Nightmare Magazine, Issue 141 (June 2024): Nightmare Magazine, #141

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 #141 of NIGHTMARE! We have original short fiction from Manish Melwani ("MAMMOTH") and Ally Wilkes ("Billy Blue"). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash story ("The Dark Devices") from Bruce McAllister and a poem ("Penis Secrets of the Anunnaki") from Sonya Taaffe. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, "The H Word," plus author spotlights with our authors, and a book review from Adam-Troy Castro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227100702

Book preview

Nightmare Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 141 (June 2024)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: June 2024

FICTION

MAMMOTH

Manish Melwani

The Dark Devices

Bruce McAllister

Billy Blue

Ally Wilkes

POETRY

Penis Secrets of the Anunnaki

Sonya Taaffe

NONFICTION

The H Word: New Millennium Nautical

Emmett Nahil

Book and Media Reviews: June 2024

Adam-Troy Castro

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Manish Melwani

Ally Wilkes

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, July 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 Juhasz Sz / Shutterstock

www.nightmare-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From the Editor

Editorial: June 2024

Wendy N. Wagner | 366 words

Welcome to Issue #141 of Nightmare Magazine!

One of my most enduring childhood memories is of waking in the night, certain a shadowy figure was standing in my bedroom doorway. I remember sliding out of my bed and burying myself in my toybox to hide from whomever—or whatever—stood watching me sleep.

How many of us have similar terrifying stories? In bad lighting, who hasn’t mistaken an innocent item like a coat thrown over the back of a chair for a prowler? Who hasn’t startled themselves when catching movement in a dark room only to realize they were startled by their own reflection? And who hasn’t awakened in the grip of sleep paralysis and seen a hideous figure crouched at the foot of the bed? In fact, the night hag or sleep paralysis demon is such a common experience it gave birth to the term nightmare.

Every society generates its own terrors, but the shadowy figure is universal.

This issue is about shadowy figures—metaphorical or otherwise. In MAMMOTH, a new short by Manish Melwani, the shadowy figure emerges from the internet, where a series of terrifying videos sets off a maelstrom of terror. Ally Wilkes’s Billy Blue features a shadowy figure in the stairwell of a brand-new luxury apartment who begs us to ask which is more terrifying: gentrification or ghosts? Our flash story (The Dark Devices by Bruce McAllister) features a monk searching for answers from the shadows of his monastery. We also have a fresh poem from Sonya Taaffe: Penis Secrets of the Anunnaki.

Our nonfiction includes an H Word essay about the nautical Weird by Emmett Nahil (not technically about the shadows, but even Nahil notes the long shadow cast by H.P. Lovecraft across this field!) and a book review by Adam-Troy Castro. Our spotlight crew sat down with our short fiction writers to get a few more insights about their work, as well.

Shadowy or not, it’s a delicious issue. I hope you’ll lower the lights and allow yourself to enjoy all these unsettling figures.

And when you turn off the lights, don’t forget to say hello to your sleep paralysis demon for me!

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

MAMMOTH

Manish Melwani | 2155 words

---

CW: school shootings, political violence, gore.

---

If you haven’t seen it yet, you will.

Three hooded figures sit cross-legged on the floor of a candle-lit warehouse. There’s something strange about the middle one: its torso somehow both too long and too hunched. The figure flickers, like a transcription error in crimson candlelight.

It gets stranger.

Sixteen school shootings in sixteen days, the connections between them simultaneously obvious and obscure. No clear geographical pattern. The shooters all young men, almost all white. Eight of them were lurkers on the same message board. Twelve were members of the same three-thousand-person groupchat—promptly disbanded after the murder-suicides; retreating, undoubtedly, to darker digital environs—but a half-dozen victims were members of that groupchat, too.

Further investigation unearthed two more names, puzzled over by journalists like some sort of cypher; repeated mantra-like by memelords, trolls, and talking heads until they became meaningless.

Except, they weren’t meaningless.

The first: Gorgo Mormo. You’ve seen her. High school counselor, clinical psychiatrist. She’d worked at three of the sixteen schools before her social media career took off. A woman beloved by the manosphere’s more esoteric fringes—including that same three-thousand-person groupchat.

The second, of course, was the name of the groupchat itself; the name of the message board; the name of the video.

MAMMOTH.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you will. If you have seen it, then