The Fastforward Machine

Little did I know back in 2024 when Sean McDonnell and I were chatting about The Twilight Zone did I think things would roll so quickly into starting a new business.

That business, Tiny Worlds Publishing, has blossomed from the baby-step first edition of The Midnight Vault in 2025 and is growing into something wonderful.

Building something from scratch is, of course, never easy. Especially when you’re doing it on borrowed time and a shoestring budget. But I’m really pleased with the work we’re doing — cutting our teeth all-the-while.

Our first foray in this new endeavor was Sean’s Cherry Kills. I honestly couldn’t think of a better BANG! to start things off. It’s a hell of a story about loss and imaginary friends with a backbeat that’ll keep you reminiscing of the 90’s until Lalapalooza returns (or is it the Warp tour? One can never be sure). In any case, you’ll want to get your hands on a copy.

I’ve mentioned it before, but hanging out with the likes of , , and makes my day. They’re truly good humans and fantastic authors. Our asynchronous chats on Discord are always lively: Lyndsey’s home reno-gone amuck, Hanna’s continuous dive into social media. Maybe my favorite are Sean’s semi-regular post of “So… I think I’m gonna write a whole book about _____”

And, thankfully in all this, I have another partner in this endeavor, the incomparable . His creative support and talent are a breath of fresh air in a sea of book mediocrity.

The Midnight Vault II

We’re a scant few days from releasing the hardcover version of The Midnight Vault II into the world. I can tell you quite confidently the details has put into this edition are bellissimo.

Both The Midnight Vault I & II go on sale June 1st. They’ll be everywhere but if you want to support the authors directly, you’ll nab them from the Tiny Worlds store next week.

Each will be $29.99 and we ship all over the globe.

Oceanus • Second Edition

Some months back I pitched an idea to : why not revisit your first book?

Surprisingly, she was game for it.

We spent a couple of months pouring over the material, batting ideas and copy changes back and forth. sigh — that’s not at all what happened. We tore into the book like [place British idiom here] and asked the tough questions and scrutinized details.

Regularly, notifications on my phone would look like this:

As Hanna has mentioned, her voice and the style of the novel remain intact. Where I think her strength of the last few years writing came to bear, though, is in bolstering the characters and shaping them more fully. It’s not an easy thing to look back at your own writing and want to dive in again. I applaud every little finesse she added to the story.

Oceanus • Second Edition launches on June 19th. It’ll be everywhere but also available at Tiny Worlds.

I thought you’d like a sneak peek at the trailer for Oceanus.

Harmony House

let the cat out of the bag — but, really, why keep a good thing a secret?

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Ben over the last few months while catching up on his work — The Memory Of My Shadow, Harmony House and his newest creation Daedalia. He’s exactly as you’d imagine: thoughtful, easy with a smile and maybe one of the smartest people I’ve met. Even if I hadn’t listened to his incredible audio productions of those stories, the prose just sounds like him.

Harmony House will be out in July.

Gimmebook

When I sleep, which truthfully is not much, I’m dreaming. Sometimes of stories yet-to-be-written. But, more recently, about the heavy lifting an author does putting thoughts down, polishing them and, eventually (for most self-published authors) becoming your own marketing, publicity and sales person.

And I thought, if there’s some reasonable way I could lighten that load, shouldn’t I try?

So, in between other things, I built gimmebook.com.

The premise is simple: give authors a storefront for free where they can sell ebooks and audiobooks directly to readers.

Authors on gimmebook can set their own prices, cultivate their audience, gift books, automatically create ebooks from Substack posts and see stats about where readers are coming from.

But something lately was bugging me. When I set Gimmebook’s fee at 30%, I had a number in my head that was better than what most people get from Amazon. What I didn’t have yet was any of you telling me how it actually felt.

So I launched and I’ve had an amazing group of Beta authors to test it and provide feedback. The messages have been kind and clear: 30% gives authors sticker shock.

I heard it and I agree. So starting today, gimmebook’s platform fee is 20%.

Big picture - for twenty-ish years giant networks have monetized the attention they capture and the data they harvest. Amazon is the purest version of that for books. Authors toss their hard work into a sea of million of titles, and whatever relationship you manage to build with a reader belongs to them, not you. It’s like renting access to your own damn audience.

I think the next chapter looks different, and more human. Whether you’re starting with five readers or five thousand, the ones you earn should be yours: people you can reach again, for the next book and the one after that. That’s how a writer builds something that lasts and it’s a pillar of gimmebook. Your readers, your data, your direct line to the people who buy your work. I don’t get between you and them.

I’ll always be honest about what the 20% is and isn’t. It covers hosting, support, refund handling and the constant work of building the best storefront I can for authors. There’s no big team here, it’s one person building this, because I genuinely believe authors should own their work and audiences, and I wanted a place built around that idea instead of against it. The 20% is what keeps that going. (And it’s about to look better, too…I’m bringing on a designer soon)

Twenty percent is the work I do, so you can keep doing the work only you can do. That feels like a number I can stand behind when an author asks me to justify it.

Give gimmebook a try. Tell me what you like, or hate. I’m all ears.

The Midnight Vault

TMV II : Editors' Choice Award

The inaugural Editors’ Choice award goes to the top story from a selection narrowed down by the organizers. Trust us… it wasn’t easy…

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a month ago · 89 likes · 29 comments · J. Curtis, Shane Bzdok, and Bryan Pirolli

Tiny Worlds

Announcing: Cherry Kills by Sean Thomas McDonnell 🍒

Artwork by Butcher Billy…

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5 months ago · 21 likes · J. Curtis and Sean Thomas McDonnell

Tiny Worlds

ISLA | Chapter One

Welcome to Tiny Worlds…

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a year ago · 44 likes · 24 comments · J. Curtis

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Serial Novel: ISLA

Missed something? Sketchbook | Stories | Dispatches

Shaving trees into toothpicks

I read a post about a new wave of agentic capabilities in AI1 — that’s where a system can operate autonomously — and I’ve been thinking about it for the last two days. The article has been viewed about 75MM times so it’s safe to say it struck a nerve.

In it, the author, Matt Shumer (CEO of HyperwriteAI) paints a pretty bleak picture for, well, everyone, but especially up-and-coming folks. Simply put: if you’re just starting out in any number of trades: AI will take your job. Too bad, so sad.

But what if you’re already established in your field? [Office Space Lumbergh.AI] Uh, yeah... we’re gonna need you to move to the basement, too.

It’s no lie that companies far and wide are jumping on board with this idea.

• IBM lays off 8,000 as AI replaces HR

• Salesforce slashes 4,000 jobs amid AI boom

• etc, etc, etc...

Why? Because AI is smarter, cheaper and faster at doing your job. This is all justified by the steamroller of progress, you see. It can’t be helped.

Shumer says this evolution can be slowed if you’d spend time — just an hour a day — using the tools. Think of this as training for how a new cog (you) might adapt to the future. Thank god there’s a way through this, right? Not quite. Your job is still in jeopardy but at least they’ll have some of your money in the meantime.

Now, I’m not a luddite and I think there’s value in researching new tools. We should seek out tools that enhance us. I don’t do art well, so I use Photoshop, Pixelmator or Express. I like spreadsheets but loathe Microsoft Excel so I use Google Sheets, lately with some scripting help from Gemini. And I frequently use ElevenLabs reader app for listening to my stories (Burt Reynolds is my favorite) and have even used their licensed voices for audio versions of my stories.

Let me say this clearly for those who mistake my intent: at no time is my hand off the wheel relinquishing creative control. I’m still the one making all the poor gramerical2 errors. Because, for my money, the subtle pen might be mightier than the sword but a keyboard in flow state is a howitzer by comparison.

But there was something in Shumer’s salesmanship of investing in this technology gave me pause.

Just look at the marketing of any LLM and you’ll see a system to replace writers, software engineers, even teachers... for only $20/mo. The frugal side of me says “that’s a paltry sum to pay for such expertise!” But forget the dollar figure and look at the *real* cost.

To find that, we have to look under the “Nice Price” sticker to see the obfuscated fine print. An LLM isn’t a calculator for doing math faster, these are systems that mean you never have to do math again. Or composition, history, and any number of learned studies that feel too hard. I mean, with 100 trillion pages of data at your fingertips, why bother with school at all?

This is where I see the rub. Leaning heavily on these tools feels like a no-brainer... but that might be exactly what it sounds like. When you take away the friction of learning something, failing, trying again and, hopefully, succeeding that hollow sound between your ears becomes deafening.

When you abstract the “work” of learning 2+2 by jumping to 4 it’s the same to me as shaving a tree down to simply make a toothpick. Not to mention that all the while the AI is kissing your ass and calling you brilliant. Craig Mazin on the Scriptnotes podcast had a similar take.

In the end, it’s a loss of something far more valuable: the frustration and exhilaration of learning. Of learning to think critically. Maybe, of having your own opinion.

After all, if the solution is always at you fingertip, what’s the point of life?

At the behest of velocity we lose the value of looking out the window to wonder and to dream.

And dreaming — not hallucinating — is what gives us life.

If you’d like to read something written by a human, we have a ton of books at Tiny Worlds written by fabulous authors like , and

I have a story you might like there, too. It’s about AI on the surface, but it’s not. Grab a copy of The Zeno Paradox for free with code: ZenoZero

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Check out her new book The Shade In The Sands at Tiny Worlds Publishing

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Do you still dream?

Dreams about getting the lead in the school play. The vindication of being picked first for a playground game. The nervousness of talking to the pretty girl at school.

All those fears and hopes cast aside when they’re no longer important, when we’re older, far removed from those years.

But they’re still in us somewhere, aren’t they?

Yeah, buddy—they’re still there.

I’ve felt them—an unseen breath blowing dust from the corners of my memory, starting up the old projector behind my eyes now and again.

Maybe you have, too.

And I’ve been wondering: what part of us does that?

What part of us keeps watch, even after we’ve moved on?

I think they might be some other version of us, hiding beneath the bleachers with a can of cheap beer and a nearly empty pack of smokes. Waiting. Watching the school buses pull in at the end of the day, engines ticking as the motors cool down. They watch the assistant coach put away practice equipment. As the shadows stretch longer, they begin skulking around, unseen by the hunched janitors moving through empty halls.

I like to think of them like jokesters—wily miscreants with my forgotten thoughts spilling out of their pockets.

Through the halls they roam, jiggling the handles of locked doors late at night.

They search for windows left open just a crack, just wide enough, pressing against the frame, squeezing through.

Until they’re inside. Inside my dusty photography lab of a brain.

They move in the dark, digging through old filing cabinets and collapsed boxes, until they see it: a glimmer in the dust. At first, only a pinprick of light.

But those characters—the ones in my head—don’t give up easily.

They follow the faint light to the crack in the wall. They know the mortar has shifted just enough to let a finger slip through if they dig. They scratch at the edges as the light grows brighter.

Eventually, they remove the first brick, and on the other side, they see:

My kids have grown. Moved out.

A walk to the mailbox where there are no letters, only leaflets—sales upon sales.

The bricks come away, and one by one, the forgotten dreams spill out of their pockets as they squeeze through the crack.

They see me—TV left on as I doze in my easy chair. My side table cluttered with bottles—the medications that keep my body working, the ones that ease the pain.

Night after night, they find me as I sleep, brushing against my thinning hair. I never wake. In my dreams, I think about people long dead. About moments that might have been.

Most nights, that’s all it is. Just that.

And it feels so real.

I see faces. Trees turning color.

I exit the stage door, elated.

I’ve just gotten the part—the one I always wanted.

More Tiny Worlds —

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Serial Novel: ISLA

Missed something? Sketchbook | Stories | Dispatches

It’s a new year everyone! If you’ve made it this far, congrats.1

Some momentous things are afoot for 2026:
• More short fiction, of course. This is Tiny Worlds after all.
• A new novel – I’m daydreaming about it.

But, perhaps, something bigger and far-reaching…

I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens after typing “the end.”

The story might be finished, but the work isn’t. Getting a book from a final draft to actual readers means navigating systems that only cover part of the journey. After that, the work is released into noise—onto a crowded shelf where silence is easy to mistake for failure.

You don’t have to look far to see writers describing that feeling:

“Like I’m shouting from six feet underground.”
“It makes your art feel worthless.”
“The silence after publishing hurts more than bad reviews.”

Most writers patch together their own map. It works—until it doesn’t, and the same frustrations repeat themselves. Step back far enough and I think nearly all of it collapses into three things: discoverability, economics, and agency—how the work is found, how a writer gets paid fairly, and how writers stay in control.

Occasionally, an alternate route appears. It begins when a few writers realize they’re running into the same walls and want to stop pretending it’s a personal failure.

That’s the part I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about.

So, I’m proud to announce the opening of Tiny Worlds Publishing—a small bookstore built by writers, for readers who still like to wander.

It isn’t trying to compete loudly or scale quickly. It’s built around a shared belief that some stories need time, context, and care—and that progress mean highlighting what came before.

The shelf is intentionally small for now. It’s shaped around work that rewards attention instead of demanding it, already making room for what comes next.

That’s the idea. Let the books do the rest.

If that sounds a little old-fashioned, good. Some ideas age well.

And this isn’t theoretical. The first book is already here.

Cherry Kills, by master storyteller , is a punk-noir novella that grabbed me from the first page and didn’t let go. Precise, ferocious, and darkly funny, it’s exactly the kind of book this shelf exists for.

Here’s a synopsis to kick-start your heart….

Cherry Kills wants to be left alone.

Unfortunately, her Alternates: an overprotective lug, a happy-go-lucky child, and a mute rabbit the size of a man, have other plans. They’ve haunted her since her father’s violent death, following her from grimy punk clubs to the TV-static halls of her apartment building. The doctor calls them hallucinations, symptoms of trauma.

But when her Alternates start interacting with the world around her, Cherry realizes it might not be all in her head.

Pre-orders for Cherry Kills open January 22.

Character art comes from Butcher Billy.
Interior and cover design are by .
Edited by .

This is the first release under the Tiny Worlds imprint. It sets the tone for what this is meant to be: strange, deliberate, carefully made work—backed by a structure that doesn’t vanish the moment a book enters the world.

This is just the beginning.
But this is where it starts.

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ACT I. The Good Place

Most reporters have a kind of swagger now. The tidal wave of machismo landed after actors like Robert Redford and Warren Beatty donned a sport coat filled with scraps of notes. From then on reporters—field reporters and beat scribes alike—stopped wearing the discount Sears coat and tie and let their hair grow long.

Paul Danner leaned that way, too—swagger and all—but his batting average never matched the look.

From his Cincinnati base, he’d scratch any itch for a story that might put him in the limelight. He’d travel down into the Bluegrass or past Amish country at the faintest whiff of something more—a banker who’d taken a swan dive from his office window, or a union boss roughed up in the kind of dispute nobody talked about on record. But those morsels left him hungry for something else—the kind of story that might put him above the fold for once.

Far down Route 62, he eased up on the Corvair’s pedal, taking in the fall sights. It wasn’t cold yet, but the morning dew lingered all day, and the parched farmland after a record-heat summer had, for a moment, turned green again—just before the first frost and before the winter that would blow cold until April.

All around was the smell of smoke, burn piles of fallen leaves sending a thin haze above the trees. Orchards of apples—or whatever they grew out there—rose at the edges of town. Like a quiet border, these small groves marked the passage from one place to another, whether the odometer agreed or not.

A quarter-mile back he’d passed a man, first one Paul had seen in miles, in dirty coveralls standing in a fallow field beside an old, beat-up VW bus, one hand shading his eyes as the Corvair went by. The man didn’t wave. Paul watched until the rearview swallowed him.

Paul glanced at his notebook on the seat beside him, fact-checking and reminding himself why he’d driven all this way—

             Caanan F. > missing person > dead? > (oc)cult?

