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Read an Excerpt From Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva
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Read an Excerpt From Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva
An ethereal and revelatory short story collection about faith, delusion, and the demons that can’t get enough of us.
By Melissa Lozada-Oliva
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Published on October 22, 2025
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive!, a short story collection by Melissa Lozada-Oliva, available now from Astra House.
A beheaded body interrupts a quinceañera. An obsession with her father’s bizarre video game shifts a lonely girl’s reality. A sentient tail sprouts from a hospital worker’s backside, throwing her romantic life into peril. And in the novella “Community Hole,” a recently cancelled musician flees New York and finds herself in a haunted punk house in Boston.This collection, at once playful, grisly, and tender, presents a tapestry of women ailing for something to believe in—even if it hurts them. Using body horror, fabulism, and humor, Melissa Lozada-Oliva mines the pain and uncanniness of the modern world. Reveling in the fine line between disgust and desire, Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! is for the sinner in us all.
Heads
I find Tootsie’s head in the lettuce garden, her snout open and her beady eyes, too. She’s looking at me like I know something, like I’ve always known something and it’s just a matter of when that something bubbles out of me and grows legs. She was a little thing; a fuzzy, almost-Chihuahua you could lose easily or sit on. I open the cotton purse with the purple flowers sewn on the handles, grab Tootsie’s head by the ears, and toss her inside. Blood leaks through the cotton. I have to tell Linda and I don’t want to. Linda’s older. She’s my friend. She was the one I ran to the night my father bashed my mother’s head into the kitchen sink.
“I’m sorry,” I say, holding up the cotton bag for her to see, “It’s Tootsie.” The heads don’t bother me or make me sick, they just freak me out about the patterns of things, and when strung together, what everything can start to mean. Linda looks inside the bag and gags.
I see her eyes well but she puts herself together, brushes her hands on her apron. “We had a few good years together, didn’t we?” We don’t talk about looking for the rest of the body. I follow Linda into her backyard, her flowered skirt billowing around her dry ankles. She limps slightly, dragging her left foot on the ground. She hands me a small red shovel and I dig a hole in the yard we share. She throws the cotton bag with Tootsie’s head into the hole.
“What do you think,” Linda says as I pat the dirt down with a shovel, “Is it that monster you’re always talking about?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but yeah. Is that crazy?”
“I’ve seen stranger,” Linda says, sighing and looking out into the trees. The wind makes them dance.
“Shall we?” I ask. Linda’s voice quivers as she begins, following the words of Ruth.
“In this long life of shared pain, I found your soul, and you found mine. You were there, and so was I. We will work now, in your name, as you rest. Rest.”
“Rest,” I repeat, placing a hand over my heart.
“Do you want me to ride with you?” she says, squeezing my shoulder. Today I turn eighteen. I’m finally allowed to visit my father at the Halls, but I also have to decide how I’m going to contribute to the district. I haven’t given it a lot of thought, though everybody expects me to just do Food Distribution with my Aunt Beatrice. I shake my head, focusing on the fresh mound of dirt.
“No, that’s okay,” I say, “You should relax.” When Linda was still one of the head coordinators at Food Distribution at MA-13, she used to hold 70 pounds of groceries at a time. Then she tripped over a branch she broke her ankle. Our medics set it back but it never quite healed. Some people think she was sabotaged because you get extra rations when you’re a head coordinator. Now rations get delivered to her every Tuesday and she doesn’t have to work, which more people are mad about. I like that she doesn’t work so much, because then I get to talk to her.
“So, what’s the deal,” Linda says, her hands on her waist, “You afraid?”
“A little bit,” I swat a fly away from my face. “Why, do you think I’m self-centered?”
“I don’t know why they have you thinking all these things. Self-centered,” she swats the word away like a bug, “They think they invented piousness. Look, sweetie. You don’t have to go. Nobody’s making you.”
“But I want to,” I say, “I think the screenings helped. It’s sad to see him in those rooms. I think he needs company.”
“Those rooms look like my old college dorms!” She says, the skin around her eyes wrinkled petals, “I’ve seen them! Your dad is a lucky man.” I rub one thumb over the other, like I’m trying to tell it to calm down.
“You’ll be just fine, honey. Come back when you’re done, okay? We can talk about it.”
“Thank you.” I pause. “I’m sorry about Tootsie.”
“Not your fault, my dear. Not like you tore her head off!” She cackles and gives my hand a squeeze. I walk back to our living area, dead leaves sticking to my heels. My Aunt Beatrice chops wood in the back.
“There’s blood all over the lettuce again,” she says, the wood splitting easily into two. “Was there another head?” I nod.
“I’ll write the street chat, ask them to keep a look-out for wolves. In the meantime I’ll cancel pick-ups from our neighborhood. No salads for a while.” Aunt Beatrice lifts her axe again. The pieces of wood dive away from each other.
