Nightmare Magazine, Issue 140 (May 2024): Nightmare Magazine, #140

By Wendy N. Wagner

NIGHTMARE is a digital horror and dark fantasy magazine. In NIGHTMARE's pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror.

 

Welcome to issue #140 of NIGHTMARE! We have original short fiction from Daniel David Froid ("An Offering from the Void") and Victor Forna ("like blood on the mouths of death"). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash story ("Solve This One, Mrs. Miller") from Carlie St. George and a poem ("The Southern Bells") from Beatrice Winifred Iker. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, "The H Word," plus author spotlights with our authors, and a feature interview with author J. Nicole Jones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224487011

Book preview

Nightmare Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 140 (May 2024)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: May 2024

FICTION

An Offering from the Void

Daniel David Froid

Solve This One, Mrs. Miller

Carlie St. George

like blood on the mouths of death

Victor Forna

POETRY

The Southern Bells

Beatrice Winifred Iker

NONFICTION

The H Word: My Father, My Private Monster

Haralambi Markov

Interview: J. Nicole Jones

Alex Puncekar

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Daniel David Froid

Victor Forna

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, June 2024

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Nightmare Team

© 2024 Nightmare Magazine

Cover by iobard / Shutterstock

www.nightmare-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From the Editor

Editorial: May 2024

Wendy N. Wagner | 388 words

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of The Creek Girl, forthcoming 2025 from Tor Nightfire, as well as the horror novel The Deer Kings and the gothic novella The Secret Skin. Previous work includes the SF thriller An Oath of Dogs and two novels for the Pathfinder Tales series. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, and her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in more than sixty venues. A Locus award nominee for her editorial work here, she also serves as the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed Magazine, and previously served as the guest editor of our Queers Destroy Horror! special issue. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.

FictionOut There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele

An Offering from the Void

Daniel David Froid | 4990 words

---

CW: death, mental health.

---

Ought Be Sequestered: A History of the White Stone

Introduction by J. M. Harris

Typically, we editors do not write our own introductions for our books. But this one, we felt, had a sufficiently intriguing provenance that the story was worth the telling. What we present is not so much a typical introduction but, rather, an explanation of how we came across Ought Be Sequestered and why we chose to publish it.

• • • •

There is something uniquely squalid and sad about estate sales. To traipse through a cluttered house, one of a teeming crowd here to bear witness to the end of a life and all that it held, not to pay respect but instead to lunge for whatever goodies you can find and pull them close, hoard them, adding to your own overfull lot, which will continue to burgeon until death claims you and you yourself are a corpse in the ground, your house open to strangers, to rinse and repeat—to engage with all of that