GAME
by Majo Delgadillo · July 21, 2026
Majo Delgadillo is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of California, San Diego and the PhD program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, where she also was Student Artist-in-Residence in Neuroaesthetics at the IUCRC BRAIN Center. She writes about bodies, memory, pop culture, the fantastic, history, and horror, and is interested in how these interact and intersect. Her work has been published in Carte Blanche Magazine, Camas Magazine, the Revista de la Universidad and Erizo Journal for the Arts, among others. She has published the digital piece machine3.xyz and the book of short stories Lullabies for the End of the World (Bakstenen Huis, 2021) and its Spanish translation Canciones de cuna para el fin del mundo (Editorial ParaÃso Perdido 2022). She was a finalist for the Casa Wabi Narrative Prize-Dharma Books 2023. She currently teaches at James Madison University in Virginia, USA.
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GAME
Majo Delgadillo
IT’S NOT SCARY if it’s a game. It’s not scary if you remember we’re playing. Count to ten between each breath, one Mississippi, two Mississippis, three Mississippis… Whisper. Don’t make a sound. It’s not a threat, I just don’t want to hear that voice right now. I’m not interested in the pleading. It’s not scary if you remember we’re about to eat. We’re sitting at the table facing the wonders of pleasure, remember? We’re smelling pepper and cinnamon. Sage. Game. It’s not scary if we hold hands and I tell you a story: Once upon a time lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children. The boy’s name was Hansel and the girl’s name was Gretel. He had but little to eat, and once, when a great famine came to the land, he could no longer provide even their daily bread. It’s not scary if you remember what happens next: the woodcutter will take the siblings to the forest to try to get rid of them. The boy leaves traces behind, remember? First round, they come back. Like zombies. Like the undead. A hungry plague, a crying curse, the children. Second round, they get lost and find the house of a witch. They don’t know she’s a witch, remember? They just know the house is made of sweets and sugar. A dream. The story won’t say it, but they’ll wonder if they’re dead. If this is paradise. The siblings, who have only known their own hunger, a pull in their guts, a scream stuck in their throats, the sickly quality of honey over their tongues; they will find a new kind of pleasure when they learn the act of sinking teeth. They bite, remember? It’s not scary if you remember. It’s not scary if you know the story. They open their mouths to eat whole universes. They chew on the foundations of the house. They swallow the frosting and the colors. They realize they’re not dead. They realize they have never been this alive. And just when they’re finally satisfied, like a selfish king and queen, the witch finds them. In the story, the witch will find them and bring them home. New toys or foraged mushrooms, the children. And the witch will sing to them: songs, lullabies. She will tell them stories before bed. She won’t be angry. She will desire to keep them. This is the part the story always gets wrong. She’s maternal, the witch. More attentive and certain of what they need. Feeding them. Holding their hands, and wiping pearls of sweat from their foreheads when they get sick. That’s the part the story gets wrong. She loved them, remember? It’s not scary if you remember the days they would spend together, singing and dancing. In a haze. In love. The story gets this part wrong. In it, the witch transforms the little girl. No longer a sister but a torturer, remember? An executioner, fattening up the brother like a suckling pig and dreaming of dying. Oh, how the poor little sister sobbed “Dear God, please help us,” she cried. “If only the wild animals had devoured us in the woods, then we would have died together”. It’s not scary if you remember that the story is wrong. It’s not scary if you remember that we had rules and regulations and prizes and love. It’s not scary if you remember the frenzy of dancing, the sensation of an expanded belly after eating cream and berries. The fingers over your ribcage and inside your mouth. The other kinds of hunger: salivating at the sight of lips or of legs. This is what the story gets wrong: we had rules. A pact set up one morning, the gold of sunlight rippling through hand-made curtains. The witch stares at her children, grown and ripe, who request a game. And she accepts. It’s not scary if you remember we’re playing a game and games have rules. It’s not scary if you think about the rules: a bite for a bite. A hunger for a hunger. A hunger, in fact, in exchange for two satiated little kids. The witch, is true, has been hungry. The witch has always been too hungry for this world. Too hungry with desire, a fever for feasts and festivals. The witch feeds the children: sweets and roasted meat and marshmallows. It was morning when we set up the rules, the sun coming in through the windows, remember? And I told you the truth: a bite for a bite. This is a part of the story that’s unfair. It’s true that the witch wants to sink her own teeth into flesh and bone. Breaking. Pulling. Swallowing. It’s true that the witch dreams of the nerves trapped between the gaps in her mouth. White strings of gummy flesh giving in. But it’s unfair to say that the witch turns the girl into a torturer. She just allows for passion to have room to roam. It’s not scary if I bring you close to my chest, shhhshhh. It’s not scary if I call you my love. My love, you know what’s coming. The decisive moment. A breakthrough: becoming a victim or a murderer. Becoming the sizzling of fat above an open flame. It’s not scary if we’re playing a game: hide and seek, cat and mouse. I’ll close my eyes and count to ten between each breath. It’s not scary if I remind you of your role: your brother will attempt to run. His legs, round and fleshy, will make a supple sound where the thighs meet and you’ll signal to your hands and your legs and your tongue. To go. To not salivate. But you won’t be able to avoid it. It’s not scary if you’re under a spell. It’s not scary if it’s beautiful. A banquet in candlelight. A kiss on the lips. It’s not scary if you’re in love, my love. It’s not scary if you cook it right, the flesh coming off the bone, softly, juicy. The smell of burnt hair covered by butter and honey. It’s not scary if you sip on wine and mead. It’s not scary if you remember your wishes: we are the wild animals. We can die together. And you’re hungry, remember? You were so hungry you could eat a house. It was a time of great famine, and you could’ve eaten an entire village. You could’ve turned into teeth, a cannibal. I understand. I do. You want to know what it feels like, being an only child. Becoming my wild thing. Hungry and sticky with sugared fingers. You want to know what it’s like to be a creature of pure desire. So eat. Open your mouth. It’s the rules of this game. A hunger for a hunger.