We looked for stories of ghosts, fables, and fractured fairy tales and were transported from the here and now to a new land of discovery. And now we're back from our journeys to present you with the longlist for this contest! Be back soon with the shortlist! Evening...
When we saw the hot pink Barbie-branded Corvette sitting in our neighbor’s trash pile, we hesitated. Aggie and Tim were our summertime neighbors, kids who lived next door three months out of the year with their grandma, our full-time neighbor. Aggie liked to say their...
When you approach the bridge, you will hear her moans. The teenagers go to Dead Woman’s Crossing, in search of love and destruction. It’s darker there, on this church hayride night. Flatbed truck with wooden benches and a scattering of hay. Driver crawls to the spot...
A box sits broken down across my lap. I slide out of the car into the garage and slip the box behind the tool bench—it’s there with nine other empty boxes. Dozens more pile up around me. My husband says it’s time to get rid of my collection. They’re not hurting...
We flush my sister’s goldfish down the toilet at three in the morning. She says the poor creature suffered a lot due to a condition inherent in all fish past twenty. I hold the flashlight, its beam stuttering over scales. The fish’s eyes look small, like black seeds....
She first appears as a pale-yellow blur in the darkness, her figure solidifying as I approach, all taffeta and ribbon. Her extended thumb seems to glow, accentuated by a dainty white glove. She looks normal. Human. So tangible that I laugh as I pull onto the shoulder,...
First, she cradled it like a child, then put it between her legs and galloped like a horse, next slung it over her shoulder like a rifle, and she stood at attention, the leg at the ready. The leg was more than she had intended to take. So greedy, she chastised. Until...
because the tightness the itch the stiff rectangle smothering us. Because eyes bore when mouth and nose hide. Because micro mold, the uglies. Didn’t get vaccinated because— well duh. Didn’t quarantine because we’re all God’s children except those who aren’t. We didn’t...
Blackout I walked into the theatre halfway through the performance. The ushers were all on their phones, and no one stopped me. All the way down the aisle, in the dark, I dragged a heavy-duty black garbage bag filled with things he had left behind in my apartment....
Gretel wakes in the middle of the night with the kind of hunger that claws at your insides, as if it were a feral creature trying to get back to the woods. She hears Hansel’s soft breathing in the dark, the faint sound of jazz downstairs, and the distant, tremulous...
James was grieving the death of his father, who’d mistrusted Michaela. Too dark a horse, he’d warned. She’d be the one to break him. James had told Michaela this in bed, laughing, after a good and unhurried sexual encounter, the night their daughter was conceived. The...
The first time the house swallowed a sound, we blamed the insulation. A penny fell from your fingers, flashed once, and never landed. By June, the kitchen had gone almost entirely mute. A plate could burst across the linoleum without a crack. We learned to live by...