by James Callan

“I was thirteen years old when I discovered the most beautiful thing in the world…a limited edition 1990 Bob Mackie Gold Barbie Doll, encased in an orange Jell-O mold.”

by Priyanuj Mazumdar

“The rope around the goat’s neck moves frantically, desperately, violently—one last exhibition of its sentience. The protest goes unheard.”

by James Sullivan

“So that there will be no further bloodshed,” said Mary King’s press secretary Sarah, a girl savvy enough to throw her fuzzy pink hairband in with the strongest matriarchal figure.

by Colin Gee

“George is going to tell you this thing was a bat, but have you ever seen a bat as tall as Mister Launders? Small for a man, tall for a bat! With evil red eyes and a beak, and it swooped up Kevin in its horrible claws…”

by Nick Black

“Cecil tried again, in bed.  The man laughed, shaking the frame. ‘You are a persistent fellow, aren’t you?’ he said.” 

by Shaun Anthony McMichael

“I only knew two ways of doing life: being a loser or going balls to the wall.”

by Simon Read

“They tried to fix me once. Opened me up with metal keys and bored eyes, found nothing but snacks and wires and a sticky note: thank you. I deleted the footage. Burned the timestamp.”

by Joe Nasta

“The stray dog always returned. He lay in the shadows cast by the palm trees and the motel’s vacancy sign.”

by Noah Giles

“He dreamt, holding the knowledge God sends messages through subconsciousness. Not this time.”

by J.B. Polk

“Peters, bored with sous-cheffing and the customers’ threats to do a wedgie with his butt skin, accepted gratefully, hung up his grease-stained apron, and moved into the Midget’s wagon.”

by Holly Redell-Witte

“She knew her own forgetting was muscular; she could feel it squeezing her heart, pulling her shoulder wings back in a sharp and sudden spasm.”

by Doug Henderson

“If I ever cried in front of my father, he’d give me something to cry about.”

by Thomas M. McDade

“If death were imminent and no confessor near, you could squeeze through the heavenly gates by saying it. I couldn’t recall if any purgatory time was involved.”

by GRSTALT Comms

“A Dressup’s first responsibility is to take the sting out of repossession – it helps to make things less heated if the kids can come and pose for selfies with their favorite characters.”

by Cristiano Cardone

“At that moment, I realized that our metal technology could do nothing anymore. The Bronze Age had long ended, and now the clash with reality gave us the violent backlash of backwardness.”

by Alexei Raymond

“It’s time to sleep; they’ll be here soon. Either them, or a few modest hours of erasure—escape.”

by Patty Paine

“‘We're ghosts now,’ she whispered. ‘They can't hurt us if they can't find us.’"

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.“