by C.A. Schaefer David’s father would be released on the far side of the moon, away from the warm metal of his car, the rain-ruined...

by Patricia Patterson There’s this game I used to play with my kid sister when we were as far from death as we could be, before she went...

by Robert Yune The gargoyles on the roof hoist overflowing bowls above their heads, transforming the drizzle into a whimsical blessing....

by Cherish Collins I’m not claustrophobic. I’m not… or wasn’t, but I’ve been stuck here for hours now and I’m starting to think I am....

by Susan McCarty The zombie apocalypse took everyone by surprise, not because it was very different from all of the movies and books and...

by Jacob Paul You unbutton his third (or is it fourth?) shirt button down and clutch a fist of his chest hair, right between the two blue...

by Amber Sparks When Death came and started it all, the people on Earth had already drawn close together to wait for spring. The trees...

by Manny Loley Shimá sipped from her can of Shasta. “Hastiin lei jiní, łah biniye náánáshdlah,” she said, laughing. “Like he took another...

by Daniel Takeshi Krause We had to take a step, hold a pose, take a step, hold a pose, on and on like that to get anywhere.

by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer “And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” — Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

At Work by Steven Dunn Sarah said my sister’s name, Sha’Queesha, was a made-up name.

by Ryan Bradford The day the man appears in the field, Mama says, “Oh no.”

by Julia Dixon Evans “Are you ready?” Samir asks, not looking up from his phone.

by Erika T. Wurth (from Buckskin Cocaine) For some reason it’s the sound of the big, grey van door sliding shut on her face that dusty

by Lee Ann Roripaugh At fourteen, you were completely obsessed with The Bell Jar.

Lance Olsen (excerpt from My Red Heaven) Every evening the dead gather on rooftops across the city.

by W. Todd Kaneko Metalhead swaggers through the mall, a giant crumpled and stuffed into a sixteen-year-old boy’s scrawny frame.

By Jenny Ferguson I’m watching him at the bus stop. Smells like piss, but this is the only place out of the rain, under here.

by Sina Queyras Michael’s eyebrows arched perfectly. I was sitting in the McDonald’s on 152nd with my brother, Jerry,

by Carleigh Baker (Excerpt from The Matriarchs) Ember draws a portrait of Mademoiselle Morin on the foursquare courts with a piece of stolen

by Ambika Thompson Remember when we drove out to the coast to see that whale carcass? my sister asked on the sixth or tenth call I’d had