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Valentine by Jane Snyder

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A prison officer plans for Valentine's Day with his wife and daughter, but first must get through a challenging day at work. Image generated with OpenAI Ten years ago, Bob McClean killed his four-year old stepson Dakota for the insurance money, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He's been here ever since. We have other offenders who've killed a child, their own mostly. The baby wouldn't stop crying or the wife had it coming and the kid got in his way. Bob wasn't impulsive. When he bought the policy, he didn't tell Dakota's mom. He was running a scam involving churches at the time, had no fixed address. On the night Dakota died, he said, Dakota's mother had gone shopping, and he and Dakota were in their motel room, sitting up in bed, watching TV. Cars , Dakota's favorite show, was on. Bob fell asleep. When he woke Dakota was gone. Oh, he was frantic, he said, went running down the motel steps into the dark, crying. The EMTs ...
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The Lava Beasts of Titan by John Sloan

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Novitiate Sym'An investigates an object descending from the sky that threatens to shatter the ideologies his world is built upon. Image generated with OpenAI Sym'An the Novice could not believe his eye. High in the Motherless orange sky, a strange object hung on lines from a floating overturned bowl. The lines looked a bit like spinners' ropes but even more delicate. The bowl appeared to be made of a membrane. Slowly descending, the object dropped behind a low ridge, trailing that membranous cup. Sym'An scuttled out of his small hermitage hovel, cut into the side of a dune, and made for the landing site as fast as his ten legs could carry him. It was the 100th day of Sym'An's wilderness fast among endless dunes and strewn rocks of an ancient seabed. How he wished the seabed was wet with life water. The fast had been long, and Sym'An was very thirsty. The sky was Motherless as the Holy Mother was not visible on this side of the world. There wa...
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Crossing the Plains by Talha Ahmad

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Afsha receives a message that her long-lost mother is dying, and she must cross the Middle Plains to see her before it's too late, but the annual invasion of giants is worse than usual. Image generated with OpenAI Afsha pulls her machete out of the giant's thigh, twirling away to avoid the jet of blood that arcs from the wound. The lumbering beast falls with a wet smack on the crimson-soaked grass of the prairie. The ground shakes as Afsha advances with her squad, finishing off giants lying prone and close to death around her. She had always heard of Crossing the Plains as if it were the final battle before the Day of Judgement. When she grew older, she learned it wasn't a final battle, but one that recurs every year as Winter slowly melts into Spring. But this truly feels like the final battle she had feared as a child. Screams cry out from every direction. Blood squelches under her boots with each step. The smell is unimaginable. "There's too ma...
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