Your fingers lock into mine. “Just say yes or no.”

  I say nothing, and my feeble attempt at passivity doesn’t matter, my body has already answered: my fingers wrap back into yours when you start to pull away, the possibility of your warmth leaving me. I pull you back in. Closer, closer. I pull your hand down, and you pull my face in, and there are no more gaps between us.

  Sangronas shouldn’t—

  But we are. You ask to go further and I shudder, “Yes.”

  We are—Hands hungry, hands searching, grabbing, holding.

  We are—The taste of you flooding through me, your quiet breaths.

  We are—Your skin giving under bites you do not pull away from because you know these teeth will not puncture you.

  Sangronas should, like all active people, stay hydrated.

  “There’s an ice machine in the foyer,” I say after having turned on the bathroom faucet and watched the copper-tinted water slither down the drain. I fit my jacket back on, the studs catching the neon from the motel sign outside, meanwhile you’re still on the bed, too comfortable to get up. The neon colors you blue, and at first I think it’s just the light that makes me think you’re sad.

  “What did that mean for us?” You’re looking at your own body below you when you say it.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I took you as you are. I’m willing to, but…”

  “But what, Khiabet?”

  “I want all or none of you. The Sangrona too. But you won’t let it out, will you?”

  You hold me there with your question. How cruel to do that now, after what we did, after the shame is already flooding back in. So much shame, I’m ruled by shame.

  Sangronas don’t talk to strangers.

  In the foyer there’s a bar and three drunk men, one bartender, one paisa-lookin’ fuck in the corner drinking tequila under a black sombrero while soft rockera plays. I’m trying to put time and space between me and your questions I could not answer. I squeeze ice cubes into a plastic bottle one at a time then ask the bartender to fill it with water. He glares at the sight of me and I glare right back, then he shrugs, does my small request.

  I wait, tapping my thumb on the stained bar-top, ignoring the men’s looks, staring off into the trickle of cars outside, people with destinations to reach, when the sombrero whistles at me.

  “Yes you.” A woman’s voice.

  I take my water, full now, and take a seat across from this vaquera staring me down through her cigarette smoke with tired, apathetic eyes.

  “Saw you when you girls came in,” she starts. “Don’t see many people like that around here, and most won’t bat an eye. Not me though. My job is looking. Reading people.” It’s only then that I notice the bloated holster on her hip. The steel’s gleam. “I like stories. I bet you got one, don’t ya, misssssssssss…?”

  “Maria. And not an interesting one. We’re sisters going to a funeral. Just passing through.”

  She tips her hat. “My condolences. But the thing is, people express grief in so many different ways. There’s no shortage of it in these times either, so we have a great diversity of expressions. Like those knuckles of yours. Looks like your rage stung. Doesn’t look nice next to your nails, then again…they’re chipped.” She’s got gloves on. Her eyes are so far behind her brim’s shadow, embedded in her dark, sunburnt skin. She sniffs the air. “You catch a cold traveling? That’s Vaparu, huh? I got a rash if you don’t mind sharing.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” I stand up, leaving the water on the coffee table she’s resting her boots on.

  “You take care now—lots of strange deaths happening these days too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugs. “Oh, you know. Those harpies. They take little girls like you at night. You ought to watch out for them. Taken grown men too. I’ve seen it. You know, in Mexico some say they’re gifted by their Aztec gods. The Christians call them demons for sure, but you know, these beings are so new to us, we’ll have no idea what they are for decades to come. Not until they start organizing and marching and demanding—some think they’re doing that already, ya know? They all mature into flyers, and that’s when they get caught, soaring wayyyyy up there. The ones who’ve gone up and come back down say they can actually see past all the pollution, see Earth’s smoggy edge. They’re probably the only living creatures who’ve ever truly seen the stars. Maybe that’s why they do it. Maybe that’s worth it. Or maybe they’re leaving messages on the earth that only their own kind can see. That’s what worries me—they’re embracing it.”

  “You’re a huntress.”

  She doesn’t smile, just nods, slow and factual. “And you’re someone who probably thinks you know a thing or two about life. That you can keep on moving as you have been, but look at the world. The times, they are a-changin’. How long do you think you can last?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Not on your own. Don’t you know? There’s a gaggle of Ornithosapiens loose from the Bay Area, they could be anywhere, even all the way down here and they’ll pluck you right out of the night if you’re not careful.”

  “I have to go, my prima’s alone.”

  “Thought she was your hermana.”

  “She’s—”

  “Way I see it, there’s only two options for them. Either they have to organize, and they’ll take to the streets just to line themselves up all fish-in-a-barrel-like ready for their own annihilation. Because they can’t win, not really, there’s no way. OR they do the smart thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She hooks her index fingers in the corners of her mouth and tugs her lips back tight to show me all the black, sanded down nubs where fangs should be. “Join the winning team.”

  Sangronas mustn’t overstay their welcome.

  Minutes and we’re gone. There’s nothing to pack. We rush back into the dryness of the night, towards home, to fix this mess. A stupid fucking idea—Sangronas don’t retrace their steps—that makes us predicable, catchable. But again, we’re girls, and we miss our moms. I miss my tía.

