me. I’m going up to my room. Would you let me know when you’ve finished the floors?”

She left and Conchita tried to tuck the tiara into the pocket of her apron, but it didnʼt fit. She ended up putting the thing back on for expediency and continued her work, wondering why the beautiful, rich Mrs. Benson had said her own tiara hadn’t looked good on her. She began to think there was something more about her employer she didn’t know, something which made her sad sometimes even with all she had.

Conchita knocked on Mrs. Benson’s door when she had finished for the day. The woman answered and went downstairs to check on Conchita’s work, approving everything before pulling the dollar bills from her slacks pocket and bidding her good afternoon.

The following morning when Conchita arrived, Mrs. Benson told her she had something she needed help with in the attic. She led the way and pointed to a corner.
“There are many outfits in these three trunks over here,” she continued, “designer clothes, all the accessories—hats, gloves, shoes, and even jewelry, I believe. I will not kid myself any longer. I will never be a petite again, and I refuse to allow such beautiful garments to mold away when someone could be enjoying them. I want you to go through each one and take whatever you want from these trunks. Perhaps you’ll find some for your mother and sister, too.”

For a moment—just a tiny second of a moment—Conchita felt a twinge of anger. She had never accepted charity (her friends’ contributions to her wardrobe didn’t count) and didn’t know how to feel about the rich woman’s proposition. But she looked into la señora’s eyes and saw a sincerity there. “I was so vain in my youth, Conchita,” she admitted. “I thought I would be young forever and my good looks would also last forever. Do you know that’s the reason I never had children? I never wanted to lose my tiny waistline, isn’t that just stupid?”

Conchita saw tears forming in the woman’s eyes, and she sprang to action on impulse. She went to the closest trunk and pulled out a lovely silk scarf and a handbag of the same shade of lavender. “There are many things in here you can still use or wear, Señora.” And she brazenly but gently wrapped the scarf around the woman’s neck. “See?” This sets off your complexion beautifully. We should see what there is you can still wear before I take anything. If you’re anything like me, I know what’s in these trunks were probably some of your favorites.”

There was a hint of wistfulness in Mrs. Benson’s expression, and so Conchita pulled up a stool, wiped the dust from it, and settled the woman down. Pulling out one garment after another, she struck up outlandish poses and crossed her eyes or stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth. Conchita had Mrs. Benson laughing so hard a few times she almost fell from the small stool. Conchita found a bureau mirror against one wall and pulled it forward so they could see themselves as they donned more outfits over their clothes.

“Look at this lace wrap, Mrs. B,” Conchita gushed over the shiny gossamer material that glowed in golden shades. She placed it on her employer’s shoulders and turned her to the mirror. “It’s perfect on you.”

“I think you’re right, Conchita,” the woman smiled at her in the mirror. “Mrs. B, huh?”
“Oh, forgive me for being forward…”

“No, don’t apologize, I rather like it.” She adjusted the wrap and turned left and right as she kept talking. “No one has ever had a nickname for me—ever, not even as a child. My mother always called me Elizabeth, never Liz, never Beth or Betty or Betsy, always Elizabeth, so formal. And when she was angry, which was often, she called me Elizabeth Monique Davinia Jones, as if I needed to be reminded who I was. The woman had no love for me, I don’t think.”

Conchita turned introspective. She thought of her relationship with her own mother. By the time Conchita was born, her mother had been in her thirties. They had more of a formal relationship than one of friend or confidant though there was love between them, and her mother didn’t treat her coldly as Mrs. B’s had seemed to.  However, there were just some things she could never talk about with her mother.

Take her menstrual cycle. Her mother had tried to talk to her about it before the event came, but she stumbled over words and faltered in details so much she called Conchita’s older sister, Lourdes, to explain. So, on the night when Auntie Flo came visiting, Lourdes was the one who told their father to run to the store and bring home some feminine napkins.

“¡Qué ’stas pendeja o qué, napkins a la fregada!” Señor Paiz had protested. His grumbling over Lourdes being stupid enough to think he would go and buy such a product made her laugh all the way to the bathroom where she’d left Conchita stranded. Their mamá had to accompany him, never mind that she left the ropa in the washer waiting for the wringer just to be the one to buy the feminine products her father wouldn’t. When Conchita got her first French kiss and panicked it would make her pregnant, Lourdes was again the one she ran to, confessing tearfully and fearing her parents would throw her out of the house. Lourdes had laughed even louder and longer about that and educated Conchita about the truth of male-female relationships.

