¡Novela Fantástica! #9

¡Novela Fantástica! #9

Yes, We Are Open

Bethany Hernández knew that crazy people don't think they're crazy. That was, according to her doctoral thesis, the first and most solid pillar of paranoia. The funny thing, she thought while sipping watery coffee in the university cafeteria, was that she did consider herself a little crazy. But for having devoted eight years of her life to studying people like her ex-boyfriend.

Damian.

The name still tasted like metal in her mouth. Damian, who in their second year of dating had sworn to her, tears in his eyes and a laser pointer aimed at a blurry photo on his laptop, that the Secretary of Defense wasn't human. "Look at the shadow of the eyes, Beth. They're not eyes. They're reptilian. You see them when they blink in videos, just for a frame. They're taking over everything."

She, at nineteen, freshly arrived from El Paso to study at UT, had laughed. At first. Then, when he started putting duct tape on the door cracks of their shared apartment so "they wouldn't steal their air," the laughter got stuck in her throat. The breaking point was when he blocked her from entering her own house, convinced that she had already been "replaced" by an interdimensional entity. She had to call the police from a neighbor's cell phone, watching them take him away in handcuffs while he screamed at her: "They're using you, Bethany! Look at their hands, they don't have five complete fingers, they're disguised claws!"

That night, crying on her friend Lupita's sofa, something broke in her. But it wasn't her faith in love. It was her curiosity. How did a mind reach that point? Where was the border between mistrust and psychosis?

That's why now, a decade later, Dr. Bethany Hernández sat on the other side of the desk, facing a study subject who was sweating and telling her, with astonishing conviction, that chemtrails were actually a liquid vaccine to make the population sterile and submissive. She nodded, took notes, and felt terribly guilty. Because deep down, in a very dark corner of her academic brain, a little voice whispered to her: What if Damian... what if he wasn't so crazy? Not about the lizards, obviously. But... what if madness is just an allergy to reality?

The dark joke of her life was this: the more she understood the machinery of delusion, the more she suspected that everyone, herself included, was just a couple of bad nights of sleep away from seeing claws on other people's hands. Sanity, she concluded, was just a conspiracy that worked.

She turned off her recorder, thanked the patient, and went out into the hallway. Her phone vibrated. It was a message from an unknown number. It just said:

THEY'VE SEEN YOUR THESIS. THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU. TRUST NO ONE WITH OPPOSABLE THUMBS.

Bethany snorted. A troll. It had to be a troll. But looking at her own hands on the phone, she felt a ridiculous chill. She noticed her thumbs. There they were. Opposable. Like everyone else's.

For an instant, she hated Damian with a fresh passion. For leaving her that doubt, that little splinter of glass under the skin of reality.

Bethany blocked the number and spent the next three hours pretending to grade papers. The thumbs thing kept circling back, a mosquito of a thought she couldn't swat. Opposable thumbs. Was that a joke? A reference she didn't get? Or did some paranoid corner of the internet actually believe thumb structure indicated humanity?

She needed a palate cleanser. Something normal. Boring, even.

Instagram offered her a video of a woman frosting a cake that looked exactly like a basset hound. The caption read: "Nobody told me the ears would take six hours." Bethany laughed—a real laugh, the kind that surprised her—and scrolled to the comments.

And there, under a thread debating the merits of buttercream versus fondant, was a woman arguing that cake decorating was "proof that reality is negotiable."

Fondant is just lies we tell ourselves, the woman wrote. Buttercream is truth with texture. You can't smooth it perfectly because life isn't smooth. But people keep trying to fondant everything—their faces, their feelings, their memories. Smooth and plastic and fake.

Bethany typed before thinking: So you're saying we should all eat lumpy cake?

The woman responded within seconds: I'm saying the lumps tell you where the flavor is.

Something about that landed in Bethany's chest like a soft dart. She clicked the woman's profile. Private. One photo: a silhouette against a sunset, holding what might have been a cup of coffee. Username: @deep_currant.

She requested to follow.

Three hours later, back in her small apartment with takeout Thai food, her phone lit up. @deep_currant had accepted. And there was a direct message waiting.

You're the one who asked about lumps.

Bethany typed: Guilty.

Lumps aren't the problem, the woman wrote. The problem is people who insist the cake was never in the oven. They want you to believe it materialized whole. Finished. Frosted. No heat, no rising, no collapse.

Bethany set down her fork.

Who does that? she asked.

Everyone who's afraid of what happens in the dark, came the reply. Between the mixing and the baking. That's where the real recipe lives. But they don't want you looking there.

The mosquito thought returned, but softer now. Less annoying. More like a tiny lantern.

What's your name? Bethany asked.

A pause. Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

People call me Abuela. Not because I'm old. Because I remember things they've tried to frost over.

Bethany stared at the screen. Outside, a car alarm blared and died. Her phone buzzed again.

You're studying paranoia, right?

Bethany's stomach tightened. How did you—

Because you asked about lumps. Only people looking for something real ask about lumps. The rest just want the smooth.

Are you saying paranoia is real? Bethany typed.

I'm saying maybe the cake is haunted. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

Bethany laughed despite herself. That's not very scientific.

Science is just organized curiosity, Abuela wrote. And curiosity knows the cake is lying. There's always something underneath the frosting.

Another pause. Then:

You got a message today. About thumbs.

Bethany's blood chilled. How do you know that?

Because they sent it. They send those messages to everyone who gets close. Testing. Seeing who panics, who blocks, who asks questions.

Who are "they"?

Three dots. Then:

Not here. Not like this. But I'll tell you one thing, Dr. Hernández.

Bethany waited.

It's not about lizards. It's not about clones. It's about what happens when you realize the recipe was wrong from the start. And you have to decide: eat the cake anyway, or find out what's really in the oven.

The message sat there, glowing in the dark of her apartment.

