Lost Signals by Josh Malerman, Damien Angelica Walters, Matthew M. Bartlett, David James Keaton, Tony Burgess, T.E. Grau

interview, but that’s not what you’re looking for. You steal the inserts because you like to read the chapter titles. It’s like a whole movie in ten seconds. The chapter titles tell you all you need to know.
    You grab a random one as if to prove your point. Okay maybe not so random. You’ve read this one before   :
    Sharks with Guns
    •“Love on a Lifeboat”
    •“Sharks Are Using Tools   ?”
    •“Are You Gonna Eat That   ?”
    •“Dolphins Are Not Our Friends   !”
    •“Bringing a Shark to a Gun Fight”
    •“Shark Factory Revealed   !”
    •“Duel to the Deaf”
    •“Quitting the Coast Guard for Good”
    See   ? What are you missing from the story after you read that   ? It’s all there. The crisis, the love interest, the surprise ending. Didn’t someone once say there are really only three stories you can tell   ? A stranger comes to town, and a man goes on a journey   ? Man sort of talks to fly   ?
    You study the box and snicker. It’s one of those pre-fab cult movies that are so popular these days, and you scoff. There’s no way that shark could hold that chainsaw, much less a gun. They don’t have any thumbs.
    Now that would be a scary movie, you think. If they had thumbs, they could make a phone call. It wouldn’t have to bite anyone. Just show one shark whip out a phone and every asshole in the audience would start screaming their head off.
    Could happen. You’ve seen more far-fetched things than that in a movie. One time, in the bathtub, your ex-girlfriend checked her phone underwater so you couldn’t see who called her. You figured she’d ruined it, but it turned out the phone worked fine when you blew the bubbles off of it later that night to find the number she was hiding.
    You slip some DVD booklets into your sleeves. You avoid the Blu-Rays since they rarely have them. Then you go up to the counter and grab one of those free internet CDs. She is up there, and you see a strange light flickering in her eyes and realize this girl is watching something under the register with the volume turned down. You wonder when she snuck a TV in there and now you have to know what movie she’s watching. Is she watching something she’s not supposed to   ? Why else would she have the volume down like that   ?
    On the way out, you finally see what it is. A security monitor. She was watching you steal those movie inserts the entire time, and you can see yourself in the corner of her screen, standing by the door, hunched and alone, unbelievably small, looking over her shoulder, guilty as hell and green as the sunset.
    Sitting in the car with your hands on the steering wheel, your heart jumps. The fly is dangling on the hair like a suicide, so you turn on the air-conditioning, open all the vents, and hold it in front of the cold air. It starts to climb back up its leash like a spider. It’s moving slow, but it’s still alive. You realize that every time you hide the fly, it starts to die.
    Sounds like a children’s rhyme, doesn’t it   ?
    You have to get home. Or get it to the bathroom. Or a restroom. You think about how cold toilet water is even on the hottest day, and you realize that, even if you know what’s been floating around in there, it’s got to be tempting to swim in it when you’re burning up. For a bug, you mean.
    You drive fast, checking the size of the gas stations, trying to gauge whether they’re big enough for a public restroom. You glance down at the fly and see it slump on the string and swing from the hair like a pendulum. You slam on the brakes and make a hard right into the smallest gas station you’ve ever seen. You ask the third-grade boy behind the counter if they have a restroom. He says no and turns back to counting the candy bars. In desperation, you hold up your hand with the limp fly swinging from your finger.
    “Dude, my fly needs to drink from a toilet fast or it’s going to die.”
    The kid smiles over a huge piece of gum and