By Alexandra McAnarney-Castro
I.
It had been a long and bone-rattling flight.
And now, as she ascended the cracked stairs to her second-floor apartment in Petworth, Eileen’s smallest roller board felt heavy, almost resistant to her staggered pull. It didn’t help that the bag also gave off a scent of days-old chicken nuggets and unwashed feet.
“Piece of knock-off, Taiwanese shit,” she muttered to herself.
She had bought the red, 20-inch roller-board at a dusty, road-side market stand while en-route to the airport in El Salvador. Her other suitcases were at capacity, and she needed something to carry several canisters of old photographs that belonged to her grandmother, who had died a year prior from diabetic shock, and, as an extra, several stacks of pineapple-jam filled tart locally known as semita, bought by her mother.
She stopped to catch her breath. It would be the last suitcase she would need to carry up the three flights of stairs. Cracking a window on the landing, she lit a cigarette and stared at the uncooperative bag.
It amazed her how each visit always managed to be the same old story: the prologue always included a relative’s passing; the afterword, her mother’s determined isolation and growing financial insolvency. In between, a sprinkling of colorful lamentations and passive-aggressive expectations: Why do you even bother living in a city where you spend so much for so little? Why don’t you just marry that boy? You need to take care of the kitty I gave you, show that boy that you can take care of small things. Can’t you look for a better paying position? Things are getting expensive here too, and I need to eat. You seem so stuck. I could take care of you while you figure things out, you would just have to, you know, pay my way.
Every question tightened the umbilical noose which her mother slipped around her neck at every visit and forced Eileen to live with the knowledge that she would only be able to execute her slow, pendulous gallows dance between El Salvador and the United States for so long.
At least until her body swung and gave its death rattle squarely in the quadrant of “home,” under her mother’s loving, yet demanding gaze.
Nothing ever really changes in our tropical hellhole.
Except this year had been a little different, thanks to the Vermillis baggage scanners.
“Recently installed, thanks to our dear Presidente,” the customs enforcement agent had proclaimed with servile pride as she readied to board her flight back to the United States.
This is what they decide to spend all that money on? she heard someone say, followed by a scared shush, and a muttered Cuidado. I bet these things can even read what you’re thinking and feeling. They’ll throw you in prison with all the rest of them.
From where she stood, Eileen rolled her eyes in despair and beheld the scanners.
They were detestable, throbbing things that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and almost want to turn back and run to her mother’s car.
And she couldn’t explain why.
They were, above all things, efficient, which Eileen could otherwise appreciate. But in this case their efficiency seemed evil.
According to a glossy poster advertisement next to her queue, the new model scanners had helped decommission three tons of hard drugs, exotic fruits, and other contraband in only the first month of their use. Vermillis scanners: Eating through Three Tons of Crime in One Month! It read, the bold typeface stamped behind the President’s grinning, egg-shaped head.
The machines captured everything in a bag with extraordinary detail. Each massive discharge of radiation made the segmented, white chassis vibrate and seemingly wriggle in anticipation, swallowing bag, upon bag, upon bag, through one end and excreting bag, upon bag, upon bag out the other.
Attached to the side of each scanner, human passengers would step through portals with panels that contained a glossy, membrane-like substance.
The agent waved at Eileen to keep moving forward as she bent over to untie her sneakers. “The removal of shoes and laptops is no longer necessary,” the agent called out, “Everything can be seen.”
She passed through the membrane. Feeling light-headed and for some reason, a bit sticky, Eileen shuffled forward to the conveyor belt.
“Is this yours, ma’am?” an agent with oil-slick black hair and a parrot-beak nose flagged Eileen down, already unzipping the bag.
Annoyed, but not willing to pick up a fight over the maggot-like determination of the scanners, she nodded silently.
“This counts as contraband, ma’am,” the agent noted with starved eyes and prurient fingers as she confiscated the saran wrap-swaddled stacks of semita.
Eileen sighed, The worm will take its payment, and walked away.
But not before getting a sweaty, orange post-it note pressed into her hands by the agent, “You forgot this.”
Eileen smoothed the square piece of paper. It had a black-sharpied happy face and the words “Love, mom” scribbled on it.
As she took the last drags of her cigarette, she reached into her back pocket to look at the post-it note.
Through the crack in the window, she tossed the butt and the crumpled paper, and continued to struggle on until she stood in her apartment, her haul finally completed.
Eileen felt disoriented in the dark and dusty, one-bedroom space, so different from the open-air, high-ceilinged family home.
