Latest Short stories
Second Place Winner: Memory Knife
The desert is no place for a guilty conscience. The silence eats at sinners until they’re small enough and broken enough to be swallowed whole. That’s why Erin Flores chose the Mojave as her new home. After her term in prison, disappearance felt like absolution. She paid cash for a structure that the ad loosely described as a house, the siding peeling off in white strips like dead skin, and settled in to wait for her ingestion.
First Place Winner: The Girl Who Drove the Getaway Car
Mother’s favorite waltz warbled from the corner of the garage. I must have left the phonograph on a few hours ago, before the party. Behind me, the chipped door closed on the clink of crystal, the swish of silk, and the thrum of a cello.
Lifewarden
Shadows draped over the furniture in the small Lifewarden cottage. Death hung over Madiya’s mind like that darkness, clouding all her thoughts. Except the one that chided her for sleeping through her last chance to enjoy the beams of dawn penetrating the curtains and casting beautiful patterns on the floor. But she needed no such distractions today. As she rose from her cot, a vision crashed into her.
Loving John Wilson
“John’s dead, Maggie.” Ann stood in the doorway, her voice hollow and her cheeks streaked. In the two years that she’d been my roommate, I’d never seen her cry.
Second Place Winner: Skeleton
Dec. 24. Victim discovered 3 min. off San Pasqual Valley Road/Highway 78. Mile marker 12. Female. Mid 20s. Face down. Homicide suspected. No attempted burial. Thrown and discarded. Decomposition suggests 6 weeks since death. Wild animals got to body. Skeleton mostly intact. Left femur missing. No ID. Prostitute? Photograph in back pocket.
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