Lullaby by Darlene Eliot
There’s an owl outside the window. He hoots at 1:00 a.m. The tenants toss, turn, and fume. 3B opens the window, aims a flashlight at the leaves. 2A stomps out with a tennis ball and hurls it at the tree.
Slow Turn by Annamaria Formichella
It starts like this. Not the way she imagined it when she was young and didn’t understand the slow murder that can happen between a man and a woman.
Beggars Would Ride by Elizabeth Fletcher
The lead crystal decanter, a wedding present, reminds the girl of a genie’s bottle. Wide at the base with a slender neck, it glints, throwing rainbows when the sunlight catches it.
Fucking John Wayne by Sara Hills
Dale knows it only takes four hours for a body to bloat in the desert. One day for flies. Three for maggots. Six for the skin to slip around the eyes.
Nowhere Girl by Robert Herbst
You were one car over, all curls and eyes. I was just four wheels, an engine. This was at the stoplight – Western and Milwaukee. I pulled up, and it was like you’d been waiting for me in someone else’s backseat all night.