http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss/ http://nightmare-magazine.com Horror Fiction Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Horror Fiction Nightmare Magazine no Horror Fiction http://nightmare-magazine.com/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://nightmare-magazine.com http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-benjamin-konig/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-benjamin-konig/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 10:05:23 +0000 Julia Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8808 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-benjamin-konig/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tanith-lee/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tanith-lee/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 10:02:55 +0000 Erika Holt http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8789 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tanith-lee/feed/ 1 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/doll-re-mi/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/doll-re-mi/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 10:01:31 +0000 Tanith Lee http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8828 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/doll-re-mi/feed/ 2 Folscyvio saw the Thing in a small cramped shop off the Via Silvia. In fact, he almost passed it by. He had just come from the Laguna, climbed the forty mildewy, green-velveted steps to the Ponte Louro, and crossed over to the elevated arcades of the N... Folscyvio saw the Thing in a small cramped shop off the Via Silvia. In fact, he almost passed it by. He had just come from the Laguna, climbed the forty mildewy, green-velveted steps to the Ponte Louro, and crossed over to the elevated arcades of the Nuova. Then he glanced down, and spotted Giavetti, who owed him money, creeping by below through the ancient alleys. Having called and not been heard—or been ignored—Folscyvio descended quickly. But on entering the alley he saw Giavetti was gone (or had hidden). Irritated, Folscyvio walked the alley, clicking his teeth together. And something with a rich wild colour slid by his right eye. At first his attention was not captured. But then, having walked a few more steps, Folscyvio’s mind, as he would have put it, tapped him on the shoulder: Look back, Maestro. And there behind the flawed and watery window-glass, hung about by old, plum-coloured bannerets and thick cobwebs, was the peculiar Thing. He stood and stared at it for quite five minutes before going into the shop. #### He was, Folscyvio, of medium height, but seemed taller due to his extreme leanness. His was a handsome face, aquiline, and reminiscent, as was more genuinely much of the city, of The Past. His hair was very long, very dark and thick and heavily if naturally curled. His eyes, long-lashed and bright, were narrow and of an alluring, or curious—or repellent—grayish-mauve. No one was immediately attendant in the shop. Folscyvio poised for some while inside the open window-space, staring at the Thing. In the end he stepped near and examined a paper which had been pinned directly beneath. Not many words were on the paper, these written old-fashionedly by hand, and in black ink: Vio-Sera. A vio-sirenalino. From the Century Seventeen. A rare example. Attributable, perhaps, to the Messers Stradivari. Folscyvio scowled. He did not for an instant credit this. Yet the Thing did indeed seem antique. Certainly, it was a sort of violin. But—but . . . The form was that of a woman, from the crown of the head to her hips, the area just between the naval and the feminine pudenda. After which, rather than legs, she possessed the tail of a fish. She was made of glowing auburn wood—he was unsure of its type. All told the figure, including the tail, was not much more than half a metre in length. It had a face, quite beautiful in a stark and static kind of way, and huge eyes, each of which had been set with white enamel, and then, at the iris, with a definitely fake emerald, having a black enamel pupil. Its mouth was also enameled, pomegranate red. The image had breasts too, full and proud of themselves, with small strawberry enamel nipples. In the layers of the carved tail had been placed tiny discs of greenish, semi-opaque crystal. Some were missing, inevitably. Even if not a product of the Stradivari, nor quite so mature as the 1600s, this piece had been around for some time. The two oddest features were firstly, of course, the strings that ran from the finger board of the Piscean tail, across the gilded bridge to the string-clasper, which lay behind a gilded shell at the doll’s throat; while the nut and tuning pegs made up part of the tail’s finishing fan. Secondly what was odd was the hair, this not carved nor enameled, but a fluid lank heavy mass, like dead brown silk, that flowed from the wooden scalp and meandered down, ending level, since the doll was currently upright, where, had the tail constituted legs, its knees might have been. A grotesque and rather awful object. A fright, and a sham too, as it must be incapable of making music. For the third freakish aspect was, obviously, at the moment the doll was upright, but when the instrument—if such were even possible—was played, what then? Aside from the impediment of its slightness yet encumberedness, the welter of hair—perhaps once that of a living woman, now a hundred years at least dead?—would slide, when the doll was upside-down, into everything, Nightmare Magazine no 1:05:56 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-domestic-horror/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-domestic-horror/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 10:05:20 +0000 Nathan Ballingrud http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8807 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-domestic-horror/feed/ 2 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caitlin-r-kiernan/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caitlin-r-kiernan/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 10:02:54 +0000 E.C. Myers http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8788 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caitlin-r-kiernan/feed/ 2 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/houses-under-the-sea/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/houses-under-the-sea/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 10:01:30 +0000 Caitlin R. Kiernan http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8827 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/houses-under-the-sea/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-may-2013/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-may-2013/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 10:05:18 +0000 John Joseph Adams http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8806 