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Dec. 2023 (Issue 135)

We have original short fiction from Ashlee Lhamon (“For All Your Other Daughters”) and Lynette Hoag (“Bête Noire”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash story (“The Twelve Dying Princesses”) from Marisca Pichette and a poem (“dread”) from TJ Price. Our author spotlight interviewers sit down with our writers, and Ed Grabaniowski discusses snow horror in his essay for The H Word. Adam-Troy Castro dives into Stephen King’s new novel Holly, then goes on to recommend a dark Chilean film (El Conde) and the latest adaptation of A Haunting in Venice.

Cover art by annamei / Adobe Stock Images

Dec. 2023 (Issue 135)

Editorial

Editorial: December 2023

by Wendy N. Wagner

The horror genre is often defined by its use of terror, suspense, gruesomeness, and mounting dread. These are important tools in a horror writer’s toolbox, and none is more important or useful than any of the others. I didn’t set out to celebrate dread in this issue . . .

Fiction

Bête Noire

by Lynette S. Hoag

Author spotlight

Tuesday, June 7, 2022 14:02 GMT. There is movement on the pathway for the first time in 113 days, six hours, four minutes, and five seconds. My motion sensitive cameras flicker on. I see Maker. Maker is not alone.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Lynette S. Hoag

by Xander Odell

Years ago I read that Bill Gates has a turn-of-the-century fully AI-enabled house. Everything in it is specialized for its inhabitants. I wondered: What if it was left empty? Alone. Without purpose.

Fiction

The Twelve Dying Princesses

by Marisca Pichette

This is one of those stories that just about wrote itself. Each princess had something to say, grief and rage straining through the veneer painted over their original tales. The end result is part obituary, part manifesto.

Nonfiction

The H Word: The Blizzard Song

by Ed Grabianowski

You draw one icy breath before the blizzard snatches it away. You moan in the same key as the storm, a polyphonic nightmare sound: ice cracking across a wide lake, a melody of numbness, backed by whispers of death and the rhythmic thud of something nearby.

Fiction

For All Your Other Daughters

by Ashlee Lhamon

Author spotlight

Western texts date the discovery of vagina dentata to 1800 BCE, to the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, the oldest medical text in the world. Misalignment of the lower jaw is detailed, for which regular application of date oil is recommended.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Ashlee Lhamon

by Xander Odell

Being a teenager is horrifying! There is the horror of your body suddenly being outside of your control, for one, and it’s so messy and gross and bloody and smelly and hairy and you have all of these feelings, all without your consent.

Poetry

dread

by TJ Price

Some time ago, I woke from a dream in which I had gone missing. Over the course of the ensuing sunlit hours, I could not rid myself of the overwhelming feeling that everyone around me was somehow overlooking my presence. 

Nonfiction

Book and Media Review: December 2023

by Adam-Troy Castro

Adam-Troy Castro dives into Stephen King’s new novel Holly, then goes on to recommend a dark Chilean film (El Conde) and the latest adaptation of A Haunting in Venice.

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