Musings on the Dark: Nineteen Tales

By Silvia Font

Musings on the Dark is inspired in myth, superstition, and old wives' tales. Add a pinch of truth; fact and fiction coexist in this collection of fantastic accounts. Author Silvia Font sifts the mediocre to find the exquisite, be it darkly humorous or frankly macabre. She believes that wandering away from the light of reality into the dim unknown may actually protect our sanity, or at least provide some poetry in a world of inescapable bad news and pitiless technology. So beauty will marry the beast, and they will have a child. Some of these stories will make you smile. Others, more often than not, will creep you out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524567118

Silvia Font

Born a thousand years ago. Since early childhood, she has a been a tireless reader and listener. Raised by a family of soothsayers and storytellers (not as in liars but as in raconteurs), she was blessed with (semi)considerable wit, along with the gift of sarcasm and a good eye for the absurd. She soon committed to writing what she learned—or tried to—but she never published. Too chicken. Journalism was possibly a huge mistake for a somewhat mystic, spooky girl, but she made a living. And on the sly, she focused on the interesting stuff. She made her bones as a news and feature writer, editor, and translator, especially of literature. Font screams in her sleep, disturbed by eerie nightmares. They can be funny or horrific. She fears yet loves the dark, hates Daylight Saving Time (because it's stupid), but kind of likes the light.

Book preview

I. Dwellers

The Daughters

When Sally met Harry, he had recently gained custody of his girls. The divorce had not been necessarily hostile, but the ex-wife was described as a crazy woman by most common acquaintances. Some said she drank and did drugs (mushrooms, according to those who were more specific). Others claimed to bear witness to various, sundry dirty habits combined with a vile temper and ironclad egoism. Harry only made it clear that he preferred to raise his kids himself, and their mother seemed amenable.

However, no one pointed out that the girls, being in their teens, had already been practically raised by their mom. Nobody pondered if it wouldn’t make better sense to leave things as they were. And most extraordinarily, not a single relative or friend ever wondered why the boy (yes, there was a son) stayed behind.

By the time Sally married Harry, she had long since initiated contact, albeit without much success, with Heather (sixteen) and her younger sister Fern (fourteen). The girls were usually distant; both had dark-green eyes and soft-red lion manes and resembled the photo she had seen of the ex-wife in her prime. The boy, Tarquin, aged thirteen, was also a redhead, but his eyes were light; and he was a joy.

How often she wished that the living arrangements were the other way around.

Back from a quick honeymoon, the couple collected the daughters at the old address downtown. Sally’s first impressions that day ran from curious to irked. These young ladies exited their childhood home without even a glance back at their mother and brother and equally ignored their father’s welcome. Upon arriving at their new rooms, they proceeded immediately to change into clothes that displayed their many Goth tattoos, clicked some bling into their piercings, painted their eye sockets with charcoal, and left before anyone could stop them.

They came back shortly after midnight and rang the bell because they had no key. Sally and her new husband had their first serious fight.

"Excuse me? I will not have this, Harry. This is disrespectful and dangerous. They look like tramps, and they’re still children, especially Fern. Where could they possibly go? I had better not smell liquor…" On and on until he interrupted.

They are not yours, sweetheart. I mean, they’re not your responsibility.

The hell they’re not, my love. The endearment came out as an insult. "I am the stepmother. Everything on my watch is my fault."

You don’t even know them… yet.

Was that sadness in his voice? Fatigue? So soon?

We’ll work it out, don’t worry, he weakly recommended. Just let them be, at least until they get to love you. Then, much more strongly, he advised, Just don’t cross them.

At the mention of her husband’s daughters getting to love her, Sally thought of the frozen good-byes and hellos dispensed to their real parents merely hours before. Indeed The Plants—as she mockingly came to call them to herself, in secret—took all meals privately and were never around, and when they happened to be, they were virtually speechless except for an occasional statement pronounced solely for the obvious purpose of horrifying the innocent and followed by a studied, wicked look:

I can fly, you know. I fly through the night… no, really. Or Let’s ask Daddy to buy us a snake with those dead shiny eyes and that cute little black forked tongue. Or, ultimately, about the neighbor’s pet, I hate that stupid, yappy dog. One of these days, I’m gonna bite his balls off and feed them to my sister.

Nevertheless, the stepmother held her tongue and made herself scarce. Certainly, she could not be the only woman to face this kind of situation with somebody else’s offspring from a previous marriage—spoiled, rebellious teenage girls to boot, going through a phase.

But the behavior worsened, well beyond the Goth. Weeks passed. Come September, school was not even brought up because They won’t go and we can’t force them. who’s we? thought Sally.

The stealth excursions at all hours, in shocking dress and makeup, became routine. The foul comments proliferated; the language, unchecked, was now downright offensive, as was each new tattoo.

Are you aware that your fifteen-year-old—by then, Fern was fifteen—has a picture of a huge bloody penis on her arm?

Yes—with a hopeless sigh—a penis with a big nail in it. Harry, whom by now she couldn’t stand, had become a lonely, nervous man. None of his relatives ever once came to call.

His daughters painted their bedroom black and covered their windows with dirty dark fabric of unknown precedence, along with some barbed wire. Every mirror they could carry, they put away under the bed. They never turned their lights on. They denied permission to clean their space and altogether shunned personal hygiene. Never did the water in their bathtub run, not even when they had their period.

Now the once-pretty children lived encased within a crust of filth, putrid makeup, and every recognizable body excretion. They were desperately avoided. A lingering trail of infestation would suggest their every movement inside the apartment. Although they didn’t lock their door, no one ventured anymore into their crawling sewer of a room.

Once, on a night trip to the kitchen, Sally noticed a sort of moonlight seeping through to the hallway, and she overheard low music. She stopped to listen. No, this light was from no moon; she remembered the windows were covered. The music was… disturbing, under soft laughter and whispered chatter. What are they doing, Sally? she asked herself. Open, open the door. Now.

As she touched the doorknob, a small noise caught her ear: a muffled, breathless yelp of mortal pain then avid, wet chomping. With her hand over her mouth, she scurried away back to her husband’s side.

And about a day later, the neighbor littered the entire block with urgent flyers: Reward. Have you seen Charlie? Lost dog.

Sally phoned the children’s mother, who had moved to Europe. Of that delirious conversation, she retained a few phrases that worked like pins into her flesh.

So you finally figured it out, huh? . . . If you wanna find them at night, tour the cemeteries. Heehee… . Tarquin? He’s fine, thank you, dear. Safe. That’s why I left the country,