Hear a Fly Buzz
by Rachel Oestreich

Hear a fly buzz. Trapped on a windowsill—the forgotten kind, where moths decay into ash beneath sun-faded pillows—bulbous body and silver-veined wings smash against thick-paned glass. Broken drones eclipse into silence, seconds—maybe minutes—and many dust motes float unhindered until the fly cracks its body against the glass again. Look the other way.

Wilting
by Clem Fandango

“So how was your day?’”
She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, looking for unexpected ways to frame the expected. “Jenny wasn’t in so I had to pick up her work… You don’t realize how much someone is needed until they’re gone.”
“Absolutely right. The other day I—” He recounted a similar story with the enthusiastic eyebrows of someone pretending like this was conversational new-ground.
She listened with the nods and smiles of someone pretending they weren’t bored.
The dialogue trailed off, soft laughter and softer smiles concealing the shared feeling that they might die like this.

Hardboiled
by Rudy Koshar

He puts the water on, drops in two large brown eggs from the co-op, organic, free-range, opens his digital edition of the Times, reads that wildfires are devastating a part of the San Gabriel Valley and Britain has left the European Union, he hears the water boiling, there was a bloody riot in a private prison in Texas, of course, and oh, the plight of Syrian refugees, then he remembers he forgot to set the timer, takes the eggs off, submerges them in cold water, cracks one open, and damn, it’s undercooked.

Voice
by Jennifer L. Freed

Now that Grandpa’s gone, Grandma’s coming to live here. She’ll use my room, and I’ll share with Connor. Connor says I’m a freak and he’ll make me sleep under the bed with the monsters, and if I tell he’ll lock me in his closet all night instead of only before school. He knows the Voice lives in the closet. The Voice is worse than monsters. It says, eat only brown food today. Pee twice in my pants. Collect red pills from the medicine cabinet. Give Grandpa those pills, not the white ones Grandma put in my palm to bring him.

Entropy Explained
by Kenny A. Chaffin

The goose on the gurney was rushed once more into the operating room. Another golden egg had to be surgically removed from its rectum. Technically of course it’s not a rectum, it’s a cloaca, but that isn’t the point. It was actually a production problem. The heavy-metal food, the purified water, and the trips to the emergency room were quite expensive. It was a losing proposition. Impossible to win, much less break even. Realizing this, the owner felt fortunate to foist the fowl off on a farmer’s son, a young boy named Jack who happened by that very same day.