Nightmare magazine issue.., p.1
Nightmare Magazine, Issue 136 (January 2024), page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 136 (January 2023)
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial: January 2024
FICTION
Ten Thousand Crawling Children
R.A. Busby
The Forgetter
Andrew Snover
POETRY
In Our Bodies, There Is Heat
Somto Ihezue
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Chase Scene
Megan Kiekel Anderson
NONFICTION
The H Word: All the Missing Mothers
Kelsea Yu
Interview: V. Castro
Gordon B. White
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
R.A. Busby
Andrew Snover
MISCELLANY
Coming Attractions
Stay Connected
Subscriptions and Ebooks
Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard
About the Nightmare Team
© 2024 Nightmare Magazine
Cover by Fran_Kie / Shutterstock Stock Image
www.nightmare-magazine.com
Published by Adamant Press
Editorial: January 2024
Wendy N. Wagner | 304 words
Welcome to Issue #136 of Nightmare Magazine, and welcome to another year celebrating horror and dark fantasy fiction. We’re excited to scare, unsettle, nauseate, amuse, and depress you—because we believe in the power of horror to do all of those things. It’s truly a genre for everyone and every palate, the perfect realm to explore all the complicated, dark facets of the human condition.
January is a month for celebrating new beginnings and fresh starts. It’s also the month we’re most likely to take a serious look at our health, relationships, and work-life balance. Every magazine at the grocery store shouts cliches like “New Year, New You!” and gyms across America offer incredible sign-up deals. In January, you’ll be hard-pressed to have a conversation with anyone without someone bringing up exercise. Needless to say, it seemed like a great month to center our issue around, you guessed it: bodies in motion. Or at least, bodies and verbs.
The month starts off with R.A. Busby’s story “Ten Thousand Crawling Children,” a tale of exquisite body horror. Verb? Crawling, of course! Andrew Snover joins us with his short “The Forgetter,” about a man with a very unusual job. Verb? Shoveling. Megan Kiekel Anderson brings us our first creative nonfiction piece in several months, discussing the way we remember terrifying experiences in her essay “Chase Scene.” (Verb: running.) And Somto Ihezue explores the verb “smoldering” in his poem “In Our Bodies There Is Heat.”
Kelsea Yu writes about the roles of dead mothers in fairy tales in her essay for “The H Word,” and Gordon B. White interviews author V. Castro. Plus, our spotlight interview team brings you insights into our authors’ eerie minds.
It’s another terrific issue for you to enjoy—even when you’re on the treadmill.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy N. Wagner is the author of The Creek Girl, forthcoming 2025 from Tor Nightfire, as well as the horror novel The Deer Kings and the gothic novella The Secret Skin. Previous work includes the SF thriller An Oath of Dogs and two novels for the Pathfinder Tales series. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, and her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in more than sixty venues. A Locus award nominee for her editorial work here, she also serves as the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed Magazine, and previously served as the guest editor of our Queers Destroy Horror! special issue. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.
Ten Thousand Crawling Children
R.A. Busby | 7757 words
* * *
CW: arachnophobia, pregnancy and childbirth/tokophobia, miscarriages/abortion/sterilization, graphic gynecological exam, body hatred, self-harm and suicide, brief mention of child sexual assault and pregnancy, death, blood/bodily fluids, bodily harm, mental illness, sexism and misogyny, medical gaslighting.
* * *
Pregnancy is an infestation. A hidden invasion.
An invisible operative sneaks inside you, planting a package of foreign genetic material and forcing you to replicate it trillions of times. Soon, your hostage cell floats down your fallopian tube to the womb to feed on the blood-bed of your uterine lining like a vicious little tick. If it plants itself in the tube, the cell will kill you as surely as it killed my mother.
Like my mother, if I get pregnant, I might be among the 23.8 people in 100,000 who die. If I were Black, my risk would be twice that; if I were over forty, almost eight. There is an 85% chance my vagina will split; a 6% chance I’ll suffer a fourth-degree perineal tear. That’s when your vadge rips open to your asshole.
