El Repelente

Illustrated by Sarah C. Bell

An Excerpt:

(On Thursday, July 28, at 4:37 p.m., Anabela Quintal quit her job as general assignment reporter for the Denver News.)

This is the story of how Anabela Quintal jumped her tracks (and entered a parenthetical phrase. How she became an Agent of Chaos.)
This story was told to me, freelance investigative reporter Lim Tang, by Anabela Quintal in the First year of the Sun of Lepitoptera Jagua, PMD.
Newspapers hate grammatical playfulness. It’s Associated Press-style this, New York Times-style that, day in, day out. Newspaper editors are linguistic liturgists, casting the sin out of your syntax, the hype out of your ‘perbole. Anabela Quintal was never attached to details. But it is in details that we glimpse truth. The sky is a detail; “the ground” is an indefinite.



Back Cover
 “Truth?” Anabela would have snorted. “Your truth or mine?”
I don’t mean truth as the opposite of lies, but lies as omissions, repression of the intricate picture in favor of fashionable generalizations.
Anabela Quintal was just as banal as her employers. Just as complacent. She did not fret about the Denver News’ platitudinous prose, sensationalistic headlines, stultifying miscellany and bland biases, so long as the place provided her with a paycheck and dental insurance.
Anabela Quintal believed she needed security. She believed in the Future. She was an immigrant.
And she had three peculiar characteristics. Two were her feet. There is no retail size to describe them.
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