Fiction

But no matter how fast the speedometer said he was going, he knew: nothing was faster than sins coming back for revenge.

We’d decided to try out Calf, the restaurant where the only thing on the menu was calf. Each set of diners was assigned their own room, called a “pen.” When we got there, the host walked us to our pen and latched the door.

With each atrocity Shoshi was forced to watch, she retreated into herself, creating bigger and stronger dolls to shield her, only her outermost layer visible to her tormentors.

When you finally reopen your eyes, the strobe lights have been replaced by soft overhead lighting and a maelstrom whirls on the dance floor – faces suspended in expressions of exhilaration that will only last until the bar closes. You see a familiar form moving among them. You let that thought go, sure it is a negroni-induced mirage. But you notice the way it taps its foot against the floor. Slowly. Out of time with the music.

People wanted to be debased. They wanted to debase others, their scent lingering as they walked by.

Oh home, you are nothing more than a sweet and exhausting illusion.

“Where did you find her?” I ask. 

Cigarette butts, wilted leaves, and little gray feathers fall into the sink as water runs through her arteries. 

“Leaking by the Bethesda Terrace,” he responds. He takes a seat at my two-person kitchen table. He keeps his arms and legs close to his body. His hands rub at the red stain on his sweatshirt.

I nod, that’s where she always goes.

…Mamá knocks on my door in the early morning. The sky is dark still, the sun in hiding. She sits on the edge of my bed and strokes my hair like she used to do when I was just a kid. We have cereal for breakfast, and the sound of our crunching syncs up. We don’t talk about tía Marisol. We leave Sepelio behind and go to San Francisco.