Welcome to Issue #140 of Nightmare Magazine! It’s May, the most flowery month of the year, and here at Nightmare, we’re seeing the blooms springing up everywhere—horror blooms, of course! We’ve been having a terrific spring. Listeners have been loving having more content to listen to on our podcast (every story and poem is being offered in an audio version), and everyone on staff has been overjoyed by Rachael K. Jones’s Stoker, Nebula, and Hugo nominations for her story “The Sound of Children Screaming”! It was truly an honor to get to work with her on such a powerful project.
This month’s content came together like a field full of wildflowers. I didn’t have any theme or organizing principle in mind when I scheduled these pieces, but I think they make a fabulous bouquet. We start the month with an original short story by Daniel David Froid (“An Offering from the Void”). I can’t resist stories where books play a central role, and the book at the heart of this tale is one unpleasant little volume. While this story is classically creepy, it also has an oddly cozy vibe, so I think it’s the perfect story to share with your friends who are just getting into horror, or who are looking for a horror story that won’t gross them out or traumatize them. When I say we want to publish horror for everyone, I mean it!
Victor Forna’s new short story “like blood on the mouths of death” blends family trauma with a touch of body horror to touching effect. It’s joined by a flash story built around a logic puzzle (“Solve This One, Mrs. Miller”) by Carlie St. George. We also have a beautiful poem wrestling with race and evil: “The Southern Bells,” by Beatrice Winifred Iker.
In our “The H Word” column, Haralambi Markov discusses the way horror has helped him cope with trauma. For interviews, Alex Puncekar sat down with debut novelist J. Nicole Jones to discuss her work, and Xander Odell talked to our short fiction writers to learn more about their pieces.
We like to think that no matter your allergies, this bunch of blooms will delight.
