7,000 Words The blue pills came first. Robin’s egg blue and smelling faintly chemical when Madeline opened the bottle. Then yellow, and a green the color of scum that grew on the pond her landlord …

5,200 Words The Night Watch was scheduled for 10 that evening, but Jay started his patrol at sundown. With a newly sharpened gulok resting on his shoulder, he ambled down the scabrous road that wou…

4,300 Words There is a lot of blood in this world. A lot of blood. Even if you don’t include insects. Which you should. Why not? Their blood might be paler, bluer, insignificant. But it is still th…

Andrius Kavalauskas, the last magician of Lithuania, closed the door and rested his head against the wood as the nurse’s footsteps faded away. He smelled cabbage and pork cooking from the apartment…

7,000 Words She scrabbled in the dirt, sifting through dust piles, raising turrets and smashing castles. Her hands were coated with grime, the mud dark in the lines of her palms. Pushing her skirt …

1,341 Words You want to fall. You want to fall up, sideways, diagonal — towards the sun, or the moons, or the asteroid field. Out here in the vast pin-pricked black, it all feels like falling down.…

900 Words I am running. I am running and it is good, I am running in the dawn–dappled forest and the new air of the day is sharp and good in my lungs. Listen; the hounds are baying. But not all of …

7,500 Words The first thing the Old Man told me was this: “Sometimes folks just don’t die right.” So I’m gonna tell you a story about what that that means, and I want you to listen real carefully. …

5,900 Words For now, you can still watch Marty’s creation online. It begins with this disclaimer: WARNING: IF YOU VOTED FOR GOVERNOR YVETTE POLSON, DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO. IT CONTAINS POWERFUL SUB…

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…

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…

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…

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 …

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…

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…

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 …

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…

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…

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 …

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 …

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…

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 …

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…

6,200 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…