cover

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For Our Readers,

with Love

Table of Contents

Prologue- Alexis Brooks de Vita

"The Man Who Loved Medusa"-A.J. Maguire

"Sirens"-Desmond Warzel

"Keys"-C.E. Murphy

"The Argument"-Ceschino

"Rainsong"-Lee Barwood

"Lullaby of a Hated Person"-Joseph Michael

"Through the Looking Glass"-Karen Duvall

"In the Closet"-Natalie L. R. Baker

"I Am a Smart Maid"-Matthew K. Bird

"Ice Cream"-Christina St. Clair

"Noisnam Edicius"-Joel Owusu

"Cacie's Prism"-Novella Serena

"Long Knives, Sharp Tongues"-Max Balkan

"Only Then Can I Sleep"-Tenea D. Johnson

"The Vengeance"-Tedd Hawks

"Blood Doll"-Ezekiel M. Zachs

"The Wakings"-Alexis Brooks de Vita

PROLOGUE

LOVE AND DARKER PASSIONS

Do you remember that psychological study that demonstrates that, without dream-image sleep, sane people become psychotic?

Keep that in mind as I tell you that Love and Darker Passions is an anthology of dark fantasy relationship stories. Not stories of romance; or, at least, not romantic.

Here are stories about how love feels. What love needs. What love makes us yearn for and dread.

These are stories of love like black holes: devouring, cleansing and creating anew in ways we don't quite want to understand.

Love like religion: dragging up from the depths of our unspeakable fears a blind insensate faith.

Love like birth: a bloody tide that exiles us onto arid sand where we stumble and fall, ignorant of the customs and the language, gesturing and grunting, trying to get someone to teach us how to belong.

This unspeakably visceral, frighteningly insistent love is probably vital to existence, like volcanoes firing up the ink of the midnight ocean where no one will see.

The following tales of primal want question our need to bond at a subatomic level and the ruptures from love that cost us self-obliteration.

A.J. Maguire's "The Man Who Loved Medusa" and Desmond Warzel's "Sirens" present the sublimity of a man's desiring what has as its nature to destroy him, while C.E. Murphy's "Keys" and Ceschino's "The Argument" show how love seduces the true lover into . . . but I will let you discover that for yourself.

Lee Barwood's "Rainsong" and Joseph Michael's "Lullaby of a Hated Person" let love take us on a quest through what is perilous, drawing ever nearer to what we both fear and crave.

But Karen Duvall shatters our self-reflective illusion, for in her tale "Through the Looking Glass," love and grudge are intertwined; "Yes," says Natalie L. R. Baker in her tale "In the Closet," for without selfless love of the nameless, hidden other-than-ourselves, love recognizes neither its object nor itself.

Matthew K. Bird's "I Am a Smart Maid" further queries how it is that we choose whom we will love and how we cope when that gift of love is thwarted. Christina St. Clair and Joel Owusu answer with love of self-annihilation, the ultimate immersion in what claims us. Novella Serena's "Cacie's Prism" and Max Balkan's "Long Knives, Sharp Tongues" suggest that this all-consuming power is as it is because love kills what it cannot heal.

Tenea D. Johnson's "Only Then Can I Sleep" and Tedd Hawks's "The Vengeance" surrender us to love's spiritual cannibalism; the lover seeks to devour what is beloved. But if love destroys its object and its enemy, then neither is safe; just so, agrees Ezekiel M. Zachs in his unforgettable story of multilayered love triangles in "The Blood Doll." But love makes such self-sacrificing seduction sweet.

So what if we could be forced to love selflessly, blindly, strangers more than ourselves, taking nothing away except the knowledge that we have given all?

What, indeed.

Here's hoping we may close this volume able to say that we've learned what these painstakingly penned stories have to teach us. For in this collection love proves to be that bloody splatter across the eons that moves at the edges of our lives, in our silences and secrets, drawing yearning hearts to hear what they were always listening for, in its indecipherable whispers in the dark.

I can safely promise that you'll love these stories.

