Quick Sips - The Dark #61

Art by grandfailure

The June The Dark Magazine brings a pair of stories that revolve around objects that come to carry a certain kind of power. That link our world with...something else. The first involves a bowling ball--and while that might seem like a setup for a joke, I assure you it’s not a funny story. The second centers a zoetrope, an old kind of moving picture device, and one that seems to be reaching across the mortal plane. Both stories feature people who feel helpless in the face of a hungry violence they witness. Both feature people who have to decide what to do, and how much they can do to escape, or fight back. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #70

The pair of stories from Nightmare’s July issue focus on people trapped in situations where they don’t have a lot of power, mostly because of their age. They weigh in on opposite sides of the specrtum, though, one character made vulnerable because of his old age, put in a home where he might be preyed upon at any moment and aware always of his own approaching death. The other piece focuses on a young person in a stifling household, living with rules that aren’t designed to protect him so much as to make his parent’s life easier. In both situations, the toxicity of the environment manifests in ways great and small (and sometimes furred) and forces the characters to choose if they’ll stay and try to face them or try to escape from a power they might not be able to defeat head on. Let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Chorazin / Fotolia

Quick Sips - Nightmare #34

Horror takes a look inward in this month's Nightmare Magazine. Two stories, as always, and two that are linked by the shared theme of the inside leaking out. Of the repressed finding its way to the surface. The first is a story of people lost physically, the second the story of a man lost emotionally. In both situations, the added stress the situation brings leads them to breaking down their barriers, their controls, and transforming. So let's get to it!

Art by Dennis Carlsson