The first child exploded in the parking lot of a nondescript fast food joint in one of the safest, most unassuming parts of our city on a clear summer evening. Beatrix Middleston (five years old, never stopped moving, loved butterflies and Spiderman and her cat, who she named “Dippers”), was skipping to her family’s car, one hand held in her father’s warm grip.

Most people give her a single eye. This is within the rules, so she accepts, with a quiet warning. They nod, not understanding. Others try to be clever, and give her an appendix, or a spleen, or even hair. These she does not bother to warn. They will return soon enough, she knows, offering a hand, or a foot, or even a leg.

Welcome to issue #169 of Nightmare Magazine, and welcome to October! In our household, we’ve been preparing for this moment for months, planning, daydreaming, and crafting as we get ready for our annual Halloween party. Here at Nightmare, we have also been preparing a kind of Halloween party—a literary one. We always try to pull out the stops to make our October issue extra fun.

Michael Wehunt has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, multiple Shirley Jackson Awards, and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts’s Crawford Award. In Spain, his stories have garnered nominations for the Premio Ignotus and Premio Amaltea, winning the latter. He haunts the woods outside Atlanta with his partner and their dog. Together, they hold the horrors at bay.

not a metaphor for social decay,
or the collapse of the modern family,
or the domestic transformed to dread