(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Falling Away

I don't like them, but Sung-Joon loves them. He watches as I squeeze the soft shell between my fingers, follows the path of the husk as it falls to the pile. Then I see the familiar anticipation in his eyes as he waits for me to proffer the two small jewels I've extracted.

Cynthia A. Kim
 

A Threnody

Sometimes, the blue ball of light dips viciously towards the earth—it dives and screams as it goes, down, down, down to the heavy earth. And when it gets there it kills. Oh yes, always. Sometimes it's a single hit—a child dies in a womb, or is crushed with a tipper truck, or burnt black and brittle in a careless fire.

Rohana Reading
 

Dead Leaves Driven

The capital is seventy miles away and we're only making ten or twelve miles a day. The artillery starts up behind us in the early morning and only stops at nightfall. We're running out of food and water. We can't trust the village wells: they're a good dumping place for corpses.

Tom Brennan
 

Mapping Charlotte

"My name is Zelda," she would say in her deep, soft voice, without laughing, as though it were true. I would stand by her side and feel, not crazy, but younger, stronger, more capable in my own life because I was married to a woman with such spark and imagination. I never acted like a normal husband and asked her why she did this—perhaps it would have been a good idea to have done so.

Susannah Indigo