“By 7am the Room Was Ready” by Cristian Flores Garcia

I met her at work. I was five years younger than her, and shy. She always smiled, was loud and outspoken . . .

“Lazy Gangsters” by Jen Kitses

Officer Leon James slipped out the back door of the Quayside Oil Company, where he worked part-time as a security guard on the overnight shift. In his hand was a paper bag containing the cold meatball sub that he brought from home but had forgotten to eat. Instead, he’d spent his break dozing in an office chair, his chin nodding toward his chest . . .

“Off the Record” by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

She came up to me in the parking lot behind the Slung Rig after the show. The lot reeked of piss, puke, and exiled pizza scraps. Even the rats were too finicky to troll around this Hamden hole, where headbangers and punkers partied or balled inside their cars whenever there was a gig. Those who could get it on around this stench had a better constitution than me—that, or some sort of mutant fetish, but hell, that’s mutants for you . . .

“Mr. Acid” by Richard Jay Goldstein

Which reminds you of the first time you ever dropped acid.

Hardly anyone then had ever heard of LSD. But rumors dawned of a great new drug which let you see God, or someone similar. Apocryphal stories drifted like alien blimps through misty skies. How LSD had been discovered by an atheist Swiss chemist who got some on his hands and became a holy man. How Aldous Huxley had taken tons of it and left his dying body behind, rising like a comet into heaven . . .

“Duct Tape” by Heather Dune Macadam

The bells of the village clang. Sunlight bounces over both steeples and through the curtains. Periwinkle shutters open onto the square, and from the street, the beginning chatter of our neighbors heading up the lane to meet the bread van floats in on the breeze. A minute later, the other set of bells on the other church sound . . .

“Glitterless Game-town” by Timber Masterson

You tell yourself you have a handle on it, that it’s not so bad. You catch yourself looking down at that once-precious, bleeding, now-scarring arm—blisters reddening, rotting boughs hemorrhaging, far from on the mend, things swelling where they shouldn’t. And those twitches you have . . .

“Suicide Note #3” by David L. Robb

I shouldn’t have dropped acid today. But then, that’s what I always say. I live on the third floor of the Mars Motel in Yuba City. If you lived in the Mars Motel in Yuba City, you’d drop acid, too. But this time is different . . .

“A Different League” by Carrie Cuinn

Two a.m. at The State Diner came with a refill on my half-drunk coffee and an impatient smile on the lips of the waitress who’d been hovering nearby. My appointment was late, but my wallet was empty, so I couldn’t afford to leave. A week of poor sleep, too much caffeine, and more than one drive-thru meal meant my stomach was churning like the Buttermilk Falls after a storm, but I glanced over the menu anyway . . .