Winning Entries

Every month, storytwigs hosts a free competition in which we invite writers to submit up to three 100-word stories based on a prompt. Here, you can enjoy the most outstanding entries we selected from each round. Storytwigs has new competitions every month, and more information on this month’s competition is available here.

• JANUARY 2022 — DRAFT

• OCTOBER 2021 — BONE

• SEPTEMBER 2021 — MINE

• AUGUST 2021 — SPIKE

• JULY 2021 — ABSORB

• JUNE 2021 — STAMP

• MAY 2021 — PITCH

• APRIL 2021 — TOOTH

• MARCH 2021 — STRING

• FEBRUARY 2021 — CUBE

• JANUARY 2021 — HAMMER

• DECEMBER 2020 — SALT

Grand Prize Winner

The Fortune Teller, by Noel Arzola

Looking at the newly engaged couple, she said, “Shake the jar. Then pick 2 cards each to discuss.”

The couple did as instructed:

“Six loved ones will die.”

“A mental illness will occur.”

“A lie will cause broken trust.”

“A family will move in with you.”

“Now, you must draft out how you will handle these situations because it isn’t a matter of if, but when they will happen.”

 “Still want to do this?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said.

And they lived. 

Winning Entries

Between Inbox and Sent, by Nico Gonzalez

I’d find them on my napkin inside my lunch box, in a handmade card on holidays, and even in a folded post-it hidden in my pocket, notes, little “I love yous”. In retrospect, I think they found me when I needed them most. These became less frequent after I grew up and moved out, but she would still find ways to let me know. She did this until her final breath. Then as I organized the services while closing her online accounts, there in her email between Inbox and Sent, I found the last one in a draft. 

Let’s Stay Here, by Bob McHugh

The disease was infinitesimally rare and usually fateful, the doctor told Liv.

“The disease is fateful?” her girlfriend asked later.

“It’s cosmically significant, I guess.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I think it was a typo.“

“You mean—oh no.”

“Liv, don’t let the writer revise this. A second draft will kill you.”

“What do we do?”

“Don’t worry; it’s easy. Just sit here and talk.”

“Ok. Sup?”

“Nothing. You?”

“Oh, you know.”

“Perfect. Keep meandering.”

“You watch that show?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

“This is perfect. We’ll never get a second draft.”

“I could do this forever,” Liv said.

“Me too.”

The Miscarriage, by Noel Arzola

The draft sent a chill through my body as I became unglued. It was unfair to walk back through the waiting room seeing all the expectancy and smiles. It was unsuccessful to will my body to heal. It was unsatisfactory to minimize that it was only several weeks. It was unacceptable to get invited to a baby shower. It was unchristian to offer Mother’s Day sentiments at church. It was unnecessary to ask when I would try again. It was uncertain when I would be okay. It was a time I wanted to stay unraveled. 

Like Father, Like Daughter, by Margie A Silbernagel

We sit at the counter. He asks how school is going, but I prepare for the conversation to inevitably lead to his fantasy team. The bartender brings us two tall glasses of beer. 

“Can’t believe you’re old enough to drink with me now.” 

A few glasses later, he is asking what I’ve written lately and how I’m doing after that “blonde prick” and I broke up a few months ago, and I’m answering his questions in detail. I should probably be concerned that this setting is the first where we’ve been able to actually talk.  

I ask for another round.  

Honorable Mentions

Draft Marks on a Sinking Ship, by Elle Hanley

She sipped the wine and rolled it around her tongue, absently adjusting the jacket over her arm. Her shoes pinched, but the date had promise. And she’d wanted to see an O’Keeffe.

She stopped in front of the painting, vaguely interested at first in the intensity of color. Suddenly engulfed, she was taken by the white hot folds of the flower, the pulsing power of movement, in and out of the sticky petals. Her lips parted and she started to sweat.

“I’ve always found her paintings too…accessible. Boring, really,” he said, resting his arm across her shoulders. “Dinner?”

“Sure.”

Medicine for Mother, by Brennie Shoup

She is six, and Mother coughs. Up comes one lung, then two, Mother’s stomach and liver, until she’s a deflated balloon. She holds her mother’s cold hand, but it’s not Mother anymore.

She can’t be sure if it’s a memory, that strange coughing. But she keeps things in jars that look like lungs. 

This time, it will work. She lights the stove and boils water, adds the quartz, frog’s tongue, and the lungs, sliced like fish fillet. Her mother’s mouth is smooth and lipless, and the concoction runs between yellow teeth over white bone.

She is fifteen, and Mother coughs.

The Draft, by D. J. Green

“Line up, hats off, unbutton your shirts, drop your pants.”

There was a collective whomp as gravity took hold of denim, corduroy, leather, and brass.

Eyes, ears, say “ahh,” a cold stethoscope.

“Show me the round brown.”

I bent over and a gloved finger probed my ass.

“Get dressed. Face forward.”

With no semblance of military precision, we turned.

“Count off, 1-2-1-2…”

The numbers echoed through the hall.

