Por Alex V. Cruz

El chico de boca rosada le mordió los labios mucho antes de conocerlo en persona. Ocurrió en un sueño, pero Lucas no lo comprendió hasta el siguiente día que, mientras caminaba con la boca sabor a sangre coagulada, lo vio andar los pasillos de la universidad Utesa, recinto Moca, como si nada hubiera ocurrido.
 
Lo conoció por sus labios, largos y delgados como orugas de polilla, y por la manera en que caminaba, pecho alto y espalda recta como si llevara la torre Eiffel metida por el culo. Sus ojos las aguas azules del mar mediterráneo, y su pelo carbón carecía la textura característica de pelo malo. Se llamaba Mateo, y Lucas lo supo por las olas de bochinches en la que navegaban las chicas que lo veían caminar por los pasillos ardientes de la pequeña universidad cibaeña.
 
Lucas, con la punta de su lengua, pasó el día jugando con los agujeros que dejaron los dientes de Mateo en el adentro de su boca. Ya no sentía el dolor naufragante de la mañana, pero aún estaba ahogado en el sabor metálico cliché de la sangre. Cuando terminó su día universitario, se acostó en uno de los bancos por el jardín principal de aquella institución, donde podía ver las nubes oscuras contemplar cómo y cuándo arruinarían el día de los jornaleros diarios.
 
“Nos conocemos,” Lucas escuchó a alguien decir, y no tuvo que moverse para saber que era el chico español que traía a todos locos. Sus eses agudamente pronunciadas y el intercambio de la ce por la ze lo delató casi instantáneamente.
 
“No creo,” dijo Lucas, sentándose en el banco y mirándolo a los ojos, porque de que otra manera iba a explicar que lo conoció en un sueño, que todavía lleva el sabor de su boca y sus dientes marcado bajo sus labios. En lo profundo de sus entrañas, en un lugar cerquita al corazón, cuyo latía como locomotora del siglo XIX, llevaba la memoria de la humedad de su piel.
​
“Sabes,” dijo Mateo, “eres muy atractivo…” Lucas perdió el contacto con los ojos de Mateo. Sus cachetes sonrojaron bajo la melanina diluida de su piel. “… para ser dominicano.”
 
Mateo continuó por su camino, el viento jugando con su pelo y sol adorándolo. Lucas, aún sentado en su banco, vio como un chico, quien él conocía de cara, pero no de nombre, caminaba con su mochila a medio hombro, y su camisa ensangrentada en el pecho. La porción inferior de su boca totalmente devorada, y su espalda sudada. “Ese seré yo mañana,” dijo Lucas.

Las primeras gotas del diluvio de esa noche se encunaron en el pelo crespo de Lucas, y supo que era hora de echar camino a casa, donde su madre, con sus huesos de osteoporosis, lo estaría esperando con la comida servida en la mesa, y con el orgullo de ver a su hijo universitario plasmado en su cara. 

***

Se esperaba el tercer huracán de esa temporada, y Lucas se aseguró de llevar en su mochila la sombrilla que no podría usar por los fuertes vientos. También encontró la bufanda olvidada de su primo americano y la envolvió en su cuello bastante veces para cubrir la sangre que caía por la falta de toda su mandíbula y parte de su cuello. No quería ensangrentar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas que tenía esa mañana. Ya el maestro se las traía con él y no quería darle más pretexto para que le reprobara la clase.
 
Lucas llegó tarde a clase. El carro público de infinita capacidad que tomó esa mañana se averió a muchas cuadras de la universidad. Entre los fuertes vientos que amenazaban hacer volar esa bufanda teñida de sangre y el agua percusionista, Lucas pasó por el puertón principal sin despertar el guachimán que protegía la universidad para que nadie la atacara en sueños.
 
Los pasillos ya estaban vacíos y solo quedaba el mal olor de almas y cabello mojado. Se encontró con Mateo, nariz perfilada y pelo brilloso, que lo miraba por debajo de sus pestañas. “Quiero más,” él dijo, y fue en ese momento que Lucas reconoció que Mateo lo estaba esperando. La sangre hecha para el sonrojo brotó por la carne desgarrada de donde debía estar la mandíbula, enchumbando aún más la ya pesada bufanda. Lucas desenvolvió la bufanda poco a poco hasta revelar su labio superior y brotes de sangre fresca y coagulada. Mateo se le acercó y, con su lengua larga y puntiaguda, lamió la cara de Lucas por la frente y bajo las sienes hasta encontrar en su cuello un pedazo de piel aún no destripada por sus dientes y empezó a comérselo a mordidas, deleitándose de su piel morena. Una chica, que salió de un salón de clases, gritó y se desmalló al ver tanta pasión entre los chicos.
 
A Lucas no le quedaba nada en el cuello ni en la parte superior de las clavículas más que esa poca carne rosada y obstinada que no quería desprenderse de los huesos blancos. La bufanda ya no podía cubrir su cuello completo y temía que sus compañeros pensara que parecía zombi de una película de terror. Decidió tomar el día libre. De todas maneras ya era muy tarde para tomar el examen de Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas, así que regresó a la parada de carros para ir a casa, pero los choferes, al ver el derroche de sangre por todo su cuerpo, le negaron la entrada y no tuvo mas que irse caminando entre el viento, que soplaba tan fuerte que levantaba los vehículos y los hacia llegar rápido a sus destinos.

***

​En casa, donde Lucas puso sus libros abiertos en la mesa coja para que secaran, su madre lo esperaba mientras revolvía el sancocho de tres días en la gran paila de aluminio. “Mira la televisión,” dijo ella, apuntando con los labios al televisor que usaba de antena un paraguas para desviar el gotero del techo de zinc. “El ojo llega hoy y va acabar con todo.” Lucas temía que cancelaran las clases. Temía que no iba a poder ver a Mateo. Temía que no iba a sentir sus labios sobre su carne cruda.
 
Esa noche, entre las fuertes ráfagas de viento, la inagotable lluvia, y los macos escabulléndose entre las tablas de madera buscando refugio, Lucas soñó de nuevo con el chico blanco de la escuela. Este le devoró el pecho y el brazo izquierdo dejándolo en huesos y tendones. Lucas despertó, solo su habitación quedaba en pie. El resto de la casa y su madre se los llevó el huracán y nunca fueron encontrados. “Maldición,” dijo Lucas. “Casi no me queda nada que ofrecerle a Mateo.”
 
Lucas, sin nada mejor que hacer en aquel pedazo de casa que espantar las incansables moscas, se puso su mejor ropa, la que le enviaban los primos y tías de Nueva York, y le envidiaban sus compañeros. Perfumó las llagas que cubría la carne mal comida de su cuello sintiendo el breve picor del alcohol tocando sus heridas y emprendió camino hacia la universidad con la esperanza de ver a Mateo, porque aunque no hubiera clases por la destrucción que dejó el huracán, tenía más oportunidades de verlo en las calles de Moca, que en su pequeño y aburrido pueblo.
 
Lucas llevaba su cabeza en alto, balanceada en casi los huesos cervicales, y con una sonrisa solo en lo que le quedaba de labios, navegaba los obstáculos dejado por el huracán. Ni los postes y cables eléctricos, ramas y árboles, hojas de zinc y cuerpos moribundos pudieron borrar su buen humor. Tenía el presentimiento de que no solo encontraría a Mateo en la universidad, pero que ese día el chico de pelo bueno terminaría el festín que era su cuerpo. Entrarían a un salón vacío y por fin Lucas y Mateo serían uno en un mismo cuerpo.
 
Le tomó horas llegar a la universidad. Su ropa toda sudada y ensangrentada. Limpió el banco, donde tuvo ese corto dialogo con Mateo, de las hojas lloradas por los árboles que aún quedaban en pie. Se sentó y esperó y esperó hasta que anocheció. Mateo nunca llegó.
 
Lucas amaneció sentado, espalda recta, en el mismo lugar donde esperaba a Mateo. No durmió, no soñó, solo esperó. Esa mañana, con la salida del sol, llegaron las moscas fastidiosas que le serenaban constantemente sus oídos. Lucas estaba cubierto de ellas, quienes lamían su carne y ponían sus huevos. Él no podía espantarlas, su columna dorsal estaba tiesa, no podía mover ni siquiera su cuello. Pero por fin lo vio. Mateo, el único en la universidad, llego a verlo.
 
La perfecta nariz de Mateo se arrugó al acercarse a Lucas, quien parecía carne seca al sol. Lucas intento sonreír con lo que le quedaba de labios, pero era difícil al ver la cara de disgusto de Mateo.