“What if it wasn’t a wolf,” I offer, “What if it was a monster?”
“Mari, please. We need to get the wolf situation under control. Neighbors are in danger.” She grabs another stump and sets it on the ground. The axe rises.
“How’s Linda doing?” She twists the handle of the axe as it gets trapped into the stump. It breaks and she keeps hacking.
“Still limping. It was Tootsie’s head.”
“Well, that’s a shame.”
She doesn’t ask me about how I’m feeling today. She doesn’t want me to go. When my mother was killed, she threw out all of my father’s clothes and burned them in the street’s dumpster, wailing in a way I’d never heard before. A wail from the earth. From inside her blood. It was her one act of pain, and the only form of vengeance she was allowed. She let me keep one photograph of him, where his eyes look red and filled with blood. The rest she threw in the fire.
“Listen, I won’t be home when you get back,” she says, hacking away. “There’s a lot of nonsense happening in Education and they need me to mediate.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.” I don’t want to show Aunt Beatrice that I’m a little hurt she put her responsibilities before my birthday because then I’d have to hear about being self-centered and how I didn’t even know how bad it was Before.
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“No.”
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Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive!
Melissa Lozada-Oliva
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Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive!
Melissa Lozada-Oliva
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“You haven’t given it a single thought? You’re 18 today, Mari.” A happy birthday Mari would’ve been nice.
“I wanted to decide at the end of the day. It’s not like it’s set in stone, either.”
“You don’t have to do Food with me. You could always teach. You have me worried talking about these monsters. Waste of time. What about composting?”
“I feel like I’m too disorganized for that.” Aunt Beatrice kicks over another stump. I think my aunt is happiest out here sometimes, hacking away at dead trees. It’s not that I don’t want to do Food with Aunt Beatrice. Everybody has a role, that’s what we were taught. Every life is precious because everybody is responsible for keeping somebody else’s life safe. I just never feel like it’s my own life.
“Grab some, will you?” She throws the axe down and gathers the wood in her arms. Maybe because it’s my birthday, but she doesn’t lecture me. I pick up a few blocks. One of hers rolls into the lettuce patch. She tosses the blocks to the side and shakes her head. She kneels and wipes blood off a leaf with her hand.
“Goddamn wolves,” she says.
My bike’s the only thing I have left of my mother. It’s a baby blue two-speed that a mechanic in MA-11 helped me re-gear. I thought about being a bike mechanic because they get first dibs on what crops they want delivered, but the warehouse I went to had all these men and I hate admitting this, but they made me blush. I pedal softly through my streets. I see Eva biking towards me with carrots in her basket. She’s wearing a long-sleeved pink dress with built-in shorts. Her mother is the district’s seamstress and she always looks more put together than everybody else. The outfits I’ve been given for the season are fine but Eva always looks like herself. It would be nice to look like myself sometimes. I don’t even know who that is.
“Helloooo!” Eva says, “Happy birthday!” She remembered. I smile. “Where you off to, Mari?” We pedal together, our wheels buzzing in time.
“The Halls.”
“Oh, right!” she says, her eyes growing wide, “How are you feeling about that?”
“A little freaked out.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” she says and while she means it I know she’ll never relate.
“You started delivering today?”
“I did! But oh my gosh, I got kind of confused with the spreadsheet. All the numbers. Maybe this isn’t the right job for me.” She laughs to herself, “I feel like Linda might be mad. But everybody has their place right? That’s what they say!” She giggles at what everyone says. She’s always giggling.
“Linda doesn’t get mad,” I say. Eva bikes ahead of me. Her curls are a breathing forest. Sometimes as I fall asleep I dream of myself colliding with the ground, pieces of my skull flying everywhere and turning into little white birds. I don’t tell Aunt Beatrice about those dreams. We’re pedaling together and pretty content with it, side by side, enjoying the beautiful day.
“I think I have a crush,” Eva tells me, darting her eyes at me mischievously.
“Oh?” I say, focusing on my spinning wheel. A pink flower got stuck and is getting squashed with each pedal.
“One of the gear guys,” Eva says, “Who knows he’s probably –“ Eva lets out a scream and crashes into a bush. The carrots rolls to the ground. I leap off my bike and run to her.
“Are you okay?”
“You didn’t see that?” she says. The skin on her knee’s broken open and blood’s slinking out.I take the ointment I’ve packed out of my purse and kneel. She sucks her breath in through her teeth.
“What did you see?” I apply ointment and she winces as the blood starts to bubble. I’ve already told Eva my theories about the monster, and she’s been kind, but I don’t think she really believes me.
“Thank you.” I help her up and she wipes the dirt off her skirt. “I don’t know what it was,” she says, picking up the carrots scattered across the road, “Whatever, I probably made it up. You didn’t see it?”
