by Jennifer Benningfield

“When I die, I just hope someone worth a damn gives a damn.”

by Melvin Sterne

“I deduce from this that he was not popular in high school or especially good at sports – all traits that channel people into police work like here at the agency.” 

by Brandon Yu

“Some of them take severed ears, scalps, and thumbs from dead VC and make necklaces out of them, which—even I have to admit—is a little tacky.”

by Arthur Aronstein

“There were giant marble vulvas, impressionist fungal stalks with colorful throbbing veins, clitorises crafted with coils and still-life circumcisions. Patrons surveyed these works with hands over their children’s eyes, jaws slack, none stopping to look at the painstaking detail invested in each one.”

by River Lucero

“And anticipation together, like sharing blood and breath together and shimmering in your chests together and BOOM! And BOOM!”

by Ace Boggess

“The fight started right in front of her in the pasta aisle. Mary Ellen wasn’t close enough to hear if words had been exchanged…Everything was political, even the act of picking out linguini.”

by Zary Fekete

“He calls the future water alive. She looks down at the rope-burned rim of her jar and thinks, Alive isn’t always the same as easy.”

by Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi

“Elena’s gone, and she’s not coming back…She left a clear reminder that happy people aren’t happy. Not all the time.”

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.”