Short Fiction

Genre short fiction from Apex Magazine

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The Performance Artist

On the first day, she sits there wearing a black dress that is neither provocative nor sexless. Yet visitors who flock in from the cold January streets and ascend to the atrium on MoMA’s second floor are mesmerized, for the entire space is awash in a video installation depicting various interactions between machines and flesh.
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Labyrinth

He may not come. Not all do. Some, deciding that a refusal to participate was a form of protest, merely sit near the entrance, waiting, assuming that the doors will open eventually, release them.
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Relic

Out at the end of the world on a long spit of land like a finger poking into oblivion, nestled in a valley among the dunes, sat The Church of Saint Ifritia, constructed from twisted driftwood and the battered hulls of ships. There was one tall, arched window composed of the round bottoms of blue bottles.
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Blood from Stone

He had no idea that I loved him. He barely acknowledged that I existed, a maid twice over, little more than a shadow in empty hallways. Trapped in unhappy marriage and prisoner in his own castle, he did not conceive that anyone loving him was even possible. The baron was a man of war, not of love.
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Sprig

The little boy gazed up at the beautiful girl seated cross-legged on a tree stump. She wore tights, a sparkly skirt, and enormous plastic wings. Her wild hair was decorated with twigs, leaves and flowers. Her small, pointed face was painted with make-up. Strands of plastic ivy decorated the guitar across her lap.
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Erzulie Dantor

Whispers prowl through the rubble that surrounds the leaning house. Half-fallen buildings stand on either side, as though a careless giant strode through the town and only by chance missed the one house—surely when the gods choose to wreak destruction on all, they are not so capriciously merciful to one.
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