Welcome to Issue #136 of Nightmare Magazine, and welcome to another year celebrating horror and dark fantasy fiction. We’re excited to scare, unsettle, nauseate, amuse, and depress you—because we believe in the power of horror to do all of those things. It’s truly a genre for everyone and every palate, the perfect realm to explore all the complicated, dark facets of the human condition.

January is a month for celebrating new beginnings and fresh starts. It’s also the month we’re most likely to take a serious look at our health, relationships, and work-life balance. Every magazine at the grocery store shouts cliches like “New Year, New You!” and gyms across America offer incredible sign-up deals. In January, you’ll be hard-pressed to have a conversation with anyone without someone bringing up exercise. Needless to say, it seemed like a great month to center our issue around, you guessed it: bodies in motion. Or at least, bodies and verbs.

The month starts off with R.A. Busby’s story “Ten Thousand Crawling Children,” a tale of exquisite body horror. Verb? Crawling, of course! Andrew Snover joins us with his short “The Forgetter,” about a man with a very unusual job. Verb? Shoveling. Megan Kiekel Anderson brings us our first creative nonfiction piece in several months, discussing the way we remember terrifying experiences in her essay “Chase Scene.” (Verb: running.) And Somto Ihezue explores the verb “smoldering” in his poem “In Our Bodies There Is Heat.”

Kelsea Yu writes about the roles of dead mothers in fairy tales in her essay for “The H Word,” and Gordon B. White interviews author V. Castro. Plus, our spotlight interview team brings you insights into our authors’ eerie minds.

It’s another terrific issue for you to enjoy—even when you’re on the treadmill.