Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Dark Issue 34: The Dark, #34
    The Dark Issue 34: The Dark, #34
    The Dark Issue 34: The Dark, #34
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    The Dark Issue 34: The Dark, #34

    By Hadeer Elsbai, Ray Cluley, Aliya Whiteley and Mark Morris

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:

    “Your Damnation Will Be Infinite” by Hadeer Elsbai
    “In the Light of St. Ives” by Ray Cluley (reprint)
    “Corwick Grows” by Aliya Whiteley
    “We Who Sing Beneath the Ground” by Mark Morris (reprint)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrime Books
    Release dateFeb 24, 2018
    ISBN9781386630579
    The Dark Issue 34: The Dark, #34

    Related to The Dark Issue 34

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Haunted

      Sep 27, 2023

      Haunted
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 30, 2019

      Summer Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      The First Day: One man’s walk to his own cremation.

      Aug 7, 2014

      The fog was thick when I left my bedsit and ventured out alone into the barren and murky city. I was heading for what used to be called a crematorium and these days is known as a funeral parlor. I had received a notice instructing me to arrive by 9 a

      15 min read

    • Article

      I, Von Economo

      Oct 10, 2022

      I’d never seen a Bentley Mulsanne in the flesh, not even in the chop shops where I sold the luxury cars I boosted. Yet there it was, parked behind an inner-city soup kitchen with its signature hood ornament of silver wings stretched wide to the heave

      12 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Every CLOUD

      Aug 31, 2022

      Every CLOUD
      6 min read

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Pulling Up Azaleas

      Jan 10, 2023

      Throughout their lives, women are showered with bouquets of roses on numerous splendid occasions. But men? They’re only given flowers at their funeral. It’s a harsh world for men, as our lives tend to go unappreciated until death. Such was the case a

      22 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Sorrow

      Aug 19, 2019

      Sweet Sorrow
      8 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      Thirteen

      Jan 30, 2020

      Thirteen
      21 min read

    • Article

      Last Saturday Night

      Dec 7, 2023

      Last Saturday Night
      6 min read

    • Article

      The White Fox

      Oct 13, 2017

      The White Fox
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Invitation

      Aug 21, 2023

      York, October 1644 Before I’ve even mustered the courage to knock, the door to the townhouse flings open. I drop my hand. “It is me, John Falmouth,” I say and wince at how loud my voice carries into the night. My greeting falters when I look up and n

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Afternoon In Her Shoes

      Jul 26, 2022

      An Afternoon In Her Shoes
      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      Planetesimal

      Aug 15, 2022

      Planetesimal
      3 min read

    • Article

      Hollywood, Ending

      Feb 13, 2018

      Hollywood, Ending
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Night That Changed Me

      May 12, 2021

      The Night That Changed Me
      8 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Fortune Teller

      Jul 10, 2021

      My head has a liquid feel to it as I stumble down the street. The bottle of red wine in my belly making it seem like my limbs have become balloons, and at any moment they might float away. Next to me, Michael has a stupid whiskey grin stretched acros

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2020

      Then I heard a violinand it didn’t matter that I was a Jew,they are painting swastikas on campus walls.What happens when they paint them on my doorfor my kids to see?I will sic the cat after them.I will sic the violin after them.What can a violin dot

      2 min read

    • Article

      The perfect DRESS

      Sep 7, 2021

      The perfect DRESS
      6 min read

    • Article

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Dark Issue 34

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Dark Issue 34 - Hadeer Elsbai

      THE DARK

      Issue 34 • March 2018

      Your Damnation Will Be Infinite by Hadeer Elsbai

      In the Light of St Ives by Ray Cluley

      Corwick Grows by Aliya Whiteley

      We Who Sing Beneath the Ground by Mark Morris

      Cover Art: Black Pearls by Laura Sava

      ISSN 2332-4392.

      Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace.

      Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

      Copyright © 2018 by Prime Books.

      www.thedarkmagazine.com

      Your Damnation Will Be Infinite

      by Hadeer Elsbai

      The body in the bathtub is starting to smell.

      I have been staring at it for hours, trying to forget that not too long ago the body had been he and not it, but that does not seem to be working.