​“Que patético eres,” dijo Mateo. “Me das asco.” Lucas miró como el joven europeo tomaba su alrededor, el desastre dejado por el huracán. Él vio como Mateo nunca perdió de su cara la revulsión que sentía por lo que veía, por la tierra que pisaba. Lucas entendió que ya este sitio lo aburria. Ya la gente le molestaba. Lucas sabía que Mateo iba hacer lo que los mismos dominicanos no podía. Iba a tomar sus cosas e irse a otro lugar por otras aventuras. Buscaría a otro que devorar.
 
Lucas no pudo moverse de ese sitio. Allí quedo como monje en meditación. Los compañeros le traían flores y le hicieron una tumba. Cuando sus huesos se hicieron polvo, fabricaron alrededor del banco un jardín de claveles blancos.

by Alex V. Cruz

The slender-nosed figure sunk his teeth into Lucas’s lips before their first encounter. It happened in a dream, and Lucas could not fully grasp what had occurred until the following day. He wandered about with the lingering taste of clotted blood when he noticed the guy strolling the hallways of Utesa University without a care in the world.
 
Lucas recognized him by how he strode along, chest puffed and back straight as though the Eiffel Tower were lodged up his ass. His eyes, waters of the Mediterranean Sea. His sultry lips were like long, thin caterpillars. His charcoal hair lacked the texture of “bad” hair. Lucas learned through the undulating waves of gossip that swept through the university that his name was Mateo. The news propagated and intensified with each new flock of girls and guys that gawked from afar as he navigated the sweltering hallways of that small Cibao university.
 
Lucas traced the wounds on his lips with the tip of his tongue, no longer plagued by the agonizing sting of Mateo’s bite. Still, he was intoxicated by the rusty taste of blood. After an exhausting day of classes, he lay on a hard concrete bench by the school’s central garden, peering at the sky as the dark clouds brooded over the ideal time to ruin the life of the daily commuters.
 
“We’ve met,” Lucas heard his voice, and without a glance, he knew it was the Spaniard speaking—the one that caused the entire academy to spawn in a frenzy. The way he pronounced the “S’es” and substituted the “ce” sound for “ze” immediately gave him away.
 
“I don’t think so,” responded Lucas—sitting up on the bench to face him directly—because how could he explain that they had already met in a dream and he could still savor his lips?  Deep within his pulsating heart, he suppressed the memory of Mateo’s damp skin, which throbbed to the cadence of a nineteenth-century steam engine.
 
“You know what,” said Mateo. “You’re handsome…” Lucas eluded his gaze, finding refuge in passers-by. His cheeks reddened under the diluted melanin of his skin. “…for a Dominican.”
 
Mateo continued on with his day. Lucas was engrossed by how the wind tousled his hair, and the unforgiving sun chose only to caress his delicate pale skin. He fixated on his swaggering stride until the Spaniard was entirely out of sight.
 
A group of chattering students exited the school and Lucas recognized a class peer. His backpack carelessly hung loose off his shoulder, and his disheveled clothing belied his usually compulsively neat attire. His shirt was bloodied and torn near the chest area. Remnants of his jawbone, freshly nude of flesh, glistened like ivory, and his entire chin and lower lip were gone. Lucas felt a strong pang of jealousy but was comforted by the anticipation: “That’ll be for tomorrow.”
 
Lucas hesitated to leave where he and Mateo first engaged, but raindrops began to penetrate his spiraled locks of hair. It was time to go back home where his mother would surely be anticipating his return with a hot meal set on the table for her college son, pride plastered on her face.

***

The third hurricane of the season was approaching. Lucas packed an umbrella and rummaged through his chest of drawers until he found the old, forgotten scarf belonging to his cousin in America. He shrouded his neck as crimson excretions oozed from his shredded skin and absent jaw. Lucas didn’t want to stain the Civilizaciones Mesoamericanas exam the professor had prepared for class.
 
The small and rickety public car broke down on the side of the road mere blocks from the academy. Lucas squeezed passed the other passengers and pressed on, his back hunched against the battering winds and hailing rain droplets, a warning that the hurricane would soon anchor. He reached the main gate, where the watchman slept through the howling storm, fiercely safeguarding the school in his dreams.
 
The stench of decaying souls and damp hair permeated the empty halls. Thin-nosed Mateo, with glistening hair, leaned against the wall and gazed directly at him from underneath his thick lashes.
 
“I want more,” he said. Lucas realized that Mateo was waiting for him. The blood intended for the blushful reddening of desire gushed from his missing mandible and torn flesh, saturating the scarf.
 
Mateo unwrapped Lucas’ scarf unveiling the vestiges from the previous night’s feast. Mateo pressed closer and, with the tip of his tongue, caressed Lucas’ face around his forehead to his temples, exploring down the untouched skin near his collar. Mateo’s mouth widened, his teeth scathing Lucas’s flesh, and with firm pressure, tore a mouthful. An approaching schoolgirl shrieked and fainted at the sight of such passion.
 
Lucas felt for his flesh, his fingers encountered but a stubborn thin layer coating his white bones. His scarf was deemed useless and forgotten on the dirty floor of that school to later become the most beautiful red rose.
 
Already too late to take the exam, and with the professor fixed on failing him, Lucas embarked on the long journey home. 

At his house, he set his soaked books on the flimsy table. His mother stirred the  sancocho in the large aluminum pot.
 
“Look at the news,” she pointed with her puckered lips. “The eye of the hurricane will hit tonight and destroy everything.” Lucas panicked at the thought of classes being canceled, fearing he would miss Mateo’s lips all over his raw flesh.
 
Lucas dreamed of him that night, sleeping through the blustering gusts of winds, endless rain, and the macos that squeezed between the wooden planks of the house and searched for shelter. In his dream, Mateo devoured his chest and left arm, and left only bones and tendons. That morning, Lucas awoke to the house and his mother swept away by the powerful gust, never to be found; only his room standing. “Shit!” said Lucas, discovering what was left of his body. “I have nothing left for Mateo.”
 
With nothing better to do than swat tireless flies, Lucas laid out his finest clothes, the ones sent by his aunts from Nueva York, envied by classmates and others. He poured cologne on the exposed ribcage held together by the half-eaten flesh, indulging in the brief sting of the alcohol infiltrating his wounds. Classes were suspended due to the destruction of the hurricane. Still, his chance to see Mateo walking the streets of Moca was better than staying in his lifeless town.
 
His head held high, balanced on bare bones, and a contrived smile with what he had left of his upper lip, Lucas navigated the remnants of nature’s wrath—electricity poles and cables, branches and trees, and corrugated metal and corpses. He was confident he’d see Mateo and was convinced the thin-nosed slick-haired man would continue feasting on his body. They would stow away in an unlocked room and become one in the same body.
 
After hours of trekking to the academy, Lucas’s clothes were a spectacle of sweat and blood. With his one hand, he swept away the leaves on the bench and sat down as best as his weak body would allow. Lucas spent the night on the bench, his back stiffened by dry flesh. Refusing to sleep, to dream, he simply waited.
 
Mateo never showed.
 
With the sunrise, a legion of flies arose, competing for a nip of rotting flesh and repulsive enough to lay their eggs. His body hardened like meat hung to dry.
 
But finally, just as Lucas was beginning to lose hope, he came.
 
His perfect nose wrinkled as he neared Lucas. With the few teeth he had left, Lucas tried to smile but quickly became disheartened as he caught the look of disgust on Mateo’s face.
 
“Patético,” said Mateo. “You sicken me.”
 
The young man skimmed his surroundings and the devastation left behind by the hurricane. Steadfast and beyond reproach, Mateo’s revulsion never faulted; Lucas now understood that this place bored him, the people pestered him, and he was repelled by the soil he stepped on. With deep, inconsolable grief, Lucas knew Mateo would do that one thing Dominicans themselves could not; he would search for adventure in unexplored lands and find himself new flesh to consume.
 
Lucas froze at that moment and never moved again. The world around him retook its rhythm.
 
Classes resumed and Lucas's fellow college mates purchased a tombstone and planted white carnations around the rustic bench where his bones turned to dust.

