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My Papa, He Made Me a Frankenstein, Steve Sibra
“So my Papa, he says, ‘Okay Boy, here we go,’ and he gets me by the back of the head and he drowns me in a bucket of rusty nuts and bolts. ‘I keep these around just for this sort of thing,’ he says, and then he whistles while he holds my head down in the dust and old spent metal.”
What You Deserve, Tabitha Pearson
“Everyone is just a repeat of someone else. You even have the same problems as someone somewhere else. That’s why I hear a different voice when you talk. It’s someone with the same life as you.”
At the Old Ball Game, James Wade
“I was pretty happy with myself when I made it back to my seat with at least one shoe and a foam finger that said ‘we’re #4.’ Problem was, the baby on the pitcher’s mound was fooling all the batters on the home team with his dribble ball, and I was getting worried the octopus wouldn’t be needed.”
Omen, Christopher Morgan
“Just after the air came alive / with hunger. Birds fell / in clumps, softly pattering / the ground. Deer shrieked”
How They Lost Us, Eleanor Gallagher
“It was the new girl, April, who told us it wasn’t open revolt that we wanted, but to get away with something right under their noses. ‘That way you can look at them every day and know that they don’t know.'”
Everything That Matters in Life and Death, Christopher Allen
“The company psychologist has a reputation for being a whiny existentialist. How, I ask him, can the dreams of a 911 operator be about anything but death? I don’t call death; death calls me. Every night now.”