Apex Magazine: Issue 117, February 2019 by Izzy Wasserstein & Hayley Stone & Brian Keene & Wole Talabi & Woody Dismukes

Author:Izzy Wasserstein & Hayley Stone & Brian Keene & Wole Talabi & Woody Dismukes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Apex Publications

I knew what he meant.

I had loved him. I had asked to go with him. When he’d offered me drinks, I had drunk, ignoring the way the wine—or whatever it was—tasted like a cut on the inside of my mouth, not caring that each sip only made me thirst for more. Kinnear claimed he had broken some rule to bring me to the Otherworld, and I believed him. I wanted to believe him because then I was special. Then I was not just some chicanx from the middle of nowhere, falling into a life of leather and tires like their papi.

Some part of me must have known Kinnear was a monster when I left with him, and still I went. Maybe I liked his monstrosity, maybe that was the appeal. His power snapped at me like a live wire, and I sizzled with desire. But his body wasn’t all I craved. I craved his guiltless spirit, so different from the ghost I carried—one whose voice sounded exactly like my abuela.

You can always come home, Apá had said.

Maybe he believed it. He’d certainly convinced me. But then, he had never challenged Abuela, never objected to her targeted reminders: Tu cuerpo es templo del Espíritu Santo. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Tu no eres el tuyo. You are not yours.

It was the same message Kinnear sent while we were together, though it took me longer to translate, distracted by the cursive swirls of his tongue.

But Kinnear was wrong about almost everything.

Maybe my abuela was wrong, too.

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