fiction
Crown Her With Many Crowns by Fariha
Show Me Your Fangs by Crystal Odelle
I Have to Be the Hottest Oracle at the Shrine of Dodona for Some Reason by Cody Sooy
Frogs to Come by Jackie Vondross
poetry
Psychoterratic Sculpture IV & XVIII by Adda Farcus
sculpture
Sebastian, Penetrated by Pablo V. Cazares
Plus six original cover illustrations by Adam, Evangeline Gallagher, Hal Schrieve, Lillie J. Harris, Malachi Lily, and Rani Som.
Dear Reader,
Given the current demand for horror in literature and pop culture, as well as the intensifying horror of living through the onset of the U.S.-Israel war on the world, it’s hard to believe that horror wasn’t much on my mind when smoke and mold began in 2019. At that time, I still defended myself from horror. Both the allegations that I wrote horror and the darkness that threatened to consume me. There are those who seek to drown out the horror with positive vibes, and those whose instinct is to overwhelm it with more darkness. I never really fit into either camp. I tabled that discussion and went for a walk in the woods.
But the problem with treating nature as an escape from the world is that when things get dark—when the devastation gets so thorough—nature can’t compete. A forest can’t counter all the darkness and suffering in the world. When it becomes impossible to find the same level of retreat in the natural, when the same balm once sought there is now nowhere to be found, the world feels darker for it. Our crisis at discovering the lack is enough for us to lose our enthusiasm for all that is not us. Maybe this sounds overblown, but it feels very true about the moment we are in in the world. And then, when you live under a regime that sees ecocide as a viable tactic of war and population control, how do you reckon with that?
According to the stories in this thirteenth issue, the solution is not to escape into nature or retreat from it but to let it overtake us. To sit very still and let it scratch out a home for itself among your internal organs. To let it change you, shape you, in whatever way it sees fit. This might be considered horrific to some, but to the trans writers and artists assembled here (and many others throughout our back issues) this is the desired outcome. This loss of a self, these changes to the body, are considered pleasurable. Not uncomplicated, not without suffering, but an improvement nonetheless.
Trans eco horror isn’t transcendental camouflage. Content warnings abound. This is true desire to live inside of decay, inside of the smoke and mold that have come to live inside our airways. This is horror that aims to rewrite the position of the trans human, of the trans body, within the networks of “natural” entanglement. So enjoy this 13th issue of trans eco horror, become one with the centipede inside, and I’ll see you on the other side.
— Cal Angus, Publisher, March 2026
For this issue, we commissioned six trans artists and illustrators to create six unique pseudo book covers for the six pieces of fiction featured here.