  “We’ll stay for a day,” I tell you on our dash through the creaking hall. “That’s enough time for a plan. For something.”

  We climb back up the bus’s steps and when I turn back, the vaquera is there on the porch, emotionless, the saloon’s OPEN sign burning her face red.

  Sangronas don’t trust no one.

  It’s a liability, you can only be sure of yourself in the end. Only sometimes we’re desperate, and we’re burning to believe. Like when you show me the text from your mom, a whole wall of words distilled into: I won’t tell. You’re still my míja, please come home.

  The sun arches across the sky and by dusk I’m watching you from the driveway as your mom takes you into the house. Your mom’s mouthing gracias to me, and you’re waving at me as if it’s okay. Shyly, I wave back, wait there for several heartbeats after the door shuts until I’m sure that nothing will crack on that still, little house.

  Until I know I am alone again.

  Medication’s still in my bedside drawer when I’m home. Cool. Tío’s working late and I don’t know where my tía is. A clock ticks. Dryer’s rattling. The lights are all off and I strip away my filthy jacket to let my shoulders breathe. I’m thinking, It’s just me here. The only soul in the world. Then I catch it, the slightest pinch on my nose.

  Cigarettes.

  The closet explodes too fast for me to turn, to scramble away from the leather hands bursting through grabbing my wrists—nailing me down with all their body’s weight. My own blood coating my teeth metallic and I’m spitting, scraping my face against the carpet to hitch my head up—see Avalon stepping into the doorway from the hall with hate in her eyes, my tía behind her at my mother’s side —Mom?! She’s saying she knew this would happen. Saying where they’ll take me they’ll make me better. They’ll fix me. Broken me. And I’m snarling at them,

  I howl all my spiteful words I’ve locked in so long until those leather hands behind me fist a clump of my hair—slam my skull back down against the world, ringing now. Hazy. Spinning. A muffled argument of my tía and Mom I cannot make out because the world is going black, but the vaquera cuts through it all with her words dripping into my ear, “I tried warning you, you know. You had a way out.”

  IV

  The Indestructible Part of Yourself

  We pray every night, doesn’t matter to whom, Sangronas make sure we always ask whatever God we have for forgiveness.

  Maybe that’s why it’s the chapel Avalon brings me to. The vaquera drops me handcuffed before the cross like some fucked-up lamb for her altar, like Avalon will forgive me and rise me up once more if I take the blame, lie that I was the one who killed that man. Like that would sew our family right up. Like that too will save Avalon’s soul.

  It’s all about survival, remember?

  That’s what Avalon is saying in the candles’ glow, her eyes sleepless, what was her perfectly parted, perfectly straight hair now scribbles. “You’d do the same if you were me,” she’s saying. “Don’t lie. The Huntress promised I’ll be okay if I just helped—you know I can’t like the rest of them. You’re not going to ruin this for me. You’re not. You’re not!”

  The vaquera’s watching us with bored eyes. “The badges will be here in ten,” she tells Avalon. She’s chewing on her cigarette stem, and maybe that’s why she only feels for the gun at her hip when the doors click in the foyer out front. She should have drawn it. But to her it’s just a noise. All that cigarette smoke tarring her inside out, she doesn’t smell it: candle smoke, citrus conditioner, and Vaparu—the unmistakable scent of you.

  Did you find me sniffing for mine? I hadn’t texted you that I made it home.

  The vaquera heads to the source of the sound, eyes on the foyer head. She steps in, then as the doors to this worship room shut behind her—CRACK!

  Sangronas learn to love the pain.

  The pain of being a woman, of being young, of breathing smog, crisping in the sun, cutting your tongue on fangs, splitting fingertip bones, because we know becoming is pain, and pain is temporary. Our bodies will fuse back together, our hunger always returns—never satiated—Our ability to keep ourselves one step ahead of death, a jackal nipping behind our heels. I can break my bones. I can slide through these handcuffs. My muscles will pull my bones back into their sockets by the time I’m springing for Avalon who has become right now all of her teeth, all of her claws slashing and biting and elbowing and howling at you.

  And you’re biting back.

  Only heartbeats ago, you’d thrown open the doors to the chapel with the vaquera’s gun raised after the shot shattered the quiet. I noticed her face leaking onto the floor behind the clapping doors; her blood slashed across your beautiful, determined, horrified face coming forward to gift me salvation. Shame washed over my monster self again—how could I have ever wanted to ruin your face? You were never a killer before.

  But the vaquera, the güero, they were nobodies, and Avalon was somebody. This fact caught you when you reached the base of the steps, right under the stained glass and the cross, so much so that Avalon simply walked down, slapped your hand to let the human weapon jump away into the pews like it wanted it to, and then it was a battle of just teeth, and claws, and screams.

  Now your skin’s ragged. Stomach leaking out your life. You’re gasping for breaths and stumbling away from Avalon’s slashes and she keeps rising after every attempt of yours to throw her down, never mind the knocked-over candles, their fire swallowing the curtains, lurching up the pews. Avalon’s still so much more experienced than you with your prepubescent powers—you lack the hate it costs to win.

  And she’s going to rip your throat out for it.