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-may-2013/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caspian-gray/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caspian-gray/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 10:02:52 +0000 Seamus Bayne http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8787 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-caspian-gray/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/centipede-heartbeat/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/centipede-heartbeat/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 10:01:29 +0000 Caspian Gray http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8826 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/centipede-heartbeat/feed/ 0 Each time Lisa rested her head against Joette’s breasts, she heard the centipedes. In between heartbeats there was the tiny sound of hundreds of chitinous footsteps against bone, of miniature mandibles tearing at organs. Joette refused to admit to it, Each time Lisa rested her head against Joette’s breasts, she heard the centipedes. In between heartbeats there was the tiny sound of hundreds of chitinous footsteps against bone, of miniature mandibles tearing at organs. Joette refused to admit to it, or maybe she didn’t know. “It’s hot,” Joette announced. Lisa refused to take the hint. She tried to memorize the feel of Joette’s body tangled with her own: prickly shins, downy calves, the warmth of Joette’s stomach, the tight swell of the small breasts on which Lisa was resting her head. “It’s hot,” Joette repeated. Their bed was stripped to only one thin sheet, but the July air, thick with humidity, made it almost too much to bear. Joette pulled away, leaving a gulf of mattress between them. “What are you reading?” Lisa asked. Joette held up her thin paperback just long enough for Lisa to make out a cover dominated by shapes and primary colors. The kind of cover that told her nothing about the book, except that probably it was for people too smart to need that one precious picture to illustrate all the words inside. “Is it good?” asked Lisa. “It’s okay.” Joette paused. “I’m really tired,” she added. “It’s been such a long day.” “Oh.” Lisa bent her body under the sheet. Her knees crept toward Joette’s, one last sally for even the feeblest contact. Joette rolled further away, until the arm holding her book was hanging off the edge of the bed. Lisa retreated. The centipedes were ruining everything. #### Joette did not mind the idea of centipedes in their home. “They’re good for the house. You know, like spiders. They eat other bugs. We won’t have to worry about silverfish or earwigs.” “We should just call an exterminator,” Lisa replied. “Then we don’t have to worry about any kinds of bugs.” “That’s horrible!” Joette gave her a look of such sincere disgust that Lisa felt embarrassment creep up the back of her neck. “We’re not going to commit genocide against a bunch of little guys who are just here to help us keep our house clean.” Except for the occasional order of chicken vindaloo, Joette was a vegetarian. She opposed genocide on even a bacterial level. “They’re not here to help us,” said Lisa. “They’re here to commit insect cannibalism and poop inside the walls. I don’t think that calling an exterminator would be unreasonable.” Joette did think it would be unreasonable. No exterminator was called. This was Lisa’s first failure to eliminate the enemy. #### The problem with centipedes was that Lisa did not know how to lure them. She tried, first with bowls of sugar water as if for ants, then with bowls of saltwater, as if for slugs. Centipedes, she discovered slowly, were not that kind of bug. Like most predators, they preferred live prey. On the internet, some people defended house centipedes. Those bodies in many shades of brown, with their feathery legs and long antennae sprouting from either end of the abdomen, had their admirers. To Lisa, they looked more like fugitives from some extraterrestrial coral reef than common household pests. Each flitting movement suggested flight, despite their closeness to the ground. Some people even sold boxes of scutigera coleoptrata to be released in the home, that they might eradicate less innocuous insect populations. In the face of such incredible ignorance and casual evil, Lisa did not know how to explain that all insects were less innocuous than centipedes. The idea of trying and failing to save each hapless eBay customer was overwhelming, especially in the face of the seller’s long pages of positive feedback. So Lisa did what she could, which was to concentrate on the war at home before it was too late. #### “Yeah,” said the exterminator, peering behind the couch. “We take care of centipedes all the time.” “Mh,” said Lisa. “Well, I’m also worried about preventing them from coming back, once you get rid of them.” “The two main things you can do, Nightmare Magazine no 35:33 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-sarah-langan/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-sarah-langan/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:05:29 +0000 Lisa Morton http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8725 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-sarah-langan/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-weston-ochse/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-weston-ochse/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:02:11 +0000 Seamus Bayne http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8688 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-weston-ochse/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/gravitas/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/gravitas/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:01:27 +0000 Weston Ochse http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8712 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/gravitas/feed/ 1 He stared bleary-eyed at the broken glass studding the land. This was his crop, seeded over the span of four weeks, irrigated from the residue of Napa Valley grapes, sun-kissed until it glistened like dew. It was the bounty of his desperation, Custer, South Dakota The wind sang through the Ponderosa Pines, a barely discernable voice beneath the thrum that seemed to serve as commentary on the events it witnessed. To Dave it sounded like Paha Sapa. Of course it would. He knew what it meant;... Nightmare Magazine no http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-steven-meyer-rassow/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-steven-meyer-rassow/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:05:26 +0000 Julia Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8722 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-steven-meyer-rassow/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-elizabeth-hand/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-elizabeth-hand/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:02:06 +0000 Lisa Nohealani Morton