AB INTRA

Our heroine is an Arctic explorer. The camera lingers on the calluses on her palm, hard from many years of wielding a harpoon. She took up seal hunting against her father’s wishes. “You’re such a smart girl, such a pretty girl…” She bucked parental pressure to go to law school, or at least, to join the force and become a forensic examiner. — Michelle Chihara

An old colonial three-story house had been destroyed by fallen trees and street lamps. The top floor looked as though it had been tipped over and poured out—letters, photos, cancelled checks, a stained mattress, a VHS tape of The Little Mermaid, all tossed across the sidewalk. Through a shattered window on the third floor I could see where a single shelf stood and a single candle burned, untouched. — JJ Strong

The Neptune Society had not offered explicit instructions on this, but she imagined polyester or rayon or viscose wouldn’t burn well. She had a terror of getting a call that a bad melt of synthetic fibers had ruined the crematory slab or emitted a toxic gas. She was concerned she’d get billed for it. — Tara Ison

And of course we know he is manipulating us, but we also know he was in the hospital for two days because he took so much cough syrup and Vicodin he saw things, and we know he still cuts himself because there are so many missing X-Acto knives, but more than anything it’s how fast he talks sometimes that scares us, apparently without breathing, and the look in his eyes that’s hard to describe, except it’s as though he, River, has left and some other eyes are looking at the world. — Michael Guista

I examined the photos. Mike was smiling, shy and genuine. He looked happy. Every time I saw him watering the lawn or going out for the mail he looked like he was trying to memorize dialogue for a play he was thrown into. — Roberto Ontiveros

I watched and could tell the moment she remembered what we had done together; the skin around her eyes relaxed upon one memory. She sighed and looked away. The quietness that followed her sigh foretold I would never again know her intimately. — T. Duncan Anderson

I suppose his speeches on the assembly floor and from the garlanded stages of the campaign trail were forgettable enough and will hold no sway with the schoolmasters of ever after. This was the sad fact; I see now that he was trying to win his immortality. He was always testing them out on us at breakfast, a weather-eye peeking sidelong across the table, but I only remember one or two. — Benjamin T. Miller

Destroying The Sound and the Fury was heresy. The thought of Benji and Jason going up in smoke was unbearable. And Flannery O’Connor, fighting and spitting against the flames was too much to bear. There would need to be criteria for this book burning. It couldn’t just be random. It would have to be considered and weighed, figured out in a way that made sense. — Cynthia Adam Prochaska

I have decided to use the Smell-O-Matic to document my life. I’ve kept a journal for years, but whenever I’ve looked back at old entries, they seemed like they were written by somebody else. I’ve been thinking that once the entries were matched with smells they would be much easier to recall and re-experience, and maybe this would even trigger in me some sort of animal insight. — Katya Apekina

The fish they were burying was most likely the large, zebra-striped cichlid, lately indifferent to its dinner. The night before, when Judith reported him circling near the surface of the tank—always a bad sign—I’d looked up from my book with an existential wince, a look that in another context might suggest mild sciatica, but seemed to carry, as I hoped it would, across the ottoman to counteract my cushioned comfort. — Dwight Yates

The mizzenmast plunged onward overboard, tangled in rigging and dragging the last of the lifeboats with it. It smashed the railing as it rolled, so the bo’sun and the bo’sun’s mate clung fast to each other and leaned over the bare edge of the deck to watch the mast fall, end over end, surrounded by a cloud of small fish, the white light of the stars and the now-dim yellow sun flashing off their bellies and their teeth. — Ben Ehrenreich

The Didwell children dangled here on earth, doing nothing outstanding for the kingdom. They lacked fire. In their Christmas letters, the Didwells were often vague. Francine still lives in Costa Mesa, Ilene has three boys and seems to love Tennessee, Bunny continues to be interested in Christian psychology and has taken classes at UCLA, where some of her teachers are Communists! — Rhoda Huffey

The man just ahead of me in line looked awful. Sallow complexion, sunken cheeks, two days’ stubble of beard, pigeon-chested—it appeared as if he’d been working thirty years in a coal mine, smoking Lucky Strikes all that time, eating white bread and gravy at every meal. The company you keep. I began to feel I was really in trouble and kept putting my thumb and index finger to my throat to be sure the ticker was still ticking. — Christopher Buckley

Folk music is fine, it is OK. It is even okay, which is OK spelled out. It’s great, is what I’m saying, but it is not for me. Folk music is like Westerns, it is like black licorice, like science fiction. All of these things are OK, all of these things are not for me. — Ben Slotky

It was the story of Jesus, and how he had been brought to his death by the Jews. A chill came over me, for, in my household, talk of what Christians had done to Jews, the accusations and the deeds, was not infrequent. Indeed, one of my first questions to my grandparents was: Why do all your friends have numbers on their arms? — Jonathan Cohen

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. I considered not answering it, but my curiosity got the better of me. It was lonely waiting at home for the baby, waiting to find out what the pain would be like. There was a time every afternoon when the baby always went dead still for too long, and I’d press a music box against my skin and worry as I tried to get her to respond. — Jenny Shank

I missed San Martìn’s statue with the saintly broom that could sweep away anything, and the peaceable rat, dog and cat, and the fragrant bank of candles. This kind of faith just did not exist in my culture, where we went to counselors, exercised, or studied self-improvement, none of which ever worked. — Linda Purdy