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Volume 5

The Horror Issue

Featuring:

Putrm Towers

Guy Kojak

In a rotting high-rise that used to be a hotel, the last American president sits fused to his chair, barking orders into a microphone. Every delusional word becomes law. Outside, people work, starve, and stay quiet. Told by one of the workers trapped inside his tower, the story shows a world where power has gone rotten but won’t let go.

I brought a gun today

Grant Foxon

In I brought a gun today, a speaker reflects on fear, isolation, and the quiet normalization of violence. The poem moves through confession and denial, tracing how self-defense and self-destruction begin to sound the same.

China Doll 

Sacha Francis Lees

In China Doll, a boy keeps a family alive while everyone else looks past them. Ten-year-old Ezekiel moves between tenderness and a dangerous, hardening resentment as he cares for his mother’s prized baby and the empty, rotting household that made them. Plain and unsparing, the story tracks what happens when neglect becomes the only teacher a child has.

My Favorite Kitchen Knife 

Betty Jean Kojak 

This poem moves through domestic routine, escalating abuse, and a brutal act of self-redemption—exact, stripped of ornament, and without apology. Raw and unsparing, it asks how far a person will go to stop being powerless.

A Faustian First Date at Wetherspoons 

Florence Hutchinson

In A Faustian First Date at Wetherspoons, desire meets damnation over cheap wine and small talk. The poem turns a casual night out into a surreal negotiation between hunger, power, and self-loss—where the Devil is both lover and mirror. It’s funny, dark, and quietly devastating in how it captures the price of wanting more than you’re allowed to have.

What To Do When You're Accused Of Being An Interdimensional Being Of Pure Evil

Mark Daniel Taylor 

In What To Do When You’re Accused of Being an Interdimensional Being of Pure Evil, a simple misunderstanding spirals into absurd paranoia. Through razor-sharp dialogue and deadpan humor, the story unpacks conspiracy thinking, friendship, and the strange logic of belief in the internet age. It’s a darkly funny descent into how far people will go to make sense of the ridiculous—and how easily the ridiculous becomes truth.

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