Author |
Story |
Description |
Neil Krolicki |
"Live This Down" |
After suffering humiliation and bullying, three high-school girls plan to commit suicide by following a Japanese guide on the internet. |
Chris Lewis Carter |
"Charlie" |
A man comes into a veterinarian clinic late at night, holding a battered and tortured cat in his arms. The vet who helps him recognizes the animal, and in a moment of comeuppance confesses something horrible he did to a cat in his childhood. |
Gayle Towell |
"Paper" |
A woman imagines a stick-figure on the edge of a toilet paper roll and relates the image to her personal life. |
Tony Liebhard |
"Mating Calls" |
A college student retrieves a lost phone while studying for his vet school midterm. |
Michael De Vito, Jr. |
"Melody" |
Dougie, a mentally disabled man who lives above his parents, obsesses about a young woman who works in a convenience store across the street. |
Tyler Jones |
"F for Fake" |
Twice-divorced Earl, miserable from his failed writing career and job, pretends himself to be the famous, reclusive author Don Swanstrom. |
Phil Jourdan |
"Mind and Soldier" |
A disabled Vietnam veteran with schizophrenia gives advice on crushes to his young neighbor. |
Richard Lemmer |
"Ingredients" |
A supermarket employee plays "The Game," a dangerous, urban legend-like activity that ultimately renders her infertile. |
Amanda Gowin |
"The Line Forms On the Right" |
A man follows a mysterious woman down an alleyway and they share drinks in a bar. |
Matt Egan |
"A Vodka Kind of Girl" |
A teenager dies from congenital heart failure, aggravated by bulimia. |
Fred Venturini |
"Gasoline" |
A disfigured man learns that the boy he had lied about setting him on fire hanged himself in his jail cell, and recalls what led up to the lie. |
Brandon Tietz |
"Dietary" |
An obese ex-homecoming queen goes to extreme lengths to gain her figure back in time for her reunion. |
Adam Skorupskas |
"Invisible Graffiti" |
A man encounters an overdosed, armless junkie in an abandoned building and takes her under his care. |
Bryan Howie |
"Bike" |
A father gives his son's bicycle a new paint job. The ending is left ambiguous. |
Brien Piechos |
"Heavier Petting" |
While at a strip club, the narrator tells a rather graphic urban legend about a teenage girl having drugged, drunken sex with a dog, and a meditation on bestiality and the nature of storytelling. |
Jason M. Fylon |
"Engines, O-rings, and Astronauts" |
After enduring a ruthless beating, an outcast boy kills his teacher and several of his classmates. Told from the perspective of a survivor many years later. |
Terence James Eeles |
"Lemming" |
On Halloween, a man tracks down his twin brother causing a rash of suicides across the world. The title comes from the legend of lemmings' ritual suicide. |
Keith Bule |
"Routine" |
A depressed, insomniac pharmacist finishes his last night shift routine. |
Gus Moreno |
"Survived" |
Following his grandfather's death, a young boy witnesses an electrician collapse in his grandmother's apartment due to heat stroke. |
Daniel W. Broallt |
"Zombie Whorehouse" |
In a post-apocalyptic world, one journalist goes undercover to expose a string of underground "zombie" sex rings. |