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          THE CHORDS' "SH-BOOM" WAS playing deafeningly loud in the black earphones whose wires were tangled around tanned skin plastered on a body too thin for the age of the girl whose energy went specifically into pedaling her bicycle down a half paved road. On both sides, dark and humid, with only the stars to guide in between the streetlights placed like milestones, the state of Coahuila was bracing the journey of Clara Carita from her school, in the city, back to the rural town where her supposed home was waiting.

To blame for the new blaring company she had with herself on the bidaily three hour bike ride was a boy, an year older than her, who, in order to declare his love for her, in the break between Mathematics and Spanish, gifted her this cassette with only one song on it. She found it charismatic, rather than cheap, no matter the giggles of the other students who witnessed her in love smile, because that was the first gift she’s ever received in a far too long time.

She was about to receive her second gift too and another sort of blush would paint her face then.

But until the arrival of the second gift, already flickering its bright orange flare between the stars looking upon the lonely road, Clara was humming along to the song. It was loud enough in her ears to not hear the creaks of her bicycle, the sound of those wheels dragging at such speed over the pavement meant for cars, but hardly ever circulated at this early hour in the night. Perhaps, they would hold, later on, some of the races she had heard the engines of shaking windows, all the way from her town.

There was no one else on the street with her that night. Only some alligator lizards or lost rodents would cohabitate the plain fields on both sides of the road where Clara just dashed beneath another faint, yellowed street light.

About ten more and she would see the very first houses of her town.

Ten more street lights meant just about twenty more minutes of enduring the ache in her sixteen-year old legs, pedaling vigorously while her mind was in the clouds. 

Her head leant back, in a hope to at least relax her shoulders. The speed brushed wind through her short dark hair and tangled it further, as a mockery to her need to buy a new hairbrush one of these days. But even if her face was looking up, where the bulging light was looking bigger and bigger amongst sprinkles of stars, clearer than ever as a torch of roaring burns, Clara’s eyes were closed and the light of the imminent danger was not bothering her yet.

The song ended abruptly in her earphones and, actually quite annoyed to hear again the creaks of her bicycle, the girl looked down and fished from the pocket of her shorts the cassette, keeping her course steady with just one hand so she could struggle, for the hundredth time to turn the song back from the start. 

She almost got it.

A bright light, much brighter than the street lights caught her attention from right and Clara looked up.

Her eyes grew wider. Her hand slipped on the cassette and at least the song was back on, because she saw a meteor falling down and that was fright made instant, rushing through her veins and leaving no time to react because it took her breath away to feel her skin warmer, to sense that her eyes were reflecting fire like no time ever before. 

Losing control over her bicycle, Clara fell first on the group, before being swept across by the shockwave of the impact happening just on that field, next to the lonely road. 

It burned until she could not feel her body, just barely acknowledge, through a ridiculously slow blink that she was inhaling smoke, not dirt, so she must surely be looking towards the clouded sky all of a sudden, not the inferno deep below, opening to claim her life. The earphones were no longer in, but tangled around her arm, they stayed close by, along with the cassette, which, broken, played a crooked, haunted version of the song. 

If I could take you to a paradise up above.

With very little understanding of whether or not these were her very last breaths, after all, it was not like she could move at all, no matter how much her alert mind tried to push those signals down to her body, Clara focused on the feeling of beads of sweat on her forehead. She needed to believe that it was sweat, and not blood, at least while air still reached her lungs, be it filled with smoke or not. And how terrifying were the auburn clouds, a curtain between her and the sky she had ignored until then.

If you will tell me I'm the only one that you love.

And it was a good thing that she couldn’t move her head much, far less even stand up, because that way, she was spared the look at the damage, the glance at the carnage which was caused by an unfortunate and unlikely event of being in the range of a blasting falling object. Her body was covered in burns, some so deep they scraped through skin and muscle and browned the bone. She hit her head too, so it was planted to the group, refusing to move. Yet, Clara clung to her breath, to those lungs slowly getting poisoned.

Life could be a dream, sweetheart, hello, hello again.

But it wasn’t a meteor which she saw falling from the skies, even though in the eyes of a panicked idiot, anything falling from the heavens on fire could be classified as that. No. It was a vessel which fell, a ship which, experiencing severe system failures due to unfortunate travel conditions, crashed uncontrollably. Every single accredited crew member died, but from the ashes of what was inscribed with O.M.N.I.U.M. a black liquid magnetized itself in spikes and distinguishable panic, falling off of a broken canister and slithering pointlessly until it stopped.

Though formless, to the planet it reached, this thing seemed for a moment to smell the atmosphere and from across the street, it sensed one breathing being. It rushed across the crater, around the bike while the black substance it was made of hissed at the presence of fire, all about. Alas, it climbed on the senseless Clara’s leg and entered her body through the open wounds, which closed behind. 

She felt an odd chill, and then the beginning of an upset stomach.