Bethany typed: How do I find out?

Abuela's response came immediately:

First, stop trusting your thumbs.

Bethany stared at the message until her phone screen dimmed, then went dark. Her own reflection looked back at her—tired eyes, takeout container balanced on her knee, thumbs hovering over the black glass.

Stop trusting your thumbs.

She snorted and typed: That's ridiculous.

Abuela's reply was instant: Is it? When's the last time your thumbs did something for you? Really for you, not for the phone?

Bethany opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. She looked at her hands. The thumbs just sat there, opposable and smug.

They hold things, she typed defensively.

They hold phones, Abuela corrected. They scroll. They type. They swipe. They're doorways, Dr. Hernández. And doorways go both ways.

The mosquito thought flared into something larger. Bethany put down her phone, picked up her cold pad thai, and discovered she wasn't hungry anymore.

•••

She didn't message Abuela for three days. Not because she wasn't curious—she was, terribly so—but because something in her professional brain raised a red flag. This was exactly how recruitment worked. This was exactly how people got pulled into the very belief systems she studied.

But on the fourth day, a notification arrived.

@deep_currant started a community

The community was called Las Recuerdas. The description read: For women who've been told the recipe was wrong. Abuela's kitchen. Bring your own lumps.

Bethany's finger hovered over the Join button. Her thesis advisor's voice echoed in her skull: Subject proximity, Bethany. Never get close to the subject.

She joined.

•••

The first thing she noticed was the language. Spanish threaded through everything like the grease left on good tortilla papers. Mija this and ay Dios that. Screenshots of unhinged texts from ex-boyfriends captioned with El loco se graduó cum laude de la universidad de pendejos.

The second thing she noticed was the humor.

A woman named Carlota posted a photo of a crumpled note her ex had left under her windshield wiper. It read: THEY'RE IN THE DRAINS. LISTEN WHEN YOU FLUSH.

The comments exploded.

Oh honey, he's not crazy, he's just early for the sewer tour.

Did you tell him the alligators are actually working for the lizards? He'd love that crossover episode.

Someone send him the menu for La Cueva—I hear they do a great human ceviche.

Bethany laughed so hard she choked on her coffee.

But the laughter felt strange in her chest. Because these women weren't mocking. Not really. They were doing something else—something she couldn't quite name. They were taking the madness and folding it into something shared. Something almost warm.

She scrolled deeper.

A thread titled Restaurant Recommendations caught her eye.

OP (Liliana): My ex keeps saying the aliens run a farm upstate where they process humans into protein powder. I told him I'd love to visit but only if they have a vegan option. He hasn't spoken to me in three weeks. Victory.

Comment from Elena: You should ask him about the wine list. I heard they pair humans with a nice Chianti.

Comment from Sofia: Actually my cousin's boyfriend's roommate swears the aliens just opened a food truck on Cesar Chavez. "Los Extraterrestres" or something. They only serve on Tuesdays and you have to bring your own teeth.

Reply from Liliana: TEETH. I'm dead. Tell your cousin's boyfriend's roommate I'll bring dentures.

Bethany typed before thinking: Do they take reservations?

Three dots appeared immediately.

Elena: She asks the real questions.

Sofia: Only if you're pre-tenderized, mija. You look pretty tough though.

Liliana: Welcome, new girl. Pull up a chair. The lumps are on the house.

•••

Over the following weeks, Bethany found herself checking Las Recuerdas the way other people checked the weather. It became a ritual. Morning coffee, scroll the feed, laugh at the conspiracies repurposed into inside jokes, marvel at how these women had taken the sharpest pieces of their pasts and polished them into something almost beautiful.

There was Valeria, whose ex insisted the moon was a hologram. She now signed every message with See you on the green cheese.

There was Marisol, whose ex had hidden her shoes because "they put trackers in the soles." She now ran a small business selling handmade sandals with "free-range leather and guaranteed no tracking devices."

There was Patricia, whose ex had claimed the water bill was actually a coded message from interdimensional beings. She now sent voice notes to the group translating random junk mail into "alien prophecies."

"Dear resident," she read dramatically in one, "your garbage service will be delayed due to the holiday. This means... THEY'RE COMING ON THURSDAY INSTEAD. HIDE YOUR COMPOST."

Bethany wept laughing.

But underneath the laughter, something was shifting. The women in Las Recuerdas didn't just mock their exes' beliefs—they inhabited them, playfully, like trying on coats too big for their bodies. And in doing so, they drained the beliefs of their power. The conspiracies became costumes. The paranoia became puppets.

Bethany, trained observer of delusion, realized she was watching something she'd never seen in a textbook: communal exorcism through absurdity.

•••

Then one night, a direct message arrived from Abuela.

You're ready.

Bethany typed back: For what?

The real question. The one you've been avoiding since you joined.

Bethany's thumbs hovered.

What if they're not wrong? Abuela wrote. All of them. Your Damian. All our exes. What if the recipe IS wrong? What if reality IS a cake made of lies?

Bethany's professional brain screamed. Her heart pounded.

That's not— she started.

I'm not saying the lizards are real, Abuela interrupted. I'm saying the hunger is. The feeling that something's off. That the frosting is too smooth. That the lumps are trying to tell you something.

Bethany thought of Damian's face the night he was arrested. The desperate love in his eyes. The way he'd screamed that he was protecting her.

Where is this going? she asked.

There's a place, Abuela wrote. A message board. Deeper. Not for beginners. Women there have been through more than most. They've stopped laughing at the conspiracies. They've started asking what's underneath them.

And?

And they want to meet you. Tomorrow night. Virtual. I'll send the link.

Bethany stared at the screen.

What's the board called?

A long pause. Then:

La Cocina Verdadera.

The True Kitchen.

Bring your lumps, Dr. Hernández. And maybe leave your thumbs at home.