You can read this story as part of The Midnight Vault II book, available at Tiny Worlds Publishing.

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joins for a chat about what makes Lulu special and why they’re the exclusive print partner for The Midnight Vault II.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with !

We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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The wheel needed oil. It always did, because it always squeaked. But she didn’t mind; the Discman on her hip drowned out the sound.

L. – La, Ly. – Two more shoved between, one nearly a pamphlet. Why print something so small?

Squeak. Squeak.

M. – Mc. – Just a small paperback.

Squeak. Maintenance or not, the cart still worked—and that was what mattered.

P. – Pe. – Two authors, thankfully with the same last name. Shadows and something. Required course reading, but it was always out of stock.

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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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A ripple of light fell across the water at their legs.

Kathryn’s boots were soaked and heavy, but that didn’t matter. She’d suffer the ankle-deep slop they’d been trudging through for hours if it meant finding George—and getting away from this mumbling buffoon. Whatever interior compass he’d been following was off–way off. But she didn’t have any better sense of direction in here.

“Ahead,” Roberto’s voice echoed. His hands padded along the walls, his footfalls slow and labored. The small kerosene lamp in his hand cast a soft glow in front of him but failed to reach farther than an arm’s length.

Out of the tunnel he blinked—like a mole feeling light for the first time. Kathryn followed, heaving George’s backpack higher on her shoulders, both of them grimy, painted in muck.

The space could have held a few dozen people. Perhaps less a room than a central rotunda—several tunnels feeding into it, the walls in the dim light looked like little more than dirt and roots. In the center, the roof had caved in, dropping a massive tree inside, angled, taking up most of the space, not upright but not on its side either.

The light Roberto had seen came from above, through the open sky left when the earth crumbled and the tree sank to its new resting place.

Roberto raised the lantern to look more closely.

“The old calabash,” he said quietly. He looked away to Kathryn, as if she might remember, “We used to climb it for fruit when we were kids.” He stared a moment longer, voice trailing off as the ground shook again. “All this time it was standing right over this place.”

Giving the trembling branches a wide berth, Kathryn looked up: stars—brighter than she remembered them as a girl. And a comet, rippling across the sky in a slow arc, sending its light down into the room. After all the stench and darkness of the tunnels, seeing it there felt like finding a jewel.

But something about it—a comet. She tried to place it. In the blur of a declining relationship, working extra hours for money to move her and George—had she missed it? No, it had been there.

That little TV beside—what was his name’s?—espresso machine. Yes, she remembered.

The morning news had shown it: a cartoonish graphic, a voiceover promising its once-in-a-lifetime return. She’d half-listened, then filed it away with everything else that didn’t matter just then.

Halley’s Comet. Yes, that was it.

Trying to see the comet in the city would have been impossible, the sky was always drowned behind city lights or covered in winter clouds. But here, in this open hollow of dirt and ruin, the view was clear. It felt like the world had remembered how to show itself.

Roberto sloshed around the fallen tree in the opposite direction, peering into each tunnel. He stopped a few feet inside one, letting out an exhausted sigh, then a short laugh as he looked around. “It’s nothing but another set of passages.”

They both froze as the ground trembled. For a long moment the walls around them shook. Dirt sifted down from the open ceiling. Water splashed from the tunnel where they had come. Both Kathryn and Roberto turned to look, but no other sound followed. Roberto shrugged.

Her eyes drifted as she circled the tree. It filled nearly the entire room, leaving only a narrow path around its edge. The comet’s glow, reflected off the water in bright ribbons of light, gave her just enough to see.

She rolled her neck, then looked at the passages Roberto had found. East, west, north—who knew which way?

Then, faintly at first, a howl carried down one of the tunnels. Another answered from across the rotunda, then another—until they were surrounded on three sides.

A gust of air surged through, creating waves on the pooled water. In the next breath, light flared from one of the tunnels, moving and alive, halting her steps.

From deep inside came a rapid rhythm of splashes, closing fast.

Roberto looked to the only passage without a sound, the one they’d just come through. His heart raced.

“There is no archive here,” Roberto hissed, waving her back across the space, “vamos!”

But Kathryn didn’t follow, she only backed away, circling the tree, away from the light in the passage.

Listening to the sounds, it wasn’t one thing but a whole group—an army of feet cascading down the tunnel.

Whatever was coming was moving closer.

Watching the tunnel, Roberto looked around–they would never outrun whatever it was but maybe he could hide?

The shapes got closer and closer until the light was blinding as it entered the room.

Nicte slid into the space, followed by George, his torch flickering wildly.

The tree at the center startled them both, the path looked blocked. Unsure where to go, both quickly moved around the edges of the tree until they were face to face with Kathryn.

“Mom!?” George said.

Searching for the words, Kathryn was interrupted a second later.

At the tunnel entrance, a disparate group of animals appeared led by a boar standing chest-deep in the water. One by one the other entrances were blocked by more animals, their glowing eyes searched the room, then followed the faces they saw there.

Nicte swung around, taking in the space, the comet overhead, the strangers, the tree.

She knew this tree.

She pressed her hand to a split in the trunk, where the bark had cracked, and sap oozed out—thick and sweet-smelling. With a quick move she wiped the sap across her cheek, then George’s neck. Seeing the other woman standing there, she scooped another handful and drew it across Kathryn’s arm like a mark.

Then pushed them both back.

Nicte leaned to face the beasts, as she had countless times with the island’s alux.

She lowered her voice, growling, “Ma’a beeta’al,” — don’t do it.

Around the room, the animals stopped their forward movement. The air stilled, every muscle tensed, waiting.

As Nicte looked closer, these beats were different, not the alux she’d encountered before. Their bodies were decayed and haunted. In their blank eyes Nicte saw no recognition of the special barrier as they leaned forward, daring her, taunting. But they didn’t strike out. Like they were waiting for something.

Roberto edged backward toward the passage they’d entered from. He slipped slowly into shadow until he stopped—blocked. A chill of terror flashed across his face as his mind caught up to what might be there.

He turned sharply, squinting into the darkness. His stumped-fingered hand opened, the lantern slipping free—until it was caught mid-fall by another hand. The figure stepped forward, raising the light, pushing him back into the room.

For an instant the face echoed Roberto’s own. Recognition flickered between them as the light reflected across the mirrored sunglasses tucked into the man’s front pocket.

“Esteban…” Roberto whispered, “Tú aquí, hermano?”

Even in shadow George recognized the man from the beach and the alley. Pilluelo. And from the old picture in Roberto’s restaurant. His brother.

But also that name… hermano?

“No debiste volver,” Esteban said quietly. “The island …doesn’t need you,”

The animals leaned in, their noses inching into the room.

A monkey, grabbing at roots, pulling itself high onto the tunnel wall, sniffed. Then again, its nose turning up toward the hole in the ceiling.

All eyes lifted, human and animal, to the shape appearing there.

Slowly, revealing itself, the yellow eyes of a jaguar opened, reflecting the torchlight. It turned, the decay of its massive head visible, taking in the group below as it let out a long, low growl.

Roberto flinched, wiping the sweat of his brow with his handkerchief.

Kathryn gasped, stepping slowly back.

Across the room, George watched Esteban raise the lantern, eyes fixed on the jaguar.

The light caught his face—scarred, hollowed, the skin drawn tight where a nose and brows should have more shape. But as Esteban lifted the lantern closer to his chest, catching George and then Nicte’s eyes, the lines softened; the ruin became human again.

And sad, George thought. A sadness that ran deep enough to curve his spine.

The same light twisted Roberto’s features, the shadows cutting deep until his terror looked carved in.

“K’aak’,” Esteban said with almost a purr—then, softly, “Fuego.”

It dawned on George: fuego. Yes, fire. That might drive back the animals. If only for a minute. It would give them some room to figure out what to do next.

Nicte reached, her hand landing on George’s, on the torch. Cautiously, she pulled, positioning the flame between them. Their eyes met. Hers flicked toward the fallen tree, then back to the jaguar crouched at the rim above them.

Nicte’s eyes stayed on the monstrous cat, now leaning at the edge—a single leap away from the tree, maybe a second one to the floor. George gulped at the image in his head: one swipe from its horrible claws and their skin would open like fruit. Then the others—the monkeys, dogs, the boar—would follow in a frenzy.

The torch’s flame drifted slowly toward the tree. Every eye was transfixed—predator and prey alike.

Nicte steadied her aim, shoulders shifting. Ever. So. Slowly.

A hiss came from the jaguar. The other animals flinched.

Everyone froze in place.

Esteban whispered, “Óox,” —three.

A monkey bellowed.

Nicte tensed. The jaguar’s eyes narrowed on George.

“Ka’a.”—two.

The flame lowered a fraction further. Water splashed as the boar shook its head.

“Jun.”—one.

Esteban flung the lantern.

It spun once before striking the trunk and bursting—not in fire, but fuel. Kerosene slicked down the bark in gleaming threads. A thunder erupted from the jaguar as Nicte’s torch whipped across the gap.

Sparks leapt as the flame struck the spill. For a heartbeat it sputtered—then roared to life.

In the tunnels, the animal screams rose as the ground trembled again.

Incredibly, like a furnace overfilled with oil, the sap in the scar caught fire. Underneath the skin it bubbled, fire raging along the tilted trunk until every bug hole, pore, and broken branch spat flame.

George closed his eyes, stepping back, feeling the otherworldly heat on his skin. It sparkled in a way no fire he’d ever seen.

Above, the jaguar reared back losing its footing trying to scrabble for higher ground. The edge gave way. Toward the fire it fell, limbs pawing at the air as it twisted in retreat. It landed, tangled in the fire and boughs of the tree—thrashing.

Instantly, from every tunnel they came—monkeys clambering along the walls, dogs splashing low through the water, the boar plowing ahead with a guttural snort. In a single wave they met, crashing together at the calabash—teeth and claws and panic tangling in one heap.

Heat from the tree rolled over them. Through the gap in the ceiling a pillar of flame shot upward. Screams and writhing from around the tree pitched higher as sparks lifted into the updraft like a thousand burning insects. The flames reached up to join the comet’s light, gold folding into white.

The air detonated—a concussive crack that sent a wall of heat skimming across the water. The blast threw them back as the tree burst apart—bark, sap, and splinters ripping through the air in a storm of sound, striking the walls and vanishing into the dark like a volley of stones.

Kathryn hit the ground first, the shock slamming the air from her lungs. Roberto crashed down beside her. Esteban twisted. George and Nicte struck last, one tangled with the other.

A second gust of air tore outward in a single breath, a force that stripped the walls bare. It was more than sound—it was the island’s own voice, a bellowing howl from its heart.

For an instant George thought it was calling his name—or maybe everyone’s at once.

That howl–George had heard before or thought he had. Standing on the rooftop looking out at the stars. A call of both pain and release. Except it wasn’t in his head, it was here, beneath him. It vibrated through his bones as his own mouth opened, calling back to it as if to say, “I hear you.”

After came the silence, a deep, ringing stillness that swallowed everything.

When his eyes opened George saw clumps of mud and dirt fall from the walls around branches that were embedded from the blast. The whole roof had been blown away. In the center, where the tree had laid was empty with no sign of the jaguar or the other animals.

Nicte was the first to stand, her wound bright red but no longer pulsing, slowly turning, the chamber wheeling around her.

George crawled to Kathryn, gasping as she caught her breath. She patted his chest: I’m okay, just a minute.

“Mira,” Roberto rasped from the ground.

George followed his gaze as he got to his feet. The blast had stripped the walls bare: what had been dirt and roots was now stone, encircled by carved faces and squared arches. Each tunnel mouth was framed in precise masonry, the surfaces alive with glyphs that moments ago had been buried in mud. He wanted to touch the carvings—to feel the age of them, the weight of what he’d only ever seen in pictures or through the window of a cab.

But his hand froze an inch away. He remembered the room and the shapes that vanished at his touch. It felt like he’d been tricked before.

Roberto was up, studying the glyphs that lined the walls. His eyes tracked a stelae at one doorway, then another, muttering under his breath, “Once… catorce… cero-cero-cero.”

Kathryn looked to George, who returned a shrug.

“They all say the same thing,” Roberto said, turning to Esteban, who was still trying to lift himself from the ground. “Just a date.”

George’s lips cracked as he whispered, “Is this… it?”

Brushing dirt from the carvings, Roberto thumped at them. “No. Just a room.”

Their eyes drifted over the intricate columns that form the room’s boundaries.

Roberto paced between the tunnels. “No door to open.”

“Maybe there’s something else here—directions,” Kathryn said, wiping off her pants and pointing down one of the dark passages. “Like ‘go that way.’”

“No, no. I’ll know it when I see it,” Roberto said—then, quieter, almost to himself—“I’ve seen it before.”

He rubbed at the rounded skin where his fingertips had once been, the nerves still alive beneath the scar. The memory flickered there—those eyes, violent and celestial, staring back at him as the doors closed. In that instant they had taken something from him, severing more than flesh, leaving a piece of himself behind. But, couldn’t he still feel them—those missing fingers—as if they were here, reaching through the stone, divining a way back to what he’d lost?

He laid a hand on Esteban’s shoulder. “We have to find it.”

Roberto turned back to the carvings, his breath sharp in the close air. “But it’s wrong. All of it. The pattern repeats, like it’s mocking us.” He pressed his palm flat against the wall, then drew it back as if it had burned him. “It’s down here somewhere. I can feel it… but it’s hiding from me.”

“Hermano…” Esteban said, reaching for his elbow as he passed by.

Roberto’s voice thinned, almost trembling with certainty. “It always does.” He scanned the walls, the air around him alive with some invisible pulse. “The island—hiding it again.” The words came out between breaths, half curse, half confession.

“Wait,” George said. He leaned down, grabbing his backpack from Kathryn. Pulling out the leather journal, he flipped it open, muttering as he turned the pages. “Seeing… eyes…”

George pushes the book in front of Kathryn, “This.” He points to a passage, “I can make out a part of it but, mom, his—”

“Yeah, his handwriting is like a doctor” Kathryn finishes the sentence.

Nicte watches, unsure what’s happening. She sees Esteban trying to lift himself from the water and rushes to him.

Reading aloud, George said, “Communion requires willing eyes. Like—”

“Children playing, listening—” Kathryn read, deciphering.

Esteban moved to his knees; Nicte holding him upright. Black specks glittered across his chest and face—shards from the blast embedded in his skin, sparkling like glass in the comet’s light.

George’s voice softened. “Children playing, listening to the wind, watching for falling stars on a summer night—not expecting to see one, only watching with open hands, ready to receive whatever the sky gives.”

Roberto listened but George’s words came through jagged and warped through the chamber as something else: I alone can open it.

The echoes in Roberto’s ears lingered long after George’s mouth had stopped moving. “What did you—?” Roberto started, but his own voice sounded foreign.

George frowned at the page. “I don’t know what this says…”

Esteban coughed, blood streaking his lips.

George tried again, carefully sounding out each syllable. “Ken je’ek… abta’ak…”

Esteban’s voice came low, translating between breaths. “When one heart opens…”

George traced the next line. “Jump’éel puksi’ik’al… ichil k’áak’…”

Nicte leaned closer, listening as if to a prayer half-remembered.

“…others will follow,” Esteban said, his voice fading to a whisper.

George looked back at him. “There’s more,” he said, pointing lower on the page.

He squinted, sounding it out, halting and unsure. “Táan u máan… u yéetel k’iin… tu’ux aj k’u hunp’éel…”

Esteban’s eyes fluttered, the translation surfacing as if from memory. “A proud man digs for light,” he murmured, “and buries himself instead.”

George echoed him softly, fitting the pieces together. “When one heart opens, others will follow. A proud man digs for light and buries himself instead.”