Alex V. Cruz es un escritor dominicano de ficción especulativa nacido en la ciudad de Paterson, Nueva Jersey. Él es graduado con honores de la Universidad de Columbia en la ciudad de Nueva York con licenciatura en Escritura Creativa y Estudios Hispanos. Actualmente está trabajando en su master de la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU). Alex ha asistido a los prestigiosos talleres de escritura Clarion West 2022 y Tin House 2021. Alex comparte su conocimiento sobre la publicación de cuentos con su comunidad de escritores dominicanos impartiendo clases gratis en la plataforma de Asociación Dominicana de Escritores (@dominicanwriters). Sus cuentos pueden ser encontrados en las revistas SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, y pronto en Azahares. También él cuenta con un cuento en Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology. Pueden encontrar a Alex en las redes sociales Instagram, Twitter, y Threads usando @avcruzwriter.

Alex V. Cruz, a Paterson-born speculative fiction writer with Dominican roots, writes short fiction in both English and Spanish. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University, he holds a degree in Creative Writing and Hispanic Studies. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU. Notably, Alex is an alum of Clarion West 2022 and a member of Tin House's 2021 Young Adult Workshops. His works have been published in notable online magazines such as Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology, SmokeLong, Acentos Review, LatineLit, with two forthcoming stories in Azahares. He is an active member of the Dominican Writers Association, passionately supporting fellow Dominican writers by teaching free publishing classes. Alex is dedicated to sharing his knowledge and empowering his community of writers. Join him on Instagram, Twitter, and Threads using the handle @Avcruzwriter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is it security headquarters?” Cisco asked.

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

“Keep trying Gus.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Japovatos?”

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

“How dangerous are they?” Cisco asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey Cisco, you okay?” Gus asked.

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

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

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

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

“He’s gone!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You sound groggy,” Gus said.

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

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

“What about the tracking signal you noticed?”

“It stopped. It was probably nothing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     Al timbre del teléfono saltó América de su silla dejando su cena a medias.
     —Bueno, ¿y esta huerca que tiene? — dijo su padre Artemio mientras tomaba una tortilla del canasto.
     —Déjala viejo, ¿no ves que ya trae novio?
     —Nunca le debí dar permiso, nos va a salir con su regalito — levantó un bocado de su cena —sí ya vi a ese peladito, pinche cholo. ¿Tú lo conoces?
     —No dad.
     Pasó el bocado con un trago de cerveza y volteó a ver a su hijo menor, Jacinto, —Pela bien el ojo. Si sale mal tu hermana tú la vas a mantener.
     En eso, América regresó a su asiento diciéndole a Jacinto, —Era el Chevín.
     —¿What he want?
     Su padre los interrumpió, —Eit, aquí se habla español, nada de inglés. Pa’ eso está la escuela. ¿O qué, no te enseñan nada allá? — Volteó a ver a su esposa Clara, —Te dije que nos quedáramos en McAllen, aquí es puro vago. Mira tu hija, de seguro va a salir panzona y éste ya hasta la oreja trae con agujero. Pero no, querías tener tu propio solar, ya no querías rentar. ¿Y tú adónde vas?
     —Le va a llamar a su novio, — dijo América burlándose.
     —Shut up you idiot.
     Jacinto se sentó en un sillón viejo al lado de la mesa de madera donde se encontraba el teléfono. Los resortes rechinaron y el polvo de los cojines se esparció. Tomó el teléfono y marcó.
     Al primer timbre contestó su amigo.
     —La migra se llevó a Juan.
     —¡No! ¿How? ¿Qué pasó?
     —Se le puso roñoso el viejo de la labor y aquél no se quedó calló. Sabía que Juan es mojarrita y pues, he called them. Handcuffed y todo — terminó de hablar el Chevín mientras Jacinto pensaba en lo que estaría pasando Juan en esos momentos. La voz de su amigo lo trajo de vuelta a la realidad, —Hey, ¿you there man?
     —Yeah.
     —Vamos a chingar a ese gabacho. Tonight.
     El temperamento del Chevín siempre lo ponía en situaciones de peligro. Nunca acudía a sus clases porque se la pasaba en el cuarto de ISS con los demás muchachos problemáticos. Aun así, nunca reprobaba el año porque los maestros tenían orden de darle el mínimo grado para que pasara de año y pudieran deshacerse de él. Se dedicaba a vender narcóticos junto con sus hermanos. Jacinto lo conoció en el autobús escolar y aunque sus padres nunca aprobaron al Chevín, éste siempre lo protegió de los demás.
     —¿You in Jack? ¿O vas a culear?
     Jacinto sabía que no tenía opción. No acompañar a su amigo era una traición, más aún porque lo tenía que ver todos los días. —¿A qué horas?
     —¡Eso cabrón! —Jacinto escuchó la risotada de su amigo y al momento se arrepintió de su respuesta, —A las nine, ahí ‘onde siempre.
     Jacinto colgó y se dirigió a la cocina. Sabía que pedir permiso sería una alegata con su padre, pero tenía que convencerlo porque prefería eso a que el Chevín viniera a buscarlo a su casa. Al sentarse vió que su padre se retiraba molesto. En cambio, su hermana se quedó enraizada a su silla con lágrimas en los ojos mientras que su madre alisaba su cabello.
     —No le hagas caso a tu padre mi’ja. Él que va a saber — sus manos seguían acariciando la cabellera de la muchacha quien hizo por tomar una tortilla —no hija, nada de tortilla. ¿Quieres engordar? Así estás bien, delgadita y muy bonita. Pa’ que te busques un muchacho guapo de buena vida.
     Su hija retiró su mano mientras su madre recogía su plato aun con comida. Jacinto miró que una lágrima rodó por la mejilla de su hermana y sintió lástima.
     —Búscate un muchacho bueno mi’ja, que tenga buen trabajo. Para que no vivas al día. No seas bruta como yo.
     América se levantó del comedor dirigiéndose a su recámara y cerró la puerta. A los pocos minutos se escuchó el golpe de la música contra las paredes de la vieja casa móvil. Jacinto vio su oportunidad para salir.
     —Voy con el Chevín ma’.
     —‘Ta bien mi’jo. No vengas tarde.
     Salió Jacinto y vió la farola encendida y en el cielo podía ver las últimas huellas del sol mientras las primeras estrellas se dibujaban en el firmamento. Pensó en no ir a ver a su amigo pero sabía que vendría por él, tenía un mal presentimiento. Se dirigió hacia una labor de sorgo que estaba detrás de su casa, pasando el bordo de irrigación, vió las compuertas del canal de riego. Inmediatamente sintió el olor de la marihuana revolverse con los olores de la hierba y los nogales saturados de nueces frescas.
     —Pensé que te habías rajado — estaba el Chevin recargado sobre el tubo de cemento que resguardaba la compuerta, —éntrale.
     —Nah man.
     —Pues a llegarle bro — tiró el cigarrillo y cogió un bate de aluminio. — ¿Qué trajiste?
     —Nada güey, ni dijiste que íbamos a hacer.
     —We’re gonna fuck that guy up. Por mamón.
     Caminaron a lo largo del canal hasta llegar a una casa blanca de madera. En el segundo piso se podía divisar un televisor encendido mientras las demás ventanas mostraban oscuridad. Callados y cuidadosamente se dirigieron hacia la puerta de atrás. El pánico invadió a Jacinto al ver que su amigo sacó una navaja de su bolsillo y le dió el bate. Sintió que sus rodillas se aflojaban mientras su pulso se aceleró. Dió un paso atrás cuando el marco de madera explotó en miles de astillas. Los dos corrieron, pero Jacinto no supo cuando se separaron.
     Corrió hasta que sus pulmones ardieron. El sonido del disparo aún hacía eco en sus oídos. Sin aliento llegó a los escalones de su hogar y entró cayéndose. Ya adentro, se sentó en la tina de baño mientras sus manos temblaban incontrolablemente. Abrió la regadera e intentó hacer razón de lo ocurrido.
     Horas después, acostado en su cama escuchó a su madre tocar la puerta. Entrando le preguntó—¿Dónde andabas? —al no contestar Jacinto, añadió, —me acaba de contar la vecina que mataron a alguien en la labor. ¿Escuchaste los disparos?
     Jacinto ocultando su llanto bajo la oscuridad de la litera, se quedó callado.
     —Pórtate bien mi’jo. No te juntes con esos vagos, ya vez como terminan.
     En ese momento América entró y al subir por la escalera a su cama dijo, —Hasta mañana mamá.
     —Hasta mañana mi’ja. Hasta mañana mi’jo. Descansen.
     Entre el ruido del abanico cuadrado que sostenía la ventana escuchó a su hermana decirle, —De seguro fueron ustedes.
     Jacinto no contestó, solo se volteó boca abajo. Un escalofrío recorrió su espalda al sentir el aire fresco sobre su nuca sudada. Pensó en rezar un padre nuestro, pero no estaba seguro de las palabras.
     —Goodnight little brother, — dijo América.
     —Yeah, good night. 

