May 2023 (Issue 128)

We have original short fiction from Keith Rosson (“Primal Slap”) and Elena Sichrovsky (“Goodnight Virginia Bluebells”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash story (“Nine Lies You Tell Yourself About Ghost Hunting”) from Aimee Picchi and a poem (“We Are Always Walking on Dead Things”) from Emily Ruth Verona. 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 editor and reviewer Sadie Hartmann. We also have an excerpt from Jeremy C. Shipp’s new novel The Merry Dredgers.

Cover art by Fran_kie / Adobe Stock

May 2023 (Issue 128)

Editorial

Editorial: May 2023

by Wendy N. Wagner

When I was a freshman in college, eager to knock out all those pesky general education requirements before I dug in and got serious about my major, I signed up for Phil. 207: Early Modern Philosophy, 1500-1750. Philosophy, as I understood it from shelving books as a library volunteer, had something to do with world religions, alien abduction, and/or hallucinogenic drugs. I didn’t know they were into all of that in 1500, but I expected I was in for a fun time.

Fiction

Primal Slap

by Keith Rosson

Author spotlight

Jeffrey, chin glazed in grease, leans his head over my cubicle wall and asks me what I’m working on. He slurps something from his bento box—the one with his name supposedly written in kanji on the side—and noodles hang trembling from his lips. Jeffrey’s the senior sales associate, which technically makes him my superior. He’s wildly unsavory for a number of reasons; the fact that he insists on eating at his desk every day is pretty high on the list.

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- Narrated by:
  
  Susan Hanfield
- Duration:
  
  58:59
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Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Keith Rosson

by Dawn Davis

I started boxing recently and am finding myself drawn to these parallels between combat sports and horror. Both ask for a wild and possibly counterintuitive sort of consent: I give you permission to scare the hell out of me, or I give you permission to hit me in the face. Everyone signs a waiver in Primal Slap class.

Fiction

9 Lies You Tell Yourself About Ghost Hunting

by Aimee Picchi

This started with a prompt in a weekend flash writing contest: “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” That weekend, my teenage daughter and a couple of her friends were talking about sidekicks in books that are more interesting than the main “chosen” one character—and it brought up my own conflicted feelings about the show Supernatural, which is littered with the bodies of the Winchester brothers’ female sidekicks.

Nonfiction

The H Word: Healing Through Horror

by Rae Knowles

The Stradivarius is my love-letter retelling of Patrick Hamilton’s Gas Light, yes, but it’s also another in a long line of attempts to process my experience with the abuse that would come to define an era of my life. Today, I see “gaslighting” thrown around casually, usually as a high-powered stand-in word for “lying.” But as Mae and Carter—the main characters of The Stradivarius—or as I, or anyone else who’s experienced this type of abuse can tell you, it’s something far more devastating and complex.

Fiction

Goodnight, Virginia Bluebells

by Elena Sichrovsky

Author spotlight

The call comes when Kaitlyn is at Little Star—the cafe on the corner of Third and Main—picking up lunch for the marketing team: two Caesar salads and a cream cheese avocado bagel sandwich. She answers her phone as it’s her turn to step up to the counter. The voice on the other end of the line says, This is Father Lawrence, chaplain from the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. She already knows what he’s going to say next.

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- Narrated by:
  
  Justine Eyre
- Duration:
  
  20:31
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Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Elena Sichrovsky

by Xander Odell

I think there’s a part of human nature that instinctively fears what they don’t know or understand. For me that aversion to “the other” is what draws me to horror because I’ve always identified more with the other, the monster, the incomprehensible. Often, I feel like an outsider even in my own sense of self, and so writing is a way for me to get closer to my thoughts and feelings. And then a big part of the appeal of horror is that first it introduces the other, the unknown, and then it entices you to come closer.

Poetry

We Are Always Walking on Dead Things

by Emily Ruth Verona

There is so much we don’t know. I’ve often stood in ankle-high grass wondering what lay deep beneath my feet . . . and what lay beneath that . . . and beneath that. This poem is my way of exploring history, legacy, and inevitability.

Nonfiction

Interview: Sadie Hartmann

by Gordon B. White

Sadie Hartmann, aka Mother Horror, is the co-owner of the horror fiction subscription company, Night Worms, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor of her own horror fiction imprint, Dark Hart. Her non-fiction book about horror books, titled 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, for Page Street Books, is coming in August 2023.

May 2023 (Issue 128)

Editorial

Fiction

Narrated by:

Duration:

Author Spotlight

Fiction

Nonfiction

Fiction

Narrated by:

Duration:

Author Spotlight

Poetry

Nonfiction

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