They skulked behind their monstrous owners in the passageway, and the shape seemed impossible. She rose from her bed to get a better look, crept slowly to the edge of her door, tried to stay quiet, tried not to scream in panic, and she watched as they dragged a man out of his home. He fought, hard and fierce, and then a knife sliced at his arm, and one of the creatures jumped, stuck its snout in his blood.
There, in the light, she saw what had descended upon Solado. Their eyes glowed, and their bodies were twisted, dark, their snouts so terribly long, the horns on their heads hideous and sharp.
Then … they fed.
The man was nothing more than shredded remains, a sickly pile of gore and blood, when los sabuesos lost interest in him.
She kept her mouth covered, backed away from the door, and tried to make it back to her bed, an irrational thought consuming her: If she buried herself underneath la cobija, it would all disappear. This was a dream. She could wake in the morning, and it would be nothing more than her imagination.
Then a shadow from the doorway fell over her.
La bestia stood motionless, then twisted its misshapen, nightmarish head to the side, that awful snout filling Marisol with dread, and then it took a step forward.
These people conquered Solado. They stole la aldea from its inhabitants in only a few hours.
But that was not what haunted Marisol, what drove her to Empalme. No, when that thing stepped into her home, Marisol leapt up and knocked it aside, shoved into it hard with her shoulder, and she rounded the corner, into the passageway, past carnage, past destruction, past those she knew and loved and respected as they were torn apart.
She did not stop for their screams.
She did not stop for those who begged her to help them.
She was so afraid, Solís, and she couldn’t think. She just reacted.
Marisol was close to the entrance to Solado, so close that she could see the glowing light of las estrellas seeping down below.
He called out her name.
“Marisol! Marisol!”
She stopped, spun around, saw Ricardo, the light from a torch behind her reflecting off his bald head.
He was pulling himself forward on his arms. Something was wrong with his legs, something she couldn’t make out, something she could focus on and—
They were missing.
Redness trailed behind him.
“Mi amor,” he slurred, “please help me.”
Another voice. It rang out from farther along, echoing to her.
“¡Mi sabueso siempre te encontrará!” the voice declared. “You can’t escape.”
She cut back a sob.
“Mi amor,” Ricardo said, “just a hand, please.”
He extended it.
She was so afraid.
She saw its eyes before anything else, glowing behind her papi.
And her body pushed her, pushed her away from him, yelled at her to keep going, to save herself, and she obeyed it, Solís, and she heard Ricardo’s voice rise high in horror.
Then it was cut short.
Then: nothing.
She ran. She escaped. She didn’t even try to stop them.
Marisol begs for Your forgiveness, Solís. She is sorry. She is sorry that she buried this story within her, that she waited so long to tell the truth, but she ran. And ran. And ran. She left it all behind a generation ago, and she started a new life in Empalme.
And she now believes it all came back to her.
You came back to her.
She told me she was sorry. Over and over again.
Her ragged breath tumbled out of her, and she was covered in sweat. I was, too, and some dripped into my eye, stinging me as I tried to stay upright.
“Lo siento,” she said, possibly for the hundredth time, and I knew she wasn’t saying it to me anymore. There was a piercing regret now living in my stomach, and it joined all the others in a wave that overwhelmed me. I tried to steady myself on Marisol, but she could barely stay still beneath me. “I have to leave.”
And so did I. Yet as I stood there, Marisol huffing nearby, her words settling within me as nausea clung to my throat, the same thought penetrated the haze.
I wanted to leave—because I couldn’t do this anymore.
Marisol’s guilt tore at me, but I ignored it. How was this my life? How was I expected to consume such horrible traumas over and over again? Now that I had kept so many stories inside me, refusing to give them to the desert, Empalme no longer looked the same to me.
Mi gente were suffering. Not just from men like Julio, but from You, Solís. From the terror of potential: at any moment, You could take everything away from us again.
No matter how hard we tried, no matter how much we improved or survived, You could finally decide that You had had enough, and then, You could wipe us all out. All those attempts to keep Empalme safe, every story I took and gave back to You … was that ever enough? Was our nightly celebration pointless, a lie we had agreed to believe?
How was that any way to live? How could we ever thrive if we were so gripped by terror?
There was a longing inside me, one that had been building for years, slithering up like the rattlesnakes that hid in the barrel cactus and under the baking stones. Maybe it was selfish of me to want more, but I had to choose for me. Would Empalme be plagued with pesadillas if I left? Would they finally be punished for their misdeeds?
I couldn’t make this my problem anymore.
If I gave those stories back to You, I would forget everything. I would forget about Julio, la cuentista who had survived Your wrath. I would forget the true shape of Empalme, the vivid portrait of suffering that had now formed within me.
They would not forget, though—what I had done or what they had tried to hide in me.
I had spent the past week lying, but how much of my life was a lie?
Marisol stood, and I knew then it