Eleazar Zúñiga, a native of Donna, Texas, recently received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He teaches English Literature at Donna North High School. Eleazar has lived his life, he tells us, divided by the Rio Grande River where he coexists with countless other individuals of dual culture.  This hybrid culture has enveloped his life and is reflected in the colorful language of his characters with which he expresses the life of those whose voices get lost in the multitude.
​
  ​

​by ​Gloria Delgado

Saturday, 22 April 1747, dawn is breaking 

It’s early Saturday morning on this market day in the Villa of Aguascalientes in central Mexico. The town’s main plaza quickly fills with campesinos, white cotton-clad farmers and craftsmen leading strings of donkeys or driving high-sided wooden carts filled with baskets of produce or pottery. All head towards the tianguis, the traditional marketplace where, from time immemorial, generations have sold and traded their wares. Other vendors, working together in companionable silence, quickly set up tiendas, awnings made out of the same white cotton manta as their clothing. The canvas tiendas, supported by bamboo poles, will shade and protect their goods and customers from the anticipated afternoon heat. Aside from creaks and groans from wooden wheels and the braying of a recalcitrant donkey or two, the plaza is relatively quiet. After all, the Rev. Dr. don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui sleeps in the rectory nearby, and it would not do to disturb the esteemed pastor’s slumber.
 
Off to the opposite side of the plaza, gleaming pink-gold in the first rays of sunlight, stands the grand church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Our Lady of the Assumption. Even after some twenty-five years of construction, the cathedral still lacks its two bell towers, but that project will have to wait until more funds become available. Regardless, the recently dedicated cathedral is the pride of Aguascalientes. At the moment detritus from several unfinished projects lies in tidy heaps inside the vestibule; outside, some immense elaborately carved wooden doors stand leaning against the walls, waiting to be installed. But everything will be cleared and completed before the celebrations in honor of Our Lady’s feast day in mid-August. The reverend pastor, a very capable administrator, will see to it.
 
Felix, one of the church caretakers, an elderly indio with a crippled leg, sings softly to himself while he sweeps and gathers windblown leaves and debris from the front of the church into a large costal that he keeps propped open with a second equally worn spiky twig broom.
 
Two campesinos, young farmers each leading a string of donkeys burdened with goods for market, pass nearby. In one smooth graceful gesture the men remove battered straw hats, bow respectfully towards the cathedral, cross themselves, replace their straw sombreros, adjust the brims back to the particular jaunty angle each prefers. Only then do they turn to greet the white-haired caretaker in their traditional, formal nahua way. “The light is good, the light is upon us. Buenos días, don Felix. At it already?”
 
Felix lifts his own equally battered sombrero to the two before responding in kind: The light is good, the light is upon us, a beautiful morning, amigos. Yes, I’m always up and about before dawn, just like my tata and his tátarabuelo before him, like all our grandfathers, humble madrugadores, early risers hard at work even as the sun still lies yawning in bed. Well, señores, we are not lazy gentlemen like the sun, just humble indios campesinos, manta-clad men working for our keep every day, any way we can, scrambling to fill our morral, this empty shoulder bag we all carry, with provisions for our families and animals.
 
Yes, you’ll always find me close by, sweeping and cleaning; but these never-ending tasks keep me going, give me a reason to live. I must have worn out dozens of brooms since the good Padre Vicente Preciado de Maldonado first gave me a job here at the cathedral. No one else would hire me after my old patron, that damned gachupín don Visente Diaz-De Leon, had me sacked from his hacienda when I broke my leg and could no longer help care for his precious horses. “If Felix can’t work or earn his keep, he can’t stay here. I’m not about to support the whole world!”​

¡Imagínate! And he the wealthy owner of Peñuelas, the finest hacienda in Aguascalientes! After all the generations my ancestors served his family, worked his fields, cared for his livestock, to be treated like that! It was because I dared talk back to him, I’m sure. But gracias a Dios I was born a free man, and not one of his or Peñuelas’ wretched slaves.
 
I’m grateful there’s so much to do around here at the cathedral. Every day I’m kept busy repairing fences, chasing chickens out of the vegetable garden and young rascals out of the bushes, watering flowers, sweeping the steps and atrium of the church, even burying the dead. When it’s my time, the good padre vows to bury me with this ancient broomstick by my side, and with one of the broomstick’s predecessors as marker. Fine with me, Padre Vicente, I say, as long as you plant me in that far corner under the green-leafed jacaranda that shades the graves of my dear Lupita and our little ones who died from plague or hunger or from only tata Dios knows what. Que en paz descansen.
 
Oh, there’s Padre Vicente waving at me, I must go.  ¡Imagínate! Three funerals already scheduled for today, so there’s much to be done before evening. Later, perhaps, on your way home we can chat, and you’ll give me news of our village? Me voy. ¡Con permiso, hermanos!
  
The same day, near dusk 

¡Muchachos! I’m so glad you stopped to see me before heading home. What’s that? Pos sí, boys, a good guess. It was indeed don Augustín Diaz-De Leon, the son of my old patron, whom we buried today. Don Augustín was the first or second oldest son, I can’t remember right now. Anyway, yes, Padre Vicente saw to don Augustín’s final rites yesterday, with none other than the town’s chief administrator, el alcalde mayor don Fernando Monrroy y Carrillo as witness and executor of the dying man’s last will and testament.
 
My nephew Bitoriano and I prepared the gravesite beforehand, early yesterday evening, so as to avoid the full heat of the day. Even with all the jugs of water we poured over the ground to soften the soil, our shovels had a hard time of it.

“Ay, Tío!” Bitoriano gasped, resting his head on the shovel handle for a moment trying to catch his breath, “Not even the cemetery wants him. You can wrap a corpse in cloth of gold, or in don Augustín’s case, the brown cloak of Saint Anthony of Padua himself, corded sash, wooden cross and all, but that doesn’t transform him into a saint, worthy of being buried in consecrated ground.”

¡Cállate! Somebody might hear you! I scolded my nephew as I passed him the water gourd. But I couldn’t help laughing to myself. Exactly what Bitoriano had against don Augustín I never knew, he never said; but life on the Diaz-De Leon hacienda was not easy for their workers, be they slaves or indios laborios like us. That I do know!

How was the funeral, you ask? Very well attended, very well preached. Padre Vicente did a good job. All the town council was there, even the alcalde mayor don Fernando. After Mass the funeral procession made its grand way to the gravesite for final prayers, with candles, incense, genuflections, singing, weeping mourners and all. Bitoriano and I and two more assistants stood by waiting in the shade of another jacaranda, shovels and sturdy ropes close at hand for lowering the coffin, as Padre Vicente began:

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to honor and lay to rest the body of our dear son and brother, Augustín. We commend his soul to the tender mercies of God - and to the loving care of San Antonio de Padua. As some of you may know, don Augustín asked to be buried in the plain brown cloak symbolic of his favorite saint, that most humble Franciscan friar, Saint Anthony…. ”

Out of the corner of his eye Bitoriano slid me one of his ‘See, I told you so’ looks, which I did my best to ignore. But my nephew didn’t let it go with that. He leaned over to mutter in my ear: “¿Qué te dije, Tío? ¡Ay, pobrecito de San Antonio! He’s probably rolling around in his grave far away right now, about to die, again! from the shame of being mentioned in the same breath as that wretch, that desgraciado!”

I must have choked or something. Glancing our way, Padre Vicente lifted one disapproving eyebrow at us before returning to his sermon. I pretended to stifle a cough, held my tongue and from then on kept a safe straight face. Bitoriano did the same.

​Padre Vicente continued: “Yes, my brothers and sisters, we call upon Saint Anthony to find that which is lost, or for help with desperate causes. But I think our saint is best remembered for his special devotion to the Infant Jesus. San Antonio loved God and in his humility, found the idea of God most accessible, most evident, most alive, in God’s youngest creatures, nuestros parvulitos, our own little children. That’s why San Antonio is always depicted as carrying el niño Jesús, Jesus as a young, innocent child, along with a white lily, symbol of that purity and love.”

Notes for this story:

This story is a work of fiction based on historically documented events. All individuals with surnames, including their children, were real people; those without surnames are fictional.

In Mexico tens of thousands of residents, Indians, mestizos and españoles alike, died from intermittent plagues, smallpox, chickenpox, mumps and measles. At times there were so many deaths that the priests were too overwhelmed to comply with church regulations as to the proper listing of entries in the death records, able to note only the date of death and the names, if known, of victims who were interred on that date.