The litter smelled like it hadn’t been changed in a few days. Piles of mail tilted on the side of the dining room table. Silence stifled Eileen like a woolly cocoon.
“Tofu?”
With the rude entitlement of an underage roommate, the white long-haired cat minced up to her legs. A gift from her mother, Tofu’s pink nose wetly touched the tips of her fingers in a forced greeting.
Eileen fussed with the suitcases and her coat. Meanwhile, Tofu sniffed the bigger suitcase, lightly spritzing it with piss and walked off with taunting indifference.
“Tofu, what the fuck?”
Then she went up to the small, red roller-board.
Tofu hissed and arched her back. Eileen bent down to try and calm her, only to narrowly dodge the cat’s claws and watch it scamper into the bedroom.
Eileen rubbed her face. Her mother had pleaded she unpack her grandmother’s items first so that they wouldn’t get ruined. True to her word, Eileen gripped the zipper and began to yank at the pull tab.
But it simply wouldn’t budge.
She pulled again.
Nothing.
Then, she ran her finger along the zipper trying to see if anything had gotten caught in it.
That’s when Eileen noticed that, in addition to the horrible stench, the red canvas felt warmer, moister, and perhaps, if she really over-thought it, bloodier.
There was something white and fang-like sticking out of the seam. She poked it, drawing a faint pin-prick of blood from her index finger.
The bag began to pulse underneath her jet-lagged hands.
No, but that’s ridiculous. Likely, someone had snuck Pollo Campero in their bags past the Vermillis scanners, dribbling chicken juice and bones in the carry-on compartments.
The thought made Eileen gag. She crossed over to the kitchen and reached into a drawer for a knife and stomped back to the dining room with exhausted determination.
Only violence will undo this mess. Como buena Salvadoreña.
Eileen stuck the tip of the knife along the ridge of the zipper.
The bag shuddered and jumped.
Eileen blinked twice.
Picking another part of the red canvas, she stabbed the suitcase, this time with a downward arc.
What followed was a low, wet growl that sounded malformed, as yet unaware, primal.
Eileen quickly pulled the knife out, stood back, and watched.
Thin, vein-like threads cross-hatched their way in a deep blue and sickly mauve pattern across the slippery red canvas. Carrion-like fumes wafted lazily from the suitcase and made the room spin.
The smell was too much.
Barely digested airplane food rose in Eileen’s mouth. Most of it she managed to hold in with gritted teeth. Some of it sprayed on the hardwood floor, to the delight of the cat. The rest poured into her resplendent toilet, splashing the floor with puce yellow and slick green splatter.
From the living room came another growl followed by an outraged hiss.
“Tofu, leave it!”
She shooed the cat and stepped forward. But Eileen didn’t notice the wetness of the vomit left on the floor. She turned on her heel and slipped on the white, hexagonal tiles, hitting her head on the edge of the toilet seat.
II.
For the first time in many years, Eileen desperately needed a drink.
“Alo?” Eileen half-grunted, half-spoke into her cell phone, which had been ringing non-stop since she’d walked into the apartment.
She kept looking at the roller board. It twitched, in the throes of some creature dream, and appeared to be…snoring?
“What happened to you? It’s already nighttime over there. Did you make it home safe?” her mother clamored like a scared bird over the phone.
“Yeah, yes,” Eileen looked out the dappled window. Her cheek remained plastered to the coolness of the bathroom floor. The sun had just dipped beyond the pines across her bedroom window, casting twisted, shaking shadows in the violet light. “I just had some trouble with the luggage.”
“What do you mean? Did they lose your suitcase again? They didn’t lose the suitcase, right? These airlines, Dios Mío, are getting worse, and worse—”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s the little suitcase. I can’t open it.”
“That piece of trash?” Her mother sighed in exasperation. “See, I told you. We should have turned around so I could have given you one of the nice ones. All of those old photographs are in there, even some semita.”
Eileen rolled over on the floor, “oh, don’t worry about that. I’m sure some airport security agent had that for breakfast. But—”
Her mother interrupted, “I can understand the need for more security, but you should call and complain. They probably ruined the suitcase when they searched you. Maybe they can give you money back!”
“Not how that works, Ma,” her mother’s misplaced persistence and indignation made Eileen grind her teeth, “I also don’t know why you keep buying me that stuff. The doctor already said I’m pre-diabetic.”