“Two,” I said.

“Ones, on the bus. Twos, we’ll call you.”

Half of us went to Nam. Half of us went home in the sleet of an Ohio winter afternoon.

Escape to Disbelief, by Ellen Denton

Before the plane exploded, the fuselage shuddered hard enough to make her brain feel like an egg cracking inside her skull. The shriek of metal blowing apart shattered her eardrums and her skin was seared black as burnt steak.

As she plummeted head over heels toward the ground, on fire and still seat-belted into her chair, the draft of freezing air hitting her stifled her screams and blew patches of burning skin into the air, and because she, impossibly, was burning and freezing at the same time, for just a 

split

second, she

thought

it was a

slow-

motion

dream.

Grand Prize Winner

Wishbone Etiquette, by Darby Power

The wishbone takes a few days to dry out, Cassidy taught me. Thursday’s for gratitude. Saturday’s for wishes. 

We were eighteen, and at art school, and too broke to fly home. We cooked a ten-pound turkey in the communal kitchen.

I’d rather spend Thanksgiving with you, anyway.

It was burnt and bland and neither of us cared.

Pull on three?

We kissed for the first time that weekend.

One…

We were both each other’s first girlfriend.

Two…

Come March, we’d have a horrible break-up.

Three!

For months, I’d keep my half of that wishbone in a box under my bed.

Winning Entries

State of Permanence, by Madeleine Gallo

She judged everyone by the bones. 

Small ribs determined a weak personality, sturdy clavicles a passionate lover, and tapered phalanges a musical future. Her favorite party fact was that living bones are actually pink. People listened sometimes. Many times, they didn’t.

As a girl, she had found an armadillo’s skeleton, half-buried. She remembered the mosaic pattern of its shell, how it almost looked still living.

Feeling boneless after work, bus-waiting, she imagines the pink pillars inside her. “Our structures are permanent,” she tries to convince a pigeon pecking nearby. “We’re tethered to something real.” The pigeon, like most, doesn’t answer. 

Crush, by Austin Panush

The class huddles around Esteban Gutierrez and his broken arm. He did a sick ollie off a two story roof and his elbow landed on Gillespie Drive. The other students transform his cast into a mural of sharpied autographs and graffiti. You watch as Amilia Bordera neatly traces her name over cursive pencil, dotting each i with tiny pink hearts. So after school, you inch the bottom of your skateboard over the fourth floor balcony and bask in the glory of fleeting genius.

Honorable Mentions

Feed, by Adam Stemple

Shp: WSSS-Galaxy

Loc: Kepler 396f

Dte: EDN 3117.11.03

Sbj: CMO McAlsten Surgical Feed

[Beginning feed…]

Ensign Barton reported pressure and pain in his left forearm after away team duty. Scan revealed an organism burrowing into his left ulna. Organism is tunneling fast, so we’re operating before total sedation achieved.

[muffled screaming]

Forceps.

Got it.

Organism displays a hard carapace, single foreleg, two rear legs. Horn-like structure behind the foreleg is emitting a thick ooze.

[high-pitched scream]

MO Steele reports ooze is acidic. I concur, as it has now eaten through the forceps.

I dropped the organism! Where…

[multiple screams]

[feed ends]

Skeleton Summit, by Carter Lappin

Once a year, the skeletons climb out of their graves, brush themselves off, and head to a little get-together in the crypt. Nothing too fancy, just a couple of old acquaintances sitting around, complaining about old aches, and getting caught up on the happenings in each others’ afterlives. They’ll compare the bleaching of their bones, discuss how best to keep worms out of their joints, and grumble about how things were better back when they were alive. Then, at the end of the night, they separate, going back to their individual plots of earth, where they’ll stay. Until next year. 

Quick Note: We changed the format from a ranked system to the Grand Prize / Winning Entry / Honorable Mention System between the Sept 2021 and Oct 2021 competitions.

1st place (tie) — Mycelium, by Rachel Teferet

When they put plastic-digesting fungus in landfills, they didn’t consider this. Beneath my tires, asphalt bubbles, eaten by white veins of mycelium.

“Was only a matter of time,” a guy says, his RV lurching. He’s cute but missing front teeth. “Let’s walk.”

“What about my car? My stuff?”

We walk Route 66, steadily joined by other refugees. The fungus stretches out before us, a white carpet unrolling past a Shell station sinking into the dust, then quicksand Albuquerque.

“There must be a place we haven’t destroyed yet,” says gap tooth. “Keep walking.”

By nightfall, my sneakers turn to goo.

1st place (tie) — Sea Creature, by Haley Kennedy

I see tiny webbed hands on the ultrasound. Our little sea creature, unnamed, backstrokes in my private ocean. She kicks at me with a temper. Clearly of your kind. 

I could tell you about her. Send my message on the waves in an empty gin bottle. I’ll say my whale belly hosts a parasite. She eats away at me with a willful vigor. You can relate, can’t you? 

You swim safely in your muddy shallows. A slick eel with a high voltage. 

