🍄 🫶

Cover for The Deadlands Issue 42, Spring 2026. The image shows a pale figure with curled arms and hands laying upon a graying forest floor. A yellow lichen creeps across their hands and face, obscuring their eyes.

COVER

Do Forests Dream of Plasmodial Creep

art by @dorywhynot.bsky.social

FICTION

In This Corner of the World by @aeweisgerber.bsky.social

The Dog by Phoenix Mendoza

Lurid Parts by @aquaticteal.bsky.social

What the Trees Took Back by Marvin Garbeh Davis, Sr.

NOVELETTE

The City in White by @dianadima.com

POETRY

No Mother to Replace by Nosawema O.

After Messiaen: A Quartet for the End of Time by @rblemberg.bsky.social

We’re Running out of Numbers for all this Counting by Kelsey Dean

it's TOC'o Tuesday! 🌮

and here's your issue 42 table of contents 🖤💀

including a NOVELETTE

are you ready?

/

Eyyy! Thank you so so much to all the readers and voters -- ONE MESSAGE REMAINS is in some AMAZING company with collections this year! (Including my exceedingly brilliant agent-sibling @thomasha.bsky.social !)

💀

*checks calendar*

next week we have a Table of Contents 🌮 drop for issue 42!!!

do we have the ultimate answer to DEATH, the universe and everything???

stay tuned

and hey, help us keep the goodness going! Join our patreon 🙏🖤: www.patreon.com/the_deadlands

it truly makes all the difference!

*checks calendar*

next week we have a Table of Contents 🌮 drop for issue 42!!!

do we have the ultimate answer to DEATH, the universe and everything???

stay tuned

and hey, help us keep the goodness going! Join our patreon 🙏🖤: www.patreon.com/the_deadlands

it truly makes all the difference!

"A Prescription for Suicide" by Anya Leigh Josephs “What are you going to do, do you think?” Euphemistic, carefully casual. Mary-Anne doesn’t want to come right out and ask, Are you going to take it? even though of course that’s her question. Even though she’s scraped Dikra out of enough crises to know that will always be the question. controversial pills / ethical debates / at what cost, freedom?

Story preview! Third story in FF#27 is "A Prescription for Suicide" by Anya Leigh Josephs. This one's for you if you're into:

-heavy but fascinating dives into the ethics of world-changing inventions

www.fusionfragment.com/issue-27/

A lovely cover entitled The Deadlands #41, with a path leading up to a skull, or perhaps a skull-shaped hill, and a lone traveler.

Just arrived, my author’s copy of @thedeadlands.com Issue 41, featuring ‘The Skull of Francisco Xalbec’ by yours truly and a collection of excellent poetry and short fiction by other fine writers. More info - and more stories - at psychopomp.com/deadlands/.

The Skull of Francisco Xalbec - PSYCHOPOMP.COM Every time I died, I received another coin to place in the skull of Francisco Xalbec.

Many thanks to editor @vajra.me and the fine folks @psychopomp.com. My story can be found at:

I'm so slow, but NO ONE TO HOLD THE DISTANT DEAD by @klschroeder.bsky.social is a haunting elegiac wonder, a slow dream of empty skies that asks the only question worth asking- what is to be done?

"Let the dead rest, and fight for what we still might be able to save.”

Beautiful unflinching work

are we human or are we dancer?

are we 🪽monkey

or are we centaur

but make it ostrich?

🫶

a fantastic list! ✨

check it out!

and read Phoua Lee's complete poem, "in which Orpheus is a Hmong daughter" here

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

biiiiig friday stretch

how's it going?

need something....GRAVE?

we got you 🫶

psychopomp.com/grave-goods/

Sole - PSYCHOPOMP.COM Will this letter reach you? I don’t know yet.

"Sole" by Aliya Whiteley in @thedeadlands.com, a sorrow spiralling inward in search of its own name. (Unrelatedly I recently picked up Whiteley's latest novel on the recommendation of someone on here and now I'm really looking forward to it - thanks, whoever you are!)

🖤🖤🖤🖤

WOW

DO IT

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

AMAZING

COINS

MORE

!!!!

Our 2026 mushroom skull coin with a bunch of black envelopes.

Coins are starting to ship from @thedeadlands.com. Be on the lookout for your mysterious black envelope. 💀✨️

The Breeze & the Black Door - PSYCHOPOMP.COM I heard some movement at my front door / but it was just a storm.

"There’s nothing out there beyond the fence
except the old house and the woods.

Nothing to be scared of, I guess."

OUR FINAL piece of issue 41!

The Breeze & the Black Door by Mack W. Mani

read and enjoy here:

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

The Breeze & the Black Door - PSYCHOPOMP.COM I heard some movement at my front door / but it was just a storm.

"There’s nothing out there beyond the fence
except the old house and the woods.

Nothing to be scared of, I guess."

OUR FINAL piece of issue 41!

The Breeze & the Black Door by Mack W. Mani

read and enjoy here:

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

This interview is one of my most honest and upfront. I also wax poetic a few times bc I’m old. Anyway, thank you Shingai Njeri Kagunda. Great questions!

You Build Your House on Your Father's Corpse - PSYCHOPOMP.COM You build your house on your father’s corpse.

"You walk down the hill to draw water, and you have to watch your footing. Navigating your father’s corpse is a perilous affair."

TODAY, beloveds!!

a new story for you 🖤

You Build Your House on Your Father’s Corpse by Sadoeuphemist

read it here:

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

🙌🖤

a giant skull on a mountain

a golden skull on a pile of coins

Don't forget to check out @thedeadlands.com for some excellent stories. The skulls demand it! :-)

Here is a pair of covers I illustrated- oil pastel, acrylic paint and digital colour. Fun to design a themed set!

#art #horror