“No.”
“It was probably one of those wolves.”
“Have you ever seen a wolf?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it was a wolf?” I’m being aggressive.
“I guess I don’t know.”
“Listen, Eva. I found a dog head in my lettuce this morning.”
“Another one?”
“I feel like it’s all connected.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know. All these heads. And that thing you just saw? I think something is going on. A conspiracy.”
“Mari, I don’t want to sound mean, but maybe you’re listening to too many of those radio shows at night.” I hand her the last of the carrots and she can tell that I’m annoyed.
“Well, I better deliver these,” she says, mounting her bike. “Thanks for the ointment. Good luck today.”
“Whatever,” I say. Eva pedals away, the carrots clapping together in her basket .
The Halls rests on the top of a hill, surrounded by mulberry trees. The teachers say that the Halls was an abandoned “elite” university after the rebuild. Now it houses people you aren’t allowed to see until you turn 18. A lot of care goes into these facilities, and some cynics think that neighbors will cause harm in order to get the Halls treatment, but who are they kidding? Nobody really wants to be there. I pedal while standing to give my thighs a little break as the hill swells. I reach the yellow brick building and set my bike in the tall grass. Inside, a woman wearing a yellow pantsuit sits behind a glass case. She has her hair is slicked up in a neat bun. Behind her there’s a golden banner that reads “WE ARE NOT WHAT WE HAVE DONE, WE ARE WHAT WE CAN BECOME.” I grab a mint from a bowl that’s also golden, unwrap it from its yellow shell.
“I’m here to see Gabriel Ernez, MA-13”
She squishes her face at me into a smile. My father’s face appears against the glass case, the reason why he’s here, the night that it happened. I breath in, then out.
“You’re his child?”
“Yes.”
“It says today is your birthday?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Happy 18 years around the sun,” she beams, “Do you know what you’ll be doing? It’s an exciting time.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe teach.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” she says, “You must be very patient. I never had patience so that’s why I’m doing intake. Plus, I get time to work on my plays.” She puts a finger to her mouth, and points with the other to the computer, like it is our little secret. It’s not against the law to make art, it’s often encouraged, but there are a series of tests to take in order to live as an artist in the artist commune, creating all day. Some of them paint murals on the schools, others make radio plays and broadcast them at night. The fact that she’s working on her plays at her designated job must mean she’s not very good.
“That’s cool,” I say, “Can I go inside?”
“Oh,” she says, “Right, of course.” She presses a button and the door next to the glass case opens. I’m met with a gush of cold air. This is the only place in our district that’s air-conditioned. We just keep the windows open at home.
“Take a seat and help yourself to some food. We just got a delivery this morning. There’s also some ice water.” I walk through the doorway and the door slips closed behind. The waiting room is the color of butter and the seats are cushiony, impeccably white, like the marsh mellows we ate before they all ran out. I sit carefully in one of them, afraid I will dirty or break them. Beside me are a few other visitors my age, probably also here on their birthdays. We glance at each other and give little nods of understanding. There’s a giant window looking into a sunny courtyard. There’s a painting of three brown puppies, nestled into each other like blankets. I look through the pamphlets on the cream-colored table next to me. One says: “TALKING TO A LOVED ONE IN THE HALLS: SOME SUGGESTIONS.” I read through.
For decades, The Halls has committed itself to the rehabilitation of those who have Taken Life or Severely Traumatized the Lives of Others. Our patients undergo daily therapy sessions and have their choice of 1-6 “extracurricular” art activities. We have a gym facility for patients —
I fold the pamphlet into quarters and then unfold them, trying to smooth out the wrinkles and make them young again. I tap my foot. I stare at the puppies. I’ve been taken care of in this life. Aunt Beatrice read to me and stamped a kiss on my forehead every night. She said “Love you,” to me the way she also said, “Wipe down the counters,” a hard after-thought, an ordinary direction. A lot of people grow up without fathers or even their biological parents. I am not special because of this. I’ve always had a community around me.
I hear my name called. A person in white linens holding a clipboard calls me into an office. Suddenly I feel exhausted by all of the steps of this, all of the checking in, all of the lights and the seats and the walls and the cakes. I take a seat in a red wooden chair. On this person’s desk is a photo of them and another person, maybe the person’s spouse, and a little baby.
“How are you feeling today about seeing your parent?” They fold their hands. They have long hair and gentle eyes, soft hair swimming across their arms.
“I don’t know,” I say, “I think fine.”
“That’s good. I’ll be in the courtyard the whole time. You only need to press this button on the pad,” they hand me a silver pad with a screen, “If you feel unsafe. Your parent has done a lot of work in his time here so there should be no problem. You already know this, but there are no weapons here. Everything is built on trust.”
“Okay,” I say, fingering the edge of the screen.
