The Dark Issue 101 by Tim Waggoner

Author:Tim Waggoner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2023-09-28T13:54:36+00:00

Eric Schaller’s most recent collection of dark fiction, Voice of the Stranger, was released in 2023 from Lethe Press. His stories can also be found in the collection Meet Me in the Middle of the Air and in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, Fantasy: Best of the Year, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and The Time Traveler’s Almanac.

Zoraída la Zorra

by Ana Hurtado

A river wails. At noon, a heartbroken sky. Clouds above fight and break up, las nubes fall apart and so rain pours on a valley of Quito. Their white heavenly bodies unfold into the Machángara river, and el río gurgles and swallows the sky whole. It feeds off heartbreak, this river of shrieks. Quiteños who keep their hands steady on the bridge’s rail listen to the valley’s brown and viscous water bubble and cry. The glutted river roars the names of all the drowned, from rainclouds en el cielo to the young women with hair down to their waist, the ones with tattoos on their wrists and hickies on their clavicles, the ones who keep their eyeliner wings sharp and their glasses smudged, the ones who texted it’s over, ya nada an hour ago.

Today the Machángara river opens its jaw and weeps Zoraída.

The webbing of her fingers tickled by hair on Nacho’s knees. With each thump, Nacho groans into Zoraída’s back. His nose catching beads of sweat lingering on her skin, like fruit waiting to be plucked. After, Zoraída visits his bathroom where she sits on the toilet and discerns piles of used cardboard rolls amassed into a flimsy castle. In Nacho’s muggy shower, dishwashing liquid perched next to his two-in-one shampoo. The label reads Quita Manchas. Will it remove all stains. Next to Zoraída, a sink inky with blue toothpaste dollops.

Nacho waits for her back on the couch with a Pilsener beer cap pinned between teeth and a smile so big she counts beyond a thousand canines. Zoraída presses the warm Pilsener bottle up to her face, the beer foam crashing against her lips, yeast sizzling.

There once was a pair of untied black Converse tossed on a beach. River pebbles caught and strung by damp shoelaces. A couple of feet rubbing sand, each other. Then un grito. Some quiteños describe it as a cry. The young man and woman perk up, wipe their lips, and listen. A scream echoes the riverbank and bounces off the brown water and runs into them.

Where’s all the yelling coming from? he had asked.

And she responded, It’s not a yell, it’s a sob.

Quiteños like to tell this next part in a whisper. Their mouths shrinking into a tiny cave where secrets and violence inhabit. El Machángara river that hails from a volcanic glacier and later empties itself and everything in its way out in the Pacific grabs the ankles of the young woman and drags her into itself. She screams, too, as the water opens wide and bites.

Be careful with el río traga-muchachas, they coined it. The river that eats women.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.