The Dark Issue 85: The Dark, #85

By Angela Liu, James Bennett, Tegan Moore and Kay Chronister

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:

 

"Ppaka" by Angela Liu
"In Hades, He Lifted Up His Eyes" by James Bennett
"The Land Beneath Her" by Tegan Moore
"Linden in Effigy" by Kay Chronister

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: May 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201400781

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 85 • June 2022

Ppaka by Angela Liu

In Hades, He Lifted Up His Eyes by James Bennett

The Land Beneath Her by Tegan Moore

Linden in Effigy by Kay Chronister

Cover Art: Ancient Lord of Flame by Alessandro Amoruso

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Copyright © 2022 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

Ppaka

by Angela Liu

Ppaka thinks he’s a frog. Every day he puts on a full-body frog kigurumi, the soft green hairs worn thin like an old beach towel, and opens his bar in Shinbashi. He’s got a few regulars, the ones who come for the little song-and-dance he does when he brings over the drinks, but they stay for the conversation. A frog’s a pretty good listener if you give him a chance.

Rumor has it Tanaka-san’s been runnin’ that flower shop since the 1840s, Morimoto grinned red-faced, tapping his empty sake glass on the table.

Like she’s almost two hundred years old, ribbit? Ppaka asked, refilling his glass.

Ashina-san got it in her head that the old lady’s a witch, the balding life insurance salesman snorted, picking peanuts out of a small dish. That she used to sell curses, love potions, ogre-making elixirs, the whole she-bang ’til that got too taboo. Now it’s all fancy 5000 yen rose boxes to convince someone to love you. Supply and demand, amirite? At least the witch’s got business sense, Morimoto leaned forward, spilling some of his warm sake onto the table. But Ashina-san thinks the old hag’s gotten back into the old business. Thinks she sold her a batch of cursed sunflowers, and that’s why her husband got his student pregnant.

Oh, how terrible, ribbit, Ppaka said from behind the counter.

You better watch out, Morimoto gestured at the vase of colorful gerberas near the shop entrance with his chin. Those suckers might be draining your bank account as we speak.

Ppaka laughed on cue, taking out a Tupperware of washed shishito peppers from the fridge. He admired their bright green color, that lush grass green that covered the marsh after a long summer rain.

But I love Tanaka-san’s shop, he said, tossing the peppers into the fry pan. Hot oil sputtered up, the sizzle filling the small bar. Oil splashed onto his hands, but he paid it no attention. A good frog doesn’t mind a little pain. She always has the best selection, ribbit.

Ppaka closes his shop at 5AM and takes the first train of the day back to his house in Ofuna. It’s a long commute, but he likes the quietness of the early morning train, the sleepy gauze still hanging over the streets, the announcements echoing over empty train stations. When he gets home, he passes out on the tatami floor still in his frog kigurumi.

He wakes up at 1PM, pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a clean t-shirt as his frog kigurumi spins in the washing machine, and heads out for a jog. The neighborhood kids recognize him because he sometimes hawks free tissues outside the station in his frog costume, plastic-wrapped packs that advertise his bar and feature frog wisdoms like ‘jump as far as you can’ and ‘a lily pad is a great place for a nap.’

The neighborhood adults know him because of the nasty fights he used to get into with his ex-wife. The rocks thrown through windows, cellphones smashed through windshields, laptops dropped from the second floor, just a whole lot of broken glass. A neighbor once found the wife, barefoot outside her house with a watermelon.

Hi, Urui-san. Happy summer, she said, handing the old woman the fruit before heading home, tiptoeing over the broken glass near the front door. She’d run off after their third year of marriage, taking his sanity with her.

Before Ppaka met his ex-wife, he was Keisuke Mizutani, a twenty-nine-year-old salaryman selling electronics at the Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. He knew nothing about frogs or their eternally wet backs and protruding eyes. He woke up at 8AM every day, brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes (he loved his electronic toothbrush), put on his uniform, ate natto mixed into steaming rice with a bowl of low-sodium miso soup, and squeezed into the Keihin-Tohoku Line to get to work. He got along with his coworkers and sometimes got lunch with them at a nearby shop. They were always surprised by how slowly he ate, how he’d nibble pieces of stewed potato or sandwich crusts like a well-mannered mouse. His father had died choking on his own vomit in a back-alley bar, and his mother had subsequently instilled a deep fear of improperly chewing his food. After work, he’d pick up a discounted bento box from the supermarket near the station and went straight home. Most nights, he was in bed by 10PM.

Mizutani met his wife at a go-kon mixer with college friends. She was a Waseda University graduate student from China, and they were the only two people who weren’t drinking that night. He liked how she’d brought her laptop to the bar just in case she needed to do work.

She’s kinda weird, his friend