Dead Silent
by Leah Cypess
Shanna leaned over the edge of the ferry, watching the water turn to white froth as the boat plowed noisily through it. She loved looking at the froth. It coiled and swirled angrily for several yards around the boat’s bottom before dashing out against the gentle swells of blue-green water beyond. Shanna glanced once at the gray-green line of mountains in the distance, then returned her gaze to the water.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with that child!” Her mother’s voice, from two seats behind, was barely discernible over the roar of the ferry’s engine. “Look at her. This is the first time she’s smiled during the entire trip.”
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Addy In My Mind
by Eugie Foster
Here’s a question I never thought I’d ask myself: what’s worse, being on the lam from a guerilla gang, or flying cabin class through turbulence with someone who’s bits to bollocks terrified of being in the air?
The zipper plane pitched again. It was kind of fun, like a motion sim at a rec park. I was betting Adrienne wasn’t big on thrill sims, though. Her fingernails dug into my arm for the umpteenth time.
“Addy,” I said, trying to keep my voice ride-the-mellow while all the nerves were hopping and screaming from my elbow up. “Can you maybe pick a different part of me to claw at? I think that arm’s hanging on by strips of willpower.”
Adrienne’s eyes were bright blue balls of oh-help-me-God.
“Sorry, Kristof.”
I extracted my arm from her death clutch and checked to see how many arteries she’d severed. Not even one, couldn’t believe it.
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The Center of the Universe
by Eugie Foster
With a class numbering only seventy-two, my high school reunions were more like family get-togethers. The class of ’83 was a demoralizing family though, filled with peers like distant cousins who knew me when I was gawky and spastic, excruciatingly self-conscious in my metamorphosing skin. I’d avoided them — classmates, reunions, my estranged family — easy to do when I lived four states away. But, as with other family gatherings, it was death that brought me back home to my twenty-year reunion: Marc’s funeral.
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Clapping for the Fairies
by Sara Genge
You crack open the dusty curtain of the motel room window and peer out at Green standing on the curb. Lighting isn’t a priority in this part of Oklahoma and from where you stand she looks like any ordinary prostitute, indiscreet in her trench coat and flashable lingerie.
She will kill again tonight, that’s for sure. She will kill because you didn’t have the guts to pull the damn trigger. She’s a rogue and she kills people. You’re a hunter and you kill rogues.
The issue should be simple.
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Pretty Little Thing
by Sara Genge
Claude
She was a pretty little thing, lithe, dark. She swung her hair just so, without a care in the world, not a hint of tension to betray the danger of the situation, a young girl taking the metro at night, alone.
I imagined she had a boyfriend. She was too hot not to. What kind of man would let her walk home alone at night? Some teen kid, surely, someone who didn’t know what the world was like or didn’t value her enough. If she were mine I’d protect her. I’d help her onto the 25 kph conveyor belts so she wouldn’t have to take off her high heeled shoes. I’d accompany her home. That’s what a decent man would do.
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