“Nonsense! You’re not even fat. In any case, I can always call for you—”
Suddenly the suitcase gurgled, shifting Eileen’s attention away from the conversation.
“Call you back, mom. Someone’s at the door,” she lied.
“Is it that boy? Say hi for me. Honestly, I wish you would just settle—”
Eileen hung up on her mother mid-sentence, in time to see the red canvas of the suitcase pucker, crinkle and open up. She got closer and looked down.
A yellow eyeball with a black, honey-combed slit for a pupil looked up. Each blink came with a thick squelching sound. Eileen stifled the black scream flapping at the back of her throat and instead, bent over and poked it.
The suitcase squealed and shut its eye tight. Then, it zipped across the table violently, clattering with a moist thud on the hardwood floor below, waking up Tofu.
Startled, the cat went up to the suitcase.
“Tofu, don’t—”
But no sooner had she tried to shoo the cat than a large, proboscis-like appendage stuck out from below the suitcase, near the wheels, and impaled the cat’s white back.
With a loud screech, Tofu tried to detach herself from the mutated roller-board. But it began to drag itself closer, sucking as it did so.
Eileen, numb and bruised, tried to unplug the cat from the unfurled organ. But the cat, with equal destructive doses of outrage and fear, dug her nails into Eileen’s forearms.
Blood, and white tufts of fur flew into the air as Eileen pulled. But the bag proved too powerful. With one guttural schluppp, Tofu cracked in two. The organ aspirated the cat, who passed like a chunky, malted milkshake leaving behind a singular bloody claw embedded in the Moroccan rug.
In a rage, she kicked the bag across the living room.
Defeated and bleeding from the claw-marks on her arm, she expected the thing to retaliate, to absorb her into whatever eldritch oblivion held within.
But instead, the demon roller-board started to whine, like a whipped dog.
It carried on for several minutes, making Eileen angrier and angrier. Until she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Will you shut the fuck up?” she yelled at it, in tears.
And with one loud whimper, the bag scooted itself under the couch.
III.
Eileen took a swig of gin from a bottle she’d stashed at the back of the coat closet and raised her shredded ribbon of a left arm. She walked to the bathroom for a towel to wrap it in then sat on the hard-wood floor, where she remained for hours, suspended in a long-forgotten space between sleep, fear, and high-alcohol content, with half-formed thoughts skittering across her brain like the tiniest of German cockroaches.
With dawn came a turning of keys at the door, sending those thoughts scurrying away, back to their dark corners.
“Eileen?”
Her boyfriend’s reedy voice filtered in through the apartment. Eileen stood up, teetering and gin sick. The white towel around her arm was now salmon pink, dyed by her blood.
A low growl reverberated on the floorboards.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“Stop what?” Tom, her boyfriend bent down and kissed her on her forehead, missing the stale scent of gin, saying nothing about her arm, or the mess. “Welcome back. Sorry I missed changing the litter these past few days. I got so busy. You know how it is, me needing reminders and all that.”
“It’s only the cat’s urinary tract,” Eileen muttered, cradling her arm, surprised by her own brusqueness. But Tom didn’t hear her, he breezed past her to the kitchen. “You forgot to wash the dishes you used, too. We got fruit flies,” she pointed out.
Again, he didn’t hear her, and launched into his early morning monologue: “Did you make any coffee? I’ve just been absolutely miserable without you. Did you read my email about my promotion? I really couldn’t believe it. After so many years, they finally recognized what I was worth. The elevator was out by the way, do you have anything to drink? I’m absolutely parched,” as he bent into the fridge, he finally noticed Eileen cradling her arm, then he took stock of the apartment.
“Jesus, you look like shit,” he stuck his nose in the air. “What happened here? What’s that smell?” He leaned in closer, “Have you been drinking?”
“You could say that,” Eileen slurred quietly.
“Christ, must have been one hell of a visit to make you fall off the wagon,” He looked her up and down. “Well, coffee should do you good. Don’t forget about the barbecue with my co-workers tomorrow night, so try to look in good form,” Tom stood stock-still in the kitchen next to the coffee machine, finally saying nothing. He looked expectantly at Eileen and stepped aside.
It was a motion Eileen knew too well. She walked up to the pantry to take down the coffee bean tin and grinder. “Don’t get blood in the beans,” Tom said jokingly.
As she begrudgingly made the coffee, she thought she heard a whimpering noise coming from the living room.
“Tofu really missed his mom, that cagey little shit. I kept myself working on this new data-migration project at work,” Tom whiffed the air again, “You know, you really should air this place out. It reeks like spoiled milk and rotting flowers.”
