by Ronita Chattopadhyay

“She was done with being quiet and submissive. “I will become tough,” she said out loud. She gulped down the remaining water. And then she noticed it – a crack at the bottom of the glass.”

by Lior Locher

“Neutral face, clean-shaven. Eyebrows neat, hair lined up like a platoon. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. You both know the deal.”

by Jake Creps

“It’s been 25 years since I took Sammy’s life but only 6 days since I understood why. Maybe not why but how. The story I told everyone was a lie.”

by L.G. Reed

“The coffee shop looked different as Rob Winkle approached it after a restful nap…Was this a dream? Maybe he was still on the couch, asleep.

by Mika Nadolsky

“I love you!” Gem shouts, and she is running. “I want to be you, ingest you, consume your blood and piss! I want your mind and body, and I want to feel it on me like my own flesh!”

by Richard Alured

“It all started about a week before when I’d stumbled from bed and down to the kitchen and discovered a scene of great negligence: five empty beer cans on the floor, crushed at their centre, dregs refracting on the linoleum, wildness.”

by Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi

“The nightstand leaned slightly forward, and Izzy glimpsed her legacy as the dead meat filling of a floor-and-nightstand sandwich. But the nightstand had other plans…”

by Hil Schmidt

“She was an adorable child, though a sensitive one to be quite frank. She seemed to consider me to be a sophisticated creature, and I believe I filled that role with ease.”

by Ika Bittern

“The body in the open casket is smoothed over, waxy – as if, if you cut it, it would be the same all the way through. As if it never had any secrets.”

by Daniel Deisinger

“In July, her parents found her drowned in the creek. Her body floated in the weeping willow's shade.”

by Kyle Cox

“He grips my chin and I open my mouth, slow to stop myself, but stop myself I do, just before a word slobbers out. Maybe my last one. This drug, whatever it’s called, makes my mind wander and it makes me slow.”

by _­­Michael Czyzniejewski

“_­­Whisenhunt explained he’d just learned the word Hello hadn’t been invented until the early 1800s, and for decades, was considered vulgar slang, big-time commoner talk.”

by Elijah Cansler

“The noon sun beats down mean on the school bus Two Bikes calls home. He lies sleeping in it, red and peeling all over except for where his skin is covered by the cargo shorts that he hasn’t taken off for some weeks now.”

by Davor Mondom

“a Vessel’s tenure varied. Great effort was made in the selection of the pool of potential Vessels to ensure that a Vessel could serve as long as possible…Of course, you could plan only so well against the Illness.”

by Maisy Phelps

“At 4am I keep on driving and the radio speaks to me. To me? I meant to hit my motel around 4 hours ago but I got that lonesome sunk-cost kind of lost that no map can rectify. Unless a body might be willing to break a law or two.”

by Shrutidhora P Mohor

“…inside that demolished heap, is a pair of tiny, helpless hands, fingers curled up, nails light blue, the skin as thin as muslin, a premature blue baby whose survival was questionable right from the moment of its coming.”

by P.X. Vayalumkal

“That day, Molly and I entered a long, almost never-ending darkness. It felt like searching for a light switch in a room where none exists, then realizing there’s a string hanging from a light bulb that you have to pull and when you finally pull it and hear a click, nothing happens.”

by Seth David Parker

“it’s the most potent form of psychology. I pull levers. Put ideas in people’s minds. Put words in their mouths.”

by Zoey Knowlton

“Those same lights would be illuminated in green for the next nine months, just as soon as Danielle’s womb was transferred from her body to the freshly placed gestation unit.”

by Yuna Kang

“I blink, and Rella leaves my bathroom mirrors. I blink again; she finds a new home in my bedroom corner.”