The Dark Issue 58 by Orrin Grey

Author:Orrin Grey [The Dark Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2020-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

Gabriela Santiago is a writer and performer previously published in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, The Dark, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, among others. She is a Clarion graduate and almost done working her way through a 50-pack of horror movie classics.

Casualty of Peace

by David Tallerman

It’s Sunday, and we’re drawing lots in the church hall.

The vicar calls them straws, but really they’re only strips of paper. He shows them, each time, before we start: most are longer than his middle finger, a few—two, three, never more than six—are shorter than his thumb. Today, three are short. He fans the entire handful, with a smile, so that we all can see. Then he goes among the rows of weary women, and we each take a strip.

By the time he comes to me, my hand is shaking. I curl my fist and dig in my nails to make it be still. The vicar continues to smile. As I reach to draw my straw, his fingertips brush my own. His are warm, much warmer than mine. Then he moves on. Rather than look at the paper, I ball it in my hand. I wonder if I can tell from feel alone whether it’s long or short. I roll it within my fingers, back and forth, over and over.

Kathy, beside me, is looking at her slip. I know, perhaps only from how her body tenses, that her straw isn’t short. Then her eyes are on me, on my hands where they press against my stomach, turning the scrap there. So I stop and unroll it, careful not to tear the sweat-moistened paper. I hold it up so that she can see, and she holds hers up, and we can both see than neither one is short.

Behind us, a woman cries out. She is saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” again and again, a sound neither happy nor sad, like a pause between thoughts. I don’t recognize her voice. The women here are from five villages and farther, and I know only a few by name; less than that I’d call friends. But the woman making the oh, oh noise—which is more rapid now, as though she’s having trouble breathing—has her own friends, and they’re talking to her, telling her how lucky she is, telling her how glad she must be, ignoring her strange almost-sobs.

Eventually, the woman quiets. I wish I could leave. I wish we didn’t have to stay until everyone has drawn their straw. Is that uncharitable of me? To find this cruel? Anyway, there’s no use in wishing. We all must wait until the end.

At least there are only two short straws left. The woman who receives the second says a man’s name, which I don’t quite catch—Gerard? Gerald?—and then nothing more. The woman who finds the third won’t stop laughing, a sound not very different from the first woman’s sobs. Couldn’t we stop now, when there’s no more hope for anyone? But no, we carry on until the end. Anything else would be cowardice, I suppose.

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