Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

I want to be remembered like I am now.

Delilah needed her beautiful shell because inside of her, there was nothing. But Delilah didn’t get to leave a pretty corpse.

Cora says because she doesn’t want them to say it out loud.

But no one hears Cora, no one ever hears Cora, because her thoughts are only half out loud

and half in her mind, anxious sounds that haven’t quite coagulated into words.

This time, they’re running.

joints still locked tight, before she hears Yifei call for her.

Auntie Zeng always told Cora not to stay out late at night in August.

Cora vaguely remembers her aunt saying something about not touching anyone’s shoulder and putting out their “spiritual torches” and winces at the memory of her hands gripping Harvey. How many rules has she broken in one night?

In that moment, she wishes that Delilah—however she is—were here.

But she has always felt like she’s out at sea with only a star map and no stars at all overhead, voyaging somewhere far and nameless, and Delilah always knew where to go. All Cora can do is tread water until her arms grow numb, and float on her back and let the current rock her like a piece of garbage. It is a slow and quiet drowning, to not know your destination.

Even when she dies, she’ll just be copying Delilah again.

this is the part where she’ll fall to the ground and never get up again, where her body will shatter and she won’t be human anymore.

I don’t want to die here, Cora thinks, and the loudness of the thought shocks her, because it’s been a long time since she’s wanted anything this badly.

I will not die like my sister in this disgusting train station.

Harvey grabs one of her hands and Yifei grabs the other and they pull her up,

At least, no one they can see.

she can still feel a hand on her ankle.

Yifei turns to her, gaze softening.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve done this,” Yifei says, dropping her arm from Cora’s shoulders, zipping her jacket up. Cora remembers the bite mark below her ribs. “This will work, and next year—” she turns to Cora “—burn the fucking joss paper.”

She doesn’t need Yifei to tell her this is all her fault.

She especially can’t imagine herself ten years from now.

Maybe it’s a sign that she will end like Delilah—one moment she’ll be everything all at once, the next she’ll be in pieces too small to be human, not even worth saving.

even if Cora can’t stand to look at her, she thinks Delilah at least deserves to be heard.

Delilah would never hurt her.

Part of her had always liked not having to decide.

Part of her trusted Delilah, and part of her just liked being pulled, innocent and blameless when it all inevitably fell apart.

Cora knows, in the way she always knows terrible things before they happen, that the USB will not contain family vacation photos, or college term papers, or old tax returns. Those kinds of things aren’t worth hiding.

but she cannot

conjure a single image except a looming sense of rot, a nameless darkness, a box of white spiders.

ashamed at the relief that once again, it’s not her choice anymore.

like a sleeping animal caged beside her head.

so it smells like chemicals and the scent feels sharp and new and safe.

Delilah’s ghost might be driven by some inhuman hunger, but part of her humanity was left—she wanted to tell Cora something.

But, as always, just like a moon pulled into orbit, Cora finds herself drawing closer to the subway, readying her MetroCard, closing her eyes as she descends into darkness and the curtain of stiff hair brushes her face.

is only narrow shoulders and a neck that tapers off into a hungry whisper.

She ascends the stairs and emerges into the sunlight, peels her masks off, wanting to call out for Delilah like a child. But she doesn’t have to. The mouth of the exit sits right in front of a police station.

was so like Delilah to drag her somewhere new and then vanish, leaving her drowning in dark waters.

Delilah hadn’t seemed to want anything beyond food until Cora set foot in Officer Wang’s apartment, when Delilah gave her the USB.

The lie is so easy it scares her.

Cora is always telling quiet lies, making her aunts think she’s fine. No one ever wants to know the full truth of the carousel of Cora’s mind; she learned that lesson the hard way. But this lie is bold, even for her.

It’s been less than twenty-four hours and his things are already gone?

Nails scrape down the glass, the sound so horrid that Cora wants to tear her own ears off. But Delilah wants this badly, enough to claw her way back from hell for it.

And Cora always does what Delilah wants.

calm and unhurried because Cora is very good at pretending ...

Tears well in her eyes and Cora knows she’s doing a good job of pretending to be a grieving widow, but the secretary doesn’t understand that you don’t have to know someone to mourn them, that Cora has seen this man be unmade, and now she knows what his smile used to look like, the smile that was blasted off his face with a machine gun.

one Korean girl hacked apart with push saws while still alive, one Chinese girl drowned in her bathtub fully clothed.

never fully submerged or unaware, and she wakes feeling like she’s been treading water rather than resting.

Like a cross between American zombies and vampires.

Cora isn’t the right person to run this kind of idea by.