The Dark Issue 43 by Kay Chronister

Author:Kay Chronister [The Dark Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2018-11-27T20:44:56+00:00

Wenmimareba Klobah Collins lives in Puerto Rico, where she is currently a BA student studying literature and visual arts, along with art history. She is a recent graduate of the Alpha Writers Workshop for young SFFH Writers and teens. She can frequently be found talking about poetry, unconventional art mediums, and films on Twitter @WK_Collins and @wvnmix.

Telling Stories

by Ruth EJ Booth

Cuil (kuːl) n.

1. A measure of abstraction from the reality of a situation.

2. The degree of deviation or dissociation from reality.

3. The perceived extent to which an observed reality is divorced from actuality.

Because you ask (of course, you always ask), I tell you a story.

5 cuils

(I say:)

They were five cuils from the Bastion when they realized they had each lost the sixth fingers on each hand: a small thing; one that, likely, the other three would never have even noticed, had the first not stopped to unstrap a glove, pulled it off between impatient teeth, and held their right hand up into the liminal space between themselves and the storm; turning it over, and over again.

At this, the others had reached for their own, felt empty sheaths press against gloved fingers, a chill of guilt, far too late. This was not unexpected; and, sworn to silence as they were, they took it without word; though each felt the loss as if they had been narrowed. Molded. Shaped to fit.

This was simply a hazard of the storm—this roiling murk of dust, static and lightning that swept the Hinterland. The whole plain between the Bastion and what lay beyond was obscured by it, save a few feet of grey earth around them. The storm sought difference. Things changed under its eye. The Bastion, a glinting, porcelain lighthouse to those who strayed into the Hinterland, was already lost to the winds, the pealing of its bells distorted beyond all recognition. There could be no turning back.

There were four of them; each wrapped in the self-same brown coveralls, goggles, scarves, gloves (glove, in the case of the first. Unable to re-fasten the straps that bound the right one into the rest of the suit, they had left it dangling by one side, hanging by the remaining strap. The storm, for its part, toyed with the spinning thing; batting it playfully, then tugging, pulling; finally, as if bored of the game, turning to the first’s hand, whipping between exposed fingers that curled and twitched in spite of themselves.).

There was no chance that they would make their destination without further change, not one of them. That is the nature of such journeys, after all. Only this could they hold to: that as long as they kept the line—kept walking, four abreast, in silence—they would make it through the storm.

And I finish there. I end my story, and fold my hands, and wait for you to say something.

And you say, that’s not a story.

Not in so many words, of course. You would never say that. But you look at me as if you were expecting more to it than that.

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