Regina has revised and expanded "Dark Matters" and re-released the story under the new title "The Glow of the Dark".

"Dark Matters" has formerly been published by Absolute XPress, an imprint of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The History of Dark Matters:

Dark Matters' print version was launched at Anticipation - the Science Fiction Worldcon held in Montreal from the 6th till 10th of August 2009. 

Here is a link to a reading from Dark Matters, held during the book launch event of Hades Publications - the publishing house to whom the imprint Absolute XPress belongs (next to Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy, Dragonmoon Press and Tesseracts). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKT0XVNuc4w

Reader's comments are always welcome. Please send them to:

The Glow of the Dark

The Captain of the Luminous is mad.

A solar flare tore his ship apart and killed all his crew members. He is creeping back to earth in his crippled vessel for eleven years already – all alone.

Until he intercepts a distress call from an uncharted planet in the middle of nowhere – four stranded humans beg to be rescued from a haunted world.

Each night a peculiar “dark matter” shrouds the planet and troubles the Captain’s dreams. The substance lets the Captain relive his agonizing decline into semi-madness after the accident on his ship. Not only that, the “dark matter” also shows him the most horrible and intimate memories of the four ship-wrecked humans.

Will the Captain be able to solve the mystery of the “dark matter”, rescue the stranded crew and manage to return to earth, or will he finally succumb to madness?

Excerpt:

***

It was pitch-black in Neville’s hut. I yelled and sat upright in bed, breathing hard after that nightmare.

Something was weird, something was very wrong. I stared around in the darkness and at my flashlight on the floor where I had left it. Something inexplicable had happened to it. Its light was trying to shine, but failed to penetrate the darkness. I saw nothing but a round spot of disconnected brightness in the pitch-black room. Its light didn’t make it to the opposite wall as it had earlier.

I reached out for the flashlight and grabbed it. Its round light-disk moved through the room. I aimed it here and there erratically but it lit up nothing, neither the wall, the table, nor the bed.

“Damn, what is this? It’s so dark. What...”

I did a test and tried to illuminate my hand. It didn’t work. I saw nothing but the weird disk of the flashlight. Suddenly, my finger came out of the dark­ness as if it was emerging from black ink and touched the glass. The range that the flashlight illuminated was maybe an inch. I jerked and pulled my finger back. Not believing this weird phenomenon, es­pecially since I could see my finger emerging from the darkness. If the darkness blocked everything, why wasn’t my range of vision only an inch as well?

“Oh my God, what is this?” I said and tried the experiment with my finger again. Same result. An inch in front of the flashlight’s bulb, my finger emerged from impenetrable darkness like it was popping out of black water.

“Oh God. Help. Help!”

Instincts awoke; the instincts of the caveman, of the little child, afraid of the dark--afraid of the monsters under my bed.

I jumped out of bed. I still held the flashlight, pointing it here and there, seeing nothing but a pathetically jumpy round disk of yellow light. Only now I noticed how cold it was.

“Fuck, it’s so cold.”

I took a few steps in absolute darkness and bumped into the completely invisible table. I screamed more from shock than pain.

I hopped around on one leg, afraid not to find the bed again, that the monster under it had swallowed it. But it was still there and more than grateful for that, I fell back into it and crawled under the protective sheets.

“Oh my God. What is this? It’s so cold. So dark, oh shit...”

I reached for the ray gun under the pillow and held on tight, waiting for something to attack me but nothing happened. There was no sound from the other Gao people, no sounds from the woods. Silence. The universe had ceased to exist. I couldn’t even smell the wood anymore. I had put the flashlight onto my chest and saw its light-disk moving up and down slightly with the rhythm of my breathing.

Thoughts of horror and terror chased though my mind. They’d slay me right here and now, they’d tear me apart and have me for breakfast. Nevertheless, the darkness also lulled me and even against my will, I fell asleep again.

***

Life was good. Gordon Neville took a deep breath in the mellow evening air and drew in the salty smell of the ocean. He sat on a plastic bench at the pier and marveled at the sunset. A highly welcomed planet-leave had started a day earlier than planned, and now he would surprise Stella and pick her up from the ferry. He had been gone for only a month--three times to Tau Ceti’s Hornbass mining colony and back--but it always felt so much longer.