http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8687 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-elizabeth-hand/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-bacchae/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-bacchae/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:01:26 +0000 Elizabeth Hand http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8711 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-bacchae/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-bringing-the-horror-home/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-bringing-the-horror-home/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:05:28 +0000 Dale Bailey http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8724 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-bringing-the-horror-home/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-marc-laidlaw/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-marc-laidlaw/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:02:08 +0000 E.C. Myers http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8686 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-marc-laidlaw/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/bonfires/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/bonfires/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:01:24 +0000 Marc Laidlaw http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8710 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/bonfires/feed/ 0 The shore was dark when we showed up, but it would soon be blazing, and that thought was all I needed to warm me while we built the bonfires. The waves slopped in and sucked out again like black tar, and I went along the waterline with the others, The shore was dark when we showed up, but it would soon be blazing, and that thought was all I needed to warm me while we built the bonfires. The waves slopped in and sucked out again like black tar, and I went along the waterline with the others, pulling broken boards and snags of swollen wood out of the bubbling froth and foam, hauling it across the sand and up to the gravel where the road edge ran. Piles from previous scavenging were heaped up high and drying there. It didn’t take us long to figure out which ones were dry enough to burn. Some of the piles already had little combs of bluish light flickering along the splintered edges, as if they couldn’t wait to burst into flame. These were the ones we pulled from first, dragging pieces down toward the sound of waves and standing them on end, so they stood there tilted and crazy, like drunken skeletons leaning on each other so they wouldn’t fall down. I had matches and lighters, pockets full of strikers and flints and everything we’d need to start a fire. While I was standing there looking at the pile of drift, seeking the best place to set a flame, she came up next to me with a can of fuel, uncapped already, so volatile that she seemed to swim and melt in the fumes like a vision on a hot road. “You want it here?” she asked. “Let’s get it burning,” I said. And she tipped the can, dousing the pile so it would make a proper pyre. The stuff was tinder dry already; the touch of gas was nearly friction enough to set it off. But it waited almost respectfully, the pyre wanting me to give it life. I’ve always been obliging. As the flames exploded, she threw the can into the fire, and you could hear it crumple like a metal lung collapsing. I turned to her and she was laughing, and then I was on her, mouth on mouth, sucking on the metal in her tongue, pierced by it. She tasted like gasoline. We weren’t the only ones around the bonfire, far from it. Many hands had been pitching on wood and paper and broken furniture, ripped-up books and matted newspapers, dolls stuffed with sawdust, figures made of straw. We were shadows with bright glinting eyes, orange and vibrant in the light from the flames, all of us ageless and infinitely experienced in our innocence. We danced around our pyre as if it was the center of the universe; we were part of the ring of light that held off the encircling dark. I squeezed her hand and couldn’t tell, when our knuckles ground together, whether it was her bones or mine I felt. I sucked on her tongue and she chewed on my lips; we could devour each other and never run out of other to devour. We were sweating from the fire, even though the wind from the black sea had turned cold as the flames got hotter, and now you could hear the screaming it carried. “Have I met you before?” I asked, because it seemed like I must have. But she shook her head. “I’d have remembered you.” Which must have been true because I could never have felt this way about someone I already knew. It was her strangeness that made it so easy to be with her. This was just for tonight: the guzzling fuel; the single, unique and isolated spark; the bonfire that had never blazed like this before, never lifting these exact flames. Nothing ever happened twice—even though the fire was eternally the same. Her eyes were so deep that I couldn’t pull myself out of them. I put my hands all over her, and she was on me as if she wanted to crawl inside. As we grappled, my vision went past her down the beach, along the shore, to all the other bonfires blazing like this one. Silhouettes dancing around them, figures like stick-people, hardly more than tinder themselves. The smoke rose up and blotted out the starless dark, making it churn and billow so the cast-off firelight had a place to gather and glow back down at us. It was like a scene of invasion, all of us massed at the waterline, waiting—but not to repel the invaders, hardly that. “Coming,” she said, breathless, urgent, Nightmare Magazine no http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-april-2013/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-april-2013/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:05:26 +0000 John Joseph Adams http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8723 Nightmare! We’ve got another great issue for you this month; read the editorial to see what we’ve got on tap.]]