Bethany set down her phone. Outside her window, the city hummed its indifferent hum. Somewhere out there, Damian was probably still screaming about lizards. Somewhere out there, the women of Las Recuerdas were probably still laughing.

And somewhere else—somewhere deeper, somewhere she couldn't yet see—a kitchen waited.

She wasn't sure if she was hungry.

But she was curious.

•••

The Zoom link arrived at 7:52 PM. Bethany had been staring at her laptop for twenty minutes, a glass of wine sweating onto a coaster she kept forgetting to buy. The meeting was scheduled for eight. La Cocina Verdadera. The True Kitchen.

She'd told herself she wouldn't dress up. This wasn't a date. This wasn't even research, technically. This was—what? Curiosity? Loneliness? The strange pull of women who'd learned to stir the pot instead of fear it?

At 7:58, she changed shirts three times. Settled on a black one. Neutral. Professional. The shirt of someone who definitely wasn't about to join a conspiracy theory support group that might actually be a conspiracy.

At 8:01, she clicked the link.

The room that opened on her screen was not what she expected. No shadowy figures. No distorted voices. Just a kitchen—a real one, tiled and warm, with copper pots hanging and something simmering on a stove in the background. Five women sat around a table, their faces lit by soft light. They ranged in age from maybe thirty to well past seventy. All of them held mugs. All of them smiled like they'd been expecting her.

"Dr. Hernández," said the oldest woman, her gray hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip. "Sit down, mija. You're making the screen nervous standing there."

Bethany realized she was, in fact, standing in her living room, laptop on the coffee table, hovering like she might bolt. She sat.

"I'm Abuela," the woman continued. "Though you probably guessed that. This is Carlota, Elena, Sofia, and Liliana. You know them from the group."

Bethany knew their usernames. Seeing their faces felt strangely intimate, like walking into a dream where everyone already knows your name.

"Hi," she managed. "I—thank you for the invitation."

Carlota leaned forward. She was maybe forty, with sharp eyes and a nose ring. "How's your wine?"

Bethany blinked. "Sorry?"

"Your wine. You're holding it like a shield. Is it any good?"

Bethany looked down at the glass in her hand. She'd forgotten it existed. "It's... fine. Cheap. Student budget, even though I'm not a student anymore."

"See?" Carlota said to the group. "She's honest. I like her."

Elena, a soft-faced woman with reading glasses perched on her head, laughed. "Carlota thinks honesty is when people admit to drinking cheap wine. She's not wrong."

Sofia, the youngest of them—maybe early thirties, with dark curls and a baby on her hip—raised her mug. "I'm drinking box wine and I'm not ashamed. The baby only sleeps forty-five minutes at a stretch. Box wine is a survival tool."

"Survival," Abuela said, and something in her voice shifted the room's temperature. "That's what we're here to talk about, mija. Not conspiracy. Not paranoia. Survival."

Bethany set down her wine. "I'm listening."

Liliana, who hadn't spoken yet, placed both hands flat on the table. She was elegant, silver-streaked hair, cheekbones that could cut glass. "Your ex-boyfriend. Damian. He believed the Secretary of Defense wasn't human, yes?"

Bethany's stomach tightened. "How do you—"

"We don't spy," Liliana said. "We remember. Women in Las Recuerdas share stories. Patterns emerge. Your Damian's pattern is... familiar."

"He was sick," Bethany said. The words came out defensive, professional. "Delusional disorder, paranoid type. Possibly schizoaffective. The reptilian beliefs are a known cultural variant—"

"He was right," Liliana said.

The words landed like stones in still water.

Bethany stared. "Excuse me?"

"Not about the lizards." Liliana's mouth quirked. "Dios, no. The lizards are just... decoration. The way children draw monsters with too many teeth because they don't know what fear looks like yet. The shape of what he believed—that was wrong. But the feeling? That something was eating people and pretending it wasn't?"

She looked around the table. The other women nodded.

"That feeling," Liliana continued, "is real."

Bethany's professional brain screamed. Confirmation bias. Group contagion. Folie à plusieurs. She opened her mouth to cite studies, statistics, the DSM—

"Before you diagnose us," Abuela said gently, "look at something."

She held up her phone. On it was a photograph of a man in a suit, shaking hands with a politician. Normal. Boring. The kind of photo that ran in newspapers and was forgotten by lunch.

"Do you know him?" Abuela asked.

Bethany squinted. "No. Should I?"

"He was my husband's brother. Disappeared in 2008. Found three weeks later in a field outside Laredo. The official report said coyotes. But coyotes don't fold clothes."

The word fold hung in the air like smoke.

Bethany's throat tightened. "I don't understand."

"Nobody does," Elena said. "That's the point. The ones who do understand—they don't want us to. They want us fighting about lizards and chemtrails and flat earth. They want the crazy people to be so loud that no one listens to the ones asking real questions."

Sofia shifted the baby to her other hip. "My ex believed the water bill was coded messages. Everyone laughed at him. Meanwhile, his uncle was actually laundering money through a church in Juárez. The real conspiracy was sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and nobody noticed because we were all too busy rolling our eyes at his alien theories."

Bethany's mind churned. "You're saying the paranoia is—what? A smokescreen?"

"A pressure valve," Carlota said. "Let the crazy ones scream about lizards so the rest don't notice the people quietly getting disappeared. Make believing anything seem ridiculous, and suddenly nobody believes anything—including their own eyes."

"This sounds like..." Bethany hesitated. "This sounds like a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories."

"Meta," Liliana said, and almost smiled. "We know. We've been called crazy by people who think the government definitely faked the moon landing but definitely doesn't run disappearances. The hierarchy of delusion is fascinating, isn't it? Everyone's wrong except me."

Abuela laughed—a real laugh, warm and creaky. "Mija, we're not asking you to believe us. We're asking you to look. You're a scientist. Look at the data no one else is collecting."

