Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

Cora thinks about the Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the Mona Lisa, and all the beautiful women immortalized in oil paint, and wonders if they said cruel things too, if their words had mattered at all or just the roundness of their eyes and softness of their cheeks, if beautiful people are allowed to break your heart and get away with it.

Cora wonders at what point a person stops being one singular person and becomes a collection of parts.

But in real life, bodies are delicate.

Because even if Cora thought she hated her sister sometimes, even if she hated her even more for dying, she didn’t want her to suffer.

There are thousands of gods that open thousands of doors to anyone who knocks. It’s about deciding which doors you want to open.”

Cora thinks about a time, before the pandemic, when she truly thought the worst monsters were the ones inside her own head. When she thought people were mostly good, that they would save each other.

Many people think that death is the end. The ending of pain, of hate, of love. But these things are not so easy to erase.