By Michael Coombs

The sky sweltered over their heads with the coming of a new moon. The tinkling of glasses and the dull hum of soft music surrounded them. Ms. Cheers sat across the table, her thin hands folded together tight. Mr. Buck, Tracy’s owner, sat to her right. He was trying every trick he knew to sell her to Ms. Cheers above market value.

Tracy had come into Mr. Buck’s home as a new TRACR Companion Unit, fresh off the show floor. He was a single man with money, and he had brought her in to sweep the floors, wash the clothes, cook the meals, and watch TV with him in the evenings. The relationship had never been inappropriate, though Tracy knew enough of the world to realize many would assume this. But Mr. Buck rarely touched her at all. He’d only wanted her there with him, until today.

By Anthony Ceschini

My son’s sock drawer has been keeping me up at night. 

If I slept, it might be better. If I dreamed, I could give shape to these thoughts, hold them, discard them at will. But the closest I get to sleep is when he, my son, is at school. No footsteps, no slamming doors. My hands ride the tide of my gut and, like a starving fisherman, I begin dozing. And then I feel a tug, not on my finger, but deeper inland, and I’m looking at the ceiling, and all I see is his—my son’s—dresser, clothes poking out, each drawer agape, except one. 

Just so you know, so it’s out there, I absolutely love my son. I love that he’s more like Karla than me. Not to say that, if he were more like me, I would love him any less for it. It’s more of a constant relief, seeing him unburdened. 

That’s three times I’ve used the word “love”. Add thirty more, times a thousand, and that might show the work he’s done on me. 

By Ben Cogan

As the long arm of my clock slowly marched to its scheduled meeting with the number twelve, I noticed that the pink light of the faeries that radiated up from the garden at night had begun to diminish. In fact, it hadn’t been there for some time now. 

Sitting patiently and cross-legged on my bed, I counted down the seconds until my tenth birthday and got increasingly wary that the monster who had taken up residency underneath had been rather quiet of late.

My prying eyes wandered across the pictures on the dimly lit walls of my room, art prints and movie posters, and acknowledged that they had grown reluctant to writhe and contort in the shadows like they had of old. Even the towering piles of folded laundry I’d neglected to put away refused to gain the anthropomorphism they usually adopted under the cloak of night.

By Bethany Bruno

The pool filter hums all night. I used to think of it as a heartbeat, proof the place was alive, but now it sounds like a machine trying to remember how to breathe. Half the rooms stay dark. The neon sign flickers C I TR US M O T E—one letter short of collapse.

The boy showed up before sunrise. He sat on the curb with a backpack in his lap and a stain on his sleeve that looked like orange pulp. When I asked where his parents were, he pointed toward the orchard behind the fence.

I knew what happened there. Everyone in town did. ICE trucks rolled in at 2:00 a.m., lights off, engines low. By daylight the grove was empty except for dropped lunch boxes and a rake leaning against a tree.

By Jesse Salvo

I guess the wheels really started to come off me and Tom after the thing with the food. I don’t think Tom could get over the thing with the food, and it really set him on a bad trajectory. We’d married young too, which maybe is incompatible with how people live now. But everybody thought it was a really good idea then. My dad, who’d not emerged from his study for most of my childhood on account of, he said, “spiritual rheumatisms” had, upon meeting Tom, given me only that one piece of advice: “Marry early.” 

Though he hadn’t specified I should marry Tom precisely, but given the context, his comment seemed to indicate it. My mom had said Tom seemed like a solid guy. Those were her words exactly. “Solid guy. Not a Publishers Clearing House type pick, but…” She seemed to think I couldn’t do better. I didn’t think I could do better, either.