by Johan Smits

“From within your dark enclosure, you had heard him counting the banknotes…the magic glue that keeps the world together…An ideal god.”

by Tim Hanson

“For one moment, the bully was sitting atop his prey, and the next, something green was gripping his face—a hand, a claw, something with fingers, one of which was sliding effortlessly into the pulpy white mush of the bully’s right eye.”

by Christopher Hallenbrook

“The Lady carried herself with an effortless old-world elegance that had exited this age a generation or more before she entered it.“

by Jayson Carcione

“Soon the Manhattan skyline will be invisible behind a veil of white…His wife places her open palm against the glass of the window. She thinks everything is beautiful in the snow.”

by Alison L. Fraser

“The stench is emanating from inside Arlo’s locker as we pass it on our way to lunch. I glance towards it, and she notices me.”

by Kenneth M. Kapp

“Dead and gone. I’m getting colder. No pain though.”

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.”