Nothing much had changed. A sailor’s job separated one from one’s family, no matter if ships sailed the oceans or the sky. Neville stretched and let his bones crack. Seagulls screeched overhead. One waddled towards him, eyeing him sternly through yellow eyes, checking whether he had some food. He shook his head and the bird stalked on as if it had understood the gesture.

To the ferry pier’s right rose the masts of private yachts, behind Neville a few people walked their dogs, to the left lay a narrow bridge connecting a small island six hundred feet off the shore with the mainland. A viewing platform and a few souvenir shops crowned the island’s top. The bridge separated the ferry and yacht pier from the commercial fishing harbor.

It was so peaceful and quiet that Neville threatened to doze off. Ship’s clock read midnight, but it was six in the evening here. He yawned and stretched again.

Ah, the ferry, he caught a glimpse of it in the distance. He didn’t like the high-speed jet-ferry. To him ocean meant tranquility, slow life, unwinding, not hurrying as if dinner were burning in the smoking frying pan.

Nevertheless, Neville watched the rapidly approaching ferry with a warm flutter of joy in his stomach. He was looking forward to Stella’s surprised face on seeing him here, the hug, the welcome, the normal life far away from space ships and engines and star-leap calculations. Stories awaited him about his father-in-law, who lived far offshore on the most distant island that the ferry visited only once a week. He was a cranky and yet lovable old man who could hardly walk anymore, but who refused to return to the mainland, which he called a prison.

Yes, Neville understood the old man. Compared to his island the mainland was stuffy and crowded.

Movement caught Neville’s attention from the corner of his eye. A fishing vessel headed full speed for the bridge between the viewing platform island and the mainland. The boat was too tall for the bridge.

“What...” Neville mumbled and looked around. A couple walked past behind him, away from the bridge, they had not noticed anything. A girl tugged at her mother’s sleeve and pointed at the fishing boat. Neville got up and made a step towards the bridge, which lay five hundred feet to his left.

“Hey!” Neville shouted, completely in vain.

The fishing boat hit the bridge. Its masts splintered so loudly it sounded like an explosion. The girl screamed, her mother too, more people stopped walking, stared and screamed. Pedestrians on the bridge turned around and ran back to the mainland.

The fishing boat ploughed on and appeared with chopped off masts from the other side of the bridge with unbroken speed. Neville jumped over a balustrade and ran to the edge of the pier and jetty wall. The fishing boat seemed leaderless and headed straight into the arriving ferry’s path. The ferry’s captain had seen the rogue boat, he sounded his horn, he powered down, but he rode a speed-boat and it would take a while to reduce that speed. Too long a while. Collision course.

...

ISBN-13: 978-1495482700

ISBN-10: 1495482707



About the cover artist:

Naoyuki Katoh is a noted Japanese science fiction artist since the 1970s and has contributed to many science fiction/fantasy magazines, novels and games. He did the outstanding cover art for all of Regina's books:

"She Should Have Called Him Siegfried."

"To Mix and To Stir"

"Dome Child"

"Lord of Water"

"That One Minute"

"The Glow of the Dark"

The Captain of the Luminous has only one thing to eat: protein mass:

Make your own protein mass!

Recipie (four portions):

Ingredients:
- 2 pounds of protein-containing fibers (whole animals like cockroaches, spiders, fleas, rats, mice... scrap paper, chipped wood or pieces of fabric, etc. – depending on availability.)
- A pinch of salt
- 1 liter of liquid (water, pressed cockroach, chemically purified urine etc. – depending on availability)
- 10 vitamin pills

Directions:

Put all ingredients except for the vitamin pills into a large pot and simmer at low heat for 4 hours until the protein-containing fibers have attained a soft and squishy texture.

Take pot from heat and mash the mass with a hand blender until it becomes smooth and even. Add the vitamin pills and put pot back onto the oven.

Boil at 400 Fahrenheit for 5 minutes while stirring until vitamin pills have dissolved. Adjust viscidity by adding additional liquid.

Take from heat and let protein mass cool down to edible temperatures.

Enjoy!