I think I’ll keep her for myself. I’ll tell her she is of me, and of the sea.

3rd place — My Last Memory, by Maria Ramos-Chertok

The signals of decline reveal themselves, disguise themselves.  A printing business closes after many years.  A fingertip is sliced off at a new job as a dishwasher.  A faraway look takes over.  The paranoia visits – he screams that my two friends are spies.  “No, they’re not, papa.”  He is institutionalized in a County Hospital: indigent with no insurance.  I visit him.  There are crazy people screaming.  Some shuffle listlessly. He recognizes me a little.  The last memory I have of him is my stepmother feeding him sweet, homemade cornbread as if he were a little, damaged bird.

4th Place — Museum, by Wilson R. M. Taylor

It was a strange thought, to give myself entirely. 

We stood together, contemplating love. The colors were riotous, the walls white. My heart thumped. She turned to me, hair trickling behind her ear, her pinkie brushing my own.

“If you could own any painting in this room, which would you choose?”

I looked around. I couldn’t afford any of them, of course, but I picked one anyway.

She chose a different one, her brow furrowed, her eyes blue and clear. Through the rest of the galleries we occasionally drifted apart, a painting’s-width between us.

5th Place — Father/Son, by Wilson R. M. Taylor

He was digging a hole in the backyard and muttering to himself. “Gold Rush 1849. San Francisco 49ers.”

I watched him from the porch. It was 2021 in Pasadena. The front yard used to be farmland, as far as I knew. The sun beat down on his head. He kept digging, using a child’s trowel, arms smeared with dirt.

“Here,” I said, dropping the gardener’s kneeling mat at his side.

He nodded thanks, in his own world, and quickly got back to work.

Through the window I watched him, still at it.

Was this normal? I wondered. 

Mom would know.

Honorable Mention — My Bottle of Fury, by Maria Ramos-Chertok

“You threw the bottle across the room,” my mother says, explaining how, as an infant, my steadfastness supported her desire to breast feed.  I imagine my little hands hurling it, I see the bottle flying arc-like and smashing into pieces.  Formula sprays in every direction.  I am an ally. She is my co-conspirator.  We will take on the world together.  

Years later, sitting in a therapist’s chair, describing my mother as the center point of gravity in our family constellation, I hear the truth, “Maria, a newborn is incapable of throwing a bottle.”

I so wanted to believe our folklore.

1st place — Sea Biscuits, by Autumn Bettinger

Lara watched as he loosened the net, a bundle of urchins tumbling onto the sand. As she peeled off her wetsuit, Lara focused on her instructor’s hands as he untangled the delicate purple spikes. With an attentiveness that made Lara flush, he meticulously separated the little shellfish, careful not to harm them. Lara began daydreaming about what else those hands could do. 
CRACK. 

Her eyes flew down as he began ripping the urchins apart, his fingers splintering skeletons and popping out joints. He scraped out the wet, yellow innards and offered them to Lara.

            “Uni?” he asked.

2nd place — Obedience Training, by Alexandra Flores

The spiked collar was supposed to be a joke.

"Woof," I said. 

"Good boy," she said. "Maybe now you'll remember to take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen."

That was weeks ago.

Now the collar's digging into my skin. I try to get it off but my fingers aren't as dexterous as they used to be. The spikes hurt.

I have to fight the urge to pee in the yard.

The doorbell rings and it takes every ounce of willpower not to run there screaming. I can feel the veins popping on my forehead. 

"Good boy," she says.

3rd place — Enjoying the Spike in Likes, Wish You Were Here, by Jon Fain

There are 89 professionals named David Krause on the work connection app Blurg, and he is one of them. Recently, his profile and posts have gotten spikes in Likes, Comments, and Connection Requests. Maybe because he started calling himself Original Recipe David Krause. He claimed he's made from 17 secret herbs and spices. Of course he's still unemployed, but that doesn't set him apart. The Blurgen, as they are known, are quick to follow the scent of a fresh distraction, before they skitter off to waste time somewhere else. None of it is of any use, but otherwise it's perfect.

4th Place — Unicorn of the Sea, by Mary Kuna

In middle school, the cool girls aspired to be marine biologists and play with dolphins. I wasn't cool. Now I'm a marine biologist, but I study sea snails. Still not cool.

My seven-year-old daughter is obsessed with narwhals, her bed awash in anatomically incorrect plushies, each with a horn on its forehead. The inaccuracy drives me nuts, but Hailey doesn't care. She knows real narwhal tusks are long, protruding canine teeth, that fifteen percent of female narwhals have tusks, that rare two-tusked narwhals exist. I abhor sewing, but she'll love this sparkly double-tusked narwhal stuffie... if I ever finish it.

5th place — Yard Spike, by Jean Feingold

The 3-foot-tall spike had appeared overnight in the middle of Regina Montover’s backyard. It was about a foot wide at the base, tapering to a sharp point on top. She was glad it was not in the front yard, where its glittery surface would have attracted the attention of neighborhood kids.

