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Miguel Prays While His Mother Cries

by Steve Rasnic TemAugust 8, 2019

The blessed truck would arrive at midnight to carry them out of Phoenix. Each day Miquel prayed to the Virgin for her forgiveness: for hiding in the basement of this house he did not own, for dragging his own mother out of her home while Guatemala burned, for promising that life would be better here, for hiring that coyote to take them into an abandoned city whose summer temperatures averaged over 150 degrees, for not stopping el diablo when he opened the door and dumped them onto the melting asphalt, for not insisting that his mother wear gloves, or shoes.

About Steve Rasnic Tem

World Fantasy Award winning author Steve Rasnic Tem's most recent collection is Onion Songs (Chomu Press). This will be followed soon by his career-spanning Celestial Inventories (ChiZine). In December Britain's NewCon Press will collect the best of his science fiction stories in Twember as part of their Imaginings series.

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