Nightmare “The Final Girl Trap” by A.C. Wise
“The Spiders You Swallow in Your Sleep” by Wendy Nikel
“We Are All in The Same Boat” by Avi Burton
Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike
Nightmare, the magazine of horror and dark fantasy, offers two short stories and one piece of flash fiction.
“The Final Girl Trap” by A.C. Wise is a rather ambiguous short story as told by an unreliable narrator. The titular ‘final girl’ refers to the last girl standing in a slasher horror movie; the girl who survives the mayhem to the end. In this tale, a ‘final girl’ shows up on a movie set to find a second ‘final girl’ also present. What is reality, and what may be the psychotic delusions of the protagonist, is purposely kept unclear throughout. Dreadful violence on set seems to be a norm, but we doubt this can be real. The clouded reality is related through an unappealing main character, lesbian sex and a somewhat disjointed plot, so this may not appeal to all readers, though its strangeness is in fact strangely compelling.
“The Spiders You Swallow in Your Sleep” by Wendy Nikel is flash fiction. A neurotic girl needs to somehow rid herself of fear, so she orders online a solution to combat her fears. While it has the veneer of horror in its imagery and tone, the horror is predominantly in the girl’s mind. It’s not a bad idea.
“We Are All in The Same Boat” by Avi Burton is an interesting short story, set on a factory trawler out at sea. It starts with considerable promise, as things start to occur on the fishing vessel that are simply ‘wrong’. The grim scenes and sense of claustrophobia of the sailors who cannot leave the ship is good. The ending perhaps lacks punch, relative to the set-up, but it’s unusual enough to warrant a read.
Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/