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

Torquere

He lifted the pages, aligned their edges with three sharp thwacks, bound them with a butterfly clip, put them into a manila envelope, and twisted the waxy string around its button of cardboard. He locked the memo in his cabinet and then the door to his office. He said goodbye to his secretary and the security guards and walked through the doors and down the steps.

Lesley Howard
 

I Opened the Window
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)

I imagined the children locked away behind closed windows and doors, ignoring their studies, tormenting their mothers—and likely fathers too!—with their new skipping song: I had a little bird, its name was Enza, I opened the window, and in-flew-Enza!

Heather Pegas
 

Dissociative Anesthesia

That almost-friend's name was Clarence, but Clarence preferred Al, after his middle name. Arthur had visited him often over his last few months. In sharp contrast to the time-obliterating tube lights on his ward, the administrative offices were lit by claustrophobic orange domes hanging low over glossy desks, all of it lending the rooms a sense of anachronism and control. The desks and the floor were made of the same artificial wood. Al had a private office at the back of the wing. There were no windows. Curated calm dampened everything, a synthetic blanket. When Al died, Arthur found his body, the room filled with the smell of Al's shit and a hint of rotting flesh, an abrupt tear in the usual antiseptic stench permeating Arthur's whole life.

Jake Stimmel
 

Samson and Darby

Darby met the mayor once. She and Meg went with their momma to city hall last summer after their water had been cut off for failure to pay. Their momma contended it was a mistake, that she was signed up for automatic withdrawal. She stubbornly wouldn't concede automatic withdrawal wasn't a cure for insufficient funds. Their momma asked her girls to come along, said she'd like the company, but Darby knew they were pawns to garner sympathy, that their momma hoped to get the water returned without paying the balance owed and the ridiculous reconnect fee. She needed a little mercy, and having rarely received any herself, put her daughters forward in hopes they might warrant some.

Eldridge Thomas III