Cassie June was hobbling along the scorching sidewalk, dragging her skates as though they were cement boots. She stood about four feet tall. She had jammed a plastic visor onto her head, and her knees were protected by thick pads like pieces of some armor. Beads of sweat glistened on the tanned skin of her shoulders, arms, and legs. As my car pulled up beside her, I noticed Cassie was blinking—maybe to keep the sweat out of her eyes, or because fatigue was overpowering her—and she breathed through her mouth like a fish on the lookout for food flakes.
It never ceased to amaze me that I could recognize living faces, that a person’s features in the flesh would match those I had memorized from a faded photograph, the frozen image I had stared at until I became familiar with the rage and hatred that filled me and shot through me like electric jolts.
A flash in the rearview mirror dazzled me. In that rectangle of glass, the ruby-red body of the Ford Thunderbird glimmered, except for the stripes of shadow along the raised center. Its grille: two rows of metal cells in a robotic smile.
The bronze-like, wavering glare of the sun sometimes concealed the silhouette of the man at the wheel. The lenses of his sunglasses ignited. The outline of his face showed pale holes for eyes, big as a startled owl’s.
I slowed my car to match Cassie’s skating speed. Behind me, the Ford Thunderbird closed the gap. I braced myself, expecting a metallic crunch that would jolt my back from the seat. With one hand still on the steering wheel, I reached to my right and, turning the crank, rolled down the passenger-side window. The car crept along, shielding the girl, who tugged a strap of her T-shirt up over her shoulder. On its chest, the superheroes from the Super Friends series posed.
“Cassie,” I said.
The girl was swaying on her skates, as though squeezing out the last dregs of her battery. The band of her visor pinned down some sweat-soaked brown strands. Little trails of sweat slithered down her neck.
I hardened my voice.
“Cassie, get in. I’ll take you home.”
She slowed down, turned her face, and cut off her panting with a little noise of confusion. She leaned forward to peer inside the car.
“It’s not far.”
“It’ll be less far if I drive you.”
A horn blared behind me, making me jump. In the rearview mirror, a rippling band of bronze now covered half the man’s body. He slammed his palm into the horn again.
I clenched the steering wheel’s rubber grip to focus my anger. When I opened the passenger door, Cassie skated backward in a semicircle to avoid getting hit by it. She let herself drop sideways onto the seat and lifted her legs inside with her hands, as though they’d fallen asleep. She shut the door.
I sped up to the tune of another long honk. I exceeded my previous speed, but in the rearview mirror, the Ford Thunderbird kept pace. Amid the haze of heat, the man’s knuckles rose over the wheel like an eagle’s talons.
“What’s this weird gadget?” Cassie asked.
She’d turned in her seat and pulled aside the cloth cover I’d draped over the tracker set behind the gearshift.
“What do you think it is?”
“Some expensive radio.”
I took her hand away from it and wiped the sweat off my palm onto my pants.
“Very expensive.”
“Does it pick up Nevada stations without static?”
“It doesn’t pick up any station.”
Cassie, still breathing through her mouth, laughed and studied my face.
“Why’d you buy it?”
“It seemed good and important. Isn’t that reason enough?”
I fixed my attention on the asphalt ahead, though for a few moments I felt the girl’s gaze burning into my right temple. The car was filling with the smells of plastic, hot fabric, and toasted skin giving off vapor. Over Cassie’s forehead, a membrane of heat distorted half an inch of the window. She leaned over to fiddle with the straps on one skate, leaving a sweaty silhouette in the upholstery.
“You might’ve passed out from heatstroke,” I said.
Cassie looked up. A bead of sweat rolled into her nostrils and, as she breathed in, she snorted it away.
“A what?”
“Too much heat. Coupled with exertion, you could’ve fainted.”
She shrugged.
“I finished my water bottle.”
Her legs—no thicker than one and a half of my forearms—were trembling, but the strain had washed off her face. The reddened skin was returning to normal. She tugged at her socks, sneaking glances at me without any sign of fear.
I sank into the seat, speechless. I kept switching my attention from the road to the stop signs, the turns I had to make, and the specter in the mirror. Would it have been enough if that man had just asked Cassie to get in his car? A smile, an offer, and the child’s ten years would swirl down the drain like food scraps in a sink.
Cassie was wiping sweat from her face. She peered out at the scenery through the windshield and side window. Along this unmarked stretch of asphalt I was navigating, houses in an Italian style passed one after another. The sun glinted in their windows and bleached the sandy façades. Concrete ramps led up to the closed garage doors. Over the flat sky—a cornflower blue that faded to white at the horizon.
