Tiny Nightmares

by Lincoln Michel

  Caravan

  PEDRO INIGUEZ

  Rudy raised his arm and wiped the sweat from his brow. Around him, thousands of people from the caravan settled into the Zócalo in Mexico City. Here and there, volunteers wove their way through the crowd, dispensing food, medical aid, and clothes.

  A light-skinned boy named Enrique who’d traveled in Rudy’s immediate clique received a pristine Cruz Azul cap from a generous woman. She caressed his face and made friendly chatter with his father, Guillermo, the fat man from Honduras. Rudy looked at his own arms. They were dark, and shimmering with sweat. A group of curious onlookers gave them cold stares, as if looking upon a herd of animals.

  Rudy’s mother pulled him close. “Mijo, stay close. Stray children have been known to get snatched here.”

  Rudy turned his head to look up at her.

  “This world is full of monsters. They kidnap children and demand ransoms or sell their organs on the black market. We’re not in Guatemala. People disappear here all the time.”

  “Monsters?” Rudy asked. He wanted to ask what she meant but he knew better than to question his mother.

  They walked inside a large tent and received the best meal he’d had in weeks, since crossing the border into Chiapas: a bowl of rice, beans, corn, and tortillas.

  “Enjoy,” his mother said. “It only gets harder from here.”

  The nights were the worst for Rudy. He sat beside himself and wrapped his arms across his chest and shivered in front of the campfire. He looked at the people around him as the light danced across their bodies. Their faces looked gaunt and pale, like corpses. Many had grown thin, relying on the generosity of strangers for food. He’d spotted some of the men catching rats and bashing them against rocks and grilling them over the open flames.

  Some of the older travelers stayed behind to wither away as their feet could no longer carry them.

  Tonight, they camped outside San Miguel, Sinaloa. His mother had left for town to scavenge for dinner. She often left him alone at night, as she offered her services to old townsfolk or to local butchers who detested cleaning the bloody counters and allowed her to do it in return for scraps.

  As he waited for his mother to return, he made a game of counting the people in his clique. He counted fifty. The group had thinned out over the last month. Many of them disappeared during the night. Some, he’d overheard, had turned back as the trip dragged on and food became scarce. Others sought asylum in the small towns they’d ventured through, choosing to start anew in Mexico. Sometimes he’d even hear parents crying on about their children vanishing, pleading for anyone to help start a search party. Most people ignored the pleas and carried on. That’s why his mother didn’t let him make friends with any of the other children; it would hurt too much if you didn’t see them again.

  Rudy wondered about the monsters his mom had mentioned. They couldn’t be real, could they?

  He tried not to think about it. There was a rational explanation for their losses. Some people had chosen to travel another route. That was it. After the caravan disembarked the freight train in Guanajuato, half the group splintered and traveled north, hoping to enter through Texas. Mother had said the cartels were worse in that part of Mexico. Maybe they were the real monsters . . .

  Rudy’s belly rumbled as it had for the last week, and he hoped his mother would come back soon.

  He looked across the way and spotted Guillermo and his son, Enrique. Guillermo’s shirt appeared tighter on him, as if he had gained weight over the last few days. Rudy wondered how the man had stayed so plump while everyone else starved. He was eating well, and Rudy hated him for it. He hated Enrique, too, for being given such a fancy new hat. He knew it was because dark people like him were seldom given anything but mean stares.

  Rudy’s mom suddenly approached the camp. She smiled at him and placed two slabs of meat onto a pan and set it down over the fire.

  “I helped the owner of another butcher shop clean down his counters,” she said. “I think I’m on to something.”

  The sizzle of the meat had stirred a few curious onlookers who soon returned to their starved slumber.

  After dinner Rudy slept well and dreamed of the promise of a new country.

  They’d crossed the Sonoran Desert and headed farther north, where they now made camp in the Tijuana countryside, just outside a colony of concrete-and-sheet-metal huts. There were just twenty people in the group. His mother had been right; people disappeared in this country left and right.

  Rudy crouched alone beside the campfire where his mother had told him to wait. He dwelled on the border, now just a half day’s walk away.

  Guillermo buried his face in his hands and sobbed beside Rudy. Enrique had vanished as evening came, and Rudy couldn’t help but feel guilty. Maybe if they’d been friends, they could’ve watched over each other.

  “My son is gone,” Guillermo said. “Will no one help me find him?”

  “You have nothing to cry about, you monster,” shouted one of the women. “We know you’ve been snatching children in the night and slaughtering them to keep yourself fed.”

  “No, I, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s right,” said an old man. “We’ve been talking about it. Interesting how all of us are starving, yet you keep getting fatter. How do you explain that?”

  The rest of the adults in the group stood and surrounded Guillermo. One of the men pulled on his collar. Rudy stood and stepped away. He hoped his mother would hurry back.

