My name is Cristina Lynn Acevedo, the creator of She Lives Among Us NYC, and what that means is entirely dependent on what version of the creature “that lives among us” you have met.

If you met “La Vejiccubus”, then you met the creature of advanced evolution and hostility. Her species lives among us everyday people as a product of that very environment. She was an endangered predator cloaked as prey. These Succubus hybrids were inspired by both the design elements and history behind the vejigante masks of Puerto Rico, as well as the concept of Bessel Van De Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, in conversation with both the erasure and adaptations of Taino (Arawak) culture.

But just like the Vejiccubus who peeled from their carcasses as cocoons, these concepts too changed and evolved.

In processing a lot of what the Vejiccubus reflected back at me, I found myself looking within, outward, and all around me. I soon recognized that much of this world, family, friends, situations, and strangers…were mirrors for a variety of different parts of my own being. And I too, was a mirror for them. I concluded that the Vejiccubus, symbolic of my own human experiences, needed to go beyond simply being a creature of habit and predisposed, inherited identities. She now is one of the many deities within my own spiritual narrative.

It’s sacred text that speaks of moral code and titans who are tested on those very principles. Because what are gods if not at least the cosmos reflecting us?