by John Sara

“I keep a box of ideas stashed beneath my bed; misshapen balls of flesh I cut from my body and mail to my editor. (Um, thanks, but I didn’t actually ask you to do that).”

by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece

“…you know what it makes me think of, those engravings of camera obscura where the outside gets projected in but backwards and upside down, like Plato’s cave…”

by Danila Botha

“Someone told him he looked like Ed Sheeran once, a few years ago, and I saw his lip curl, like he wanted to say something mean about pop stars who look like lawn gnomes instead of looking like Harry Styles…”

by Andrew Eastwick

“Seized one morning by an impulse, Joel parted his hair on the right instead of the left…Though a little uncertain, he convinced himself he liked it. Maybe it was a long-overdue change.”

by Margaret Cahill

“My father’s brain tumour changed everything for me. He collapsed at home a week after my thirteenth birthday and sunk into a coma he never woke up from.”

by Essi Ward

“I had never felt so comfortable in my skin. I looked down at my sloughed, humanoid exterior and felt with astonishment and my brand new pebbled, green skin.”

by Cooper Clarence

“Telemachus froze. Here was an obstacle he had not foreseen—already this morning he was dangerously over-budget on exertions, and now he was expected to haul his own dry goods?”

by Hayden Taylor

“In the backyard, another hole paraded around, consuming plants and fallen acorns. It moved quickly toward the cat. Just as it was prancing around with vibrancy and intention, it was nothing in an instant.”

by Lucian Cubric

“The dog follows, keeping distance, eyes fixed on the shape clinging to his master’s back. He waits for it to release its grip before he attacks.”

by Carolyn Bennett

“She'd add the stub in her scrapbook as a souvenir. She almost skipped as she entered the exhibition, excited yet repulsed to be seeing her mom.”

by Gerald Lynch

“Whatever, I am now paying the price in instant isolation and threatened anonymity. What can be done?…Upset over the absence of responses to my post, I turn to PornPlanet.”

by Daniel Lukes

“They dumped the corpses in the middle of the pool—a beautiful curvy pool with no flat bottom, but scooped out of the Earth like pistachio ice cream—and set them aflame like a bonfire.”

by Swapan Samanta

“He was inside something cold. Metallic. Confined. A refrigerator. When he moved his neck, it creaked. Not bone against sinew—but something brittle. Cracked chocolate.”

by Stuart Watson

“These babies ain’t been nowhere. And you know what? They ain’t never gonna. ‘Cuz their dad’s white trash. Sweepin’ and moppin’ sawdust all day.”

by Loren Niemi

“He may have taken me out of the carnival but the carnival was still in me. The devil you know. Church is another kind of razzle-dazzle, but from my earliest days, I chaffed in the pew, choked on the prayers. Even if I could be that revival miracle, why would I?”

by Vincent Barry

“. . .Yes, I suppose you could say I’m a habitué of the subway. Something about the rocking motion of the car keeps my nerves at bay, keeps ’em from twitching and straining . . . What can I tellya? The New York City subway—it flows.”

by Olivia Cantadori

“He collected me to him, limb after limb, dragged me together. I would have preferred to stay apart.”

by Keith Hinrichs

“As he approached the street entrance to the second-floor apartment, a yellow, tessellated glow appeared, superimposed on his head. The yellow glow reminded Connor of the inside of a spaghetti squash: stringy and overlapping.”

by Frederick Schardt

“Ash jumps ahead toward eternity, thinking he is ending his life, but instead he falls onto the edge of some balcony a few stories below. He is stuck with broken bones, most especially in his back.”

by Daniel Bailey

“So thank God I’m drunk and alone again. Whoever reads this, I beg you—laugh at it. Publish it. Or at least Venmo me enough for a burrito and a medium Baja Blast. Because at Tulane, that’s considered financial aid.”