Regina inspected it carefully, trying to determine its inherent nature. It was not animal, as it had no temperature or pulse. Although it emerged from the ground, it did not appear to be vegetable. That left only mineral and the possibility it was something of great value.

1st Place — Sponge, by Wilson R. M. Taylor

The books are stacked so high on either side of him that I can barely see the top of his head.

He reads and scribbles, vacuuming information. I hesitate, wondering if I should tell him. On the other side of the library someone coughs; I decide he would do the same for me.

“Hey, man,” I say. “The deadline’s been pushed back. Molonowski’s giving us another week.”

He blinks behind his glasses. His shoulders uncurl from the table. As I leave I feel a strange sense of guilt: he looks lost, like he’s just woken up from a long dream.

2nd place — Steep, by A. M. Kennedy

The bees got tired of standing, so we made them chairs. Wood slivers glued together on a balmy Sunday afternoon. We all sat afterwards, us with tea and them with loose bellflowers.

“This will be the best batch yet,” the bees said, sipping the nectar.

We leaned forward with interest. The garden had started off rocky.

“The cranesbill and dog rose infuse well.”

We nod, take in the sun and the buzzy hum. It settles along our skin.

“But perhaps,” the bees said, with no small amount of judgement for our rudeness, “next time some cups from which to imbibe.”

3rd place — Making Lemonade With Lemons, by Charlene Mertz

Nisra clutched her woven basket as she examined the forest floor, carefully pushing aside leaves and twigs in her quest for the precious animal leavings. Turds had many uses: fertilizer for crops, cement to patch the roof, fuel for cooking. A daily hunt, necessary for survival, she had to find the droppings quickly before they decomposed, absorbing organically into the soil. Her favorite find was the scat of the civet, which she used to make a flavorsome beverage that could be traded for beads and trinkets. People asked how to make it, but she never divulged the secret ingredient.

4th place — No Use Crying, by Monica Wenzel

In her haste, the witch knocked over a bottle. The entire youth potion absorbed into the skin on her face and arms before she could wipe it up. Her appearance in the mirror took longer to sink in. This was the distinct reason she warned her clients to only use three drops.

Her gray hair returned to silky black. Her spine stood unbent. Her skin smoothed out its wisened wrinkles even as she frowned. 

She’d lost decades in mere seconds. She hoped she wouldn’t lose clients who wouldn’t trust the young-looking woman. No use crying over spilled potions now.

5th place — Last Words, by Adam Spencer

“Did you put those strawberries in the fridge?”

“Yeah.”

David turned the lamp off and closed his eyes, content that his farmer's market strawberries wouldn't spoil (or get eaten by the cat).

Just as sleep was about to overcome him, he had a thought that set his heart racing.

How awful would it be if the last thing he ever said to his wife was about some stupid strawberries?

He rolled over, curling up against her, holding her tight enough it felt as if his body was trying to absorb hers.

“I love you.”

1st place — Bad Kitty, by Jen Mierisch

The purring Persian snaked through Jerry’s legs. Unfortunately, at that moment, Jerry was walking across the room carrying Edith’s birthday cake, its 95 candles bright with flame.

The guests' singing turned to shrieks. Edith herself tried stamping out the fire with her sensible shoes, but when the curtains caught, the party was over.

The next day, Lieutenant Zavala filled out the incident report, noting the address, the dollar amount of the property damage, and the name of the perp: Mittens Mahoney.

Zavala chuckled as he stamped the file CASE CLOSED. A feline felon. Now he'd seen everything.

2nd place — Forever Stamps, by Katie Holtmeyer

She pays with cash and considers the irony of buying forever stamps. But she barely keeps in touch with her family and friends back home, and it felt too cavalier to tell people you’re dying over text or via Facebook. She couldn’t bring herself to call, so she pulled out the notebooks she hadn’t used up in college and wrote to the people of her past about her nonexistent future. She thinks, in a movie, this would be the most poignant part. In the parking lot, she cries, but only at how pretty the flowers on her forever stamps are.

3rd Place — Laika, by Janai Breffitt

In Russia, they sent a dog into space and left her to die.

They put her on a stamp. So now, if someone misspells an address, she has a chance to return.

4th place — The history lesson, by Bobby Rollins

Grampa’s old suitcase didn’t look much like a history book, but the best ones never do. We found it cleaning out his attic after the service. 

It was full of letters and documents from his youth, with stamps from the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. He never spoke about his escape over the wall into West Berlin, or what he ran from, but the scars on his body whispered plenty.

There were pictures of him in the suitcase too, some with a mocking smile, as if he knew, even then, he would outlive the country that built walls around him.

5th place — Errors, Freaks, and Oddities, by Jack Hawkins

Suspended behind plexiglass in a dark corner of the E.F.O. museum, there was a misshapen skeleton from a century-old freakshow act.

“Unsightly, such a piteous creature.”

“I suppose children enjoy such grotesqueries…” 

“What a peculiar skull!”  

