Welcome to Issue #127 of Nightmare Magazine, and welcome to April, that month of fools and taxes. It’s a time of year when bad choices can really come back to bite you in tender places, a time when it’s all too easy to find yourself shaking your head and saying “Why the heck did I do that?” And that’s why this issue is all about self-sabotage and bad ideas.

I think many people have to go through a period that’s, for lack of a better term, self-destructive (I might think this simply because I saw St. Elmo’s Fire too many times at a formative age). Our ancient forbearers had rites of passage and periods of great hardship, but these days, many of us can spend our entire lives in relative comfort. If we keep our heads down and follow the rules, we can often get by without truly challenging or endangering ourselves. But there’s something deep inside a lot of people that yearns for rebellion. For danger. For a chance to spit into the very face of annihilation.

The works in this month’s issue all confront that urge. We start the month with Natasha King’s story “Root Canticle,” a tale of a witch, a haunted house, and one woman’s terrible choice to go treasure hunting. Beatrice Winifred Iker brings us a flash story (“Delicate Webbing”) about a relationship sewn together with pain. James Tatam’s new short story “Jumper” introduces us to a sport that might give pause to even the hardiest adrenaline junkie. We also have a creative essay from Maria Haskins—“A Piece of Paper, Burned”—about the role of magic in a small Swedish community.

These are stories of people willing to play with fire, no matter the danger of getting burned.

Luckily, our nonfiction team brings us a little relief from all that risk-taking. Our spotlight team grills our writers to find out all about their deepest motivations and upcoming projects. Photographer and writer Neal Auch delves into the communicable nature of violence in his essay for “The H Word.” In the latest installment of our de•crypt•ed column, Meg Elison discusses her experiences with Richard Matheson’s Hell House. Spoiler: she doesn’t love it! As a huge fan of the novel, I found her essay a little hard to read—but in a way that made me excited to find the next generation’s big creepy haunted house novel. I think these kinds of conversations about the canon are exciting and really worthwhile, so I’m so glad we’ve created this new room for them.

Speaking of haunted houses, those of you subscribers who get your Nightmare fix via Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program should know that they’re discontinuing the service at the end of August. But don’t despair! You can still get your issues either directly from us (nightmare-magazine.com/subscriptions) or from Weightless Books (bit.ly/3XQbase).

Thanks so much for joining us in our dark corner of the world!