The more you know.
You could be invaded right now. You can’t see it.
Trust me. I’ve tried.
I never wanted to be pregnant. Now I can’t escape it, not even in my dreams. Especially there.
You see, the things are inside me.
• • • •
Ever since my divorce, I’ve worked for WriteStuff, a content creation company. I pick an article topic, examine the SEO-friendly terms the client wants, and string them together in a blog post that sounds as if an actual person wrote it. If you’ve ever Googled ball pythons, gearshift knobs, or ten reasons you should worry about mesothelioma, you might’ve read my work.
The pay’s not bad. In an average day, I can typically crank out between $15-30 an hour because I type fast, but still, it’s not a king’s ransom, and as with all gig work, it’s not predictable. Mostly, my bills get paid from renting out the property my father left, a grudging reminder of his credo that a woman’s place was in the kitchen.
No, the real money is in direct orders, when a client asks specifically for my services, which is how I became a ghostwriter for Bitty Bugs—ironically enough, a mommy blog. My only request was to write only child-rearing articles like “Diapers: Cloth or Disposable?”
But pregnancy topics? Hard fucking no.
• • • •
You may wonder if the divorce was Alan’s fault, but it wasn’t. Alan was decent and thoughtful, a bouncy, Labradorish person, not a guy who thought foreplay was grabbing you on the ass and saying, “Hey, we have twenty minutes.” (For the record, that was my boyfriend before Alan.)
The issue was that Alan wanted children.
We met in college when Alan hired me to write his Humanities 250B paper. From there, we struck up a friendship, a relationship, and finally a Vegas wedding with a tacos-and-beer reception and his sister Livvie as maid of honor. I love Livvie. To be honest, she’s why I stayed with Alan as long as I did.
Anyway, you’d think these low-key nuptials would’ve assured Alan’s parents I wasn’t a gold-digger, but no. Whenever Alan’s mother visited, I imagined an infinite loop from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes started up in her head. I think it’s the scene where Lorelei meets her wealthy fiancé’s uptight father. The dad confronts her with, “Do you expect me to believe you don’t want to marry my son for his money?” and Lorelei responds, “Of course not! I want to marry him for your money.” After we divorced, Alan’s mother probably bit her nails for the next nine months, certain I’d turn up pregnant.
Trust me, she had nothing to worry about.
Before getting married, Alan and I had discussed kids, but I’d told him, “Probably not.” Then seeing his face fall, I added, “Let’s maybe see in five years.” He took this as a yes.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
Even before the marriage, I’d been nervous about pregnancy. About the whole concept. It grosses me out, to be honest, especially the swelling. Toward the end, every pregnant woman looks like she’s carrying a bomb filled with baby. I’m not sure when that anxiety started.
Scratch that. I remember exactly when.
On a fourth-grade field trip, I sat next to the other unpopular girl, Leah W., and at some point, she handed me a stolen library book called Five Hundred Fucked-Up Facts. Passing it around had been Leah’s big strategy to move up the popularity scale, and I’ll have to give it to her: it was kind of working. When I took it, the book fell open to “Fucked-Up Fact #42: The Youngest Person to Give Birth.”
The girl was five. There was a picture.
Then Leah explained how it must’ve happened.
Before then, I’d thought I had only two lower holes: my butthole and the tiny one for pee. No, said Leah. There was a middle hole. Then she explained what went in there. And what came out. That this could be done to any girl.
To me.
Spoiler alert: I became paranoid about pregnancy. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t take the Pill, so I was adamant that all my male partners wore condoms I provided. Only during my period did I feel safe, and not always then. What if it wasn’t a period, but implantation bleeding? Honestly, it was maddening not being able to look inside and see.