> http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-april-2013/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-angela-slatter/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-angela-slatter/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:02:10 +0000 Erika Holt http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8685 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-angela-slatter/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-coffin-makers-daughter/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-coffin-makers-daughter/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:01:22 +0000 Angela Slatter http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8709 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-coffin-makers-daughter/feed/ 1 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-jonathan-maberry/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-jonathan-maberry/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:05:15 +0000 Lisa Morton http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8605 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-jonathan-maberry/feed/ 1 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-jeff-vandermeer/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-jeff-vandermeer/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:02:59 +0000 E.C. Myers http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8628 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-jeff-vandermeer/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/no-breather-in-the-world-but-thee/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/no-breather-in-the-world-but-thee/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:01:15 +0000 Jeff VanderMeer http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8617 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/no-breather-in-the-world-but-thee/feed/ 8 The cook didn’t like that the eyes of the dead fish shifted to stare at him as he cut their heads off. The cook’s assistant, who was also his lover, didn’t like that he woke to find just a sack of bloody bones on the bed beside him. “It’s starting again, The cook didn’t like that the eyes of the dead fish shifted to stare at him as he cut their heads off. The cook’s assistant, who was also his lover, didn’t like that he woke to find just a sack of bloody bones on the bed beside him. “It’s starting again,” he gasped, just moments before a huge, black, birdlike creature carried him off, screaming. The child playing on the grounds outside the mansion did not at first know what she was seeing, but realized it was awful. “It’s just like last year,” she said to her imaginary friend, but her imaginary friend was dead. She ran for the front door, but the ghost of her imaginary friend, now large and ravenous and wormlike, swallowed her up before she had taken ten steps across the writhing grass. From a third floor window, the lady of the house watched the girl vanish into the ground, the struggling man become an indecipherable dot in the sky. Then nothing happened for a time, and she said to the dust, to her long-dead husband, to the disappeared daughter, to the doctor who now lived somewhere in the walls: “Perhaps it’s not happening again. Perhaps it’s not like last year.” Then she spied the disjointed red crocodile walking backwards across the lawn: a smear of wet crimson against the unbearable green of the finger-like grass. The creature’s oddly bent legs spasmed and trembled as it lurched ahead. No, not a crocodile but a bloody sack of human flesh and bones crawling toward the river at the edge of the property. Was it someone she knew? Of course it was someone she knew. An immense shadow began to grow around the unfortunate person like a black pool of blood. This puzzled her, until she realized some vast creature was plummeting down from an immense height toward the lawn. Raw misshapen pieces of the behemoth began to rain down, outliers of the body itself. Within seconds, it would descend, whole. The crawling bag of bones redoubled its efforts, seeming aware of the danger, frantic to avoid being caught in that impact. Now the lady of the house could not contain her fear any longer. She turned and ran, intending to flee down the stairs and seek shelter in the basement. But something wide and white and cut through with teeth reared up out of the darkness and bit her in half, and then quarters, and then eighths, before she could do more than blink, blink rapidly, and then lie still, the image of the crawling man still with her. For a while. In the basement, waiting for the lady’s return, a furiously scribbling man sat at a desk. He did not look up once; beyond the candlelight things lurked. As his mistress fell to pieces above him, the man was writing: Time is passing oddly. I feel as if I am sharing my shadow with many other people. If I look too closely at the cracks in the wall, I fear I will discover they are actually doors or mouths. There’s something continually flitting beyond the corner of my eye. Something she tells me that I don’t want to remember. Flit. Flit . . . No. Tilt. Tilt, not flit. Tilt. He stopped for a moment to restore his nerve because a certain mania had entered his pen . . . and he didn’t know who he was writing to. The child? The doctor? God? Something white and terrible waited in the shadows, its movements like the fevered wing-beats of a hundred panicked thrushes crushed into the semblance of a body. With an effort, he continued: The tilt is a gap. The gap is the cracks becoming corridors when I look away, and yet there is no way out. This ends well only if I can be in two places at once. But if other people are using my shadow, isn’t that a kind of door as well? Can I use my own shadow as a window? Can I escape? A mighty crash and thud shook the mansion, as if something enormous had landed on the lawn. Dust and debris cascaded down on the man writing. A distant rattling cry came that did not bear thinking about. He looked up from his work for a second, thought, It’s happening again, just like the doctor warned, but continued writing, Nightmare Magazine no 28:54 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-spotlight-daniel-karlsson/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-spotlight-daniel-karlsson/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:05:22 +0000 Julia Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8606 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-spotlight-daniel-karlsson/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-livia-llewellyn/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-livia-llewellyn/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:02:57 +0000 Erika Holt http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8627 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-livia-llewellyn/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/jetsam/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/jetsam/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:01:14 +0000 Livia Llewellyn http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8616 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/jetsam/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-f-bomb/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-f-bomb/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:05:25 +0000 R.J. Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8607 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-f-bomb/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-david-tallerman/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-david-tallerman/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:02:52 +0000 Seamus Bayne http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8626 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-david-tallerman/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sign-in-the-moonlight/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sign-in-the-moonlight/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:01:12 +0000 David Tallerman http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8615 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sign-in-the-moonlight/feed/ 0 You will have heard, no doubt, of the Bergenssen expedition—if only from the manner of its loss. For a short while, that tragedy was deemed significant and remarkable enough to adorn the covers of every major newspaper in the civilised world. You will have heard, no doubt, of the Bergenssen expedition—if only from the manner of its loss. For a short while, that tragedy was deemed significant and remarkable enough to adorn the covers of every major newspaper in the civilised world. At the time, I was in no position to follow such matters. However, in subsequent months I’ve tracked down many journals from that period. As I write, I can look up at the wall to see a cover of the New York Times I’ve pinned there, dated nineteenth of May 1908, bearing the headline, “Horror in the Himalayas: Bergenssen five reported lost in avalanche.” In a sense, I suppose, it’s a spirit of morbidity that draws me back to those days upon the mountain and their awful finale, which I failed to witness only by the purest chance. Equally, there’s a macabre humour in the thought that to almost all the world I am dead, my body shattered and frozen in the depths of some crevasse. But what draws me most, I think, is the memory of what I saw after I left Bergenssen and the others—that knowledge which is mine uniquely. It’s without disrespect to the Times that I say they know nothing, nothing whatsoever, of the horror of Mount Kangchenjunga. Likely, there is no one else alive who does. No rival can rightly be offended when I say that Bergenssen was the finest mountaineer of his generation. No other but that fierce and hardy Swede would have considered an expedition upon Kangchenjunga after the dramatic failure of the first attempt, and the very suspect circumstances of that failure. I recollect clearly how we spoke of the matter, when he first proposed the climb to me. Coincidence had brought us together in a London gentleman’s club that I favoured whenever I was there on business. His tone was scathing as he cried, “Aleister Crowley, that self-publicising fool? The man’s as much a mountaineer as I am Henry Ford.” “You can’t deny that Dr. Jacot-Guillarmod knows his business.” “Pah! I’ll deny what I like. I doubt if they ever left Darjeeling.” “Then how do you explain the death of Alexis Pache and those three porters?” Bergenssen furrowed his brows. “Must I explain it? Perhaps what they say about Crowley is true. Perhaps those unfortunates were sacrificed to whatever ghoulish spirits the man had devoted himself to that week. More likely, he plied Pache with alcohol, drugs, or some yet darker vice and the man remained in India to indulge himself. Even if it’s true, a better climber would have known the warning signs of an avalanche and avoided it accordingly.” With retrospect, those words seem bitter with irony, but at the time, I was caught up by the Swede’s immense self-confidence and courage, which were as infectious as any cold. “Then you really think it’s possible? Freshfield and Sella confirmed the findings of the Great Trigonometric Survey—it truly is the third-highest peak on Earth. It would be a grand achievement.” “I believe there’s nothing to be lost in the trying.” “Nothing except our lives.” “Well, of course.” He grinned, baring perfectly even white teeth. “So are you with me?” I was violently tempted to agree on the spot. Instead, I prevaricated, knowing in my heart that I was little more than a hobbyist and, in the final analysis, not fitted to such a venture. Bergenssen’s dream was a marvellous one, but outside the smoky environs of the club it would evaporate, and though I might think of our conversation with a certain wistfulness, that would soon pass. I was wrong. That month brought both personal and business misfortunes, and with each fresh trial, my mind called back to Bergenssen and to misty, snow-clad vistas. By the end of February, almost in despair, I wrote a brief note and mailed it immediately. If the offer still stood, then I was in. Bergenssen’s reply came three weeks later, by telegram to my offices. Aside from the date, time and place for our rendezvous it bore only a simple message: GOOD TO HAVE YOU SIR. #### Nightmare Magazine no 47:23 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-march-2013/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-march-2013/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:05:21 +0000 John Joseph Adams http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8592 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-march-2013/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-molly-tanzer/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-molly-tanzer/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:02:24 +0000 Lisa Nohealani Morton http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8593 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-molly-tanzer/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-infernal-history-of-the-ivybridge-twins/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-infernal-history-of-the-ivybridge-twins/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:01:19 +0000 Molly Tanzer http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8591 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-infernal-history-of-the-ivybridge-twins/feed/ 1 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-caitlin-r-kiernan/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-caitlin-r-kiernan/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:05:56 +0000 Jude Griffin & Paul DesCombaz http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8392 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-caitlin-r-kiernan/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-norman-partridge/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-norman-partridge/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:02:11 +0000 Erika Holt http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8375 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-norman-partridge/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/blackbirds/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/blackbirds/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:01:32 +0000 Norman Partridge http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8419 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/blackbirds/feed/ 0 On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home. On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home. The house was empty. Major Peterson was at the base, writing a report on the importance of preparedness in the peacetime army. Mrs. Peterson was shopping for groceries. Their daughter Tracy was doing volunteer work at the local hospital. Billy