The group of philatelists moved on to the next exhibit, congregating around a small canvas in the room’s center. So enraptured, they ignored the plaque nearby:

One-hundred years ago, a careless artificer fed his sheet incorrectly into the press, resulting in one-hundred stamps with upside-down planes. These tiny aberrations are sought after like precious diamonds by collectors all over. People adore such elegant errors.

1st place — To the Moon (Not Back), by Kyler Morgan

“I shoot the moon. Hearts.” His eyes say Trust me.

He's talking game, not our relationship—but I don’t. I can’t.

My hand: Joker, eight, four. He’s on his own.

He starts with the Ace.

I play the Joker. You won’t have me for long.

His lips twist left. Trust me.

Our opponents pitch their nine and five.

I pull in the Ace and Joker, tap twice. Two points.

His eyes lock on mine. Trust me.

Next leads: King, Queen, Jack. He has them all.

He makes it to the moon—but I don’t. I can’t.

2nd place — Resonant Frequencies, by Aubrey Zahn

The alien invasion began with a shrill, high-pitched noise. We noticed it first in cats, who spun in tight, irritable circles, clawing their ears bloody.

(That’s what civilians noticed first. The military had flagged it as a non-random signal days earlier, codebreakers laboring to decipher a message.)

Funny enough, the hippies were right: cosmic beings wanted to open our minds, help us resonate on the same frequency, man.

After the ringing came the onslaught: voices, emotions, memories. All living beings psychically attuned to one another. Anguish. Unbearable.

The aliens cried, in one voice, seeing how few of us survived.

3rd Place — Between Wilshire and West 6th, by Jon Fain

We look at the museum exhibits, walk the grounds, and end up by the statues in the big lagoon. Saber-tooth cats attack a woolly mammoth, ignorant that this dooms them to the tar pits too.

"Do you take all your first dates here?" she asks.

She's an agent's assistant, my roommate's sister. It is a date, sort of. I'm trying also to interest her in my script.

Standing by the chain link fence, I point and say, "Isn't that the perfect metaphor for this town?"

"It's the perfect metaphor for everywhere," she says. "You'll have to do better than that."

4th Place — A Batter’s Execution, by Lee Stallings

she places her fingertips along the laces’ spine
its vertebrae fitting harmoniously within the indents of her callouses

the body of the ball in her hands

she bows

not to the catcher

nor the cavalry behind her

but to the inevitable end

to the persecuted

ensnared within the gallows of the batter’s box

with a knee’s thrust

an arm’s whip

the executioner swings her flail full force

testimonies and tendons alike are torn by the whirlwind momentum

with mere seconds to sing her swan song

mortality’s victim takes one last look at the cruel and beautiful game before

release

5th place — Walking Nostalgia, by Rebecca Langley

We used to live close enough to walk barefoot to the ocean. On the way, we’d balance heel-to-toe on the road-cracks to feel the pitch between our toes, warm and squishy from the sun. My brother said when he grew up he’d like a whole room where the floor was made of warm squishy pitch, and another one with moss. I didn’t know until we grew up and far away that the patches on the road would be as sweet a memory for me as the sand and sun, barefoot kids trekking to the beach—the luckiest.

1st place — Adult Teeth, by Clio Thayer

I have a bag full of left first molars in my dresser drawer. I lost my first one when I was eleven years old, the only baby tooth in the bag. The second I lost at fifteen. The third at sixteen. Two erupted back to back during my junior year of high school and triple that during senior year. The bag is short a few that I’ve accidentally swallowed. Dentists never find anything in x-rays. No one knows why they keep coming in. My left first molar is always loose now, with raw gums bleeding from constant eruption.

2nd Place — Around the Toothsome Table, by Liz Hufford

"If grandpa can gum his food," Jeffrey asked, "can I tooth mine?"  

"This is what comes from lexicographers breeding," his father commented. 

 Mother couldn't let it go, her two-volume, shorter OED at the ready.  

"You would not be incorrect," she replied. "but it's not common usage."  

"Well, we're not common people, are we?"  

Father's raised eyebrows veered toward mother, but before she could speak, Jeffrey continued.  

"So I could say 'I toothed strawberries yesterday'?"  

Both parents grimaced.  

"Well, I couldn't say teethed, could I? I'm entirely too old for that."

3rd Place — That Summer I Worked on the Farm, by Nathan Alling Long

When I’d said the exam was hard, my English teacher had said, “You mean difficult; hard refers to rocks.”

I thought about that often as I raked rocks from a field that summer. 

After work, I’d go sit by the cliff overlooking the valley. One day there, I discovered an old horse tooth in the ground.

“That’s from the animal grave,” the owner said later. “We’ll put it on the mantel.”

No, I thought, wanting to keep it. 

Before summer ended, I snuck back and held it one more time. It was hard as rock and difficult to let go.

4th Place — 19 to go, by Lisa Muschinski

"C'mon, tooth."

The twine slices between my gums, strangling the scraggly connection. My brother has his grubby fingers in my mouth, readjusting the slippery thing. It's hanging on by a string.

"Almost there..." my brother says, puppeteering my incisor with the string.

