Storybook Romance, Eirik Gumeny
“The knight doesn’t notice the sugar-fed delirium in her tiny green eyes, the unstable fury proclaiming that one day, one distant day, all the men she comes across are in for a world of hurt.”

Squirrel, Tom Hutt
“All this fun-and-games ended abruptly, however, when I encountered another squirrel who, in a rather angry tone, said: ‘Chi chi chi chi! Cha cha cha cha!‘ Roughly translated, that means: ‘Yo, asshole, this is my territory! Can’t you smell my piss?'”

The Puzzle, A.A. Garrison
“A new piece came daily, all vaguely sulfurous and depicting darkness. One was lurking in the mail, thickening the pile. One came from a toothless beggar to which Laura had donated, the man only smiling and nodding when questioned.”

Hey, Brother, Zac Goldstein
“The biker nodded solemnly, and I thought that’s all I would get out of him, that he’d go back to door-watching and threaten me to leave him alone. Instead, he leaned further back against the wall and stretched and drew in his breath. ‘Listen, bud,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to tell you your business, but if I were you, I’d go up there and grab a pillow and finish it. That’s what I would do.'”

Bazaar, y.t. sumner
“Jay used to write morbid poetry about death. He told me after we did it that life would never measure up. I didn’t listen at the time. He was always saying weird shit and I was too focused on how gross and painful the sex had been. When he passed my stall I wanted to take his hand and touch his pale blue face. I wanted to tell him I finally got it.”

Back and to the Left, Ryan Werner
“Aside from his relations with Marilyn Monroe and being the most powerful man in the United States for a little bit, JFK wasn’t the luckiest guy around. He was accident prone, more than anything. Still, he kept his humor. He’d call me a few times a year and say something like, ‘I just slammed my hand in a car door. First I get shot in the head and now this.'”

Church, M.R. Lang
“Dan was one of the diner’s first patrons. He walked in one Sunday morning, not knowing the church was now a diner. He was only in town visiting friends and meant to go to church. The owners told him he was more than welcome to kneel at a table and pray to the sketched Madonna. He did.”

Slow Betty, Jason Shults
“She kept bees in her backyard and grew marijuana in a dozen bright ceramic pots on her front porch. It was a regular jungle up there. Some thought the fact she grew it on the front porch was a sign of defiance, but those who knew her knew she wasn’t so much a rebel as a fatalist, who chose to keep her secrets on public view, since — in her experience, at least — they always ended up there anyway.”

Inspiration’s Well, Kevin Tosca
“There was something subversive `50s about it, something Beckett might have scribbled down in a notebook and later sold to collectors, something that appealed to Jamie from head to toe. It pleased him, the him him, so he gave himself up to it and became the phrase’s puppet, as it were, using it in every interaction with strangers that followed. It was all he could say. It was all he wanted to say.”

Cover art: Forgotten, Octavia Hunter