HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!

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Check out what's happening in this month's news:

• Word of the Month: horripilation
• New Releases: IT ENDS WITH HER: A Sapphic Horror Anthology
• Flash fiction: "Message in a Bottle" by David O'Mahoney
• Unsettling Truths: György Dózsa and Creative Medieval Torture
• Forest Market Feature: A Slightly Stranger Point of View by Hannah Birss

WORD OF THE MONTH

horripilation (noun)

hor·rip·i·la·tion
hor-uh-pi-LAY-shun
/hɒˌrɪpɪˈleɪʃən/

1: a bristling of the hair of the head or body (as from fright or excitement) : goose bumps

Can be used as a verb, horripulate.
The Devil's Reign reads like a memoir with a supernatural element designed to entertain and horripilate the reader…

NEW RELEASES

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Love blooms as swiftly as it devours.

Pull back the layers to delve into the devotion and longing, the lust and the love, the triumphs and tragedy in this sapphic horror collection.

Featuring stories by Rebecca Bennett, Samantha Bryant, JJ Carpenter, Alchemy Dawn, Cat Delani, Wren Handman, Mirella Higuera, Toshiya Kamei, C. A. Larkin, Frey Lylark, Ren Mercer, Kassandra Morgan, Liz Pinto, Liddell Rayne, Chantell Saunders, David M Simon, LB Waltz, Annabelle Wang, and Rachel M Wilman, as well as illustrations by Matsubara K., David M Simon, Nik Sylvan, Dona Vajgand, and Kuza Vampire.

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FLASH FICTION

"Message in a Bottle" by David O'Mahoney

Dad’s rattling around the basement again, knocking things over and shouting at the mess. It happens every time he wakes up, and he’s been sleeping less and less.

“I only cleaned the place yesterday,” I shout down the stairs, but the only answer I get is a ferocious crash against the door; he might have thrown something, or he might have thrown himself. “Come on, I never did this to you.”

One more thump against the door—reinforced with whatever metal sheets I could scrounge up—and he goes quiet, though I can hear him shuffling about and sniffling in that growling sort of way he’s had ever since he lost his nose. He never liked it anyway, said it was too big. Now he doesn’t really say much of anything.

It’s common enough at his age. His mother was the same. My mother left before we could find out, but I don’t blame her. Who’d want to be a nursemaid to the living dead? Then again, she was a grown adult and was certified clear of infection, I was sixteen and didn’t even have a passport. So Nurse Frank to the rescue.

It wasn’t so bad at first. The infection was slow to start—it was six, seven years before Dad’s speech really went, though he’d lost all his fingernails long before that along with two of his toes. Once the rot sets in, there’s no getting rid of it, only slowing it down.

I’ve never chained him up. I’m not an animal. Friends of mine have done it, as have friends of theirs, but it just doesn’t seem right. But I’ve always been an organic, free-range sort of person, and it reminded me of those battery farms for hens or pigs. Once he was fed and watered, he’d settle down and sleep for two, three, even ten days at a time if the meal was right. It was only when the rot got to his brain—and when so many people in the city had died or been quarantined—that I had to put him in the basement.

Don’t judge me. I can almost see the look on your face. It was the basement or the government meat wagon, and you know what they do to the dead. If I could have kept him upstairs, in the living room where we used to play Mario or something, then I would have.

But he was roaming around doing too much damage, knowing he was supposed to know things and in a blind rage when he couldn’t recall what those things were.

All the neighbours are gone. There was a big outbreak and for a day or so the army was overrun, but eventually they brought the snipers out and levelled half the houses nearby. I’m in a cage now, like a free-range hen myself. I couldn’t leave him, you know? And I couldn’t let them shoot him down in the basement either, though a nice lieutenant from Virginia offered. I think he was sweet on me, but I just couldn’t do it, and on he went to some other hot zone. You know the law: the dead are still citizens, technically, and Dad was sleeping and no threat to anybody. The Red Cross throws food over the fence for me every Sunday when I can manage to steer clear of the roaming dead; they swarm about like packs of dogs without a leader.

