Welcome to Issue #139 of Nightmare Magazine! And happy April, a month so delightful Shakespeare was both born and died in it. I like to think that if Shakespeare was working in 2024, he would be writing horror—after all, the genre is full of witches, ghosts, murder, and double-crosses, some of his favorite material.
The latter stuff—double-crossing, cheating, treachery, and betrayal—connects the work in this month’s issue. We start with a dark fantasy short by Shannon Scott: “My Containment,” a damply unpleasant little tale of a relationship based on trickery. James Tatam returns to our pages with “Backseat Kiss,” the story of a grudgingly polyamorous couple whose relationship turns horrific. Our flash piece this month is “There are three children jumping over a can outside a bodega,” by Mark Galarrita, which examines the way far too many people focus more on appearances than on real human connection. We also have a lovely poem with an unhappy ending in John R. Turner’s piece “Ensabled Night.”
Corey Farrenkopf writes about cemeteries in the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus we have author spotlights with our authors. In our de•crypt•ed column exploring the horror canon, Sonora Taylor discusses Stephen King’s short story “The Man Who Loved Flowers.”
I’m not going to compare the work in this issue to that of the Bard himself, but I think it’s a terrific installment in a genre that is absolutely flourishing right now. It’s said that Shakespeare lived at the very peak of the Renaissance in England, and I think it’s safe to say these writers are working at the zenith of a horror renaissance sweeping through film and literature. There’s such a tremendous amount of wonderful horror material to watch, read, and enjoy—thank you so much for spending time in our corner of the genre!
