Fiction
Wild, wacky, and utterly entertaining, the 2nd place-winning story from our 2016 fiction contest turns the hardboiled detective story on its head.
There was no dew, so she could work without the discomfort of grass clippings stuck to wet bare feet. Ken had always said that dry grass in the morning meant there’d be an afternoon thunderstorm.
"I was sweating and drooling. It was April. I had almost made it through fifth grade. And now I was leaving the planet. Permanently."
When the children drew pictures of our school, it always looked as if they were drawing a jail. They would start with a big rectangle, and then fill it with countless little squares until the windows started to overlap.
He paced down the inner corridor, heading to the place he thought she might be, rolling a piece of sea glass in his hand. Odd, maybe, that he still panicked when she went missing, because she could never really be lost.
The seagull glides over me, surprisingly clear and large, onyx eyes looking down, black-tipped wings outstretched, its fractured shivering shape a reflection in the water—except that I’m looking at it from the other side.
First the eyes, he thought. Watch the eyes—where are the eyes watching? Forward, searching over heads, sorting out the familiar ones ahead on the rickety gangplank?
Victoria conceded that her "nothing new under the sun" mantra might be taking its toll on her personal life by draining it of a certain immediacy.
“My father is flying, my father is flying,” Rachel chants as they rush around the house in a panic, moving their mattress down to the tatami room and making their bedroom ready for the visit.
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