On a hunch, she told Mrs. B about these memories, and they shared a good laugh and shared even more. A camaraderie was created between the two that day, one which saved Conchita’s life in the years to come. The two women spent the entire morning up in that attic, trying on each garment they pulled from the three trunks and separating them into piles while they shared more cuentos from their pasts.

“Oh my heavens,” Mrs. Benson cried when the clock downstairs announced that it was noon. “We’ve spent the entire morning up here, girl! What say we go make some sandwiches. You can use that luggage over there by the back wall to pack the clothes you liked, and I’ll give you a ride home. We shall declare today a personal holiday. Tomorrow is soon enough for you to do what I wanted done today.”

And so they did. Conchita felt like royalty indeed in the woman’s shiny, new sedan. Again, a twinge of shame hit her in the chest when they passed the main street and entered the poor side of town. But when she pointed out her modest house to the wealthy woman, she raised her head defiantly and realized that indeed she was proud of their little adobe casita. Her father had repaired the plaster and made them paint it each year, and he taught her brothers to fix the picket fence. Her mother guided them all in planting fresh flowers each spring. The windows gleamed, and the entire façade presented comfort. Theirs might not be a mansion, but it was a home, one which they all worked toward presenting a welcoming exterior so people would see there was love on the inside.

“Would you like to come in?” Conchita asked. “Meet my mother?”

Mrs. Benson looked at the house for a long minute, taking in every detail, Conchita was certain. But she wasn’t sure what the woman thought or whether she’d accept her invitation.

“Of course,” the tall, refined señora replied with a smile. “I’d love to meet your mother.”

They pulled two large valises from the trunk and struggled to carry them through the little gate. By the time Conchita opened the front door, they were laughing at their awkwardness in carrying such heavy luggage and banging their shins with each step they took.

They found Conchita’s mother Josie in the living room where she had been ironing in front of the TV tuned to a daytime soap opera she had become addicted to. The look of horror she gave her daughter showed Conchita her mother was mortified. To have been discovered doing a household chore in the living room was bad enough, but to be caught with her braid falling down with her exertion and to be seen sweating in an old housedress was sacrilege.

Too late, Conchita realized she should have called ahead. Rather than watch her mother suffer, she plunged on in with both feet. She was already going to be told off anyway, might as well go full hog. “Mom, this is my employer, Mrs. Benson. Mrs. B, this is my mother, Josie Paiz. I am so sorry I didn’t warn my mother we were coming. The woman cleans twenty-four hours a day. The house can be spotless, but she always finds something to do.” She knew she was scrambling to say something, anything to make her mother feel at ease and vice versa.

For a moment the two women looked at one another in awkward silence. But then Josie spoke up after wiping her brow on her apron and wiping her hands as well. “Welcome to our home, Señora,” she said, putting her hand out to shake Mrs. Benson’s. With seriousness, she added, “I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to watch TV or do the ironing, so I chose to do both to save time. I’m glad you didn’t stop by yesterday when I was doing the dishes on the coffee table.”

The moment of silence passed when the two women burst into laughter at the same time, and Conchita sighed in satisfaction. She should’ve known her mother would save her own day. No longer embarrassed, she motioned for Mrs. Benson to take a seat on the sofa and bade Conchita to go bring them some glasses of tea. By the time she got back, Mrs. Benson had opened the suitcases, and the two women were pulling out all the dresses so Josie could put them up to her chest to “try them on.” She oohed and aahed over the jewelry and then kicked off her house shoes to try on a pair of red dressy heels, posing her legs one way and then the other while the señora whistled her approval.

