Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

Fear is born in the after, when the world peels back its skin and shows you its raw, pulsing innards, when it forces you to remember its name. Anyone who has seen the face of fear knows you should damn well be afraid.

Thoughts are nothing at all, they come from nowhere and disappear into nothing and you can’t wade in their river as they pass by—that’s

The living are good at forgetting, the years smoothing out memories until all the days of their lives are nothing but rolling planes of sameness. But in Hell, it is always just yesterday that everything was lost. The dead do not forget.