"What data?"

"The women who come to Las Recuerdas. The ones whose exes were 'crazy' but also... right. Not about the aliens. About the feeling. The pattern. The way certain people vanish and no one asks why. The way certain jobs make you safer than others. The way having money protects you from being 'eaten'—whatever that means."

Bethany thought of Damian's face. The terror in his eyes. They're using you, Bethany. Look at their hands.

"The thumbs," she said quietly.

Abuela nodded. "You got the message. We all did, at some point. It's a test. See who blocks, who laughs, who asks questions."

"I asked questions."

"You joined Las Recuerdas. You showed up here tonight. That's more than most." Abuela leaned forward. "We're not a cult, mija. We're not recruiting. We're just... women who've noticed something. And we're willing to share what we've found."

Bethany's heart hammered. "What have you found?"

The women exchanged glances. Something passed between them—a decision, maybe. A weighing.

Liliana spoke first. "Patterns. Certain people who disappear have one thing in common: they were about to testify. About to talk. About to expose something."

"About to inherit," Elena added.

"About to be inconvenient," Sofia said.

Carlota nodded. "My ex wasn't crazy about the aliens. He was crazy because his brother worked at a meat processing plant in the panhandle and started asking questions about where the really cheap meat came from. The one that gets sold in bulk to prisons, schools, nursing homes. The one nobody asks about because it's cheaper than chicken."

Bethany's stomach turned. "What happened to his brother?"

"He didn't disappear. He just... stopped asking questions. Moved to Florida. Works at a Waffle House now. Won't talk about it." Carlota's voice was flat. "But before he stopped, he told my ex something. He said the trucks came at night. No markings. Government plates. And the smell—he said the smell was wrong. Like nothing he'd ever smelled before. Not rot. Not chemicals. Just... wrong."

The baby fussed. Sofia bounced him gently.

Abuela set down her mug. "We're not saying we know what it is, mija. We're saying something is. And the men who got too close—the ones who couldn't find the words for what they sensed—they reached for the only framework they had. Aliens. Reptilians. Demons. Whatever their culture handed them. They were right that there's a monster. They were wrong about its name."

Bethany sat very still. Somewhere in her chest, the little splinter of glass that Damian had left behind—the doubt, the question—pulsed faintly.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're not crazy," Liliana said simply. "And because you're a researcher. You can look where we can't. You can ask questions without people assuming you're asking about lizards."

"And because," Abuela added, "you're alone. We can tell. The way you hold your wine like a weapon. The way you haven't mentioned a single friend in any of your posts. The way you're still wearing your thesis advisor's voice in your head like a helmet."

Bethany flushed. "That's—"

"We've all been there," Sofia interrupted gently. "The academic armor. The 'I'm studying this, not participating in it.' But you are participating, mija. You're here. In a kitchen. With women who make box wine jokes and watch their babies while talking about disappearances. That's not research. That's life."

The word landed hard.

Life.

Bethany realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd done something that wasn't work, or preparation for work, or recovery from work. Couldn't remember the last time she'd sat with women and just... talked. Laughed. Felt the warmth of shared absurdity and shared fear.

"Okay," she said quietly. "What do you want me to do?"

"For now?" Abuela smiled. "Come to ladies' night. Tomorrow. There's a place on South First—La Paloma. Low lighting, strong drinks, live music that's loud enough to talk over. We meet every Thursday. You bring your lumps, we bring ours."

"And then?"

"And then we see if you want to know more. If you want to look closer. If you want to help us understand what's really in the oven." Abuela's eyes were kind but sharp. "No pressure, mija. The cake isn't going anywhere. Neither are we."

Bethany looked at the faces on her screen. Carlota's sharp eyes. Elena's soft smile. Sofia's bouncing baby. Liliana's elegant stillness. Abuela's warm, creased face.

They looked like women she could have known her whole life. Women who'd drink cheap wine and laugh at absurdity and, somewhere underneath it all, carry the weight of something real.

"Tomorrow," Bethany said. "What time?"

"Nine." Abuela raised her mug. "And Dr. Hernández? Leave the thesis at home. Bring your appetite."

The call ended. Bethany sat in her dark living room, laptop screen faded to black, wine forgotten and warm.

Somewhere outside, the city hummed.

Somewhere out there, trucks drove at night and people disappeared and men screamed about lizards while women in kitchens asked real questions.

Bethany looked at her hands. Her thumbs. Opposable. Doorways.

She thought of Damian's face. The terror. The love. They're using you.

Maybe he was wrong.

But maybe—just maybe—he'd felt something real and dressed it in the only clothes he had.

Tomorrow, she'd find out.

She picked up her phone and texted Lupita, the friend who'd caught her tears a decade ago: Hey. Remember Damian? I think I might be following him down a rabbit hole. But the rabbits are women and they make really good jokes.

Lupita's response came fast: Send address. If you're going crazy, I'm bringing snacks.

Bethany laughed. The sound surprised her.

For the first time in years, the darkness outside her window didn't feel like it was pressing in.

It felt like it was waiting.

And she wasn't afraid to look.

•••

The elevator lobby of her building smelled like someone had been boiling cabbage again. Bethany fumbled for her keys, her mind still back in the stuffy office with Mr. Castellano and his conviction that the local water supply was laced with tranquilizers to make men docile for the coming takeover. They want us sleepy, Doctora. Too sleepy to fight.

She was tired. The kind of tired that lived in the marrow.

The lobby was empty. Just the flickering fluorescent light, the sad fern in the corner, the elevator door with its little sticker reminding residents to report suspicious activity.

She pressed the button. The elevator hummed somewhere above.

And then a figure detached itself from the shadow beside the fern.

Bethany's heart seized. Her hand tightened on her keys, the longest one pointed outward the way Lupita had taught her after Damian's arrest.