  “No, wait, I can explain.” Guillermo reached for his wallet. “Look,” he said, retrieving a wad of cash. “In Honduras I was a wealthy man. I’ve been buying food.”

  “And you didn’t think to share with us. When so many of us were starving?” the woman said.

  The group hauled him off into the darkness of the countryside until Rudy could no longer see them. Guillermo’s screams faded after a while.

  Rudy smiled as his mom returned from Tijuana. He’d never felt so relieved.

  As always, she returned with two thin strips of meat. One for her and one for him. She slapped them on the pan over the fire and brought Rudy against her body.

  “Tomorrow a new life begins for us,” she said. She retrieved something from a small plastic bag. “I found you this hat, Mijo. I think you’ll like it.”

  She placed a Cruz Azul hat on his head. The hat was crumpled and a little wet with something, but felt warm in the bitter, cold night.

  Downpour

  JOSEPH SALVATORE

  The rat had been trapped on the subway platform for a half hour before Rose lugged the dripping baby stroller down the stairs to the swamp of bodies waiting in the humidity for the L train to Manhattan. The sudden July downpour brought even more riders than usual off Bedford Avenue and down to the trains. And when Rose finally got down there, Emma was miraculously still asleep. Rose put the brake on the carriage and thought about opening the plastic rain cover, but when she saw her four-month-old’s sleeping face, she decided to keep her inside her plastic bubble.

  Rose turned to see a swath split the crowd, parting them like a zipper, everyone jumping and lifting their legs and holding on to other people. The woman in front of Emma’s stroller screamed, “Fucking rat!” Rose saw the rat dart under a bench and then reemerge on the other side and scurry under a trash barrel, its long gray tail twitching like a dying worm. A white girl with dreadlocks and designer bell-bottoms screeched and jumped up on the bench, clutching her backpack to her chest and laugh-whining to her friends, still standing around her. Someone called for help, at which point—deus ex machina—a cleaner in dark blue subway overalls came down the stairs with a broom the size of a hammerhead shark, with bristles as big as chopsticks. He silently moved into the crowd, laser-focused on finding the rat. He held the broom up with two hands and approached the trash barrel stealthily, as everyone moved back, crowding Rose and the stroller closer to the edge of the platform.

  The cleaner crept toward the
barrel with the broom raised like a spear. The rat’s tail disappeared under the barrel and everyone let go a collective groan. Suddenly the man released the broom, throwing it like someone trying to spear a buffalo. When the broom stopped, the rat rolled out from under the bristles, not dead but moving much more slowly than it had been for the last half hour. Some of the crowd whooped and others gasped. The man picked up the broom and the rat rolled over quickly, and the people moved back again, this time forcing the stroller’s handle into Rose’s belly, and just then she saw the red light of a subway train growing larger inside the tunnel. She felt the breeze of its approach and swung the stroller out and away from the edge. But the rat leaped up, the crowd surged back again, and the man plunged the broom at it once more, not throwing it this time, but stabbing it, stunning the rat, now lying flat on its belly, a rear leg out at an angle impossible to believe didn’t indicate a break.

  Someone shouted for the man to stop, to leave it alone now. Rose joined the group and yelled for the man to sweep the poor thing onto the tracks. But her voice was drowned out by the arriving train.

  As the doors opened, Rose gently tilted the stroller back over the lip of the car’s floor and pushed to the other side, nestling it tight between the doors and the blue seat next to it. She used her foot to kick off the brake, leaned against the doors, and watched the man begin sweeping the dazed rat toward the platform’s edge, pushing it hard and fast. Whether he heard Rose or not, she thought, he was doing just as she’d suggested.

  It was then the rat leaped up again, as if it had been playing possum, electrified and wild, running between legs and luggage and jumping between the subway doors just as they were closing, a dark blur flying at knee level across the car. Rose looked down just in time to see the rat’s tail disappear under the rain cover of the stroller, a dark shadow moving up and over Emma’s body toward her face, a wild spray of red splashing across the plastic bubble. Emma’s tiny pink-socked foot began to kick wildly, and Rose tore into the rain cover but could not puncture it, could not pull it off the stroller’s frame. She pitched the whole thing over on its side and went up under it with her hands and head disappearing in the same spot the tail had disappeared moments ago.

  Under the cover it was hot and wet, so much hotter and wetter than the Brooklyn afternoon out of which she and Emma had stepped in search of some relief.

  Human Milk for Human Babies

  LINDSAY KING-MILLER

  MESSAGE REQUEST

  From: Zuzu Shaw

  To: Cori Kennedy

  Hi Cori, I saw your post on the Mother’s Milk forum about having oversupply and wanting to donate milk. I would love to take you up on your generous offer. I’d be happy to come by your house to pick it up.

  If you respond to this message, Zuzu Shaw will be added to your list of contacts.

