As violence, corporate greed, and international tension rise, we are all asking: What’s really going on beneath the surface of our society? Are we really as safe as we have been led to believe? And holy crap, how f*cked up is everything, really?

Making a horror magazine is a real labor of love, and February is the season where we celebrate all things loving and relation-full. This issue really dives into the language of the heart.

In a time when most of us are surrounded by bland, corporate big box buildings and bombarded with thoughtless, empty “content,” our writers are surgically extracting their inner worlds and offering them to you, our readers, so you can have a genuine, powerful experience.

Maybe it’s the long dark nights stirring up the imagination, or maybe it’s the strange light you get when sunshine glints off the snow: We might be out of spooky season, but December is the time when our thoughts are often in communication with legends and lore.

I have lost count of the number of discussions I’ve had about what the difference between horror and dark fantasy might be. Plenty of people have very crisp definitions and think applying them helps them better understand dark fiction. Me? I have a tougher time every year. I’m inclined to say that dark fantasy is the stuff that when you finish, you care more about what couldn’t be explained than the parts that were trying to make you feel scared.

We always try to pull out the stops in our birthday issues, and this year is no different. There’s no real theme this month—although regret and reparation loom large—but every single piece is out to squeeze your heart or slap you across the face.

If there’s one thing I learned this summer, it’s that we need each other more than ever. There are so many terrible things happening, and there’s no way we can survive all of them without a helping hand. We must invest our time and our energy into our relationships.

Many of us are feeling anxious about what’s going to happen to each other and our beautiful planet. I sometimes lose heart, myself! But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with so many amazing horror writers over the years, it’s that when things get dark, humans have the capacity to come together and shine.

Luckily for me, the ghosts in my house aren’t nearly as toxic as the ones in this month’s issue. Sure, we sometimes wake in the night to feel phantom dogs jumping on the bed to join our pup (who seems unfussed by these strangers).

Welcome to what might be our most meta issue ever. I’m no expert on postmodernism (seriously, I fell asleep every session of my 20^th Century Philosophy class), but I do love fiction that recognizes it’s working within a larger schema of texts all inescapably linked by culture.