I wanted to shout at Cassie, shake her. If I seized her wrist and took a detour, how would the girl react? Had she cried out before? Had she screamed? Those details were kept by the surviving witnesses, but I craved them like collectible pieces. If I weighed them all together, maybe I’d recognize a pattern that, in time, would form the stakes of a palisade to keep the beasts at bay.
I scraped the rubber of the steering wheel with a fingernail. I shook my head. Should I stay silent? When Cassie gave me a smile, I opened my mouth and frowned.
“Why did you get into my car?”
The girl wriggled and laughed, revealing teeth that were too big for her mouth.
“You let me get in,” she said, as though she was part of a joke.
“You don’t know me.”
Cassie tilted her head and lifted one skate onto the seat.
“You know my name.”
“Do you recognize my face? Do you remember me from anywhere?”
She let her smile drop. Her gaze wandered over the dashboard.
I stiffened my tone.
“A stranger offers you a ride home and you believe him.”
“You seem like a good person.”
“What gave you that impression?”
Cassie planted her palms on her knee pads, arms locked.
“You offered me a ride. You’re kind.”
“Do you think if I wanted to hurt you, I’d tell you up front? Would I have pulled up next to you, opened the door, and offered to make you suffer in ways you can’t even imagine? Does my tone suggest I’m kind?”
Cassie lowered her head and pursed her lips. She tugged the plastic visor down, as if to hide her eyes.
I scratched an itch on my neck. The seat felt as if a spring had come loose. The girl would refuse to cooperate or reason. She chose to remain blind, deaf, ignorant. Once I parked in front of her house and Cassie got out, what would she have learned, other than to avoid me?
At an intersection, I remembered the Ford Thunderbird. Behind us now was a moss-green Chevrolet Chevette, driven by a gray-haired woman. I berated myself. My arms tingled. I looked around, certain that the Ford Thunderbird would ambush us any second, but it must have given up and turned at some cross street. For the rest of the drive, I kept my eyes glued to the road.
“You were worried about me,” Cassie said in a tense voice, watching some spot above my forearm.
“I am.”
“That’s why you seem like a good person.”
“Cassie, anyone who wants to hurt you can pretend to have good intentions and you won’t see any difference.”
She turned to look out her window.
“Will you ever get into a stranger’s car again?” I asked.
Cassie’s voice wavered.
“I don’t know.”
I smacked my palm against the steering wheel.
“Maybe I should hurt you. Then the next time someone offers you a ride, you’d run away.”
She fixed me with a defiant stare, like a lion cub trying to roar.
“I’d shoot you.”
I let out a scoffing laugh.
“Oh, really?”
“With a huge gun.”
I hunched toward Cassie, pretending to check for hidden weapons.
“Are you carrying it?”
“My mom keeps it. I’ve seen it. She told me never to touch it.”
“How will you shoot me with that gun if you’re forbidden to hold it or pull the trigger?”
Her flushed face turned downward, and she clenched her fists on her knee pads.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Don’t get into strangers’ cars, whether they know your name or not.”
Cassie turned her torso toward the window as though to doze against her shoulder; her skates clacked when their wheels knocked together.
Two minutes later, I pulled up to her single-story ranch house, low-slung and cream-colored, with a wooden baseboard. Rhododendron bushes were gathered around the windows. Just above the roof, you could see firs and maples, as if the backyard bordered a patch of woods.
“Off you go.”
Cassie snapped alert. She looked around, frowning. Her eyes were glassy, and a tear trailed down one cheek, leaving a shiny line.
She huffed, opened the door, hopped onto the cement path, and skated as though in a final sprint toward the front door. She stabbed the doorbell, back turned to me. She tapped her fists against her thighs, jittering like she needed to pee.
The door opened a crack. Cassie slipped inside.
I leaned back in my seat. I’d pictured this scene. I’d pictured myself pulling up next to the lawn, perpendicular to the walkway that narrowed by a few inches until it hit the door. Cassie had been smiling on her skates.
When did she ever come out like this? How did I convince myself that this time the chain would break? Maybe I just needed to believe it.
A woman’s voice barked. I stirred like a carnival machine that had just had a quarter dropped in its slot. Cassie’s mother stood two strides from the passenger window, one hand on her hip. She wore a bright apple-green dress, possibly cashmere, barely reaching her thighs, with a pattern of stripes and mandalas. Loose sleeves draped to her forearms like a kimono. Her turquoise eyes, bulging lids and all, regarded me with keen alertness. Her mouth tipped upward toward her nose rather than down toward her chin, giving the impression she disapproved of everything.
