Obsession by Sharon Buchbinder

tight ass in motion.
    “There’s a trail around Isabel’s property, a few hills, some rocks—”
    “Shut up and run.”
    He started with an easy jog, red dust kicking up behind him on the well-traveled running path. A few scrub pines and boulders dotted the landscape. A hawk circled over head, diving down, then up again, riding the air currents. She welcomed the strike of her foot on the hard ground, the pounding of her heart, and the mesmerizing rhythm putting her into a semi-hypnotic trance. Running brought back memories of the only times she felt free and easy as a child, back when a young woman named Janice had joined the cult.
    Angie had been ten years old when her mother drove up to the house in the muddy pickup truck and announced that she had found “this poor young thing” outside a grocery store, panhandling and crying. Nineteen years old, abandoned by a boyfriend she’d followed to the Eastern Shore, Janice had no family, no job, and no prospects. Her father’s initial wrath at the arrival of the intruder subsided as soon as he saw the young woman. With her corn silk hair, big blue eyes, and freckles, Janice looked as if she belonged in heaven, not on earth. The following year was the best one of Angie’s young life. Janice told her stories about life outside the farm and the cult, about how women could be equal to men, and how there were some very bad people in the cities. Away from her parents disapproving eyes and ears, Janice taught Angie forbidden rock and roll songs, how to braid her hair, and how to run for the sheer joy of it. Then Janice disappeared.
    Angie had cried for weeks. Her mother told her the girl had gone back to the Devil’s playground, and that Janice didn’t deserve her tears. That only made her cry harder. She wondered if she’d done something wrong and driven Janice away. Tightlipped, her father thrashed Angie with a leather belt, shouting, “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
    Angie glanced up at the clear blue sky and saw dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, diving and weaving in an erratic elliptical pattern. She ran harder, passing Alejandro, pushing herself past her pain, past the stitches in her side. Alejandro called after her to slow down, but his warnings only served to spur her on faster, toward whatever dead creature was being picked apart on the other side of a tin-roofed shed. Had Guillermo Goat met an untimely demise? She loved animals, and that creature had the personality of a pet dog. Her breath rasped in her ears, and as she rounded the shed, the stench of rotten meat hit her. A swarm of huge vultures gathered around a mound of dirt and fought over bits of flesh and bones. She screamed and stomped her feet at the hideous creatures, crying and shrieking at them at the top of her lungs. In that moment she was eleven years old again, struggling to drive buzzards off the body of her beloved Janice.

Chapter Six
    Miriam gazed around the village square of El Paradisio and wondered how anyone could have named this flyspeck on a map Paradise. Beady-eyed chickens and roosters scratched in the dirt near a trading post. A band of brown-skinned children with stick-thin legs ran barefooted through the square, shrieking and chasing each other in what appeared to be a game of tag. A young girl watched them from the sidelines, her black hair wild, a brown-eyed baby in a sling on her back. The girl’s assessing gaze slid over Miriam, sizing up this outsider, another chabochi in their village. Yes, this was a poor village by anyone’s standards. But were they desperate ?
    She tore her gaze away from the little urchin. “Sister Anne, where will we find the nun in charge of the orphanage?”
    Anne pointed to the dust cloud left behind by the roving band of children.
    A woman in a head covering and dress the same color as the sand in the village square materialized on the steps of the church. Sun reflected from the mission’s stained glass windows and bathed the