Nightmare #132, September 2023

“Nightmare of a Million Faces” by Pedro Iniguez

“Student Living” by Ashley Deng

“The Ascension of Magdalene” by Donyae Coles

Reviewed by László Szegedi

“Nightmare of a Million Faces” by Pedro Iniguez

The author took his time to build the main character bit by bit from scratch. The protagonist, Anastasia, tries to get herself established after working as a porn actress and also getting rid of her abusive boyfriend. She has such an interesting life story it overshadowed the main plot, that of the terrible monster hunting in the desert.

The whole text was frightening yet entertaining, making me think all along what I would have done differently—and finding every time I wouldn’t have had much choice either. There were many aspects of the story which made it fearsome, like the desert, the night party, the annoying guests, and the appearing monster, but her struggle with her own fate made it the most fearsome of all.

I really hope Netflix picks this one up and creates an episode in one of its anthology series’ as I would gladly watch it.

“Student Living” by Ashley Deng

This short little piece turned out to be too compressed and dense to contain a real story. It’s not even possible to talk about it without spoiling anything. Unfortunately, the form of academic citations took control and the content behind it couldn’t follow.

“The Ascension of Magdalene” by Donyae Coles

The premise of the story is that the protagonist has a headache. True, that ache is a really strong one and evokes many memories and feelings, but it’s still just a headache, which is not a strong enough driving force for me in a short story. Unfortunately, the payoff at the end, the resolution didn’t work for me either. It had a kind of magic touch but didn’t grab my attention because it wasn’t executed well enough.

László is an SF enthusiast living in middle Europe, who also writes songs in the attic.