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We have original short fiction from Pedro Iniguez (“Nightmare of a Million Faces”) and Donyae Coles (“The Ascension of Magdalene”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash story (“Student Living”) from Ashley Deng and a poem (“A Trick of The Night’s Hunger”) from Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a book review from Adam-Troy Castro.
Cover art by danielegay / Adobe Stock
I don’t need to dig into Lovecraft’s backstory. If you don’t know that he’s a deeply racist person who let his problematic ideas bleed cruelty all over the horror genre, you’ve either been asleep for a few decades or you just started reading this stuff.
When the sun plunged beneath the horizon, the striations of red clouds looked like gashes raked across the sky; flayed wounds ready to rain blood on a thirsty desert. Anastasia Mendez offered her left forearm a glance. The lacerations crisscrossing her skin had mended.
Sometimes we are at the mercy of things that scare us, and those things become our voice and they control our lives until we are destroyed by those very things. That lends itself to the horror genre very well, I believe.
“Student Living” is something of a love letter to the makeshift nature of living on a budget as a student. It’s bleary-eyed mornings and caffeine fueled nights with our faces slammed against readings and lecture notes. I wanted to write something that encompassed my love of that experience.
Jorōgumo, a spider that shapeshifts into a woman (there’s something for your nightmares). Zombies in every form. The making of a vampire. These transmutations represent more than just the birth of a baddie—they reflect change, upheaval, disruption, metamorphosis.
It felt a little like fucking. Reminded Magdalene of the first time she’d ever let a boy get a hand up her skirt, long before Ben but he didn’t know that, she wore white on her wedding day. Couldn’t even remember his name, that boy, just that he’d died in The War.
How many articles do we read about how doctors don’t take women’s pain seriously? How many stories have we all heard of women getting diagnosed with fat and anxiety instead of cancer? How often do men scoff at menstrual pain?
he poem was inspired by the unending struggle of the world and its continuous demand in our blood, where we must keep striving to stay afloat. In the last part of the poem, I demonstrated how at that point I was okay with much the world has to offer me, and was willing to not keep spending my blood.
Find out a little more about Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard and why veteran reviewer Adam-Troy Castro is recommending it.
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