Winners

  • The Ballad of the Curfew

    The Ballad of the Curfew

    Richard Vetere

    The day the curfew was announced it made her realize how alone she was. Her heart pounded and she needed to go outside. She needed air, she needed to be outdoors. So she put on her mask and made her way to the lobby of her building, looked around to make sure no one was… Read more

  • The Dark of Another Night

    The Dark of Another Night

    Hamish Goodwin

    1704Once the physician was summoned, he took three full days to reach the farm. Three days as he would not cut short his daughter’s wedding and because he refused to travel on the sabbath; three days where it should have taken one, and by which time the girl was almost dead.The girl’s father had waited… Read more

  • Wolf-Cry

    Wolf-Cry

    J.M. Sherman

    You would feel bad for the wolf-man if you met him. Don’t worry: this doesn’t offend him. After all, there are some things worth pitying. The wolf-man is one of them. He attracts pity like flies to a corpse. But the wolf-man does not do himself any favors, sitting atop her grave like that. He… Read more

  • All the News That’s Fit to Print

    All the News That’s Fit to Print

    William Paul Lazarus

    LAMINATE, WV — The headline on a recent front page of the “Laminate Lackadaisical” newspaper was startling.  It reported that: “Hitler Invades Poland.” It wasn’t a big story, although editor Walt “Bones” Heywood found room for it under a small article about an apartment fire in nearby Enoch, next to the election of a mayor in… Read more

  • The Child at the End of the World

    The Child at the End of the World

    Anna O’Flynn

    People think they know what happens when the world ends. They talk about the monsters emerging from the woods and onto the streets. How the people mutate into hideous creatures, hunting the rest of us down. The sky deepens to red, the water becomes unsafe to drink and we all huddle around the last tin… Read more

  • Only Forward, Never Back

    Only Forward, Never Back

    Ellis Eden

    “There’s monsters in my closet,” Hugo said, from under his pillow. “They go in but they never come out.” “What kind?” Faron asked. Maybe it was an act to put off bedtime, but he understood–his childhood basement had seethed with imagined horrors waiting to snatch him in the dark.  “Mostly giant bugs, or things with no… Read more