Award Nominees

Award-winning and award-nominated stories from Apex Magazine

Hole world by js brekelar.

Hole World

Apart from the rusting cars in the parking lot and the blood-spattered branches on the Eucalypts, the store looks much the same as it always did. Justin can do his job as he always had, mostly, except for the barbed manacle around his ankle.
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a poster with a woman holding a glowing ball.

Mr. Death

I’ve ferried two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death, and I can already tell my two-hundred-and-twenty-second is going to be a real shitkicker. I know by the lightness of the manila folder in my hand, the preemptive pity in the courier’s face as she gives it to me. I read the typewritten card paper-clipped to the front with my stomach tensed, braced for the sucker punch.
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an open book with an image of a pentagramil and a pentagramil.

A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies

Our late fee is twenty-five cents per day or a can of non-perishable food during the summer food drive. By the time the boy finally slid The Runaway Prince into the return slot, he owed $4.75. I didn’t have to swipe his card to know; any good librarian (of the second kind) ought to be able to tell you the exact dollar amount of a patron’s bill just by the angle of their shoulders.
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