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What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?

Psycho
Sleepaway Cam-
Silence of the L-

Always the slasher
and never the final girl.

Notes from
the severed
studio heads:

If she does survive,
she needs to be
legless or blind,
eyes gouged out
or wheelchair bound.

No trans heroes
can be whole.

Is this a Nightmare on Elm St. 2 thing?
Are audiences ready for-
Who is even asking for-
Kids could watch this-

X-Rated Sequel
to The Homecoming
Texas Chainsaw
Drag Scream King

And once you transition

Forget it
Forget him
Forget me

But, but, but
you make me remember
like Freddie-
no, like Bette Davis,
The Wicked Witch,
Pamela Vorhees,
Angela from Sleepaway Camp 2

You’re the ones
who made me hide,
who taught me how
to scare you
-just a little scare,
a tickle in the throat,
another body in the moat.

A rumor bound
to strike again,
after 25 years
on the very day,
at the very site of the slaughter,
no room for anything
camp not summer and-

Is it wrong to want to
hurt them
the way they hurt us
on the silver screen?

Scream, Cissy, Scream!

And as the blood runs
from their faces,
from their tender places,
the macabre, grim, untidy
notion arises
that we do
in fact
exist.



Mack W. Mani is an award winning author, poet, and screenwriter. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Spectral Realms, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Rhysling Anthology. In 2018 he won Best Screenplay at The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. He currently lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon.
Current Issue
2 Dec 2024

For nine straight miles, the hot-rolled steel rails cut a path through the woods, a metal chain thrown into soft mud. Discarded, rotting railroad ties littered the tracksides, the stench of creosote saturating the forest air until birds no longer frequented the trees.
I didn’t complain about him / being a werewolf / He thought I didn’t know
Dark against the sky of steel / And men gather to get to its top
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents A Cure for Solastalgia by E.M. Linden, read by Jenna Hanchley. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
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Art by: nino
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