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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.
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2 Mar 2026

Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Once I’ve finished writing, I will fold this letter up and tuck it into the Tristram you kindly loaned me (may it be our Galeotto … ). I’ll knock on your door, at which point I will most likely encounter a puzzled maidservant, who will ask who in the world I am, and I will explain that I am returning a book you were kind enough to bestow on me (generous creature that you are and clearly down-on-their-luck weatherworn would-be poet that I am).
the trees were softening, their bark for the hungry to scrape and scrape and spread it on whatever bread they could beg or bake
i must warn you before all else / before you poke and prod
Paul Kincaid and Dawn Macdonald join Dan Hartland to discuss style.
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
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Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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