by Henrick Karoliszyn

“Far behind me and always close, I could feel the shape of the thing Danny wanted for us. It wasn’t a finish line or a list. It was a way to keep going.”

by Vic Brooks

“The only thing she imagined she was good at was being nubile in the eyes of men at least twice her age. She was passable, too, at heart-shaped glasses and bubble-gum pops.”

by Kevin B

‘The doctor was agitated listening to all this. He wasn’t a therapist. His job was to take people who had turned into something and turn them back.”

by Shrutidhora P Mohor

“Arun knows plants inside out. The stem. The skin. The crust of fruits. The pulp…Full lifecycle, he says proudly..”

by Esme Chen

“The memory of his childhood blurred when he left the continent at thirteen, including the years he spent with his father and mother. It was a peaceful remembrance, though.”

Fiction by Hank Kirton

“Lying in a puddle of purple vomit, Lottie von Scrodd interviews herself as if she is a guest on a highbrow PBS talk show.”

Fiction by John Byutorie

“We walked past the empty beauty products …the only products still on shelves being the newly marketed NeauSkin that rolled out a few months ago alongside a robust marketing scheme complete with cardboard cutout of Reese Witherspoon in deadface…”

by J. L. Tyrrell

“This morning the light came through the blinds the same as it did then. Hard, white, pitiless.”

by Thomas M. McDade

“I was so happy with the sad way I rigged their lives that I called my thoughts a short story.”

by Katherine Liljestrand

“When the curtain closes for the last time, instead of the eleven dancers there should be on stage, Camille can only count ten.”

by Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi

“Lucretia stood in the outer schoolyard, looking through the fence that separated her from the scene of the crime she had created two months prior.”

by Joseph Quilindrino Niduaza

“As if in slow motion, Heath spotted the incoming feline, and feeling the need to preserve his integrity, and keep his suit clean from cat hair, he evaded the air assault, but with his ungraceful maneuver…”

by Hil Schmidt

“You always look so peaceful when you sleep.”

by Derek Waulet

“He took one step out over the railing. Then a quick drop, and then nothing.”

by Ben Connell

“As soon as I touched down I was slapped by the heat. I saw a bloke on a scooter with a dishwasher strapped to his back, no word of a lie. Cages full of chickens, horns blasting and funky smells. Pure rabid carnage.”

by Kyle Cox

“He had picked the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He loved animals. She remembered him once, after, going on about jaguars and how strong their bite was.”

by Hank Kirton

“On July 4th she decided to clean her impossible apartment, despite her hangover. Bob's stupid drum set still sat splayed shamelessly in the comer like a homicide victim.”

by Andrew Rai Berzins

“Most of us do things of which we are not later proud. Ghosting a lame date. Prompting an avalanche. Sinking a continent. Or sitting back – beer in hand – dispassionately amused by the antics of idiots…”

by Richard Grayson

“Outside P.S. 15, half a dozen neighbors were gathering the way people do when there’s both danger and uncertainty – half hoping for news, half hoping there isn’t any.”

by CR Widen

“There is a haze over our community- not just the smoke, mind you, but spiritual, a malaise, a sickness. We are missing something fundamental, or perhaps there is a wound we cannot see…”