Black Static

Cover

The cover art is 'Rendezvous' by Ben Baldwin

 

Contents

 

Fiction

The Black Paintings by Simon Avery
illustrated by Richard Wagner 

On the final day of his life, Lucien Halcomb’s cancer began to speak to him.

“Lucien,” it said, with a voice like clotted blood and fevered nights, “I should like to leave you after all of this is over.”

 

The Stonemason by Danny Rhodes
illustrated by Ben Baldwin 

When he found a moment for a hurried lunch he carried his satchel through the cathedral grounds to his favourite spot in the walled garden, a little bench there. He liked to observe the visitors as they appeared through the stone archway and crossed the garden, following the path towards the Queningate. Such ordinary things soothed him.

 

Alseep in the Deep End by Cody Goodfellow
illustrated by Kai Martin 

Shaking with hunger, Nora Welch lay in the undergrowth beyond the swimming pool through two rains, until she could not smell herself for the mold and moss growing on her clothes, before she crawled to the duck nest.

 

Roots by Daniel Carpenter 

Dennis was the one who struck it, but he’d quickly backed away, realising that what he was looking at was a small hand. It seemed to him, at first anyway, to belong to a mannequin, though it only took a few moments for him to know with certainty that it wasn’t. Human. Pale. A child’s. He’d dropped the spade and scrambled back. Others on the site with him came over. Was everything alright? What had got his knickers in a twist? Bloody newbie can’t take it in the heat. But then they all saw what he’d seen. Someone called the foreman over, bruiser of a man called Churchill. The lingering scent of cigars that followed him wafted in and Dennis felt sickness rising.

 

Except for the Down Below by Kristina Ten
illustrated by Richard Wagner 

The know-it-all knew it all. Most know-it-alls can’t say that, but for this one, it was true. He knew that a jiffy was exactly one one-hundredth of a second and that owls were the only birds that could see the color blue. He knew that hot water froze faster than cold water, and why, and that a milliHelen was the exact quantity of beauty required to launch one ship.

 

Columns

Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker

DON'T DREAM IT'S OVER

So, how’s everyone doing?

Life may be full of surprises, but even that banal-but-true observation never prepared me for writing a column about horror for a horror magazine while living through an actual horror story. Although we’ve been here before, in plenty of stories, there are still a lot of surprises: the scarcity of toilet paper, of course, but also, who’d have guessed that apocalyptic times would include so much tedium?

 

Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore

GREAT CATCH

One day I was wandering around the internet, as we all do, clicking a link on a page, then clicking a link on that new page, a link on the next page that loaded, like walking through a funhouse maze of mirrors, and came across a video of a dog running backwards in a yard, jaws pointed up towards the sky, mouth open. It was obvious he was tracking a thrown ball’s trajectory in the air, getting ready to catch it in his mouth, to make his master proud of him. After a few moments, the ball fell into view, bounced off the grass. About fifteen feet away from him. I have to admit, I cracked up. Poor doggy. The rest of the video showed him trying to find the landed ball, running five feet past it, sniffing the ground, reversing, missing it again, striking out in a new direction, finally proudly snatching it up, in his yellow fangs, off the lawn.

 

Reviews

Case Notes: Book Reviews

Daniel Carpenter: Thin Places by Kay Chronister, plus author interview • Laura Mauro: These Foolish and Harmful Delights by Cate Gardner • David Surface: One Good Story: A Beginner's Guide to Survival Before, During, and After the Apocalypse by Christopher Barzak • Georgina Bruce: You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce • Mike O'Driscoll: Engines Beneath Us by Malcolm Devlin, Honeybones by Georgina Bruce • Andy Hedgecock: Night Train by David Quantick

 

Blood Spectrum: Film Reviews by Gary Couzens

The Year of the Sex Olympics • Doctor Sleep • Magic • The Mad Magician • The Man with the X-Ray Eyes • Endless Night • Phase IV • Colour Out of Space • Kwaidan • Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain • Beyond the Door • Hammer Volume Five: Death & Deceit • Why Don't You Just Die! • Extra Ordinary • The Perished • The Platform • Best of COI: Fifty Years of Public Information Films

 

Where to buy Black Static

This issue is not available in shops but you can purchase it from a number of online retailers or preferably direct from us at shop.ttapress.com. You might also find it difficult to find the previous issue in shops as many copies are still "in storage". Hopefully before long the magazine will be back in good shops in the UK and many other countries, including the USA where it can be found in Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and elsewhere. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock it they should easily be able to order it for you so please don't hesitate to ask them.

You can also buy a version of the magazine for e-readers from places like Weightless Books (highly recommended), Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc.

The best thing though is to click on Shop above or the link below and buy this new issue, or better still take out a subscription, direct with us. Subscriptions are more important now than ever. You'll receive issues much cheaper and much quicker, and the magazine will receive a much higher percentage of the revenue. No postage charge is added to UK orders, and we send overseas copies by airmail for just £1 per item.

 

Please spread the word

If you enjoy Black Static please blog about it, review it, or simply recommend it. Thanks!

 

Coming soon

Black Static 76 is out in July. Please subscribe now.