Nightmare Magazine, Issue 166 (July 2026)

We have original short fiction from Claire Jia-Wen (“The Plague Comes From Chinatown”) and S.L. Coney (“Annette Funicello is My Dream Mouse”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash (“A Nebraskan Choir”) from Stephen Toase. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with Chloe Lauter.

Cover art by Joe Therasakdhi / Adobe Stock

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 166 (July 2026)

Editorial

Editorial: July 2026

by Wendy N. Wagner

It’s another terrific issue, packed full of great insights, blood, magic, and creepy rats. I think it’s the perfect counter to room temperature potato salad and overcooked hamburgers. I hope you think so, too!

Publishes Online on 7/8

Fiction

The Plague Comes from Chinatown

by Claire Jia-Wen

Your companions drag the coolie girl to her feet. Some two-cent girl with rags for clothes and hair hanging across her face in tangled strings. Her eyelids flutter but do not open, revealing only the white crescents of her sclera. Blood trickles from a gash across her forehead. The ragged skin sickens you like the Devil. Her skull peeks through. This is a lynching.

Publishes Online on 7/8

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Claire Jia-Wen

by Carrie Finch

As I wrote this story, I was mulling over legacy and inheritance, how the way I experience the world now is affected by the way Chinese Americans were treated then. The panic around the bubonic plague resonates with that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent wave of Asian hate, for instance; questions of femininity and labor persist as well.

Publishes Online on 7/8

Fiction

A Nebraskan Choir

by Steve Toase

The engines echo across the emptiness of the plain like a chorale, individual melodies weaving together to create a tune in the voiceless air. We hear them miles away, aeons in the distance, giving us time to prepare for their arrival. By the scratch-wounded clouds of the sunset and the throat-clawing grasp of the grass, we will prepare the house for them.

Publishes Online on 7/15

Nonfiction

The H Word: The Walls of the Box

by Mary Berman

“Women’s issues horror fiction” has bloomed into its own hot subgenre, and no one is more thrilled than me. On some level, this subgenre arches back across generations (see: the gothic novel)—but I’m referring more specifically the spate of novels that has crashed onto the market since 2021 or so.

Publishes Online on 7/15

Fiction

Annette Funicello Is My Dream Mouse

by S. L. Coney

I took the rats with me when Ilona kicked me out because I knew she loved them. She’d hold them, caressing their pink tails as she fed them pierogi, their large front teeth scraping against the pads of her fingers. Anton was her favorite, a big black rat that she’d stuff between her breasts and carry around the apartment while reading about microeconomic determinants.

Publishes Online on 7/22

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: S. L. Coney

by Devin Marcus

I obtained a degree in clinical psychology, which helps, but I’ve always been adept at imagining other people, the conversations they might have, their reasons and motivations. The degree helped me understand the underpinnings of disordered behavior, but I don’t think it would’ve had as much impact if I hadn’t already been very good at empathy.

Publishes Online on 7/22

Poetry

A Bargain Made in the Monster’s Shadow

by Sam W. Pisciotta

They say a mountain vista looks loveliest in the golden hour, and
lunar landscapes most fully reveal themselves in quarter moons;
light and dark embrace to lift each other.

Publishes Online on 7/29

Nonfiction

Interview: Chloe Lauter

by Alex Puncekar

Chloe Lauter is a writer and publicist based in Los Angeles. Her debut novel is The Flayed Man, a July 21, 2026 release from Penguin Random House’s Skull House Press imprint.

Publishes Online on 7/29