The Dark Issue 89 by Margot McGovern

Author:Margot McGovern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2022-09-29T14:45:53+00:00

Bibi Osha lives on the East Coast where she writes speculative fiction typically set in imaginary non-Western worlds. Outside of writing, she can be found glued to her headphones listening to music, talking about video games and speeding around the house in her electric wheelchair.

The Eighth Cigarette

by Lisa Cai

1

Eight cigarettes aren’t enough to celebrate my author’s death. The one between my fingers was smooth as my thumb grazed it up and down. It’s been decades since I smoked. The craving to fill myself with tobacco and surround myself in a cloud never left me. In my present life, my parents warned that cigarettes would rot me from the inside. The pack, lying on my lap, was wrapped with a pale, diseased heart.

If I cared about my choices’ consequences, I wouldn’t have made it to the homeland that inspired my first life. I used my writer’s lighter, smoked his cigarette, and sat on the veranda of the ryokan he rented for our trip. It faced a garden with thin pine trees, a pond, and a plot of raked stone shards. He wanted to re-create the house we lived in in his most famous book.

I found a box of condoms and a woman’s kimono when I rummaged through his luggage. He wanted me to dress up and dance for him as he reclined back and sipped sake. I was nothing more than a marionette to him; if he pulled a string, I had to follow him. This couldn’t have been the first time he’s taken a student on a trip. Pierre Loti travelled back and forth around the world for decades and wrote of his relations with the women and girls he met.

His copy of Madame Chrysanthème rested beside me. The cover had a black and white photo of a seated girl in robes. When readers looked upon that picture, did everyone think that I was her? Did they read every paragraph as the truth? So many writers took my tale to create stories on pages, stages, and films. In their narratives, my death was convenient for every other character, so I could be forgotten as they moved onto the next chapter of their life.

The reality was different. When Loti’s main character departed from Nagasaki, I was swept away into another world.

I took a drag of the cigarette and exhaled. White smoke rose in swirls around the moon. The lunar crescent above Tokyo was alone, bright, and clear. I’ve never seen it so large and shining before.

2

In 1908, I occupied a table in an American university library with stacks of books. Last year, Madame Butterfly debuted on this continent’s theatres. White women donned robes that were too long and tucked the right side over their bodies like corpses. They wore black wigs with widow’s peaks to become the titular Cio-Cio-san, a fifteen-year-old in a temporary arrangement with a foreign naval officer. They lamented over unrequited love, gave their son to the father, and killed themselves.

Cio-Cio-san, as a former entertainer, should’ve known better than to birth a bastard and end her life over a man.

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