Kate Ryan

She gropes for attention while he dies in the other room.

Surviving the Apocalypse didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy a little romance.

He died a violent death. I saw him myself, flopping between wooden blades, his head bent back strangely.

She doesn’t know how to communicate the feeling that all is for nothing, nothing is normal.

It was a tradition of theirs. When siblings Sue and Johnny went home to their mother’s for Christmas, they watched the 11 o’clock local news.

Alma couldn’t understand why her Yelp reviews were so dismal. She didn’t advertise herself as a magician. She was a hair stylist.

The birds abandon their posts in the pepper trees, sending tiny, oblong leaves raining to the ground.

Sheila applied widely and on a whim. She needed a job and she needed one fast.

One of my biggest fears is having a random stranger ask me, "how it’s going?" They might as well ask if I’d like to step into their van and get murdered.

The bread had to be store-bought and white, of course, so as not to raise a red flag among my classmates. I still see rebellion in a ham sandwich.