Don Augustín Diaz-De Leon’s child, Pantaleón, died in December 1747, eight months after the death of his father. Pantaleón was three years old. The youngest child, Augustín Miguel Estanislao, was born two weeks after his father’s death, on 11 May 1747. He survived into adulthood, eventually settling in Sierra de Pinos, Zacatecas, where he and Thadea Josepha Gertrudis Muñoz Tiscareño married.
​
Don Augustín’s widow, doña Maria Antonia Fernandez de Palos Ruiz de Escamilla and el alcalde mayor don Fernando Manuel Monrroy y Carrillo, (witness to the death of don Augustín as well as the executor of his estate) in September 1749 were granted a dispensation to marry. Don Fernando was a widower; his first wife was doña Juana Salvadora Jimenez.

Don Augustín’s father, el alférez (subaltern) don Visente Xabier Diaz-De Leon, was at this time the owner of the Hacienda de Peñuelas. Following the death of his first wife, doña Catharina Acosta, he married and raised another family with his second wife doña María Dolores Medina. Upon his death in April 1754 he left money (including 15 gold Castilian ducats) for his intentions, including 100 masses to be offered for the repose of his soul and for his servants, living or dead.
​
The ex-Hacienda de Peñuelas, still in existence, is one of the oldest haciendas in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes. Established sometime before 1575, Peñuelas predates the foundation of the Villa of Aguascalientes itself. This hacienda consisted of several self-supporting plantation-like communities staffed and farmed by resident Indians and slaves.

The Cathedral Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, originally known as San Ysidro Labrador, was initiated in 1704 and completed in 1738 by don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui, head of the Mitra de Guadalajara. Its northern bell tower was completed in 1764, the southern bell tower not until 1946.
 
Sources
 
All birth and death documents cited are from the following:
 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
FamilySearch.com and other films on line.
 
The entry cited re the infant, the parbulito of this story, is from:
Mexico Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Catholic Church Records
Parroquia del Sagrario, Asunción de Maria
Defunciones 1708-1735, 1736-1748
El Parbulito: Image 530 [Libro quatro de Entierros]
 
Montejano Hilton, Maria de la Luz:
Sagrada Mitra de Guadalajara, Antiguo Obispado de la Nueva Galicia, 1999
 
Rojas, Beatriz, et al:
Breve historia de Aguascalientes, 1994
 
Topete del Valle, Alexandro:
Aguascalientes: Guia para visitar la Ciudad y el Estado, 1973
 
Vázquez y Rodríguez de Frias, José Luis:
Genealogía de Nochistlán Antiguo Reino de la Nueva Galicia en el Siglo XVII según sus Archivos Parroquiales, 2001
 ​

Ballad of a Slopsucker

The parking lot at Horatio’s was packed for the ten-year reunion of San Leandro High’s Class of ’87 and Elvis Borboa—who had been voted Most Likely to Be on MTV his senior year—sat in his car near the back of the lot, sucking on a cigarette like nicotine was oxygen. An hour before, he had stood in front of his closet mirror wondering, Should I stay or should I go? He tried on shirt after shirt until he narrowed it down to two—a long-sleeve button-down shirt so it’d look like he had made something of himself, or a striped polo shirt that said I-don’t-really-give-a-shit-about-appearances-but-I’ll-look-presentable. No matter which one he wore, Elvis saw a twenty-eight-year-old straight-edge Latino reflected back to him—the cropped hair, fitted jeans, and a shirt that covered the flaming skull tattoo on his right shoulder. As he stared at himself, he couldn’t help but wonder if the teenage, fuck-authority version of himself would have hated who he had become: just another tool; another sellout working for a big bank.

While he sat in his new Honda Accord, he couldn’t shake the nervous, twisted feeling in his stomach. He popped the Eagles’s Greatest Hits into the CD player. He skipped to “Best of My Love,” which was totally un-metal of him. A long drag from his cigarette followed. It had been months since he had smoked. Oddly enough, the song soothed him even though it reminded him of Susana, his ex-girlfriend from high school. Ever since they graduated, he had occasionally daydreamed of playing and dedicating that song to her (which was totally un-metal of him).

After he flicked the cigarette out the window, Elvis flung the car door open. He strode across the parking lot. On his way to the entrance, he noticed a few faces that looked familiar. He couldn’t remember their names, but he knew they were smart kids back in school. Would they recognize him now? Would anyone recognize him?

Standing by the entrance, next to the part of the restaurant that resembled a kitschy lighthouse, was Joey Marchment. He was smoking a cigarette by himself. Back in high school he was a quintessential stoner-skateboarder. He had gone to a couple of Elvis’s shows. Shit, they even shared a joint at one of their high school parties. Joey had also cleaned himself up for the occasion. Dress shirt, pair of khakis, shiny dress shoes instead of his old Dr. Martens. His bleach-blonde hair—which used to be long and greasy as if he flipped burgers for a living—was now short, thinning, and slicked back. Like Elvis, he had developed a respectable beer paunch.

“Elvis Borboa?” Joey said.

“What’s going on, Joey,” Elvis said, shaking his hand. “Glad you remember me.”

“Of course, man. You were Elvis, the heavy metal god!”

Elvis used to be the front man of a thrash metal band he started at San Leandro High with his best friend, Dontae. The band’s name was Slopsucker. In high school Elvis sported long, curly black hair, torn-up jeans, and a black leather jacket his dad had handed down to him.

“You still play?” Joey asked.

“Nah, man.” Elvis couldn’t help but hang his head.

“That’s too bad. I remember you used to shred.”

“Yeah, well, you know, it’s one of those things. Hardly anyone can pay the bills playing a six-string.”

“Fucking A, man, fucking A,” Joey said, nodding and slowly turning his head like he was watching a thought gently bob away.
Inside, Elvis heard a loud hum of chatter around the corner. Goddamn it, he thought. People were already asking about his former musical self.

A sign by the front podium read, “Class of ’87 Reunion!” An overly smiley Asian woman with a name tag that read “Annie Chow” sat behind a long table covered with rows of printed name tags. They exchanged pleasantries. Elvis remembered she was a major kiss-up in school. She parked her rear front row and center in their physics class so she could laugh at all the inane jokes from their teacher along with all the other voracious grade-grubbers. On top of being pretty, she had always been smart and driven. Once he saw the big glittery rock on her ring finger, Elvis figured she got just about everything she ever wanted in life.

He saw his name tag on the table. He scanned the remaining ones for Susana and Dontae’s. They were MIA. Were they coming? Were they already there? Would they talk to him, or tell him to fuck off? Would Susana be there with someone? A boyfriend? Husband? What if she was inexplicably free after all these years?

The classy restaurant overlooked the San Leandro Marina. The dining area around the bar was roped off for their reunion. All the tables had been cleared out so everyone could mingle. Seventy or eighty people convened throughout the room. Most of his old classmates had dressed up as if they were dining at a posh restaurant in San Francisco, the city he had called home since graduating from high school. Booming laughter from the patio startled him. There was so much happening around him. Before he realized what he was doing, Elvis beelined to the bar. He could’ve walked past Gandhi, Cindy Crawford, or Ozzy Osbourne and not noticed them. Man, did he need a drink.

As he leaned against the counter, staring at the bartender, trying to will him to look his way, Elvis scanned the bar as though his birth name was Cool Breeze. He locked eyes with a classmate whose name tag read “Mindy Roberts.” Her jaw dropped. She waved with such glee that he waved back, although he had never—as far as he remembered—had a conversation with her. Two stools down from Mindy was George, a wild-haired Samoan who had streaked across the football field during a homecoming game Susana had dragged him to. And then there she was: Susana. The woman of his sad and sorrowed dreams of unrequited love. She stood in a circle of women gathered at the other end of the bar. His heart bottomed. She was fucking gorgeous and cute as ever—the same big brown eyes, light-brown skin, and magnetic smile that drew people to her. Her black hair fell over the straps of her blue summer dress. Elvis thought she had never looked so beautiful—except maybe at the junior prom they had gone to together.

Once he spotted her, Elvis was done for; he couldn’t keep himself from stealing glances at her. After all those years they were actually in the same room. And to his complete and dizzying surprise she seemed to be alone. No possible significant other satellited around her.

While he watched her, Elvis couldn’t help but remember—as much as he didn’t want to—the last time they were together.