-Alexis Brooks de Vita*

* Editor's note: Readers will see that, in the interests of preserving the atmosphere of individual stories, formatting conventions have bowed to author, and editor, preferences.

THE MAN WHO LOVED MEDUSA

BY A.J. MCGUIRE

A. J. Maguire reminds us that it was Medusa's incomparable beauty that led to her suffering and her curse. But shouldn't a lover see past the outer woman to the soul hiding within?

His right foot slid over the shale-ridden ground and he had to catch himself before his body could plummet over the cliffs. Eustace took a steadying breath and waited for his heart to calm. Moonlight fought its way through a turbulent sky, barely lighting the sharp path he had to follow. The island around him was a barren, cursed place of craggy rocks and prickly brush. He could still hear the trickle of pebbles rushing over the cliff face beside him, and for a long moment he actually considered jumping.

Death seemed preferable to a life of longing.

He realized at last that he had caught himself on the elbow of a statue. Under his fingers was the curious roughness of stone. He ran his hand up the arm, to the shoulder, recognizing even in the gloom what stance the man had been in. An archer, Eustace thought grimly.

"A pity you have to look at what you're aiming at," he told the dead man.

Her voice came unbidden from his memory, "Oh, I do not know if they are dead or alive. They are just ... stone. There are moments when I think I can hear them, calling out to me as though from a great distance. Is that not strange?"

No stranger than when he'd begged her to turn him into one of them, to keep his fate by her side forever. He shivered a little at the thought of being trapped in such an awkward position as the poor soul beside him. Although it hadn't been an empty request, it hadn't been a pleasant one, either.

Reluctantly, Eustace started his trek again. He had to smirk at his own capricious nature. A year and five days ago he'd washed up on these strange forbidding shores and had prayed to every god in the pantheon to be rescued from it. While he hadn't known it was Medusa's lair at first, Eustace had the good sense to know danger when it was present. Even in the weird shifting mists, when he'd first heard her music, Eustace had the self-preservation to pause. But the lyre-song was so haunting, so achingly lonely, that he'd paddled his wreck of a ship closer, hoping to get a look at the player.

Now that he knew who it was that he'd been searching for, Eustace was grateful that the mists had concealed her form.

"What a melancholy song!" He'd shouted the words, but hadn't needed to. His voice traveled easily over the still water.

There was a great shifting of shadows on the shore; he could remember a hissing whisper just before an arrow chunked into the floorboards of his boat.

"I mean you no harm!" he'd said, scrambling for cover in the naked ship.

Her bitter laugh curled through the air. "No harm, you say? Year in and year out, you foolish men try to make yourselves heroes by slaying the beast."

Another arrow hit by his foot and he jerked back in defense. "Good lady,"-he'd heard from the voice that she was female-"why would I want to harm you? Poseidon was in a vengeful mood and my ship was blown off course. I do not know where I am, much less who you are."

Perhaps it was her unbridled hatred for the sea god, or perhaps it was the last vestiges of her humanity shining through, but she'd ceased her assault. Through the fog, she'd relayed instructions for where he could harbor. He could fix his boat and leave in peace, but was restricted to the southern half of the island. There was a small pool of fresh water on the eastern side, and a few small fish he could catch in the cove, but if he was found wandering anywhere else he would be killed.

Eustace had built a small hutch against the side of a rough hillock laden with boulders and desertous weeds. He spent very little time there. By day, he worked on his boat-though the task was nigh impossible. There were no tides in the forsaken place; no driftwood to find and what little trees populated the island were too porous to patch the small ship. By night, he sat at the edge of the freshwater pool and listened to her music drift through the air.

His heart flinched and he stopped his downward trek. There was no music tonight. Eustace turned to stare up the mountainside. Its jagged slope cast deep pools of shadow against the unfamiliar terrain. He'd only been on this side of the island once before, earlier that day when she'd instructed him to leave. He had an overwhelming desire to run back to her, to grab hold of her and let her know, once and for all, that no beastly countenance could hide the woman she was from him.

Carefully, he opened the small pouch she had given him. Inside was her parting gift-a lock of her hair, her real hair, not...