Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

and somehow in the space of a few minutes she has failed once more at becoming someone.

because this is the part of cleaning that Cora likes the most—the part where you rip off the skin and what’s left is unrecognizable, transformed.

Sometimes the unknowing is worse than the knowing. But other times, Cora cannot bridge the distance between the two.

Father Thomas said, as if a teenager had gotten trapped down here before, had been left here long enough to rot.

“That’s not me.”

“Cora, you have to decide,” one of them says, but Cora can’t do that; she needs someone else to decide for her because her choices are always wrong.

Dream Delilah is not real, she reminds herself. She’s a part of Cora’s mind, a chopped salad of her subconscious. Delilah did not lead her astray, because Delilah is gone. Cora led herself into a dirty janitor’s closet because she always picks the wrong door.

God cannot forgive someone whose name he does not know.

But Cora knows that trying different restaurants counts as a hobby for a lot of people, so maybe Cora can become a foodie, if she can force herself to just eat and not think about where each ingredient came from. She can write Yelp reviews for restaurants, start a food blog, be the kind of person people want to go out with because she knows all the best places.

Cora knows that she’s transparent glass for anyone who actually looks

her, but most people don’t want to.

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. This time, Cora sees herself holding Harvey’s bat in one hand, jamming her fist into the white man’s mouth, down his throat, punching into his stomach. She sees the bat living inside him, scratching at his stomach lining, trying to claw its way back up, scraping his insides raw. His body is the vent in Zihan Huang’s apartment, nothing but a cold metal cage, and he will hear the sounds of dying deep inside him, he will remember it always, feel the fear that Zihan felt. Who’s the bat eater now?

Cora stares at the brick, feels a bit like one has shattered her brain as well because she was doing everything right. She was out trying to be social, to not hide away in her apartment, to eat food she didn’t prepare herself, make small talk about movies, things normal twenty-four-year-olds do. But still, no matter how hard she tries to just have a simple life, everything around her always breaks. And Cora doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened in Chinatown, at a Chinese take-out place. Even when she is no one at all, just an echo of a dead person, she’s still Chinese and no one will let her forget it. That’s all anyone cares about, all anyone wants to see.

Cora starts walking faster. She feels like the sidewalk is vanishing in chunks behind her, a great chasm biting at her heels, the seams of the world ripping open. There is something following her.

Yifei says that hungry ghosts are real, and every part of Cora wants to believe her. It’s a dangerous thought—the idea that it’s not Cora’s own mind that is bending, but the barriers between worlds. 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.

Closing your eyes doesn’t stop monsters from devouring you.

A shiver rips through Cora’s blood. She feels that there is an entire universe just behind her, but she’s not allowed to look.

“Don’t turn around,” the voice says again. But, like always, Cora needs to know. She turns around.

She clings to the sound of Delilah’s voice, replaying it in her mind even though she can already feel the memory rebuilding itself, growing quieter, less truthful by the moment. 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. Delilah was always supposed to be here, but that was just another one of her lies.

Truth: What are you most afraid of? Cora set down the book and walked to the edge. She cannot remember the name of the city anymore, but she remembers the skyscrapers in the distance, three of them like syringes, a foamy bath of treetops below. Truth: Where are you most afraid of going? Cora’s mom had just become the fourth wife of a cult leader. Cora’s dad had just remarried in China. Cora didn’t know Delilah that well yet, but Delilah’s mama wouldn’t let Cora go anywhere alone because she was too young. Everyone in Cora’s family had examined her like an old sweater off the clearance rack and politely said “No, thank you,” hung her back up for someone else to take. Dare: jump. Cora leaned forward. A breeze rushed up from between the trees, birds shivering into the gray sky, and Cora wanted to join them, to fly until she found somewhere brighter, warmer. She would later learn that this was just another intrusive thought, but in that moment, it felt realer than anything in her so-called life.

“You don’t want me to,” Cora said, because all that ever mattered was what Delilah wanted. Truth: Who are you most afraid of? Delilah shrugged, and some small part of Cora was glad that she didn’t deny it, that she hadn’t lied to her. “You’re my sister.” “That’s just a word,” Cora said. Delilah scrunched her face up. “All words are just words,”

She gave Cora something better than an abstract idea of love: a promise. That whenever Cora drew too close to the ledge, Delilah would be there. Cora should have known better than to believe her.

Her throat is needle-thin, no more than a whispered silver thread. Her eyes are deep chasms of black, skin a translucent tarp pulled taut over her cheekbones, the knife edge of her jaw, her withered black lips.

Finally, they fill their mouths with blood, and at last the pain in their stomachs grows quiet.

The creature has no eyes, but Cora knows it sees her—Cora has a prey sense for when she’s being watched. She has always been a white rabbit ready to dart away, knows all too well the prickle of eyes on skin, the cold rush of blood, the clench of her heart.

They are real—at least, as real as anything else Cora has ever seen.

Too tall for Cora’s ceilings, hunched over, head lolling to the side, wire neck curved in a limp U, and stiff black hair hanging down. She is pressed into the archway of Cora’s bedroom as if trapped in the shadows.

When nothing changes, she tries to cast her consciousness out somewhere far away, to go numb the way she sometimes does when the world is too loud, but she stays locked in the prison of her own trembling bones. The shadow appears first, rolling across the open doorway, a buzzing black, like Cora’s floaters converging into a sparkling darkness.

The creature reaches forward, hand unfurling palm-side up, fingers nothing but bones blurred with a glassy webbing of skin so thin it’s hardly there. But it does not come closer to Cora. It waits.

She reaches forward because she needs to know, the unknowing is worse than the knowing. Her fingers close around the cold jade, turning the bracelet until the gold plate is on the top, light glinting off the Chinese character for hope.

She thinks of all her missing food, how Yifei had called the ghosts hungry.

She raises the fruit to her mouth and unlatches her jaw until it looks like a silent scream, cramming the entire orange in her mouth. She devours it, peel and all, a burst of juice raining down on the floor.

She did this to Delilah.

It felt easier that way, to try to spackle over all the holes Delilah had left behind as quickly as possible. Cora was supposed to be the one who suffered. Cora was good at suffering, it was nothing new to her. Nothing she did was supposed to hurt Delilah anymore.

she dreams of a darkness that begins in her living room wall and spreads wider and wider until it devours the entire world.

Cora herself has a shadow

that she can’t escape.

A horrible part of Cora realizes that Delilah is no longer beautiful,

Cora thinks that Delilah deserves it.

Because Delilah had never known anything but adoration, and a grim part of Cora is satisfied that for once, Delilah has to occupy a body that is gross and jagged like hers.

second shower, scrubbi...

caring more about ghosts than nosy neighbors,

The sunshine has wiped the morning clean, and it is almost too easy to pretend everything was a dream.

can just leave the lights on forever,

starving and silent and invisible.

fold that terrible thought up into smaller and smaller squares,

Cora knows the building. It’s a hotel in the Bowery where Auntie Lois stayed once, back when she tried

harder to keep an eye on Cora.

Chinatown was a war zone,

The blood drips down, like the creature is melting into the bed. A hideous, dripping bat.