Good Hunting by Ken Liu (Fantasy, Science Fiction)
She held up her finger against my lips. So close to her, I finally noticed her scent. It was like her mother’s, floral and sweet, but also bright, like blankets dried in the sun. I felt my face grow warm.
Golden Years in the Paleozoic by Ken Liu (Science Fiction)
But the Carboniferous Period, 350 million years before civilization, is the perfect time to retire.
Crazy Me by James Patrick Kelly (Science Fiction)
Crazy Me is crazy, but he has his moments of prescience.
Spillage by Nancy Kress (Fantasy)
When dawn came, he saw that it was a shattered pumpkin, and next to it lay a slipper of glass.
The Monkey Trap by Adam-Troy Castro (Horror)
Amber had heard of a method, possibly only an urban legend, that some hunters reputedly use to capture monkeys. It involved placing a fruit inside the knot-hole of a tree. The monkey reaches in and grabs the treat, but with it in his grasp, his fist is too large to be withdrawn. He cannot bring himself to drop the treasure in his possession, and so he remains trapped, in its possession, for however long it takes the clever hunter to return with a net. Here with this demented old man, this close to terrible knowledge about the author who had come to consume her academic life, Amber could have demurred and walked out without the dread knowledge that was now being offered to her. But it was impossible, not with the secret within her grasp, and a little voice inside her asked, forlornly, if the monkeys ever understood the nature of the trap that had imprisoned them.
Buffalo by John Kessel (Science Fiction)
It begins to dawn on Wells that Kessel is not an example of a class, or a sociological study, but a man like himself with an intellect, opinions, dreams. He thinks of his own youth, struggling to rise in a classbound society. He leans forward across the table. “You believe in the future?"
Sing, Pilgrim! by James Patrick Kelly (Fantasy)
The bank’s janitor, Hiram Hickock, discovered the second most extraordinary thing about the chair. It could not be moved.