Yuki Asahina

Sean King

Esseta O

Lia Thorn

Sam Becker

Yuri Williams

English

He was a man of many words - except for this time.

As a thought experiment, he narrowed his daily vocabulary down to 20 words. He could manage most tasks using only one to three words from the list. He went several days, then a week, then two, only using the 20 words. Very few people even noticed.

The only person who’d noticed was the barista at the coffee shop on Main St, where this man frequented. She’d usually rolled her eyes in his direction as he held loud Zoom calls every other day in the shop. His relative silence unnerved her, so she asked him about it one day.

"Do you ever shut up?" The barista asked, stacking his coffee cup over the others she had piled on a silver tray. 
"I'm a talkative person, what can I say?" He looked up at her, a smirk forming on his face.
"You can say nothing." She glared at him.

With that, he snapped, jumping over the counter, to grab the closest thing he could find—in this case, pumpkin spice latte concentrate—and started chugging, syrup spilling everywhere. She didn't know it then, but the barista was witnessing the birth of the Seasonal PSL Predator.

PSL Predator

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Zoe Becker

Jerry glanced down at the photograph in his hand, then back up again at the woman sitting alone at the back of the cafe.

She looked oddly familiar. Perhaps it was a girl who was in his psych class, or maybe it was that one woman Jerry always talked to at Home Depot.

All at once a blinding light coursed through the space. Jerry and the woman froze. And then a creature appeared, seemingly from the air itself.

Jerry stumbled in front of the woman, hoping to protect her from whatever this thing was. But the woman was strong, and leaped in front of Jerry instead; sacrificing herself to save Jerry's pathetic life.

Lia Thorn
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