By the time Mrs. Benson left, Josie had agreed to accompany her to her charity luncheon the following day so she could introduce her to her closest friends. “Wear that blue dress, Josie,” she pointed at the frock lying on the arm of the couch. “That will look so great with your black hair. I’ll pick you up at eleven. Conchita, come walk me to my car.” When they reached the sidewalk, the woman turned and caught Conchita up in a hug so abruptly she almost didn’t hug back. “Wear your crown proudly, my young friend,” she whispered into Conchita’s hair. “In fact, I insist you wear it at work every day to remind yourself what a priceless gift you are to me.” She stepped back, gave Conchita’s arms a last squeeze, climbed into her car and left.

Closing her mouth when a fly hit her cheek head on caused Conchita to register the words that had left her employer's mouth and into her ears…“wear your crown proudly…a priceless gift you are...” She brushed away the tears with the heels of her hands and went back to the house. Her mother stood over the mess of clothing and accessories everywhere as though a whirlwind had just come into the living room and thrown beautiful garments willy-nilly and left without damaging a thing. Conchita waited for the telling off that never came.

“She’s something else, your boss.”

“Yes, she is.”

“I thought I was going to die of embarrassment when she walked in, but she’s alright. Down to earth, that one.”

“I didn’t see that side of her till today.” And so Conchita proceeded to tell her mother how Mrs. B and she had spent the morning as they grabbed hangers for the dresses and gathered everything else to find places to put it all. 

The next day Josie and her new friend attended the charity luncheon, and Conchita went back to work, but instead of being dissatisfied with her lot, she felt a new pride in her duties. She caught a glimpse of herself in her crown in the hall mirror and laughed out loud with a new happiness, a new self-satisfaction she’d never felt before. She embraced a new desire to do her best for the woman who had given her a job when she could find no other, the woman who had befriended her mother moments after they met.

The months flew since the relationship between the wealthy señora and Conchita had changed. The woman even began calling Conchita the daughter she never had, the sister she always dreamed of, the confidant she wanted for so much of her lonely life. Conchita, her mother, and Mrs. B even began shopping together so each could try on outfits, make up, and all the accessories their new clothes needed to get the others’ opinions on the spot. Life was good, and the three were happy with their newfound friendship. 

For the first time in her adult life, Conchita was content with what she had even though she still wanted better for her future. From time to time as she worked, she thought of Marguerite and all that she gave up to become a nun. Invariably, Nicola and Gloria came into her thoughts, too, and Conchita offered a prayer for her primita and her friend and reminded herself what had happened to them. This never failed to keep her humble and thankful for the life she did have. This was what she was thinking of that afternoon when she was walking from the rich side of town to the poor, a forty-five minute walk through the heat of summer and the cold of winter and every type of weather that came with the seasons.

She had forgotten to take off her tiara and strolled content and happy with the day’s work and with her new relationship with her employer and her mother. It was still warm on this spring afternoon, the sun beginning to go down. It was that hour of the day when anyone driving toward the sunlight was blinded if they didn’t raise an arm or lower a visor to shade their eyes. So when the noise came up behind her, she was knocked forward so violently she had no idea what hit her. She felt pain so severe that after a moment her body numbed with the intensity. The last thing she saw was her shiny tiara flying in front of her and rolling like a wheel down the side of the street. It disappeared into a storm drain, and that was all she remembered until she awoke in the hospital weeks afterward.

The hit-and-run driver still had not been identified, much less apprehended, by the time Conchita came to and was told what had happened to her. Considering it had happened on a main residential avenue with at least twelve side streets branching off of it, no one had seen a thing. The loud commotion sent people to their windows and screen doors, and several had reported seeing a dark vehicle speeding off on one of the side streets. But no one caught any clear details, not a description of the driver and not a single number off the license plate, nada.

Another few weeks and more sad news greeted her when she awoke from a mid-morning nap. The doctors didn’t think she would ever walk again. The tears shed by family, friends, and even Mrs. Benson could have washed the entire town of Pajarillo clean, they fell for so long and so hard from the eyes of everyone who loved her. But they were nothing compared to the crying she did for herself in the state of self-pity into which she plunged after that last announcement. There would be no moving away for her, no attracting any future husband, no large house or beautiful clothes, no social occasions or children later in her life—the life she had come to live gratefully was over. Replaced by a crude and unwelcome wheelchair, the indignities of being  handicapped, the pitying looks from strangers—that was the life she now had to look forward to.