It all went down on a Saturday afternoon, less than two months before their senior prom. Elvis was in his bedroom restringing his black Jackson King V guitar. Venom’s classic Black Metal blared from his stereo. It was 1987, a year after thrash metal’s zenith when Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Slayer’s Reign of Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells . . . but Who’s Buying?, and Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill came out. Elvis’s dad was in the backyard, working in his shed, when his mom knocked on the door.

“Yeah,” Elvis shouted over the music.

“Susy’s here for you!” she yelled from behind the door where Elvis had taped a poster of Machu Picchu shrouded in mist. “Shit,” he said to himself. He took a deep breath as he lurched to the front door.

Susy stood on the other side of the screen door. She wore a black tank top, faded blue jeans, and the green Chuck Taylors he had doodled on with a permanent marker. (He had scribbled “Elvis lives!” on the back heel.) She was concealing something behind her back.

“Hey, you wanna come in?” Elvis said, creaking the screen door open.

“That’s okay,” Susy said. “My dad’s taking us out to lunch with one of his friends. I was running some errands and just wanted to pop in to give you a surprise.”

“Oh yeah, what you got?”

Though he was trying to play it cool, Elvis could feel his stomach knot. The night before, he had snuck out to hit up a party without Susana. Celeste White, the lead cheerleader at San Leandro High, had invited him. Celeste White, the hottest girl in school, had flirted with him. She professed to Elvis that she liked him. This was certifiable wet dream material. To boot, she kept putting her hand on his arm and brushing her blonde hair while they talked. After he stumbled back home in a fog of blissful drunken stupor, he woke up thinking about how good it would have felt to make out with her. To have his hands all over her. The only reason he kept his paws to himself was because he and Susy had been together for two years.
Susy handed him a mixed tape. On the cassette case spine she wrote “Heavy Shit” and drew a smiley face. Years later, remembering those details slayed him.

“I really liked your last mix,” she said. “I think you’re right—the Scorpions are the best thing to ever come out of Germany.”
Elvis combed his long hair to the side so it wouldn’t cover half of his face. He stared off at the front lawn. Earlier that morning he had convinced himself to break up with her. He just didn’t know when to pull the plug.

“You okay?” she asked. Elvis had not hugged and kissed her like he typically would when she’d come over.

“Yeah, I’m just tired. Wait—let me walk you to your car.”

Susy marched to her old gray car parked in front of his parents’ house. He followed. She walked with her head lowered, staring at the walkway like she knew something was up. Afterward, Elvis wondered if she could sense what was coming.

“Your mind seems to be somewhere else,” Susy said as they approached her car.

Elvis took a breath. “Susy, this is something I’ve been thinking about for some time. I’m just, uh—I, umm—I think we should date other people.”

Elvis never forgot the face Susy made—her mouth dropping, her eyes opening wide.

“Are you serious?” she said, staring up at him. She took a step forward. “You’ve been thinking about this for some time? Since when?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

“So why are you saying this to me now? You wanna go out with someone else? Is that it?”

Elvis took a step back. He thought she might try to slap him.

“Who is it, Elvis? Who is it?”

“It’s no one, Susy! I’m just afraid of this getting too serious. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it.”
“So what are you really saying? Are you breaking up with me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No, Susy. I just—think it’d be a good idea if we saw other people.”

Susy crossed her arms. She glared at him until he looked away. “That’s bullshit. And I am not okay with us seeing other people. If all you want to do is break up with me, then grow some damn balls and do it.”

Susy brushed past Elvis and stormed to the driver’s-side door. Once she fumbled for her keys, she stomped back to him.

“Give it to me,” she said.

She snatched the tape from Elvis, threw it on the sidewalk, and smashed the case with her foot. She flung the door open and slammed it before she drove off with the motor roaring.

Broken cassette in hand with its tape dangling, Elvis walked back into his house. He bunched up the loose tape in his hand. He didn’t want his mom to see it and ask what had happened.

In his room, the door closed, Elvis flipped through his milk crate full of albums. He took out Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. The album cover had an electric chair floating in a dark sky with bolts of lightning. He cued the record to “Fade to Black.” He blasted it, all dramatic, then he lay on his bed, hands cupped behind his head, clutching the cassette as the opening guitar notes filled the room. He stared at the picture of his idol, Tom Araya—the Chilean bassist and lead singer for Slayer—taped on the ceiling above his bed. He felt shitty about what he’d done. They had been friends since junior high when he and Susy took Spanish classes together (the equivalent of Rob Halford taking beginner’s classes for heavy metal screeching). During sophomore year he walked her home practically every day unless she was working on the school paper, having soccer practice, or attending one of her Chicano-power MECHA meetings. Susy had lost her virginity to him. That was a big deal to him as well. And she was the first girl—and maybe the only one—he had ever loved.

By then Elvis was getting caught up in all his self-hype about their band, especially after Slopsucker blew away the other musical acts at their school talent show. He truly believed that part of his life was merely the beginning of something bigger. His bandmates, Dontae and White Trash Phil, talked about becoming the best thing to come out of shit town San Leandro, like how Metallica’s Cliff Burton had come out of neighboring Castro Valley to become the most badass metal bassist on the planet. Elvis didn’t want to be like everyone else. He didn’t want to turn out like his mom and dad, who never seemed happy—more like they were stuck with one another. He wanted a rock ’n’ roll kind of life: the thrill he’d get when he would thrash his head and flail on a guitar. The way he felt ten feet tall onstage in front of a crowd. The communion he felt playing with his bandmates. “It’s one life you live,” his father—a former bohemian—liked to tell him. Una vida. Susy was a way cool chick, but Celeste White—the girl every straight guy in the locker room openly fantasized about—was the Big Leagues. Susy didn’t fit in with the flashy, VH1 behind-the-scenes documentary Elvis thought his life could become. He was afraid that he and Susy would turn out like his mom and pop someday. He was afraid of growing up to become like his dad, living his dreams vicariously through one of his children since he was too chickenshit to have truly chased them when he was younger.

After “Fade to Black” ended, the turntable needle hissed on a constant loop. Elvis leapt off his bed. Fuck it, he thought, chucking the tape into his trash can. In that moment he practically thought of their breakup as some life lesson; he rightly figured life would have its share of difficult decisions he would have to make. Like dumping a sweet girl for the hottest chick in school.

Ten years later, Elvis regretted their breakup more than anything in his life.
....
From Ballad of a Slopsucker: Stories by Juan Alvarado Valdivia. Copyright © 2019 University of New Mexico Press. Look for it in 2019 at UNM Press site here.
​

Juan Alvarado Valdivia is a Peruvian American writer born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised in Fremont, CA. His fiction has been published in The Acentos Review, Black Heart Magazine, The Cortland Review, Label Me Latina/o, Origins Journal, and is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner. His first book, ¡Cancerlandia!: A Memoir, received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 International Latino Book Award for Best Biography in English.

​

​They were married on the Day of the Dead, el Día de los Muertos, which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony. He manifested behind the wheel, then stretched his arm over the back of the passenger’s seat as he turned to face Martin and Isabel.
“Beautiful ceremony, mijo,” he said.
The couple’s smiles froze. It seemed to take an eternity for either of them to speak, and when they did, they had little more than mumbles.
Her whole life, Isabel had heard stories about spirits who spent this one day of the year with family. As a child she had built altars for her great-grandparents, vibrant tributes made out of open shoe boxes adorned with paper flowers and pictures of religious figures that looked a lot like the dioramas she created in grade school. In her teens, her family congregated around her great-aunt’s grave to clean it; one year, her mother even brought a battery-operated vacuum for the stone. “Today we remember our dead,” her mother always said.“We honor them.”
Martin’s father looked more frazzled than dead, as if he was running late because he had been caught in traffic. Isabel looked to her new husband for guidance and was shocked to realize he seemed annoyed. Not afraid, because honestly her father-in-law looked harmless, just like in the few pictures she had seen of him. No, Martin looked like he had simply bitten into a pepper that was hotter than anticipated.
“Did you know this would happen?” she said.
“No, but it’s typical of him. Typical. Only someone so shameless would show up to a wedding uninvited.”
“Martin, please!” She hadn’t expected him to be so rude. She hadn’t expected any of this at all, but her instincts to remain polite and respect her elders were deeply engrained—even more than her assumptions about life and death, apparently—and so her efforts to understand the situation were quickly overridden by her desire to make everybody feel comfortable.
It was the first time she had met her father-in-law. She smoothed her white dress, which was bulging into every inch of the seat, and straightened her veil over her shoulders. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
The old man sat quietly, waiting.
“I’m not talking to him,” Martin said.
“Martin, you can’t be serious.”
At this, her father-in-law smiled and leaned toward her, through the small space that separated the front and back of the white Rolls-Royce they had rented. “He is, I promise you. That kind of stubbornness runs deep in our blood. Isabel, I’m Omar. Though I hope they at least told you my name?”
“Of course. Encantada,” she said.
In ordinary circumstances, she would have leaned in to kiss him, hug him even, but these were not ordinary circumstances. She didn’t know what laws governed the dead. Could they touch? Feel? Hold? Omar seemed as if he might shift the car out of park any moment now. Instead he placed his hand over hers, and she felt not a solid touch but a vibrant warmth, like gentle electricity. Her eyes lit up, but Martin scoffed and turned away.
“Omar,” she said, letting his name empty her lungs. “Will you be joining us for the reception?” What a foolish thing to say.
“You’re very kind to ask, Isabel. Thank you.” He stepped out of the still-open door of the car and began walking toward the church gardens. Neither Isabel nor Martin attempted to follow.
She didn’t know how, but she knew she wouldn’t see him as she and Martin shared their first dance or cut their wedding cake. The whole evening, she didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to see if her father-in-law had arrived. And because the last thing she wanted to do was upset her new husband, she acted like it’d never happened.