"Beth."

The voice stopped her cold.

He stepped into the flickering light. Damian. Thinner than she remembered. His hair was longer, unwashed, and his eyes—those same dark eyes that had once looked at her like she was the only real thing in the world—were wide and wet and burning.

"Damian." His name came out flat. Shock, maybe. Or the exhaustion that had been pooling in her bones for years. "You can't be here."

"I know." He held up his hands, palms out. Empty. "I know, Beth. I know. But I had to—they're going to—" He stopped, swallowed, tried again. "You have to listen. Just once. Just five minutes. After that, I'll go. I'll disappear. I promise."

The elevator arrived with a cheerful ding.

Bethany didn't move. Her thumb—her opposable, traitorous thumb—pressed hard against the key shaft.

"You're scaring me," she said. Which was true. But underneath the truth was something else: curiosity. The old wound. The splinter of glass.

"Good." Damian nodded vigorously. "Be scared. Be scared, Beth, because scared people live. Scared people pay attention. And you need to pay attention right now like you've never paid attention to anything in your life."

He took a step closer. She didn't step back. The keys stayed ready.

"I'm not crazy," he said. "I know you think I am. I know what the doctors said. What your thesis said. But I'm not crazy, Beth. I was wrong about the lizards. I see that now. The lizards were just—they were just my brain trying to find a picture for something that doesn't have a picture."

"Then what—"

"The aliens aren't reptiles, Beth. They don't have a form we can hold. They're not little green men. They're not grays. They're not anything we can point at and say that. They're—" He pressed his palms to his temples, squeezing like he could force the right words out. "They're hunger. Pure hunger. And they've been eating us forever. Not our bodies. Not at first. Our attention. Our belief. Our ability to tell what's real. They eat the space between things."

The lobby felt smaller. The flickering light seemed to pulse.

"You showed up in my dream last night," Damian continued, words tumbling now. "You were standing in a kitchen—some kitchen I've never seen—and you were stirring a pot. And I tried to yell at you, tried to tell you to stop, because I knew—I knew—that what you were stirring was the recipe. The real one. The one they don't want anyone to find."

Bethany's blood went cold. A kitchen.

"Damian—"

"And then you turned around and your eyes weren't your eyes. They were just—holes. Empty holes. And you said, 'The lumps tell you where the flavor is.' And I woke up screaming."

The words hit her like a physical blow. The lumps tell you where the flavor is. Abuela's words. The words that had pulled her into Las Recuerdas.

"How do you know that phrase?" Her voice came out sharp. Accusing.

Something flickered in Damian's eyes. Triumph? Terror? "Because it's real, Beth. It's all real. The women you're talking to—they're not what you think. They're not saving you. They're collecting you. Gathering ingredients. You think you're studying the recipe? You're in the recipe. You've always been in it."

The elevator dinged again. The doors slid open, revealing empty fluorescent brightness.

"Come with me," Damian said. "Right now. Leave everything. Your phone, your keys, all of it. They track through the thumbs, Beth. The thumbs are the door. I told you that. I told you."

Bethany stared at him. The man who had once duct-taped their apartment. The man who had blocked her from entering her own home. The man whose face she'd watched disappear into a police car a decade ago.

He looked sane. That was the terrible thing. He looked more sane than she'd ever seen him.

"Just five minutes," he said again. "Walk with me to the corner. No phones. No thumbs. Just talk. After that, I'll go. I promise."

Behind her, the elevator waited. In front of her, Damian waited. And somewhere in her chest, the little splinter of glass pulsed like a second heart.

The lobby door burst open.

Two security guards in cheap uniforms filled the doorway, radios crackling. One of them—Miguel, she recognized him from building meetings—pointed at Damian.

"That's him. That's the trespasser."

Damian didn't run. Didn't fight. He just looked at Bethany with those burning eyes and said, "Remember the dream, Beth. Remember the kitchen. And remember—" He touched his own thumb. "—the door goes both ways."

Miguel and the other guard were on him then, efficient and bored, the way people handle a problem they've handled before. Damian went easily, still watching her, still burning.

"Call the police," Miguel said to his partner. To Bethany, softer: "You okay, Dr. Hernández? He bother you?"

Damian, being pulled toward the door, twisted back one last time. "The recipe is wrong, Beth! The whole recipe! But you can still—"

The door closed. His voice cut off.

The lobby was silent again. The elevator still waited, doors open, fluorescent and empty.

Bethany stood very still. Her keys pressed into her palm. Her thumb—her opposable, traitorous thumb—throbbed faintly.

The door goes both ways.

She should go upstairs. Pour that wine. Call Lupita. File a police report. Do all the normal, reasonable things a normal, reasonable person does after a disturbed ex-boyfriend accosts them in their lobby.

Instead, she pulled out her phone.

The message from Abuela was still there, days old now. Bring your lumps, Dr. Hernández. And maybe leave your thumbs at home.

Bethany typed: He knew about the kitchen. He knew about the lumps. How?

Three dots appeared immediately. Then:

Tomorrow. La Paloma. 9pm. We'll explain everything.

Bethany stared at the message. Outside, a police siren wailed, growing closer.

Tonight, she typed. I need to know tonight.

A long pause. Then:

The door goes both ways, mija. Choose which side you're on.

The lobby was cold. The elevator dinged again, impatient.

Bethany looked at her thumb. Then at the door Damian had disappeared through. Then at the elevator.

She didn't go upstairs.

She walked outside into the night, leaving the elevator to wait for someone else.

•••

The night air hit Bethany like a wet towel—humid, thick, carrying the distant smell of grease from the taco truck on the corner. She stood on the sidewalk outside her building, watching the police cruiser pull away with Damian in the back seat. His face pressed against the window, mouth forming words she couldn't hear.

