Intrigue is our game. We play it well. It is all we have. She steps out of the pub with smoke on her lips, heels in her hands. A flicker of gin hides behind her eyes. Her interest meter is low, except for a seed of fear. She has not posted anything … We Are New(s) | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2G8ZuNf

I reach the dairy mid-way through my morning rounds, expecting to find Mary hard at work inside. But the simple wood structure is silent. I knock on the door. “Mary? It’s Karen. Are you there?” Nothing. All three milking devons watch me from their p… Work, and Ye Shall Eat | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2sw9zyk

You wake up to your phone crawling across your face, buzzing hard against your cheekbone. Snatch it up on muscle memory and the little plastic cilia retract. The screen is achingly bright, needles your eyes. Squinting, you see an avalanche of notifi…

The woman you go to see for your reading isn’t old, but her eyes have aged more than her skin as if she’s seen horrors but hasn’t learned to hide them. Her name online is Butter, and you see why. She’s a punkinskin, her complexion high yellow and do…

Rhett Walker had always been a creature of unsettled dreams. When he woke on one particular night, somewhere in the dusty nowhere of west Durango, he couldn’t quite remember what had caused him to bolt upright, breathing heavy and screaming his thro… Asylum of Cuckoos | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2qaK8kF

Five knew two things about Brother Ted Gunderson: The man loved Jesus, and hated his own son. Five was never allowed to call him Father or Pa. via Pocket Clap Your Hands | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2GuNFCd

When we gaze up at the heavens, we see exactly what one sees from Mother Earth: the resplendent, teeming stars and beacons of civilization flickering in the darkness. via Pocket The Heaven-Moving Way | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ExNsZf

A Priest of Vast and Distant Places | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2p8a4dB You are on a plane again. An Emirates flight, this time, the dusk-dark ceiling seamed with false stars. via Pocket

The sign outside Hello Design Coffin Works read, FOR SALE: FANTASY COFFINS. But the little girl imagined more ominous words floating just below the other letters, “Ababuo Need Not Apply.” via Pocket For Sale Fantasy Coffins (Ababuo Need Not Apply) | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2NXJ5uV

Not everything that’s missing was taken, but once it’s gone, it’s gone, ain’t it? There’s nothing to be done about it now. What isn’t dead is burned to the ground. What isn’t mourned is barely remembered. Forward, then. Since you think you know defe… Mother Jones and the Nasty Eclipse | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2jWwhZ6

Ginny’s hand is on Cal’s face. She’s smiling with red-rimmed, squinting eyes. The bedroom is tuned to a light blue-green and her map of Cuba has been shifted onto the east wall, between the two windows. via Pocket Stars so Sharp They Break the Skin | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2HHsA3H

1957 | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ypuKBE It was a bright day in May, and the clocks were striking twelve. I had no idea why I’d been summoned to the Head’s study. Dr. Treadwell had four clocks there, each a present from a grateful pupil. We heard the chapel clock everywhere in Dean House, …

Cottage Country | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2pGDQ9u I had come into some money and with it, purchased four hundred acres of land. I signed the lease in early fall, when the forest was a patchwork quilt of color. It was old-growth outside of Sudbury, east of the airport. via Pocket

There weren’t many three-bedroom houses that a single woman could afford.  1532 Lachmont Drive was an exception.  Built in the 1930s from masonry block, it sat in the middle of a line of houses that had once been very similar to it. via Pocket