Halloween Special Issue 2023

By Warren BenedettoOriginally Published as “Close Your Eyes” in Mythic Magazine “Will it hurt?” I watched my father roll the sewing needle between his fingers, the tip glowing orange-red in the hea...

By Samuel Poots I try to scream as it pulls me from its walls, but my vocal cords haven’t formed yet. It stitches me together, thread by thread, muscle and skin and bone snapping into place, until ...

By Rowan Hill His grandaddy’s Civil War saber was a rusty and curved thing that swung on Leon’s hip like a second dick needing caressing. So that’s exactly what a cocksure hunter like Leon did—care...

By Eygló Karlsdóttir I wished for you. The soft blue flowers always sway delicately back and forth in your hair. I placed them there myself as a reminder, and you didn’t seem to mind, not then and ...

By Kay Hanifen "You were born under a bad sign,” Mother once said. “I should have known then, when the pain started, that you’d be nothing but misery.” She would comb my hair, braid it into dual pi...

By Polly Hall I didn’t want to look, but I knew it was him. Too many nights I had wondered how long he would live alone outside, wearing hardly any clothes, even when the earth turned iron-hard wit...

By Victoria Nations The human stood at the mouth of the alley, staring at Ghoul. She would be a silhouette to another human, with the low sun throwing rays from behind her. Shadows from the tall bu...

By Grace R. Reynolds Ruslan did not enjoy feeling threadbare strands of muscle stuck between his teeth. It brought him no pleasure to pluck away the soft tissue of a cadaver’s mutilated pectoral. S...

By Amanda Cecelia Lang Three weeks after my big brother ditched out on me, I raid his bedroom. Screw him if he thinks he can abandon me in this hell-house with nothing but stale memories and our as...