Peterson was the youngest member of the family. He was ten years old. Like the rest of his family, Billy was not at home when the man in black shattered the kitchen window. Billy was pedaling his bicycle down Old MacMurray Road. Billy was pedaling very fast. Billy’s Daisy BB gun was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a small army surplus backpack. There were only a few things in the backpack. For one, there was a blackbird’s nest. In the nest were three eggs. And there were two more things. Two items that, just like the backpack, had once been the official property of the United States Army. One was a canteen, which Billy had filled with gasoline siphoned from his father’s lawnmower. The other was a hand grenade. #### The man in black had a pet of sorts. A blackbird which perched on his shoulder. A blackbird with a BB hole in its chest. But the bird did not seem inordinately bothered by the injury. No doubt it was well-trained. It did not make a single sound. Its head mirrored the movements of its master’s, searching here and there as the man in black explored the empty house. But in the view of the man in black, the house was not empty. In his view, he was surrounded by the Peterson family. In his view, they were all around him. Mrs. Peterson’s coffee cup stood abandoned on the kitchen counter, bearing a stain of frosted pink lipstick. But the man in black passed it by. The scent of Tracy’s girlish perfume drew him to the upstairs bathroom. He touched her uncapped perfume bottle, touched the damp towel Tracy had abandoned on the floor, touched Tracy’s soap, touched the heap of girlish clothes she had tossed in the laundry hamper. And the man in black left the room. He followed the track of Major Peterson’s bare feet on plush new carpet until he came to the major’s walk-in closet. The closet held many uniforms. The man in black ran his fingers over these. When he was done, he did not leave the closet. Instead, he bent low and spun the dial on a safe which Major Peterson had bought at Sears. He spun the dial with a calm sense of surety. The numbers clicked into place. The man in black opened the door. There were many valuable things within the safe. But the hand grenade was gone. #### The mouth of the cave gaped wide. Billy knew that it was a mouth that could not speak. Shivering, Billy stared at it. He did not want to look away. He could not look away. That was what he had done just the other day. He’d been staring at the mouth of the cave, staring into that black mouth that could not utter a single word, when his buddy Gordon Rogers said something stupid. And, just for a second, Billy looked away. Just for a second. Just long enough to give Gordon Rogers a poke in the ribs. And when Billy looked back, a man was standing at the mouth of the cave. A man dressed all in black. Billy swallowed hard, remembering. He wished that Gordon were here. Maybe, in a way, he was. No. That wasn’t right. Billy knew that he was all alone now. Gordon was gone—as good as dead, really. And no one stood at the mouth of the cave. No one stood there dressed all in black. No one said, “Don’t you know that caves are dangerous?” No Gordon to answer, “If caves are so dangerous, what’re you doing in one?” “Guess,” was the single word the man in black whispered, but there was no one to whisper it. No one but Billy. He stared at the mouth full of nothing. “You’re a mining engineer,” he guessed. But no one shook his head, as the man in black had done. Nightmare Magazine no 28:18 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-sergio-diaz/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-sergio-diaz/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:05:03 +0000 Julia Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8395 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-sergio-diaz/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-ted-kosmatka/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-ted-kosmatka/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:02:58 +0000 E.C. Myers http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8373 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-ted-kosmatka/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/cry-room/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/cry-room/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:01:27 +0000 Ted Kosmatka http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8417 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/cry-room/feed/ 4 The church looked normal from the outside. All steepled and angular in the way of good, rural Indiana churches of a certain age. Red brick and stained glass, St. Thomas Aquinas, surrounded on three sides by hot asphalt parking. The church looked normal from the outside. All steepled and angular in the way of good, rural Indiana churches of a certain age. Red brick and stained glass, St. Thomas Aquinas, surrounded on three sides by hot asphalt parking. Mitch carried his daughter up the steps and through the broad, wooden front doors. Inside, the heat was oppressive. “I’m here to see the baptism,” Mitch whispered to the usher. The usher nodded, guiding him down the aisle. “Baptism’s at the end of mass,” he said. The pews were already packed. Since there wasn’t much room, Mitch put his daughter on his knee. She was a year and a half, blonde and cherub-cheeked. Old enough to run, but not old enough to listen. “You were like that, too,” his mother told him once, when he’d asked if his daughter was normal. “Lasted till you were seventeen.” Around him, ladies fanned themselves in the heat, dressed in their Sunday finest. At the front of the church, the minister began. He was an older gentleman, as narrow and angular as the church itself. Somewhere up ahead, among the sea of blue hair and balding pates sat his cousin Jason—along with Jason’s wife, her grandparents, and other assorted relations, both close and distant, all here for the special occasion. Mitch came from steel people, north counties, Hammond and East Chicago. But these were rural people down here. Farm people. His cousin’s wife’s side. In Indiana, an hour south might have been another world. His daughter was good for the first minutes of the minister’s sermon. Then it began: she slid down his knee to the floor. “Ashley,” he whispered. “Get back up here.” “Nooooo,” she said. “Down.” Two words she knew. “Now,” he whispered, putting as much authority into it as he could muster. But his daughter pulled away, sliding into the gap between the pews. Mitch grabbed and lifted her to his lap. Then his daughter did the thing he’d been afraid of. She started to cry. Heads turned, amused at first. The crying turned to screaming. She arched her back, trying to buck herself free. Mitch did his best to hold her squirming body, but this only made her more upset. Gradually, as the screaming shifted into full-blown tantrum, the expressions around him went from amused to something else. The minister’s words drowned in the