La Leche de la Reina

La Leche de la Reina charcoal drawing
La Leche de la Reina short story illustration. Charcoal drawing by author.

La Leche de la Reina

When M. first saw the town called La Leche de la Reina, he knew he had gotten off the map quicker and sooner than he had wanted to.  The town was easily as isolated and as scary as any place he had seen in Colima and Michoacan the year before, possibly moreso.  And this year M. was alone.  He would have to be careful in Leche.

Leche was dirty, small and cut off, and three quarters of it was garbage-strewn ruins from an earlier century.  There were only a few occupied dwellings in Leche, and these were just ruins that had been rebuilt on a  cheap budget.

These occupied ruins were refitted with homemade doors and windows and had a little amateur cement work done to replace missing stonework and some whitewash, but other than that, they were still part of the same hive of adjacent stone and concrete walls.

Everything was weathered and worn and falling apart.  Almost half of the ruins that had been re-occupied had later been abandoned yet again.

[This story is yet to be completed.]

short story by Joe Riverson Smith