The name Dark Harbor Magazine gave us a strong beginning, but it no longer reflects the scale of the magazine we are building.

Something is wrong. There is a stranger in the back of the train. Someone I have never seen before. Sitting alone, among all the daily commuters I see every day. Perhaps I never noticed him before. Though he has a distinct look I would have noticed.

Caroline nearly misses it. She would’ve missed it if it weren’t for the snow-blind blankness of her new bed set. The spot is perfectly round and rust red, the planet Mars in miniature. “The god of war,” she thinks, a bad omen.

Halloween was the best family event of the year. Every Halloween, The Cousins  played Ninjas. Our grandmother had ten children. Ten children all got married except Uncle Steve. He died in Vietnam, and my dad always poured a beer into the grass for Uncle Steve when all the siblings got together.    

You don’t remember how you got here, just that you woke up on a dusty futon in a large empty garage with a slick concrete floor that you place your bare feet on as you jolt awake. Light is coming through the high windows on the one wall but you can only see tree tops swaying outside.

Now that he has passed from this life, I can reveal the remarkable tale he entrusted to me. With respect to this narrative, my name is unimportant. Know only that I was a close friend of Ian Bellairs for many years.

In the far stretches of Taraba State, where the savannah breathes in long sighs and the earth blushes red beneath bare feet, there lies a land shaped more by stories than by time. The wind there is not just wind. 

It hadn’t been a conscious thing, the way he lost his mind. It slipped away slowly, like water draining through a crack in the hull. Somewhere along the way, he knew it was gone. Hunger consumed it. Hunger could do that, especially when you hadn’t eaten in days.

Although he couldn’t save his wife, Matthew said he was lucky to escape the woods. Later, it came out that, onthe first day of the hike, as he’d planned all along, he hit her on the head with a stone and pushed her off a cliff.

Emily remembered long ago when her parents found her in the backyard as a child, knees in the mud, digging in the dirt with her bare hands. She looked up at them as they loomed over her…

It could be a shed for livestock, or farm equipment; anything except kitchen supplies. The dark green paint job looks fresh, trying to blend into landscape; an attempt to appear inconspicuous. Eyes of greasy men watch from across the road, cigarettes dangling from their bearded mouths.

The front door slams downstairs. If I hear whistling, it’s dad. If not, it’s her. I count my heartbeats in my throat. The sun has started its slow descent.