We saw the first billboard while driving along Lake Road. We’d driven the road a hundred times before, because it was the only road out of town that went anywhere worth going, and there was fuck-all to do in town except get drunk, get stoned, and get in trouble. Lake Road let us go ice fishing in the winter. Lake Road let us go camping in the summer. Lake Road let us drive and pretend like we would keep going, like one day we would get out for good. | Copyright 2022 by A.C. Wise. Narrated by John Allen Nelson.
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A.C. Wise | Sharp Things, Killing Things

Edited by Wendy N. Wagner, NIGHTMARE is a critically-acclaimed digital magazine of horror and dark fantasy. In its pages, you will find all kinds of horror and dark fantasy, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror. Every month NIGHTMARE will bring you a mix of original short stories and flash fiction, and featuring a variety of authors: from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven't heard of yet. When you read NIGHTMARE, it is our hope that you'll see where horror comes from, where it is now, and where it's going. The NIGHTMARE podcast, produced by Grammy Award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat Media, features original audio short stories and poems 3-4 times a month.

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The opening line is my riff on Bach’s chorale prelude “Come, Sweet Death,” one of his most profound. | © 2024 by John R. Turner. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
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John R. Turner | Ensabled Night

It didn’t come as a surprise when AJ told me she wanted to open our relationship. We’d been an item for four years, but by the middle of the third year the two of us had long since checked out. | © 2024 by James Tatum. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
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James Tatam | Backseat Kiss

When a nice man with a smart phone camera approaches them. It is also the phone he uses to record his real real reviews of the tacos from the authentic food trucks in Brooklyn and the scenes of the noble and earnest people at the bodegas in Queens. Places where honest people hang out and where he doesn’t make friends with anyone. | © 2024 by Mark Galarrita. Narrated by Annette Oliveira.
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Mark Galarrita | There are three children jumping over a can outside a bodega

When the American saw me sitting on a stone in the river, his mouth opened and closed, a brown trout caught on a fishing line. He kept his eyes on me as he hurried to pull off his socks and shoes, as if I would vanish otherwise. | © 2024 by Shannon Scott. Narrated by Annette Oliveira.
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Shannon Scott | My Containment

This poem began as flash fiction, and was then whittled even smaller—perhaps ironic, given its subject. I wrote this to explore how we change in a relationship, how it isn’t always healthy or best for us—or necessarily consensual. | © 2024 by E. Catherine Tobler. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
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A.C. Wise | Sharp Things, Killing Things

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