Red — Justin McLachlan

Driving home one night, Red editor Kris Goldsmith spotted a bright, red scarf lying by the side of the road. She lives beyond the middle of nowhere in rural Pennsylvania and wondered just how that scarf got there. She also wondered what reasons some of the writers she'd been working with at Boxfire Press could dream up. So she handed out a challenge: write a story that tells us where an out of place red scarf came from and why it's somewhere it probably shouldn't be. She ended up with five original, marvelous, sensational, absurd, visionary, pecuilar, unthinkable, wicked and totally untrue stories. Justin McLachlan (Time Up, Boxfire Press) brings us a superhero vigilante; Rebecca Gale's radioactive knowledge consumes minds and, well, the rest of the body, too. L.G. Fitzgerald explores a rash of disappearances in Arlington, Va. and Shaunna O'Connor makes amends at a dystopian lake. J. Allen Scott -he justifies our fear of flying.