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    Bete Noire Issue #18
    Bete Noire Issue #18
    Bete Noire Issue #18
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Bete Noire Issue #18

    By A. W. & Jennifer Gifford

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    About this ebook

    Bête Noire brings you the best in dark fiction, poetry and art. In this issue we bring you: Ian McKeachie, Marge Simon, N.L. Sakks, Alfred Klosterman, Mohammad Saif Al-Wahedi, Wesley D. Gray, William Akin, Bruce Boston, Denny E. Marshall, J. J. Steinfeld, Denzell Cooper, Chris Zuver and Florence Grey.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA. W. & Jennifer Gifford
    Release dateFeb 28, 2015
    Bete Noire Issue #18
    Author

    A. W. & Jennifer Gifford

    Many of A. W. Gifford’s story ideas come from the nightmares of his wife, Jennifer. Though she too is a writer of dark fiction, she will never write these stories herself, fearing that if she does, they will come true.He is the editor of the dark fiction magazine Bête Noire and his work has appeared in numerous magazines, webzines and anthologies.Though he grew up in the northern suburbs of Detroit, he now resides outside of Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, two dogs, Reagan and Riley, and a pride of cats.Jennifer Gifford has always had a fascination with the dark and humorous side of fiction. She hates creepy old dolls, spiders, and garden gnomes. The inspiration for her stories strikes her in the oddest of places from an elevator, walking in class, even in the shower. She loves to read, to cook, and loves horror movies. In turn, her nightmares are often the basis for her husband's stories, because she fears that writing her own nightmares will make them come true. Jennifer has been writing for almost two decades, and spends her time in three states: Georgia , Michigan , and panicked.

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      Book preview

      Bete Noire Issue #18 - A. W. & Jennifer Gifford

      Issue #18

      BÊTE NOIRE

      FEAR IS JUST A POINT OF VIEW

      Published by Dark Opus Press

      Editors:

      A. W. Gifford

      Jennifer L. Gifford

      

      P.O. Box 811

      Ortonville, MI 48462

      www.betenoiremagazine.com

      Smashwords Edition

      This collection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and scenarios are the products of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places, or events is

      purely coincidental.

      Bete Noire Magazine copyright 2014 Charm Noir Omnimedia

      Cover art copyright 2014 A. W. Gifford

      All stories, poems, artwork and photos copyright 2014 of their respective

      creators

      All rights reserved. No portion of this publication can be reproduced by any means without the prior written permission from the authors of the work or Charm Noir Omnimedia

      This ebook is licensed for the personal use of the purchaser. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to another user. If you are reading this and are not the original purchaser, then you are in violation of this license.

      In This Issue

      The Cold Girl – Ian Mckeachie

      Howl 1856 – 2016 – Marge Simon

      Many Lands I have Travelled – N. L Sakks

      Man with a Gun – Alfred Klosterman

      Ravings – Mohammad Saif Alwahedi

      Another Light – Wesley D. Gray

      The Shark Cult of Launasi Lagoon – William Akin

      Traces of the Alchemest – Bruce Boston

      Mission Confirm – Denny E. Marshall

      Orthographical Torment – J. J. Steinfeld

      The Dreamer – Denzell Cooper

      Scorpio Gunmetal – Chris Zuver

      Jealous Stone – Florence Grey

      The Cold Girl

      Ian McKeachie

      When I was a little girl, I fell through the ice.

      I shouldn’t have. It was barely past New Year’s, and any other year, the first thaw of spring wouldn't even have begun to reach our part of Maine. But the winter had been warm that year; the lake had frozen and thawed so many times that the ice was thin and tinted white by little bubbles of air. But even so, I should have been fine. It should have been enough to hold me. Except Nora’s hick boyfriend had gotten a hunting rifle for Christmas, and the two of them couldn’t think of anything funnier they could do with it than scare me while I was practicing my figure skating routine for the Valentine’s Day Grand Prix.

      To this day, I still honestly believe that they didn’t mean to break the ice. Nora's boyfriend was just a bad shot. He’d never used the rifle before, wasn’t ready for the way it kicked, so that when he squeezed the trigger, the shot went in the lake instead of into the woods at the shore.

      I didn’t have time to register what had happened as I came down from my toe loop. I hadn’t even noticed they were there, hadn’t heard them snickering over the sound of Tchaikovsky blaring from my headphones. All I understood was that when I started my jump, the ice under me was solid and milky-white, and when I finished it, little black cracks had snaked their way out in every direction from the spot where the bullet had hit.

      I heard the sound of the shot, a single thunderclap that echoed inside my skull, punctuating every beat of the Tchaikovsky music like an enormous metronome.

      I had time to see the flock of geese on the horizon take flight, frightened by the noise.

      And then I looked down at my feet—by some happy miracle, the shot at least didn’t hit me—and saw them twist and pop as they hit the surface of the ice. I screamed in pain and collapsed to all fours. My head hit the ice, and red lights flashed behind my eyes.

      The ice cracked around me, booming, echoing over and over—the sound of the rifle going off.

      Somewhere in the woods, unseen, Nora started screaming. I tried to climb to my feet.

      No, goddamn you! Nora was saying, her voice competing with the clamor of Tchaikovsky and the still-echoing gunshot for room in my skull, Stay where you are!

      But it was too late. As I brought myself to standing, the ice gave way under me.

      And I fell through.

      My iPod shorted out, and the music disappeared. In that silence, I couldn’t even hear the blood pushing through my own veins. I faintly remember letting out a wordless scream as I realized what Nora had done. She'd killed me, I thought. There was no way she could get me out from under here.

      But even the scream had no sound, down there under the ice. I felt bubbles against my face, big pockets of precious air that I’d released from my lungs and would never get back; as the bubbles drifted up away from my body, I couldn’t hear them move, couldn’t hear the glug-glug-glug that they should have made.

      There was just that perfect, frozen silence.

      The blackness.

      The cold.

      It took a long time for the cold to register. It didn’t hit me at once, the way I would have expected it to.

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