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Open the Airlock

The surface of the moon was a dull, dusty gray, but the view from the lander window was still the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.  The earth shone brightly in the distance on a canvas of pure black, surrounded by legions of stars.  I and my four other crewmates had just landed on the moon’s surface a few hours ago, cementing ourselves in the history books alongside only twelve others who had witnessed the same majesty in person. “Crazy, isn’t it?” a voice asked from behind me.  I turned, knowing well the voice of the man whom I had worked closely with for the past two years in preparation for this mission.  It was Andrew Ratcliffe, the crew’s geological specialist. “I can hardly believe it,” I said breathlessly.  “I’m looking at it with my own eyes, and even still I can’t believe we’re here.” “Decades of staring up here wondering what it looks like will do that,” another voice chimed in - this one belonging to Diana Figueroa, our mechanical engineer....
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Manchester

The last house I burglarized was three years ago.  I’d been doing it for nearly a decade before that house, and was extremely talented in getting in and out without ever being detected.  I would spend weeks picking my target, making sure it was nobody I could have ever crossed paths with, and then weeks after that casing the house and learning everything I could.  When I finally decided to make my move, there was no closet I didn’t know about, no dog I hadn’t befriended in the yard, and no camera whose blind spot I couldn’t exploit. This house was the home of Winston and Mary Manchester, a couple in their mid-eighties who inherited their wealth after the death of Mary’s parents.  Her father was a businessman with questionable ethics who often dealt in off-shore accounting, and although the whole sum of what he left to his only daughter is unknown to anyone but the Manchesters, their estimated worth was in the hundreds of millions, even after all these years.  Th...
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My Daughter Who Went Missing Just Showed Up On My Doorstep (Sarah)

1 My wife and I had just sat down to dinner when we were interrupted first by the sound of the front doorknob twisting, then by three loud knocks. I stood up from the table and went to the front door, wondering who would have tried the knob first before knocking - my brother maybe, but it was a little late for a visit from him on a weeknight. The sound of the rainstorm outside grew as I opened the door. When I saw her standing on the porch, covered in rain and mud, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. “Hi daddy,” Sarah said. The way her eyes and nose were scrunched up told me she was crying, even though the rain washed away her tears the second they fell from her eyes. “Can I come inside? It’s so cold.” I heard something glass shatter in the kitchen, then rushed footsteps. I grabbed my daughter in a tight embrace and began to sob. “Oh my god. You’re home,” I said. Three years ago we had reported our daughter missing. We t...
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