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Literary short stories by established and emerging writers Excerpts: Lee Montgomery Torture Techniques of North Americans I opened the door and stepped inside. All the sounds grew into themselves as if I had just dipped my head underwater. Everywhere I looked, all I could see was where our lives left off. Peter Ho Davies Chance There was a chance the baby was normal. There was a chance the baby was not. Clayton Luz When the Wind Blows the Water Gray That Davis had lost one eye in an auto crash, married interracially, hugged Richard Nixon, and suffered from recurrent bouts of "lifestyle-related" liver and kidney problems endeared him to the Maurants. Lauren Groff A Season by the Shore He felt between the sisters a heaviness, a syrupy depth of feeling that made him unable to wade in, and so he would pause shyly in the doorway and wait for her to raise her eyes, to notice him. Joan Wickersham The Tunnel, or The News from Spain Some of their worst fights, confusingly, seem to both prove and disprove it: two people who didn't love each other couldn't fight like that--certainly not repeatedly. James F. Sidel Insurance In a few years, the remaining mills would finally sputter out, though the city, unlike most of the rust belt, would survive with some measure of grace: a neutered economy of hospitals and service, free of the sweat, the carcinogenic burning and puffing required in the manufacture of solid goods. Micah Nathan Quarry "Do you think he lost his shoe before he got shot, or after?" "I don't know." "If it's before he got shot, then he's just a bum," Sam said. "Walking around with one shoe. Dad won't care if we brought in a bum. Dad likes bums." Lindsay Sproul Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Connecticut Miranda Tivoli found her first gray hair early one morning, while drinking a jelly glass of Earl Grey tea. She saw it in her reflection on the side of the toaster, and she