The authors who discuss Istmica number 27 with their respective stories; the Guatemalan Francisco Alejandro Méndez and the Costa Rican Iván Molina Jiménez have found surreptitious and transtemporal ways of erecting the skin through the narrative they offer us in this edition. Méndez (1964) is a journalist, literary critic, university professor and recognised writer of the isthmus, who won Guatemala’s National Prize for Literature in 2017. Has published the following books of novelty and story: Graga and other stories (Editorial Central American Services, Guatemala, 1991), Manual to disappear (Arco Iris, El Salvador, 1997), Sobrevivir to count it (Praxis, Mexico, 1999), suburban Chronics (Editorial X, Guatemala, 2001), Russian Rulette (Fund for Economic Culture, Mexico-Guatemala, 2001), Completely Inmaculada (Perro Blue, San José de Costa Rica, 2002), Reinventory of fictions. Marginal catalogue of bestias, crimes and pedestrians (La Tatuana, Guatemala, 2006), Les ombres du jaguar et autres nouvelles (Éditions Elifetime, Paris, 2009), Game of dolls. One further case for Wenceslao Pérez Chanán, (FLACSO Editorial, Guatemala, 2012) and Triple Play, (germ, Costa Rica, 2013). As an investigator, he has also published the following literary critics tests: Central America in the eye of its critics (Rafael Landívar University, Guatemala, 2005), Towards a new state-of-the-art fee in Central America (Ed. Culture, Guatemala, 2006) and Diccionario de Autores y Críticos de Guatemala (La Tatuana, Guatemala, 2010). Molina (1961), a historian and writer of Costa Rican science fiction, author, co-author or editor of numerous studies on the history of Costa Rica in particular and Central America in general. Professor at the School of History and Researcher at the Latin American Identity and Culture Research Centre (CIICLA) at the University of Costa Rica. He won the National History Prize (1991), the Prize of the Academy of Geography and History (1991), the Ancora Prize of the newspaper La Nación (1992), the Prize for Researchers in Social Sciences (2015) and the Luis Ferrero Prize for Cultural Research (2016). Its most recent research includes: Education in Costa Rica from the colonial era to the present (EUNA, Costa Rica, 2016) and Príncipes of the remotities. Carlos Luis Fallas and proletarios Costa arricenses (EUNED, Costa Rica, 2016). In science fiction it has published several books of short stories and some of its stories have been included in collections and magazines published in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Spain, Argentina, the United States and Cuba. His most recent book of science fiction is The Fugitives of Abidos (La Jirafa and Yo, Costa Rica, 2017). In the stories of both authors presented in this edition, there is a combination of the creation of a suspended atmosphere, which can lead from apparent hallucinations to revive anxious fears. In this meeting, real and fictitious monsters converge — even if we have a difference — as well as the neurosis of the 21st century and the legends of the 19th century, which are relieved by psychoanalysis and fed by the first experiments of ‘genetic engineering’, and enable us to sow us a question about the (in) distinction of what is real in our environment.