"Slice. Slice. Slick. Slack. Slip," the twine saws.

The tooth does a spin, swiveling crunchily along the tooth below that's growing in. It itches, weirdly.

With one giant yank, my brother snaps the tooth from the root. The ugly sinkhole blooms blood.

"Tooth number one," my brother congratulates. I count my teeth in the mirror: 19 to go.

5th place — They Found Him at the Bottom of Old Grim River, by Ryan Diego Martinez

They found him at the bottom of Old Grim River. That’s not the real name of it. S’just what the locals call it. It’s a grey, rushing thing—a powerful, wild thing. In the wet season, when the rain comes down hard, Old Grim tears through town like a bullet train. 

The locals think it’s Mary’s boy, who went missing last summer. Old Grim stole his face, made him bloated and rotten. But they’re still finding teeth washing up on the banks, and Old Grim ain’t got fingers—so it wasn’t the river that plucked ‘em out.

Honorable Mention — Inspection No. 47, by Zoe Wong

The peeling blue door is locked. The man in the bowler hat sighs. 

Over the door sits a giant tooth, chipped and yellowing. What remains of the sign's big red letters, now faded to salmon pink, spells "D-NTAL EXP-E-S." 

Dental Experts? No. Dental Express. 

Really? Who'd want to get their cavities filled at a place called Dental Express?

The man in the hat shakes his head. He shades his eyes with one hand and presses his face to the grime on the window, but sees only flimsy yellow blinds. He sighs again, and sits down on the curb to wait.

1st place — String of Strikes, by Bob Thurber

After bowling and burgers and walking Betty to the bus stop, my sister asked how I’d liked my first date. I had no clue what she was talking about. I blinked while she stared, squinting like I’d fallen out of focus.

—How stupid are you, she said. Seriously? Today. You. Betty. All afternoon together. Casual. Relaxed. Me wandering off half the time. What did you think that was?

—Me tagging along?

—Nope. She likes you.

—So you were chaperoning?

—She likes you a lot.

—I should have talked more, I said.

—Send her a poem, my sister said.

2nd Place — Uses, by Nathan Alling Long

To wean me off my special blanket, each night my mother pulled out a thread, until it disappeared. 

As a kid, I’d take her tampons—which I thought looked like hand-grenades—pull the string, and toss them across the yard, imagining I’d blown up the enemy.

After telling the story of Ariadne entering the maze to save Theseus, my mother asked me, Guess what Ariadne took with her to help her get out. String? I asked. No, my mother said, thread.

Only after she died, did I find in her closet a box labeled String Too Short to Use.

3rd place — You’ve Got a Friend in Me, by Koby Rosen

Martin took a sip of tap water from the glass, “You shouldn’t have!”

“Found it used, Amazon… you’re not that special!”

“Really thoughtful Mauve.”

“Go ahead, try it!”

Martin studied the replica worn Woody doll.

“Pull the string Marty!”

Cautiously, Martin acceded.

There’s a snake in my boot!

Sensing the subtle squirm under the arch of his foot, Martin removed his shoe; rubber snake plopped onto the hardwood.

“Funny Mauve.”

“Wasn’t me-- try it again!”

Reach for the sky!

Light bulb crashed to the floor; Martin shot his hands up.

“Come on, once more!”

Somebody’s poisoned the waterhole!

Martin fainted.

4th place — Pool Party Glamour, by Lauren Beard

And on the very last day of sixth grade, it happened — right before the end of the year pool party, the event that was supposed to skyrocket my nonexistent popularity before seventh grade, the year that all the girls got mean (or so I had heard). So, I grabbed a bunch of toilet paper, squirmed onto and off of the bus, and scooted my way into the presence of my i-was-a-cheerleader-in-high-school mom, who offered up her all too confident, blasé wisdom: "honey, just stick it up." And so, just for swimsuit-worthy safe measure, I cut off the string.

5th Place — Lucid Dream No. 6, by Mykki Rios

bobbing like marionettes we jumped from rooftop to rooftop with gunmen on our toes. cranes snapped and tilted like see saws. beams and panes of glass were chutes and ladders. we crashed to the ground feather light and our escape continued. i don’t know who i was running with but i know we were together. at some point the running turned to wading then swimming. the water was wintry cold but we were fine. there was no fear of drowning. we’d keep going across bottomless trenches with trust the scattered sandbars would meet us when we needed to find earth.

Honorable Mention — Spider String Saturdays, by Elizabeth Schultz

Silver dew drops. Beautiful, but Mimi says they ruin the web. The spiders take all night to spin it, string after string, an art and a science. I used to be afraid of spiders. Now I can admire them, tiny huntresses in a brutal world. Birds and sandals both out to get them. Mimi sleeps in on Saturdays, and if I wake her there will be sandals out to get me too. I like Saturday mornings, me and the dew drops and the spiders and their web. They spin and I sing low, made up songs about a princess.

