Welcome to Issue #149 of Nightmare Magazine!

Here in Oregon, February is a totally unpredictable month. Every year a local bike group hosts an event called the “Worst Day of the Year Ride,” because statistically that week of the year features the very worst weather. But since February likes to keep us on our toes, for the first thirteen years of the event, it didn’t even rain.

Some years we get snow in February; some years we get sun. The only thing we Oregonians know for sure about February is that we don’t know anything.

This issue of Nightmare is as unpredictable as February. Our poem this month—“in your mind they still dance” by Ariya Bandy—was inspired by the Dancing Plague of 1518. Kelsea Yu’s short story “In Our Skin” is a science fiction-horror hybrid about two minds sharing one body. Bruce McAllister contributed a flash piece (“The Sound a Rabbit Might Make”) about harmful relationships. And Dan Stintzi’s short story “God of the Black Moon” kicks off the issue with a work of weird fiction focused around art films and cults.

It’s the kind of issue that doesn’t really have a theme, and yet each piece somehow seems to connect with the others. There’s a special kind of darkness in each one that’s made out of both our struggle to understand each other and our failures to be what other people want us to be. It’s art that feels like sunshine on what the meteorologist predicted would be the worst day of the year—or vice versa.

This month we’ve also got the first entry in our new “Plumbing the Depths” column, where we’ll be bringing on scholars, critics, and creators to explore horror subgenres and establish their canons. This month, we’ve brought on board Neil McRobert, host of the Talking Scared podcast, for a discussion of survival and adventure horror. In the latest “The H Word,” Priya Chand delves into being buried alive (one of my worst fears). Plus of course, we have author spotlight interviews with our authors.

So join us for a totally unpredictable issue. We promise it will be more fun than biking in the rain or fighting the crowds for a table on Valentine’s Day!