Shirt and Tie | Laurel DiGangi

"Her torso was bent forward, her nose almost touching the tabletop. She made small, frantic motions with her fingers, as if rushing to knit a sweater for a pet gerbil or create a tiny tapestry for a dollhouse wall..."

The Third Floor | Emma Wilson-Kanamori

"Something is wrong with the third floor. I have nightmares about it..." Emma Wilson-Kanamori is a writer, artist, and dancer who grew up in Japan and currently resides in Scotland.

Things Begin to Happen at a Faster Rate | Kara McMullen

"Even before it started, the journey felt like a snake: something undulating and coiling and predatory. Later it felt like—nothing. It began on a humid-thick and warm spring day with a woman sitting on the wagon facing west..."

July | Freyja Hellebust

"The city during the summer is golden and dripping, syrupy slow, and the days taste sweet, like clementines or peaches, the juice running in sticky rivers down forearms, chins..."

Septimus | Lucie Bonvalet

"Septimus had always had a fondness for cephalopods. The poetry of suction cups, the grace of tentacles, the strangeness of their beaks, the mysterious flexibility of their heads..."

Disorientation | Suman Mallick

"I wanted to stop worrying about the Scylla of finding new donors like the businessman and the Charybdis of salary reductions and cutting our already meager staff, and I wanted to live a little while there was still living to be had..."