“Guess you should have changed the cat litter when you had the chance,” Eileen said again bitingly, stroking her arm. “Anyway, Tofu’s dead.”
“Wait. What?” Tom looked at her with wide eyes.
“He’s dead.”
Tom swallowed, finally showing concern. “Was it me? Are you saying it was my fault?”
Eileen sighed and shook her head, “No, Tom, nothing is ever your fault,” she peeked under the towel wrapping her arm, regretting it immediately, “I—brought something back.”
“What? Ew, are you contagious?” He raised his hands to his face.
Eileen sighed and walked to the couch. Getting on all fours, she cooed and coaxed the bag from its dark, dusty corner. With a rumbling purr, the bag ejected its handle.
Eileen pulled it out and brought it to Tom.
“Oh god, Eileen. What did your people put in that thing. It smells like a corpse,” Tom fanned the air in front of his uncomprehending eyes. He looked down at the suitcase. “Is that…is that thing purring? Is the cat in there?”
Eileen nodded “In a sense.”
“Eileen, how much did you drink? Should I be worried? I can pay for rehab—”
“Will you shut up for once and keep looking at it?”
Like a guppy, Tom’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. He stared at the suitcase. Its eye opened up sleepily and stared back.
Tom yelped and jumped three feet behind her.
“It’s been a day. Like I said,” Eileen shrugged, and walked to pour herself coffee.
“Jesus, Eileen,” He walked past her, to the kitchen. “Fuck the coffee. Is there any gin left?”
She passed him the bottle sitting on the dining room table. Tom took two swings and breathed in deep.
“You should file a complaint. who knows what atomic hell zapped itself into existence in this thing. And it already ate the cat. What was in it?”
Eileen shrugged again, “Stuff that belonged to my grandmom. Photographs, an old book—”
Tom pinched his patrician nose with vaudevillian disgust and interrupted again, “Maybe some weird mutation happened in the x-ray machines I keep reading about. So much for being on the vanguard of security and surveillance. Chuck it out and get that arm looked at while you’re at it,”
“Well, maybe—” she stammered, “Maybe we can give it a chance?”
“You’re joking,” Tom stared at her, blue eyes as wide as empty ceramic cereal bowls. “That thing?”
The stench slowly got stronger. Eileen cleared her throat, but Tom coughed theatrically and went to open a window.
“Don’t be crazy. What could you possibly do with this thing?” Tom fanned the air in front of him and picked up the suitcase.
Then without further questions or comments, he opened the window and threw the bag into the alleyway.
Eileen said nothing. But for a moment, she felt a low rumbling in her own chest. Suddenly, Tom scooped her up into his arms.
“Stick with me, and I’ll take care of your baggage baby. Now, why don’t you freshen up, mamacita, and I’ll show you what a real freak feels like?” He pulled her close, smashing his thick, colorless lips onto hers.
IV.
Streaks of semen and flakes of dried blood had turned Eileen into less of a person and more of an abstract rendering.
She stared at the ceiling. She stared at the sleeping Tom.
Not once had he asked if her arm hurt. Not once had he asked about her trip. Every breathless thrust felt like an affirmation of his abilities and less of a conversation between two bodies. Every additional utterance like a recording over a used cassette tape, nullifying the previous voice.
Why don’t you just get on with it and marry him, her mother had said.
A growl erupted from her throat at the thought.
She rose out of bed, hungover, sleep-deprived, and sore, and trudged to the shower. Her thoughts were thin and shuddering. Each drop washed Tom, Tofu, and the mess that had been coming back down the drain.
Then, Eileen wandered into the splatter fest that was her living room, mop, sponge, and Mr. Clean wipes in hand.
The bag had returned. Eileen had to hold on to her cleaning supplies to make sure she didn’t drop them from the shock.
It had accommodated itself next to the record player. A black, throbbing, mold stain had expanded underneath where it sat, like a toxic shadow.
Swallowing thickly, Eileen got to work, cleaning the living room, and the bathroom; ensuring the little bit of control she still possessed was meticulously asserted.
Once she was done, she sat there in the gray cracks of the shattering dawn, listening to it breathe, listening to herself.
Tofu had been a nightmare cat. But too invested in appearing to do the right thing with the gift her mother gave her, she couldn’t give it up or surrender it to a shelter.
Tom, self-absorbed and oblivious to the point of inflicting psychological and physical harm, was wonderful on paper. But, good Christ, he sucked.
