The bird was wild with fear. Entangled in the fishing-rod line—wings awkwardly stretched, feet dangling mid-air—it leaped and bounced and swayed, a puppet on a string dancing a macabre pas de deux over the wordless song of the waves. More frightened than the bird, the...
The dumb bomb that dropped on my mother’s house did not explode. Instead, it flattened the dinner table and severed the left leg of my uncle. He had just finished eating a bowl of chè đậu trắng, my favourite dessert, when the roof caved in on them. It was not an...
What did the octopus know? Each day at work, when Alice fed it or cleaned its tank or gave it some item to keep it busy—a rubber dog toy, a teething ring—she wondered. She watched its eight roving arms moving around the enclosure, all independent from whatever was...
She arrived at the ragged edge of the sea with four canvas totes. One for herself, and three for the children. Each bag sang faintly when it shifted, as if full of seashells or bones. The townsfolk watched her climb toward the old house on the hill. They thought she...
I ask the boys to send me pictures, and then I build their faces. They show me family portraits in parlors, hair slicked from severe center partings, and military snapshots in uniforms brown and crisp as paper packages. They come into my shop, and I lay paint upon...
WHALEFALL Lorenza is honest in therapy about everything except the whales. She tells Dr. Adams a purgatory of bland truths: her hands shake, jelly seismic activity, when she walks outside and the world is small and real and people look at her with pupils that dilate...
I hang my shadow on the clothesline like a sheer, limp solar panel. After dancing beside me all night long, it needs a sun-washed nap. The steel-colored version of me descends into dreams slowly, like that violin quartet that played on, as the Titanic French kissed...
I wrote tenderness on a sticky note and stuck it on my computer monitor. The next person who wandered by my cubicle, I tried to hug. Their arms flailed like ribbons. I was fired. So that wasn’t it. At home, I made a cake, and my wife made a list: sugar, fat, calories,...
We absolutely loved reading the stories from this unique and inspiring contest! We love seeing how different writers approach our prompts, and we found some fresh and exciting stories from this prize! Congrats to everyone on the shortlist and big congrats to our...
On the morning Ma forgot my name, she remembered everything else: the price of onions in 1998, the exact shade of blue Baba wore the day he proposed, the smell of the sea on her first and only trip to Digha. She stood at the balcony, gripping the railing as if the...
We're so excited to celebrate these winning stories! They took us to settings only found in these writers' imaginations! Big congrats to everyone on the shortlist as it's always hard to get on this list! First Place: Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter...
Now let us consider the problem of the man with three children and one fig tree. In the Talionis Commentaries we find a man whose will ordains that each fig be split into three equal pieces. This solution is just but impractical. The Annotations of Marduk speak of a...