The Dark Issue 78: The Dark, #78

By H. Pueyo, Rob Costello, Ai Jiang and Phoenix Alexander

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Selected by award-winning editor Sean Wallace and published by Prime Books, this issue includes four all-new stories:

 

"We're Always the Ones Who Leave" by H. Pueyo
"The Thing With Chains" by Rob Costello
"The Catcher in the Eye" by Ai Jiang
"Dance, Macabre" by Phoenix Alexander

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201603007

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 78 • November 2021

We’re Always the Ones Who Leave by H. Pueyo

The Thing With Chains by Rob Costello

The Catcher in the Eye by Ai Jiang

Dance, Macabre by Phoenix Alexander

Cover Art: Intruders by Stefan Koidl

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2021 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

We’re Always the Ones Who Leave

by H. Pueyo

When they first come to our street, the blue jacarandas are in bloom, like they always are from September to December. Darkened seed pods fell on the pavement and crack under their shoes like eggshells, tiny bits of wood flying everywhere. It’s so beautiful, they tell us, smiling, eyes on the trees. It’s so beautiful that I wanted to take them all out of their roots and have them just for me.

They are, aren’t they? Everyone who comes to our street likes the trees. Their violet flowers pool on the roofs of parked cars and cover the cobblestones like a natural carpet. No, everything here is beautiful, they correct themselves, first the man, then the woman agrees, smiling, always smiling.

I smile back. Our narrow street is one of the branches from a large avenue, but it never attracts too much attention because it only has two ways: the left goes up, the right goes down. Some people like the houses, but they comment how worn out they are, how worm-eaten by time. Can’t the mayor do something? We don’t know, we usually say, we don’t know. Other people like the trees. But nobody really cares or even stops by, except for occasional visits to the only two businesses around: my mother’s grocery shop, and a family drugstore.

A coffee shop here would be good, continues the man, or maybe a boutique covered by those jacarandas . . . The woman nods, yes, it would be gorgeous. And it’s close to everything! There’s a hypermarket a few blocks from here, and my sister can visit us at any time.

They forget I’m here, dusting away all the fragmented seed pods they step on in front of our shop, crack crack crack under the soles of their shoes. Not just the pods, the flowers also look bruised after a heel carelessly mashes their petals, turning them ugly and slick.

My mother calls me back inside. You don’t go talking to strangers, she says, not a young lady like yourself. Didn’t I teach you about danger? The couple still talks outside, and they point at our little shop, one lifted finger above the boxes on display: Fuji apples, not as bright and beautiful as the Red Delicious sold by the hypermarket they mentioned, but ten times more delicious, several ripe persimmons looking like tomatoes about to burst, bunches of large Dwarf Cavendish bananas, several containers with fat strawberries—I need to take care of that. It’s too hot to leave strawberries outside during spring; they mold too fast.

The couple comes again a week later with a moving truck. Oh, it’s you again, the woman tells me, we’re neighbors now. Neighbors? I look around. There are no rent or sale signs on any doors. To my surprise, the house they purchased was the one by our side. But the Hondas . . . I start to say. Mom knows the Hondas since forever. Since before I was even alive. Four years ago, when my little sister Sofia was born, right after the divorce, they came to our house to bring food and gifts. They had family in Ivoti, where we bought all our strawberries and persimmons and grapes.

The Hondas are going back to their hometown, the woman says, smiling. I smile back, just to be polite. Strange thing, that they didn’t even tell us . . .

Anyway, she continues, you’re very cute, and I loooved talking to you, but can you ask your parents to close the shop for a little while? We have a lot of furniture, you know, and I don’t want it to get dirty if we accidentally hit your fruits.

Sure, I agree. Of course. We also wouldn’t want you to make a mess, I think of saying, but the lady is already in front of the truck, telling the workers where to put their wall lamps.

When our eyes meet, she smiles again.

The second neighbors to go are the Pereiras. We were never particularly close to them, it was more of a hello-how-are-you kind of relationship, but we always see each othern on the street. Mr. Pereira walked their Yorkshire thrice a day, one at seven in the morning, when I go to school, then after lunch, and a last time at six thirty to have time to go back home to watch the telenovela aired at seven with his wife. On those occasions, he would always wave when he saw me, and I