Stories
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Thirteen for Halloween: Dye Test
Roxanne Wojnar found the water stain in Apartment 3D larger than the photograph the property manager sent her, which was hardly unusual.
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Thirteen for Halloween: The Quiet Floor
Janice Palumbo documents issues in her apartment building, particularly concerning resident Kurt Madsen, who frequently violates rules. Tension escalates as residents and management respond to complaints, leading Janice to reflect on past incidents with another troublesome tenant, Howard Karp. A legal dispute emerges over selective enforcement, impacting community relations.
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Thirteen for Halloween: Carcass Persistence
Denise Yost found the first wooden stake twelve feet from turbine C-17, its orange survey ribbon snapping above a patch of flattened buffalo grass. The stake marked a carcass location, though the carcass itself was gone. A laminated tag lay beneath the grass where something had pulled it free of the wire used to secure…
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Thirteen for Halloween: The Duplicate Address
Lori Bender found the duplicate at 8:43 on Monday morning, thirty-seven records into a quality-control report that contained 1,126 errors and approximately nine hundred reasons for people to blame someone else. Most were harmless. A private road lacked a suffix in one layer and carried it in another. Four mobile homes shared coordinates because an…
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Thirteen for Halloween: Switchboard, 1954
It was only Monday and not even lunchtime yet and Thelma Keener had connected a bomb-damage report to payroll, sent an imaginary ambulance to the machine shop, and listened to a shipping clerk announce three fictional dead men with enough relish that Mrs. Tipton at the message desk told him to try again without enjoying…
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The Missing Piece (Redux)
A series of peculiar cosmic anomalies leads scientists to connect them with an ancient metal ring, revealing that the universe operates as machinery with specifications, previously misunderstood as natural laws.
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The Crown of the Crowd
A lone speaker faces a vast, indifferent crowd at dusk—until he lifts a strange crown-like device and the city’s quiet begins to crack.
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The Businesswoman Who Came From Outer Space
Celestine Varr, addressing Heliox Global’s board, presents evidence of their unsustainable practices, framing it as a diagnosis rather than a pitch. She offers a proposal for corporate restructuring to avert impending failures driven by environmental crises. With the power of their financial liabilities, she challenges them to sign a transformative charter for survival.
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Reign of Indulgence
Loretta Demarest enters a lavish penthouse, confident and deadly, as tension builds between her and Ralph Entwistle regarding her ties to the mob. With her stepfather’s disapproval looming, Loretta plans a risky night out with her sister Whitney. Ralph, increasingly apprehensive, fears the consequences of their reckless lifestyle.
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The Legal Rights of the Extraterrestrials Who Seeded Earth
They arrived with receipts older than our oceans and a claim that made every nation on Earth sound suddenly temporary: We planted you. You are ours. The UN convened an emergency tribunal, and one exhausted lawyer realized the real fight wasn’t about ownership. It was about what counts as consent when the “contract” is your…