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Walks Outside by Zary Fekete

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A Hungarian couple who have lost the spark in their relationship start taking daily walks that get them talking together again. Image generated with OpenAI The slip of paper in their mailbox was from the gas company. Gyuri already heard the news from their neighbor lady. The gas company was testing the new pipes installed last month across the district. Starting tonight, for one hour every night between 7 and 8pm, all the residents needed to vacate the building in case there was a gas leak. Gyuri walked up the three flights of steps. The elevator was too small since his hands were filled with grocery bags from the store on the corner. Once in the flat, Gyuri breaded the turkey from the butcher's and was just finishing cutting the spears of asparagus when Judit came home. She had been staying later at the university the last few weeks to grade papers. Because Gyuri was in the dissertation phase of his seminary degree, he worked in coffee shops around the district and h...
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Elegy In The Retort by John Leahy

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A story inspired by the Lamb funeral home scandal in which numerous bodies were cremated at once in order to boost profits quickly. Image generated with OpenAI We are seven. We were not meant to be burned together. Not like this. Not in this oven. Not in this place. Not stacked like refuse. Not shoved in haste, as if death were a shipment, a quota, a monthly target. And yet, here we are: pressed shoulder to jaw, pelvis to ribcage, cheek to calcifying spine. Bodies robbed of the rituals meant to separate us from meat . No solitude. No dignity. Only crowding in fire. And in the fire, something terrible happens: we wake. Gladys Ingert, 82 In life, Gladys was a florist who believed in the small mercies of ritual. Corsages for high school dances. Wreaths for funerals. Tulips, not lilies - those were too funereal for her taste, though she arranged them with grace when clients asked. She believed in soft scents, fine music, and written instructions. Now, Gladys's ribs ...
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Time Drift by Alexis Ames

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A small crew researching a distant human-habitable planet are cut off from communications with Earth, until a transmission arrives that reminds them of what they left behind. Image generated with OpenAI Seren looked up from his breakfast as Ellis's tray clattered onto the table. The other man dropped into the seat across from him, a frown marring his features. "What's Doc got for you this time?" Seren asked. "Rocks." Ellis hunched over his food, stabbing his reconstituted eggs with his fork. "Same as every other transmission. You?" "I'm still doing the river inventory." He could bore a person to tears with everything he was learning about this planet's waterways and the fish that inhabited them, but restrained himself for Ellis's sake. Lately, it seemed that talk of pH and solidity and different alien fish species only dampened his mood. "Makes you almost long for the days when Earth couldn't conta...
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Blood Runs Thicker Than Truth by Katy Abel

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When a minister runs over one of her parishioners in her car, she is asked to face some difficult truths. Image generated with OpenAI The sky was as dark as a good cabernet and yes, she had been drinking. Not drinking like a fish but swimming through the kitchen after dinner, warm from the wine brought by members of the board who knew her penchant for a merlot with cherry undertones. Afterwards, guests departed, bottles open-mouthed and waiting, she had paused as if there was an actual decision to be made about whether to pour the remnants down the drain. Tossing the question instead of the wine, she drank while gathering plates and goblets and wiping counters. Then she turned off the lights to get ready to head up to the church. It was a ritual everyone enjoyed; dinner at the minister's house followed by the quarterly board meeting in the parish house. The dinner had gone well, Sarah thought. Moroccan chicken, a heaping platter of saffron rice studded with pistachios...
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Ruin by Joe Kilgore

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Proud American trucker Earl Bishop takes on a new cattle hauling contract that is destined to change his life. Image generated with OpenAI Heat waves shimmied atop the asphalt ribbon like minnows darting in a pond. Outside the temperature topped a hundred, but inside the Kenworth W990, seventy-two degrees kept Earl cool as that proverbial cucumber you hear so much about. For certain men, there's something special about guiding a five hundred horse power engine over barren blacktop for mile after mile of endless highway. Earl Bishop was one of those men. Long haul truck driving was the apex of his ambitions since he was old enough to have any. And sure, it had taken a number of starts and stops for him to reach his goal. From farm worker to construction crew, oilfield roustabout to roughneck, spot welder to pipe fitter, Earl kept enough meat on the bone and money in the bank to eventually make a down payment on the eighteen-wheeler he had always wanted, and now he was li...
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