yaotl

    The bar is small and dingy, the air thick with the smoke of cheap cigarettes. It swirls above the dark figures, forming a hazy fog over everything. The floor is sticky with spilled liquor, the bartender too busy ignoring everything but requests for another beer or another shot to notice. Not that anyone minds. Each patron is there for the same reason: to forget.    From her corner, sitting alone at a small table, a woman looks on, her eyes glazed by alcohol. The haze in the air reflects the haze in her mind. She has drunk enough that the sounds around her fade into an indistinct buzz; her vision is clouded; she only sees blurry figures

Why did you have to love me? Every time I look there you are, your eyes, your face, your future. I don’t want to destroy that future; I don’t want to see that face in tears. And so I toil forward, no matter how much it hurts, and it hurts so much. Why did you have to look up to me? I am your hero, I am special, and I am awesome in your innocent little heart, incapable of any wrong. Delicate flower that is your mind, I shudder at the thought of what might hurt it. So I trod on, never mind that I want to stop so badly. And I love you, and I care about you. And it is you the final thread that holds me fast to this life I’d ra

 It shouldn't have taken this long. For a long time I wandered: lost, alone, unable to trust myself. Within, I called myself all kinds of names: screw-up, fuck up, lazy, weak... unable to get up on my own, I was merciless in my self-criticism. No one could have inflicted pain and remorse on me the way I did – not as effectively, and not as relentlessly. “Write,” “study,” “work,” “wake-up,” “get up already,” “DO SOMETHING!” The worse I felt, the more I scolded myself: mind over matter, yes?” “Just do it!” “raise your hands and type...&rdqu

     The warehouse was not dark as he had expected; in fact, it was very well lit by the full moon, shining through several gaps on the roof. Still, there were enough dark corners for him to exploit, and with his eyes perfectly adapted to the dark he navigated through the abandoned equipment without a problem. He crouched behind an old machine that was too worn out to tell what its function had been. In the furthest corner of the warehouse was a sleeping man, the reek of alcohol surrounding him; he was the perfect victim, helpless and too far gone to even try to defend himself. The fledgling smiled and licked his lips.     He had cro

       The sun had just set, and as the light dimmed, the tension in the air grew. The town's people hurried home or scurried for shelter, trying to hide from the nightly onslaught of the undead. The homeless and destitute, among them entire families with children, made easy targets and they could only pray that they would see the next sunrise. They huddled together in small communities, relying in numbers to protect each other, trying their best not to be the next body that would appear in the streets come the morning.       Among the populace walked the young vampires; too young to have acquired the deathly pallor of the elders, th

     There was a story, told from long ago, about a girl who wished for nothing more than freedom. What happened may be magic, or may be the imagination of the story tellers. It may have been that the men in charge of bringing her back to the fields didn’t want to admit a young girl had outsmarted them and so came up with this tale. However it came to be, this is the story; you may believe it or not, as you wish.     It was the end of yet another exhausting day. With the sun setting over the fields the slaves began to take their tools back to the shed, another day worked, another day ended. Their bodies slumped in exhaustion, lo

 I take a step and my boot sinks with a deaf crunch into the snow. It’s quiet; there are no birds, no squirrels, not even a breeze to move the tree branches. I didn’t know the woods could be so quiet. I feel like I’m walking into a temple; I feel an urge to kneel down and pray. The noise Pepe and I make feels sacrilegious. We follow the trail so we won’t get lost. We usually follow the creek, but today I want to try a new road. The woods are my favorite place to be. I like it better in the summer, when it’s warm and squirrels and birds move about, when the breeze makes the branches dance and sing. Today everything h

The aroma coming from the kitchen announced that Christmas eve had finally arrived.  The women were busy in the kitchen preparing for the night's feast, while the men had all gone out to get tables, chairs and other supplies from the stores.  Tammy sneaked into the kitchen, squeezed in between two aunts and took a look at the turkey slowly baking in the oven.  The delicious aroma was making her mouth water.  It sizzled in its pan, and she could even see the meat sweating its juices.  It had been baking all day, Mama Lola taking it out occasionally to bathe it in sauce. "Tammy!  Out of the kitchen!"  Mama Lola shoed her away while carrying a