5,000 Words They were naked, now, on a dirty mattress. “Neither of you have eaten or drunk anything for twenty-four hours?” Ryan asked, hauling equipment into the room: sloshing plastic buckets, pa…

5,200 Words “No school today,” Melanie’s mother said. “No playing outside. If you have to go into another room, you tell me so I can go with you. Can you do that?” Melanie nodded. “Does Christopher…

RT @apexjason: Nothing worse than a tomato thief. Read Ursula Vernon's Hugo-nominated novelette at @apexmag https://t.co/uWIn2yHRcE

5,300 Words Palmer was standing at the counter in Chichen Itza Coffee at nine in the morning when he spotted the next big thing. He’d pushed open the blue-papered doors minutes ago to find himself …

1,900 Words Today, I remembered soursops for 46 seconds. Well, I say ‘remembered,’ but it was more like I bought myself a few seconds of pain-filled pleasure, plugging into some dead guy’s memory f…

4,900 Words Maggie was sitting on an old packing crate by the docks, having tea with a lobster she had named Miss Snips, when Father O’Grady approached her. She heard the light, smart click of his …

5,800 Words Author’s Note: The story of Rawhead and Bloody Bones originated in Europe but migrated to the American South and underwent a local transformation. The definitive folklore version is lik…

4,700 Words When you ask most psychics why they don’t just learn the lottery numbers and play them ahead of time, they’re going to tell you that’s not how it works. You can’t just get the numbers. …

4,500 words Men wear hats outside. Black for the winter, brown for the summer. Hat brims are three inches wide. Once a man marries, he grows a beard but shaves his upper lip. Unmarried boys must be…

4,000 Words As the world marches toward the guillotine of its finale, the sleeping beast shakes loose the slats of its painted unthought and licks the tang of dénouement from its fangs. It stirs up…

7,900 words Shadoua arrived early at his home, just after midnight in the full planetless darkness Kutraya’s farside enjoyed, a darkness he was all too aware of on this night. Only a farside astron…

1,800 words He rests like frozen time in the coffin—his face embalmed to wax, his cheeks flushed to rouge and an ever-sparkling smile on lips I’d kissed only days ago. Family and friends file by hi…

4,300 Words HIRONORI Sun, Dec. 1, 08:57 Want to meet me at Lawson’s? Kasumi’s funeral is today. Oh, sorry, Yukiko. I forgot. How about tomorrow? I can’t think about that now! My best friend just di…

8,200 Words Philip K. Dick — American author (1928-1982) of many novels and short stories. In later years Dick began to believe he was in touch with a cosmic intelligence, which he called V.A.L.I.S…

Thank you all—faculty and students, deans and provosts, Ms. President and our board, community members and honored guests for coming today. I suppose I’ll begin with a few prefatory remarks about t…

6,200 Words I am on fire. Around me smoke and orange sparks spiral upwards. I feel the heat deep in my titanium bones, but there’s no pain. For a moment, I want to fight the instincts that scream a…

6,700 Words You can listen to our audio edition of this story here. nude woman, black veil, seated on the stairs she uncovers her face she sees me. — from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall I go…

6,000 words On Sunday when Dolly awakened, she had olive skin and black-brown hair that fell in waves to her hips. On Tuesday when Dolly awakened, she was a redhead, and fair. But on Thursday — on …

4,100 Words Two dozen seemingly identical chips rested atop small black stands, displayed on the shelves like treasure. James reached into the wide rosewood cabinet to inspect one of the pie…

8,000 Words I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. We’d take the train into Boston, and go to The Garment District, which is this huge vintage clothing warehouse. Everything is arranged by …

2,100 Words It was even larger than we realized, half-buried in the cove’s sandy beach. Scales the size of cars covered its sides; the smokestacks running from nose to dorsal fin towered above the …

5,800 words 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…

5,000 Words 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 grat…

14,400 words One: Bird Aptrick’s Word Bird Aptrick said an awful word. There are big curse words and little curse words in anybody’s language. A little cursing isn’t hardly cursing at all. A child …

9,100 words Cam finds Pham Thi Thanh Ha in her house, as she expected. By now, she doesn’t question the aunts’ knowledge or how they came by it. She does what she’s told to, an obedient daughter be…

5,900 Words “You never wait to see if it’s really dead,” says Samantha, leaning over the small arsenal configured in pristine rows on the linoleum. “Because, you know, it isn’t. You just put it dow…

5,200 Words Corporal Carlisle Beckett had known from the beginning that teasing the truth out of forty-six (at last count) verses about the Ardua County Sniper would permanently engrave the lyrics …

10,200 Words 1. Colt was playing cards when trouble crawled in through the door, in the shape of a dead man who didn’t yet know he was dead. This was on old Venus, ancient and most decadent of plan…

4,100 Words People call him the Gentleman of Chaos, but he is not gentle. By popular count, he’s assassinated thirteen kings, seventy-two princes, one thousand nobles, and five queens. By popular l…

For Bea LaMonica and Gillian Hastings 16,100 Words Beatrice did not wake up in Heaven. She lay flat on her back. The surface beneath her was hard as concrete, maybe bouncier, like those playgrounds…