From: Issue 6 | Subscribe | Buy The beacons were in the wrong place. Noma swallowed her roasted squid and clicked, still staring at the sea. It was hard to be accurate on land, of course. She’d have a better sense once she got in the water. But the beacons had moved. Which wasn’t possible. She turned the squid in her hands. The water was quiet and gray under the brilliant blue sky, barely touched by the hot wind.

From: Issue 5 | Subscribe | Buy Some moron’s car horn woke Jenny up. Through the haze of her morning breath, she saw yet another scientists’ van, packed with nerds and geeks, pull up next to her truck. She almost went back to sleep, sprawled lengthwise in the bench seat, but her eyes locked onto the head geek: white, East Coaster, dirty blonde hair in a pixie cut, academic with a crisp, white blouse and slacks, a wool longcoat draped over her arm, useless in the New Mexico air.

From: Issue 5 | Subscribe | Buy Our messenger speeds out of town with the first grey of dawn, and in the evening, Shardon sends us his bones. His sister empties them onto my table in dry-eyed silence. They’re clean and golden-brown as though stained by years underground, a burnished shine beneath the alien head of the operating light. “You’re sure it’s him?” I ask. She fingers an old callus, a slight overlap of fractured ends.

From: Issue 5 | Subscribe | Buy Log entry 1035 No. of souls: 3 Tonight one got away. I cast my net wide, but fog rolling from the east blocked my view and I hauled back empty. Fewer souls apparent. Possibly due to recent heavy rainfall? Also, the captured souls are untypically fragile. Of the remaining three, one severely damaged by net. Tomorrow I will switch to the finer weave.

From: Issue 5 | Subscribe | Buy When the repair-shop door crashed open, they found me in an unlady-like pose, down on my back scrubbing canker from an old grain-hauler coupling that had seized yesterday. As Town Steward, I dare say I could have prevailed on others, but I wasn’t above taking my turn. Not when there were too few of us for watching duties as it was, and a community depending on this year’s harvest coming in clean and untainted.

From: Issue 5 | Subscribe | Buy Sam moves through the woods using the Quiet, the way Daddy taught her. Axe in her right hand, club in her left. Her head is tilted to the side to avoid nudging the lower, snow-heavy branches. Her eyes never stay in one place more than a moment. She can hear Jamie behind her, stomping twigs underfoot. The thick snow doesn’t dampen the rasp of his breathing.

From: Issue 4 | Subscribe | Buy 14 I will die on a rainy Thursday afternoon, at the terminal end of Cape Cod, alone. Purported cause of death: ischemic stroke, though the capsule crushed between my molars will tell a longer story. Long Point is an hour’s drive from the nearest hospital. Too far, by design. The Feds will be en route from Hyannis, speeding toward the cape’s clenched fist. I won’t remember why they’re hunting me, only that I can’t let them take me alive.

From: Issue 4 | Subscribe | Buy “I wanted to be darker,” I said in Korean. My grandfather let the unlit cigarette in his lips droop as he squinted at me. I remember him sitting on the cement steps outside of the Kalihi house, tucking the cigarette behind his ear while he looked me over. My skin was raw from lying out in the sun all morning, my face already glowing like a tomato.

From: Issue 4 | Subscribe | Buy I see the green and lilac ribbon braided tight and tucked under the brim of your hat. Thanks for the confirmation—you could call it an installment payment. My part of our bargain is this story. My story begins on a lovely night, one of those clear crisp early-summer evenings where the sun lingers well into working hours but the cool air begs for a silken wrap or a shot of vodka.