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November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Dark City
by Milan Smith

It was a strange city, where the buildings were bent, the windows were black, and the sky was always gray. It was where I hid when I wanted to lose myself, and no one ever followed me there – not that they would think to, my body always stayed behind – and even if they had, they couldn’t have found me, for it was too dark to see anything.

Not that you could ever “see” as we know it, for the rules were different in the Dark City. In the city, I could hear the walls speak, so I knew where they stood, and I could touch the sounds of things scampering, so I knew where to step. I even smelled the blood of the Others racing through their veins, and by that smell I knew they were not human. But, I didn’t mind that, for humans had never been kind to me.

I went to the city as often as I could, and when I returned to this world, people would ask me where I’d been – thinking it a joke – and I’d say, “Visiting.” Which was true, if incomplete.

Those I grew up with in this world always found me odd, and I suppose I am to them, but those in the city never did, or at least, they never cared if I was. It’s hard being a stranger in the world you were born to, and always aching to be somewhere else. I often considered leaving for good, and living in the city. There was no need to eat or sleep there, and I was never bored because no matter what I did or where I went, there were always things to hear and feel and do. But unfortunately, I had to return sometimes, and when I did, I always found myself by the city gates, unsure of how I got there, and I would walk until I woke in my bed. Or – as sometimes happened when I stayed too long – in the hospital. I once woke in a morgue, minutes away from an autopsy, and after that I never again ignored the gates.

There was only one person who ever understood me, or cared about me, and that was Layra. We’d met as children, and from the beginning she listened to my stories of the Dark City, and asked about the Others, and what we did, and who they were. She never grew tired of me, or the stories, and wanted to see the city, too. Soon it was all she talked about, she shared my fascination, and nothing I said about it was unimportant. We understood each other, and soon she wanted to run away with me and live there forever, and I loved her for that.

And so one day, I decided to take her with me. The next time she came over, I said, we’d go together, and though we couldn’t stay forever, we’d stay as long as we could and return every chance we had. We made many plans, and I was happy and thought life was now complete, now that I’d have Layra.

But it didn’t happen. Instead, without a word, her parents took her across the country for reasons I was never told – though I knew they had to do with me – and so my only friend was taken away while I was still very young.

I missed her, and wrote letters that went unanswered, and made calls that no one returned. I never forgot her, and hoped we’d meet again when we grew older, but I never believed it would happen. My childhood was a great misery from then on, and I expected my grown life to be the same. And it was. No one understood what I thought about, or cared about what I did, or what I wanted. Even the few who could’ve understood me chose not to. I think it was easier to live in what they knew, than to bother with that they didn’t. So I lived in a world of one, always unhappy, always alone. And then one day, Layra came back.

At first I didn’t know her, for of course she was taller, but also thinner, and easily startled. Her family had been cruel to her – as mine was to me – and when she could leave them she’d run as quickly as she could to my door. I held her close and pulled her to my room and we sat holding hands as I asked about her life, about what she’d seen and done, but she said little. She'd faced harsh words, beatings, maybe more, but she gave few details. All she really wanted was to know if the Dark City was real, and if I still went. No one else had asked me that in all those years, no one else cared about the things I felt or saw, and happily I told her all I knew. Which, after all that time, was much.

Layra was now a silent woman, she no longer smiled or laughed like she did as a girl, her family had taken that away. I felt for her, I know I loved her, and I asked if she still wanted to go to the city with me. She sounded desperate when she accepted.

I didn’t know if I actually could take her – I wasn’t even sure how I found it – but I wanted to try. I took her to bed with me, and we lay down side-by-side. Of all things in my life, I wanted nothing more than to be with her until the day I died, and I thought about what we'd see and the things we’d do. We'd work just enough to get by, then leave my parents world when we could. We'd find rooms in the Dark City, like a summer home, and maybe I could find a way to stay forever. And as we lay there, thinking about our new life, it happened. I fell through the wall between this world and the city, and still holding her hand, I turned and led us to my only real home.

I found it, and despite my worries, she was with me, and when she saw the city she was awed, and then ecstatic. She felt things the way I did, and like me, she found that the dark corners of life were not always ugly, and that, in fact, ugliness didn’t really exist here. The demons of her other life just fell away, and she came alive.

Hand-in-hand we ran down the streets, and she began to dance in the open spaces. I taught her to hear and see things the way they were meant to be seen and heard, where sound was felt and smells were tasted. She understood everything, and said she’d finally found her true home, and hearing that, I was happy.

And when we met the Others, she was so enthralled that she danced with them. I’d always been distant around them, a little afraid, but her joy infected me, and then I knew how lonely I’d been, even here in the city. Not as lonely as in my parents’ world, but even in the city I needed more than a place to hide, and finally, through her, I’d found that.

So we danced through the city with our new friends, and I grew close to the Others, much closer than I'd ever thought I could be, thanks to Layra. And soon the Others and I embraced, and now all we ever did was dance, too happy to ever sit still.

And through the Others I went places in the city I’d never been to, even after all these years, and experienced things you could never know in my parent's world. Here your senses worked in odd ways which were hard to explain to those who have never been there. In the center of the city was a tower whose walls played music, and as you stood in the courtyard and listened, you felt the sound of violins. And on the edge of the city there lay fields where I could smell the stones, as if it was really a landscape made of lemons, oranges and roses. And in the scattered gardens the smell of flowers left the taste of cinnamon on your tongue. And even the things I’d grown bored with and forgotten I noticed again because Layra was there to know them for the first time. It was good to be alive and in the city. And I was so sad when I saw the gates appear and knew we had to go back, even if only for a little while.

I stopped and took Layra’s hand, and tried to lead her away. She refused to come. I told her we must, just for a little while, but she pulled away and went on dancing, and singing, and laughing. Again I told her again we had no choice, that we had to leave. But, she turned away and raced off with the Others through the crooked streets and left me behind.

For a moment I thought of following her, I loved her too much to let her go, but the gate was still there, pulling at me. I knew better than to fight it, I knew what happens when you do, and so I left, looking behind me as I went. And when I woke back in my own bed, I turned to Layra and waited for her to return, to wake up, but she never did.

I waited a long time, holding her hand for hours, calling to her, and still she didn’t come. I remembered how she laughed and shouted as she ran away, calling to her new friends, never slowing down. I thought hard about that, how she never looked back at me as she ran away, and then I knew that it wasn’t me she wanted, or cared about, but the city. She needed me to bring her there, no more than that, and once there she’d forgotten me. My dreams of being with her had been fantasies, and I wonder if she’d ever cared for me at all.

Eventually her parents and others came for her, and tried to wake her, and failing that, declared her dead. I tried to explain she was still in the city and would return, and I fought to keep them away, but they drugged me to keep me quiet until she was buried.

When they let me out, I went to her grave and sat there for some time, frightened for her. One day she’d have to come back, you couldn’t stay forever, not in the Dark City. And when she returned, she’d be in that box, a living corpse.

It was months before I went back to the city, and by then of course, she was gone. The city was never the same for me after that, I don't often return. It’s strange how your place of refuge can hold your most miserable memories. I sometimes wonder if she screamed down there in the ground, wrapped in her own dead flesh, unable to escape. Poor Layra. Poor, poor Layra.

I hope the bitch suffered.