“Happy birthday, by the way.” They do not ask me what I’m planning to do.
“Thank you.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
They lead me down the hallway, where more people in white pass us by, towards an open courtyard with an empty swimming pool.
“He’s right over there,” they tell me, pointing with their finger to a man sitting in a chair looking out at the courtyard. It’s the back of him. There’s his hair, grayer than I remember. There are his shoulders, broad like a mountain. There are the dark, curly hairs peeking out of his shirt.
“I just go and say hi?” I can feel my shirt damp from my armpit sweat. I wonder if it’s possible to just turn eighteen next year.
“Yes,” they say, “Or whatever you feel is best. Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” I say, taking one step closer, “I’m excited.” The puppies in the frame start looking disgusting to me, a three-headed furry worm.
“Hmm,” they say, “It’s good to frame things that way. You sure you’re alright?”
“Yup!” I say, swallowing. I take another step and something inside of me flies down a slope, turns, and crashes. I start sobbing. It’s humiliating. All the blood in my body feels like it’s at my face. I turn and run away.
My Dad taught me how to ride a bike, but I can barely remember the moment now. I’m sure I was frustrated at first. I’m sure there were scabby knees and many tears. I can remember all of us riding together in a line. My mother on her blue one, my father on his black one, me on the white standard children’s one because I was small and still feel small when I drop a glass or have to hold in my pee. He must have had his hands on my waist, holding on to me like a loaf of bread, right before he let me go. It was before he started talking about conspiracy theories about the other neighbors and he stopped sleeping.
I’m practically flying down the hill. I cannot pedal fast enough. The mulberry trees blur past me as I make my way to familiar roads, thinking of my father’s curly back hair and the back of his graying head and=Tootsie’s pink open mouth, and the puppies on the wall all nestled into one another like they were a single pulsing body. I stop at Linda’s house, leaving the baby blue bike on the front porch. I knock on her doors. She doesn’t answer. I peer through the windows. Maybe she’s in the kitchen.
“Linda?” I run to the back where she keeps the key underneath a rug. I pass by the mound where Tootsie’s buried and open her back door. They took all the locks off before I was born. I enter her kitchen, afraid I’ll find her headless body seated at the table and her head somewhere dripping nearby. Something turns the corner, and I grab the red shovel by the door, but it’s Linda holding a small corn cake with a single wax candle in the middle. I’ve been told that you used to light it and then blow it out, but it isn’t worth wasting the oil now. Eva is behind her, her hands clasped together, smiling. They start singing together and clapping and I drop the red shovel.Eva jumps up and down and Linda sets the cake down at the table.
“Make a wish sweetie!” Linda says, gently arranging my hair away from my face. I close my eyes and blow on the candle, imagining a flame I extinguished with my breath. “What were you gonna do with that shovel, Mari?” Linda laughs and so does Eva, and I find myself laughing too, for being so ridiculous.
“I’m sorry. I had a weird morning.” Eva turns on her heel and rushes out the door.
She’s probably sick of hearing about this. I get it.
“How did it go?” Linda rummages through her kitchen cabinets, taking out a small knife.
“I couldn’t do it.” She cuts the cake in three even pieces, picking one up for herself.
“Aw, honey, it’s okay. No one’s blaming you.” I bite into my piece, trying to concentrate on its sweetness and not how guilty I feel. Linda wraps her weathered hand over mine.
“You didn’t know how you were going to react until you did. It takes time.”
“I saw the back of his head and I thought about Tootsie’s head, I think? I don’t know.” Another sigh from Linda. She sucks her fingers when the cake is done and smiles at me. She looks all worried, the same look everyone has given me since my mother died, like there’s something inside of me that’s gonna mutate and grow on the walls.
“They had a portrait of dogs in there.” Linda leans forward and knits her brow. Even if she doesn’t believe me she’s interested in what I’m saying, like it’s the plot of a radio story. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what I should do. If I should join the bungalows and write elaborate stories with other artists. But I can never think of anything good. Everything is recycled from something a little better. I think some people need to be the ones who listen and it’s okay if that’s me.
“Go!” I hear Eva say, and I hear little nails scratching on the floorboards. A chocolate-colored puppy runs all over the kitchen and jumps on Linda, licking her face. Another puppy in a day of puppies. Strange.
“You got Linda another dog? After this morning?” I’m defensive.
“The dog’s yours to take care of, silly,” Linda says, and the puppy leaps off Linda and waits at my feet. I hold out my hand and she licks it.
“I found her on my delivery route today,” Eva says, “My parents are allergic and nobody can take care of her. She’s yours.” Eva corrects herself, remembering that nothing belongs to us, “Yours to take care of.” The puppy chases her tail. I’m envious of her. She doesn’t know anything about anything.
