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Oct. 2020 (Issue 97)

We have original fiction from David Tallerman (“Not Us”) and Adam-Troy Castro (“The Monkey Trap”), along with reprints by Kaaron Warren (“Furtherest”) and A.C. Wise (“The Secret of Flight”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, and a book review from Adam-Troy Castro.

Cover art by Andrey Kiselev / Adobe Stock Image

Oct. 2020 (Issue 97)

Editorial

Editorial: October 2020

by John Joseph Adams

Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month’s chilling content and for all our updates.

Fiction

Not Us

by David Tallerman

Author spotlight

When he comes home that evening, he wants to talk. He tells her about his day, about an argument with his boss, about the new contract. He relates a funny story narrated by a colleague. He wants her to react. She has difficulty feigning the correct demeanour, or even recalling what it should be. What does sympathetic annoyance look like on her face? How do her features register amused interest?

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: David Tallerman

by Tyhitia Green

Somewhere along the line, my thing, certainly as far as short fiction goes, seems to have become setting out to write genre stories that wind up becoming relationship stories. It’s probably no big giveaway to say this was intended as a take on the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” formula, but as I went on, I began to realise that a big part of what I found so fascinating in that concept is, how would you even know?

Fiction

Furtherest

by Kaaron Warren

As kids we’d dare each other to go further and further into the dunes each day. You couldn’t come back until you found something, some proof you were there: A cigarette butt, a page from a book, a shoe, a ribbon. We always found something. I cheated often, tucking things into my swimming costume so I would have to travel too far.

Nonfiction

The H Word: An Empathy of Fear

by Premee Mohamed

“I think I’m going to faint,” I whispered. My best friend nodded sympathetically, his face radiating concern. “Try not to knock over the popcorn,” he whispered back. We were in a movie theatre, back when one could visit such outlandish things, and the first Saw was playing. I was more terrified than my normal baseline of “extremely” and a loss of consciousness seemed not only likely, but imminent.

Fiction

The Monkey Trap

by Adam-Troy Castro

Author spotlight

Amber needed a book. It was The Estates of Sarah Holliday, a delicate comedy of manners following a young woman’s trials and tribulations in 1870s New England, and it was the most obscure novel by one Charlotte Winsborough, a fussy and now almost completely forgotten nineteenth-century author Amber had chosen for her dissertation. Winsborough had enjoyed three decades of critical and commercial success in her own time, and was by about 1900 lionized as a female Twain.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

by Xander Odell

This is a dark reply to recent obsession with the worst things creators have done, either in their personal lives or in their public pronouncements. I fear that, given what amounts to omniscience like the bookseller’s unspecified “sources,” damned few creators would survive with their reputations intact. And then there are the names of people safely dead, like the story’s specified Al Capp, whose deeds are downright sickening.

Fiction

The Secret of Flight

by A.C. Wise

SETTING: The stage is bare except for a backdrop screen showing the distant manor house. The lights should start at 1/8 and rising to 3/4 luminance as the scene progresses. AT RISE: The corpse of a man lies CENTER STAGE. POLICEMAN enters STAGE RIGHT, led by a YOUNG BOY carrying garden shears. The boy’s cheek is smeared with dirt. The boy points with shears and tugs the policeman’s hand. POLICEMAN crosses to CENTER STAGE and kneels beside the corpse.

Nonfiction

Book Review: October 2020

by Adam-Troy Castro

This month Adam-Troy Castro dives into The Best of Michael Marshall Smith, a retrospective of the author’s short fiction. Should you read it? Find out!