May 2015
The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace, with the eighth issue featuring all-original short fiction by Kevin McNeil, Cassandra Khaw, Lisa L. Hannett, and Eric Schwitzgebel.
In This Issue
The Ghost of You Lingers
by Kevin McNeil
The Victorian House in Old Town The first house the real estate agent shows you will not work. It reminds you too much of the house you grew up in—old, dark, cluttered. A musty odor hangs in the air, the sort of smell that has become as much a part of the house as its […]
An Ocean of Eyes
by Cassandra Khaw
One “If I were the mayor, I’d have renamed this town long ago,” announces the man beside me, his chuckle wet with old hurts. I turn to read the scythe of his mouth, his milk-pale skin, his eyes like tatters of the noon sky. A foreigner, most definitely. Only outlanders court strangers in bus stands. […]
A Shot of Salt Water
by Lisa L. Hannett
Accordions unpleated welcoming songs the day the mermaids returned. The first notes droned joyful at dawn, played by young men with wool collars unrolled against the wind. Mattress-clouds bulged above land and water, miles of damp cotton dulling the fishermen’s music. As the sky blanched, fiddlers sawed harmonies, horsehairs screeching on weather-warped bows. Bodhráns were […]
Momentary Sage
by Eric Schwitzgebel
That midsummer’s night, after we four collapsed in fairy sleep beneath boughs and moon, I roused to see a sprite looping through the flowers. Carrying a single seed in his ant-leg fingers, he ducked beneath Hermia’s skirts. She turned once, in dream. The past is nothing but the shapes and colors that now arise before […]