We take her out into the shared yard and I’m amazed by how fast she goes, her legs taut and muscular, built to move fast and catch things and bring them to us. She knows what she’s always been meant to do. She doesn’t even have to think about it.
“How was today?” Eva asks me, wrestling a rope from the puppy, the puppy making aggressive play-noises at her.
“It was fine.” I don’t tell her anything else.
“I heard it’s really nice in there,” Eva says, the puppy gnawing at the rope. I feel Linda’s eyes on me.
“So nice,” I say. Eva smiles. I wonder what it’s like to be her. She doesn’t know what kind of questions to ask because this hasn’t happened to her.
“Oh, darn,” Eva says, looking at the sinking sun, “I have to go. My dad wants us all home for dinner. He’s a little nervous.”
“About the monster?”
“The wolves,” Eva says, not meeting my eyes. Linda gives Eva a hug.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Linda says to me, “But I have to get going, too. It’s our monthly neighborhood check in meetings.” I make kissing noises at the puppy and she doesn’t know that that means to follow me. I feel really lonely all of a sudden.
Eva waves goodbye to me from her bicycle and I watch her pedal away. Shadows stretch all around our house. The puppy runs ahead of me, sniffing the porch and the door. She rushes inside when I open the door, sucking the entire history of her house up her nose.
On the counter there’s a new delivery basket with a note from Aunt Beatrice. I’ll be back home later. There’s chicken in the ice box. The puppy nestles into a ball on our old blue couch and I think once again of the painting at the Halls. I shut the windows. I turn on the radio and listen to a teleplay about space and time travel. Nobody goes to space anymore. The world is smaller, and it is better than way. I listen to the news. Medicine developments. Another year of climate catastrophe delayed thanks to No Cars. A group of ability activists asking to make the wagons for those who can cycle more comfortable, the pushback from mechanics who need the resources to fix bikes already in use. The sentiment from everyone that at least its better now. I take the chicken from the ice box and make a fire outside. I fry the harvest of okra and mushrooms in lard we had stored, still fresh from delivery on Tuesday. I make a list of things I could do with the rest of my life. I cross them all out. In the trees, I see two red lights. I blink and they’re gone. I think I’m seeing things, just putting together a story to make myself feel better. The teleplay ends. The astronauts make it back home. It’s a happy ending but it turns out one of them isn’t an astronaut at all. He kisses his wife goodnight as a stranger, and as a stranger, turns off the lights.
“Puppy,” I say, “Let’s go to sleep.” I climb into the bed I share with Aunt Beatrice think about energy preservation and how it is best to keep the lights off but the teleplay scared me a little bit so maybe I can deal with Aunt Beatrice yelling at me when she gets home, in exchange for being at ease. The puppy jumps into bed with me but I don’t want to get her started on bad habits so I place her on the floor. She jumps back up. I put her back on the floor. We go back and forth like that until she gets the point and gives in to the floor. I hold out my hand to let her lick it. Her tongue is warm. I do this every five minutes until I dream of the puppies in the photo, swirling and gnawing at each other’s tails, swallowing each other’s heads.
I wake up. The lights are all still on. I don’t hear Aunt Beatrice anywhere. Where is she? I hold out my hand for the puppy to lick it and she does, her tongue warm and comforting. I’m fine. I’m safe. Aunt Beatric will be home soon and then I’ll wake up to her snoring.
When I roll over the puppy is next to me in bed, her small body rising and falling as she peacefully snores. Who was licking me? I twist my body and slowly inch towards the edge of the bed. I lower myself slowly, so slowly it’s almost painful. I try not to breathe. When I see the two blinking red eyes in the darkness I’m frozen. It’s come for me, I think. I leap back up and grab the puppy, slamming the door shut and pushing a flimsy chair in front of it. When the door rattles and I run with the puppy into our closet in the hallway. The puppy is growling and I hold her snout closed with my palm. “Shh,” I say. I hear heavy breathing and that awful nail scratching and know I’m not crazy. I know it’s not a wolf. I see its shadow beneath the door, it’s awful breath rattling. It almost sounds like it’s laughing. Then it lets out a horrific howl and dashes away, nails scratching on the floor. I hear glass break.
There must be a reason why I am the only one finding the heads, on this day of all days. I remember my dad’s curly back hairs. I keep my dad’s photo in this closet, in an old shoebox of memories. I look out the window. Red eyes, staring up at me. So it is him, after all. Does that mean whatever is in him, is in me? Everything comes together for me, suddenly. I move our jars of pickled vegetables and find the pad installed into the wall. I dial Eva first. Her face flashes before me. She looks sleepy.
“Hello?”
“Eva. Can you come over here?” Eva yawns.
“Why? What’s up?”
“You know that thing you saw earlier today? Did it have red eyes?”
“I don’t know. It was in a tree.”
“I think it’s trying to tell me something.”
“Like what?” Eva’s eyes got bigger.