Honorable Mention — My Secret, by Michael Kashgarian

I frequent magic shows for nothing more than to find the string. Sometimes I bring a laser pen to swipe across the stage, revealing a greenish dot when the beam intersects a vertical length of monofilament string. No one sees it because no one’s looking. It’s too fast and in the periphery of the audience’s focus. Once, the magician noticed. He paused and scanned the crowd, and everyone thought it was part of his act. Except me.

1st place — CLOUDS, by Jack Furth

One of the clouds is shaped like a box.

Everyone knows this is wrong.

The cloud passes.

We try not to speak of it.

2nd place — Sweet, by Zoe Wong

From the safety of the projector screen, a grainy Mayan temple watches over the knots of concentrating second-graders. In the hallowed name of social studies, they huddle over towering bowls of sugar cube bricks and plastic cups of Elmer's glue mortar.

Of course, the glue is delightfully sticky. But the sugar — the sugar is what holds them captive.

Perfect, white, crumbling, tantalizing. 

Slowly, lopsided sugar ziggurats rise up from marker-streaked desks amidst whispers and giggles. More than one cube is squirreled away, slipped into a pocket or a watering mouth. Ms. Cardenas pretends not to see.

3rd place — Clear Escapism, by Jack Hawkins

Maurice the mime was an acquaintance of mine. I’d notice him at his usual spot to and from work, that was, until he relocated a few streets down. From then on, he spent his days curled into a tight ball pressed against a graffitied wall. So, in a fit of altruism, I took my invisible pickaxe and chipped away at the invisible box he’d constructed around himself before finally clearing out the invisible debris.

“I got evicted,” he said.

“Goodness, how unfortunate.”

“Will you help me?”

I didn’t reply, but I did spend fifteen minutes putting the bricks back.

4th place — Replay, by Colleen Alles

You ready yourself for future conversations—sex and death—but down the road. Which comes first? Sex by accident—a steamy scene in a PG movie you play to cook dinner in peace. Risotto. Red wine. But death? Death is for later. Death is meant for later. Death is always meant for later. Death is not for your three-year-old to understand, to witness in a video game. You watch him clock it. “He died,” your son says. It’s shock. He understands. You reach for the green cube on the controller, touch it. “It’s okay,” you say. “You can go again.”

5th place — The Most Creative Man in the World, by Jack Hawkins

The most creative man in the world stands proudly onstage, though a metal box is secured firm around his head. Onlookers, a potpourri of television execs, watch perplexed as the wires from the device are plugged in to a computer screen. 

“Our machine will display an organized database of our subject’s unfiltered imagination,” the lead scientist states, “all creations from birth until death.”

Yet as the machine whirs to life, so dies the body of the most creative man in the world, collapsing as the audience ponders how long it’d take for this miraculous invention to enter mass production.

1st place — Found on Zillow, by Amanda Lamadrid

15 Mountain LN, Lakeville, MA, 02357 

$350,000 

2 Bed

1 Bath

1,018 Sq. Ft.    

Yellow cottage, white wood siding. Location quiet and rural. Built by my husband, for Ava. The hammer used is engraved (available upon request). They met at fifteen, married at nineteen, moved in at twenty. Their initials carved into threshold (can be painted over). She passed at twenty-three (outside of the home).      

We’re thirty-five, looking to sell. Our family’s outgrown it. Newlywed couples preferred (this point is negotiable). Contact me directly. Tours by appointment only. Sellers motivated – present all reasonable offers.

2nd place — The Artist, by Hannah Wang

One time, Giuseppe Verdi visited our forge. He was composing an opera and looking for inspiration. "Help us, signore," we cried, panting. "We labor until our bones give way, yet we cannot feed our children." Verdi said nothing. He took some notes, then rode away in a splendid horse-drawn carriage. 

Six months later, Il trovatore premiered in Rome. The "Anvil Chorus" in Act II was a favorite of the critics, who applauded the number for its lively percussion and rousing chorus of Zingari singing the praises of hard work with every cheerful strike of their hammers.

3rd place — Media Literacy, by Amanda Lamadrid

You’re stalking red speedo guy from swim meet on IG and this is his bio:

“Be the hammer.”

You do a little research, for an opening line the next time you hand R.S. a towel from the sidelines.

Google credits Erwin Rommel for the quote.

You wonder if R.S. knows the dude he’s quoting wanted to have Hitler’s babies.

Nah, probably just heard it one day and thought it sounded tough. 

But don’t hammers exist to be used?

He's basically admitting he's a tool.

4th place — The Seance, by Emily Schneider

Jennie—pixie cut, freckles—snuck into the cemetery ahead of me. She wanted to contact Virginia Woolf. (I knew she was out of my league.) Here’s how it went down: pentagram, candles, a lot of waiting. I had a straight-C average and my nickname on the football team was Hammer because I’d sacked so many quarterbacks. You don’t know what’s going to turn someone, soften them, but it’s been fifteen years and she swears it was that dog-eared Mrs. Dalloway she found in my backpack that night. All those notes in the margins. How hard she could tell I’d tried.

