Welcome to Issue #137 of Nightmare Magazine, and welcome to the pinkest month of the year! I don’t know what your local grocery store looks like this month, but when February rolls around, the Safeway up the street from my house nearly bursts open with pink stuffed animals, pink boxes of candy, pink accessories, and pink baked goods. Every aisle manages to sport some kind of product packaging designed to make sure you don’t forget Valentine’s Day—that holiday purportedly celebrating love in all its forms. And you know what they say about love and war: all is fair.
All is fair.
Which actually means that in the pinkest of realms, nothing is fair. Which is why this very pink month, we’re rolling out our Unfairness Issue.
We’re kicking off our short fiction with a short story by George Sandison called “The Cut Cares Not for the Flesh.” It’s about a couple who stumbles into an exclusive club for making magical exchanges. The trades purport to be fair, but by the end, you (like the main character) might wonder if some club members might be getting a raw deal. H.B. Menendez brings us a short story—“Preamble to the Death of a Small God”—about a pair of young women who are horribly mistreated by society. Luckily, they have some powers that might help them even the score. Our H Lab originals include a flash story (“First Girls”) by Jessica Luke García that meditates on the unfairness of girls’ roles in slasher stories, and a poem by Adriana C. Grigore called “The Mourning of Sam Lillow, the Gardener,” which tells the melancholy tale of Sleeping Beauty’s gardener.
Our nonfiction includes an H Word essay from debut novelist Jenny Kiefer and a de•crypt•ed book review by Sunny Moraine, who wondered what it would be like to re-read Stephen King’s The Stand in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also have spotlight interviews with our wonderful short fiction authors.
It’s another terrific issue, and we’re hoping you’ll enjoy it like the dark little Valentine it’s meant to be. From our bloody hearts to yours—XOXO!
