Welcome to Issue #143 of Nightmare Magazine!

I’ve always found August the toughest of all the months. Here in Oregon, it arrives in a dust cloud and leaves on the drifting spores of powdered mildew after beating the color out of the landscape with its jab-cross combo of scorching heat and wildfire smoke. There are no holidays in the month of August, and everyone is glad to see its back.

But not this year, damn it.

This year, we’re making August fun. We’ve rounded up the most electric work, the kinds of stories and poetry that can keep your swamp cooler going even when the power grid is overwhelmed. We open the month with Erin Brown’s The King in Yellow-inspired tale “Butter,” a story about horrors both cosmic and earthly. Cody Goodfellow’s nasty tale “Queen of the Rodeo” blends folk horror with Americana to raucous effect. Guan Un brings us a vicious piece of flash fiction (“Painted Surfaces”) centered around the love of a beautiful woman, and Lisa M. Bradley channels her inner “VVitch” in her poem “Witches’ Sabbath.”

Over at the H Word, Neal Auch discusses demons and their appearances in recent horror films. We also have author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with writer Michael J. Seidlinger.

I hope you enjoy this color- and energy-packed summer issue. I think it’s exactly the high-octane stuff we need to get us through to October. Halloween is coming, my horror friends. I hope you’re dreaming about it—and that those dreams are nightmares.