noise. Mitch’s face grew hot. “Shhhhh,” he whispered. “Ashley, shhhhhhhh.” But she continued to squall, kicking her legs now, trying to get away. Old people stared, frowning, craning their necks. Mitch tried to disappear into the pew. “Shhhhh,” he whispered again. His daughter only howled louder. Finally, a woman next to him shot him a stern look. “There is a cry room in the back,” she said. “What?” She pointed. At the back of the church, on the far left side, was a door. Mitch nodded his thanks, picked up his crying daughter and retreated. #### The sign above the door read “Little Angels.” “You’ll be more comfortable here,” said the usher, showing him inside. It was a white room about fifteen feet square. Folding chairs made neat, narrow rows in which young mothers sat, each cradling a small child. The chairs faced a single large window that looked out over the congregation. Through the glass, Mitch could see the minister, his voice resonating from speakers at all four corners of the room. Mitch sat with his daughter. “It’s nice here,” he said. The mother next to him smiled. She was the beautiful, competent mother of a million magazine ads, not a hair out of place. A moment later, Ashley was squalling again, wanting down. “Well, if she isn’t just bold as brass,” the woman said. “The trip here took an hour in the car,” Mitch explained. “She’s done sitting.” Mitch let his daughter slide to the floor, hoping she’d stay put. Instead, she crawled under the seat in front of them. Mitch pulled her out, and she started crying again. Around him, the mothers’ smiles faded, flattened, became frowns. Nightmare Magazine no 16:17 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-failure-of-fear/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-failure-of-fear/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:05:59 +0000 Dale Bailey http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8393 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-failure-of-fear/feed/ 6 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-goosle/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-goosle/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:05:30 +0000 Margo Lanagan http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8418 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-goosle/feed/ 2 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-margo-lanagan/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-margo-lanagan/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:02:03 +0000 Seamus Bayne http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8374 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-margo-lanagan/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-february-2013/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-february-2013/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:05:03 +0000 John Joseph Adams http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8394 Nightmare! We’ve got another great issue for you this month; read the editorial to see what we’ve got on tap.]]> http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/editorial-february-2013/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-sarah-langan-2/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-sarah-langan-2/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:02:19 +0000 Lisa Nohealani Morton http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8376 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-sarah-langan-2/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/sacred-cows/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/sacred-cows/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:01:33 +0000 Sarah Langan http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8420 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/sacred-cows/feed/ 0 Clara Maloney peered down the long Brooklyn block. She and baby Sally had been waiting in the cold for twenty minutes, and still no sign of Pop. Figured. Even to pick out his wife’s casket, the old man was late. Clara Maloney peered down the long Brooklyn block. She and baby Sally had been waiting in the cold for twenty minutes, and still no sign of Pop. Figured. Even to pick out his wife’s casket, the old man was late. “Hi. Hi!” eleven month-old Sally babbled. She had her father’s brown eyes and, was hairy like him, too. “Your Grandpop is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Clara announced. Pop’s latest was an ardent conviction that every funeral parlor in West Brooklyn was mafia-run. “Connected,” he’d whispered when she arranged for them to meet here at Guido’s Funeral Parlor, like he couldn’t say more than that, because his phone might be bugged. “Hi. Hiii. Hiii!” Sally repeated. The word meant I love you or screw you, depending on circumstance, and given the chilly breeze in the air, now leant toward the latter. To distract her, Clara belted a few lines of Elvis’s “Don’t be Cruel.” Sally clapped in time. They smiled at each other, a carefree couple of girls. Just then, a grizzled old woman poked her head out Guido’s second floor window. She was so skinny you could see the bones in her chest. “Copper is nice. Gets green like the Statue of Liberty. Steel is good, too. Who wouldn’t want to be buried in steel? It’s a bullet straight through Heaven’s Gate. You ought to buy something while you’re here,” the lady called down like a carnival barker. “Excuse me?” Clara asked. The woman cleared her throat with a hocking sound, then let it drop. Spit landed square in the middle of Clara’s forehead. “Up yours, lady!” Clara shouted, fist pointed and shaking. The window slammed shut. A minute later, Pop showed up wearing two different colored shoes. When Clara asked the guy in the black suit—whose name really was Guido—about the spitting hag on the second floor, he told her that the apartment was vacant, but if she knew somebody looking to rent it in cash off the books, he was listening. Then Pop, showing the first hint of mischief she’d seen in months, whispered too loud, “Make him an offer he can’t refuse!” Things degenerated from there. #### “Pine,” Clara Maloney told her brainy boyfriend Gene Schmidt, known to some as Da-da, that night over dinner. Sally watched from her high chair. Her fingers were green with mashed peas. So was her hair, and her bib, and her cute corduroy dress. It was something out of The Exorcist. “Maaaa-Ma. Say Maaaa-Ma,” Clara said slowly. “What’s wrong with pine?” Gene asked. He taught semiotics at Columbia University, a subject he’d explained repeatedly, and which Clara still couldn’t grasp: Sign? Signifier? Signified? Why not just make yourself a ham sandwich and call it a day? They’d met at Methodist Hospital two years before. She’d put a cast on his leg; he’d asked her out. The next thing she knew, she was knocked-up, the co-owner of a Montague Street one-bedroom, and committed but not married, or, as Pop called it, giving the milk away for free. “Because they don’t make pine! It’s an excuse. He thinks