I’ve been coughing something awful these past three weeks, though. I’ve been careful, so careful you wouldn’t believe it: thick leather gloves all the way up to my biceps to stop scratches, a hockey mask to stop him getting to my face. I even pulled out all his teeth when he started getting on so he couldn’t try to bite me any more.

It’s only been passed on by physical contact until now. Bites, mostly. Other ways too. You’ve no idea how many husbands have passed it on to their wives and vice-versa after a night upstairs. No such joys for me. No, I’ve been keeping myself to myself, feeding him possums and crows and whatever fool animal happens to wander into the traps.

But lately the animals have been steering clear, like they know what’s up. So I’ve had to let him have a bite of other dead ones. Just small bits, you understand. Enough to keep him ticking while waiting for… I don’t know, a fox or a badger or something. Makes his breath stink even worse than usual—it was sticky on me for two days straight after I fed him last.

That couldn’t be it, could it? No, they’ve always said it can never get airborne.

But still, I’m sick. Getting a bit fuzzy in the head. I lost the fingernails on my right hand yesterday. This morning I looked at myself in the mirror for a solid ten minutes before I knew who I was.

Even if it has become airborne, it’s not supposed to spread this fast. I don’t even have anyone to ask for help. Just you, if you read this after I throw it over the fence. Provided the bottle doesn’t break and let the rain in. But we all live in hope, don’t we?

Because if I go, who’s going to look after Dad?

If you’re reading this, could you let him out of the basement? As a favour to me? You don’t even have to feed him. Just let him roam free to join the pack. I might be there waiting for him.

Just hold your breath. You wouldn’t want to catch your death now, would you?

—

David also has a story, Inheritance, that can be read in our Twisted Trysts anthology!

David O'Mahony is a horror and dark fantasy writer from Cork, Ireland. He has had more than 65 stories published or accepted across the globe, with his work finding homes with Dead Fox Publishing, Cloaked, Temple Dark Books, Graveside Press, Dragon Soul Press, Rogue Planet Press, Dark Holme Publishing, Wicked Shadow Press, Emerald City Ghosts, and others. He has written non-fiction at irishexaminer.com, where he is a columnist. He is the author of two collections—The Ties That Bind (2024) and What Gets Left Behind (2025)—and the forthcoming In the House of Sorrows. Find him at davidomahony.ie or threads.com/david.omahony

UNSETTLING TRUTHS

What first comes to mind when I say medieval or the Middle Ages? For me, it comes down to religion, blood, and torture. Now, I don’t know what that says about me, but if you take a second and look, that’s mostly what you’re going to find. The Middle Ages were famous for things like torture devices, war, and the Crusades. Jeanne d’Arc, one of my favourite people in history, is from the medieval period. (Not witch trials, though, which might surprise you. Not that they didn’t have them, but they weren’t popular until the Early Modern period, which ranged between 1450-1750 whilst the Middle Ages were between the fifth century and the fifteenth century. People in medieval times were actually more prone to being skeptical of witchcraft, which is kind of wild, right? One step forward, three steps back.)

Today, I am going to tell you about someone named György Dózsa and how he embodies the medieval period in a lot of ways.

A lot of personal details about Dózsa are guesswork. His birth year? His place of birth? We can make educated shots in the dark, but that’s all they really are. Let’s just say he was likely born somewhere in the 1470s and that Romania has been suggested as his place of birth. He may or may not have been part of an important clan, and I could give you a million other maybes that historians argue about, but let’s skip all that and get to the interesting part.

On the ninth of March in the year 1513, Leo X was elected as the new Catholic Pope. His concern was driving the Ottoman Empire out of Europe, and to do that, he published a bill that began the infamous Crusades. In Hungary, where Dózsa spent most of his life, the kingdom warned that they weren’t really equipped to assist in something like a major war. Simply: they didn’t have the money nor the soldiers.