None of those mattered when her ears caught the vibration of her phone, smashed in her other pocket. It had been small enough not to fall out of the tight shorts. 

Despite not having been able to move an inch, Clara discovered that the second her phone started ringing, she got up without an issue. She glanced down at herself shocked, because apart from dirt, she had no scratch. Her stomach growled while, without any further hesitation and just simple confusion, she picked up her phone. 

On the broken screen read: hermana.

Clara also caught a glimpse at half of the clock and her heart rate raised, at last. No, being the victim of the most unlikely catastrophe and being able to sit up scratchless, from amidst the wreckage of a crash, could not have made her heart run so fast as seeing that her little sister had been calling her four times already and that she was one hour late from getting back home.

One hour late from making sure that Priscila was safe and away from their father. Yes, Gerardo Carita was the sort of drunk man worth all the panic in Clara’s young heart beating in a shell experiencing a new hunger which she ignored with such class. 

Standing up, she took one look at the ruined bicycle, then at the roaring flames coming from the crater beside her, in which she barely narrowed her eyes for a second at the melting metals. Her nostrils flared at the scent of flesh -something she was too little aware she shouldn’t have been able to identify. But the girl did not linger. She turned her head away and started running towards her town.

What she would make in twenty minutes on a bicycle, she did in five by running. 

Clara felt time started passing differently since that explosion right next to her, so she didn’t give it much thought at just how fast she moved or how big were her leaps during the run, to help her reach her little house in time. She burst through the backdoor, the handle of the door broke off and she let it fall, absolutely shattered by the look of the living room. Alerts burned red into her mind: the armchair was empty, six empty beer bottles piled next to it and the TV was still on, ranting about the recent news. 

Just as she had turned away, the title frame on the TV changed to “Breaking News: Unidentified Object Crashed in Mexico, close to the border with Texas”. 

Her heartbeat was so loud into her temples that Clara did not even hear what the news had to say about what she had just ran away from, leaving behind her earphones, blasting The Chords, as well as her bicycle, the only investment the family had ever made into her since her mother’s side of the family abandoned them completely into this home of horrors.

Busy fiddling a shivering hand to the cupboard under the sink and retrieving the old, rusted pipe only she knew was kept under the washing cloths there, for the dark days ahead in which she guessed she’d need it to stand her ground against her father, Clara ignored the TV. Her next focus was to get to the stairs, but once she reached them, her hearing was welcomed by a new sound: fists were pounding into a door.

She rushed up the stairs. Two steps at a time turned into three, then as if she was pulled up, she skipped four steps and got to the narrow hallway with a dusted orange light. The horror prolonged to this new view of her father, rabid-like, punching the door of her and her sister’s room. His face was red with fury, his eyes were bloodshot in madness and his white shirt was drenched in yellowed sweat from the day at work and the night of drinking into perdition.

He didn’t even see his eldest daughter standing there when he smashed his fist so hard into the locked door that the wood, putrid anyhow, cracked audibly, “Get out of there, you little bitch!”

What did poor Priscila do this time to earn his anger was not Clara’s concern. Sometimes, just breathing his way was enough to get him this insane. 

“I don’t like him,” a deep inner voice echoed in Clara’s mind and she nodded to it, finally snapping out of her shock and tightening her right hand on the half-pipe, her replacement of a baseball bat for self defense.

“Get away from her door!”

Her rough voice made the man throw one last weak punch then drunkenly lean back and look cross eyed towards Clara. “You are fucking late,” he spit his words. “What? Sixteen now and think you can let boys into your shorts after classes. If you want to become a whore like your mother, just say the word and I’ll toss you to the men on the construction site. You and your sister both, since she wants to wear your mother’s lipstick around my house.”

Clara’s heart sank. Priscila was young and at barely eight years old, of course she just wanted to play in the old and expired makeup left behind in boxes in the garage. Damn, how Clara cursed herself for not having burned those boxes earlier, torched those memories before they became weapons this madman could use against them when the alcohol kicked in.

“Wait your turn,” Gerardo chewed on his words past his mustache. He raised his fist to hit again into the formed crack, “Will teach your sister a lesson first-”

Clara rushed closer and raised the heavy pipe, “Get away from her door!”

Absolutely astonished by the audacity and stupidity of his daughter, the man turned again towards her and measured the pipe she was holding, “What do you think you’ll do with that one, huh?” That grin of his, that crooked smile which mocked her very being and looked at her like a burden now tore holes through everything which built up as tension into Clara.

Her eyes furiously narrowed, “I will hit you if you don’t leave Priscila alone.”

The threat leaving her lips was the last drop in the bottle cap of patience her father held. He turned his fist towards her and Clara felt as something definitely pulled her out of the range and safely held her closer to the wall. That gave her the time to react and smash the next time the hit came for her with the pipe. 

Knuckles cracked audibly.

