The Dark Issue 44 by The Dark Magazine

Author:The Dark Magazine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, magazine, dark fantasy
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ian Muneshwar is a Boston-based writer and teacher. His fiction has appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Black Static, and has been anthologized in Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Currently, Ian teaches at Brandeis University where he is a writing instructor in the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program. You can find out more about his work at ianmuneshwar.com.

Tansy

by Angela Fu

Blue spoon, wide milk saucers. Velvet shoes.

You like flowers? Don’t put them in your mouth.

There was ivy in the neighbor’s yard. It curled over the fence. If she washed the dishes by hand, after supper, she might look out to see the supple green convulsing in the wind. But that afternoon, Wife was not looking outside. She was preparing the roast for supper. The oven didn’t have a little window cut into the front like the models advertised on the television, so she had to open the oven door to check on the baby from time to time. She hoped the usual temperature would not burn it; a baby is more tender than pork.

I will carry you to the upstairs bedroom; you are sick. I will tuck the edge of the blue coverlet against your tear-damp cheeks. I will not let you stay up watching TV; you are too young. I tell you to sleep, but your head is too hot to rest on plush pillows. You tell me if I make you sleep, your eyeballs will melt into goo because your head is too hot. Then I will sit on the edge of the bed and chant sleeping spells. I will tell you the paper streamers on your walls are parchment plastered on. In the damp dark, I will tell you of the beach I have yet to take you to. We will walk along the dark damp, bogged fin lines and tackle box, wood pulp in fish-pestered docks. Doesn’t make any sense, I know. Listen. Swagger down sleep-lane. A louvered bedframe, a crank-cradle sends the room rocking. I leave when you’ve fallen asleep.

The baby had been mischievous since morning, and only took breaks from shrieking to kick its feet in a fitful stupor. It would not stop crying; it would not take milk. Wife had pressed the baby against herself, but it would only dribble and spit on her naked breast. She had had no time to run to the butcher’s for the meat she needed for the evening’s roast, but tonight the husband wanted one.

She bounced the baby and shhh’ed the baby and cradled the baby and it cried. Wife sat in the kitchen with the baby clutched tightly to her chest and prayed that its protestations were absorbed into her noiseless self.

Instead, she felt the high vibrations of its hoarse cries shake her behind her wet eyes. The baby’s wailing reached a fever pitch and Wife begged it to stop, stop please, and it spat and screamed back at her. She clutched the baby with both of her hands and rocked it and screamed at it.

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