The Ones That Got Away

A boy’s summer romance doesn’t end in that good kind of heartbreak, but in blood. A girl on a fishing trip makes a friend in the woods who’s exactly what she needs, except then that friend follows her back to the city.

A father hears a voice through his baby monitor that shouldn’t be possible, but now he can’t stop listening. A woman finds out that the shipwreck wasn’t the disaster, but who she’s shipwrecked with. A big brother learns just what he will, and won’t, trade for one night of sleep.

From prison guards making unholy alliances to snake-oil men in the Old West doling out justice, these stories carve down into the body of the mind, into our most base fears and certainties, and there’s no anesthetic.

Turn the light on if you want, but that just makes for more shadows.