The words seemed to hang in the air, the comet’s light pulsing faintly against the walls, as if the chamber itself had been listening.

To Roberto, the echoes twisted backward, each syllable dragging like stone: This is not for you, old man. Go rot.

“K’ux… le máako’ loobilta’an,” Nicte said, pulling a shard from Esteban’s chest. Blood welled instantly, slicing her fingers like razors. She gasped.

A cold pulse ran through Roberto’s skull. George was no longer reading—only smiling at him. No, laughing. The sound ricocheted around the chamber, bright and cruel, until it was everywhere at once.

He stumbled forward, heat rising under his skin. The boy will steal it from you.

Yes. It’s not his. He hadn’t lost everything to get here.

Roberto plunged his hand into the water. His fingers closed around a stone—smooth, heavy, slick with silt.

“Jorge,” Nicte said, her voice testing the word, urgent.

Roberto lunged.

George barely saw it coming as he turned toward her—

—but Esteban moved first, catching Roberto’s leg and dragging him down.

Roberto’s teeth gnashed. He saw only defiance. The archive was his—his and no one else’s.

He tore free and brought the stone down. A crack of bone split the air. Esteban’s head snapped forward.

Before the blood reached his brow, Roberto swung again—

—but Nicte was there.

Her hand rose to block, and when the stone struck, light burst from her wound—pure, blinding.

The flare ripped outward, then folded back in on itself, light reversing through the air. The water at their feet turned to glass, every ripple a mirror, every reflection showing not the chamber but another sky, another moment.

For a heartbeat…

Esteban saw Marisol—her arm raised, waving from the fields.

Roberto saw himself as a boy, tanned, pulling his net from the water, empty.

George saw his father’s face, winking at him through the rearview mirror of the Triumph.

Kathryn saw George, sketching his self-portrait at the kitchen table, the face older, more like Arturo’s.

Nicte saw her own hand, unmarked, stroking the back of a tortuga.

The visions trembled, flickering between surfaces as if unsure which world to hold. The glassy water hummed—a single note, pure and rising. Then, one by one, the reflections collapsed back into Nicte’s wound, the light drawing inward until only a faint pulse remained beneath her skin and the scar…

Nicte turned, dazed, her eyes wide. She looked at George, holding her hand up.

The scar was gone.

A moaning sound from somewhere deep in the island fluttered through the tunnels.

Carved faces along the walls began to weep molten lines of gold. Every tunnel mouth glowed, veins of fire threading toward the center. Along the floor, under the pool of water it flowed until they were all standing on a surface made of light, shining the comet’s brilliance back.

Kathryn, “Wha—Should we run?”

George looked at her, his shoulders raised: I don’t know. Then pointed at the comet closing its arc overhead.

Roberto, doubled over, hair falling around, kneeling in the water.

Esteban whispers, “Le islao’ ku ka’a ch’a’ik u yiik’” – the island is breathing again

Feeling the floor tremble beneath his feet, George didn’t feel scared. It was the first time, really, the only time here on the island since he landed where he didn’t feel the need to look over his shoulder. He couldn’t put his thoughts together in any rational way but felt calm. Like he belonged here. Like he was meant to be here at this moment.

But something in it felt like a needle switching tracks, the explosive first track now over and onto the deeper ones, the ones you really bought the album to hear. And in that he knew he’d played a role but what kind?

From deep beneath the ground they felt a vibration that rippled up the walls. A grumble above them became louder as the plants and trees shed their midnight dew from high on the mountain.

A trickle at first, then a torrent.

George watched the water moving down as is spilled over the broken rim above and poured down into the chamber, circling them in a widening ring.

All those drops coming together, mixing, forming a whole that had more power than a single drop. And he knew what role he played here. The words came splashing out of the water, his father’s voice:

“You know, it’s Watson who keeps Holmes tethered to the world, and Samwise who hauls Frodo through the last shadows of Mordor. The hero may bear the weight of the world and have his name written in gold—but stories outlive glory, and it’s the sidekicks who keep the fire lit.”

Waves slapped against their legs, rising higher.

George gasped at the shock of coolness—the first he’d felt in what seemed like days. The walls began to give way, roots and stones tumbling loose as a new sound filled the air: sparse chords in the wavering water.

And a different voice, rolling, becoming thunder—

Lord, here comes the flood
We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood

Water surged outward from the chamber and down the mountainside.

The ground split—earth and water folding together, peeling away the years.

Stone steps, long buried, poured from the mountain’s side—each tier revealing itself in turn, a great descent unfurling as the hidden temple emerged from the earth, as if the mountain were shedding its disguise.

The glyphs flared as they were scoured clean, blazing like new voices in the stone.

If again the seas are silent, in any still alive
It’ll be those who gave their island to survive

One-by-one the tunnels began to collapse, washed out from the inside, filling, falling, then washing away.

Except one that led directly into the mountain.

George stood wide-eyed as Nicte moved to its center. From within, shapes emerged—men and women, luminous, walking in pairs. Their eyes sparkled with the calm of ancient things, their clothing moved like leaves swayed by an invisible wind. One wore a mask of black glass, its obsidian eyes blinking at the sky, another with wings made of reeds. Each paused to touch the air, to taste it with their senses as though for the first time.

George’s tears fell freely, mingling with the water rushing down the mountain. The gods were returning to their world, and he was part of the tide that carried them home.

Last among them came a tall figure crowned in the flashing of stormlight, his hair moving as if underwater, his skin traced with faint shimmers of blue, like the inside of a wave. He took Nicte’s hand and leaned close, whispering words only she could hear. She bowed her head, eyes lowered, until he passed.

Watching it all, George stood beside Kathryn, their eyes full with the light of these beings.

In the distance, George spotted a strange shape walking across the land toward the temple on top of the hill—a leathery beast on all fours emerging from the west, the color of tarnished gold, speckled along its sides. On the back of the massive crocodile rode a woman. When she stepped from its back, gold dust billowed with each of her steps.

As she approached, she looked down at Roberto, her eyes a dazzling mix of stars and constellations. At once, he seemed to know who she was and withdrew, crawling backward, his face in the mud. George saw him crest the hill, still crawling, and disappear from sight.

Nearer now, with a light touch, she reached out to the slack body of Esteban. He had rolled onto his side, his head on a pillow of dirt and leaves the rushing water had built up like a little dam. The woman said something close to his ear that George couldn’t hear. By the end, his body had relaxed fully—the slight rise and fall of his chest now stilled.

When the woman stood, turning to George and Kathryn, Esteban’s shape was only a shadow behind her. As she came closer, he was gone completely. The woman approached Kathryn and, reaching up, seemed to pluck something out of the open sky. Between her fingers, she set down a jade bead on Kathryn’s open palm and stepped away.

From where George stood, the scene bloomed in his mind: Kathryn—her hand lifted—framed against the dawn. Behind her, the comet burned in the western sky, the morning clouds fanning out like palm leaves as the rising sun caught them in gold.

For a moment, the picture was perfect—the glyph made real.

The sun broke over the horizon, flooding them in gold. The stones at their feet and along the terrace shone, wet with water and bright in the new light. The maize fields stretched almost to the sea, where the waves rolled, flashing before turning blue forever.

George lowered his eyes, the moment heavy. No lyric, no voice but his own as he pieced together the last few days. The years came next—threads drawn across his mind until they lay in a weave. In those lines, so disparate and strange, he saw what he hadn’t before: an improbable inevitability.

A pattern.

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Music

• Here Comes The Flood - Peter Gabriel

We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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Nicte and George were spat onto a polished granite surface.

George hit the ground so fast his hands didn’t have time to brace himself. Stone debris from the chamber scattered around them.

The space was tight. George couldn’t sit up fully as his head bumped into a smooth wooden surface. But the sides where the wood stopped were close and mostly open except for… legs?

Around them were intricate leggings and footwear. Some had robes or cloth that fell neatly to each side or to the floor behind them. George started to count them, nine on one side, five on the other, with an empty space in the middle where there were no legs.

A table?

Nicte seemed to be wondering the same as they crawled toward the open space. Quietly they crept, around feet and legs outstretched and past a sleeping dog. Its nose snuffled, freezing their movement, as they waited to see its eyes stay shut.

Nicte was the first to emerge from behind an intricate weave of material that lay draped over the edge. There she stopped moving, George pausing behind her.

“Guardian?” George heard a voice say from somewhere beyond his vision, “Good of you to join us.”

Nicte moved slowly, pulling herself out, then rising beyond the drape of cloth.

“Did you bring someone with you?” Another voice asked. “Come out, boy.”

George peeked out just enough to see the man seated there, resplendent in shape and form—his hair bound tight with woven bands, his eyes dark and steady. Jade glinted at his ears, a collar of carved shells resting on his chest. He looked down, smiling at George emerging from under the table.

“You must be Story,” the man said, holding a palm out, welcoming George into the room.

The hall gleamed as George stood, looking around. The granite shone as though polished daily, the wooden table they had been underneath stretched without a seam. Light from candelabras of hammered gold shimmered from above.

“This is Xibalba?” George wondered under his breath.

It was so unlike any story of the underworld that George blinked, half-expecting his head to still be ringing from the fall.

Then the figures stirred.

One by one, directed by the two men who sat at the center of the table, they each gave Nicte and George a slight nod or touched their beards, watching the two closely.

When they had finished, one of the men at the center spoke. His eyes were impossibly clear and steady, his face smooth, as though no beard had ever grown there.

“Please, dine with us,” he said.

The other, more handsome than the first but with a faint scar above his eye, opened his hand to the space without chairs.

A pair of hairy wild boar behind Nicte and George lowered their heads and quickly shoved two large chairs toward the table. They slowed enough in the last few paces for both to sit as the chairs slid into place.

With a wave, from the corners of the room owls and monkeys swept in with a whisk and a whoosh, setting down platters that gleamed with fruit, maize, fish, and steaming meat. The table filled in a blink, dazzling and sudden. George felt awe catch in his throat, watching the animals move, and how swiftly it all appeared.

As the last dish settled, George caught it—just a flicker. A metal goblet filled with wine, yet in its reflection inside the polished surface the liquid was black as pitch. He blinked, and all was perfect again. Nicte was looking at something in the reflection of her silverware, her eyes widening.

The smooth-faced man leaned back, his companion forward, eyes bright, voice smooth as wet stone.

“Please eat… you must be hungry,” he said with a slippery smile.

George felt like a knight at the roundtable, surrounded by so much pageantry—and food.

Er, no. These men weren’t Lancelot or Galahad but they did have some similar flourishes. And, of course, the table was a rectangle.

Still, his stomach grumbled at the sight of the steaming platters, then groaned. Pushing aside the plate of corn—too much of that already, and it hadn’t gone well—George reached for a slice of meat, juices running off the plate and onto the wood. His fingers closed around it, and he lifted it halfway to his mouth before Nicte’s hand shot out. Her silverware tumbled to the floor along with the meat.

In a flash, behind them came the sound of chewing. George turned quickly to see a jaguar cub wrestling the piece of meat, flinging it side to side. Juice from the meat slopped onto the floor. He peered closer—the cub’s reflection was different: horribly matted, with skin missing from around its jaw, its gnarled, broken teeth visible beneath. And writhing in the liquid from the meat: worms, fat and slippery.

At once George lost his appetite. Beside him, the air seemed to shift—charged.

Nicte stood, her chair scraping the floor. Even before it stopped she was already speaking, her voice hard as stone. To George it sounded like an incantation—until he caught names in the torrent. She was calling out each of them in her own tongue: Xiquiripat. Cuchumaquic. Ahalpuh. Each seemed to strike like a blow, and with every name the recipient’s once-pleasant face turned cold.

Light from the candelabras flickered, throwing grotesque shadows on faces. Animals—on the ground and above, still attentively waiting—flinched.

And when Nicte’s naming came to the two men in the center, her mouth turned up, a slight smile as she said, “Vucub-Camé… Hun-Ca–”

Then her voice went silent.

She grabbed at her throat, her tongue still moving as if talking—the sounds just never came out. Her other hand clenched tight against the table, the burn on her hand flickering—pulsing. George stared at it. It glowed like the beat of a second hand, faster than before.

“Guardian…” the scarred one muttered with a tisk, “far too many words.”

A roar of mirth spread, rippling from the center to the outer edges of the group.

Nicte reached for the goblet at her setting and, with a deliberate twist, tipped it over. The black liquid spread across the polished table, pooling in unnatural shapes.

The smooth-faced one turned to George. His eyes, still clear but now with a touch of malice, narrowed as he said, “We understand that you, boy, are Story. If you will not eat, tell us one.”

All eyes turned to George. He could hear their clothes shift as everyone pivoted. Waiting.

George’s mouth fell open, dry. He looked at Nicte as she sat, her hand continuing to pulse. Her eyes showed she was holding back a scream of pain.

“A story?” George said quietly.

“Stand, boy,” one of the men said.

The room erupted in laughter.

George pushed his chair back with some effort. The Rolodex in his head spun, cards slipping, stacking, scattering. Nothing fit.

These men watched him, waiting for him to fail.

He could tell the story of Scylla and Charybdis, but it wasn’t one he knew well. Or borrow from his father’s style, riff on The Phantom Tollbooth—maybe about the princesses Rhyme and Reason. But to do that he’d have to be someone else.

His whole life he had wondered about that power that flowered so deeply in his father’s chest—if the seeds of it would ever grow in his own. The soil was fertile, but the fruit—his voice—still unripe. That’s what this felt like: too soon.

The jeering pressed in. The flames dipped low.

In that flicker he thought he caught two shadows leaning together at the edge of the room, behind a hanging tapestry. When he looked again, then they were gone.

George swallowed and blurted the first thing that came.

“There’s a little black spot on the sun today. The same thing as yesterday.”

The hall stirred, approving.

“And after flame?” a Lord asked.

George flipped the Rolodex, grabbing at anything that might fit.

“Generals gathered in their masses. Sorcerers of death’s construction. Fields, um, with bodies burning.”

A rumble of satisfaction circled the table. Their questions came faster, sharper, like arrows.

“And after blood?”

“A skeleton choking on a crust of bread. And a king… kings… with their eyes torn out. Kings of pain.”

The lords smiled.

“And after sorrow?”

The words—and whatever thread he’d been trying to weave—left him. George stumbled, grabbing at anything his mind could remember.

“You may ask yourself… how did I get here? This is not my beautiful house… not my beautiful—” His voice cracked. The thread unspooling.

Mocking voices thundered off the polished stone.

“Story without a story,” one spat.

“Nothing but fragments,” another chided.

George’s face burned. He wanted to sink beneath the table.

But through the taunting came something else: silence. Not in the room, but in his head, as the volume of everything turned down.

In a flash he saw his father’s classroom, students hushed, eyes waiting. His father stood like a conductor in the pause before the first note, arms raised in silence to snatch thoughts from the air. He saw him behind the glass in the radio station, head tilted to the sky, quiet, while chaos raged outside.

That pause—it was something he’d seen his father do, even mid-speech. George only ever saw it as forgetfulness, thinking, waiting for the words to form on his tongue.

But, as a light wind blew on George’s face he considered something else: was his father waiting for words to arrive on wind, ones only he could hear? Eye-to-eye or to an invisible audience over radio waves, his father never took words lightly. They were sacred. Each one… a breath.

George lifted his head.

“I am not a great storyteller. That was my father.”

His voice carried differently now—his father’s rhythm beneath it, but something new rising through.

“He said stories breathe through us. They move through our bones, through the living parts of us. If we bury them, they don’t die—they seep into the ground. They are not just words—they are life itself, moving from one chest to another, like air. That is why we pass them on. We have to, or else we don’t live.”

He paused, letting the thought settle. “That’s why I’m here. Because of stories—the ones he breathed into me.”

The laughter thinned.