She was released from the hospital and welcomed by the entire neighborhood when she arrived home. Her father and brothers had made ramps to accommodate her, and her mother and sister were prepared to take care of her for the rest of her life. Once her oldest brother positioned her chair in the living room, her mother presented her with a new tiara, this one more elaborate and more bejeweled than the last. For her part, Conchita tried to be cheerful when she was with others, sinking into the depths of her despair when she was alone. Everyone was careful not to leave her to herself for long, but the late hours of the night and the early ones in the mornings drained her of life little by little as she focused on the bleak future ahead. She lost her appetite, lost her will to fight with her family and friends when they tried either sympathy or anger to get her out of her doldrums, lost her love of life. They feared she wouldn’t last much longer, and no one could figure out how to change what they knew would come true.
Señora Benson came to the rescue shortly after Conchita’s family tried and failed to get her to want to continue. After an evening of consultation with her parents, the señora came for Conchita the next morning in her car, accompanied by a driver this time. Her mother and sister had bathed Conchita, styled her hair, applied her make-up, and practically forced her into a presentable dress before sitting her back into her chair and then placing her new crown on her head. Conchita gazed at her reflection in the mirror and smiled faintly. Like the corona of the Virgin Mother, she thought, that’s what it looks like. She prayed a “Hail Mary” for the Mother to take her to eternal sleep soon. She prayed to Gloria, too, asking if she had any influence in heaven to use it, please. She did not want to go on anymore, not without a future to look forward to.

When the señora arrived, she said she had a surprise, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer, but they were going for a ride. When the sedan left the town behind, the sound of the tires on the pavement lulled Conchita into a deep sleep, and she remained asleep for the almost three hours it took to get to their destination.

She awoke when the vehicle began slowing and looked up to see a small airplane right in front of them. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Mrs. B smiled. “Let’s go for a ride, hmmm?”

“You’re kidding?”

“Would I be so cruel?”

Conchita knew the answer and did what she could to assist the driver in putting her into her wheelchair. Then he drove it up the ramp, unloaded her gently, and then fastened her into a seat in the aircraft. The plane taxied and took off with Conchita clutching the arms of the seat but with her nose pasted to the small round window. She watched as the earth receded beneath and behind her, the houses and cars getting smaller, the people turning into the size of insects from her vantage point, until moments later they were in the sky with clouds beneath them.

Oh, the ironies of life, Conchita thought. She had envisioned marrying a wealthy man who would fly her to exotic places, yet here she was, flying to…to…

“Where are we going?” she blurted to her companion.

Mrs. B laughed. “I was waiting for your curiosity to be too much for you.” And she talked for the next half hour, filling Conchita in about her plans for her future, with or without her consent. “So you see, sweetheart, everything’s been taken care of. All you have to do is will yourself to make this work. You and your powerful crown will make you a queen after all, mark my words.”
 
A year later…
 
The tiara Conchita wore on her wedding day glittered in the candle lights of the cathedral in Santa Fe where her fiancé had brought her back to make her his bride. Dr. Richard Stewart had been her doctor for the year since her benefactor, Mrs. Benson, had taken her on her first flight. He was her nephew, a specialist in spinal injuries. He had taken Conchita as his patient at his very own clinic in New York City, vowing to do everything he could to make her see that she could still have a quality-filled life even from a wheelchair.
​
The physical therapy combined with medication, psychiatric support and life skills instruction. They worked in tandem until Conchita accepted her condition and learned to live with it. Dr. Richard didn't intend to fall in love with the tiara-wearing beauty, and Conchita never in her wildest dreams saw herself as a bride to the man who had saved her from herself. Indeed, she had to travel across the country to find her Prince Charming. And so here they were, him standing at the altar beaming with pride. And her, holding her bouquet, being guided to meet him by her father on one side and her mother on the other. He smiled and everyone assembled could see the love in his eyes he never took off her as she came closer. And Conchita, with her own eyes locked on his, lifted her head proudly, her crown catching the light and sparkling with all the colors of a prism. Her dream had come true. She felt like royalty and she would be waited on just as she would wait upon the man who had captured her heart.