the Guido Funeral home is a mafia front and he doesn’t want to support drug crime in Mexico,” she said. “Is that senile or just stupid?” “Well, he’s got a point. Maybe not in this instance, but buying drugs is supporting crime in inner cities and underdeveloped nations. Anybody involved in that business ought to be tried for murder.” Gene was completely serious when he said this. Earnest, even. Marry the guy, Pop had told her in the hospital when Sally was born, and Mom was in the same hospital’s cancer ward, too weak to make the trip. He’s good people and you’re not getting any younger, so what are you waiting for—hot flashes? “He was a contractor for thirty years. He should carve the casket himself,” Gene said. “Doesn’t that garage in Red Hook have a woodshop?” Then Gene added, with misty eyes, because his own family didn’t keep in touch, and he’d come to adopt her parents as his own: “It’ll bring him closure. I’ll help.” Nightmare Magazine no 53:53 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-choosing-gruesome-subjects/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-choosing-gruesome-subjects/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:05:00 +0000 John Langan http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8299 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-choosing-gruesome-subjects/feed/ 2 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-lucius-shepard/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-lucius-shepard/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:02:04 +0000 E.C. Myers http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8278 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-lucius-shepard/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-ease-with-which-we-freed-the-beast/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-ease-with-which-we-freed-the-beast/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:01:27 +0000 Lucius Shepard http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8290 http://nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-ease-with-which-we-freed-the-beast/feed/ 1 Me and Molly Bruin were lying on our stomachs atop a sea cliff overlooking Droughans Beach, fresh from a fuck and lolling there, our skins stuck with bits from the weeds and tall grasses that cloaked our sin, Me and Molly Bruin were lying on our stomachs atop a sea cliff overlooking Droughans Beach, fresh from a fuck and lolling there, our skins stuck with bits from the weeds and tall grasses that cloaked our sin, with the wind in our faces and our lives yet to be lived. For want of anything to say, I scooted forward and hung my head down so I could see beneath the overhang. Just below the lip, a chunk of earth had been ripped from the cliff face, laying bare a tangle of roots, some thick as a child’s arm, from which sprang the spindly shrub that poked up beside me, producing from its topmost twig a single pink bloom, the sum of all that tortuous subterranean effort. It annoyed me, that flower, the way it was dandled, bobbing in a stiff breeze like vegetable laughter, and I snapped it off, intending to crumple it in my fist. “For me?” asked Molly with mock delight, knowing I hadn’t meant to give her the flower. She plucked it from my hand and sat up, fixing it in her black hair. Her torso was decorated with green and blue ink. Traceries of vines and leaves interwoven with the random grace of natural growth coiled about her breasts, trellised across her belly. With the flower capping her curly head, she might have been a nymph born of some mystic union, and not the daughter of a drunk and the bloated misery that was his wife. Even the scatter of acne across her cheek seemed put there by design. “We should go down,” she said. “Not yet.” A hill sloped upward from the edge of the cliff and, just below its summit, gone to nature amid a wrangle of bushes and stunted trees, there stood a ruined cottage with a caved-in roof and a gaping doorway, home to mice and spiders, shadows and snakes. By unfocusing my eyes, I could make it into a soldier’s remains, a giant fallen during an assault, his body collapsed to rib bones, tenting up the brown-and-black camouflage of the boards. A cover of soft gray clouds was being drawn across the sky. “We should see what the others are doing.” Molly said. “It’ll be dark soon.” “In a minute.” I rolled back onto my stomach. “You took the sauce out of me with that one.” Pleased, she lay down in the grass, nudging against my shoulder and hip, and went to braiding grass blades together. She stretched a hand out beside mine, as if comparing the two in size and pallor, then rested her head on her arm and said, “Let’s stay here tonight.” “Where?” “I saw a couple places back in town.” “Too expensive.” “We don’t have to find a place, we can stay awake all night.” She rolled over and grabbed a baggie from a purse, showed it to me—it held a quantity of white powder and, in a little plastic bottle, a rainbow confection of pills. “We have this,” she said, and shook the baggie, making it rustle. “Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I don’t care.” She pitched her voice low in imitation of mine. “‘Whatever. I don’t care.’” “I don’t.” “It’s all so depressing.” She threw herself down in the grass and pressed her forearm to her brow, as if overborne by the world’s brutishness. “Whatever. I don’t care.” #### There were five of us that day and, it seemed, all our days. Molly, me, TK, James, and Doria. We traveled in a small, disheveled pod, when we traveled at all, and we liked to ride the driverless white buses that trundled up and down the coast, controlled by electric cells along the road. Often we rode them to Droughans Beach. I had stolen a tool from a repairman’s kit that enabled me to open a panel on the floor and control the stops and starts. If there were other passengers on board, they would ask to be let off, and so we stretched out across the seats, scrawling our names (though not our true ones) and affections on the windows and walls, shouting, and pissing in the aisles, knowing that by the time anyone responded to the signal sent by the wounded bus, we would be off into the next chapter of our vandal’s tale. We were none of us eighteen (I had almost reached that defining age), Nightmare Magazine no 52:54 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-chelsea-knight/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-chelsea-knight/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:05:07 +0000 Julia Sevin http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8302 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/artist-showcase-chelsea-knight/feed/ 0 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tamsyn-muir/ http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tamsyn-muir/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:02:02 +0000 Seamus Bayne http://nightmare-magazine.com/?p=8277 http://nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-tamsyn-muir/feed/ 0