Nicte shifted in her chair, glancing upward. The owl was there—silent, wings unfurling and folding again. Then it looked down. She turned to see what had caught its eyes. In the shimmer of shadow near the far wall, two small figures stood side by side. Boys. Grinning. The sight chilled her—help or harm, she couldn’t tell.

George touched the polished wood of the table, eyes tracing the grain.

He pictured his father in the record store—head tilted, looking off. The words had come to him there too. He was pausing time. To hear them he had to quiet the world and make room for them, if only for an instant. That silence wasn’t aloofness. It was listening for a truth, arriving only in pieces over time.

Then, a question surfaced to George as he spoke: “And what are stories too large for one voice to hold?”

The words seemed to hang there for a moment.

“Gods” George said–the answer to his own question laid out.

From the corner of his eye he could see Nicte watching him, shifting with pain.

“Gods are stories too heavy for one person to hold. We call them gods because they’re memories too big to stay inside us. They made us to share that weight—to talk with them, so they wouldn’t be alone. And when the world grew dangerous, they disappeared and waited for us to remember how to listen.”

George’s voice broke off. For a moment all sound thinned, and he felt the air gather in his chest, listening with him.

“Unless—they didn’t disappear.”

The candelabras guttered. Shadows twisted the hosts’ faces, rot bleeding through before smoothing again. He watched them change, meeting their eyes.

Like a Polaroid developing grainy and out of focus, George glimpsed the puzzle his father had been solving—the idea that had brought him to the island, that had made him restless.

“You hid them,” George said, his voice hardening. “You put them out of reach because you couldn’t destroy them.”

He glanced at Nicte—her hand still flashing, a small smile beginning to bloom across his face.

“You… don’t have that kind of power.”

The men at the table twitched. Some looked away, pretending to be distracted. The two at the center—leaned forward as if to challenge him.

“Because you can’t cage a breath. Even in our chest, the air flows into the blood. And you can’t silence memory, not really. Trap a story and it twists, echoes, shakes the ground until it’s heard.”

He stepped closer to the table, a sudden rush. He could feel it—he was onto something.

“And when you lock away gods, it’s no different. They break the earth to make room. Not because they are beyond us—but because they are us. They are memory. They are breath.”

For an instant, George thought of the journal—heavy in his hand, filled with the words that had led him here—and of the unpublished book, the strange and beautiful bedtime stories. Pieces, but never whole until now, as if his father had left the rest for him to find.

George leaned forward. “You are not keepers. You are jailors. You smothered the archive, tried to silence the voices, because you feared what they remembered. But memory doesn’t die in the dark. It waits for someone to speak it aloud.”

The air tightened. The owl stirred above, wings flexing.

“And stories, like gods,” George said, his voice ringing now, “don’t belong to you. They belong to everyone.”

Nicte’s eyes widened, flicking from George to the owl… as it dove.

Down.

Down.

Its wings blasted over the candelabras, snuffing every flame in an instant. Darkness dropped like a curtain.

A thunderclap split the silence, followed by the groan of wood tearing itself apart.

Then—light.

But not candlelight.

A crack tore open the ceiling above them, spilling white fire across the hall. Through it, the sky yawned—dark and endless—and across that gulf the comet burned, arcing toward the horizon. Its tail dragged ribbons of silver that trembled like breath.

Nicte cried out, “Xux ek’!” Her voice rose in awe and warning both.

George followed her voice. The wound on her hand glowed, the light deepening red, pulsing in rhythm with the comet’s fire.

She turned to him, breathless, and pointed upward, then toward the far end of the hall—an unmistakable command.

He hesitated only a second. “It’s almost gone,” he said under his breath and moved toward her.

Laughing, the Twins came out of the shadows and leapt onto the table, sparks spitting from their hands as they pointed the same way Nicte had.

“In k’áat!” Nicte shouted—Come!—grabbing George’s arm.

The Twins cleared a path, their sparks swirling into shapes of stars and serpents as the comet’s light widened the breach above.

Together, George and Nicte ran the length of the table, plates and rotted food crunching underfoot. The Lords howled behind them, their feast collapsing into ruin.

Laughter from the Twins cut through the chaos—bright, merciless. In a shower of sparks, a mirror erupted along the split center of the table. It stretched from one end to the other, a narrow river of light reflecting the Lords seated on both sides.

The Lords froze. Their own faces stared back at them—bloated, rotting, skin peeling, jaws unhinged. Then the images began to shift. They saw themselves stumble, falter, collapse. Feasts shriveled into ash, proud thrones buckled beneath them, and always the laughter of boys cut through it all.

In their seats the Lords writhed but could not look away. The mirror held them, bound not by chains but by the weight of their own shame.

The walls trembled as Nicte and George fled the hall, their footsteps fading into the passageway and the waiting dark beyond..

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Music

• King Of Pain - The Police

• War Pigs - Black Sabbath

• Once In A Lifetime - The Talking Heads

Serial Novel: ISLA

Missed something? Sketchbook | Stories | Dispatches

A doorway… to something else

You may have heard a few rumblings over the past week…

Last year, we gathered a remarkable mix of writers and artists on to reimagine The Twilight Zone—and what emerged defied expectation.

This year, the portal widens: Everyone is invited. Yes, everyone.

Introducing: The Midnight Vault II — a grand collaboration of writers, musicians, and artists, each creating their own strange and brilliant tribute to Rod Serling’s timeless series on its 67th anniversary.

Deadline: November 24th, 2025 at 12:01am
Head to The Midnight Vault for full details and submission info.

And one more twist — select stories will be published in a brand new Midnight Vault anthology, complete with shared royalties.

So gather your ideas, set your clocks and ready your imagination.

Because once again… midnight is almost here.

The end (of ISLA) is neigh…

Can you believe it, the end of my serialized novel ISLA is almost here? I can’t.

It’s been a long road – nearly 13 years – that I’ve been thinking about some version of this story. Looking back, I found this journal entry from a trip to Isla Mujeres:

2/12/2012
I have this idea floating in my head about a story set on the island. Perhaps a boy traveling with his family for vacation [and] has the chance at adventure with some of the other local kid.
–
I think the story is/should be partially based on local legends with a twist of goonies and a overt dose of “getting out of your element".
–
The island must have many legends and mysteries from the old ways, carrying over to modern day. Superstitions?

Later that day I wrote a synopsis of the story. Let’s just say it was *very* different. But… that’s for a future Dispatch.

Stats don’t matter much but here we are, years later, and ISLA is a 36 chapter/ 70k word novel. Plus a 45 song soundtrack.

Many of you have come along for the ride, so, Thank you!

If you haven’t, no problem. There’s still time to have an adventure with George as he goes to the mysterious island.

P.S. - Don’t forget fresh batteries for your Walkman.

P.P.S. — if you’d like to read it ebook form in exchange for feedback, let me know.

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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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(An excerpt from “Shadows and Echoes” a collection of interpreted Mayan legends)

Burros brayed against the strangling ropes, their backs and legs stronger than the stones they dragged.

Men in loose linen shirts whipped and guided, while others—wide-brimmed hats shading thick beards and scornful eyes—stood apart and whispered. History tumbled down whole, crashing into rubble, beneath their boots, beneath the cross they raised above the smoke.

“A church will rise from these stones. What remains belongs to flame,” came the friar’s command.

And fire did its work too, flaring as villagers cowered. Dark skin was forced beneath river water by pale hands, baptized anew. They were made to bow before the cross raised on toppled temples, to pray in a tongue not their own to a god not theirs. To acquiesce was to survive. To resist the will of the barbudos, the church, to refuse homage to this new god, was to be whipped—flayed at the crossroads and left for maggots.

But deeper in the jungle the elders gathered. Firelight flickered in their eyes as they whispered, the glow a moment of reverence. Heads bowed, and with no choice remaining but to agree, an accord was struck. The communion of ancients and men—as it had been since the first dawn—would cease for a time. The sacred exchange of prayer and presence, the weaving of offerings and answers, would be broken. Yet in the night sky they saw a sign: a celestial body, its tail streaming away from the sun, drawing the stars in its wake. It was no wandering light but a summons—the last covenant of hope for the future.

As daylight slipped from the leaves, the villagers took up weapons. They circled the invaders’ encampments with measured steps, waiting. On the horizon the comet crept into view, and when it burned bright for all to see, they struck. Blood spilled, skin tore, cries rose into the night—an eruption of violence meant to hold every gaze, to draw every ear, while elsewhere the true work began.

At the windswept coast, under the stars and the sign, boats were quietly pushed into the sea. On them rode the manifestations of the benevolent heavens and the dignitaries of the middleworld. Guided by the sea tortuga, the vessels crossed the waves. Eyes swelled, tears lifted the waters—for this was no triumph but lament. And so, in sorrow, they delivered themselves to their keepers: the Lords of Xibalba.

But the sky kept its secret. Two stars lingered there, winking like mischief, like boys who could not be told to sit still. They had fooled the Lords before, and would wait for the moment to do so again.

In this covenant, the Xibalbans, the spirits of death and disease became guardians for a time. But as the hiding place closed deep in the earth, the Xibalbans deceived the lords of the upperworld, trapping them. With spells and tricks the archive was cloaked beyond reach.

Ixchel, goddess of the island, was bound as intermediary between the human world and the underworld—an office against her true purpose, yet forced upon her by the covenant. She would choose the hands, the heart that turned the key, but not the timing. That belonged to the comet alone, returning in its intervals. All other attempts would be met with her wrath.

At first, the archive was sealed like a chamber beneath stone, its doors hidden by spells. Then, as if the earth itself drew a breath, it sank deeper, past roots and caverns, past rivers that ran unseen, past echoes where no sound returned. The island doubled over with pain, its body shuddering as if to resist, pushing itself farther from the mainland, then fell still.

Darkness closed around it, folding tighter with each layer until even memory could not follow.

And still the earth widened, the jungle spreading over ridges and cenotes, the sea pressing in on every side, until the place of keeping was no more than a fleck within creation’s vast body.

Until the comet’s return, once a century, the archive lies silent, deep, and waiting—sealed since the year 1531.

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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

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George shivered, tucking his fists under his arms to stay warm.

His clothes were still damp from falling into the cenote, and the underground cool of the cave made no effort to change that. He imagined leaving his shirt or pants on a rock and finding them years later still clammy, a permanent mildew stink baked in.

That was the smell here: stale, wet laundry. With an egg-fart edge that curled into his nose hairs every so often. Ugh.

Maybe it was frying his brain. Not like kids at school huffing paint in the art closet until they staggered into a corner, glassy-eyed—but close, and slower.

But no—that wasn’t what made his head swim. It was the past few days pressing in, stacking up until he could barely hold them all: sharks, turtles, a jaguar. An owl. Those freakish dolls. Choking, then nearly drowning. And that blackout, echoing place they’d just come from, whatever it was.

He blinked hard, breath catching on the eggy air, his mind stumbling over the list.

Was that everything?
No—there was more.

The stars, brighter than he’d ever seen.
The comet.
And the girl.

She stood a few paces behind him, one hand gripping her wrist. The glow wasn’t visible like earlier but now and then she winced, checking the back of her hand. When she paused to look around, the shape of her face told George this place wasn’t on any map she knew.

George searched as far as his eyes could see, but there didn’t seem to be any other way in. He clapped, the sharp sound cracking off the stone and repeating—like it should have back in that other place.

“That’s more like it,” he whispered, not entirely sure but glad it wasn’t another trick room.

The space was big enough that he could almost count a full second before the echo returned. Less than a football field, maybe, or just about as high. Hard to say. Still possible his father had come in from some other direction.

Speckles of light shimmered in the pools of water, churning at the edges. It was a river, of sorts—not how he’d pictured it from his father’s story, but it flowed somewhere.

Again the throaty moan echoed. The girl turned toward it first, then George.

The sound was like a breeze threading through rocks at the ocean. Maybe not las voces his father had heard. More like puckered lips over a pop bottle—a steady, hollow note.

In his head it blurred into that strange whistle from Games Without Frontiers, a tune he didn’t even like but that came back anyway, thin and haunting. For a second it almost felt like the cave itself was humming it back at him.

“Wind!” he whispered to her. “If there’s wind, there’s a way out.”

In a second George was on his feet, moving over crag of stones that made up the walkway, keeping his eyes on the water. The little sprites circled, flashing as the current bumped and carried them.

Were they animals or some kind of… island magic?

Squinting, he followed their glowing trail. Until now he hadn’t let himself believe it—that the island held something beyond explanation. But it did. It had to. Those things he saw weren’t just in his head.

George paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust, then nodded once, as if to settle it with himself. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t only strange. It was alive.

It was faint but there. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the chamber narrow, the walkway rising but couldn’t see further.

As he started forward, the girl’s hand closed on his shoulder. The touch jolted him. He hadn’t expected it. And maybe… no, definitely—because a girl touched him.

She looked him in the eye and, in a whisper, dipped her eyes and said, “Nib óolal.”

He didn’t understand the words but somehow knew their meaning. “De nada,” he said, matching her tone, holding her gaze for a minute longer. Then added, “Maybe I don’t know what it means, but I think I get it. We’re in this together… I hope.”

She watched him speaking, trying to decipher. Then touched her chest. “Nicte.”

George blinked, the sound of it settling in his head. He pressed a hand to his own chest. “George,” he said, then tried again, softening it. “Jorge.”

Her mouth shaped it once—“Jorge”—softly, as if testing the sound of it.

It felt oddly comforting, maybe the first real friend he’d met here and not like at school.

George had tried before to talk to girls at school, arranging “chance” meetings at the pencil sharpener. Every time, his words unraveled into nonsense, met with the same slow blink. Like the teacher in those Charlie Brown holiday specials, his voice came out as a flat wonk wonk, not usually a real language at all. But she—Nicte—had spoken to him.

But, they were both trapped down here, weren’t they? In that there was, if not safety, at least solidarity. Their own Breakfast Club for two. The geek and the island girl?

He thought of the black chamber, the two of them bound together somehow—his breath and hers. His Adams apple dipped and stuck there for a moment. For not the first time since being here this wasn’t something he could wrap a song lyric to explain. There was no passage in the journal he could remember that went along with this.

It was just… foreign. Otherworldly foreign.

Standing in front of him, she winced again. George looked down at her hands—one hand clasping the wrist of the other, the one with the shape on it. She saw him looking and held it up. It was still glowing, though not as brightly in this cave with more light. And it was pulsing. Each time it did, she nearly closed her eyes, as if shockwaves of pain rippled through her arm.

Gently, George held her palm and lifted the hand for a closer look. The back of it looked branded, fresh and raw, with a subtle curve. He stared at it for a moment. There was something about it that was familiar.

“Budzil ek’,” she said, looking skyward. George didn’t follow. So she raised a finger, tracing the shape of it across an imagined sky, then back to her hand.

George watched, thinking about the curve. “The comet?” he finally said, mimicking her gesture. Then, almost without thinking, he added a soft whooshhh as his finger arced through the air.

Nicte smiled at the sound and nodded, still unsure but satisfied he understood. Her face drew down, pained, as she clutched her wrist. A glow pushed through the wound—then flashed, nearly dropping her to her knees. George caught her shoulders, steadying her.

Again it flashed. He felt the shudder course through her body, saw her lips press tight. And this time he wasn’t sure—was the shape answering them somehow, aware they were talking about it? Or were the pulses simply coming faster?

George gently pulled on her other wrist and said, “Follow me.”

He continued, following the glow from the water. As they did the howling sound of wind grew closer. Up and over a rise of stones. When the glow wasn’t enough, they held close to the rocks, nearly crawling through the cave, the temperature warming as they moved further.

Ahead, they felt a draft of hot air that started to make George’s eyes water.

“…like stepping too close to an open furnace.” George heard his father’s voice.

