BOOK REVIEW - Cynthia Gómez's The Nightmare Box and Other Stories

Resistance is the beating heart of Cynthia Gómez's debut horror collection The Nightmare Box and Other Stories. Oakland, California provides the backdrop for this collection which leaves no stone unturned as it examines queer, Latine, Black, and working-class struggle in the region through a Twilight Zone-tinged looking glass. Despite the darkness, the ultimate goal seems to be to uplift, offering hope in the darkest of situations under oppressive forces. The message that links these stories suggests the greatest strength against evil is in living authentically. That isn’t to say these are stories of optimism. There are no sunshine and rainbows, but you might find a few happy endings, bloodstains and all.

I first found myself wowed by Gómez's work in the acclaimed Split Scream Vol. Two (available from Tenebrous Press) where she contributed the first novelette, “The Shivering World,” a dark feminist take on the familiar La Larona mythology.  With a little shame for being late to the party, I have to admit The Nightmare Box is my first experience with Cursed Morsels Press but given that they advertise being anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, and pro-queer, I suspected their output would align with my tastes nicely. The Nightmare Box delivered. 

The titular story of The Nightmare Box sees a witch in 1970 questioning her hired role in crafting nightmares for a mysterious government agent who can easily be read as an FBI/CIA man in black, but it isn’t until she has to gather intel for crafting nightmares herself that she notices the pattern of Black Panthers being targeted; a pattern she’d previously let herself look away from, but now it won’t leave her conscience.  A particularly enjoyable read is “The Teachers’ Association” about a young teacher, Esther, with PTSD returning to the classroom with a new position at a prestigious inner-city college prep school where the majority of kids are on the free lunch program.  Esther is quickly made to feel like an outsider as any shade of individuality is stamped out by administrators, and there might be something even more nefarious at play.  “Someone Else’s to Destroy” sees a young woman watching her cousin struggle to raise Black twin boys in the backdrop of the racial violence that dominated news headlines for much of the 2010s (and decades prior as well), and the unusual way she’s finally able to keep them safe.

Rich sentences saturated with drama, history, and character fill this volume, making it hard to walk away from.  Codeswitching and identity as a theme run through many of these stories, almost every character lives as multiple people in multiple worlds and this is most evident in the list of names each of them adopts.

Several of the stories come with a endnote highlighting the real-world facts and atrocities that inspired the tale.  The effect is similar to how Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah wielded footnotes in his novel Chain Gang All-Stars; what you’re reading may feel larger than life, or fantastical, but real life is often crueler than fiction and if this doesn’t seem real to you, consider yourself lucky.  A favorite footnote comes from my favorite story in the collection, “A Kiss to Build Dreams On,” a story in which Gómez has chosen a fictional 1940s gay bar to serve as the setting.  The bar wasn’t an invention, the footnote informs, but a missing piece painstakingly assembled from research to fit in the jagged hole ripped in history by the claws of erasure.   

The Nightmare Box offers a variety of perspectives and plays with many genre traditions ranging from the horrific to the fantastical.  There are monsters, ghosts, witchcraft, magic strangers, and demons; but there are also human monsters whether they be cops, crooked school admins, racist rednecks, abusive foster parents, or just the darkness within us.  If middle-class people aren’t the monsters, they often enable or feed them and it is the vulnerable who find their communities as prey but Gómez’s stories suggest they can win.  

 ---

Supporting independent publishing is more important now than ever.  With major publishers consolidating, pushing AI fiction and generated covers, I can think of no better time to make space for independent voices that challenge our assumptions about the world and shine a light on the things the mainstream might ignore.  Take a stand, send the message that you want real voices curated by real people talking about real issues.  Cursed Morsels Press seems like a fine starting place to me, and you can start by preordering The Nightmare Box and Other Stories before it releases on July 9th, until then Cursed Morsels has plenty of reading for you to catch up on like their Why Didn’t You Just Leave haunted house collection releasing this month.  Be a winner and support independent horror.

            I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Sign up to receive email updates or to comment and tell us what you think. Follow Nocturne on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.