The Dark by Jan Darrow

1.

In the dark, there is someone at the top of the stairs. But the only thing that can be seen for sure is the glowing tip of a cigarette.

Meg is at a college party passed out in the grass behind the fraternity house. Her eyes open and she wonders how the moon can stay suspended. She smells cigarette smoke and looks up. The figure flicks the cigarette down the stairs. It burns her arm.

She doesn’t scream.

She doesn’t run.

She puts the cigarette out with her shoe. Someday, she tells herself, she is going to learn how to smoke.

2.

It isn’t the darkness that wakes her but moaning from down the hall. Her roommate met someone earlier that afternoon in chemistry class.

Someday Meg is going to be like that. That passionate. That scientific. 

3.

Blue lights illuminate bottles of liquor behind the bar. Outside, the Priscilla’s sign glows red. 

Meg spends two hours drinking Zombies.

She meets a guy under the No Smoking sign and pulls out a cigarette. He pulls out a lighter and lights it with a flick of his thumb. She remembers the sign and puts the cigarette away. Something falls to the floor.

A button? A tooth? She isn’t sure.

The guy picks it up.

She takes him home. Later that night in her room his thumb comes off in her hand, then his ear. A minute later his arm and two of his toes bounce across the wooden floor.

Just Meg’s luck. Body parts are falling off everywhere. 

*Published originally by Five on the Fifth - August 2020

Jan Darrow grew up in the rural Midwest where she connected to the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. Her collections of poetry and flash fiction are available on Amazon. You can also find her at Jan Darrow / Poetry and Fiction.