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WHEN you’re running away, it helps if you have somewhere to run to. But Sonora and I, we just kept going. We drove and drove through the day and in the night Sonora got all spooked, forcing us to pull over. The moon was crazy orange and huge, like it was falling to the earth. I supposed that was reason enough to freak Sonora out, but she freaked out something regular.


We laid down in a field and ate the meat off chicken bones we found thrown out behind a KFC. Sonora said you could cast spells with the chicken bones if you knew how. She had seen her auntie Ilsa do it. I don’t believe in none of that shit, I said. She asked how long it would take before our parents sent armies out looking for us. I shrugged. There wasn’t no one looking for us.


After we ate, we lay in the brown, dry grass. It cracked beneath us like old bones. Sonora made up constellations and stories for each of them and her voice was so sugary I listened for a long while. I started to whistle and Sonora punched me hard in the shoulder. Don’t you whistle at night, she said, or La Lachusa, the Owl, will come and claw your eyes out. She pressed a finger to my lips. She unbuttoned her shirt. Crawled on top of me, and threw her shirt into the wind. Her hand over my mouth. She told me stories of Mexico, her hand down my pants. Her stories so much like a lullaby I almost didn’t notice her touching me. She told me of a young girl born with sparrow wings and how her parents tied those wings down her whole life so as a teenager she wouldn’t draw attention to herself, so the wolf-hungry boys wouldn’t be more drawn to her. She told me of a plague in Oaxaca, spread by singing dirges in the Aztec language, Nahuatl. And of a lost group of revolutionary communists from the Villa days, living still in the Transverse volcanic belt mountains, given immortality from a hidden spring.


I fell asleep and dreamt of goatmen in the mountains, rivers of gold, the sun turning black.


In the morning we drove past lakes and rivers of dying and dead fish, bodies swelling on the banks and in the sand. I blamed it on drought, on the heating of the earth, and pulled over at a lake ringed with the fishkill. No no no no no, Sonora said. She clutched a wooden crucifix hanging from her neck. This is a sign of bad things, she said.


Oh, I know, I know, I said, but we didn’t mean the same thing. I walked down to the water and Sonora hung back by the car. She prayed aloud. Most of the fish were dead and rotting, but I found a few still in their death-throes. I picked one up and held it so I could see into its eyes. I thought to say a prayer for it and its brothers and sisters, but I didn’t know any to say, so I laid it on a rock and sliced into it with a pocketknife, pulling away the skin for the meat. I gathered more dying or freshly-dead. Wrapped all the fish meat in newspaper. Sonora said those fish were messages from God and I shouldn’t have taken them. Omen or not, I said, we got to eat.


Some spooky shit’s going to happen to you for taking those fish, Sonora said later, refusing to eat. She pouted and stoked our campfire.


I’d be more afraid of The Owl coming to scratch out my eyes, I said. I stuffed a forkful into my mouth. Nothing is going to happen, just watch. Then another bite and another. I whistled with a mouthful of fish. Sonora cursed me in Spanish. She stepped back from the fire. I took a second filet and started eating that. When I finished, I forked another. Then a fourth.


God ain’t gonna strike you down just because you’re asking for it, Sonora said. She flung the remaining fish meat into the fire. I stuffed what was left on the plate into my mouth and chewed. The fish sizzled. Whatever bad was going to happen was going to come, caution or not. The moon had lost its orange glow. I sat and waited for anything to happen. Soon, Sonora returned to the fire. What we’re running from ain’t gonna go away just because we’re farther from it, she said. The fish meat was black and charred.


I tried to fall asleep but Sonora sang Spanish songs in the dark, worrying her life away. I told her The Owl wasn’t coming, that no one was coming to find us‚—not our parents or the ghosts or the bad things of the world—not if we kept moving, like rivers. That no spells would be cast and no fish omens were going to stop us. I whistled into the dark and waited. When nothing happened, I coyote-howled at the moon. Sonora’s crucifix swayed from her neck. I howled and howled, waiting and hoping that something would come through the dark and across the earth to find us. I howled like an animal does. To prove it’s alive.






ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winner of the 2012 Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction Contest for "Mermaids," Justin Lawrence Daugherty writes in Omaha, Nebraska. He runs Sundog Lit. His chapbook, Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise, is out now from Passenger Side Books. He's working on a novella about the lizard-boy, Aurelio — and, you can find some of the pieces of that book now or soon at The Collagist, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, Whole Beast Rag, and Metazen.


MORE: Twitter | Website | Sundog Lit






LF #037 © Justin Lawrence Daugherty. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, April 2013.

Guest editor: Will Johnson

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