The door goes both ways.

She shoved her hands in her pockets. Her thumbs felt hot. Stupid. She was being stupid. Damian was sick. The women in Las Recuerdas were supportive. These two facts could coexist. They had to.

Her phone buzzed.

Lupita: You okay? Miguel texted me. Said your ex showed up.

Bethany typed: Fine. He's gone. Cops took him.

Lupita: You want company? I'll bring the cheap wine and the good judgment.

Bethany almost said yes. Almost typed please and come over and I don't want to be alone with my brain tonight. But her fingers moved differently.

Can't. Got something. Tomorrow I'll explain. Maybe.

Lupita's response took longer this time: That's exactly what people say before they join cults.

Bethany laughed despite herself. Not a cult. Just women. With jokes.

The best cults always have jokes, Lupita replied. Seriously. Call me if your thumbs start acting weird.

The thumbs thing again. Bethany looked at her hands. Normal. Just hands. Just flesh and bone and opposable digits that had, admittedly, spent the last hour scrolling through a private community of women who talked about ex-boyfriends like they were warning labels.

She walked.

Not toward anything. Just away from the lobby, away from the elevator, away from the ghost of Damian's face pressed against police glass. South First Street stretched ahead, storefronts shuttered, the occasional bar still spilling light and laughter onto the sidewalk.

La Paloma.

The name surfaced from somewhere—Abuela's message? A post in Las Recuerdas? She couldn't remember. But suddenly she was looking at it. A building. No, not a building—a complex. Ancient commercial real estate that had given up on ambition sometime in the Reagan administration. Scaffolding clung to the facade like a metal skeleton, rust-streaked and unfinished. A sign in the window advertised FUTURE HOME OF SOMETHING BETTER in letters that had been fading since 2003.

Bethany checked her phone. 11:47 PM. The restaurant was supposed to be on South First, but this couldn't be it. This was a construction site. A demolition waiting to happen.

She almost kept walking.

But her thumbs—her stupid, opposable, traitorous thumbs—typed La Paloma South First into Google Maps anyway.

The pin dropped exactly where she stood.

Street view loaded. And there it was: the same scaffolding, the same faded sign, the same absolutely nothing that looked like a restaurant.

Bethany zoomed in. Rotated. Looked for the little yellow person to drop onto the street and see what the camera saw.

Nothing.

Just scaffolding and shadow.

She looked up from her phone. The building loomed. And then—she wasn't sure why—she walked around the side.

The passage was easy to miss. A gap between dumpsters, narrow enough that she almost turned back. But something pulled her forward. Curiosity. The splinter. The stupid hope that there might be something underneath the frosting.

The stairs appeared first. Concrete, crumbling, leading up to a mezzanine that didn't seem to exist anymore. And underneath them, tucked into the architecture like a secret the building had forgotten it was keeping, a door.

The sign read: sí, estamos abiertos.

Yes, we're open.

Bethany stood in the passage, heart hammering. No music came from inside. No light escaped the edges. Just a door, and a sign, and the absolute certainty that no one found this place by accident.

She knocked.

The door opened.

The woman who answered was maybe sixty, with gray braids coiled like a crown and an apron dusted with flour. She smiled like she'd been expecting Bethany since before Bethany was born.

"Dr. Hernández," she said. Not a question. "You're early. But the kitchen's always ready."

Bethany opened her mouth—to refuse, to explain, to ask how this woman knew her name—but the woman had already turned, walking back inside, leaving the door open like an invitation or a trap.

Choose which side you're on.

Bethany chose.

•••

Inside, La Paloma was impossible.

The basement should have been cramped and damp. Instead, it opened into a space larger than the building above could possibly contain. Warm light from paper lanterns. Tables draped in embroidered cloth. A small stage in the corner with a guitar leaning against an amp, no musician in sight. The smell of something rich and slow-cooking, the kind of smell that made Bethany realize she hadn't eaten dinner.

And women.

Every table held women. Drinking wine. Leaning close to whisper. Laughing with their heads thrown back. Ages ranging from early twenties to probably older than the building. All of them looked up when Bethany entered. All of them smiled.

Not welcoming smiles. Something else. Something that made Bethany's spine prickle.

Recognizing smiles.

"Bethany!" A voice she knew. Carlota, rising from a corner table, nose ring glinting. "You came! I said you would. Elena owed me five bucks."

Elena, beside her, raised a hand in acknowledgment. "I'll pay in lump-free cake. Betty's recipe."

"There's no such thing as lump-free cake," Sofia called from another table, baby nowhere in sight for once. "That's just lies."

"Fondant," someone muttered, and the room dissolved into laughter.

Bethany stood in the doorway, frozen. This was—this was them. All of them. The women from Las Recuerdas. Dozens of them, maybe more, filling a restaurant that shouldn't exist.

Abuela appeared at her elbow. "Surprise."

"You—" Bethany's voice came out strangled. "This is—"

"A restaurant. With food. And women. You've seen restaurants before, mija." Abuela's eyes crinkled. "Come. Sit. The appetizers are coming."

Bethany let herself be guided to a table near the stage. Carlota and Elena joined them. Sofia slid into the remaining seat, dropping a kiss on Abuela's cheek.

"We're so happy you're here," Sofia said. And something in her voice—the warmth, the sincerity—made Bethany's throat tight.

"I don't understand," Bethany admitted. "This place. All of you. Damian showed up tonight and he knew things—things I only talked about here. In the group. How?"

The women exchanged glances. That same weighing look from the Zoom call.

"The group isn't just online," Carlota said carefully. "It never was. Las Recuerdas is... a network. Women who've seen things. Women who've lost people. Women who've noticed the pattern."

"And La Paloma is where we meet," Elena added. "When we need to talk in person. When the texting gets too thin."

"Damian," Bethany pressed. "How did he know?"

