Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

Cora is used to terror, a worry that wrings your organs out and carves holes in you like termites in wooden furniture, but if enough of you is devoured, soon there’s nothing left of you but

A thought skewers Cora’s mind like a lobotomy—her therapist once said they were called intrusive thoughts, the most terrible, cruel things that you know you would never do but can’t help but think. Except her therapist has no way of knowing what Cora will or will not do, what’s an intrusive thought and what’s a wish.

She doesn’t want this secret that no one will believe. She has a history, after all. She’s the perfect person to haunt because no one will trust the things she says ever again. Whatever she finds, it will be for her and her alone. No one will help her. No one will save her.

Cora’s memory will eat holes in it soon, her mind full of hungry moths. Then it will be gone, like every other part of

Delilah needed her beautiful shell because inside of her, there was nothing.

And Cora always does what Delilah wants.

“Have you ever seen Mr. Vampire?” Harvey says. “Uh, I don’t know,” Cora says. “Was that on Disney Channel?”