Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

“Cora,” she says, and Cora doesn’t like the way she says her name, not at all. Because she knows that whatever comes next is something Yifei is scared to say.

Yifei says, the word so gentle, as if preparing Cora for what’s next.

ancient China, decapitation was considered the worst kind of execution?”

The idea of her sister’s head rotting in a crevice of the subway is one of those thoughts she’s done her best to push to the periphery of her mind.

“The problem,” Cora echoes. The problem of her sister’s existence.

“I’ll fuck around with horror movie shit when I’m getting paid to do it legally, but this is something else.”

Harvey pulls back, face gray, knows he’s said too much.

“You wouldn’t do it for Cora?”

his voice softer.

No, Cora doesn’t particularly want to look for her sister’s head. But the problem is—has always been—that there are many things Cora does not want and very few things that she does want.

Then she looks outside, where the light beyond the thin curtains shifts, long hair blowing past the window, backlit by city lights.

“I can’t let you two get eaten by hungry ghosts alone!”

Not to mention the low simmer of nausea that was normally only an abstract thought had transformed into a tangible threat low in her stomach.

She knows its sharpness too well, how its salt can cut through layers of cloth and plastic under her hazmat suit.

It’s one thing to commute to a crime scene, to see the broken locks on the front door held in place by tiny screws, or the shattered garden-level windows. It’s another thing entirely to see how weak the doors of your own building

truly are,

They wouldn’t have had much luck—Cora had her door reinforced with steel, double-bolted. But someone tried.

She feels like her turn is coming soon.

She watches herself in the mirror across the room, skin vivid pink, until the room fills with steam and she is nothing at all.

The room is alive, and suddenly Cora wants to be anywhere but here.

Normally, these crime scenes feel like a distant echo of a scream, but this one is wailing in Cora’s ears.

It is not armor, it will not protect her from anything but bodily fluids and gases, yet something about every inch of her skin being hidden feels safe.

Residents praise increased security in Lower East Side,’”

The fresh blood eats it up immediately, drowning the pages in red.

The NYPD drove a police car into a crowd of protestors and all the mayor had to say was that the protestors shouldn’t have surrounded the police car in the first place.

The silence was harder to sleep through than the screams.

He got all pale and teary and said, I tried, I swear I tried, my boss wouldn’t let me print what you wrote, blah blah blah, I could get arrested. Cry me a fucking river.” “Arrested?”

“Jesus, is writing about hate crimes illegal now?” Harvey says.

He’s spineless, all of them are.

Wasn’t she supposed to outgrow the childish reflex of crying when men scold her? Some part of her feels like she’s still a little girl in pigtails and overalls that her third grade teacher can put in time-out.

but he reaches for her arm and she goes still, a prey animal waiting for teeth to close around her neck. That’s all Cora ever does—sits around and waits to die.

“Fucking Chinks,” he says under his breath, shoving past Harvey and into the apartment.

“I don’t know,” Harvey says, his voice small. “But this guy threatened to call the cops on us.”

making sure that it’s real.

Harvey arrives at one thirty, crushing a can of Red Bull with both hands before tossing it at a trash can and missing, scrambling to pick it up.

Cora spent those years reading under the covers with a flashlight, being a Good Kid, and in some ways she looks back on her life and thinks it’s much paler for it.

and Cora is struck with the sudden thought that if she falls into the dark, she’ll never be able to climb back up.

Both of their flashlights are pointed at Cora, and she feels alone and exposed on the platform.

“Here, sit down first,” Harvey says, handing his flashlight to Yifei and stepping forward. His head is just below the top of the platform....

“I’ll catch you.”

But once she touches his T-shirt, feels his bones under her palms, she lets out a breath.

That is not something she could ever forget.

More than anything, Cora does not want to find her sister’s head.

will only be a skull by now, and in a way, that’s worse. Knowing that rodents peeled her

flesh away from her face,

But Cora has a lot of experience with skull fragments.

Then she realizes that the darkness is so inky and thick that maybe Delilah is here, just behind her, but the only thing Cora can see is where she shines the light, the places Delilah can’t manifest.

This is not fresh blood, Cora reminds herself. This is just the ghost of blood.

Cora remembers Delilah telling her once

that she never wanted to grow old.