The Dark Issue 31: The Dark, #31

By MP Johnson, Robert Levy, Nin Harris and Robert Shearman

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:

“Necksnapper” by MP Johnson
“The Vault of the Sky, the Face of the Deep” by Robert Levy (reprint)
“When the Night Blooms, an Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris
“Lump in Your Throat” by Robert Shearman (reprint)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386896289

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 31 • December 2017

Necksnapper by MP Johnson

The Vault of the Sky, the Face of the Deep by Robert Levy

When the Night Blooms, an Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play by Nin Harris

Lump in Your Throat by Robert Shearman

Cover Art: Mother of Ghouls by Sandeep Karunakaran

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2017 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Necksnapper

by MP Johnson

Delayna snapped the first crow’s neck without thinking about it. She had learned this from her parents. Before they robbed and prostituted their way out of her life and into prison, they had taught her to ignore the weight of sin and instead focus on doing what needed to be done to get by. Their lessons, though masterful, hadn’t completely taken. The weight of what she had done in the past had been too much for her. This though, this dead bird in her hand, it didn’t weigh much at all.

Reaching out from behind the camera, the director snatched the black-feathered corpse from Delayna and flung it onto the concrete floor of the Burbank warehouse. One down, nine-hundred and ninety-nine to go, he said.

The director’s aged hands did constant battle with the white hair that stuck to his ever-shiny forehead. Watching the old man made Delayna feel inadequate about her lack of primping. She combed her short blonde shocks in the morning and let them do whatever they wanted during the day—no tending. By nighttime, they stuck out at odd angles like straw from holes in a worn-out scarecrow.

She had made contact with the director via a website where she often found video work. The work was dicey, but far from the path her parents had taken. Mostly on the right side of the law or only a couple steps over. She didn’t have the looks for traditional porn—chin too wide, forehead too short—but she had the guts for the out-there stuff, the whips-and-chains stuff, the oozes-and-eels stuff. This was a first though.

Upon meeting the director, her first question had been, Won’t the crows fly away? The old man had laughed and explained the assembly line setup: one man would take a crow from the massive cage and hand it to the anesthetist, who would inject it and hold it tight until the drugs kicked in. The anesthetist would then give it to the director, who would turn it over to Delayna.

Now, the assembly line shifted into gear. Another crow appeared in Delayna’s hands. Alive, but barely. It had been injected with enough tranquilizers to prevent it from flying away, but not enough to stop it from desperately flapping its wings and chomping its beak.

When she snapped the crow’s neck, she didn’t just hear it. She felt it. It echoed through her wrist, where, one late night when she had strayed too far in the direction of her parents, a man had shattered her bone with a baseball bat in Hollywood, before tearing off her fishnets and stuffing them into his mouth until he gagged. She held the now motionless bird for a moment as the feeling faded.

The director hissed, Throw it in the fucking pile.

Delayna nodded and did as ordered. Haste was for the best. If she spent too much time