Apr. 2020 (Issue 91)

We have original fiction from Ben Peek (“See You on a Dark Night”) and Millie Ho (“A Moonlit Savagery”), along with reprints by Dan Stintzi (“Surrogate”) and A.C. Wise (“And the Carnival Leaves Town”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a media review from Adam-Troy Castro. Our ebook readers are in for a special treat—they’re getting an excerpt from Kathe Koja’s new collection, Velocities.

Cover art by Chorazin / Adobe Stock art

Apr. 2020 (Issue 91)

Editorial

Editorial: April 2020

by John Joseph Adams

Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month’s content, plus all our news and updates.

Fiction

See You on a Dark Night

by Benjamin Peek

Author spotlight

W— went to the vampire club a couple of nights after E—’s death. It was on M— Street, in an oddly-shaped bar. When W— gazed at it from the outside, when he stared through the dirty windows and advertisements, the old stools and tables looked like the rotten teeth in a giant’s mouth. The bar was struggling. W— hadn’t seen more than two or three people in it for months. In an attempt to bring people in, the owner had begun to organise events.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Ben Peek

by Xander Odell

Read more. Don’t just read your friends, or who your friends say you should read, or who you’re comfortable reading, or who your model of literature is. Push yourself. Take risks. Read small things, big things, translated things, things in your native language but from different countries. Understand language is fluid, that it’s forever changing, that there are no rules. There are writers of every kind out there doing interesting and fascinating things and you want to find them.

Fiction

Surrogate

by Dan Stintzi

Emmons found the body by the riverbank. He spotted it by the color of the coat, a dark green against the white and gray of the snow and ice. There was warmth buried somewhere deep below the skin. He lifted the body, untangled its foot from the barbs of a rusted fence, and carried it over his shoulder, trudging back through his old bootprints. Inside, he set the body upright against the tree that had grown inside his home. The tree was dead now. Emmons tried to make the body speak again but it would not.

Nonfiction

The H Word: Mental Health, Ableism, and the Horror Genre

by Evan J. Peterson

Our genre isn’t known for its warm and compassionate embrace of disability. From physical disfigurement to mental illness, those with disabilities are an all-too-convenient Other to demonize. The current battle for greater inclusion in the genres continues to shed light on those stories and voices that have been excluded. As we look beyond race, gender, and sexuality for inclusion and representation, ability is vital for us to reexamine.

Fiction

A Moonlit Savagery

by Millie Ho

Author spotlight

My eyes snap open at night. I float out of the tunnel under the concrete wall and settle on the roof of the abandoned hostel. The starry chaos of Yaowarat stretches before me like rows of crowded teeth. It’s tourist season, and my belly aches with hunger at the sight of all the farangs: slurping shark fin soup in restaurants, being measured for crocodile skin suits in tailor shops, ducking into tuk-tuks with their sunburnt arms around a local girl or two.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Millie Ho

by Xander Odell

Desperation is very relatable. We’ve all been in situations where we don’t feel good enough. We may have even been shamed for being ourselves or had our trust broken by someone we thought loved us. I think humanizing the supernatural comes easily when you’re being honest. I wrote this story in a blind animalistic frenzy, with no filters and no blueprints except the map of my own experiences. It was a delight to write this and finally crystallize on the page my thoughts about power, injustice, and ultimately, self-love.

Fiction

And the Carnival Leaves Town

by A.C. Wise

The first piece of evidence appears on Walter Eckert’s desk in a locked office to which he has the only key. It is wrapped in brown paper, neatly labeled with his name, no return address. He unwraps it with wary hands. Cheap plywood, as if from a construction site wall, pasted with a handbill-sized poster. It could be advertising any event around town—a rock band no one has ever heard of, an avant garde art exhibition no one will ever see—but it appears to advertise nothing at all.