Chicano Futurism
Please enjoy these short stories that are written from the lens of Chicano-Futurism and what a world of Sci-Fi and Speculative Fiction would look like if there were more stories featuring Latino y Latina characters…
Think: Mexicans in Space 😎
Also, they’re free, so there’s that.
Taco Truck Demon Hunters
“Aim for its wings, Chuey!” my Chicano Studies Professor yelled as the rapid fire of an interdimensional plasma rifle nearly took my head off.
Most of my body was covered in a yellow thick ooze and bird feathers that bonded with the gooey substance…so many bird feathers. I slammed my back into the trunk of a blue tree as its shrieking bounced throughout the mystical forest. The sky swirled with deep colored hues like a van Gogh painting as I waved “bye-bye” to what I knew as my reality. Crouching low, I tried to focus on the footsteps and obscenities shouted in both English and Spanish after losing sight of the two men who had dragged me here.
“¡I got that Pinche cabrón!”
I heard the larger man’s voice yell as I peeked my head out from behind the tree, relieved the nightmare was finally over. I slapped the branch that tugged at the holes in my ripped jeans, as two more branches stretched and pulled at my Berkeley hoodie. I screamed and ran to the man holding the plasma rifle.
“My bad,” he stated unapologeticaly, after realizing he hadn’t killed the beast. I dove behind the tree a second before a pair of talons came sweeping at me, taking a human-sized chunk of the tree’s bark with it.
“PROFESSOR!” I shouted, trying to remember where I last saw him before the shit hit the fan.
The blasts from Chuey’s rifle lit up the twisted branches as daylight appeared to run from the flying beast. I could hear him muttering the words to the Our Father prayer in Spanish, in between his heavy breaths.
“Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre…”
BLAST!
The last shot nearly hit me! In between Chuey’s random firings, I could see the outline of the top ridge where I started. I thought if I could make a run for it after the next blast, maybe I could find shelter. I just needed to convince my legs to go.
“GO!” I shouted inside my head as I tore up the wooded incline, trying desperately to ignore the fact that my body was running upside down to the ground I started on. I zigged and zagged in between the plasma shots that rung out into the thick living forest, each shot followed by a shriek that turned my body numb.
“Almost there,” the words were heavy under my breath as I crawled on my hands and knees up the top of the hill, only to find a six foot tall Owl Witch swooping down at me.
“Get DOWN!” The last words I heard from my Professor as an explosion shook the forest and feathers rained down, while I remained kneeling frozen in time.
“Bet ya didn’t think you’d be hunting a demon with two guys in a taco truck through a nearby dimension…did ya?” the man called Chuey asked.
***
1 hour earlier…
“Yo, Sil…you gonna eat that last taco?” my roommate asked as I slammed my elbow across the plastic plate.
“Damn, girl. Nobody gonna steal your taco. I only asked ‘cause you was off in la-la-land.”
Anita was right, I had that feeling where I drifted off and left this world, even if only for a moment. “Naw, this is bullshit. I don’t care what anyone says, he ain’t that scary,” I said to Anita, but if I was being honest I really said it to hype myself up.
I stood from the lawn chairs nestled at the edge of the parking lot that was behind the only liquor store in town that sold to minors. I marched past the group of co-eds laughing and enjoying their tacos filled with hot-off-the-grill carne asada, cilantro, onions and a twist of lime and stormed up to the front of the counter, reaching up on my tippy-toes to slam down my paper on Chicano Identity with the grade of a C- facing up so he could see it.
“Do you know what my mother is going to do when she sees that her daughter received a grade that wasn’t an A and it’s in the ONE subject she should know more about than any of her engineering courses?”
The man inside the taco truck with the wool ivy cap and rounded eye-glasses glared down at me, wiping his hands on his white apron and scratching his moustache before saying, “Hello Ms. Saldana…I already told you my office hours are up there,” he said, pointing up the hill toward Berkeley’s campus that could be seen popping out of the treeline.
“I’m sorry Professor Alvarado, but I can’t go home for Christmas break and let my mom see this paper…I’m first-generation Mexicano,” I said, preying on any compassion he may have. “What would you do if you were in my zapatos, Professor?”
“I’d eat that paper before I would let my mother see it,” my Professor said as he slid a plate of fresh tacos de carnitas across the counter. “My mother would throw a chankla at me for such a bad grade in a topic I should know better.”
I wanted to throw MY shoe at him.
“Chuey, where are those tacos camerones at?” my Professor shouted over his shoulder.
“Ah, Gus? Mira, we got a situation that needs your attention,” the large sweaty man inside the taco truck with giant hairy arms said as his tank-top clung to his body.
“Please excuse me Ms. Saldana,” Professor Alvarado said as he slammed the metal cover to the taco truck window, shutting me and everyone out.
“HEY!” I shouted, clanging my fists against the metal hatch as the taco truck shook side-to-side.
I’m not that strong, I thought to myself as I walked around the back of the taco truck, watching it rock violently back and forth, the suspension being pushed to its max.
“Professor? You ok?” I shouted through the back door of the taco truck. “PROFESSOR!”
I slammed my shoulder into the door, but before I could make contact it swung inward and I fell onto the taco truck’s greasy metallic floor. There was a shrieking sound that had me cup my hands over my ears as the man the Professor called Chuey was standing in front of a swirling blend of the reality of the inside of the taco truck and a colorful forest blurred together. He was holding a weapon unlike any I had seen and my Pappi was a cop and retired military. The Professor showered the portal’s opening with a dousing of a strange looking fire extinguisher as the sound on the other side of the opening grew louder.
Craning my neck upward with my chest pressed against the taco truck floor, my Professor turned to notice me, dropped his extinguisher and lowered to a bent knee with his outstretched hand. He asked me, “Do you wanna turn that C- into an A?”
***
After the Professor yanked me through the portal that started inside of what I thought was his side-hustle of a taco truck, he explained that he and his colleague were Demon Hunters and that their taco truck was more of an inter-dimensional bridge between our world and the Demon World. It was also home to the biggest super-burrito in the East Bay.
“Her name is WHAT?” I shouted as we crept through the swirling forest.
“Quiet, mija,” he responded. “Her name is La Lechuza and she is an Owl Witch sent here to punish men who stray from the path of righteousness. That’s why I brought you along. As a woman who has lived a life on the straight and narrow, you are safe from her and can act as a distraction.”
Ok, so far this was weird but not the weirdest thing I had heard. Afterall, I’m Mexican. My Abuelita had shared much crazier stories about demons with me...mostly at bedtime and as a child.
“She’s transformed into an owl that’s the size of a full-grown man and will carry away men to never be seen again if not stopped,” Professor Alvarado continued.
Ok, now shit was getting weird.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, both of my palms facing upward as I could no longer tell which direction the taco truck was or how to get back to it.
“Stay right here, while Chuey and I spread out and hide behind those trees.”
“You want me to act as BAIT?” I screamed as both men disappeared into the forest.
Long story short, we slipped into the demon dimension, killed the ugly owl witch lady thing, pissed off some scary human-eating trees and made it back through the portal located inside my Chicano Studies Professor’s taco truck all before last call at my favorite dive bar where none of my friends believed a single word of my evening.
Tomorrow, we are meeting at midnight to chase after something called a chupacabra? Hey…nobody said college was gonna be easy.