George didn’t know how they’d ended up here, but it couldn’t be a mistake. At least, he didn’t think so. Every step felt drawn forward, like the cave itself was pulling them in—but maybe that was just in his head. He couldn’t see what waited, but he thought he knew. The weight of it pressed at his chest, the way nightmares do before you even open your eyes. For a flicker of a moment he was eight again, hiding under the covers, heart pounding as the shapes of animals stretched their claws toward him.

He turned to the girl—Nicte, he had to remind himself—stopping their forward movement. The howl of the wind was getting louder but, unlike his father’s story, there was no light ahead, only the faint glow of water reflecting in their eyes. George lifted a finger to his lips, then pointed into the dark. His hand shook more than he wanted it to. Nicte caught the tremor but only nodded, her jaw firm. Her eyes stayed steady, determined, even as the pulse in her hand flared again and bent her forward in pain.

As they moved, they had to feel the edges of stones, first just at their feet then he felt the walls ascend above him.

Wasn’t this where the creatures were in his father’s story? The terrible shapes and glowing torches?

George stood, feeling the sides of a doorway. He slid his feet a few inches inside the room, the heat rising and pushing against them in waves.

With a flash—

The room exploded in light, blinding them both.

When their eyes adjusted, in front of them was a circle: tall figures cloaked in long robes.

George gasped as a rush of hot air slapped his face.

In the circle of figures he saw the beginning of the nightmare. He didn’t want them to turn, to face him like they had in his dreams.

Torches burned along the walls with a strange, steady glow. At the center stood a stone plinth, its surface painted with swirling designs that rippled in the firelight. The figures neither moved nor spoke, but shifted—alive and real.

Just like his father had said. The torches, the circle, the terrible shapes. George’s stomach turned. He hated that it was true—hated that his father’s story had been more than a story. Because if his father was right, and it wasn’t a dream, then George was inside it now, with no way to wake up.

He stumbled back, arms flailing, colliding with Nicte. His heel skidded on a loose stone, sending it clattering across the chamber.

A shape turned: the jaguar. It screamed—arms flung wide, a raw, tearing sound that rattled through the cavern, more beast than human.

Without a beat George screamed back.

It burst out of him unplanned, high and breaking, the sound of a boy too small for the moment. Any other time he would have hated it. Here the chamber seized it, stretching it wide, sending it back at him enormous and strange—his own fear made bigger than he was.

Nicte stepped forward, pushing George aside. Without pause, she lifted her arm—a motion she knew well from facing down the Alux when their mischief pushed too far.

The glow from the burn on her hand caught, a dull ember at first, then brighter, pulsing. The light radiated outward, painting the chamber in red, alive and reaching across the distance.

For a breath, everything seemed to lean toward it. The circle of cloaked shapes, the heat of the chamber, even George—drawn closer, as though the whole room had narrowed to that single hand.

The shapes recoiled for a moment, wavering, their howls rising in a single pitch that shook the stone beneath them. Still they pressed forward, torches flaring, screams tearing through the chamber.

Nicte pressed farther into the circle, her hand lifted high, the mark blazing.

The chamber shuddered. A massive stone door slammed shut behind them, driving George forward into Nicte. Across the circle, another door ground closed, the echo sealing them inside.

The animal screams lingered a moment before the room fell silent, the air still in the enclosed space.

Nicte looked high into the ceiling where the shapes had disappeared.

George stepped toward the plinth, holding his breath, his eyes on the shape he could only imagine.

For a moment the outer surface of stone in the center of the room shimmered, painted swirls around the central glyphs highlighted: A turtle shell, a star burned across the palm of an outstretched hand.

His chest caught—he knew these shapes. At last, he thought, just as his father had said. His eyes began to fill with water as he moved closer.

George reached out, fingers stretching to touch the stone he’d dreamt about so many times. As his fingers land, the designs scattered into ribbons of light. Brilliantly they writhe down the sides of the stone face, crossing the floor in slim threads before moving up the walls.

The plinth went dull, blank. Around them the torches flickered as if choking for air.

George yanked his hand back from the now empty stone. “No—wait. I saw it. It was there.”

The strands of light, once on the plinth, now crept across the carved walls. Nicte and George watched as the lights curved, then hid, into the thousands of carved glyphs that lined the walls.

Without thinking, George lunged toward one. “It’s this one—I can fix it—” He pressed the carving.

The chamber groaned. A hot wind surged from nowhere, knocking him back. Above, the funnel of stone roared like a beast inhaling. The walls shivered—the carvings rippled like water, swelling from the surface in some places, sinking away in others, as if the stone itself were breathing until it finally settled.

The torches sputtered. With a grinding sound, the plinth sank lower into the floor by a fraction.

Nicte muffled a cry as the wound on her hand pulsed, the glow quickening, faster and faster.

George froze, his stomach dropping. He looked between the plinth and Nicte. Then at the walls, they were now unrecognizable from what they had been. He had no idea where the light that had just disappeared up the walls had gone.

His choice wasn’t just wrong—it had cost them something.

It reminded him, stupidly, of Dragon’s Lair at the arcade back home. The line of kids behind him, the glowing screen promising adventure, trying to rescue Princess Daphne—and then dead in ten seconds, fifty cents gone. Game over. He’d sworn it cheated you, swallowing coins faster than anything else. But still you wanted another turn, just to see it light up.

That was what this felt like. A room ready to eat every wrong move until nothing was left.

Nicte groaned at her hand, the glow continuing to pulse.

George circled the chamber, careful not to touch the stone in the center. Shapes stretched across the walls, too many of them—some mirrored, some upside down, some fractured into useless shards. A thousand dead ends.

He yanked a torch from the wall, angling it. Shadows swelled and collapsed, twisting the carvings into new forms. Each time he thought he saw something, it slipped away again. He clenched his jaw, frustration rising.

It couldn’t be random. There had to be some reason, some pattern. Unless there wasn’t. Unless the whole thing was just here to break them.

A thought flickered—maybe it was meant to be solved. Not just shapes, but a puzzle. The idea stirred something half-buried.

Not X marks the spot. Riddles, rumors, memory songs. His father’s voice slipped in, but none of it told him what to do now.

He shook his head, lowering the torch. “I don’t know…”

“Ahh—” Nicte’s voice cut through, sharp and low. She lifted a hand, stopping him. Then she pointed, urgent. Her finger tapped her palm, then back to the wall.

George blinked, slowly moving the torch back to where it had been a moment before.

She nodded, eyes fixed. No words he understood, just the intent clear enough: there. Like that.

The carving shifted in the torchlight, its shadow thrown wide.

George eased the flame across the wall, slower now, holding his breath. The scattered fragments bent and stretched in the glow until, at last, they overlapped. First a curve, then another, building into the arc of a comet. Below it, faint, the suggestion of a woman’s palm.

He blinked hard, afraid it might vanish if he looked too long.

For a moment the chamber seemed to hold itself still.

Then a breeze stirred—a cool wind wound past them, slipping over their skin, rushing upward into the dark funnel above. The sound of it whispered against the stone like a sigh of release.

The plinth answered next. With a grinding groan, it lifted from the floor. George and Nicte turned together, eyes caught by its motion.

Light bloomed across its surface—the arc of the comet, bright now, burning into place.

The walls followed, trembling, undulating as if alive, their carvings shuffling into new arrangements, each one sliding against the next in a slow, shuddering wave. The whole chamber seemed to breathe, exhaling stone and shadow.

George turned to Nicte. She was already smiling, fire dancing in her eyes as she snatched another torch from the wall.

With a laugh they moved opposite one another, shadows swelling and collapsing as the light played across the carvings. The walls bloomed with ridges of shapes, towering and falling like shadow highrises.

George swept his torch high, searching. On the other side of the chamber, a turtle shell curved into view before Nicte. She shifted cautiously, drawing the shape out of hiding.

George spun, casting light the other way. There—the other half of the shell.

He lifted his arm higher, filling in the missing piece.

The chamber shuddered.

Both of them froze, eyes snapping toward the stone plinth in the center. It quivered, silent, as if deciding.

Then the rumble deepened. Dust sifted down. A chip of stone broke from the plinth’s edge and tumbled away. Another followed.

The growl became a roar. Shadows shook themselves free of the walls. All around the carved glyphs collapsed into rubble that clattered across the floor.

SNAP—

A jagged crack split the plinth straight down the middle. Inward it crumbled, folding in on itself, dropping into blackness at the center of the chamber.

Nicte staggered first, pushing back toward the wall, her shoulder pressed hard against the carvings. But the vibration tore the stone loose—the glyphs shedding themselves like sand, crumbling beneath her touch.

George dropped flat, choking on the storm of dust. The widening hole pulled at him, a rushing undertow of air and debris. Grit stung his eyes, scraped across his arms and face as he clawed for purchase.

Through the haze he saw Nicte, teetering at the edge, the glow from her hand flashing wild across her face. Panic ripped through him—she could vanish in an instant, lost to the dark, and he couldn’t let that happen.

The stench returned, harsh and impenetrable, as if the chamber itself had exhaled rot—the sulfur reek curling into his lungs, burning his throat.

He lunged toward her. Nicte reached back, her fingers catching his wrist just as the floor split apart. For a heartbeat they clung to each other, the only solid thing in the collapsing world.

Her eyes flicked downward, wide with recognition. Her lips moved, her voice cutting through the din with a single word he almost didn’t catch.

“Xibalba.”

She screamed as the floor gave way, and together they tumbled into the dark below.

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Music

• Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel

We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

Subscribe now

The water on Roberto’s handkerchief seemed to slip away, evaporating before it ever reached the heat of his brow. He dipped it into the ocean a second time, watching his hands shake—the trembling had begun as the island drew near, spreading into his chest, his breath, his sight.

Cautiously, he stepped higher on the shore, over rounded stones and broken coral pushed in by the tide. He watched them tumble over and over, wearing themselves down. Soon they would be indistinguishable from what they once were. Like he was becoming. Maybe already was.

A thought flashed: he could still get back in the boat, push away, and never return. He could feel the bow dip under his weight, the boat slipping quietly off.

Kathryn’s steps were not tentative like his. She paced back and forth, stretching to see over the foliage, searching for a path. She would go on with or without him.

As his eyes drifted to the water’s surface, to the fragments of repeating sky, he knew leaving would be safer—but it would be a mistake. He saw it for what it was: fear. Fear of the unfinished puzzle that lay heavy in his gut, night after night.

And this was his island, wasn’t it? He knew it best.

Overhead, branches rustled though no wind touched his face. Somewhere deeper in the foliage came a hollow knock, like wood against wood—brief, uncertain, then gone. A thought came with them, quiet as breath: find the boy, glimpse the archive one last time.

Roberto dabbed his face again with the handkerchief before knotting it around his neck. As he did, he leveled his brow and squared his shoulders.

Yes. He could put on the mask he had worn so easily in youth, though now it felt brittle. Still, it was a resolve he trusted—if only for a while.

“Ko’ox… adelante,” he huffed, drawing in a lungful of air.

Let’s go.

For all the quiet bravado in Arturo’s journal, Kathryn had never once considered the act of trekking through the Yucatán jungle herself. Yet here she was, pushing through the brush as he once might have, her steps far less certain of the destination than his. But she wasn’t chasing the same story. She was after George.

He had vanished without a word. Kathryn had expected to find him crouched nearby, sketching, headphones clamped to his ears. But he wasn’t. No one along the paseo had seen a boy leaving in a stolen boat.

Tired of his dithering at the restaurant, she shoved Roberto into his own boat. As they motored across the water, Kathryn watched his hands grip the tiller, trying to hold them still. She needed him for what he knew of this place, but she wasn’t about to let him drag her pace. So she stayed ahead, forcing him to stumble through the jungle in her wake.

Neither of them knew where George had gone—coast or inland. Or what he might be eating, where he might have slept. Even the landing spot had been chosen with a half-hearted gesture. Too many questions, not enough facts—and guesses were a luxury she had no patience for.

Now, hacking through the vines, her boots slipping on roots, her feet searching for the faintest sign, Kathryn felt the weight of it: chasing a boy through a jungle that swallowed its own paths, hunting for a leaf in a wilderness of green.

Inward they went.

Kathryn led for a time, but when her direction faltered for a moment Roberto brusquely overtook her, pointing them toward the mountain.

He hadn’t imagined how the land would change—overgrown and untended, with few ways to cross the island. He had put them ashore on the western side for its ease. He had also hoped they might glimpse whatever vessel had brought the boy ashore.

But now he wondered if that had been folly. The eastern side, though rocky without much cover for small boats, would have been nearer the temple—Ixchel’s temple, he reminded himself. There it was again: the reflexive loop of reverence that had started the moment he’d sighted the island. A reminder? A warning? Both, perhaps. The island does not forget, and it knows why you came.

He swiped at the sweat running down his face. The island wasn’t hotter than the mainland—this was his doing. The sickness began in his gut, urging him to turn back. When his bulk refused, his skin broke open with sweat—a silent escape from the man who had loosed the curse.

“It’s for the boy,” he pleaded quietly, trying to convince his body to listen.

The boy was blind to what kind of hell might come. After all, if a man born here—raised on the gods’ stories, raised hating the barbudo—couldn’t hold it back, what chance did an outsider have?

The branches creaked in agreement. Only he could help the kid keep the doors closed—no, open them fully.

He cut the thought short and clenched his jaw. Not now.

For now, it was only the boy. They had to reach him.

Roberto scanned ahead: toward the temple, or veer nearer to the village?

The temple drew at him, insistent, as if the jungle itself leaned that way—to the east road. West was only death, the other was the road of rebirth.

He glanced over his shoulder. Kathryn was there, closing the gap—but behind her, the brush swayed a moment longer than the wind allowed, as if a figure had just slipped from view.

Roberto felt the prickle at his neck and pushed it away. He waited for whatever might emerge but nothing did.

Standing there, a thought flickered as a single word—reparación.

Could that be the way?

The years, never far enough, surged back: the imagined echoes of children drowning, swept to sea; Esteban weeping over Marisol’s body; the sidelong glances of islanders who had escaped, who knew, yet never spoke of what he had done.

Could that be the way? Would the horrific eyes behind the stones see his arrival as contrition, atonement?

Beneath all of it, though, he still felt owed. Not the contents of the archive—those belonged to his people—but owed the discovery itself. For following the old stories, for believing them, for turning over stones and reading the glyphs. He wanted—

A bird startled in the brush, its call sharp and strange, like a voice finishing his thought: acclaim.

Yes, that’s what he wanted.

He lifted his gaze skyward, savoring for a moment the imagined praise.

From deep in the foliage, a pair of eyes held him in silence.

Yes. The boy was the means.

Kathryn stopped behind Roberto.

Ahead, the vines thinned into a field of corn that stretched in all directions. Subtle as a fork in a stream, she saw the faint trail he had led them to. It seemed to split, each path circling the mountain toward the coast on either side.

Roberto raised his arm toward the slope, farther eastward. “The temple. It’s where he would have gone.”

Kathryn didn’t respond. Something held her back, even as Roberto stepped forward, following his own gesture.

She craned her neck, trying to see past the corn toward the mountain ahead. From her pocket she pulled George’s map. She didn’t have the journal, and this was as close as she would get to a AAA guide. She turned it this way and that, searching for a match. Though it wasn’t to scale—erased and redrawn until the paper had thinned—she knew George had worked through the details, shaping what he could from the journal.

The shape of the island—indecipherable from any vantage point, except maybe space.

The mountain—an oversized cone. It stood in front of her, though not as sharply pointed as George had drawn.

She sighed, her head dropping, eyes fixed on the dirt at her feet. For a full minute she stayed there, staring at the ground as Roberto moved on. Then the stalks around her pulled into focus—maize, she reminded herself. Yes, it was a maze. Go this way or that. What she wanted was a bird’s-eye view. She wanted to find shoe scuffs in the dirt. Something.