      When he died I dragged it into the bathtub, leaving a trail of blood along my imported Moroccan rug—a gift from my mother-in-law. I lifted the body, heavy as cement, which meant practically embracing it. The front of my dress was soaked in its blood.

      I took a moment to catch my breath afterward, and I could not stand the feel of the bloody dress on my body so I simply stripped down until I was in nothing but sheer black tights and pink brassiere. With slightly trembling hands I lit a cigarette and curled up on the toilet seat, knees pressed against my chest.

      Now, hours later, I have smoked an entire box of Cleopatras and bitten through most of my thumbnail. I have to spit out chipped black nail polish.

      When the body twitches violently enough that it slides further into the tub, I jump in response, nearly falling off the toilet, stare at the body for a full minute, then sigh when nothing happens. I adjust, sit cross-legged, my last ci­­­­garette dangling loosely between my fingers, and continue to frown at the body as though it is a maths problem I need to solve. My leg twitches faster than I can control it.

      It is the waiting, more than anything. Waiting means idleness, and idleness leads to thinking, and thinking leads to overthinking, and overthinking means that doubt and anxiety and fright would creep into the unguarded corners of my mind and tear me apart from the inside out.

      I hear a phantom wail coming from the bedroom, and almost run to it by instinct before I remember my baby boy is safe at my mother-in-law’s house for the weekend.

      My phone buzzes, sound waves scraping against ceramic. I put out the cigarette and retrieve my phone from the sink. The text on the screen reads: Proof?

      I snap a photo of the body in the tub. Its eyes stare emptily at me as the flash goes off.

      Less than a minute after I send the picture I receive the response: 3:45AM. Street 9, Maadi. Deco Cafe. Wait outside. Wear white.

      3:45AM. Less than twenty minutes from now. Resisting the urge to throw my phone away I instead go to my closet to pull out the first white dress I see and quickly leave the apartment. Deco Cafe is close, but I will have to hurry if I want to make it in time.

      Street 9 is bustling even this late at night. Twenty-four-hour cafes have all their tables laid outside, where their patrons are enjoying the breezy night. Hookah fumes drift towards me, along with the fumes of freshly made Turkish coffee. The unnaturally bright street lights expose deep cracks in the sidewalk, along with the dust and trash that litter the streets.

      And the noise—car horns honk in uneven rhythms as they speed past. Motorcycles rev their engines. Speakers blare loud pop music from every corner, the irritating songs mingling together into a long string of nonsense. Various people shout various things intermittently: a mother calls to her daughter not to cross the street, a waiter yells at a busboy to fetch more tobacco, a group of teenagers squeals with laughter at a dirty joke . . .

      It is beginning to grate on my nerves. I grew up feeling stifled on my parents’ farm in Sohag, surrounded by nothing but open fields. I wanted to come to the city, so I latched onto the first Cairene suitor who asked for my hand, a distant relative of ours. My parents were ecstatic at my acquiescence; my new husband was rich, born and raised in America, and he had returned looking for a bride and a place to put his business degree to use. Less than a month after our first meeting we were married and living in Cairo.

      Now I found myself missing the farm: the smell of goats and clean air, the palm trees heavy with dates, the utter and complete silence at night. Cairo is a rabid, roaring animal that refuses to be silenced.

      I arrive at the cafe promptly at 3:45AM and loiter, trying my best not to look conspicuous. Soon, a girl approaches me. She is wearing a white abaya with a scarf draped loosely around her shoulders, as though it has slid off her shiny straight hair. She looks me up and down without saying anything, then stops with her eyes lingering on my legs.

      You’ll have to take those off when we get there, she says finally.

      I blink. What?

      Your tights. She raises her voice a decibel. They said white only.

      I scowl. Right. Are you my ride?

      She nods. Nawal. Are you Nahla?

      I nod.

      We walk quietly to her car, a greenish Fiat that looks about a thousand years old. When I sit down in the passenger seat, the springs beneath me poke up into my thighs. I shift uncomfortably as Nawal starts the engine, which takes several tries.

      Nawal speaks first. So . . . did you do it?

      I glance at her warily. Would I be here if I hadn’t?

      Her laugh is hollow. "Right. So . . . who

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1