Ember’s First Contest: Results
77 hours
112 entries
22 long-listed stories
6 winners
“Young Stellar Objects” (First Place)
by H. A. Brown
After the night with the white pills and the scribbled note and the ambulance ride, the tiny rooms of Margo’s house squeeze her like a rope around her neck. Her mother’s eyes follow as she rises from the table, as she rinses an apple, as she reaches for a knife. The constant observation makes her skin crawl. Sadness burrows deep in her stomach. Her cheeks burn with shame as she pushes it all down. Any trembling of her fingers, any downturn of her lips, would serve as evidence of some sort of disintegration. As her mother descends the stairs to the laundry room, Margo lays the knife down beside the apple. She slips outside.
In the hospital, a woman in an orange knit cardigan led a group on meditation. She said, “A bad mood can feel a lot like a rainstorm. What you need to remember is that you are not the rain. You are the sky.” After the session, Margo noticed a title called The Secret Life of Stars on a bookshelf in the back. She devoured the entire thing in one sitting.
When her family came to visit, they sat around a small table in silence. Her father stared at his shoes. Her mother smoothed the tablecloth. Her sister, Sabrina, picked at her nails, glancing between Margo and their mother. No one knew what to say. A conversation like this one, here in this place, required a language her family didn’t speak.
Margo’s troubles had always outsized her parents’ abilities. As a child, she clung to her mother’s legs in the drop-off line, whimpering. At bedtime, she cried until she threw up in her father’s lap, bile and snot dripping from her face. Even then, she could see the overwhelm her untethered child-body stirred up in them. They took large steps back as she cried. They whispered in strained voices, “What are we going to do with her?” Sabrina looked at Margo like a papercut on the tip of her finger, the type you can never quite bandage correctly. When Margo cried, Sabrina would pat her hair or carry over her favorite stuffed lamb. At night, she let Margo crawl underneath her covers, taking hold of her hand, offering her warmth and steady breath.
As she grew, Margo tried with all her might to tame the storms rumbling in her chest. She watched for angel numbers and wished every time for a body that could hold her inside of it. The waves of feeling overtook her anyway, drowning everything in their wake. She spent long stretches of each day behind her closed bedroom door. She sobbed silently into her pillow. She imagined her body exploding into a billion tiny specks of dust. She hoarded sharp objects to release the pressure building up beneath her skin. At the dinner table, when her mother asked about her day, she responded, “It was fine, thanks.” Sabrina searched her face for clues. Margo averted her eyes.
In the hospital, Margo’s head swirled with all the things she wished she could say to them. I made a new friend, or, the medicine is working, or I want to go home. Instead, she said, “Do you know how protostars are formed?” Her father looked up. “Basically, a cloud of gas collapses under the weight of its own gravity.” Margo held her mother’s gaze, swallowing down her own heartbeat. “The energy from the collapse powers the star for a long, long time.”
“Well,” her mother began. “Isn’t that… interesting.” Margo’s chest burned, the way it always did when her parents looked right past her. Sabrina tilted her head, eyebrows furrowed.
When Margo returned home, there was something unsettling about the unchanged state of it all. It felt as if she had been rearranged on a molecular level, opened up and swirled around and stitched back together with thread and staples. Yet every night, the family sat around the same table they always had, and her sister set four placemats, and her mother scooped steaming pasta into bowls, and her father wiped his mouth with a napkin between bites. They discussed the weather, the news, anything except Margo’s implosion. Sometimes, she wondered if it had happened at all.
Her family talked around it. “All caught up with your schoolwork?” her father asked. “Don’t forget,” her mother prodded, placing a small orange pill beside her breakfast plate. But they tried, in their own way. Her mother picked up library books on the history of astronomy. Her father bought a telescope. Sabrina took her to the old abandoned gas station at the top of the hill, and they laid in the grass on their backs in silence, searching for constellations in the overcast sky. Margo had closed her eyes and felt the air moving across her face. For a moment, the world felt big enough.
Margo closes the door quietly behind her, tracking the same winding path to the top of the hill. She walks in the middle of the dark dirt road, allowing her feet to remember the way. Katydids chirp from the thick blanket of trees surrounding the street. The old gas station sits at the top, decommissioned pumps turned orange with creeping rust. Patches of grass grow at their base. Lichen climbs up the walls of the old building. Margo plants her foot on a window ledge, hoisting her body up. She climbs all the way to the roof, moving carefully to the center of the overhang, and lays beneath the canopy of stars.
The night is exceptionally clear. The sky stretches around her, cool and quiet. With a shaky exhale, she allows herself to expand. There is her fear, sharp and heavy, curling up beneath her ribcage. There is her anger, burning in the center of her chest. A deep, aching sadness washes over her in waves. She breathes into the feeling. I am not the rain. Gemini is splayed brilliantly across the blackness above her, Castor and Pollux eternally interlocked.
The sound of footsteps crunching dried grass emerges from below.
“Margo?” her sister’s voice calls out.
She pauses for a moment in the silence, debating whether or not she would like to be found. “Up here.”
“How did you—” Sabrina begins. She does not finish her question. Margo hears a series of tapping noises, two thumps, and one grunt before her sister appears beside her. Margo does not turn to her. She already knows what she will find. Sabrina will pull her knees tightly to her chest as if her arms are the only thing holding her body together. She’ll keep her distance, as though Margo is an overheated glass that might shatter at any moment.
