Nightmare Magazine, Issue 142 (July 2024): Nightmare Magazine, #142

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 #142 of NIGHTMARE! We have original short fiction from Thomas Ha ("Grottmata") and Megan Chee ("The Museum of Cosmic Retribution"). Our Horror Lab originals include a poem ("Automaton Boy") from Sara S. Messenger and a flash story ("Phantom Taste of Apricot on My Tongue") from Richard Leis. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, "The H Word," plus author spotlights with our authors. In our de_crypt_ed column, where we bring in visiting authors to discuss books that have been their biggest influences, Donyae Coles talks about gothic fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227626004

Book preview

Nightmare Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 142 (July 2024)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: July 2024

FICTION

Grottmata

Thomas Ha

Automaton Boy

Sara S. Messenger

The Museum of Cosmic Retribution

Megan Chee

POETRY

Phantom Taste of Apricot on My Tongue

Richard Leis

NONFICTION

The H Word: We Factories of Pain

RSL

de•crypt•ed: Coles on Poe

Donyae Coles

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Thomas Ha

Megan Chee

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, August 2024

Stay Connected

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

About the Nightmare Team

© 2024 Nightmare Magazine

Cover by reewungjunerr / Adobe Stock

www.nightmare-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From the Editor

Editorial: July 2024

Wendy N. Wagner | 487 words

Welcome to Issue #142 of Nightmare Magazine!

If you’re an American, it’s not easy to think of July without thinking of Independence Day—although to be fair, I somehow never call the holiday by its real name. It’s the 4th of July, as if fireworks and aggressive displays of nationalism are the essence of the date itself and not a quirk of a particular nation-state. And while I’m not a particularly patriotic person, this time of year I often find myself thinking about the founding of my country, its moments of idealism and surprising goodness, its inhumane treatment of peoples of many identities, and the way it’s unfurled its cultural and political tentacles across the face of the globe.

Goddamn, what a complicated mess.

I’m not a historian. I’m not a political scientist or a sociologist or even someone who reads the news every day. I can’t explain or even begin to fathom the tangled mess of -isms afflicting my nation and my planet. I am a writer and editor of speculative fiction and what I know, what I deeply and profoundly know, is that none of this had to happen this way. That there can and ought to be other worlds than this.

This issue is all about other worlds—for good, for bad, and for pure horror.

We’re kicking off the issue with a new short story from Thomas Ha: Grottmata, which blends science fiction and horror into a scathing (and wonderfully gross!) critique of imperialism. Fans of the newest season of True Detective will find much to enjoy in this tale. Megan Chee takes us backstage at Singapore’s legendary Haw Par Villa theme park in her eerie story The Museum of Cosmic Retribution, where a boy learns of crime and punishment from far beyond our own reality. Our flash story, Automaton Boy (by Sara S. Messenger), explores the future of border xenophobia. For poetry, we veer to a more magical world with Phantom Taste of Apricot on My Tongue by Richard Leis.

Our nonfiction includes a meditation on Poe’s The Raven by Donyae Coles (the latest installment of our de•crypt•ed critical review column) and an H Word essay by RSL about the contentification of horror. We also have spotlight interviews with our short fiction writers.

This issue won’t solve the world’s problems or make your annoying neighbor stop setting off bottle rockets at three in the morning, scaring the shit out of your dog. That’s not what fiction, even horror fiction, is capable of doing. Horror is the place where we come to rehydrate our souls and find the strength to carry our burdens into the future. It can give you a place to reflect, to take shelter, and to remind you that this world could be different.

Now that is worth celebrating.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of Girl in the Creek, 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, a very large cat, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.

FictionOut There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele

Grottmata

Thomas Ha | 6370 words

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CW: self-harm and suicide, violence, death or dying.

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1A

The soldiers start rounding up us factory girls just before sunrise.

We smoke cigarettes and stand in a line against the remnants of a brick wall that used to be a bakery, facing the sheer black of the mountains above the town as muted light spills across the fog and folds of the ridgeline. One girl wearing four layers of coats asks if we’re still getting paid, and everyone has a good laugh. No, someone tells her, they don’t pay for time off the line when they’re upset.

And when they find soldier-bodies near the town, they are always upset.

Gemma, next. Balaga.

My line manager directs me to an inventory house they’ve repurposed into a holding area, and an old man in uniform sits behind a table and adjusts a console loaded with photographs.

Four strange little soldiers in the pictures, with white little eyes, unmoving.

Did you know them?

Did they have any problems with the workers?

Did you see anything unusual during the night shift?

In the distance, a truck beeps as it backs through fog and parks at the gate where a couple of workers wobble