Editorial

Welcome to the eighth issue of Baffling Magazine, and the close-out issue for Year Two.

As always, thank you so much to the 40 people on Patreon who make this magazine possible. If you would like to join their fine company, for even a month or a quarter or a year, you have our gratitude.

We have finally succeeded in getting Baffling Year One to the printer. We expect it’ll launch in mid-August. We’d be delighted if you’d pre-order a copy. (If you are a Neon Hemlock supporter in Club Serpentine for either 2021 or 2022 you’ll already be getting a copy; thanks again for your patience as this one got sorted out).

Issue Eight is an unofficial theme issue! All these stories play in a horror or horror-adjacent space, and we hope they give you some of the illicit thrills they gave us.

“The Serpent Crouches in the Heart of the Unravelling” by Fruzsina Pittner is twisty, violent piece of prose. Pittner’s craft at the sentence-level unmoors me. “A Girl Less Ordinary” by E.C. Barrett explores the ugly side of jealousy with a visceral ease; I was unnerved to see myself reflected in this story.

King-Miller’s “Damage Report” is a splendid mix of flowers and shrapnel, especially apt considering the real life traumas it channels in this slice-of-futuristic life. Tania Chen’s “En el Patio de la Casa del Callejón” evokes old fears, an archetypal terror akin to whispered rumor and fairy tale.

“He Knows That The Taste Is Such” by Jonathan Louis Duckworth also toys with oral traditions, weaving creeping dread alongside a sliver of noble self-sacrifice. “First Kiss” by Nadia Shammas is a bold, full-bodied draught that curdles perfectly as it goes down.* And “A Table Set and Waiting” by Jordan Shiveley is the erotic bedtime story you didn’t know you needed, that you didn’t know you needed to recall in the dark of your room.

Our hungry cover from the multi-talented Dominick Rabrun is directly distilling elements from Shiveley’s story but manages to hit plenty of notes from the other tales.

Enjoy!

dave ring
Co-Editor, Baffling Magazine