The last time I’d seen that face, it was twisted in agony in the footage of one of the trials, when the woman pulled a revolver from inside her trench coat and the court guards pinned her down before she could fire. I’d paused the video at that moment. Wedged among those broad-shouldered uniforms, the woman’s dislocated face stood out—a blend of fury and desperation, her jaw clenched, rows of teeth forming a black gap, her pupils lit like red disks. Even though I’d frozen the image, her face seemed to vibrate among those bulked-up guards, and it would redden and swell like a balloon filling the screen, her teeth distorting like piano keys.
The face of the woman now standing by this rented car looked like an imitation, as though someone had bought Cassie’s mother’s body at a flea market and crawled in through her nose to steer the brain.
“You brought my daughter home.”
I let out a long breath. I slid over the gearshift to the passenger seat. I opened the door and got out, straightening up.
She approached so close that one punch would’ve reached me if she’d wanted. I had a head’s advantage on her, but her stance and expression suggested that from somewhere overhead, a sniper had me in his crosshairs.
“I guess that bothers you,” I said.
“She came in crying.”
I nodded. I leaned against the passenger door frame.
Tension in her eyelids betrayed her.
“Who are you to think you can put my daughter in your car?”
“Neighborhood watchman.”
She scanned my shirtfront.
“Where’s your badge?”
“I’m a volunteer.”
She shook her head sarcastically and folded her arms.
“Well, thanks for your concern, I guess. But don’t ever do it again.”
She wanted me embarrassed, worried about the consequences she might dump on me. Yet I resisted the urge to spin around, climb back in, and drive off. Why bother explaining myself? Why accept her contemptuous stare? If Cassie’s mother understood, she’d buckle at the knees, stammer her gratitude. Maybe she’d invite me in for a cup of tea, and maybe I’d accept, and relax for an hour among people who actually wanted me around, for a change. But she was glowering at me as if I belonged in a cage.
My voice came out low.
“I was hoping this would be the last time. A lot of bad people are out there.”
“Did you tell her things like that? Is that why she’s crying?”
“She got into a stranger’s car, and you’re mad I warned her about danger. You have bigger issues.”
She jabbed a finger at me, an invisible stinger.
“She’s a happy kid. She doesn’t need grim thoughts rattling around in her head.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Four blocks from here, I got shoved into the street, and my purse was stolen. For years, men have followed me around like I was prey in some alley. Cassie is a child.”
“A hammer blow would bounce right off her skull?”
The woman’s cheekbones flamed red as if I’d slapped her.
“Don’t talk about my daughter like that. I’ll keep her safe and carefree as long as I can. That’s none of your concern, stranger who put my girl in his car.”
“If she makes it to adulthood.”
She clenched her jaw and studied my face with a steely glare.
“You were in the war, weren’t you? You still think you’re hacking your way through a jungle, fearing that men with machine guns lurk in the treetops?”
I stayed silent.
“Things are different back home,” she went on with a teacherly lilt. “What are the odds someone attacks my kid? Astronomical.”
“Like the lottery. Today, your daughter would have won. A daily sacrifice to the void.”
She took a step back. Angled herself as if poised to bolt inside. Crows’ feet stood out at the corners of her eyes.
“Don’t ever force or even invite my daughter into your car again. Next time, I’ll call the real police. Or hunt you down myself.”
I started to duck into the passenger seat, but Cassie’s mother darted closer, so I froze mid-motion, rear halfway to the cushion. Her voice rose like a drawn pistol.
“Don’t mess with other people’s kids, you hear me? Under any circumstances.”
I let myself slide fully in. My heart thudded like a boxer’s punches. My vision tinted red. I wanted to slam the door without caring if it crushed her fingers.
“Your daughter was chosen today, Mrs. June. But sure, keep your rainbow world where you float among plush cushions and stuffed animals that beam out good vibes. You can afford to shut your eyes, I guess. Go on, stay blind. I’ll show up before the tar comes pouring in.”
“Fuck you too.”
She hurried back, arms folded tight, slippers tapping the cement path. She ducked inside her door. She glanced back over her shoulder as though a black bear might be lurking in the neighborhood. She closed the door. I pictured her running to the phone, lifting the receiver to call the cops.
I slammed the passenger door with a loud thud and a swirl of hot air. As I slipped behind the wheel, I squeezed the rubber of the steering wheel and floored the accelerator.
“You’re welcome,” I growled.
Author’s note: in my previous post I talked about reviving a novel from ten years ago, but this ain’t it. I thought that perhaps OpenAI’s Orion 1 model would be great at translating, and it indeed seems to be. So I’m translating this novella, the third included in my self-published book in Spanish titled Los reinos de brea, published back in 2016-2017, that nobody fucking read because I don’t know how to get people to buy my stuff. May as well post the novellas here in case anyone likes them.
And man, I was angry back then. So angry. This is one bleak, brutal story.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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