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ByDaliso Chaponda

a white mask with the words apex magazine on it.

Trees of Bone

The sound of his bedroom door being opened woke Katulo. “What is it?”

ByTom Piccirilli

What I Am

I am Big Apple. I bear witness to struggle, to tragedy small and enormous, to daily happiness, madness, and vengeance. I am gas leak, rent hike, and sewer blockage. I am five–alarm fire.

ByÉlisabeth Vonarburg

The small girl looks at me with the innocent insolence of children who say out loud what adults are thinking to themselves. A skinny, pale, fair–haired child of five or six, she already looks so like her mother that I feel sorry for her.

ByPat Cadigan

Dispatches from the Revolution

The summer air, already electric with the violence of the war, the assassination attempts successful and unsuccessful, the anti–war riots, became super–charged with the rumor.

ByRachel Swirsky

All That Fairy Tale Crap

I was supposed to go to the ball, but I spent the night licking out my stepsister instead.

ByJim C. Hines

The Creature in Your Neighborhood

MISTER JOHNSON: Thanks for your help everybody. I think we’ve collected even more than we did in last year’s good drive.

ByMary Robinette Kowal

Body Language

Saskia leaned into the darkness above the stage, only vaguely aware of the wood rail against her hips as she retied the left headstring on her marionette. On the stage below, the Snow Queen’s head eased into balance.

ByChristopher Barzak

Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster

It didn’t take with me, the world and its rules, the things it expected of me. In the end, that’s the only reason why I find myself still here after all these countless years, and still I refuse to leave the scene. If you drop a beat, I’m on it. If I hear the slightest scratch, I’m ready to spin.

ByKelly Link

The Constable of Abal

They left Abal in a hurry, after Ozma’s mother killed the constable. It was a shame, too, because business had been good. Ozma’s mother had invitations almost every night to one party or another in the finest homes of Abal.