by Peter Sipe

“There were a lot of jokes about Bill doing a disappearing act. I even chuckled, thinking of him flinging open the lid and shouting ‘Ta-da!’ But when the guys marched down the aisle with their horns, I got teary-eyed along with everyone else.”

by Saee Motling

“I  sold  emotions.  More  precisely,  I  sold  two  emotions:  Love  and  Happiness.  There  were  other  emotions  too—Inspiration,  Confidence,  Hope,  Peace—but  I  chose  these  two.”

by Alex Pugsley

“…he would certainly remember, when, in passing clumsiness, he set fire to the entire box and all the matches exploded in his hand, alarming him, harming him, but at last charming him…”

by Karl Nykwest

“Everybody’s got to have a thing. At least, that’s what my buddy Cheddar Romero used to say. Mine’s wearing a tire.

by Jonas David

“i sat in the metal chair at the metal table outside the starbucks and i was contemplating the birdshit stain in the center of the table which had somehow splattered in the shape of a crescent moon.”

by Cooper Clarence

“Behind me at a distance of thirty yards stood the man with the briefcase. I was used to seeing backpackers…but this man was no backpacker.”

by Michael E. O’Reilly

“…he could run his other business out of the old grocer’s office inside. He needed a new security guard though. The first guy worked out great for a while, but he was too chatty. And way too nosey.”

by Sullivan Rex

“I duck down to the floor and lift the tablecloth to see a huge pool of blood surrounding a severed arm. What the fuck is this?!  I grab the fork and sit up straight. ‘Everything okay, honey?’ the woman asks. ‘Do you want some more casserole?’”

by Kieran Wyatt

“Oscar lingered for a while near the clear water, then pressed his hand down into the soil, searching for a pulse.”

by Isabelle Hughes

“Empty trash bins knuckle the sidewalk. They still smell of last night’s trash like longing. When you have nothing, even your trash can accumulate a sort of sentimental value.”

by Nevin Nahar

“Now I watch, as the thing dissolves from a solid to a liquid. I knot one of her Dior scarves in my hands, and undo them, over and over. The orange flame turns blue under the spoon and the stopper of the syringe moves slowly.”

by Rahel Gamma

“I’ve listened to Yves’ last report. The whole thing. He kept calling the subject beautiful. Said he healed on the table. I don’t know what he saw. But I believe he saw it.”

by Mario Georgiou

“Inside the coffin, Norman shivered. He lay in his favourite suit…He had a bottle of whiskey and three biscuits wrapped in tissue at his side, but it was too risky to indulge just yet. The last thing he needed was a resurrection.”

by Pete Mitchell

“A welcome breeze blew, lifting the scent of the candle across the yard. Citronella was meant to keep the mosquitoes away. The candle flared, the only light outside, now all his mates have gone.”

by JD Clapp

“I turned 55 today, double knuckles, racing headlong into they call the Golden Years. Shit, with the ways things are going, fool’s gold maybe. Happy fucking birthday to me.”

by Neil Randall

“‘This damn civil war has raged on for three long years,’ Tomaz said over his shoulder from the passenger seat up front. ‘The infrastructural damage alone will take many generations to put right. But what it’s doing to the hearts and minds of the people will never be fixed. Believe me. Hatred breeds hatred.’”

by Kahlo Smith

“He dug his fingers into the ground, rooting himself like a tree to the earth that had given him up. Tears welled like mist rolling over Eden.”

by Christina Ellison

“It’s a summer hurrah before your final year of college, the last summer bookended by a school year, the last “real” summer, as y’all have been calling it. A childish conceptualization, maybe, but the notion had been born from childhood routine.”

by Jonas David

“the late Mr Darling had been until his recent and (I struggle to put it any other way) horrifying death, a very competent and renowned taxidermist known for his large collection of blackbirds ravens and crows…”

by Frank Reardon

“The depths layered with sunlight swallowed the skeleton into the deep dark. The cars on the Tobin kept going to and from, horns honked. People screamed out their windows. The church bells chimed over the water. The fishing line began to twitch.”