Gerard screamed, bent over, but he snatched the pipe from the girl with his other hand anyhow. White the broken one hid between his knees, that pipe got tossed aside quickly still, making its unnoticed noise while he exercised his carnal preference for feeling pulse underneath his skin. The functional hand pressed onto Clara’s throat and squeezed as he pushed her, from a jolt from the elbow outwards, into the wall, hard enough to shake an old picture off of it.

But just as his teeth bared, so did Clara’s. It was no mystery that if she let her guard down then, she would end up unrecognizable from bruises the next day. Heck, considering how insane the alcohol had driven him that night, she doubted she’d be able to walk to school anymore, since her bicycle was destroyed. Yet even if she looked wrecked to begin with, her own father was not lucid enough to even ask if she was alright, or at least why she was covered in ash and dirt and signs of dried blood, why her shirt had been burnt in certain spots. 

He wasn’t seeing her, that is, just a piece of meat, up for learning a lesson.

Clara kicked with her legs, at first just trying to squirm away. More rationally and successfully than ever before through that balance created, she managed instead to land some hits which only ever drew out cracking noises. 

Gerard’s broken hand forced into a fist and threw a punch at her only right before his eyes, his daughter’s eyes turned white, they widened far past the eye sockets and from inside out, her mouth broke open and wider, as big as her whole head, filled with sharp teeth. Her skin turned coal black and gooey like some expired jello, or the very depths of the universe made semi liquid. Then his eyes saw red as his hand punched into that mouth and the teeth bit it off with ease. 

Only a blink away, Clara gulped and saw next how her father stumbled one step back, holding an arm from which end’s spurred blood, freshly and fervorously. “You monster!”

That was the first time she ever got called that.

Clara had no time to bring her hand up and touch the warm liquid pooling on her bottom lip, and on her chin, because Gerard lunged at her again and this time, the ‘monstrous’ face returned in full and bit the man’s whole head off. The corpse fell on the ground and, finally beginning to understand her senses, even as she was tucked in the backseat of her own body, Clara’s hands reached properly for her mouth, just turned back to normal. Before her eyes, those hands were now filled with gruesome blood.

She stumbled away from the wall and took a look down to see how it had stained her shirt.

“Don’t panic,” a second time, the deep voice roared in her mind and startled by its presence, Clara flinched, straightening up. Her heartbeat was all over the place, but the hunger was no longer there. 

Silence dawned everywhere else but inside Clara’s head.

In her flesh carcass, her heart was running marathons and her breath was getting left behind, utterly lost.

“Clara…?” a hesitant voice muffled by the closed door shattered the outer silence.

Were it not for Priscila talking just then, Clara would have backed away one more step and fallen down the stairs and into the succumb of panic. But the voice of her sister, be it distant, made her blink, wipe her hands on her shorts, not even glance at the decapitated father and simply run towards the door. “Everything is fine, Priscila. It’s over.”

It was far from over. It was just the beginning of a truly long night for the Carita sisters. 

Stress. Confusion. Anger. Questions.

None of those four elements matched the unknown sensation of running away from home with all the little money they had stashed all across the house, mainly to keep away from the father who, though worked, loved to spend away everything on bodily pleasures, all fleeting. Now, the money was stashed in a small pocket and at least a part of them went to assure a bed for them in a road motel. Clara knew she would have to find a way to get them moving, away from this town which, before sunrise, will be trying to solve a crime and a mysterious bike left behind at an odd crash site. That peculiar activity was out of range from them for now at least, so Clara was able to afford taking a breather after her sister fell asleep to go to the bathroom, lock herself in and wish to clean herself.

Instead, she pressed her back against the door and stared at the mirror above the sink right in front of her. The face she saw was not her own. It was actually what she had pieced together, bit by bit, since the accident to the moment she killed her father. The black creature pulled out of nightmares which were looking back at her from the mirror… it was their hunger she kept feeling.

“What are you?” she asked and watched as its mouth also moved with hers. That long tongue hidden in it was terrifying, but she stepped away from the door.

“Who.” She was corrected by the deep voice residing in her head.

“Who are you?” Clara asked again, stepping close to the sink and the mirror, at least until the first was coldly touching her abdomen. 

“You tell me,” they seemed to answer rather sadly while the girl tilted her head on both sides, watching the creature copy the movement.

“You’re from that meteor,” Clara took a guess.

“It was a rocket.”

Though with wide eyes, she accepted that information, realizing instead, at last, that she left behind a crash site. “Whoever you are,” she tamed her sigh, looking down at her hands, still hiding blood underneath her nails, “you saved my life.”

“Our life.” Clara got corrected for a third time.

And by looking down, she saw that her veins were growing darker and from inside her skin, the black substance was starting to surface, coating her left forearm. She stared in awe, in the absolute astonishment of understanding that it was this creature to thank for her speed, and perhaps even for being alive and unharmed. And yet, the sight of that odd looking substance… it made her young mind think of something toxic, of something poisonous.

“It looks like venom,” Clara smiled at the coated arm.

“Venom,” the creature repeated. “I like that.”

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