The Dark Issue 27 by E. Catherine Tobler

Author:E. Catherine Tobler [The Dark Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2017-07-31T21:30:00+00:00

Ian Muneshwar is an Indo-Guyanese writer currently based in Raleigh. His fiction appears in venues such as Clarkesworld, Gamut, and Liminal Stories.

Mary, Mary

by Ray Cluley

Mary was tending the sweet peas in her front garden when the new neighbours arrived. Or rather, she was supposed to be tending the sweet peas. She was supposed to be pinching out the tips to encourage branching because bushier plants gave more flowers, especially if she picked them regularly. She had a particular fondness for her sweet peas because they produced a delicious scent (she always went for the annual sweet peas rather than the everlasting because the shorter-lived flowers had the stronger smell) and usually she was very focussed on her garden tasks, but this morning she was distracted by the dirt at her knees.

There had been a brief but heavy shower in the early hours of the morning and the soil was still alive with writhing worms, called to the surface by the rain to wriggle in the freshly turned earth or squirm their way across the lawn. She wondered if the rain sounded like drums to the worms in their subterranean homes, a constant tom-tom rhythm that called them up despite the risks of birds or the unmerciful tread of human feet. A couple of worms were attempting to cross the pavement, as if the grass verge on the other side was somehow more desirable. Greener, perhaps, Mary thought with a smile. She wondered if they knew the dangers but came up from the safety of the soil anyway, compelled by forces beyond their control.

It was the rattling up of the removal van’s back door that pulled Mary back from those thoughts to distract her with new ones. She had been so engrossed in the activity of the worms that she hadn’t heard the vehicle arrive, but that rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of the door rolling up was impossible to miss. U-Drive. She was glad to see the new neighbours had driven the van themselves rather than hire someone. She thought it admirable, such independence, especially these days when everybody seemed happy to pay somebody else to do something for them. She was also glad to see the new people were black. She might be of an older generation, but shame on anyone who thought that was an excuse to be racist. No, she was glad some people of ethnic origin or whatever the polite term was for them these days had decided to move in to her street. Added a little . . . Ha! Colour.

The man at the back of the van handed a box to his teenage daughter, a beautiful girl with long braided hair who said something to him and laughed as she took the box. A girl, that was good. Before Mary could complete her smile, though, a young boy leapt down from the van and, oh, he was beautiful too. He gave his father a bright smile and, oh my, he had such an energetic body, impatient to be

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