I’d test myself again and again, standing in the morning sunlight with my latest pee stick, trying to spot a line. Until I heard you could get cheap tests at the dollar store, I was spending over fifty bucks a month for the early response kind that can detect as little as 6.5 mIU/mL of hCG.
You know. Just in case.
Still, the instant my period dried up, the nightmares began again. I’d jerk awake, sweat streaming down my back, and grab my
Ultimately, I had to admit I hated things inside me. I detest needles, swabs, dildoes, butt plugs, thermometers, fingers, my own toothbrush. I wanted nothing in there. Nothingnothingnoth—
Sorry. Give me a second.
In any case, Alan really tried. Before the divorce, he suggested a visit to a therapist, a professional who could provide nonjudgmental feedback about . . . things.
“Such as?” I demanded.
“The nightmares.” Alan waited a moment. “I can’t sleep in the same room anymore, Anna. When you wake up all panicked . . . it scares me. You scare me.”
“I scare you?”
Alan held up his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that . . . you might need treatment. A few tests?”
As you can imagine, the rest of the conversation with Alan did not go well.
• • • •
From: Client 8354932874
To: Team Member 2039478
Re: Blog
Hey. Let me know if you’re interested in a 10,000-word article on pregnancy issues. We realize it’s a rush, but we’re offering a substantial perk for early completion. Please respond by pressing “Accept” or “Decline” below.
Thanks,
Client 8354932874
• • • •
I pressed “Accept.” What can I say? I needed the money.
In the divorce, I’d been adamant: No alimony. Even so, Alan sent me a birthday card that year. Tucked inside was a generous personal check with a note. “Buy yourself a nice present, Anna. Best wishes, Alan.” Still, no money lasts forever. If I accepted the article, I’d get a payout and bonus—and future orders. That meant steady income, the gig job equivalent of finding a magic unicorn that crapped pure perfume rainbows. I thought, Okayokay, how bad could it be?
It was ten thousand words on contraception.
Sweet.
The funny thing was, I could almost write the whole article without doing extra research. It wasn’t until I’d gotten near the end of the SEO list that I saw a method I’d never heard of.
Twenty minutes after hitting “Submit,” I was booking a consult with the first available OB-GYN on my plan.
• • • •
“So,” he said, sliding his fingers into me. “What brings you here today?”
Gritting my teeth, I focused on the clinic ceiling. The light in the room was dingy, the examination bed paper already wrinkled. “I thought we could discuss birth control,” I answered.
In response, he pressed my cervix harder. Near jars of cotton balls and swabs, the assistant stood looking clearly bored. The doctor shot her a look. “Shanelle, when was her last pap?” he asked, listening as she dutifully read it off the chart. “So, two years ago?” When he turned back, his expression was disapproving.
“Yes. We can certainly go over birth control,” he said, taking his fingers away. “Are you sexually active?” When I shook my head, he looked skeptical. “Hmm. Well generally, condoms work best for a girl your age.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “The thing is, I already know the method I want.”
Above the rim of his glasses, his silvery eyebrows rose. “Oh, please,” he replied, waving a hand. “Do tell.”
I cleared my throat. “I want a bilateral salpingectomy.”
At this he seemed surprised. The procedure isn’t as widely known as it should be, so if you’ve never heard of it, here’s a free PSA. In a bilateral salpingectomy, your tubes aren’t just cut, they’re completely removed. You’ve stuck that uterus on a desert island, and with both tubes gone, the chances you’ll die from an ectopic pregnancy drop to nearly zero. No little mom-bombs for you.
Hearing this, the doctor scribbled some notes on my chart. It was impossible to see them, so I lifted my head, but immediately I wished I hadn’t: above the small steel sink I spotted movement from some long-legged thing that crept across the ceiling.
“So. Someone’s been on Google, haven’t they?” When I didn’t answer, he gave a tight smile. “Yes. Well. I’m going to book you an appointment with a consultant.”
“A consultant? I mean—I thought this was the consultation.” I gestured to my half-open paper gown.
