Free Rescue From Planet Pleasure by Mario Acevedo

I’m a little weird. Imagine that.” Coyote guzzled a Carta Blanca.
    “Start explaining how we got here.” I removed the lid from my Styrofoam cup. Steam curled from the warm blood. I peeled the cornhusk from a tamale and dipped it in the blood. “You could’ve told me we were about to teleport.”
    “Don’t tell, show. Right, ese ?”A grin wormed onto his face. “That’s something I’ve learned from writing my novel. Besides, if I would’ve told you, you wouldn’t have believed me or understood how going from there to here works.” While Coyote talked, he was chomping on his second tamale and starting another beer.
    “I still don’t understand, but I believe.”
    Coyote wiped blood from his chin and licked his fingers. His second beer was already a dead soldier. “Then we’re halfway there.”
    “So you understand how this teleportation works?”
    “ Claro . Remember when you and Jolie were discussing Phaedra’s drawing?” So Coyote had been eavesdropping.
    I replied, “The one of a giant room lined with doors?”
    He dunked a third tamale into his cup of blood. “What we just did was go from one door, across the psychic plane, and through another door.”
    I shucked my second tamale. “How did you know where we were going?”
    He upended beer number three and chugged. He put the bottle down and burped. “I used the Sun Dagger.”
    “The petroglyph we put our hands on? That’s its name?”
    “Now. It’s been called lots of things by lots of different people.” Coyote returned to chewing, drinking, and swallowing.
    “Then that petroglyph was a portal?”
    Coyote shoved the last of his third tamale into his mouth. He chewed as he talked. “Portal?” He chuckled and spit bits of bloody tamale. “You’ve been watching too many scientific fiction movies.”
    “Then what would you call it?”
    Coyote tipped the Carta Blanca to his lips and greedily emptied it. He set the bottle aside and grabbed a fourth and held it in his hands, his eyes focused faraway. He brought his attention to the present and shrugged. “Portal, I guess. It opens into a tunnel, ese . A tunnel that’s always shifting through space. One end is on top of Fajada Butte and the other moving around.”
    I imagined the tunnels as wormholes, a darling topic of quantum mechanics and science fiction. I recalled that Coyote had kept referring to his watch before using the Sun Dagger. “And depending on the time, the other end opens to a different location?”
    “You got it, bro.” Coyote reached for the fifth Carta Blanca.
    I snatched the bottle for myself. Since I had paid for lunch, I deserved at least two beers and two tamales to his four of each. “How do you know the schedule?”
    “I got it figured out.”
    “And you’ll show me?”
    “In time.”
    “Why didn’t we bring Jolie?”
    “You know how it is when you bring a ruca along. I wanted this to be just us vatos. ” Coyote leaned into his chair and unbuckled his belt. He stuck both hands inside his pants and scratched. “You bring a girl and you gotta act Miss Manners and shit.” He fastened his belt and sniffed his fingers. He grasped the last bit of my tamale. “You gonna eat this?”
    “Not anymore.”
    He dipped the tamale into my cup of blood.
    “You can have that too.”
    Coyote smiled. “Thanks, vato . You’re a decent camarada. ” He munched the last of the tamale and slurped the remaining blood from both cups.
    I cleared the table and pitched our trash into the Dumpster. Coyote started for the sidewalk.
    A lot of questions still pinged in my head. “But you don’t need a petroglyph to teleport. Remember the last time we were here? One time, you tumbled out of my car and disappeared. And the other time, when your truck was blown up, you vanished and then returned from wherever you had gone.”
    “Doors are everywhere. And I have the magic key right here.” He tapped his temple and his fingertip gave a hollow metallic thunk, thunk against his