Margaret Elysia Garcia
Chicana Gen-X Horror Story # 2
You will be the first on your mother’s side to graduate from college. It will sound like an achievement—but your primas will observe that you are broker than they are. Good for you, mi’jita, but can you speak Spanish yet? No. You majored in the other colonial language and now you forget things, like the right word at the right time. Loser. You double downed for a master’s in Creative Writing. But no one told you it would be useless without an ‘F’ in the middle of it.
In a workshop you forget to identify yourself by your identities; you don’t have trigger warnings on your memoir pieces, and your classmates, (sporting all their identities with consideration), stare across the conference table at you, the ancient leper. Your classmates are writing coming of age stories set in the year 2015 and all the challenges they face with people who are not using the correct words. You remember a world with no TSA and walking right onto planes to visit fathers across the country at age seven; your ex-husband played with balls of mercury as toys in a shack off Revolution Boulevard. You did not warn them. Your life is a trigger. A biohazard. They may have been empathetic had you told them about you: a pansexual Latina, assault survivor, hailing from a gay military working class family, but that will sound like you are checking boxes even though it’s true. You blindsided them. Made them cry and so you are the enemy and now they will have to do an extra zoom therapy session and your own therapist—okay, you don’t actually have one, but if you did, you are sure she would have cancelled on you.
At least you have new Doc Martens. Boots are the same price as therapy, but you can feel good looking down at your feet for years. You are both ancient and immature.
You will once again take a gig teaching college freshmen. The students will not take notes unless they think it will be on the quiz. They do not appreciate you reiterating things that happened before they were born. Someone tells the dean that there are too many women authors on your syllabus and they did not sign up for feminism 101; there are also too many brown people on your syllabus. You remark how you sat through many hours of universal literature that were neither literature nor universal. However, the students are looking at their phones and your joke falls flat.
Only the present is interesting; they live in a world without context. In casual conversation after class about music, you talk about the bands you liked growing up. They find these bands questionable. Yes, there were girls who slept with bands of fully grown men. They correct you and call it rape; you correct them and call it the 70s and 80s, and think of the girls in your high school, you included, who would not date anyone under 21.
Despite all this, you are voted favourite teacher of the year. You think you might be on the way up to something and keep adjuncting—you’re in too far now to look back, a decade and change to be exact. You juggle commitments on committees. You bend backwards. And for my next trick? Nothing. No health insurance, no retirement— just a kid in your night class threatening to kill you.
You think about giving up. No mas mierda.
You think about quitting teaching again. You think of other jobs you might be better suited for. You missed the window on selling both your body and your soul. You have not made enough to retire. You will work odd jobs until you die. Younger, thinner people will train you and speak loudly as if you are deaf. You will catch a glimpse of your shoulders rolled and bent.
You howl at your choices in your head; you bark at different moons.
Oh. Is this not scary enough for you? Not a really horror story? Not Latina enough for you either? Aye dios mio. You know what? Fine.
Here is a vampire waiting for you in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Oh for Christsake. Fine.
Trigger Warning: despondent gen-xer, vampire, assault, blood, death. Murderer goes free.
Are you happy now?
Here is a vampire waiting for you in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He will be the last to see you alive. He is unassuming, not tall, pale or handsome. He can pass for anything. He is wearing bright red basketball and mixed matched socks. This is where it ends for you. You are not looking your best. Your eyeliner and mascara are smeared. You never lost the last thirty pounds. True, your neck is clean, and clearly visible in the v-neck tee shirt some child in Myanmar made. He asks you to sponsor his college education or something equally idiotic like buying a stale off brand chocolate bar. You hear him out, thinking his story is real even as his fangs pierce your skin and blood splurts out everywhere, including on your brand new boots with the red embroidered roses. At least the blood will match. A stray dog sniffs at your torso then lifts its leg. Your lifeless body is found by the pimply guy pulling in the shopping carts. The Wal-Mart manager will argue that you were actually found closer to the Krispy Kreme drive-thru next door. He doesn’t need anymore negative publicity. A couple of Gen Zs stand TikTok-ing themselves a yard from your corpse influencing—something. Your ghost watches seagulls swooping down to the asphalt for stale donut crumbs among the parking lot stick trees. It sounds more plausible to the authorities, given how fat you are, that you met your end at Krispy Kreme. Everything will always be your own fault. And no one will ever look for the vampire. AQ