They could follow the shift in the corn toward Roberto’s temple. It seemed reasonable enough but not proof enough. It felt wrong. She looked at the map again: the island’s odd shape, the mountain. Then, the mark George had made for a cave entrance. It was further west, nowhere near where Roberto was leading them.

There were no other markings on the map. That’s when the pieces clicked, another tumbler in the lock shifting into place. George only knew what was in the journal. That’s what he put on the map. He didn’t know about the temple. Following Roberto meant chasing hope. And hope was never a plan.

Then, her breath caught. Something off to the side, out of place, away from the direction Roberto was headed. A nub of yellow between the stalks. And pink. Colors that had no business here. The needle in the jungle she’d been looking for.

She stepped over and crouched, keeping her eyes on the detail until the shape resolved: a well-worn No. 2 pencil. The pink eraser was ground down, blackened at the edges, the yellow shaft chewed, the metal band at its end mauled—by a kid.

She laughed quietly, hearing George’s voice: “The best pencil for sketching. The one you always had with you.”

Then, under her breath: “Until it slipped from your pack into the jungle of a strange island.”

She lifted the pencil high, pointing in the opposite direction Roberto had chosen.

“This way!” She shouted and then plunged into the stalks of corn.

The brush beside Roberto snapped sharp. A cold weight slid across his shoulders, heavy as a hand. Someone—or something—was there.

He leaned, putting a hand between the corn, feeling—

Then Kathryn’s voice split the air: “This way!”

Roberto spun, pointing the other direction. “Templo—!”

But she was already gone.

A curse hissed through his teeth as he forced himself after her, stalks tearing at his arms and legs. Every cut burned, as if the island itself were stripping him raw.

He stumbled into a clearing—and stopped.

His village.

A place he had sworn never to see again.

Vines smothered the first shack he saw—the old corner store where children once lingered at the doorway, now its roof caved, its door hanging loose.

The whisper came again, needling at him: we went the wrong way.

Kathryn moved faster through the clearing.

“GEORGE!” she shouted. Birds scattered.

She followed the winding path past a dilapidated shack. Outside, something caught her eye: a corn cob, each kernel stripped clean. She froze, staring.

Then—strips of husk. The outer green, thick and coarse. A few steps on, the softer inner sheaths. And then the silk—the light, airy strands. She trailed them, scattered as if someone had been walking and unwrapping, shucking the corn as they went.

It was like a trail of breadcrumbs. A stray cob pointing forward—but even this wasn’t proof, only suggestion. Proof enough to follow, but not to rest on.

Then the trail ended.

Kathryn traced the stones underfoot, searching for more, but the jungle gave nothing back. When she lifted her eyes, ahead stood a tree ringed with weathered totems. The sight made her heart seize, a pang of grief rising sharp and unbidden, though she couldn’t have said why. Unease crawled through her chest—the figures seemed to watch, their faces worn but not erased. A rough-hewn sign leaned against the trunk, marked only with a date—cryptic, offering no direction.

Roberto would know this place. His village?

She would need a higher vantage.

Her eyes lifted to a small rise above what might once have been a town. She climbed, scrambling over rocks and snarled roots, her eyes fixed on the ground to keep from stumbling. At the top she looked out—then stopped.

Before her, the ground collapsed into a gaping mouth—as if the earth had swallowed itself—its edges left sheer and raw. At the bottom she could see footprints, fresh in the wet soil and moss, circling on themselves in wider and wider arcs.

She followed them with her eyes—and then saw it.

George’s pack, snagged on a thick root, dangling out over the void.

Eyes of the dolls, dead and black, watched Roberto as he circled away from the tree. He recognized the handwriting on the sign—his brother’s hand.

When others hadn’t looked back, Esteban carried on in silence. How could he move on? Roberto’s stomach twisted. He knew the truth: it had been his trespass that brought the ruin, that sent the storm roaring and left Esteban with nothing but loss. His wife and child were buried in this ground, their deaths the scar that never healed.

The gods had tested them both. Roberto had failed, and Esteban’s heart—his family—had been broken in the reckoning.

His brother wore that grief like armor, his silence heavier than any curse. The dolls were like witnesses, watching with unblinking eyes. And to see his hand carved into the wreck of a sign was to feel the accusation laid bare: you did this.

Then, a shift came in the air. One doll twisted, eyes catching a shard of light—like it too bore his brother’s silence, watching, unblinking.

Roberto’s lips moved without thought, words breaking apart in a whisper. Not the catechism of the barbudo, but a cry to the older gods—a plea tangled with guilt, a scrap of atonement even as other thoughts pressed closer.

“Perdónenme… k’áat chi’in wóol… In táankabal k’aasil u yáak’ ten.”
Forgive me… I beg you… I am haunted by my youth…

Roberto stumbled away and up the hill, his mouth and skin gone dry.

Kathryn called out, “He was here!”—pointing at the cenote.

When he reached her, his eyes followed, landing on the pack. The boy had been here. But why had he been drawn this way?

Beyond, he saw what she did not. The earth had collapsed sheer, yes—but on the far side, half-hidden in shadow, a break in the wall led downward. Not a fissure of chance, but a cut of stone, deliberate, spiraling. A road. A way into the bottom of the island.

Then the stench hit him—thick, sulfurous, rot rising from deep below. He gagged, pressing the handkerchief to his mouth.

This wasn’t the temple side. Unless it didn’t matter. Unless every path—west, east, village, mountain—bent toward the same end, feeding back into the dark.

Roads the stories had warned of. The ones that led to Xibalba. Where no welcome fire waited.

He tore his gaze away, but the thought clung like a hook.

Yes. They needed to find the boy. And perhaps, in the finding, something like atonement.

The trade of a good fisherman: one purpose hiding the other.

And if the gods chose to see it that way, there could still be glory in it—for him.

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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

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A veil of darkness fell over them. Absolute and without shape.

Sputtering and thrashing, the boy vomited onto the wet ground. As he did, Nicte’s chest constricted with each heave. She couldn’t see him, only hear the echo—coughs, wet and thick, sparking back again and again, ricocheting off walls she couldn’t see.

She pulled at him, doubled him up, angling his hips in the air like a baby sleeping, his face—or so she hoped—down to let the water drain.

All she could think of was holding a doll upside down, hair dangling, trying to position it as if it were diving into water. But he was heavier than she was, and the searing pain in her hand wouldn’t let her grip hold for long.

Her feet and his body scuffed the ground, rolling against dirt and rocks, grinding. Those sounds, so minute anywhere else, were loud. She breathed hard, pulling—more sounds colliding, scattering. Again and again.

The boy said something she didn’t understand. The vibrations of his throaty rasps bounced around them, off everything. His breath wheezed in her chest. The tightness eased every so often, allowing her to pull in nearly a full chest of air, too.

“I can’t see,” George said, the words breaking with a liquid cough. His chest was heavy, constricted between breaths.

He had no reason to believe his eyes had simply stopped working. But they had. Whatever outlines he’d seen a few minutes ago—the watery, smeared shapes on the edge of the cenote—were gone. Power out. Black. Kaput. There wasn’t even enough light to see his hands as he pulled the water from his face like a squeegee.

Maybe this is what death looks like? Nothing. Just the blackness of your life wiped away. And wet.

Except for the ground beneath him, he didn’t know which way was up. But gravity still worked. And he could feel.

That was a sense, wasn’t it?

What about… He groaned, a long, mournful sigh. The moment it left his mouth it twisted, echoed, ricocheted back and collided with the other sounds swirling around him.

Yes, sound was there, too. But it was strange. Unsettling.

Someone had been tugging at him. He reached out and felt a leg—an ankle with no shoe on the foot.

He sniffed. A wet, mossy smell.

The taste of sour corn was still in his mouth. He could do without that. But it was something.

George took inventory: Sound. Taste. Touch. Smell.

Just no sight…

Then, in the dark he spotted something—a firefly-like glow, shifting, moving, turning. It didn’t stay still long enough for him to see it fully until it flew toward his face.

Nicte reached for the shape she knew was there. Even in the constant echoes she could sense the turn and shift of his body beside her. Her hands found his shoulders.

Good. He turned over on his own. Now, crawl.

Carefully, she slid one arm beneath his and pulled. The boy, though she had seen him earlier, was only a shape she pieced together in her mind. His hands reached up her arms and touched her shoulders.

It was a strange kind of intimacy—her hands on a stranger, him touching back—without being able to see one another.

She tried to pull him to his feet but he faltered. The boy clutched her hand, and the burn sent a ripple of pain through her arm.

It flared with her heartbeat. In the complete darkness it was the only light, however faint.

He held her hand close to his face. She could feel his warm breath on her fingers as he stared at it a long time—the arc of the comet etched there, glowing red.

She leaned down, if only to lessen the pain. There was barely enough light to glimpse the shape of his face, the smallest ember left in a fire.

His eyes lifted to hers, now only inches apart, sharing the light. Both of them looking at each other, then to the shapeless space around, searching for any detail, any other light.

He said something she couldn’t understand. But she didn’t need to; they shared the same question: Where are we?

Her eyes answered, wide: I don’t know.

She helped him stand. Water dripped from his clothes in steady beats, each sound thrown across the room and back.

He coughed. Her chest heaved in sync, tied to his.

The reverberation seemed endless, like waves colliding until they finally broke, the room answering in kind—echoes repeating for minutes before fading.

George stood, his head crouched low as if he expected the ceiling to meet the crown of his skull. In truth, he didn’t know—couldn’t tell the shape of the room they were in.

Were the walls ten feet away or a hundred?

The sounds reflected back at them, random and useless, offering no way to measure distance.

What we need is…

He closed his eyes. Concentrating, he flipped open his Rolodex of memories. The cards felt jumbled, like his thoughts. He rifled through them, searching for something that might not exist anymore…

A science experiment.
Fifth grade.
Sound.
Echoes.
Yes. That one.

He and his father in the parking lot at the university. Standing by a wall. Smacking a shoe on the ground. Close up—no delay. Too fast to hear. Farther back—yes, there. A pause before they heard the sound again. Stopwatch ticking, counting the space between sound and return.

George thought maybe—just maybe—it could work here. A short sound. Clean. Strong.

They’d hear distances.

Everything else wouldn’t matter.

Like being a bat. Murciélago. Making your own sonar.

He grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her close, using the glow of her hand to see one another. George put one finger to his lips—shhhhh.

He hoped she understood.

She blinked and gave a slight nod.

Standing beside her waiting for both of them to be still. When the sound of their movement had died down George readied himself, spread his arms apart.

He gave a slight clap. The clap came back instantly, low, almost garbled from all directions like they were standing in sphere.

He tried again, this time a bit louder. Again, it came back immediately. It was a bit louder but only from beside them and not from in front.

What kind of room is this?

Maybe there was something about louder

He’d never considered that he wouldn’t be able to see both hands, wondering if he might miss. With a slight shrug he knew it wouldn’t matter much and clapped them together with a giant WHAP!

The sharp sound tore from his hands and sped into the room.

But nothing returned.

George and the girl stood, a veil of nothing in every direction, waiting.

Until—

Like a loudspeaker aimed at their ears, the sound rushed at them. Then again from another direction. Each time the sound was a replica of the original—some softer, some louder, some delayed from farther away. The sounds doubled, tripled, until a cacophony battered them from every side.

George pressed his hands to his ears against the din. The echoes pummeled him, folding over themselves until it felt like the whole room was shaking. His skull rattled. His chest hollowed. Every breath stolen by the noise. He crouched, braced, certain the sound itself would split him in two.

Beside him, the girl mirrored his posture, head bent, arms clamped tight. His chest suddenly felt tight as he sipped for air.

And then—another sound, threading through the chaos, rising higher, rawer, undeniable.

She was screaming.

The rush of sounds from the hand clap had reached a pitch that overwhelmed Nicte.

Nature didn’t do this.

Nature was predictable. It gave back what was put into it. Kindness or…

The rising noise made her body recoil, and the searing pain in her hand bloomed as something else surged inside her—the only other thing she had ever seen nature give: fury.

But this wasn’t nature. It was something else spitting the sounds back, twisting them, hurling them at her with intent.

The feeling built in her toes, weakening her knees. Each echo dragged the hope of escape farther away, draining her.

And that made her angry. She wanted to push back. To strike. To claw.

The vibration of anger that had started low rippled upward. She sucked in a breath, feeling the boy double over beside her.

When it peaked, she couldn’t hold it back. The force tore through her, unstoppable.

Nicte let out a full-throated scream, fierce and feral.

George flinched at the sound. His arms flew up to his head, guarding his… he didn’t know what—guarding everything. He felt the wind being pulled out of his body as she screamed, as if he were giving her breath, or she was taking his.

It was suffocating, forcing him into quick, shallow gulps, never a full breath. Like the wind had been knocked out of his chest. He crumbled to the ground, toppled by it, head throbbing, robbed of air.

Trying not to pass out, he lay there listening. Her scream echoed back through the space, reported like all the other sounds—but not all of it. Just parts. Changed. Different.

Some echoes were higher, some lower. They rang through the chamber together.

Mud and moss squishing beneath him, George started to think of harmonies.

Still gasping, his mind flicked to a blue sky and a wind that didn’t exist here. And to the shape of the world.

And a voice. No… voices.

He wondered why that would come to mind now. Why here?

Something inside him said: Because.

Nicte felt a hand on her leg. She flinched, then knelt to find the boy reaching for her burned hand again.

Gently, he pulled it to his face, the faint glow revealing him panting, unable to catch his breath.

But his eyes were fixed on hers. Steady.

He held his hand out flat, palm down, and pushed it away from his mouth. With great effort he whispered, “Sing.”

She blinked, trying to understand. Shaking her head, the words didn’t make sense.

He looked away for a moment, thinking, then pulled her hand close to his mouth. Between breaths he whispered a long, broken note: Aaaaaaaah.

Then stopped and pointed at her. “Tú cantas.”

In the dim light their eyes locked.

Nicte nodded as the idea took hold: a sound. A steady stream. A single note.

She pulled him to his feet. He gripped her elbow, a hand on her shoulder to steady himself.

In the dark she turned them, not knowing which way to try. There was nothing to see—every square step of the space was black.

Is this the right direction?

He seemed to understand her hesitation, giving her shoulder a slight squeeze that said, Go ahead.

She took a tentative breath, hearing him wheeze—the air pulled from him as she did.

She opened her mouth and the smallest sound came out. A squeak. The room barely returned it.

She stopped. The boy patted her back, reassuring.

She tried again. This time the sound stretched into a long vowel, slowly growing louder, stronger, even as the boy gasped for air.

The room began to react. Nicte straightened, listening. The boy was still struggling, pulling air quietly through his nose.

Her voice fractured. To the right it came back exactly as she had made it. To the left it rose higher. Behind them it returned flat, lifeless.

Grabbing her, the boy pushed her left. A direction chosen.

As he did, Nicte heard him whisper, “Otra vez.”

They moved tentatively as the echoes finally died out, careful not to scuff their feet on the ground.

She took a small breath and sang the note again.

It wasn’t the same sound, but close.

Again, the note returned—this time the higher echo was further ahead. The others rang false.

Again they stepped.

Each time Nicte’s voice grew louder, more assured.

Next to her, the boy gasped for air as they worked as one—one lung, one voice, one movement.

It was all George could do to keep his panting quiet. Each breath she took seemed to deplete him. Listening closely he readied himself just before she inhaled to sing again–only enough air in their lungs for one of them at a time.

Her voice was better anyway. Listening to it calmed him. But they had to step quickly, choosing the path and moving in its direction before the sound was gone.

At times it felt like they were turning in circles. Soon she got the hang of it and began pulling him along.

