Jay
by Archie Leung

If Jay decided to fly up, I would forsake my village and elope with Uffe. If Jay decided to fly down, I would become the general’s concubine. I closed my eyes, listening to the river, where rapids splashed onto the rocks every second. Jay was chirping between my palms. Jay didn’t know anything. He could only see the wide sky above him, or the pond below where a school of fish swam. So I opened my hands —- and cupped Jay again in my hands.

Brave
by Jareb Collins

Galarian leaned upon the gnarled oak, moaning as he drained his bladder. A twig snapped in the semi-darkness. Fumbling his sword from its scabbard, Galarian lurched at the noise. He tripped on a root, plunging the errant blade halfway to the hilt in the neck of a very old – and very dead – dragon. Upon which, apparently, he had just pissed. There was a gasp behind him, and Galarian whipped his head around. “You, boy – how long have you been there?” The child’s eyes shone. “Lord Knight, you have saved us!” Galarian belched. “Yep.”

Is it Real?
by Remington Hiles

We had two tents. Dad and I in one; Mom and my sister in the other. The next day we spent all day fishing, sitting by the campfire, and eating marshmallows. That afternoon we went hiking. Then all of a sudden, we saw a bear. My sister said “That’s not a bear, that’s Bigfoot!” Dad pulled out his pistol and shot. We heard a loud grunt as it hit the ground; it shook us all. We walked up to it slowly; but something didn’t seem real. We pulled the fur off. It’s our neighbor, Fat Pat; who now lays dead.

Mechanic
by Siobhan Pratt

He walks up to the bar, wearing blue coveralls caked in something like motor oil that smells of blood, looking weary. He orders a Jack and Bud and downs both quick. I lean over and ask him if he’s a mechanic and he says yeah but not for cars. Says he works on time and space. Then before I can get another word out of him he’s taking a wrench to something only he can see. He walks up to the bar, wearing clean blue overalls, smiling wide.

‘78
by Lee DeAmali

Unforecast blizzard transformed my dodgy school route into a snowdrift maze of untouched possibilities. Chapped by stinging winds, I reluctantly accepted shelter from a kindly man, certain of ulterior motives. A women set down warm cocoa and soup, urged that I phone home where family would certainly be worried. I knew of no such place, dialed the number staring back from rotary’s center, whispered ‘It’s dead.’ Draped in blankets and asked only to make myself comfortable, I took in every detail of these surroundings and its inhabitants, determined to forge replication in dreams until it became my sweet reality.