Dózsa comes into the story because someone suggested that they use peasants as their soldiers. Untrained, unpaid, working themselves to death to pay off land debt that would never actually be paid peasants. Though they weren’t ideal, they had passion, and how hard is stabbing someone, anyway? (Don’t look at me like that; you knew what I was when we began.) All they needed was a leader. Whether Dózsa was chosen because of his mid-level breeding and his experience fighting or because the original leader turned out to be too violent (this will make you laugh later), it doesn’t matter. Dózsa wanted to be in charge, and in charge he was placed.

The peasants, numbered at some forty-thousand or so, went upon a crusade. But it wasn’t a holy mission against the Ottoman Empire. No. The peasants were disillusioned with life already, irritated at the way the world worked for them (or didn’t), and that they weren’t given any real military support. So, when their landlords demanded they abandon their church-sanctioned duties and return to harvest their crops?

Yeah. They said, “You know what? We’re tired of this.”

And Dózsa famously said, “Works for me.” (That is not a verbatim quote. Do not @ me.)

Though Dózsa was immediately ordered to stop recruiting when it became apparent there were tensions between the nobles and peasants, he kept going. I’m going to assume he was a charismatic and intelligent man, as he gave many speeches where people would join right then and there. Their life before? Forget it. It was all about getting revenge from within now.

Though Dózsa was not without some sympathy—nobles who freely submitted to whatever demands were made were generally given some sort of parole—there is no doubt that he led, encouraged and participated in the horrific torture of any nobleperson he and his crew deemed too vicious or greedy. This wasn’t just about killing the men, the ones actually in charge, either. Dózsa promised they would treat the nobles as they themselves had been treated: that their heads would be hung, their houses destroyed, and that their wives and children would be killed. (And we all know where that kind of frenzy tends to lead…)

Unfortunately for Dózsa, he may have had the numbers, but what were ill-prepared peasants against heavy calvary? Hungary found some to spare, apparently, to quash the rebellion, which had lasted only a few months. Which actually brings me to the point of this story: Dózsa’s death.

Dózsa would get as good as he gave in the end, and it is very important that you check your sources when it comes to his demise, as accounts vary. Either way, it’s horrific, but if you go by people who were actually there, then this was his fate:

He was forced to wear a molten crown, a mockery of the grand leader he considered himself to be, and he was strapped to a chair. The men who remained loyal to him were put into a state of starvation and then offered only one meal: Dózsa himself. That’s right. His own men ate him piece by piece whilst he still lived. Which do you think would have killed him first? The hot metal crown upon his forehead? Or his men picking his flesh and bones apart in a savage frenzy? Some say he made it all the way until someone finally got bored and just cut him into pieces, letting him bleed out.

That is the truth of Dózsa’s death if you’ve done your research correctly. It is not, however, the version that is better known. This version was written much later by people who were not there, and anything not mentioned in the previous paragraph was never discussed by the people who were.

In this version, Dózsa not only gets a molten crown, but the seat is hot, too, and in his hand is placed a burning scepter. Bigger is better, right? This version also states that it was nine starving rebels who were led to Dózsa and that they were led by his younger brother, Gergely. Dózsa begged for Gergely to be spared, so they did exactly what you probably think they did…and cut his brother into three pieces. They then removed some pliers from a fire and pushed them into Dózsa’s skin, tearing his flesh. These were to serve as markers for where the remaining eight hungry rebels were to begin their meal. Three or four supposedly refused and were dismembered like Gergely had been, but the rest complied and Dózsa wound up dying of his wounds.

… okay, the second version is pretty metal and I can see why it would be preferred. But people there actually recorded a scene just as horrible. Either way, we get a crown and a meal. (Does that make Dózsa the first instance of a Burger King?)

Though people in the Middle Ages still had so far to go in learning things and progressing as a society in general, Dózsa’s case proves they were pretty imaginative, and one could almost say advanced, when it came to thinking up ways to bring a person pain and ruin.

Moral of the story? Arm your peasants better, my friend. And maybe don’t get captured by people who are of the same mind as yourself when it comes to punishments.

—written by Hannah Graves

FOREST MARKET FEATURE

Our Forest Market partner feature this month goes to Hannah Birss and her first horror collection! Now's the best time to read it so you can prepare for the sequel coming soon from Dead Fox Pub.

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