Sept. 2025 (Issue 156)

We have original short fiction from Champ Wongsatayanont (“Autogas Ferryman”) and Ash Huang (“Safe Face”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash (“Finishing Touches”) from Adam-Troy Castro and a poem (“Blood-Orange”) from L.M. Harris. We’re serving up the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors. Adam-Troy Castro brings us another fun media review!

Cover art by Fernando Gomez Cortes / Pexels.com Stock Images

Sept. 2025 (Issue 156)

Editorial

Editorial: September 2025

by Wendy N. Wagner

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.

Fiction

Autogas Ferryman

by Champ Wongsatayanont

Author spotlight

Krungthep means “The City of Gods.” A much more charming name than the bawdy Bangkok that foreigners joke about. But to Somsak, it is the city of ghosts. He drives his taxi slowly along through the glittering blocks of shopping malls, the neon signs of Yaowarat restaurants.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Champ Wongsatayanont

by Alex Puncekar

The thing that got me excited to write this story is the jaded and familiar voice of Bangkok taxi drivers. They’re my biggest driver, literally. Taxis decorated for spiritual protection aren’t such an uncommon sight either. This voice became irresistible when I was playing Cyberpunk 2077.

Fiction

Finishing Touches

by Adam-Troy Castro

When I proposed to Caroline, I told her that as long as we lived I would deny her nothing, but I had one request for myself: that we fulfill my own lifelong dream and build a haunted mansion for us. Caroline was amenable to this.

Nonfiction

The H Word: On Tod Browning’s Undead Memes

by Dan Chaon

There’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1954 called “Baby Buggy Bugs.” Maybe you’ve seen it? It’s the one with the extremely short bank robber who disguises himself as a baby and tricks Bugs into taking care of him while he searches for his lost loot.

Fiction

Safe Face

by Ash Huang

To save face, turn away from the sun. Turn away from the spatter of cold rain against the cheek, away from the hard light of the moon at its roundest, away from the snow-flecked wind, away from the barky scratch at the fork of an oak.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Ash Huang

by Devin Marcus

Inherent in saving face, there’s a backdrop of protectionism. A fear of losing your community, in losing everything. There’s pressure to be fastidious and appear too powerful to mess with. Many families, mine included, have a history of keeping their heads on a swivel to survive war.

Poetry

Blood-Orange

by L.M. Harris

I was reading Genesis but I kept imagining everything happening where I grew up, in my childhood home. When I reached the part about Lot and his daughters, I became fixated on them. I never finished reading Genesis. This poem came out of that.