by Christopher Kostyn Passante

“The cobalt light first appeared outside Caelan’s window the night Evie went through the ice. A small orb no bigger than a butternut and shrouded in updrafts of blown snow played at the witch window in the guest loft of their half-Cape…”

by Jon Wesick

“After taking the escalator to the basement, he set out lutefisk and loaded the coffee machine with K2-cups. Addicts filed in and arranged folding chairs in a circle. A man in a sombrero stood. ‘I’m C.D. and I’m a lawncare addict. I’ve been six-weeks clean.’”

by Joelle Killian

“Whatever those chemical wizards add during synthesis to create this effect always leaves you with glitter-snot for days.”

by Michael Holtzman

“Her hand rested at her side, fingers curled around a heavy key. In the hour between the dog and the wolf, the key slipped free and dropped slowly down the long well of a waking dream, striking the metal bowl beside her chair. The sharp clang broke the spell.”

by William Jennings Chalk

“…narcissists are difficult and self-centred to the extreme, but they are not actively trying to hurt you. Malignant narcissists, on the other hand, take pleasure in causing others pain, they enjoy your suffering.’

by D. C. Martin

“The kid looked up at him and squinted at the light. Telford saw himself in the blinking reflection of the kid’s eyes. An angry old man with a sledgehammer raised above his head.”

by D.J. Huppatz

“Cruising back to Nassau after my arrest and subsequent release for obstructing a bulldozer in the last Irish rainforest, my thoughts turned to the fate of the high-vis goons who smashed the forest’s fairy ring.”

by Olivia Ardine

“I left work that day somehow more satisfied than usual, feeling like I had done something good for the world. This was not a feeling I had daily, not a feeling I experienced by following the schedule.”

by Craig Demi

“The picture taking didn’t last long. How could it? We were bus drivers, not supermodels.”

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.”