Black Static 12
Art:
As usual, all the original art is by David Gentry
Stories:
My Brother's Keeper by Nina Allan
My brother died before I was born, but that didn’t stop him looking out for me. He was my earliest companion, my closest friend. His name was Stephen. My mother missed him terribly but he never appeared to her.
Bryson Feeds Families (Six Interviews) by T.F. Davenport
Charles 'Chuck' Williams, Feedlot manager, Bryson Foods: So you get to work in the morning. The first thing that hits you is the smell. I mean it hits you. You never get used to it. I mean yeah, there’s shit everywhere, and maybe a cow’s died and they won’t pull her carcass out for another few days – that’s standard – but under all that there’s blood. Think about that. Always blood on the air. Like I said, you think you’ll get used to it but every morning there’s a few minutes when the smell makes you feverish and you think, Jesus, I can’t keep doing this.
Flatrock Sunners by Sarah Totton
My father was a great man, once upon a time. I am often told this. But for as long as I’ve known him, and for as long as I can remember, he was no such thing. I have memories – distant ones – of him being happy, of him knowing who I was, maybe even loving me, but ever since he went away the first time, he has never been happy, or great, or anything at all. I blame the Flatrock Sunners.
Stone Whispers by Tim Casson
The boat was just a speck when Celia spotted her from the living room window. Gradually she came in closer, trailing white lace over a perfect blue sea, the water so calm it was hard to imagine there was a storm yesterday. The skipper must have spotted the little harbour because the boat was heading straight in now. She leaped at Celia as she held the binoculars to her eyes. A thirty-foot cruiser with polished teak hull and steel fittings glinting in the morning sunlight. Two slim young women sunbathed on deck, one was fair, the other auburn haired. Both were naked and lying on their fronts, skin honey brown, yet showing paler stencils where swimsuits would usually be worn. The little flag snapping in the wind was the Stars and Stripes.
Charles by Steve Rasnic Tem
The night before Charles’s wedding, his mother took the long bus ride from her small house in the suburbs to the run-down apartment building downtown where he had been staying for many years. She had never visited him in this place, and although she missed him terribly she didn’t at all look forward to the meeting. Off and on during that day she had such spells of absentmindedness – misplacing her keys, forgetting why she had gone in to this or that room, walking out to the clothesline with her blouse all undone, finally losing the worn-out slip of paper with her son’s scribbled address – she eventually just had to sit down and have herself a good long cry. She really hadn’t thought she’d been sad, and wondered if sadness was really the right word for what she was feeling. Sometimes her body seemed to feel things she herself had no knowledge of.
Unearthed by Kim Lakin-Smith
Descending the tiled stairs to the caves, Ben Adams felt as if he was stepping down into a wound in the earth. The first in a series of medieval cellars revealed itself as a gangrenous crypt battened with electric cables and weak strip lighting.
Features:
White Noise by Peter Tennant
news
Interference by Christopher Fowler
comment
Electric Darkness by Stephen Volk
comment
Night’s Plutonian Shore by Mike O’Driscoll
comment
Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee
DVD/Blu-ray reviews, including Embodiment of Evil, Tokyo Gore Police, The Fox Family, The Killing Room, Infestation, Grotesque, Dead Snow, Let The Right One In, Passengers, Goth, Hellraiser, The House by the Cemetery, Macabre, Sleepless, Cradle Will Fall, plus easy to enter draws to win several of these
Case Notes by Peter Tennant
reviews of books by Gary A. Braunbeck + interview + draw to win all his Cedar Hill novels, Charlaine Harris, Sarah Pinborough, Robert Freeman Wexler, Marly Youmans, Quentin Crisp, Simon Bestwick, John Llewellyn Probert, Brian Keene
You can buy Black Static in good bookshops such as Borders, or click on the links on this page or the Shop link above to subscribe.
Section items by date:
