Nightmare Magazine, Issue 120 (September 2022)

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 120 of NIGHTMARE! This issue is devoted to the feeling of discovering a slug in one's bed, or stepping barefooted on a small tarantula, or emptying the cereal box only to discover a pantry moth larva creeping over the last bran flake. It's the "Unpleasant Discoveries" issue, and every story has something nasty in store for you. Take Clara Madrigano's lovely "The Gold Coin." You'd think finding a gold coin on the floor of your best friend's house would be a real treat, wouldn't you? Luckily for us, this story finds a way to make it awful. Kiera Lesley's epistolary story "Concerning the Upstairs Bathroom" strips the joy out of a new home purchase, and our flash piece, "A Girl of Nails and Teeth," by Hannah Yang, makes parenting particularly unpleasant. I won't go into detail about how a trip to the lake can be spoiled, but the beautiful language of Corey Niles's poem "much to be mourned" can't obscure an extremely gross and melancholy experience. If you're ready to be horrified, revolted, and generally miserable, our writers have you covered. But our nonfiction team is a bit cheerier. Adam-Troy Castro has shared an excellent film and a good book for you to enjoy, and our author spotlight team has explored the more human motives of our short fiction authors. Author and screenwriter Brian McAuley has also tapped into the nicer side of life in his essay for The H Word column, which discusses the way we horror fans love to share our favorite works.