The bag sighed deeply. Then gurgled and opened its eye, the honeycombed pupil twinkled cosmically, gleefully. A blue tentacle, an organ that it hadn’t shown before, extended from within
Eileen reached out and stroked it.
Not knowing what to say, she’d could only think of one thing:
“Go fetch.”
V.
After the suitcase had compacted the sleeping Tom and stuffed his body into whatever void was zippered up inside of it, Eileen sat with it on the sofa in the living room watching a horror film.
The suitcase would intermittently stroke her hair, leaving an unfortunate coating of goo. But Eileen didn’t mind. There was something…grandmotherly in it. And she appreciated it.
Her own grandmother, who had gone through two wars and had desperately wanted to leave home for pastures less prone to cyclical outbreaks of state-sponsored terror, had always been a hard, exacting woman, with little patience for mediocrity. It seemed like this little monster carried with it, or in it, the same sentiments.
She placed tarp on the hardwood floors and extra blankets around the furniture to prevent the mold from spreading.
She watched the suitcase, while she reached for her gin and tonic, trying to figure out what it was. But the suitcase growled and slapped the drink out of her hand, sending the glass flying into the wall.
“Maybe you’re more of a scotch person,” Eileen sighed.
Then, her mother called.
“You’re acting as if we slept together,” she’d started, “Why don’t you call me?”
“I hate that saying,” Eileen had said, grinding her teeth, “Tom and I…split up.”
“What? How did he take it?”
“Ehhh..he’s pretty…broken up about it,” Eileen said, staring at the screen, “You’re not going to ask me?”
“Ay Gordita, I’m sorry. He was such a good guy, with a State Department job, he seemed to really push you. You sound broken. I should come be with you and take care of you,” her mother squeaked.
“I don’t think I sound that bad,” Eileen rolled her eyes, briefly thinking maybe she’d been a little too quick to turn her boyfriend into cosmic squid food.
“God always has something for us, don’t forget,” her mother said, likely kissing a rosary as she did.
“Yeah,” Eileen looked at the bag, which winked back at her, “God. I also got rid of the cat.”
“Wow. Are you sick? Why do you hate the things I give you?” Her mother spoke breathlessly over the phone.
“I was always more of a dog person. You’re the one who likes cats,” Eileen grumbled.
“Well I was just trying to be nice,” her mother huffed. “Did you manage to resolve the suitcase situation?”
“There was some resolution,” Eileen looked down at the suitcase, which purred.
“Really, Eileen,” her mother’s voice soured. “Those things are valuable.”
“Mmm,” suddenly Eileen poked the suitcase, which poked her side back playfully in return. “You know, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you came to visit.”
VI.
The knock on the door had been politely insistent. Eileen managed to ignore it at first. But each set of knocks seemed impeccably and metronomically timed.
After five minutes, she looked out the peephole, she’d thought she’d pressed her eyeball too close to the lens, but no, they were two perfectly identical twins in blue jumpsuits, thick rimmed glasses, with gelled black hair, and heterochromia –one blue one yellow eye. Each had a clipboard in hand.
When they entered, the suitcase leapt off the sofa and hid underneath it, making it shake.
“On behalf of the Vermillis corporation, please accept our deepest apologies. While we work diligently to test our technologies, these things do happen,” said the twin on the left.
“Please do know that we will compensate you to the fullest extent of our abilities once you sign these forms. We also assure you of our guarantee of proper retrieval and disposal of the Glitch,” said the twin on the right.
Eileen blinked, “How did you even know how to find me?”
“Every passenger is cross-referenced with USCIS biometrics, and DNA picked up from the portal section of the scanners. We know where to find you should we need to,” said the twin on the left, while looking askance.
“We do need to know the following, ma’am,” the twin on the right raised his clipboard, “Were there any perishables that could have contained any larval matter or yeast?”
Eileen, unsure, told them about the semita, “What does that have to do with anything?”
The twins looked at each other. The one on the left answered. “We’ve been getting more reports of our scanners zapping the wrong bug along with the wrong suitcase, resulting in unexpected mutations, especially in the tropics.”
Eileen looked quizzically. “I thought you used the same x-ray technology as before.”
“Our Vermillis scanners are far superior. We can tell what you’ll be carrying today, what you carried yesterday, and what you’ll carry tomorrow. Most of our confiscations and resulting arrests are based on the scanner’s assessments. But in order to do that, the particle rifts can sometimes rearrange molecules…the wrong way,” the twin on the right adjusted his glasses with punctuated sheepishness.