“I don’t know. Something about …. I think it’s my dad.”
“What?”
“I think my Dad turns into a monster. I think he sneaks out from the Halls.”
“To kill dogs? Mari, what are you talking about?”
“I already told you.” Eva’s silent on the other line.
“Hello?”
“I’m just worried about you,” Eva says.
“Well, I’m only calling you because I need to call someone before I press the green button. So thanks for being that person.”
“The green button? That’s for emergencies.”
“Good-bye, Eva.”
“Mari, wait!”
I hang up and move my finger to the upper right hand of the screen where the green button lives. My hand shakes. I haven’t pressed the green button since the night my mother was killed. And even then Linda did that all for me. The screen asks me if this was a life or limb-threatening emergency. I click yes. The screen asks me if there was anyone in my immediate surroundings who could help me. I look at the puppy who is licking her asshole and click no. The screen asks me if I have reached out to someone I can trust with this information. I click yes. The screen asks me if this person can help the immediate situation. I click no. The screen asks me if I remember the laws of our district, which state that you can only press the green button if you are completely helpless and cannot defend your own life. I click yes. The screen asks if I am ready for the process that will follow for pressing the green button. I click yes. It asks me for my birth number and the code for the screen. I type it in along with the code: my mother’s birthday. The screen begins counting down by ten, the electric numbers blasting my brain awake. I hold my breath. I bite my lips, chew on the dead skin.
A slow jingle begins down the street, then gets louder and louder. There will be drama, I’m thinking. There will be neighborhood gossip. But this is normal. This is just the system working. The puppy and I are in the living room and I’m holding the red shovel as protection. She’s running around in circles, chasing her tail. Our window’s been broken and a piece of bloody fur sticks to the edges. That’ll be good. Evidence. They’ll believe me. They knock on the door and the puppy runs to it, happy to greet strangers. I try to feel confident and reasonable. A knock on the door. I’ll explain to them what I explained to Eva and they won’t think I’m crazy or somebody who causes harm to others and they won’t stick me in a courtyard waiting forever to die. When I open the door, the responders are all in white, their bikes parked on their stands in a little line. One of them carries a bag which I know holds tranquilizers. A tall man with a hefty beard clears his throat.
“We are here because the green button was activated. We will not use force unless there is an immediate threat. My name is Neighbor Gary and the person holding me accountable is Neighbor Lauren. This is Neighbor Jan, who will activate sleep serum but only when necessary. What is the problem, neighbor?” The puppy’s at my heels. She growls.
“My Dad is in the yard and he’s trying to hurt me.” The puppy barks. I know I can’t say monster because they won’t believe me.
“Your Dad? I see. Neighbor Lauren, please pull up the information we have on this house.”
Neighbor Lauren takes out a remote then clicks a yellow button which shoots out blue light with information into the air between us.
“Residence held by Beatriz Fallon of MA-13. Cynthia Ernez, life taken by Gabriel Ernez on October 21st, ten years and two months ago. Ernez has been residing in the Hills for 10 years. Are you Marisol?”
“Yes.”
“It says it’s your birthday, Marisol.”
“Yes.”
Neighbor Jan adjusts his backpack of tranquilizers and seems to pick his wedgie. This is who is who is supposed to help?
“Really exciting time. Do you know what –”
“Not now, Jan.”
“Sorry.”
“Where did you say you saw your father?”
I bring them to the yard. The puppy follows at my heels. They turn on their flashlights and the light washes over our yard.
“I don’t see anybody here.”
“Neighbor Gary is not believing Marisol, the neighbor who pressed the green button.” Neighbor Lauren speaks into a recorder.
“I’m just stating facts, Neighbor Lauren. There is nobody here.”
“Neighbor Gary must take all measures to see if Neighbor Marisol is safe.”
Neighbor Jan pets the puppy’s stomach and smiles. She rolls on her back with her tongue out, legs wiggling in the air.
“Cute dog! What’s her name?”
“No name,” I scoop her up and hold her to my chest. I’m surprised at how protective I am of her.
“I had a dog once. But unfortunately –”
“Jesus.” Neighbor Gary shines his light on the lettuce patch. “These are some good heads of lettuce here. Really round. Do you have a secret for planting them? Ours always get worms.”
Suddenly I feel stupid for pressing the green button. I should’ve just gone back to sleep. These people can’t fucking help me. I’m a stupid idiot girl with an active imagination. Neighbor Gary searches the length of the yard. He walks towards the corner of the garden.
