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    The Dark Issue 9: The Dark, #9
    The Dark Issue 9: The Dark, #9
    The Dark Issue 9: The Dark, #9
    Ebook64 pages58 minutes

    The Dark Issue 9: The Dark, #9

    By Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace

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    About this ebook

    The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace, with the ninth issue featuring all-original short fiction by Sara Saab, JY Yang, Patricia Russo, and Kirsty Logan.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrime Books
    Release dateAug 12, 2015
    ISBN9781516375905
    The Dark Issue 9: The Dark, #9

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      Book preview

      The Dark Issue 9 - Jack Fisher

      THE DARK

      Issue 8, May 2015

      Hani’s: Purveyor of Rusks, Biscuits, and Sweet Tea by Sara Saab

      A House of Anxious Spiders by JY Yang

      The Old Man in the Kitchen by Patricia Russo

      Mother of Giants by Kirsty Logan

      Cover Art: Malevolence by Michael MacRae

      ISSN 2332-4392.

      Edited by Jack Fisher & Sean Wallace.

      Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

      Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

      Copyright © 2015 by TDM Press.

      www.thedarkmagazine.com

      Hani’s: Purveyor of Rusks, Biscuits, and Sweet Tea

      by Sara Saab

      In those years of sunshine that battered the streets, and deluges that wrinkled fingers and toes, the villagers never suspected Hafeez of anything more than putting holes in their teeth.

      He made bonbons and baked bread. The bread was his livelihood, the bonbons for the pleasure of the village children. When Hafeez lacked the gumption to wash crockery—and this was often—bonbons and bread shared the same trays and spatulas. The result was a perversion of sourdough studded with half-melted boiled sweets and goops of chocolate truffles, in pursuit of which the children of the village frantically begged change.

      The confectioner’s bonbons were of some renown. They were sold in leather-trimmed square boxes handcrafted by a second cousin called Lana, a simple woman in her early fifties who nevertheless seemed to be racing Hafeez towards the finish line of old age.

      In the temple and before they fell asleep, the children of the village prayed for Hafeez’s immortality. He was ancient, an old man since their parents had been children themselves.

      He seemed to the children a shrunken relic, desiccated and overwhelmingly sweet-smelling. The few silver hairs that still dotted his chin and earlobes were out of place, wisps of spun sugar clinging on after the treat was gone. The children stared at Hafeez across the counter fashioned of two splintered planks while he bagged the bread their mothers sent them to buy. When the shop was quiet, he snuck them a bonbon each for the road.

      And his favourite children? These he took by the hand during siesta hours and led into the kitchen in the back. The others knew by instinct not to wait about for their return, nor to give away their whereabouts when parents or tutors pressed. Anyway, the favoured children always returned the next day, smiles beatific and broad, teeth coated with toffee.

      Did he give you bonbons?

      Are there any left for us?

      But Hafeez’s favourites never told. They only moaned with over-fullness like happy calves, clutching bellies, and said, I can’t remember. My ribs hurt.

      They were quiet for some days, and the other children’s jealousy made pariahs of them. This went on until fervent dreams of being chosen next were accidentally left out of nightly prayers, and everyone, including the particular child Hafeez had favoured—who had always been hazy on the event—had forgotten all about it.

      Then came a summer worse than any before; the heat rose to such levels that livestock began to die in the fields and even the stoutest palm trees wilted like tender shoots.

      The village children rested lolling heads on the stoop of Hafeez’s shop, scuffed their shoes in the dirt, and worked up reluctant appetites for bonbons below an oppressive sky. Hafeez, on the other hand, baked with vigour, despite heat that rose to infernal levels within his small kitchen with its brick oven.

      At the end of every fortnight, he supervised a shipment of supplies. The children learned to await this delivery: it involved the toing and froing of great crates filled with steaming, streaming ice.

      Ahhhhh, the children said, arms spread wide as they hopped and skipped, drunk on relief, alongside the cooling crates. They did not think to question why the crates of ice were ferried into Hafeez’s bakery, then back to the waiting cart, its horses whinnying and lathered.

      Lana was unconsoled by any volume of ice, and at the height of the weather ran into the village’s meagre boulevard shouting prayers to the prophets, her unbridled breasts suffering the humiliation of their own pair of spreading sweat patches.

      This heat! This heat! I’d sooner roast on a spit than boil slowly in my own skin! she shouted in the direction of the children, and tossed her arms up towards the clouds and their blinding pinpoints of light like piercing arrows.

      Go inside, Lana, said the only boy who could muster enough energy to speak. It’s worse out here, with the sun beating down like a slap from God.

      That was when a loud and tragic cacophony turned every lethargic head in the direction of the little bakery.

      The children rushed in to find Hafeez slumped onto his baking counter, his nose in a log of rising dough, his shoulder dunking into a mixing bowl of meringue. In the heat, the sweetened egg white

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