She couldn’t fall asleep on their wedding night. The newlyweds made love distractedly, as if the act were nothing new, and of course for them it wasn’t. They were not, by the Church’s standards, good Catholics. Before today neither had been to mass in years, and they had slept together on their third-and-a-half date and had used condoms and contraceptives and spermicide, sometimes all at once.
If not new, though, she had imagined their wedding sex would feel different. Husband and wife, joining their bodies, and for the first time it wouldn’t matter if someone heard them or walked in on them or if the condom broke in eight places. They were married now. They were together for life.
Martin struggled with the perfectly round buttons that climbed, one impossibly close to the next, all the way up her spine. Isabel hadn’t realized until her dress was undone how the corset had constricted her all evening. She had to take a moment to catch her breath, and the indentations that the boning left on her skin, now exposed, itched.
She had wanted to make love to him in new ways, she really had, but more than that Isabel wanted to lie next to him, close her eyes, and open them to find Martin still there the next day, and the next, and the next after that.
When it was over, and they untangled their bodies, the newlyweds stared at the ceiling. She sighed. “That was wonderful,”she had meant to say, but the words that came out instead were, “What’s wrong?”
Martin brought his hand to his forehead. “I didn’t know he was dead.”

​Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester came to the US at age four and grew up in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. She earned her BA in creative writing from the University of Miami, is a faculty member of the low-residency MFA program at Regis University, and works as a freelance writer in Austin. Her work has appeared in Bustle, Catapult, Electric Literature, Latina magazine, and the Austin American-Statesman. Natalia’s first novel, Chasing the Sun, was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad. Her latest novel,Everyone Knows You Go Home, has been named a Best Book of 2018 by Real Simple magazine and is a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards.

​Excerpt with illustrations from the 2018 new edition of 
Smoking Mirror Blues

By Ernest Hogan

​"Oh, Caldonia, look over there!  Such a cute guy!" said Phoebe.
It was Tezcatlipoca.
"Yeah, I guess he is."  Caldonia pouted.  "For a guy.  Chingow! Why do you always want to talk about guys?  I'm certainly not in the mood for guys – not tonight!  I was hoping you wouldn't be either, especially after the way that xau-xau Beto treated you."
"Oh, Caldonia!"  Phoebe took her friend's hand.  "You know I love you.  I guess you're right.  That guy is probably xau-xau too. He even looks a little like Beto."
"Yuck!"
The two women kissed, and walked back to the scooter with their arms around each other.
                                                                                    *
The ghosts carried Xochitl through the streets of University City. Two figures in ragged costumes through which body armor could be seen carrying a kicking and screaming, nightgown-clad woman just wasn't anything unusual.
A lot of the National Autonomous University of Mexico students were getting into the Dead Daze phenomenon.  They were out in force in an array of bizarre costumes: jackal-headed cowboys, chicken-footed dancing devils, ambulatory mermaids, heroic masked wrestlers in artificial muscle suits, women with five serpent heads each, Aztec warriors in animal-head helmets, people of all ages and sexes in skirts that looked like they were made of living snakes, life-sized papier-mâché skeletons in all manner of attire, Art Deco robots, antique sci-fi space creatures, Hollywood horror apparitions and things spawned of unique imaginations.  It looked as if Hell and several Aztec heavens had broken loose.
It did make getting to wherever the ghosts wanted to take Xochitl difficult.  A crowd like a giant amoeba dancing to the frenetic beat of Xuxo Ben-Xuxa's "Macumba Mutation Mambo" flowed around them and pulled them against their path as it digested them.  When the ghosts tried to force their way against the flow, the members of the crowd reacted as if it was the latest type of roughhouse, martial-arts dancing.
The force of the "Macumba Mutation Mambo"-driven crowd was overwhelming.
                                                                                 *
Follow the group – the ones dressed like some kind of ghosts with robot-type paraphernalia underneath – you know, the ones carrying the girl who's doing a good job of acting like she's trying to get away from them.  There.  Good.  The big crowd collided with them.  Some bashada dancing has broken out.  Excellent!  I was hoping to catch some of that.  Bashada is very popular right now; could be a selling point for this mondomentary.  "Bashada on the Day of the Dead" – could make a good title.  Anyway, stay with the ghosts and the girl, and try to get some closeups – she doesn't have any underwear on and there may be the chance for some nudity, which always ups the salability.  Ah, yes, one of her breasts has popped out – be sure to get as close as you can, and in focus!  Oh, the ghosts have lost their grip and she's running away, out of the crowd.  How dramatic!  This will really be a hit at the Lasha Mondo Festival!
                                                                                 *
Tezcatlipoca was seeing and being seen as he strutted down Hollywood Boulevard.  He liked it.  It was overwhelming.  Now and then he had to check with the phone on his wrist to find out something that wasn't directly accessible through Beto's mind – all he had to do was look and his soul made the computer flash the desired information at the speed of light.
He soon felt that he should be doing more than just walking along as part of the parade.  He was a god – the Great Trickster who dared go beyond anything the ancient coyote god ever dreamed of.  He was new, now – not at the beginning of time!  He was young manhood riding at the peak of its powers on hormones and black magic.
His fingers tapped the teponaxtle, and the wooden drum with the strange electronic attachments made pleasing sounds.  His feet turned his strut into a dance.  Music – it was in him, and now he had to let it out: some wild, magical Tezcatlipoca/trickster music that would allow him to take this world for his own.
He walked out to the middle of the street that Beto's mind associated with vehicles that breathed poisonous fire, but that was now filled with pedestrians.  It seemed that the machines, automobiles, cars were destroying the very sky – how his brother Quetzalcoatl in his Ehécatl, God of the Winds, guise would have hated that! – so they weren't allowed in the heart of this city that spilled over the horizon.  He sat down, placed the teponaxtle down in front of him, realized that he had to turn it on and did so, took the sticks in hand and started beating out the feelings that were writhing around in his borrowed heart and computerized soul.
The electronic accent that the drum put on its wooden sound took a little getting used to, but as a trickster and wizard he was used to adjusting to new things.  Soon it became his new accent, the way Beto's voice became his voice.  His music became the music of this place  –  Hollywood, Los Angeles/El Lay, SoCal; a place with many names, names with many places.  It mixed with and infected the musics that other people carried with them.  All those marching, strolling feet began to dance to Tezcatlipoca's driving beat.
                                                                               *
Ralph didn't realize he was dreaming.  He thought he was still in the throws of insomnia, so he got up, and drifted toward his workstation.  Suddenly there was a frantic pounding on the front door, which burst open, revealing blinding, Phoenician mid-day sun, even though it was night inside, just like a Magritte painting.  Beto staggered through the door, his clothes were ripped to shreds, and his body was covered with black, swollen welts that gave off blue smoke.  He had something in his hands that he gave to Ralph, just before falling to the hardwood flood and disintegrating into a pile of black goo that gave off more blue smoke.  What he had handed to Ralph was a human heart that didn't have a speck of blood on it – yet it was still beating.  Ralph put it down next to his computer.  Blood-red wires wormed out of the heart's venal and arterial openings and, with crackling sparks on contact, worked their way into Ralph's computer.  The monitor flickered, then flashed with the detonation of a nuclear blast.
He whimpered as the image of a mushroom cloud the size of the Arizona sky filled his brain.
His wife, Norma, her blonde hair mussed from sleep, shook him awake.
"Wake up, dear," she said, "you're having a nightmare."
"I was dreaming about Beto," he said.
"It figures."  She smirked, and got that familiar look of disgust in her blue eyes.
                                                                               *

