New Terror

By Denis Álvarez Betancourt

Translated by Toshiya Kamei

Once upon a midnight dreary...

Edgar Allan Poe

He rose to power in the first vampiric republic in the world, which came into being in Cruel, the city of terror. The final battle was fought street by street. Stakes and fire. Garlic and knives couldn’t overcome the forces of poisoned blood and sharp fangs. Axes became chipped from severing so many heads from bony bodies. At the end, on Morgue Street, a flock of crows was perched on the large bust of Poe. This one was right on the lintel of a door, an entrance to the immense mass of Gothic granite. They squawked, “Leonora!” And all the attackers dyed their faces a scarlet red symbol of death. The disease couldn’t stop them. Guided by myriads of one-eyed cats, they dug out from the cold, damp walls entombed wives who, in the new darkness, joined as reinforcements to hordes of the undead, definitely tilting the scales in their favor. The flock fled to the Night’s Plutonian shore. Then the ghosts said, “Nevermore.”