​Carmen Baca taught a variety of English and history courses, mostly at the high school and college levels in northern New Mexico where she lives, over the course of 36 years before retiring in 2014. She published her first novel in May 2017, El Hermano, a historical fiction based on her  father’s induction into the Penitente society and rise to El Hermano Mayor. The book is available from online booksellers. She has also published eight short pieces in online literary magazines and women’s blogs.

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​Review of ChupaCabra Meets Billy the Kid, 
a Rudolfo Anaya Extra-Fiction Novel

By Armando Rendón

In Rudolfo Anaya’s latest book,ChupaCabra Meets Billy the Kid,  science as in science-fiction gives way to the true fundamental forces of nature as he weaves a story that flashes back and forth in time.
The title is misleading because it’s not really ChupaCabra, the goatsucker demon of Mexican lore, that meets Billy the Kid, a historical human artifact mythologized by Western writers of the purple prose, but a clash of realities. Obviously, the title suggests some weirdness going on. Is it fantasy, sci-fi, horror, a retro version of the time travel gimmick?
Or is Rudy just pulling our collective leg?
As with really good time-travel yarns, underlying the storyline are critical views of society, its social mores or disregard for humane values. I would say that in all the best science fiction I’ve read over half a century – that’s a lot of reading – writers generally conjure up the bad guys or create a social setting that contrasts with the narrator/author’s own time.
In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the protagonist reconfigures a chair with odd bells and whistles, powered by who knows what and travels thousands then tens of thousands of years into the future. It seems he never returned from his last trip, so the Traveler may still be out there.
In a way, Anaya has come, I was going to say, full circle, but only half circle back to his highly acclaimed book, Bless Me, Ultima, which is on many reading lists of schools throughout the U.S. Ultima, the curandera who becomes a spiritual guide for Antonio, the young protagonist in the story, imbues the book with her other-worldly persona and a powerful aura of mysticism.
To Anaya, his homeland is a mystical place, the mountains guardians of secrets and beauties found nowhere else, its rivers arteries of life in an otherwise harsh land, and a challenge to survival which his forebears have continually encountered for generations. I’ve caught a glimpse of these truths—seeing how mountain peaks jut up to cut off the horizon, finding a río at the bottom of a gorge by a glint of sun, leaning back a chair  against a sun-warmed adobe wall...
Anaya’s treatment here conveys the hardships of survival in the New Mexico of the latter 1800s into the early 1900s following the takeover by the U.S. government of half the territory of Mexico as a result of America’s invasion of Mexican territory beyond the Rio Bravo (Grande). Those hostilities ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.
Yet, this book also celebrates the nuevomexicanos who survived for generations from the meager resources the earth grudgingly gave up. Their devotion to a religion which was increasingly remote resulted in the creation of homegrown zealots, los penitentes, a secretive society of men who preserved the religiosity of the communities through extreme exercises of penitence and sacrifice. The hard life of the early residents resulted in a resolute people, determined to survive in spite of the hardships faced every day.
This is how I perceive nuevomexico, from readings (Anaya’s works and others) and conversations and the few times I’ve ventured into the state, traveling far up toward the headwaters of the Rio Grande in the San Juan mountains of Colorado.
Out of this history evolved a few persons whom I got to know personally: Tomás Atencio, who created a literary headwaters in Dixon, co-founder of La Academia de la Nueva Raza and author of Resolana: A Chicano Pathway to Knowledge; Enriqueta Vasquez, who was one of the first Chicanas to publish a book on the Chicano Movement (Viva la Raza, 1974) and was part of founding the newspaper, El Grito del Norte, in 1968, about the same time that Quinto Sol Publications arose in Berkeley, which by the way was first to publish Bless Me, Ultima, and Con Safos out of East Los Angeles; Esteván Arellano, a writer and photographer, who drove me up into the mountains the time I met Atencio, and Reies Tijerina, who was a Tejano, but allied himself with and became the most prominent leader of the land grant movement in New Mexico.
And Anaya.
This sampling of people and experiences inform my reading of ChupaCaba Meets Billy the Kid. I say Anaya circled halfway back to Ultima, because the plot in this book depends heavily on tried and true sci-fi gimmicks, though the story is set in the middle of the Lincoln County War of 1878.