“What do we have here? Oh, no. I’ve been hearing reports about these little guys.” Neighbor Gary is holding up a cat’s head by the ears. Then he gasps. In this moment, I hate that I’m right. A yellow claw shoots out of Gary’s stomach and pulls back, squirting blood everywhere. Neighbor Gary grabs at the insides spilling out of him as blood dribbles from his mouth. The monster knocks it to the ground and begins to feed. I want to move but I can’t. I want to scream but I can’t. Neighbor Jan shakily takes out the tranquilizers but drops them. She faints. Neighbor Lauren drops to her knees and vomits, spewing her delivered harvest onto the grass. Her screams drill into my ears and I see my father again, wailing on the floor next to my mother’s lifeless body. I see my Aunt Beatrice throwing my father’s things into the fire. I see the wooden box that held my mother, being lowered in the grass by the gardens as we said the words from Ruth, where her body would eventually feed the soil which would birth fruit which go later in our mouths. I know it’s wrong to think of people as innocent or not innocent. Neighbor Gary is innocent. Was innocent. He’s dying, anyway. He’s dying and it’s my fault. I hold the puppy to me as she barks and barks.
“S-s-top,” I say, to Puppy and to the monster, pathetically.
What’s eating Gary is enormous. It’s hair bristles, almost jiggles. It’s fly-eyes flick red and in all directions. Hard nails sprout from ten, human-like fingers, protected by a brush of fur. I don’t know why it has to survive this way; feeding like it never will again. I hear a final “Please,” from Neighbor Gary, and then his hands fall slack behind him. The hard fear on his face fades slowly, an old photograph, as the monster gnaws away at the meat of his neck, snapping his head off like a button. The monster lets out a growl and then a huff. This is it. This is how it ends. Neighbor Lauren backs away on her hands, standing up and stumbling again, dragging Jan by the collar. “Get up!” she says, “Get up!” What have I done? I’m thinking that the lettuce will surely be ruined now when I hear another yell. An other-worldly scream. It’s Aunt Beatrice, running, flying practically, with her axe. She hacks into him.
“Damn you!” she says, shrieking, the blood showering her, “Damn you, damn you!” I’ve never seen her more alive sinking the axe into the monster’s neck. The monster’s caught off-guard. The monster had no idea what was coming.
The jiggling stops. The bug-eyes flutter close, blankets in the wind. It crashes to the ground and stays there. I wait for it to turn into a man, somebody I know, but it doesn’t. Its mouth is open the way Tootsie’s was, pink, wet, gaping. It licks its lips and wheezes. If it weren’t right before me, if I was all alone outside in the woods and could sense something close to me, I would’ve thought it was crying.
I’m told they brought the body into the medic quarters. That they sliced it open at the navel. They pulled out organs that resembled ours: a stomach, a heart, a loopy intestinal track. They peeled back its eyes and stuck a tube down it’s throat. I’m told they have never seen anything like it before. They asked me if I wanted to have a look; I caught it, after all, or rather, I was the one who pressed the green button. I didn’t want to. It was enough to know that I was right. And besides, I wasn’t raised to take credit for anything. I’m told that somebody, probably someone new to the job, wrapped the monster’s body in cloth and then set fire to it, waited for it to turn to ash, that there’s an ongoing investigation with the Department. Our district hasn’t seen an animal head in over a year. Everybody is as safe as they’ve ever been. Aunt Beatrice never really talked to me about that night. She wasn’t really mediating an argument in Education, she was grabbing a bell from another district for my bike, for me, as a present. The bell was golden and when you flicked it, the noise wasn’t shrill or abrasive, but light and pleasant, like it was saying good morning instead of saying get out of my way. She gave it to me wordlessly, in a small pink cup. She isn’t one for gifts because she thinks they make us forget our commitments to one another, but I think sometimes they’re for helping us remember someone when they’re gone. When she arrived her instincts simply set in, and after she was done killing it, she dropped the axe and held on to me in a way she never had before, like she was trying to squeeze all the bad out of me. Later, I told her my secret theory, the one about how it was the monster who killed my mother all those years ago.
“That’s certainly a theory,” she tells me.
“But don’t you think it’s weird, that I was the only one finding the heads? And that my mother died in a similar way? I mean, what if Dad was framed—“
“Similar? Your mother’s head wasn’t missing, Marisol. Let’s talk about this another time. I’m tired.”
“And then there’s the thing about the red eyes. The picture I have of my father -”
“Marisol, that’s how pictures used to be. It’s a trick of the light.”
“You never want to hear what I have to say! I was right about the monster. Why can’t I be right about this?” Aunt Beatrice sprays the counters again, even though they looked clean to me.
“Get the mop,” she says, not looking at me.
“Why don’t you talk to me?”
“Get the mop,” she repeats. She fills up a bucket with water and adds two drops of apple cider vinegar and soap she had made earlier that week. I shove the mop in and think about how it looks like a woman upside-down, drowning. I dance the upside-down woman all over the kitchen floor while she dusts the cabinets. She opens them up and wipes down our dish ware, the two plates we share between each other. The sun goes down so I go outside and gather some blue flowers that have just started blooming. I cut them swiftly with scissors and place them in a jar of water. I set them on the kitchen table, where Aunt Beatrice is polishing the silverware. I think I see her bottom lip trembling, little flecks of water hitting the spoons.