Abuela sighed. "Damian was always sensitive. That was his problem. Too sensitive, not enough shape to put the feelings in. He felt the hunger and called it lizards. He felt the pattern and called it conspiracy. He felt you—felt you getting close to something real—and his brain dressed it in dream-clothes."

"He's not wrong about everything," Liliana said, appearing with a bottle of wine and filling glasses without asking. "That's the tragedy of the sensitive ones. They feel the fire but point at the wrong flame."

Bethany's head spun. "So he's... what? Psychic?"

Another glance exchange. Sofia laughed softly.

"Nothing so fancy, mija. Just human. Just paying attention in a world that rewards sleep. The men who end up in hospitals, screaming about lizards—they're not sick because they noticed something. They're sick because they couldn't find the words. Couldn't find us. So they built prisons out of their own fear and called them explanations."

Bethany thought of Damian's face in the police car. The desperate love. The way he'd known about the kitchen, about the lumps.

"Am I in danger?" she asked.

The question landed heavy.

Abuela reached across the table and took Bethany's hand. Her palm was warm, calloused, real. "We're all in danger, mija. From the moment we're born. But here—" she squeezed. "—here you're in company. And company changes everything."

A woman appeared at their table. Young, maybe twenty-five, with a tray balanced on one shoulder. She set down a platter in the center.

"Appetizers," she announced. "Enjoy."

Bethany looked down.

The platter held fingers.

Human fingers—or things that looked exactly like them—arranged in a neat circle around a small bowl of dark sauce. Each one perfectly formed. Knuckles. Nails. The tiny wrinkles at the joints. Fried to a golden brown.

Bethany's brain stopped working.

"That's—" she started. Stopped. Started again. "Those are—"

"Thumbs," Carlota said cheerfully. "Fried human thumbs. With dipping sauce. The sauce is key, really. Takes them from horrifying to haute cuisine."

The table laughed. Actually laughed. Sofia reached for one, bit into it with a crunch that echoed in Bethany's skull.

"Oh, these are good tonight," Sofia said, mouth full. "Crispy on the outside, tender inside. Chef's really outdone herself."

Bethany couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The thumbs sat on the platter, accusatory, impossible. She thought of Damian's warning. They're collecting you. Gathering ingredients.

"Eat," Abuela said gently. "Before they get cold."

"I can't—" Bethany's voice cracked. "Those are—you can't—"

"Can't what?" Elena tilted her head. "Serve the meal we've been preparing? Bethany. Mija. Look at me."

Bethany looked. Elena's face was soft, kind, utterly sane.

"Nobody's making you do anything," Elena said. "But I'll tell you a secret. The secret of La Paloma." She leaned forward. "The only way out is through. And the only way through is to taste."

Bethany's hands shook. Her thumbs—her stupid, opposable, traitorous thumbs—pressed against the table edge.

"What are they?" she whispered.

"What do they look like?"

"Human thumbs."

"And if I told you they were pork? Shaped and fried to look like thumbs? A joke, basically. A very dark joke for women who've had enough of men who couldn't keep their hands to themselves."

Bethany stared at the platter. The sauce glistened.

"Your ex-boyfriend," Carlota said casually, "the one before Damian. What was his name?"

Bethany blinked at the non sequitur. "Marcus. Why?"

"Marcus. Right. The one who texted his ex while you were in the bathroom on your third date. The one who said it 'didn't count' because she was 'just a friend.' The one who, when you found the photos on his phone, said you were being 'paranoid and controlling.'"

Bethany's stomach lurched. She'd never posted about Marcus. Never mentioned him in Las Recuerdas. Never told anyone the details except—

Except Lupita. Late nights. Cheap wine. The story spilling out like poison.

"How do you know about Marcus?"

Carlota smiled. "We know a lot of things, mija. That's the point of the network. We share. We remember. We cook."

Bethany looked at the thumbs on the platter. Looked at the faces around the table—warm, kind, utterly sane.

"This is a joke," she said. "Right? A really elaborate, really disturbing joke."

"It's always a joke," Abuela said. "Until it's not. But here—" She picked up a thumb, held it between her own opposable digits. "—here, it's always a joke. Because if we didn't laugh, we'd scream. And screaming attracts the wrong kind of attention."

She bit into the thumb. Crunch.

Bethany's stomach heaved.

"Try," Sofia urged. "Just one. If you hate it, you never have to come back. But if you don't try—" She shrugged. "—you'll always wonder."

The lumps tell you where the flavor is.

Bethany reached for a thumb.

Her hand shook. The thing was warm, greasy, disturbingly flesh-like in her grip. She brought it to her mouth. The smell was—actually good. Savory. Fried-batter good.

She bit down.

Crunch.

The texture was... pork. Had to be pork. Crispy skin, tender inside, the familiar salt-and-spice of good frying. She chewed. Swallowed. Took another bite.

"See?" Elena beamed. "Not so bad."

Bethany set down the bone—because there was a bone, small and delicate and definitely not human-shaped now that she looked closer. Pork. Had to be pork.

"Who came up with this?" she asked, voice steadier than she felt.

"One of the abuelas," Carlota said. "Decades ago. She said if men were going to use their thumbs for stupid things—" she wiggled her own thumbs suggestively. "—then the least they could do was contribute to the menu."

The table dissolved into laughter. Bethany found herself joining, the sound surprising her.

More dishes arrived. A main course—liver, prepared somehow that made it actually edible, served with caramelized onions and something green that Bethany didn't recognize. Dessert followed: a dark cake, rich and dense, with frosting the color of old rust.

"This one's special," Sofia said, cutting Bethany a slice. "Baked it myself. The recipe's been in my family for generations."

Bethany took a bite. Chocolate. Deep, dark, slightly bitter chocolate. The frosting was—different. Tangy. Complex.

"Good?" Sofia asked.

