The Dark Issue 92 by Shari Paul

Author:Shari Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2022-12-31T18:20:22+00:00

Nelson Stanley lives and works in Bristol, UK. He has had stories published/forthcoming in venues such as The Dark, Vastarien, Dark Void, Kaleidotrope, and other places.

Love Sharp Enough to Rend

by Leah Ning

She was drowning, gasping brine down her raw and waterlogged throat, so I took her. And why not? This is all you know me for. I take children. I bring them to my cave beneath the sea, I tuck them inside, and I eat them.

You know why I do it. My own children stolen. Murdered, maybe by me and maybe not; I never found out and I don’t care to. But do you care? No. You only care that I take your children.

But I take the ones that are already gone. I watch them run, gleeful, into the waves, their sweet little heads never knowing what poison spines narrowly miss the soft soles of their feet, never minding what teeth graze their calves, but still crying as something–seaweed, you say, but they cry because instinct tells them it is fingers–caresses the tender backs of their knees.

So when I found her drowning, I took her. I wish to the gods I hadn’t.

Marielle’s first instinct is to scream her daughter’s name and sprint into the ocean so fast she fairly flies. Not the best instinct, but the one any mother would have, and you can’t blame her for it; it’s certainly what I did when I found my children gone.

The lifeguards shake their heads at her. Of course they do–their instincts are unnatural, trained rather than burned into their DNA.

But Marielle’s instinct is what allows her to see what she sees: the child’s hand not falling but yanked, the flash of glossy green that could be but isn’t quite seaweed. I think later, when I see her the way I see her little girl, that this is the moment that doomed me.

And then Marielle falls, face-first, into the water. Who can say what tripped her? An errant pebble, a child’s lost toy, the unexpected pitch of a wave.

Seaweed, maybe.

No matter. She goes down in water that’s up to her thighs, she gasps in brine, chokes it out, then gasps in more before she can slog her way up to her knees. She coughs the water out and starts to swim, or, more truthfully, to thrash. The lifeguards are past her now and she doesn’t care. All she’s thinking is please, please, please.

That doesn’t help. Her daughter is gone, has been gone, and no one, not even the lifeguards with their instincts honed to save such careless lives as these, can swim fast or deep enough to pull her free.

Is she thinking of the knife already? Surely not now. But is it a little more difficult for her to breathe? Does she toss more glances at the ocean than she should? Oh, yes.

I should know. I was once standing where she was in the sand, wishing for her daughter’s endless questions and not those of the cop who is ever so sorry about the drowning Marielle knows did not happen.

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