Horror should be read all year long, but especially in October. Where I live, October is the month where you can feel the season’s change. Things cool off and the light turns golden in the afternoon. The fog rolls in, the rain returns, and the leaves turn brown and fall (mostly on the non-native trees, but still). October is when I revisit my favorite slashers and monster movies. And it’s also when short fiction magazines start cranking out the horror stories. Most of this list of my ten favorite stories is horror mostly because that’s what I leaned toward reading in October, but there is some science fiction and fantasy in here as well.
“666 Maple Drive” by Victoria Brun
Shirley is a real estate agent with a lemon of a house on her hands. It looks perfect on the outside, but it has a rot at its center. Not in the foundation or frame, but in the door to hell standing in the middle of the living room. As with many of Flash Point SF’s stories, this one by Victoria Brun is short, charming, and just funny enough to have me smiling all the way through it. I love a good horror comedy, and this has that in spades. (Flash Point SF—October 18, 2024)
“Catalogue of the Exofaithful Practices on Exoplanet SSR24-∞” by Marisca Pichette
“In the ashes of a vanished city there rests a reliquary. Its gem-encrusted glass is fire-darkened, facets clouded by centuries and smoke.” Written like an inventory of artifacts, this short story is weird in such an interesting way. The cataloguers have collected items found on a dead planet and created a calendar of saints out of the reliquary items. The skulls represent the saints, and the fragments of bone and other body parts set the feast days. It’s a reminder that the search for meaning is what makes us human, but also that the meaning is ours to make. (The Deadlands—Fall 2024; issue 36)
“Cordelia’s List of Things Not to Ask/Say Around Bea on Our Birthday” by F. E. Choe
F. E. Choe’s story is exactly what the title describes: a list of 51 items that Cordelia, our narrator, doesn’t want to say or ask around Bea, especially not today. Today is the birthday shared by Ava, Bea, and Cordelia. They live on a station, isolated from everyone except the mice they do tests on and videos of their Mother, who they’ve never actually met. Cordelia is the youngest of the trio, and her journey through this story made me wish I could pull her aside and give her a hug. The list takes a sinister turn by the end, even darker and sadder than I was anticipating. (Augur—Fall 2024; issue 7.2)
“Fix It, Remember It, Undo It” by AnaMaria Curtis
What do you do when while trying to help you make things worse? Katherine decides to use her magical gifts to help people. She fixes things at first, then people. She repairs broken relationships and finds lost friends. Then one day she realizes she’s been focusing on her clients and not the people her spells targeted. A good reminder that intent does not negate impact. You can mean well all you want, but if your actions cause harm, you still have a responsibility toward restorative justice. (Worlds of Possibility—October 2024)
“Fuck Them Kids” by Tatiana Obey
The title of this story alone is enough to get me to put this on my spotlight list, but when Tatiana Obey opened it with an elderly Black mother complaining to her middle-aged daughter about not getting grandbabies, that sealed the deal. Jaz has a great life “galavanting among the stars” as a single, child-free person. Her sister has too many kids and a husband who works too much. One of those kids tags along with Jaz on one of her runs, and they learn to see each other in a new light. It’s a fun spaceship story with a narrative style I loved. It’s one of those stories with a world big enough and interesting enough that Obey could write a dozen stories in it, and I’d read every one of them. (FIYAH—Fall 2024; issue 32)
“In the Field” by Shelly Jones
After a great catastrophe, most survivors have escaped to one of the few remaining habitable zones. At her university, a professor stays behind to continue her work. She sends her android out to the nearby farms to interview fieldworkers for anthropological research. Except there are no human workers, only machines left continuously plowing barren fields. Her mantra keeps her going: “We must keep researching. If there are people, there are stories.” As with another story a little further down this list, Shelly Jones writes about finding that last thread of hope in a hopeless situation, of trying to build something better out of the ruins. (The Future Fire—October 2024; issue 2024.71)
“NotRob” by Isabel Cañas
Our pregnant narrator is in the living room with their partner, Rob, when there’s an unexpected knock on the door (a theme this month, as it turns out). Outside is a man that looks like Rob but isn’t. Real Rob sends our narrator upstairs to rest, but when they wake…well, that’s when the horror really kicks in. This flash fiction was inspired by a nightmare Isabel Cañas had after not getting enough sleep while caring for a newborn, and it definitely has those vibes. The phantom baby cries, the unease of things being not quite right, someone you love turning out to be a monster. (Nightmare Magazine—October 2024; issue 145)
“Parthenogenesis” by Stephen Graham Jones
A new Stephen Graham Jones? In October? Yes please! Matty and Jac are stuck in their moving truck after they have engine trouble at night. The mechanic is forever thirty minutes away, but a strange creature that looks part bear, part wolf, and part elk is close by. Too close. To pass the time, they tell each other scary stories. And then those stories come true. Jones structures the story so nearly every sentence is its own paragraph, and the dialogue blurs together so sometimes it can be hard to tell who’s speaking. The effects give the reader the sensation of sledding down a hill, going faster and faster toward a brick wall and being unable to stop. The terrible end is coming and it’s a doozy.(Reactor—October 2, 2024)
“Rise Again” by Ramez Yoakeim
Afaf’s people live in a dying silo. Centuries ago, their ancestors fled Earth looking for a new planet to settle. Disagreements turned to arguments turned to fights turned to warfare, and much of their advanced technology—and the people who were trained to maintain it—was destroyed. Now they’re alive only because of the Caretakers, unseen beings who send messages and warnings to the survivors. Afaf leaves the silo in search of her lost mother and finds, much to her surprise, one of these Caretakers. This is a story about finding hope where none should be, like a flower in a pile of rubble. You can keep on carrying on, or you can strive for something better. (Kaleidotrope—Autumn 2024)
“A Stranger Knocks” by Tananarive Due
Pretty sure there’s a law that says if Tananarive Due releases a new horror story during Halloween season, you’re required to read it. Alvin and Judy are a Black couple in 1926 Washington DC. A man, Cartier, who claims to be a white passing Black man, offers them a job driving him around the Atlantic states and helping him show his new silent horror film. The movie, A Stranger Knocks, is eerily similar to Judy and Alvin’s experience and features a Nosferatu-like monster in an all-Black cast. Due is great at looming dread. We don’t need to see Cartier doing whatever it is he’s doing to his victims to be terrified of it happening to Alvin. And she embeds so much real history into her story—the part where Cartier warns of the future absence of silent “race pictures” (Black film productions), that has actually come true. The Academy of Motion Pictures estimates about 80% have been lost or destroyed. (Uncanny Magazine—October 2024; issue 60)
