Welcome to Issue #152 of Nightmare Magazine!
And if you’re a subscriber reading this on release day, then happy May Day—a day where many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate the high point of spring, a day of fertility and growth. Such a May Day celebration is featured in the classic 1970s film The Wicker Man, featuring delightful music, children’s dance, and human sacrifice via imprisonment within a giant, combustible human figure (good times!). The day is often associated with Saint Walpurga . . . a saint whose interred bones began to weep a bituminous oil that people claimed had healing powers.
Look, May 1st might not be Halloween, but it is associated with some pretty freaky stuff, and it’s time we horror lovers started celebrating it more seriously.
So in the spirit of May’s history of gross body horror, we’ve got two weird and disgusting pieces of short fiction. We’re starting off the month with “Beak” by Ian Muneshwar, the story of one woman and her bedbug problem. Or is it a bedbug problem? You’ll have to decide for yourself, but be forewarned: this story will really get under your skin. Our other short story this month is R. Diego Martinez’s “Notes from the Graft Failure,” a piece combining the claustrophobic isolation of Johnny Got His Gun (if you’ve never read Dalton Trumbo’s classic anti-war novel, go pick it up as soon as you finish reading this sentence!) with a weirdness all its own.
Our Horror Lab originals weave in more of the personal and fantastical elements of the May experience. Cassandra Khaw’s new poem “Exorcism” speaks of the way our histories can haunt us, while Lilia Zhang brings us a flash of dark fantasy: “Blood of the Idugan.”
On a more serious note, May is also Mental Health Awareness month. In the H Word column, author Michael Knost writes about the powerful role masks have played in the horror genre—and how that echoes the way many people suffering from depression learn to mask their condition. Also in nonfiction, we have author spotlight interviews with our authors, and we have the newest installment of our Plumbing the Depths column, where Stephanie M. Wytovitch dives into the depths of fiction about witches.
I think this issue is a terrific way to celebrate the sunshine side of horror, and I’m delighted to share it with you!