Puppy got bigger and she stays by my side. It’s taken me a while to go back to the Halls. An entire year. In the year my hair has grown a little longer. Linda’s ankle never improved but I bring Puppy over to her every day and she teaches her simple commands: paw, sit, play dead. I’ve ignored incoming calls from my father. Eva started working there, as an intake specialist. I never apologized to her about freaking out over the phone, but we are close enough that some things are understood, and then they fade. I think it’s a good job for her. Today’s my birthday again. Nineteen. Tomorrow I start with the mechanics. I am not self-conscious anymore. I take my bike to the Hills as I did only a year ago. I lock my bike in the pod again. I open the door again but this time it’s Eva sitting there. I don’t know what happened with the girl who writes the plays. Maybe I’ll be listening to the radio sometime and recognize her voice, and it will be like our secret, because I knew her before she was good.
Eva sits with me before I see him. Eva moves her foot around in a circle. Her ankle is brown, bony, and tender. She bumps her shoulder on mine, to tell me that she is there.
My dad is right where I left him, a year ago, as if only seconds passed since I ran away. For me the year was filled with movement, the puppy’s running into a full grown dog, the leaves shaking yellow then dying beautifully, then blooming green again, my hairs branching apart at the ends, but how does he tell time? What changes in the Halls? I never want to wait like this. I never want to be this still. Seeing the back of his head, shaved and grey, sends something down my spine again, a messenger, maybe, a person with a bag full of letters all screaming HELP. The dog’s by my heels, panting. We walk to him together. My hands shake. I take a seat next to him, at a white table that is just starting to rust.
It’s strange seeing my father like this. Like somebody stuck him through some vat of aging juice and he came out on the other side. I guess that’s time. I guess we’re on the other side before we even know it. He is only feet away from me. It’s the closest I’ve been to him since that night. I forgot that his eyes are like mine: a deep brown. A deer’s eyes.
“Marisol,” he says. “My Marisol.” He stands up, the chairs squeaking away from him. I see the therapist stand up from another table, just in case he tries anything. You are never really alone here. My face is wet. He opens his arms and I find myself in them. My dad. One half of all of me. He lets out a low moan that almost sounds like a laugh and my heart is wrapped tightly in string and desperately yanked. We pull a part. I wipe my face and he wipes his. \
“And who is this?” he says, looking down at the dog.
“That’s the dog.” Puppy has her tongue out in a smile. He sticks his hand down and she runs to it, sniffing. He picks her up with ease, not even thinking about it. He is smiling in a way I’ve seen myself smile, in pictures, as if he just drank a bunch of water and is about to laugh. I am caught up in this moment. It bursts away from the circumstance it was born from, it stands alone and shivers. I want to hold it forever and keep it warm. But there’s a reason I came here.
“Dad, I need to ask you something.” He’s holding the dog like a baby, patting her back as she licks his face. He laughs at her touch.
“Yes, my love. Ask me anything.”
“Did you hear about the monster who was taking heads of animals and um, people sometimes?”
“I think so. There was something about it in the weekly briefings. Why?”
“Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I caught it, technically.”
“Did you? I’m very proud of you, sweetie.”
“Yes, um. So, something else I wanted to bring up is—” The puppy licks my father’s face wildly. He seems so happy. So happy that he isn’t even paying attention to me. I clear my throat.
“Something else is, um, I just think it’s funny, or, it’s interesting, I think it’s interesting that …that it’s similar to… well, the monster. I sort of think… I sort of think the monster killed mom that night.” The smile on my father’s face falls. He gently brings the dog down.
“Mari.”
“The monster that overtook you that night. Or the government implanted something in specific groups of people to turn them against one another so that we would never rise up again.” My heart is racing.
He lets out a deep breath of air. He scratches his head. The dog’s still at his ankles, begging to be picked up again. I make kissing sounds at her. She whimpers. He looks away from me and closes his eyes. My father’s hands, two rakes, scratch the dog’s thin neck as an instinct. He sees me watching so he takes his hands away, folds his fingers gently together in his lap. I cross and uncross my legs, the chair making a little squeaking sound as I do. He inhales. I exhale. He looks at me again with his deer-eyes that are mine. There are stretches of land between us, an abandoned, sloping highway we’d sled down in the winter on garbage pails. The dog barks.
“Come here, baby,” I say to the dog, holding out my hand, making little kissing sounds. She looks up at me and then at my dad and then back at me again, tongue out, smiling. “Come here,” I say.
Excerpted from Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva (Astra House 2025)
The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive!</i> by Melissa Lozada-Oliva appeared first on Reactor.
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