  I won’t let you pay the price.

  I crack my hands—the pain is forgotten immediately, just a fact like the sound of the cuffs dropping and my bones snapping back together into hands reaching. Right for the boxcutter that Avalon always keeps clipped to the back of her belt. I push her down when I take it, raise the blade up high and when I split her open down the belly it’s not blood, but feathers that spill out. So many feathers. She’s crying, choking out, “Stop—please stop! It was my mom’s idea, not mine! I’m not her! I’m not her! Please!” And even though I know how like all of us, she only desires to live, to be more than a statistic, to escape the pain of a country we were all born into enduring, to be mundane, it’s too late. I’m already reaching inside of her to grab fistfuls of Avalon—this is how I undo her—I wretch out plumes of orange and blue and teal and green and violet and grey and yellow and white and black and red and red and red and red and red.

  Remember, the Sangrona is in you, not the other way around.

  I know that I’m a Sangrona, one pressing palms to your stomach to keep what’s left of you from spilling out, the church raging hellfire all around us. The windows rattling. The sirens outside. I’m telling you to hold on, let yourself heal, just a little longer, only you’re gurgling that you want to go home, but there is no home to go back to. There’s no time left.

  There is only now.

  The funny thing though? In all this bullshit, I breathe with relief. It’s still there. I see it—the kindness still deep in the liquid of your eyes, a declaration that being us doesn’t mean killing it. The way you still look at me with that kindness too—I realize how much I want to protect you. What I will do to ensure your safety.

  Boots are coming up the stairs and they smell of leather and authority.

  And there’s musk on their skin, sharp lead in their hands.

  And I know that I am a Sangrona. I glare up to Christ looking down on us—No—I glare through him, the stained glass above. I stop fighting my own bones, my own skin, I let myself go and give my body to the Sangrona inside. Grit my teeth as electric euphoria knotted with pain pulses through me as my Sangrona, finally, pushes through my bones, my sinew, my muscle and skin, until my wings stretch out to blanket us both, and I take you in my arms, eyes towards the sky, the stars beyond, the Earth that will soon be below. With a flex of muscle, I push the ground away and I don’t stop.

  We rise.

  Because my wings are strong, and my fangs are sharp.

  Because for you, I will devour them all.

  ( Editors’ Note : M. M. Olivas is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

  © 2024 M. M. Olivas

  M. M. Olivas is an alumna of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and the 2023 Under the Volcano Writers Residency. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of California Riverside and once worked as an associate editor for Escape Pod Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Uncanny Magazine, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, and Bourbon Penn. Her short story “If There May Be Ghosts” was on Reactor magazine’s Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction list for July 2022, and her short story “The Prince of Oakland” was featured in Tenebrous Press’ Brave New Weird Anthology for 2024. Olivas also made the longlist for the 2021 Samuel R. Delany Fellowship and was a recipient of the 2022 George R. R. Martin Sense of Wonder Scholarship. As a trans, first-generation Chicana horror writer, Olivas explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning her MFA in Creative Writing at San Jose State University and collecting transforming robots.

  A Menu of First Favorite Meals

  by Jo Miles

  Monday: Fluffernutter Sandwich

  You smile and greet me by name when I arrive: “Hi, Mira, please come in.”

  It’s the same polite smile you give the doctors. You know who I am, but my identity is just a fact shoved into your brain, equally weighted alongside millions of others:

  The sky is blue.

  The speed of light is 3×10^8 meters per second.

  Mira is my sister.

  The doctors explained it all, but that doesn’t make this easy.

  I hover like a stranger, or worse, a guest. I shift the shopping bag from hand to hand, moving to set it down, then holding it close again.

  Dr. Zhou nods encouragingly. She’s sitting in on our first sense-therapy session to help us through the process. I expected she’d make us do awkward, performative hugs and talk about our feelings, but I’m surprisingly glad she’s here.

  “Hey, Eva,” I try. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m well, thanks. How are you, Mira?” It’s a rote response, and it stings that there’s no good to see you. An I missed you would be too much to hope for. Your words are probably truthful, though, and the sentimental stuff might not be. Physically, in this new-made body, you’re as healthy as you’ve ever been. Mentally, though…

  Your mind traveled hundreds of light-years to come home to us, but you feel farther away than ever.

  That’s why I’m here. As the neurologist put it, to help sculpt the neurons in your new brain into the uniqueness that is you. Everyone on your reintegration team uses poetic language like that, I think because for all their expertise, this process the Venmeshki taught us is still half magic to them.

  I busy myself unpacking the bag. “I hope you’re hungry?”

  You frown, as if that’s a hard question. “I don’t think so, but I don’t feel full, either.” Your eyes flick to the clock. “But it’s lunchtime. I’m sorry. Dr. Zhou has been encouraging me to check in with my bodily sensations. I know you’re here for lunch.”

  “That’s right.”

  Our scientists have known for a long time that sensory input, emotion, and memory all work in concert. It was the Venmeshki’s suggestion to bridge the gap between knowledge and emotion using the most powerful sensory vehicle: food.

  “This might seem silly, but I thought we’d start at the beginning, with the first meal you ever made for yourself. Do you remember?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19