A super deep state government unit, operating out of the infamous Area 51, called the C-Force, which also answers directly to the White House; an incredible experiment run by C-Force gone awry which combines the DNA of chupacabra and alien DNA (think Area 51) to produce a devilishly vicious though sometimes clownish hybrid called a Saytir; the good-old wormhole angle worms its way in somehow (well, I know but I’m not telling), and the time-lapping magical laptop (magical because it seems to have a solar powered charger in 1878) that  functions for note taking and for checking emails from this now (2018).
The reference to the White House, that is, to an actual living person is rare in science-fiction. But Anaya’s story is happening in real time—his book is fresh off the presses. The president has authority over the C-Force and its members are continually advising him. (Does the C stand for ChupaCabra or Chili? Is C-Force to blame for the direction of current events? Is the current president really a Saytir?)
In other words, Anaya throws every quirky sci-fi accoutrement ever devised into the fray. You’ve got to love it.
Something seemed to be lacking in the story for me as I started to read it, but then I met the aspiring writer protagonist, Rosa, who believes it is her mission to write the true story about Billy the Kid. The true story, “it’s what every writer wants,” she says, still queasy though from some of the not so savory action she’d seen so far. So, lots of background fact-gathering, laying the groundwork for the story, but little of the spiritual or otherworldly that could connect us to his earlier writings, especially Ultima. Yet, Ultima lies in wait in the background throughout the book. For example, look for the flashback to the movie of the Anaya classic.
Rosa, the young person documenting all these events and characters, teams up with Billy the Kid, who mysteriously shows up at her new-found digs in 1878 New Mexico. A sort of platonic relationship ensues—Billy is a very approachable fellow with the young ladies even though rather reproachable otherwise.
So how does Rosa end up in 1878?
Rosa’s chief means of transportation is by horse, of course. She witnesses key events in Billy the Kid’s last few days and shares the lives of kind Mexican American hosts who give her food and shelter, even lend her a proper dress for a señorita to go to el baile, basically because she is friend of Bilito, the Kid.
Armed with her laptop and with a lot of time on her hands, so to speak, as she battles writer’s block or rides shutgun next to the Kid, Anaya, I mean, Rosa, ponders a number of issues: the very notion of time, the role of literature in culture, what is driving her even to consider writing about this outlaw and what happened in a backwater of history 140 years ago, like who cares? Rosa suggests that there is far more to comprehend beyond what we see or seek to comprehend. “Time makes something new of us all,” Rosa tells Billy as the Kid’s own timeline draws to a close. Some of us have more time than others, she fails to add. Rosa, of course, knows Billy’s last day is approaching—but she can’t reveal that fact.
After what seems like months living in this past world, Rosa begins to worry about how she is to return; there’s no ponderous circus balloon she can take to get back home.
Exactly the point, because we want to find out what happened, she has to come back to our real “time” and tell us, but how does she get back? A low-rider spaceship with hydraulics powered by frijoles de la olla?
No, chale! The force that bends space and time, Anaya tells us, is beyond quantum physics, string theory, time warps, marvelous spaceships powered by dilithium crystals to visit San Francisco Bay in the 1950s, let alone a barrio kid’s scooter that magically carries him back to historic moments in Chicano history.
We know that somehow she made it back. All the while she has been recording what she sees and hears. At the end of the book, she has graciously provided a detailed timeline, “Rosa’s Notes and Observations,” downloaded from her laptop no doubt of what she saw, so that’s proof. But the question still remains, how?
When we find out what that inexorable source of energy is, all falls into place. This is what Anaya is getting at. It’s what he has been writing about all his life. How we ourselves can be transported back in time, back to a transcendent period of our own. It’s so obvious when you read the book.


Armando Rendón is editor/founder of Somos en escrito Magazine, author of Chicano Manifesto (1971, 1996), and creator of Young Adult novels, including the four-part series, The Adventures of Noldo and his Magical Scooter, (2013-2016) and the latest Noldo novel, The Wizard of the Blue Hole (2018).

For an excerpt from ChupaCabra Meets Billy the Kid, a Rudolfo Anaya novel, the book was featured recently in Somos en escrito under the title, “I am becoming a recorder of history.” The book is available at ChupacabrabyAnaya.