"Really good," Bethany admitted. "What's in the frosting?"

Sofia's smile widened. "Coagulated blood."

Bethany's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

"From my ex-boyfriend," Sofia continued cheerfully. "Damian? No, not yours. Mine. Different Damian. There are a lot of Damians in the world, unfortunately. This one thought it was funny to text seventeen-year-olds when he was thirty-four. Thought it was flattering because they 'liked older men.' Thought I was crazy for minding."

Bethany set down her fork.

"Joke," Carlota said quickly. "Joke, joke, joke. It's not actually blood. It's—" She looked at Sofia. "What is it actually?"

"Beet reduction. With a little something something." Sofia winked. "But the story is better with blood, isn't it? More memorable. More true, in the way that matters."

Bethany looked at the cake. Looked at the women. Looked at the room full of women, all laughing, all eating, all sharing something she couldn't quite name.

"How many of you," she asked slowly, "have ex-boyfriends who are... no longer around?"

The table went quiet.

Not scared quiet. Thoughtful quiet.

"Define 'no longer around,'" Elena said.

"Dead. Missing. Disappeared."

More glances. That weighing look.

"Some," Abuela said finally. "Some are dead. Some are missing. Some are very much alive and very far away, where they can't hurt anyone else. Some are—" She paused. "—elsewhere."

"Elsewhere?"

"Not our story to tell. Not yet." Abuela reached for Bethany's hand again. "You're new, mija. Still smelling the kitchen, not yet tasting. That's fine. That's good. The ones who rush in—they're the ones who burn."

Bethany pulled her hand back. "Damian said you were collecting me. Gathering ingredients."

The women laughed. Genuine laughter, not defensive.

"Collecting," Carlota repeated. "Like we're building a cookbook of broken women. Mija, if we were collecting, we'd have started with someone less complicated. You're a researcher. You question everything. You're exhausting to collect."

More laughter. Bethany felt her cheeks warm.

"We're not collecting you," Sofia said softer. "We're offering you something. A place. A recipe. A way to look at the lumps and see flavor instead of failure. What you do with it—that's yours."

Bethany looked at the cake. At the liver. At the empty platter where thumbs had been.

"Why the thumbs?" she asked. "Really. Why start with that?"

Abuela's eyes crinkled. "Because thumbs are what we use to point. To blame. To text other women behind our backs. To scroll through photos we shouldn't see. To hold phones that hold our attention while the world burns." She held up her own hands. "But they're also what we use to hold each other. To stir the pot. To turn pages. To wipe tears."

"The door goes both ways," Bethany murmured.

"Yes, mija. The door goes both ways. Thumbs can build or destroy. Can point or beckon. Can grab or release. The question isn't what thumbs are. It's what we do with them."

Bethany sat with that. The restaurant hummed around her—women's voices, clinking glasses, the occasional burst of laughter. A woman had taken the stage, was tuning the guitar, humming something low and familiar.

"We should go," Elena said, glancing at her phone. "It's late. And Bethany looks like she's about to vibrate out of her skin."

"I'm fine," Bethany said automatically. Then: "Actually, I'm not fine. I'm really, really not fine. But I'm also... I don't know. Something."

"Full," Sofia suggested. "You ate. That helps."

It did, actually. Bethany realized the hollow in her chest had filled, just slightly. Not with answers—she had fewer of those than when she'd arrived. But with something else. Something warm and slightly absurd.

Company, Abuela had called it.

The women rose. Hugged her—actual hugs, warm and brief and smelling like good food and perfume. Pressed cards into her hands with phone numbers, usernames, invitations to coffee, to lunch, to just text if you need to talk, any time, we mean it.

Abuela walked her to the door.

"Damian," Bethany said, pausing in the threshold. "Will he be okay?"

Abuela considered. "Define okay."

"Alive. Not in a hospital. Not elsewhere."

"He'll be alive. Probably not in a hospital for long—they don't keep the sensitive ones, not anymore. Too expensive. Too many of them. As for elsewhere—" She shrugged. "That's up to him. Where he points his thumbs."

Bethany stepped into the passage. The night air hit her, cooler now, smelling of actual city—exhaust and garbage and the faint sweetness of something flowering somewhere.

"Abuela," she said, turning back. "The thumbs. The cake. The liver. It's really all—"

"A joke. Mostly." Abuela's smile was soft in the dim light. "But here's the thing about jokes, mija. The best ones have truth inside. Like bones in meat. You chew around them, get the flavor, spit out the hard parts. What's left nourishes you."

Bethany stood in the passage, door half-closed, Abuela's face half-visible.

"One more thing," Abuela said. "Your Damian. He showed up tonight because he felt you coming here. Felt you getting closer to something he couldn't reach. That's not magic. That's just... love, twisted by sickness into something that looks like prophecy. He's not your enemy. He's not your responsibility. He's just—"

"A lump," Bethany finished.

Abuela's smile widened. "See? You're learning."

The door closed.

Bethany stood in the dark, surrounded by scaffolding and the distant hum of the city. Her phone buzzed. Lupita: It's 2am. You alive or should I start composing your obituary?

Bethany typed: Alive. Confused. Possibly full of human thumbs?

Lupita: That's exactly what someone who's been replaced by a pod person would say. Prove you're you.

Bethany thought for a moment. Then: You cried at the end of Encanto. For twenty minutes. And then made us watch it again.

Lupita: OK it's you. Come home. I'm in your lobby with wine and judgment.

Bethany laughed. The sound echoed off the scaffolding, bounced into the night.

She walked toward home, thumbs in her pockets, mind churning.

Behind her, La Paloma sat secret and impossible under its staircase. Inside, women laughed and ate and remembered. Inside, the recipe kept cooking.

Bethany didn't know what she believed anymore.

But she knew one thing for certain:

She'd be back.

ATILA