Nightmare #149, February 2025

“God of the Black Moon” by Dan Stintzi

“The Sound a Rabbit Might Make” by Bruce McAllister

“In Our Skin” by Kelsea Yu

Reviewed by Chuck Rothman

Dan Stintzi starts out the February issue of Nightmare with “God of the Black Moon,” where Sam meets Haley, who describes a strange and experimental film, about a group of people who go see a movie and weird things happen. Sam, a committed pot smoker, begins to see strange and disturbing things happening and eventually sees the movie at Haley’s request. Lots of descriptions of strange events, but the story pretty much goes where you expect it to go.

It’s been a long time since I saw a story by Bruce McAllister, who I remember from the 1960s. “The Sound a Rabbit Might Make” is a flash fiction work where the narrator is an older man whose girlfriend got a pet rabbit and who broke up with him when it died. The story is very subtle—I had to read the final paragraphs several times to understand—but is horrific once you see what’s being said.

“In Our Skin” by Kelsea Yu starts out looking like it’s a body horror story, but as it unfolds, it turns out to be straight science fiction. Kyla is dead and shares an electronic body with her dead sister Maddy, though Maddy is usually in charge because she was their mother’s favorite. The story slowly reveals the secrets behind the two sisters’ deaths, filled with guilt and regrets, but the ending is powerful.

Chuck Rothman’s novel The Cadaver Princess will be published by Experimenter Publishing, the book imprint of Amazing Stories.