From "Isle of Stumps" by Bryan R. Dennis

He felt soft sand beneath his back and heard a vast crashing of waves against shoreline. By some stroke of cruel misfortune, he’d made it to land. If only he’d died, erasing his wretched identity. His body remained cold and numb, but to his amazement, he was free from his restraints. The raft lay nowhere in sight. He sat up and his head swam. He fell back down; waited for his head to clear, for feeling to return to his extremities. On the second attempt he managed to remain upright. The white-sanded beach, sparkling in the moonlight, crawled with crabs and sand hoppers. The beach sloped up past him. It ended at a forest of dark palm trees and sprawling plants. 

 What was this place?

 He inspected the sand around him. He found it covered in countless footprints of different sizes. The footprints led away from his position on the beach and into the forest. But there was something strange about the prints. When he peered closer he realized they were not footprints after all. In fact, he couldn’t discern even a single footprint.

They were handprints.

 

From "Transfection" by David Gaughran

A molecular biologist's obsession with his work begins costing him more than he realises:

His only real friend on the staff was his assistant, Jim Glover, a PhD candidate helping him with his research. His wife regularly joked she was jealous of Jim, who spent more time with her husband than she did, but beneath the teasing Dr. Peters suspected she harbored real resentment.

“Why don’t you move into the private sector?” his wife asked, when he came home from work on time for once and complained that his grants were being cut again. They’d had this conversation, in one form or another, frequently–ever since she had spotted her dream summerhouse on a realtor’s webpage.

“It’s always the same bullshit choice,” he said. “Fire Jim and scale back my work, or take the hit in my own salary. I’m sick of it.”

She barely looked at him. “I hear there’s lots of money in the private sector.”

They had stopped talking with each other years ago. Now they just talked at each other.