He patted my knee, frowning when I moved it. “Yes,” he said. “I think several appointments would be best.”
I envisioned endless hours on hold. Multiple copays. Uber bills. Client articles composed on my phone in the waiting room. “I mean, is that necessary—”
Over his head, something insectoid shimmied inside the fluorescent light. One thin brown leg eased from a hole, gently fingered the ceiling tile, then retreated.
“You’re quite young for that procedure,” the doctor remarked. “You need to consider a nonpermanent method. Even a tubal with clips would be better.”
“But I don’t want—”
“Well, we can’t always have what we want,” he said. “Please lie down. Shanelle, will you prep the tray?” For a moment, I met his assistant’s eyes, but below her mask, her expression was unreadable.
“But tubals are—I mean, they’re not the current standard for elective steriliz—”
Now it was his turn. “Excuse me . . .” He looked at the chart for my name. “. . . Anna. Anna, which of us has a degree in medicine?”
I caught Shanelle’s glance again. She ducked her head, staring at the instrument tray before scooping out a gelatinous blob from a small vial.
“I don’t want children.” I shifted awkwardly. “Or to worry about getting pregnant. Ever.”
The doctor noted this. “But you realize, Anna, that we shouldn’t make emotional decisions.”
“Emotional?”
“Let me assure you that your fear is natural, Anna, but so is giving birth. You’ll see.” Quietly, Shanelle wheeled the tray to the bedside. “I noticed in the intake paperwork that you are divorced?” he asked.
For a moment, I thought he might insist Alan sign off on this. “Yes, the divorce went through a while ago,” I said, trying to sound firm. “It’s finalized.”
He nodded. “See, right there’s what I’m talking about. Your divorce. It suggests—hmm. Some personal difficulty making a lifelong commitment, let’s say.”
I stared at him. Even in my thoughts, I was tongue-tied.
“Let me put it this way. Next week, you might meet a wonderful man. Right? After that operation, you can’t say, ‘Oopsie, I want a do-over.’”
“But . . . isn’t that really my concern?”
Deftly, he pulled on fresh gloves. “Not really. It isn’t just your concern. Feet in the stirrups, please. Good girl. Now. Are you sensitive to cervical pain?”
“Yes, but what is this—”
He nodded to Shanelle. “Sorry,” Shanelle murmured, then slipped the needle into my vein. I hadn’t seen that coming.
“No examination would be complete without the pappy, hmm?” He picked up an instrument. “You’ll feel the speculum. Then a slight pinch.”
When he slid it in me, the instrument was metal-cold. Reaching for a swab, he dabbed it in that mystery blob. Despite the injection, I sensed the tip poking at the dimpled center of my cervix. God, it felt like being rasped out with a mascara wand. The sound from the overhead lights grew from a mild buzz to a horrid insectile clittering.
With a satisfied nod, the doctor peered up, framed by my thighs. “So. That’s done. Remember, Anna. Pregnancy isn’t all about you. It’s about two other people besides you. At most, you’re only one-third of the equation. Don’t you realize that?”
I found I could not really reply.
• • • •
No clue how I got home. On my phone the next day, I saw I’d scheduled a follow-up and gotten an Uber.
I hope I tipped?
• • • •
My phone buzzed “Hey, girl,” the text read. It was Livvie.
Of all Alan’s family members, I liked Livvie best. She could pick up a conversation from weeks ago, like pressing “play” on a moment she’d paused, and low-key flirted with everyone—men, women, random pets, various trees.
Perhaps it’s actual flirtation; I’ve always been shitty at figuring that out. Once, when we were quarantine-watching a movie over Zoom, I joked I should’ve married her instead of Alan, and from my screen, Livvie gave me this exaggerated up-and-down ogle and said, “Oh, yeah. Might be kinky, but who gives a shit?” Then she reached for her microwave popcorn, and we settled down to watch Legally Blonde.
