Nov. 2025 (Issue 158)

It’s our annual Dark Fantasy issue! We have original short fiction from James L. Sutter (“Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds”) and Sharang Biswas (“Bleed For Me, Bro”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash piece (“Primordium”) from Erica Ruppert and a poem (“Futakuchi onna speaks of the Kamaitachi”) from Betsy Aoki. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors. Lisa Morton has also created a great guide to books about scientists exploring the paranormal—so if you loved Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, find some great recommendations.

Cover art by Andrey Kiselev / Adobe Stock

Nov. 2025 (Issue 158)

Editorial

Editorial: November 2025

by Wendy N. Wagner

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.

Publishes Online on 11/5

Fiction

Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds

by James L. Sutter

The surgery is an aortic something-or-other—you don’t really bother to listen. You don’t need some surgeon barely out of pull-ups to tell you your heart hasn’t worked right since Sam died. They put you under for it, and isn’t that a wonder: to sleep without dreaming. Or if you do, the propofol makes you forget, and that’s almost as good.

Publishes Online on 11/5

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: James L. Sutter

by Carrie Finch

Believe it or not, it all started as a pun. I read a description somewhere of a bird species being “cavity nesters,” and my brain immediately went “you mean like thoracic cavity?” That then gave rise to the line “they nest in hollows—do you feel hollow?” and the double meaning felt interesting enough that I wrote it down. But then it sat there. For years. Because I didn’t have a story—I had a bit of wordplay.

Publishes Online on 11/5

Fiction

Primordium

by Erica Ruppert

I have a longstanding fascination with fungi—their interconnectedness, their otherness, their ability to emerge from seemingly nothing. I also have a longstanding fascination with serial killers and the dehumanization they inflict. When I began writing “Primordium” it was only a vignette about mushrooms and their drifting spores, but it grew unexpectedly to incorporate both interests.

Publishes Online on 11/12

Nonfiction

The H Word: The Forest’s Quiet Hunger for Your Soul

by Samuel Peters

It is something that is just accepted: forests are places where things become lost. There is a dark, entangled history that grows in the shadows of the woods, weaving through myth and legend—through stories we have told and warnings we have whispered into the night. The forest is the void of the unknown, a ravenous mouth that picks clean the bones of trespassers because the forest has a stomach, and that stomach has never been full.

Publishes Online on 11/12

Fiction

Bleed for Me, Bro

by Sharang Biswas

Watching Jules claw his way back to life was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. This was the kind of scene artists immortalized with gold and lapis lazuli illumination, the kind of scene that soared, heaven-seeking, up cathedral vaults, buoyed by choirs of castrati. One moment, Jules was twitching in a pool of his own blood, and the next, he shuddered back into himself, lips opening like a crescent moon.

Publishes Online on 11/19

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Sharang Biswas

by Clay Vermulm

I have a habit of writing stories inspired by trips that I’ve enjoyed. This one, I started writing after the first time I attended CLAW, a BDSM and kink convention in Cleveland. I distinctly remember thinking—on the way back—that some of the activities I got up to would be considered “niche” or “extreme” by a large percentage of the population. I wanted to speak to that through speculative fiction.

Publishes Online on 11/19

Poetry

Futakuchi onna speaks of the Kamaitachi

by Betsy Aoki

I.
Simple, tiny blood-cuts on a calf.
She cut herself shaving. The wind whipped
weasel-clawed, in circles around her legs.

Publishes Online on 11/26

Nonfiction

Plumbing the Depths: When Scientists Go Mad—Ghost-Hunting and Horror

by Lisa Morton

Lisa Morton literally wrote the book on seances and spiritualism (you should all check out her delightful book Calling the Spirits). Here’s a short reading guide from her compiling great fiction about ghost hunters.

Publishes Online on 11/26