Welcome to the Nightmare Magazine Story podcast.

Enter freely and of your own free will.

I am your humble host, Terence Taylor, when very much at home with the children of the night.

Stay close as my muse, the medieval demon gubern guides us down into beautiful darkness.

In this episode before our following story, we have a poem, The Neighbors Cat, written

by Kevin Vargis and narrated by Stefan Rednicki.

At first, a word from our sponsors.

And now, Stefan Rudnicki.

The Neighbors Cat by Kevin Vargiz.

Writing this piece felt like a hard look in the mirror.

I wanted to be honest and vulnerable about feeling helpless,

about the true cost of being a bystander.

So I anchored those ideas to the time in all of our lives when we have almost

no agency or power. KV. Caught in a net, under the cruel leaning of his knee, it hissed and spat

like a ball of snakes or a frenzied Medusa.

I thought to say something, but instead felt prisoner witness to a scene

pasted down into the yellowed, stabbing grass of my neighbor's lawn.

Purpose unspooled.

This bag of daggers cried out.

This inert chaos privy only to the tyrant whisper,

nudging it vile and slow to death.

And I thought to say something,

...