AT THE WELL by Nathan Grover
Perhaps by now they weren’t the most well-adjusted people they’d ever been. Perhaps by now they’d become, even to themselves, a little strange.
SLINGER JESUS by J M F Casey
He held the baggy towards me, flexing its mouth, wafting the pungent vapours. It was barely a ‘teenth, not worth 30, but I bought it.
CIAO, TRIESTE by Christine Kwon
The screaming and kissing seem to come straight from the id, from the desire to suck out a man’s soul and leave him a desiccated shell.
LOVE IS A HOT STOVE YOUR HEART KEEPS TOUCHING by Jeanine Skowronski
And so, you are here, you are here, you are waiting, frost-bitten and sun-stroked; you are waiting for a warmth that you think, that you know, that you think that you know now will never come.
THE SWAMP PALACE by Jake Lancaster
There’s a boardwalk to the water through the swamp and the swamp is full of white birds on skinny orange legs and there are plastic bags everywhere and Dew bottles and it smells like we’re in a Roman candle fizzing out—that smell, what do you call that?
THE TORTOISE AND HIS PROBLEMS by Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya and Wes Holtermann
Hours spent nude on plinths in those drafty rooms, and only one painting had ever done him justice.
THE PROMENADE EXPRESS by Lauren Baker
On bad days, I fantasized about taking a sledgehammer to the train. I knew where the security cameras were (and weren’t).
ARMS by Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind
Pink light oozes in; just like that, it’s day, and I sigh because nothing bad can happen during the day. It’s a rule, and we don’t break rules.
ENDLESS VIOLENCE AT APlusAtHomeDialysis.com by June Martin
Sunlight glimmered off the van’s undercarriage, rays of white and blue and golden light mingling in beams and flares captured by the helicopter’s dazed camera. The police took potshots at the minivan as it soared past them.
CONFESSIONS OF A WINGMAN by Kyle Lung
Well first they sent chimps into space. Then men. And now they say humans will not walk on mars. I’ve heard they’re saving that for robots.