by Kenton Schmidt

“My phone vibrated again. Movement detected. For a moment I thought the camera must be glitching. Then the new video loaded…”

by Aditya Bhatia

“She says I’ve never convinced anyone of anything in my life. When I told her that she said that she said she said no such thing; she said I was making things up, as usual.”

by Cooper Clarence

“She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she crossed to the bedroom door. She had never been a pretty teenager…but this morning a one-eyed horror looked back at her.”

by Ben Clark

“Harold didn’t give a single, measly fuck about what R&D wanted. The same two sanctimonious assholes sat across from him at the Dr Pepper-stained conference room table just as they had every other week for the past couple of years.”

by Melissa Feuerstein

“Mr. Heads just took the stand and the crowd holds itself in a kind of ceremonial stillness, like nobody wants to miss the second this hardens into history.”

by Bryan Charles

“The night, the music, the moment—Everything slipping away—My curse: always lamenting the inevitable end of whatever moment I am in—The days running away from me, the years—I am forever in the past—”

by Patrick Johnston

“He fights knife-handy sailors in basement dive bars. He duels with ancient flintlocks and effete fops. He holds the smell of sweat and blood and breath and shit and fear as he braces in the shieldwall, friends and enemies intimately close in living and dying.”

by Oliver Cubillos

“There was something sharp that stabbed my foot like some kind of hot needle. I must have started to scream. There were tears in my eyes, and I felt close to drowning.”

by Thea Lloyd

“The sheets parachute over my corpse face and I let out a death-rattle sigh.”

by Mahen Nadesan

“[The boy] had recently reached an incontrovertible conclusion about his romance with the drug: it was killing him, and when it wasn’t killing him, it was distorting his perception of what life he had left…”

by Cameron Sheffield Noyes

“I’m confused and ask if Addison is dead or just kicked out of the sorority. Sarah replies, ‘What’s the difference?’”

by Joanne Merriam

“…let some drunk smash your face against a dashboard leaving you horribly disfigured and you too will discover that you can do anything, and nobody will say a word.”

by Jensen Young

“The alien invasion came on March 6th, 3134, when pinball machines still outnumbered humanity two to one.”

by Holly Baldwin

“Helena looked down and realized she was indeed holding a whip, bloodied and ancient as herself. She dropped it in the umbrella stand.”

by Nayt Rundquist

“Juniper was lost, but not hopelessly. She wandered the cool dark of the forest, focusing all her attention on the stretch between her shoulder blades that rippled with frigid electricity when spirits were near.”

by JB Malory

“Several sections of the ancient prison’s labyrinthine basement had flooded, forcing the warden to shuffle prisoners to the upper floors, putting five men in cells meant for four. Uncertainty hung in the air, and a cramped, oppressive tension made the inmates yearn for a rare glimpse of the outside world.

by Shaharzad Warkentin

“A blinding light disrupts the dark. At first, I think I am staring into the moonlit sky, but as I sit up my fingers find the worn velour of our familiar couch beneath me. The brightness dulls, taking the shape of a rectangle. The television is still waiting for an answer to its Socratic question….”

by Grace Raidan

“Some nights, I watch the cat back from inside my apartment, staring at its unblinking yellow eyes. When the night gets so dark that I can’t see the outline of the cat anymore, I begin to think about the skin on my knuckles, the lines of my palms.”

by Pavle Radonić

“For some light entertainment the night before there had been the cricket broadcast from South Africa for the finale to the series. The radio seemed right at this former British bastion.”

by Cooper Clarence

“A gust of breeze blew through the window and ruffled her hair and pushed her dress against the backs of her legs, billowing it out in the front. When it died the fabric fell back again. She saw me looking and smiled, her black eyes sparkling and wet with the remains of her tears.”