In the darkness he kept hold of her arm. Her skin was warm—far warmer than he was in his wet clothes. But the cold and damp of the space started to drift farther away as they wound through it. His mind raced, trying to imagine the shape of the room, picturing the walls they must be avoiding, but it seemed to change, mutating as they moved.

At one point he put out a hand where he thought a wall might be, only to find nothing.

More than the shape of the space, he found himself wondering what she really looked like. She was a bit taller than him, older, and he could feel the fine hairs along her arm.

Moments earlier, in the faint glow of her hand, he had caught a glimpse of her face—its outline softer than it had seemed from the boat. Her eyes were steady, expressive even in the dark. He pictured them closing for a breath before she sang again, just long enough to steady herself. Everything beyond the light, every gesture in the shadows, had to be imagined.

They seemed to be moving through the space at a good pace until at last they finally reached a wall. Together they pressed their hands to it. It was taller than Goerge could reach, smooth and had no edges that could be found.

She pulled them back another few steps and tried again.

Mostly silence.

The note slipped out thin, barely there. George held his breath, waiting for the room to answer. Nothing. Just the faintest flicker, gone before he could be sure he’d heard it.

He waited anyway. Hoping. Still nothing.

It felt like the place was holding back on purpose. Waiting for more.

But she had no more to give. He could hear it in the way her chest rattled, the scrape of her breathing. And when she drew air, it seemed to empty him. When he tried, it left her gasping.

They only had enough air for…

George had an idea. Cautiously, he put his hand on her belly. In return he pulled her hand to his.

Nicte flinched when the boy’s hand touched her stomach. But when he pulled her hand onto his wet shirt, she realized there was something she hadn’t considered.

He pressed against her stomach gently, as if to say, inhale.

When she drew in as much air as she dared, feeling his chest sink, she stopped. Then he pressed again, telling her to exhale.

She felt his stomach rise as hers descended. Slowly they fell into a rhythm. Inhale. Exhale.

Then a voice rose during his exhale—his voice, a calm, clear sound.

As he ran out of air, he pressed again. Her lungs were full, and she tried to match his tone.

Overlapping, again and again, they made their own continuous note, rising and falling only slightly with each breath.

Nicte began to understand: it wasn’t her alone the chamber was asking for. It wanted both of them—one voice feeding the other.

The sound reverberated around the space, doubling, tripling into layered harmonies.

All around them, their notes returned transformed, harmonies neither of them could have made alone.

It was the chamber itself, the shifting shape of the room, that bent and reflected the sound until it rang back as one clear tone, the voices merged into one.

And all around them, the light of the space began to change.

He thought he was seeing things as the gauze over his eyes began to fade. He blinked, his eyes watering as the light grew brighter.

George had stopped making any noise, but the room kept replicating it, rising to a fever pitch, harmonies mingling and ringing louder. His mind flashed to the massive spacecraft at the end of Close Encounters—the rapid pitches of tones. And how it finished the five-note phrase with a sustained sound.

Then, slowly, the echoes faded into silence. All that remained was a trickle of water, softly falling down an unseen wall.

The girl dropped to her knees, her hair spilling into her face. She heaved, lungs filling with air. George winced, bracing for the feeling in his chest—the air being pulled away.

It never came.

He drew in a full breath, his chest expanding like it was the first he had ever taken. For a long moment he stood with his eyes closed, drinking in the air in huge gulps. It tasted old, heavy with minerals. Wonderful.

When he opened his eyes, he saw they were standing on a stone precipice. Around them, pools of water glowed—the only light. But that glow, like the air itself, felt magical.

As his sight adjusted, he realized: they were in a massive cave.

All at once the story came back. George heard his father’s voice: “…we could see water… and a glowing river, flowing beneath the walkway. The edges of it shimmered with tiny flashes of light beneath the surface.”

From somewhere beyond the pools came a hollow, throaty moan.

It carried through the chamber, deep and resonant, like the earth remembering its own voice.

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Music

• Because - The Beatles

Serial Novel: ISLA

Missed something? Sketchbook | Stories | Dispatches

*tap-tap* – is this thing on?

Hi everyone. It’s been a while since the last Dispatch. I’ve been busy with a few other projects, both at home and here. The main one is ISLA.

If you haven’t kept up—no blame here; I know life is… choose your adjective.

I’m nearly finished publishing ISLA on Substack. It’s been a wild ride creating a novel in serial form.

That format wasn’t intentional, but I’ve come to love the cadence of making sure there’s a fresh, well-edited chapter every week. Maybe some of you understand the notion that deadlines are both invigorating and infuriating—a sort of cold bath of reality as time ticks down to the post going out.

If you haven’t jumped in, there’s still plenty of time to get lost in the world George, my main character, is discovering before it goes behind a paywall. Afterward, it’ll go through another edit or two before a print/ebook release.

Anyway, there’s time.

After a short break, I plan to get back to short fiction. I’ve got a few stories in the hopper already, as well as a project or two in the works with friends here on Substack.

There’s No Such Thing as “Fascism lite”

It’s not a lifestyle choice, like swapping the ranch for vinaigrette on your Cobb salad. It’s not a sampler plate you can nibble from and then push aside when it feels too heavy. Fascism is all or nothing.

And when you order it, the whole table gets served. Your friends, your family, the people you claim to care about—they didn’t ask for this dish. But they’ll still be stuck with the check for your poor choices.

This is never more clear than at the polls. You don’t get to pick and choose the policies you like and dismiss the rest. You don’t get to turn a blind eye to cruelty because you’re fond of the tax cuts or the tough talk. A vote for a leader is a vote for the whole menu—and history will tally it that way.

But make no mistake: fascism doesn’t stop once you’ve taken a taste. Autocracy doesn’t pause halfway through. Once you accept it, you’ve aligned yourself with its full force. The moment you cross that line, you’ve pulled up a chair next to the Nazis. History won’t mark you as “fascism-lite.” It will only mark which side you chose.

And you know how we know this? The Nuremberg trials.

Some tried to claim they hadn’t really signed on—or that they’d only been forced to take a bite. But history wasn’t swayed. Once the machinery was in motion, no one walked away clean. There was no “lite” version—only complicity.

That’s the lesson. Fascism doesn’t come in half-measures. History won’t care what you meant—it will only remember what you chose.

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Music in my head

She lit a fire - Lord Huron
Sinnerman - Nina Simone
Till the End - The Wood Brothers
I’m Gonna Win - Rob Cantor

We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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(An excerpt from "Shadows and Echoes" a collection of interpreted Mayan legends)

The Mosquito Spy

A booming sound rang through the underworld kingdom of Xibalba.

Thunderous, it rattled the sky and shook the walls below. The echoes ran everywhere—along the arguing roads and over the rivers that stank of wounds. The petty, vindictive lords grew angry. Their sleep was disturbed; their pride pierced.

Above, in the middleworld of humans, twin boys named Hunahpu and Xbalanque played their ballgame. The rubber struck stone and sprang back with such force that it shook the court with a percussive thud. The sound carried on day and night, daring the underworld to listen.

So the lords below — jealous, cruel, and deceitful — devised a plan. As with their father before them, the boys would be summoned, deceived, and killed.

The great owls rose as messengers. Feathers full of air and eyes always watchful, they swept over the low places and up toward the world of light to deliver the summons.

Receiving the invitation, the Twins recognized the trap at once. It was the same summons their father, Hun Hunahpu, and their uncle, Vucub Hunahpu, had once accepted.

The memory of that descent stung the Twins like a scar. 

Their relatives had walked into the hall of Xibalba unprepared, their eyes fooled by carved wood set up like kings. They bowed to lifeless effigies, thinking them lords. They sat upon a bench disguised with ash, only to leap up blistered, their honor mocked. Trick after trick stripped them bare until the laughter in Xibalba drowned their protests. At last came their death. Hun Hunahpu’s head was severed and hung in a tree, where it bore strange fruit.

The Twins carried all this knowledge with them. They had grown up in the shadow of that humiliation, their father’s fate whispered like a warning. Now the same game was being played again, the same crooked summons. But they would not bow to wood, nor burn on the lords’ fire. They would not be caught the same way.

So in the village they sought a companion — not a warrior, not a god, but something smaller: winged, quick, and piercing of mouth. They made their choice and said no more.

The Twins set out on the long road of descent. The air cooled and grew sour. Along the banks, scorpions clicked over black stones; the River of Blood carried a copper reek; the River of Pus bubbled and filmed over the banks at their feet. They crossed them all and came at last to the maze of roads — red, white, yellow, and black — each road with a voice, each urging them astray.

At the crossing they stopped. Hunahpu bent; Xbalanque leaned close. No words were heard, only a look passed between them, and they went on.

They entered the hall of Xibalba.

Rows of figures sat in silence. The tableau felt rehearsed—some shapes carved from wood, some alive and waiting. The lords hid their smiles as they watched. The boys would bow, they thought; then the boys would burn, as their father and uncle had burned.

But Hunahpu and Xbalanque did not hesitate. They did not bow. They stepped forward. 

One by one they spoke the names of the lords. The effigies remained blank and steadfast. The true lords startled, hands flew up, breath caught at the sound of their own names thrown back at them.

When they had finished and the lords continued to stammer, the Twins only glanced at one another, for they knew the truth. The lords did not see what had come before: a small conspirator riding the drafts of that great hall, settling like dust, and striking. A sting at the ankle, and one cried out, “I am One Death!” Another bite, another flinch—“I am Seven Death!”—and so it went down the line, each voice declaring itself into the dark while the wooden faces said nothing. When it was done, the spy departed the way it had come.

At the crossing of the roads, the Twins had heard the report from the mosquito and knew at once what waited in the hall, and how to answer.

So the trap was broken, and shame fell not on the boys but on the rulers of Xibalba. Murmurs moved among the carved and the living. None had expected to be unmasked in their own court. 

The Twins did not lower their eyes. They stood in the middle of that hot, ash-smelling chamber and waited.

The lords shifted on their seats, first trick undone, pride refusing to yield.

“Very well,” they said. “You may stay. But first you will rest in our houses.”

But the balance had shifted. The lords were unsettled.

The Twins were armed with the blade of wit and the shield of cunning.

The boys had crossed the rivers, walked the maze, and named the nameless. Now the houses waited—of razors and jaguars, of darkness and hail and cold.

So the trials began.

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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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The sound came first: a rasping gag, a last breath clawing for air.

This was when they prayed to whatever god they believed in, she thought. And they never got an answer in time.

Nicte brushed at the mosquito whining near her ear, her eyes still on the boy above the cenote. On her hand the smear of sap was now tacky in the heat, carrying its faint bitter-sweet scent.

He—it was always a he—was no different than the ones before, drifting in from some other latitude. Usually white men. Always wanting. Always taking. Sin respeto.

But this boy was alone.

Boys never came alone. Never. From the rocks she had watched the boat—he had not been the only one in it. They arrived with fathers and uncles, older ones with maps in their hands and greed in their hearts. Boys, if they came at all, trailed behind—too young to face the island by themselves.

This boy, close to her age—maybe younger by a year—carried nothing but a pack. That emptiness unsettled her as she watched him now, hanging, choking, saying his prayers—sometimes aloud with words she didn’t understand, sometimes only with grunts. For a moment she almost pitied him—a boy without help, alone where no one should be alone.

She was alone, too. Though her solitude was not the same as his. The stone under her palms reminded her that she belonged here.

Day pressed on her eyes, the world leaned instead of steadying. The light was too sharp, the air felt unsettled. She had been awake all night watching from the brush, following the boy’s stumbles in the dark. When he climbed atop the building he lay, ears covered, mouth open, gawking. He looked soft up there, and later, in daylight, like a baby not ready for the weight of the island.

But the stars had been bright, hadn’t they—brighter than she could remember—and the long white blade of the comet cut open the sky. She had never seen that before.

When… when had she stopped looking up?

Her view had narrowed, drawn down to earth and tide, everything pulled inward, to the work she was meant for. The words she whispered came back to her: crawl, swim, guard. Spoken so often she no longer thought about them, yet the rhythm of them pressed against her tongue now.

Still, both of them looking at the sky, at the same brilliant shape, felt like a secret—small and vanishing, the hush before dawn, a tortuga she had cared for turning to the tide one final time.

She held the thought for a moment, the quiet of it, the weight of being the only witness. Then it slipped, as such things always did.

Those moments never lasted. Like eggs hidden beneath sand, their warmth fragile in her palm—gone if she did not guard them. Always caring, always silence. And always alone. Her hands bore the weight, but never shared it.

She thought of the hatchlings she had carried, shells no bigger than her palm, flippers beating at the air as if already reaching for the sea. Again and again she had seen them off, some slipping quickly into the tide, others pausing before the water claimed them.

She drew a slow breath. That was her purpose here. But this cenote was not the nest, not the pen. And the island did not forgive hands that meddled.

So she stayed still, watching the boy, doing nothing.

The restless ones of the island, the Alux, had driven him to the edge of the water.

They did most of the work—seen or unseen—and usually left her alone. Her net might get dragged halfway up the rocks, or vegetables scattered down the trail while she wasn’t watching—irritations, reminders. Always near, though.

The sap kept them at bay. The honey-thick smear from the calabash tree made them circle at the edges, rattling branches, tugging baskets, but never touch her. Unless they chose to test her. Sometimes they did, forcing the mark to prove itself.

But the boy?

Why hadn’t they driven him off—frightened him, sunk his boat, sent shadows across his path? They’d had all night. Instead, they herded him here, to the lip of the cenote. 

And then stopped. 
Waiting.

Still, they were older than tricks. Their mischief always bent toward something larger, though what it was she could never see. Keepers of thresholds—caves, waters, places no one crossed without permission. The Aluxo’ob were sprites of stone and soil, balance-keepers, or so the old stories said.

For those who belonged, they were companions—restless, mischievous, always reminding you they were near. For outsiders, they wore sharper faces: a pit of vipers beneath rock, a black jaguar shadowing whole groups until they fled the island. Their reach was said to end at the water’s edge. But inside those borders… she knew better than to think anyone was safe, not unless the island allowed it.

Nicte eased to her knees at the rim, eyes on the boy as he pulled at the straps of his pack. Shoulders up, head tipped to the sky—another prayer, maybe. 

She almost smiled, the kind that held no joy. Too late, she thought. It is always too late here.

Instead of going slack, though, he wriggled free, turned, and hung by one hand. He twirled once beneath the pack, a toy with no string—then let go.

He dropped. His eyes watched the water rush up to meet him, a strange expression—half terror, half wonder, as if he didn’t know which it was.

She stood, watching him fall through the air and splash into the pool below. 

A damp chill rose from the cenote, wrapping around her calves. With no way to climb out, his body tired from being strangled, he would quickly succumb to the water. 

Nothing left to watch, Nicte turned to make her way back through the jungle. Just a few steps from the edge, she felt the vines wrapping the trees reach for her arms. They grew closer, blocking her path.

With a wry smile for the Alux and their mischief, she held up her hand, the smear of sap across the back. This was how it usually went—her reminder that she was not to be detained or toyed with.

Then, a whisper brushed her ear, soft as breath on her left: “Guardian.”

She turned—nothing there.

On her right: “Tortuga taught your hands.”

This time she turned and saw a boy, a few years younger than she was, holding her wrist where the vines had been. 

His dark eyes looked to the cenote, his brow open, pleading: “Use them.”

She regarded him for a moment, unsettled. 

“But the boy is not an animal,” Nicte said. 

Behind, she heard thrashing in the pool, the haphazard rhythm of treading water—quick gasps breaking to gurgles. She heard this knowing it would soon slow. Then only silence.

Now both her hands were held by two boys. Twins. 

Barefoot, dirty, hair sticking up in uneven clumps. Their clothes were worn, as if they’d been running through the brush, and their eyes, though dark, were no stranger than any boy’s she might have known before. Their broad cheekbones and black hair marked them with the features of her own people. 

