by Robert L. Penick

“Soldiers found him on his back, eyes staring through the broken ceiling at blue sky, as white doves flitted, freely, from rafter to rafter.”

by Jacob Wrich

“Over and over, he drops the balls, each time only able to juggle briefly before he drops them. The vultures encompass him in a broad circle, hopping and spreading their wings.”

by Johnny Byutorie

“‘Holy shit! Did you see that kid kill Joey!? What the actual fuck fire head emoji’

‘It was an accident! They were trying to help; don’t blame the kids, blame whoever installed faulty junk into our school red angry face emoji’

‘Those poor kids must be traumatized angel baby emoji’”

by Mark Daniel Taylor

“The murderer is lost, directionless—he will be looking for guidance…He’s not asking God who to kill next, he’s asking for redemption.”

by Joshua David Bellin

“If our practices are guided by rationality and theirs (seemingly) by magic, who can say at what point the former might not have evolved from the latter? Who, indeed, can claim a monopoly on reason?”

by Samantha Szumloz 

“After three slaps, specks of blood eject out of his mouth, splattering onto my collarbone. His body goes limp. Alarms blare in every part of me.”

by Kim Farleigh

“Describing unprovoked attacks as preventive actions constituted “justice,” enabling the powerful to override intra-suburb law…“The bastards do whatever they fucking well like and call it whatever they fucking well want!”

by M. G. Mclaughlin

“Her fingers cramped from the frantic pushing of buttons and tapping of light pulses. She rubbed them. She looked down at her hands. Hands that mixed water and cold air like Mother Nature to kill.”

by Mattia Ravasi

“After I got stuck in the record I crash-landed in a dark, raging ocean. I had no idea where I was, nor how far the water stretched around me.”

by Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi

“Someone who wants to be accepted as anything but what they are perceived to be, must open themselves up freely. That never happened. She didn’t want it to.”

by Peter Harris

“It was never a range conspirators who were in control, he realized. The puppet master pulling the strings was always the vast, omniscient presence of time.”

by Willow Nichols

“I hear a clock ticking but have no idea how much time is passing while I lay trapped in this human refrigerator.”

by Matthew O’Brien

“The layoff and divorce combined to form a fault line in his once rock-solid confidence.”

by Cleve Lamison

“A final act of devotion. I fingered her trigger until she climaxed a third time…It was explosive.”

by Cristiano Cardone

“The phalluses wrapped around me, and I was dragged under the block, dissolving. In the end, I was a big hypocrite, trying to escape from what I was breathing and living.”

by Allister Nelson

“God comes hungry to your table. The crops have rotted. Tins of bean, ash in the cornbread. He asks you for food.”

by Neil Randall

“We have a 0.0% success rate at present, and of that we are immensely proud.”

by R.P. Singletary

“SLAPPED any hell or heaven, come piss and shit, life out of the man-boy whos-whispered-whose? Collapsed and somehow exploded (somehow??), his head hitting loud and fluids of every shade of b.i.o.l.o.g.i.c.a.l.s. across the shipyard-emptied stones.”

by Natalie Hammonds

“What was the point of her being able to go inside of her skin but not able to change anything?”

by Daniel Sheen

“It feels like the end of the world. But whisper-quiet. Less like catastrophic thunder and more like a slow unravelling, like an old sweater comin’ apart at the seams.”