All Clear | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JQetcW Translated by R. Orion Martin When the security alarm rang out, Zhang Dong was at the very peak of the village, thinking about family. Recent bickering with his father had left him smoldering with resentment. Maybe it was just as Liang said—time to …

When Amelia turned fourteen, everyone assured her that she’d find her fairy soon. Almost all girls did. You’d find a fairy, a beautiful little fairy, and catch her. via Pocket Field Biology of the Wee Fairies | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MOGbge

Jerena hung up after listening to the on-hold loop six whole minutes. She knew those needle-sharp mini-shrieks ending each repetition were supposed to annoy her. “Well guess what? They worked,” she told her mousy-grey cat. Human Services had won ano… Luisah’s Church | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2wQp1Hx

Rose is ten when the blacksmith’s son pushes her into the river. She lands badly, rocks scraping her knees, tearing her palms. Her dress is cold and wet against her skin as she drags herself out of the water.  Her anger forms a hard lump in her thro… The Sharp Edges of Anger | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2EzMBXX

My granddad used to tell me that there were only two things he was afraid of: sharks and somehow finding himself in Iraq. I am on my way to, of all places, Baghdad. For a long time Iraq was synonymous with violence and mayhem. Grandad didn’t live to… The Standard of Ur | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Ep9pP9

My brothers imagined themselves the first to speak without mouths—their fingers blood-pricked from learning how to pass a needle through lace—but it was only my mother and I who could understand the heaviness of the things we could not say. via Pock…

Current cuts like sunlight. Electrons leap across nanometer gaps. Switches flip and circuits close, triggering a cascade of motors, sensors and other subsystems. Auditory inputs pick up random background noise consistent with the synthetics boutique… Cold Blue Sky | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JZlo3G

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…

The water runs lukewarm with that familiar chemical sting that all recyc water has. It cuts off after exactly one minute, making the pipes knock. It echoes deep inside the station walls. It’s exactly 06.00 hours, Earth-time adjusted. via Pocket Irregularity | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2I5oGCF

Have you lost me yet? The trick question, as if I am something to be found and kept, locked in your chest of bones. Yes, I implicate you. But you realize, eventually, that I am but an ellipsis in your running narrative. An unspoken thought. Niño, yo…

In our village, they say evil waits in the uterus like the night cranes before dawn, like a wound in the earth, lying broad between thighs, dropping things made of sunset, as phrased by my poetic sister, who wholly agrees with this. “Mara, this is s… Murders Fell from Our Wombs | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2J1V4pb

If I dream I dream of being electrocuted. You wouldn’t believe how gently it begins. via Pocket

The night she came back, the Cut bled dimensions off onto the City … like every other night. Sinclair was ready for that day’s sunset. He’d been ready for the longest time. via Pocket Symphony to a city under the stars | Apex Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2mAJeJa

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

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

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

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

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

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, …