Yet she had never seen them on the island, and Alux never took human form. Their presence lived in absences, the faint tug of unseen hands.

When they spoke, their words tangled together, voices slipping in and out until they became one: “Crawl, swim…” Nicte listened for the final word. It came but not the way she expected.

Instead, the boys said, “Guard. First tortuga–now all creatures. ”

She heard the vines loosen behind her, shifting in the dirt, uncoiling out and over the cliff’s edge.

From below came a groan—not man or boy, but the earth itself. There, water sloshed. It was followed by a hollow sucking sound, loud and long. Then silence.

Nicte leaned to look, the Twins still gripping her hands. Her breath caught as she saw: the water was gone. The stone floor glittered like stars. The boy lay slack across the rock, chest rising only slightly.

The vines thickened, then stretched further, braiding themselves down into a living ladder. The end of it lay down on the floor of the cenote, just a few inches from the boy’s body.

She thought of the turtles—the charge handed down to her, the work meant to keep them returning. Not the will of gods, but good magic made by people to hold the balance. That was her role. That was enough.

Nicte pulled back, whatever pity she had for the boy slipped away.

Her voice cut sharp: “My hands are for shells, for tide, for the island. The boy is not mine.”

The Twins did not answer. Their grip only tightened, pulling at her wrists. 

They glanced at each other, and in that silence she felt a verdict: she had been given a choice, and she had refused. Judgment was theirs.

Above, the clear blue sky seemed to be flicked away as the Twins looked up. In its place, darkness and stars, as bright as the night before. And blazing in an arc in the blackness: the comet where it had risen last night, impossibly clear.

Heat flared through Nicte’s hand. She tried to wrench it free, but one boy turned it over. The sap that had been there boiled, turning to vapor before it touched the ground. Her skin seared, fine hairs curling to ash as the shape of the comet’s arc carved itself into her flesh. Overhead its tail rippled; in her hand, the same flame burned raw through the skin.

She cried out, a wail of pain that echoed through the empty cenote, returning doubled from the stone walls.

The Twins sang: “One above, one below. The same flame.”

The mark glowed ember-red, pulsing with each heartbeat. In her ears she heard the tick, tick, tick of a clock tightly wound, its spring uncoiling faster. Each pulse carried another ragged breath to her ears—not hers, but the boy’s.

On the floor of the cenote George’s head lolled against the stone, his chest gasped for air. Vision smeared, he saw shapes leaned over the rim above—two boys. His stomach dropped harder than the fall into the pool. The same faces. The alley. The boat. Their laughter had left him stranded on the shore.

And beside them, a girl—the same outline he had glimpsed once on the rocks, half-caught in glare and reflection. Closer, but watching him all the same.

Fury flared, brief and useless. He tried to lift a hand, to call them out, but only gurgles broke the surface. Darkness pressed closer, each breath heavier than the last.

With each pulse, the comet’s trail on her hand told her how long; the rhythm in her lungs told her what she must keep. Timer and breath, lashed together in her body.

Guardian, whether she willed it or not.

The Twins released her wrists, vines shifted all around. Their voices rose as one: “All creatures.”

In her ears the ticking deepened, her heartbeat yoked to something older.

Blackness pressed at the edges of her vision as the restless ones closed in. Branches rattled, stones shifted underfoot, a shadow darted between roots. 

Between breaths Nicte offered a final plea: “But he is—”

Before she could finish the thought whispers rang up from the empty cenote, then from the brush at her back, mocking: “Not mine. Not mine.”

The Alux would not remember the years she had lived here. They served only the island.

The truth struck Nicte: her protection was gone.

Then—another gasp from the cenote floor. The boy.

Her lungs seized. She staggered, wheezing, her head spinning, the world collapsing toward black. She clawed at her chest. 

The Twins stepped back, their faces unreadable. Watching. 

Then, one spoke. The words came through clearly in the din of the noise, above the ragged breath: “Guardian and story, bound as one.”

Darkness fell hard over the cenote, swallowing the ledge, the vines, the stars.

She collapsed to her knees. The mark flared bright, guiding her eyes to the vines as she moved. Twisting, the dark, earthy plants braided themselves tightly as she lowered herself down.

Nicte’s hand brushed against the boy’s limp body, his skin damp and cold. His shallow breath rasped against hers, each exhale answering in her chest. The sound carried and came back doubled, echo upon echo, until she could not tell which belonged to him and which to her.

From the rim of the cenote, a last whisper floated down, sly as laughter from the Twins: “…the lords love games.”

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Music

• The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen

We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.

For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.

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“I’m alive. Points for me,” George grumbled as he swung his legs over the side of the building. In the light of morning, nothing about this place seemed scary—except, of course, that he was on an island alone.

Peeking over the trees in blinding rays of gold was the morning sun. Everything carried the deep smell of rest, the island still waking after a long night. He twitched his nose, catching a whiff. Still sore.

Dropping down to the side of the building—his nest of vines somewhere above—George heard a crinkling in the satchel. He’d noticed it the night before but had been too tired, too dark, to investigate. Pulling the bag off his shoulder, he began to empty it.

Several large chips of glass fell to the ground, followed by the broken stem of a bottle. The whole thing looked about the size of a cassette jewel case. He sniffed the tacky smear on his fingers.  Then he felt his shirt, still clinging to him, and gave it a whiff. The bottle must have broken when his nose was smashed by the door. The scent wasn’t unpleasant—floral, almost like Grandma’s perfume. Cloying. Yes, cloying was the word. Probably invented by some poor guy trapped in an elevator with too many Avon ladies. He huffed it out of his nose all the same.

The rest of the satchel held only a few small rocks and a folded leaf.

Great. A rock collection. Maybe he’d trade them at recess.

Just junk a kid might keep around, like that drawer of knickknacks he used to have. And just like that drawer, he dropped them back inside. Nothing ever really gets thrown away.

Standing, he froze at the sound of a deep growl. Eyes scanning the bushes, he braced, waiting for a beast to rush him. The sound rolled again—long and low—until he realized it was his own stomach. He sighed. It had been a full day since he’d eaten anything.

Looking around, there was only the greenery of the island.

It wasn’t like he could saunter to the corner bodega for a Jolt and a package of Twinkies. God, he’d kill for those. He could almost feel the sponge cake squish between his teeth and the burn of Jolt etching away the inside of his mouth, his throat, even his stomach lining.

If only.

His stomach growled again. A lizard skittered into the brush. George considered it, then winced at the image of skewering it—small stick through the mouth, leathery body roasting over hot coals.

He hadn’t lasted long in the Boy Scouts—just long enough to know he didn’t belong, not long enough to learn how to start a fire. Now he’d have to figure things out on his own. Kathryn would find her way here eventually, with or without Roberto. But how long would that take? And in the meantime, could he—would he—go native enough to eat a lizard? Not a chance. That never happened on the only other island he could think of. And since George was clearly more Gilligan than Professor, the odds weren’t good.

But that did give him an idea: coconuts.

Squinting at the nearby trees, he searched one after another.Nope. Nah. Hmm.Not a single coconut tree. Bananas grew on trees too, didn’t they? Maybe so, but not around here.

Hunger gnawed at him. Then a thought hit, and he grabbed his things and pushed into the thicket at the clearing’s edge.

He retraced his steps from the afternoon before. And yes—there it was: corn. Rows of it, taller than him. More than he could ever eat.

George grabbed at the nearest ear and pulled. The stalk leaned, refusing to let go. He yanked harder. Nothing. Bracing both hands like a baseball bat, he leaned back with all his weight, nearly pulling the plant from the ground. Until—snap! The ear tore free and smacked him in the chest. Before he could regain his balance, the stalk rebounded and flicked him in the head—a vegetable admonishment.

Embarrassed, he glanced around, biting his lip. They weren’t there, of course, yet he could almost hear the boys’ giggling—the same stifled squeaks that spilled from behind the crates of chickens.

Quickly—his hunger stronger than his shame—he yanked the husk apart like disposable gift wrap. Inside, he flicked off the silk and bit solidly into the corn. Sweet juice ran down his face. It was the most wonderful taste he could have imagined—sweet and hearty, everything at once. He paused only briefly before devouring it, ravenous, like a mad beaver chomping at a tree. In minutes, every kernel was gone.

He grabbed another, twisting this time, and tore it free. Then another, shoving it into the satchel.

His mood brightened instantly. This, he reasoned, was the original corn in corn sweetener. He smiled, wiping the juice on his forearm. Then, a burp. It wasn’t Jolt and Twinkies, but it was a beautiful substitute.

With the sun at his back he made his way past the building where he’d spent the night, tearing green leaves off another ear of corn, a trail of debris falling behind. He walked past the tree where the owl had perched, then onward, toward what looked like an old path winding through the growth and up the slope of the mountain, buoyed by the sudden rush of sugar.

As he walked, shapes emerged in the brush—stone outlines of squares and rectangles, scattered like bones. A few walls still stood, timbers dug deep to hold up scraps of roof. George climbed onto the stump of a tree for a better view. Like a village made of playing cards blown away in a massive gust, the buildings—what was left of them—lay scattered, vines and brush threading through until the outlines were barely visible.

George stared at the remnants of the village. “Whoa! De-rezzed… by the Master Control Program.”

He stepped down, tugging his backpack close as he wound through the wreckage. Everything looked washed away. Even the remaining bare lumber, now rotted, was bent and twisted by some great force. None of this was new, he realized, but years old. He was seeing it in the in-between: after the village was alive, before time and weather erased it completely. A time capsule cracked open and dumped out in front of him.

As George looked at the spaces that had been homes, stores, and other buildings he caught sight of something ahead. Moving around a pile of debris to where it seemed all the paths in the village converged—a group of bodies lay at the base of the only tree still standing. As he got closer he could see them, slack and twisted together, not moving. He approached slowly, his steps tentative as the shapes became more clear. They weren’t people but dolls—faded, hand-hewn and rough, made of cloth or burlap. Their faces, expressions of wide-eyed stillness, were stitched or painted on. Here, in a jumble, they looked like castaways, piled haphazardly.

“Like an altar…” George said, studying the tableau.

Circling the tree, he noticed a slab of wood wedged into the roots, the paint long faded but still legible:

Por los niños perdidos en la tormenta, septiembre de 1974.

The words stopped him. Not just dolls, then. Memorials. He read the inscription again: For the children lost in the storm, September 1974.

The words blurred as another voice crowded in—Roberto’s, low and flat: “I tried to open something I shouldn’t have.”

At the time George hadn’t understood what Roberto meant, just one of his strange riddles. But here, in front of this altar of dolls, the words pressed against the storm date like two halves of the same story.

Had he opened something that brought the storm? Was this part of the curse?

George’s stomach lurched. He couldn’t be sure, but the thought stuck, like a splinter just poking out of the skin.

As he moved around the tree George could see that some dolls were propped up on the empty shells of sea turtles, the puzzle-like shapes pale and lifeless. All of the dolls looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. The sun had bleached the materials, wearing them thin or torn apart like they’d been attacked by animals, the innards of grass and corn leaves yanked open, dismembered and disintegrating.

Then one of the husks twitched. A lizard burst from a doll’s split chest, skittering across the heap. George jerked back with a strangled sound, heel catching on a stone. He stumbled, doubled over, his stomach revolting. A dry heave wrenched through him—half from the sight, half from the sour weight of corn sitting heavy in his gut.

The heap shivered again—not all at once, but in a slow ripple, dolls toppling one after another as if nudged by unseen hands. Stitched mouths split wider, painted eyes rolling toward him. And underneath it, a shimmer of children’s laughter, light and breathless, rising with the movement.

Another line came, Roberto’s voice flat in his memory: “…mi tierra remembers. The blood, the ash—the history is all still there, bound beneath your feet.”

The wave pressed him back step by step, driving him up the rise before he realized he was moving.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, throat raw. The sweetness of the corn had curdled, gone sour in his gut, heavy as a brick. His lips were parched. All at once, he realized how thirsty he was. He patted the satchel, looking for something that didn’t exist: water.

What he really needed was a coconut.
With a lime.
Then he’d feel much better.

The line looped in his head with the stubborn rhythm of a song he half remembered, the kind that stuck whether you wanted it or not.

Backing away from the tree, George climbed a small rise. He wanted to keep the dolls in sight. Forgotten though they were, he couldn’t look away. The ruins radiated in every direction from that central point, and the higher he climbed, the clearer it looked—as if some giant arm had swept the board clean, brushing all the pieces aside.

His foot snagged on a root. He pitched backward, landing hard on his butt. The ground gave a little, then more—soft, crumbling, sliding out from under him. Dirt and rocks tumbled ahead, vanishing into a thin splash below. The echo came back fast, off walls he couldn’t see.

He was sliding, spinning. Hands grabbed for anything—dirt, air—nothing. A scream built in his throat—then stopped. Choked off. The strap of the satchel whipped tight across his chest, corn jammed hard against his neck. His body jerked to a halt, feet dangling over empty space.

Below yawned a vast pool of water, mountain reflected perfectly across its surface. Bright jungle light burned the rim, but inside the sinkhole everything dimmed, the air cooler, shadows clinging to the stone. The water lay unnaturally still, rippling only where the dirt kept falling.

George gagged, pulling at the strap for breath. His weight dragged him further down. A voice crowded in, sudden and sharp in his head—one of the boys back on the boat: Cuídalo bien. Keep it safe.

Safe. Yeah, right. The satchel was safe all right—safe as a noose.

But as he twisted, he saw it: the bag wasn’t budging. The stupid corn sack was jammed solid, unmoving even as he jerked against it.

George’s brain sparked. If the satchel was stuck, then maybe… maybe it could keep the backpack safe too.

Safe from the fall. Safe from the water.

He pictured it—journal pages bled to nothing, sketches turned to pulp, the Walkman sparking briefly beforedying. Everything he’d carried from home, gone in one splash.

He froze, air sawing in and out. Survival said: wriggle out, drop. But that meant letting go. His father’s words, the only map he had—gone. For a second he clung to the strap, wishing it would hold forever, even as it strangled him.

But forever was only seconds. The world kept going dark.

George kicked his legs like scissors, twisting, trying to slip free. The satchel shifted, corn grinding harder into his chest. He tried pulling himself up—instant regret. Gym pull-ups, the one thing he’d always flunked. “Why didn’t they make this the test?” he wheezed.

Fumbling, half-blind with panic, he wrestled one strap through the other, knotting his backpack into the tangle. His fingers slipped further, but the straps held together just enough.

He braced, sucked what air he could, and shoved one shoulder through, then the other, skin burning as they slipped over and he twisted free.

He glanced once—the satchel still jammed, the pack woven tight, hopefully—then his grip slipped and his stomach dropped with the fall. The acid from the corn rose to meet his throat on the way down.

The world slowed as he fell. Below, fish flickered through the water, moss drifting in slow currents. And there—just visible in the shimmer—was the faint shape of a girl. She was kneeling, then standing, her gaze never leaving him as if waiting, watching from the bottom of the pool.

Then the vision shattered as he plunged in.

Cold swallowed him whole. Bubbles roared in his ears as he thrashed, arms and legs striking at nothing.

He forced his eyes open against the sting. Above, a circle of light shimmered, fractured by ripples. And there—impossible—was the girl again. Not below him this time but above, looking down through the wavering water as though she stood on solid ground.

George kicked toward her, lungs and stomach burning.

For a moment her eyes locked on his, holding him as if she knew him.

Then he burst into the air with a gasp——and gagged hard, hurling up half-chewed corn. Kernels sprayed out like buckshot, catching the light before splashing back over his face.

George blinked, coughing, humiliated by his own body.

By the time he looked up, she was gone.

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Music

• Coconut - Harry Nilsson