The cauldrons are a-bubbling, and the trees have made themselves all pretty: let’s do this. Welcome to Issue 114!

Jennifer Ruth Jackson kicks things off with a poem that perfectly merges season and mood, “Inertia of the Noon Wraith.” I have no better hook for Seth Geltman’s “Might Have to Lose It” than his one-sentence cover letter: “It’s about a prickly flag salesman who gets attacked by a cat in a Subway restaurant.” Next up Gale Acuff’s speaker explains “There’s nothing I love better than Jesus” (with a few small qualifications), and Colin Kemp tells of a frugal liquor store patron’s memorable encounter with “The Garbanzo Gangster.” Joe Bishop delights with sound and unexpected imagery in “Medley for My Banshee,” and L. Breneman shows how a glitch in the matrix isn’t always a copy cat; sometimes it’s “The Songbird Thing.” Plus creepy cover art “Dark Monster” by D1/The One.

Isn’t October just the best? Frighten it online or scare up the .pdf.

One theme that leaps out in Issue 112 is vision, both in the literal sense of sight and in the deeper sense of perception and an artist’s imagination. There are people gazing inward and peering outward, people regarding the traumas of the past and the possibilities of the future without blinking, people looking in the wrong places and seeing too much or not enough.