5th place — Hi, How May I Help You?, by Rachel Qing Pang

I open my dreary eyes and raise my hand, stopping at “hi”. Standing tall at the store entrance, I greet my customers. 

An old lady slips into the store, unbeknownst to my boss. I swivel my head, trying to follow her. 

Her eyes match mine. I go into overdrive. My feet are rooted to the ground. She crosses the store, towards me. She caresses me up and down. 

I cannot breathe. 

She pulls a hammer out of her purse. 

Bang! She smashes my knees. 

Crash! I crumble to the ground. 

Bzzing! Sparks fly. 

“I knew you’re a robot!” She cries.

1st place — Memory Like an Elephant, by Hannah Lee Ahn

In the Californian desert, a man builds The Jungle. It boasts the newest animatrons, little boats bobbing along a false river. Tickets fly. Water sluices each and every visitor, carefully amassing delicate skin cells, nervous enzymes; an entire universe in a dish. After fifty years of declining ridership, it is quietly retired and left to condense. The last settlement dies out - by the time the newcomers land their spaceships, only a desiccated cake remains. One of their young - perhaps a little girl - ventures across the sunken path, salt crunching beneath. Free of their matrices, the particles finally lapse into dust.

2nd place — Bogart, by Alexander Kim

My shark and I are in love but sometimes it misses the ocean. Today I came home to find it crying on my rug. I said “I have a gift for you,” and presented the shark with a fedora. Recently it has become obsessed with Humphrey Bogart.

The fedora cocked on its head, the shark looked up at me and said “Here’s looking at you, kid.” I said “Kiss me as if it were the last time.” I had this sad feeling like it really might be the last time but I hid it. And tasted salt.

3rd place — Common Chemicals for 200, by Koby Rosen

Commonly referred to as NaCl

What is salt?

Can you be more specific?

...I’m not, I don’t know

Alright, Nancy, Mark any guess?...

We were looking for table salt

Pick again...

Pick a category Tom

Are you alright?

Cut. Take five minutes

We’ve never stopped shooting mid-game

He can’t speak

Fair point

Who screen tested him?

Mary did, I think

No it was Dan

No, it was Laura

Does he have any guests in the audience?

He the one with the sister?

No that’s Mark

He brought no one?

Laura can you try to calm him down?

Where’d he go?

4th place — Weapon of Choice, by Hannah Lee Ahn

Guns always seemed excessive to you: a blinding point of metal shearing through muscle, blood spattering white plaster. But you live alone and your bedroom window opens onto the street. Maybe you’ll get a baseball bat. “Nah, I don’t play. That’s my bat I use to bash people’s heads in.” You imagine tasting your own tears as you flee, heart pounding, a kitchen knife plunging into a stranger’s chest. That desperate taste. The cold sweat of a man breaking a window, looking to steal something, anything. You buy a taser to keep under your pillow. Electricity craves salt, doesn’t it?

5th place — Origin Story, by Sal Kang

When my parents died, grandmother made me bathe in salt. It purifies and cleanses you, she said. Later that year, I moved to the countryside to live with her. I didn’t care for all the mountains and fields, but I liked how the unpaved roads turned marshy every time it rained. If I was lucky, I could catch a worm. One day, I even brought one back to the house. Not wanting to run all the way to the water pump to clean it, I just buried it in salt. Not my fanciest murder, but yeah, that was the first.

Honorable mention — A History of Violence, by Riley Parker

I awoke in a circle of salt. Its infinite edge seemed to protect me from the horrid creature mere inches from my invisible cage. Circling me, its oily skin gesticulated as its sunken mouth muttered syllables unfamiliar to my ears. The ghastly, pale figure waved its chain to and fro, and a sudden wind traveled through me; each vertebra snapping off another. I screamed and the creature stepped back, its eye a glint of fear. Under normal circumstances I would strike, but my claw laid limp across the stone floor. “Begone, daemon,” were the last words I ever heard.

Honorable mention — Alice in Saltland, by Leah Mueller

I wander into a watery dimension filled with sodium-rich foods. Gigantic platters of fries, glistening with grease. Punch bowls as big as cars, overflowing with cocktail peanuts. Pretzels the size of garden hoses. Ceaseless, torrential rain.

Battered umbrella, too flimsy to keep my pigtails dry. Worn Mary Janes slosh through puddles. I clutch my skirt’s hem, so the wind won’t blow it over my head.

It’s no use. Every time I find the exit, someone or something moves it further away. I cry for help, but no one answers.

When it rains, it pours.

Honorable mention — Purple Salt, by Aya

Hendrix pulled at the ruffles of his purple jacket. “Mom, I don’t want to go to the church,” the nine year old said.

“I told you, if you wanted to go as that ungodly singer, Prince, you have to show Pastor Jacob,” she said coldly. 

The two passed children marveling at the candy they’d received as they approached the Pastor. 

“Halloween isn’t an excuse to immortalize sinners,” the Pastor said as he sprinkled Hendrix with salt. “This’ll protect you from the demon inside you.”

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