“That sounds…excessive. Potentially apocalyptic,” Eileens responded, uncertain.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, ma’am, even if it is across multiple dimensions,” the twin on the right stated bluntly.
“Every inter-border security agreement incorporates the disclaimer: Individuals will be subjected to additional scans. We’ve broadened the parameters within the definition of any Supreme Court case to be more effective about catching some bad hombres,” the twin on the left interjected, “You can agree that El Salvador is a country that exports many of those. You’re lucky you have a president that recognizes it.”
“I can agree that my country has zero sense of priorities,” Eileen rolled her eyes. Then she looked at both men, “What if I don’t want to give you the bag?”
The twins looked at each other again, nervously. “We don’t have a protocol for that.”
Eileen felt the bag shiver underneath her. “Listen, if our president can decide to move from crypto fascism to eldritch portal crime baiting, I can keep my fucking bag since it still has my grandmother’s…things…spirit. Whatever! You idiots opened the dimensional floodgates, you figure out how to deal with them.”
The twins looked at each other, wide-eyed, then they leaned into each other simultaneously, whispering.
After five minutes, they turned back to Eileen. “Ma’am, it’s possible that this is a Glitch that goes beyond the scope of what we’ve documented previously. If you want to keep it, you are welcome to do so, but you will need to sign the following NDA as well as a Monitoring Compliance form,” the one on the right clicked his pen furiously, greedily.
“You will not hold us liable for any…further damages. You will also be responsible for containing the Glitch and supplying the requested information,” the one on the left finished his twin’s sentence.
Eileen grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do exactly as asked.”
VII.
Her mother was due to arrive in a few hours.
Somehow, her flight had been allowed to leave despite reports that a scanner had blown up and caused a cosmic sinkhole at Comalapa airport. Big surprise.
While the situation seemed under control, secretly, Eileen hoped the country would succumb to the terrors found in the swirling void therein. Fuck that place.
But for the moment, Eileen sat on the couch, looking out the window, eating a pack of Welch’s fruit snacks.
The fake taste of fruit had always brought her more pleasure than all of the real papaya, pears, and bananas her mother had tried to force feed her as a child at their dinner table in their house on Colonia Escalon.
She’d bought three of them with quiet vengeance at the corner store. The cashier had looked at her with amusement when she’d plonked them down.
When she returned, the Glitch sat quietly in the room. Eileen turned on the news and sat next to it on the tarp. The Glitch approached, until it managed to curl itself on her lap.
Earlier it had vomited one of the photographs.
While sticky, it was salvageable and still showed with some level of sepia-tinted clarity. Eileen smiling widely as a little girl, her grandmother, somber but beautiful, looking off expectantly into the distance, and her mother, her gaze lost and uncertain. The coastal mountains in the backdrop then, as now, remained forever firm and green.
Eileen pet the suitcase.
Her cellphone buzzed. It was her mother.
“Getting through security in Comalapa took so long. Now look what happened and that Bull Terrier of a President, just denying it on twitter,” squealed the voice through the receiver, “Anyway, I just landed and I’m getting my bag!”
“Oh, so now he’s a fascist,” Eileen responded flatly.
“You don’t sound excited or worried at all,” her mother whined, “Don’t you want me there?”
The Glitch rolled its eye with disdain and stared at Eileen. Eileen stared back.
“No, no, I’m just in the middle of cleaning. And setting up dinner,” Eileen held the phone on her cheek.
Glee began to pool around The Glitch’s pupil. It’s purring intensified. Its proboscis extended upwards until it scraped the high, white ceiling.
“I think you’ll be surprised by tonight’s meal.”
Alex McAnarney Castro (A.M. Castro) is a Salvadoran-American writer and activist raised in Mexico City and San Salvador. For over 15 years, she hasworked as a human rights advocate across Latin America and in the United States, with articles and stories published in Truthout, NACLA, Al Jazeera, Salon, FairObserver, OpenDemocracy and Spain´s El País, Defunkt Literary Magazine, Odessa Collective, Last Girls Club and LatineLit Magazine, as well as various outlets in Colombia, El Salvador, and Brazil.
She studied journalism, literature, and creative writing at Florida International University and received a Master’s in Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago, with a focus on Medical Anthropology.
Currently, she lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with her husband and dog Lola, where she spends her free time writing, practicing archery, photography, and horse-back riding.