  From: Cori Kennedy

  To: Zuzu Shaw

  Hi Zuzu! Wow, you responded to my post fast. Yes, I’d love to have you come pick up some milk and help me reclaim my freezer space, LOL! How old is your babe? Mine is starting to wean herself, but I have to keep pumping because every time I stop I get mastitis. UGH. We’re up on the north side by the lake, how about you? Want to bring your little one with you? Amelie and I could both use a playdate! We just moved here right before she was born and we haven’t really found our “people” yet.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  I also live near the lake. How does 1 pm tomorrow sound? We don’t have many people either, although we’ve been in this area longer.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Awesome! Here’s my address: [open in map]

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  Thank you (and Amelie) for having me over today, and for sharing your milk. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring my little girl with me, but I hope we can meet up again soon. After all, she and Amelie are milk sisters now, so in a way, we’re all a family.

  FRIEND REQUEST

  To: Zuzu Shaw

  Cori Kennedy has sent you a Friend Request. If you accept, you will be able to see and interact with each other’s Profile.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Hey! I added you hoping I could peek at cute baby pictures on your profile, but I guess you’re not as much of a paparazzi mama as me. Could you send me a pic of your little one, and remind me what her name is?

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  I worry about privacy with putting photos online. I have some on my phone but I lost my charger; I’ll text you after I get a new one. In the meantime, do you happen to have any more milk you can spare?

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Absolutely! Wow, she went through that fast. Is she hitting a growth spurt? Amelie just had one a few weeks ago, and they’re right around the same age, aren’t they? It’s so wild how you wake up in the morning and they’re like six inches longer than you remember. We’re going to be out running errands today, so I can just bring a cooler by, since you’re in the neighborhood. Can you send me your address?

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  They just keep growing and growing. Always hungry. Don’t worry about dropping it off, I can pick it up another day.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  It’s no trouble! I’m already out and I have the cooler in my backseat, so I should really get it to you before it gets too warm.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  I live here: [open in map] Please don’t ring the doorbell, I don’t want anything to wake up.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Thanks for taking the milk off our hands, and I’m sorry for interrupting you in the middle of a nap! Totally understand not letting us in, but I’d love to come over sometime when you’re up to having company and the baby isn’t asleep. I’ll bring takeout and a bottle of wine, LOL.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  Thank you for the invitation to Amelie’s birthday party. We won’t be able to make it that day, but congratulations to you both on a year of life.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  No worries! I’m also using the birthday as an impetus to go through Amelie’s dresser and putting together a box of things to give away. Your little one is younger, right? Do you want to look at stuff before we take it to Goodwill?

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  Thank you for the offer, but no, my child is older than Amelie.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Why did I think she was younger? It’s so funny that after all this time I still haven’t met your daughter! What are the two of you up to this weekend? We might go to the zoo.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  May I come by and pick up more milk?

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  I was hoping to tell you this in person, but it’s so hard to find time to meet! Now that Amelie is a year old, I’m trying to cut back on pumping and letting my supply dry up. I have a little bit in the freezer from the last few weeks, but after that I think I won’t have milk to donate anymore. Hopefully we can still find occasional excuses to get together!

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  I saw your post on the forum asking for donor milk—you sound really panicked and I’m sorry for taking you by surprise! I didn’t realize you were running so low. Pardon me for being intrusive, but your daughter must be eating solid food by now, right? It’s probably not healthy for her to subsist on nothing but milk, if she’s more than a year old.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  It’s not healthy at all.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Are you at home right now? Can I bring the last of my milk by, and maybe we can talk?

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  I’m not at home. I’m at the house.

  From: Corir />
  To: Zuzu

  I’m worried about you. Stay calm, okay? I’ll be right over.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Are you here? I’ve been knocking on the door but no one is answering.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  I hear someone crying inside. Is that you? Is it your daughter? If you don’t answer the door I’m going to call somebody.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  Don’t leave. I can’t do this without you. I tried to do it alone but it’s just too hard.

  From: Cori

  To: Zuzu

  Believe me, I understand. You don’t have to be ashamed that you’re struggling. I know how hard raising a baby alone is.

  From: Zuzu

  To: Cori

  You don’t know. But I’ll show you. Stay there. I’m coming.

  MISSING WOMAN SUSPECTED OF CHILD ABANDONMENT

  Lakeview—Police are searching for Cordelia Kennedy, age 27, who is suspected of abandoning her 1-year-old daughter.

  Kennedy, a single mother, has not been seen since she left work on the afternoon of Friday, August 25. Her daughter was found by police in a house several blocks from Kennedy’s residence. Neighbors called police when they heard a child crying from inside the house, which has been unoccupied for more than a year.

  Kennedy’s car was found outside the house, but her phone and purse were gone. There was no sign of struggle. The child was unharmed and is in city custody while authorities attempt to find her other family members.

  Pictures of Heaven

  BEN LOORY

  A man decides to paint a picture of Heaven—the idea just comes to him one night. So he goes out and buys a canvas and some paints.