Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Darrin Doyle writes about The Dark Will End the Dark, his new story collection out from Tortoise Books.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a classroom activity, it would be a dissection. A cold frog splayed open on a tray and gazed at, poked at with curiosity, grim anticipation, and horror.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a meat, it would be a hot dog. Made of bits and pieces of god-knows-what but strangely delicious when cooked over an open flame.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a playground, it would be a rusted metal swing set, a dimpled silver slide slanting unsteadily against the pull of gravity, a merry-go-round choked with weeds.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a traffic sign, it would be YIELD – an upside-down triangle; a quiet invitation to proceed but to please proceed with caution.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a timepiece, it would be an antique silver stopwatch. A burden, a reminder, an heirloom, a tool lost to history and a story to unearth.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a fishing method, it would be a gill net. It floats silently below the surface, just off-shore, waiting for the unsuspecting trout.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a bedroom, it would have blackout curtains. The walls would hold no shadow because there would be no light. The room would request of you only two things: to sleep and to dream.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a board game, it would be Battleship. A game of speculation, of hiding, of despair and inevitable destruction.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a liquid, it would be blood, flowing through us all, blue when it’s inside our bodies and crimson when it’s exposed to the world, when trouble is upon us.
If The Dark Will End the Dark were a crime, it would be graverobbing, performed under cloudy moonlight, the plundering of an entitled, wealthy man who only in death was at last served his helping of humility. His bones will snap as his gilded cufflinks are pulled free. His skull will crumple into dust when the oxygen hits. There’s a long-needed pillage going on here, of the smallest parts that make us a whole.
Darrin Doyle is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently the novella Let Gravity Seize the Dead (Regal House) and the novel The Beast in Aisle 34 (Tortoise Books). His short stories have appeared in many literary journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Macguffin, and Puerto del Sol. He teaches at Central Michigan University. His website is www.darrindoyle.com