​"Oh look Caldonia," Phoebe said as the motorcycle came to a stop.  "That cute guy – the one that looks a little like Beto – he sat right down in the middle of the street and he's playing music.  Hey, I think Beto has a drum like that . . ."
"Don't be xau-xau, Phoebe.  He's just like all the rest, and you really don't want to pay any attention to him if he reminds you of Beto.  You should have some fun with me."
Phoebe squeezed Caldonia's hand.  "But I am having fun with you."
Caldonia pulled something out of one of her bandoliers and slipped it into Phoebe's hand.  "I mean have Fun with me, Phoebe-babe."
Phoebe looked at the stubby Fun stick in her hand.  "Oh!  Have Fun with you!  How sumato!  You mean right here on the street?"
"It's Dead Daze, we can get away with anything."  Caldonia put a Fun stick between her lips, flicked it on, and sucked it off.  Phoebe opened the mouth of her mask and did the same.
                                                                                  *
Hey!  Two girls sucking Fun at five o'clock!  Zoom in.  Good.  Our viewers love glimpses of blatant illegality.  Uh-oh.  Time for a station I.D.
(The Sumato Channel logo slides across the screen.)
                                                                                  *
"Oh!" said Phoebe.  "Feels so good and sumato!"
Caldonia smiled, put an arm around Phoebe, and grabbed one of her breasts.  "Now that we've had some Fun, maybe we can go back to my place and have fun."
                                                                                  *
You get the best Dead Daze coverage on the Sumato Channel, so stay tuned for more!
                                                                                  *

​"Oh look Caldonia," Phoebe said as the motorcycle came to a stop.  "That cute guy – the one that looks a little like Beto – he sat right down in the middle of the street and he's playing music.  Hey, I think Beto has a drum like that . . ."
"Don't be xau-xau, Phoebe.  He's just like all the rest, and you really don't want to pay any attention to him if he reminds you of Beto.  You should have some fun with me."
Phoebe squeezed Caldonia's hand.  "But I am having fun with you."
Caldonia pulled something out of one of her bandoliers and slipped it into Phoebe's hand.  "I mean have Fun with me, Phoebe-babe."
Phoebe looked at the stubby Fun stick in her hand.  "Oh!  Have Fun with you!  How sumato!  You mean right here on the street?"
"It's Dead Daze, we can get away with anything."  Caldonia put a Fun stick between her lips, flicked it on, and sucked it off.  Phoebe opened the mouth of her mask and did the same.
                                                                                    *
Hey!  Two girls sucking Fun at five o'clock!  Zoom in.  Good.  Our viewers love glimpses of blatant illegality.  Uh-oh.  Time for a station I.D.
(The Sumato Channel logo slides across the screen.)
                                                                                   *
"Oh!" said Phoebe.  "Feels so good and sumato!"
Caldonia smiled, put an arm around Phoebe, and grabbed one of her breasts.  "Now that we've had some Fun, maybe we can go back to my place and have fun."
                                                                                   *
You get the best Dead Daze coverage on the Sumato Channel, so stay tuned for more!
                                                                                   *

​Did you get that?  In closeup?  Great!  Of all the sumato luck!  I can't chingow believe this!  It's great!  We caught a SoCal citizen exercising his legal right to kill a certified gangster in self-defense!  Every network on the planet will want it!  We gotta move fast – plug into the mediasphere, let the world know what we got and start taking bids . . .
                                                                                  *
Tezcatlipoca licked the blood off the drumsticks and didn't flinch from the mild electric shock.  The crowd went wild.  Soon he was riding its many shoulders down Hollywood Boulevard.
                                                                                  *
Phoebe looked over at Tezcatlipoca riding the crowd.  "He sure is sumato, even if he does look like Beto," she said, then kissed Caldonia before she could react.
                                                                                  *
Eventually, Xochitl made her way to her father's house.
"My daughter," the bespectacled, grey-haired man asked, "what happened?"
"All Hell's breaking loose, Papa.  Evil spirits are coming to get me through my computer.  My work has gotten me into big trouble."
He looked confused.
"The god-simulating program, Papa."
He shook his head.  "I didn't think it was possible."
"It may not be – I haven't worked out all the details yet, but that doesn't seem to matter to all the crazy people in the world."
"Let me get you something to wear.  Sit down, my daughter."  He pointed her to a chair and walked over to the closet.
"No, Papa, I think I need to use your phone.  Who knows what they did to my place."
She punched in her number, then the code to play her messages, hoping to find a clue to what was going on.  The first few were of the "Miss Echaurren, we want to talk to you about the program you have been working on," variety; whoever wanted the program, they were willing to go to extremes to get it.  Then Beto's voice came in through some long distance static, singing, in English:
"Oh, Mama, can this really be the end?
to be stuck outside Tenochtitlán,
with the Tezcatlipoca blues, again!"
Then he switched to his heavily accented Spanish: 
"Well, maybe not the end, Xochitlita.  Maybe it's the beginning, a new beginning, far from Tenochtitlán, where we're going to be singing a brand new kind of Tezcatlipoca blues as soon as I run through the program of yours that I just had to make an unauthorized clone of.  Sorry I couldn't come out and ask you for it, baby, but you were being so xau-xau cautious, worrying about all those control elements.  You can't control gods, Xochitl; if you could, they wouldn't be gods.  Zero hour will be when Dead Daze kicks off.  I'll let you know what happens, or maybe the world will tell you first.  Later, baby."
Xochitl said, "Oh my God!" and didn't listen through the next three renditions of "Miss Echaurren, we want to talk to you about the program . . ."
                                                                                  *
Tezcatlipoca saw Phoebe in the distance.  Recognizing her caused a violent reaction in Beto's mind.  Beto was repulsed.  This interested Tezcatlipoca.  It was a chance to see who was the master here.
"That metal-faced woman!"  Tezcatlipoca pointed to Phoebe.  "I want her!"
                                                                                  *
Xochitl's father brought a large bathrobe.  "Here, my daughter, put this on."
She did.  Like a glass-eyed zombie.
"Could it possibly be that bad?" he asked.
"Worse than I thought.  Not only are some fanatics after the program, but that North American I met a few months ago, Beto . . ."
"The one from California."  He shook his head, sorrowfully.
"Yes, he's trying to use the program to evoke Tezcatlipoca.  And the version he cloned doesn't have any of my control elements."
"Why, if it works it could be a catastrophe."
"It may have already happened!"
"Well, don't worry, my daughter, you can stay here as long as you need to."
"Ay!  I can't do that!  I called my place on your phone!  They could have traced it!  They might be on their way here already!  How could I have been so stupid?"
He put his arms around her.  "So, where can you go to be safe, Xochitlita?  I'll do whatever I can to help you."
"Oh – I don't know.  There may not be any safe place."
"Then sit down.  Relax.  Think."  He led her back to the chair.
                                                                              *
Phoebe broke the kiss, and pushed Caldonia away.
"That cute guy," Phoebe said, "I think he means me."
She looked.  Tezcatlipoca was grinning at her.
"He does mean me!"  She pushed her way to him.
Caldonia growled.
                                                                              *
Xochitl jumped up.  "I've got to leave the country!  Now.  Tonight.  Can you lend me some clothes and money?"
"Of course, but the program, is it where the fanatics can get it?"

​She reached into the bodice of her nightgown.  "I hope it didn't fall out.  No, here it is.  I jammed it into a seam."  She pulled out an ant-sized nanochip.  "They saw me dressed like this and didn't think to search me – not very imaginative, I guess.  If they had just pointed their software sniffers at me . . ."
"I'll do what I can to help you.  Where do you think you should go?"
"Los Angeles."
He frowned.  "California?  Where that Beto fellow lives."
"I know, I know, it's crazy – almost as crazy as he is, but I have to.  And at least it will get me out of here, away from whoever it is that's after me, and allow me to stop him, or try to undo any damage he's done."

​Ernest Hogan, a six-foot tall Aztec leprechaun, was born in East L.A. and he grew up in West Covina, which he considered one of the most boring places in California. Monster movies, comic books, and science fiction, he says, saved his life. The author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter, he is considered the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, though there hasn’t been any kind of DNA test. His short fiction has appeared in Amazing Stories, Analog, Science Fiction Age, and many other publications. Recently discovered by academia, his “Chicanonautica Manifesto” appeared in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies.

Illustrations by Ernest Hogan