Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction No. 39: April 2025

by Wayne Kyle Spitzer, James Callan, J. Rizzo

dark horse
/ˈdärk ˈˌhôrs/
noun
1. a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds.
"a dark-horse candidate"

Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion--whatever it is, if it's weird, it's here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses!

In this

HYPERPHAGIA
James Callan

BEFORE YOU MICRODOSE …
J. Rizzo

CEMETERY RUNWAY LIGHTS
Rasmenia Massoud

CLEAN-UP IN AISLE FOUR-MILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH
DC Merryweather

72 HOURS TO ANIMAL
Wayne Kyle Spitzer

MIRRORS
Katrin Hessa

TERROR SLEEPS OVER
Wendy Maxon

THE NEXT ROOM
Robert Thomas

THE SURVIVALIST MANIFESTO
Shahbaz Khayambashi

THE VISITOR FROM MARKAB
Rick M. Clausen

135 pages, Paperback

Published March 20, 2025

About the author

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.