Opening Statements
Chuck Strangward
Not until the prosecutor defined her marriage as one of mutual corruption did Connie wonder what else had been kept from her.
Perfect Silence
Megan Branning
I watch a wave of distant birds break against a cliff.
Other Kinds of Death
Amanda Vacharat
He paid her the first hundred before they even got to the wedding, pulling the envelope from his jacket like a gun.
The Noisery
Jude Cowan Montague
Anna laid them out in careful ownership on the Ikea rug where they looked so comfortable in their sleepy inanimate poses – the Barbie in Bolivian dress, the lemon soap on a rope, the handpainted miniature piano, Ken in his beige polyester, the wild rattle, the purple flashing globe with robot voice, the furry grey bat whose wing she broke – cleared her throat, and began to sing them awake.
Beard
Paul Hostovsky
Like the clutter in his life, it was not an intentional growth at first, but more a kind of pure neglect that eventually grew substantial, then formidable, then distinguished—the evidence of a life’s work that, in time’s mossy hands, grew mossy, then Abrahamic, then caked with other growth, other life, that oozed, and swam, then crawled, then flew.