Instead, Sabrina sighs and stretches out on her back next to Margo. They lay that way for a few minutes in silence. “You know, I’ve been reading your star books.” At this, Margo turns. Something glows in the pit of her stomach. Sabrina’s eyes remain trained on the sky. “I just got to the part about binary stars. Have you gotten there yet?”
Margo shakes her head. Tears burn behind her eyes, a sob clawing at her throat.
“Turns out most stars come in pairs. They’re gravitationally bound, and they orbit each other.” Sabrina looks at her sister. Margo lets the tears slide down her cheeks. “Apparently our lonely sun is the exception, not the rule.” She reaches out her hand. Margo squeezes it, holding on tight.
H. A. Brown is a professional holder of stories who likes to tell her own in her free time. They have become an accidental expert on the springtime blooms of North Cambridge, Massachusetts and enjoy crafting floral embroidery designs. In her writing, she explores queerness, human relationships, and the ways that people construct meaning in their lives.
Ember says: Young Stellar Objects made me tear up so much I almost put myself out!
“Borrowed Bones” (Second Place)
by Dee Mick
We resorted to eating rats to keep starvation at bay. They were fatty little things, having snuck into our dried goods from the very beginning of our voyage. It made them easier to catch, but harder to swallow.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Ionuţ announced after his second rodent.
I made my next bite particularly large, chewed with my mouth open, and cackled when he rushed to the railing to empty his stomach. My father wasn’t amused. He grabbed my jaw in his sturdy mitt of a hand and didn’t let go. “We have no food to waste, Lavinia.” He silenced me with pressure; his fingers squeezed my gums hard enough to make them bleed. “Apologize to your brother.”
“Nu am să mai fac,” I spat.
“English, girl. So the whole ship can hear you grovel.”
There were six pairs of eyes on me. Six men waiting for me to bend to my father’s will. I glanced at my brother, his form twisted and face pale, and spoke as properly as I could manage in a foreign tongue. “Forgive me, Ion. Please.”
He nodded once before lurching toward the sea again. The sound of his bile splattering against the ice was enough to make my stomach turn, too.
After the rats were reduced to fur and tails, the men took turns digging their swords into the chunks of ice encasing our ship. They cursed me repeatedly across four – no, five – different languages. The consensus was the same: it was bad luck to bring a woman aboard. I was the reason they were stranded.
🦴
Vanya was the first to lose an appendage. His finger cracked and dropped to the deck, his wedding ring still attached. He screamed and we stared, unable to truly comprehend what we’d seen. Except for Captain Bartley, who had seen it all a thousand times over.
We frantically checked our hands and feet. Shades of red, purple, black.
“Will we lose them too?” Fenix asked as he tightened his scarf around his frosted nose.
“Aye,” Bartley assured him with a preternatural calm. Perhaps, because he was already missing an ear and several toes, the concept of losing something else no longer frightened him. “It’s what the cold does.”
“But what do we do?” Hanzi, formerly plump and proud, interjected. (He was no more than half a man after months at sea.)
“Stay warm as best you can.”
“With what?” Ionuţ growled. My father grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and scolded him. When he spoke again, it was with respect. “Captain, how do we stay warm?”
Bartley considered his answer for a long moment. We traded glances with bated breath. At last, his order came: “We’ll burn the sails.”
“And if we die?”
“When we die,” Bartley corrected. “It’s inevitable.”
“It isn’t,” returned my father. "We still have a chance. Quick now."
Hanzi held the cargo rope steady while Ionuţ scrambled up to the crow’s nest. Fenix followed my father’s desperate orders. Bartley chuckled and Vanya continued to wail.
With no one watching me, I acted on impulse. I grabbed Vanya’s missing finger and tucked it between the layers of my skirts.
🦴
The ship became one with the ice; there was no telling where one ended and the other began. Every surface was frozen solid. Every rat stuck-still. Our eyelashes, heavy from the weight of the never-ending snow. Our bodies, hollow caves. We used to keep track of time by nicking the mast, but we became too weak to continue. (Some of us didn’t even have enough fingers left to hold a dagger properly.)
We huddled together with the shreds of our humanity, near-mad and fully famished. All except for Vanya, who’d passed days ago. He still inhabited his hammock. Every time I saw his corpse, I thought of the marrow I secretly sucked from his finger and licked my lips.
“We could roast him,” Hanzi posed quietly. He couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze, but I couldn’t tear mine away. Finally, someone said what I’d been dreaming about.
Ionuţ huffed, sapless and frail. “With what? The ice has rotted everything.”
“Not the rum barrels.” Everyone looked at me, then. Hungry and desperate and curious. “We could skin him. Plop the meat inside.”
“You’re talking like he’s cattle,” my father hissed.
“A bit thinner, don’t you think?”
Bartley, now missing four fingers and half his nose, laughed so genuinely it nearly took my breath away. It was inappropriate. It was infectious. I found myself giggling with him. Fenix joined in. Ionuţ, too.
“You are suggesting something devilish!” My father was a moral man, but morality held no cards in face of mortality.
“We’re already in Hell!”
No one countered me because there was no argument to make. There were no rodents – not even a bug to suck the juices from. At that moment, I tasted power. The decision was mine and I made it with ease:
“Bring him to me.”
🦴
After Vanya, Hanzi fell ill.
Bartley.
Fenix.
We ate them all up and sucked them dry until only our family remained. Until we had enough layers to keep us warm in our icy caverns. Until we were brave enough to see what else occupied the frozen wasteland we’d learned to call home.
We left pieces of ourselves wherever we trekked. Fingers, toes, cartilage, tissue.
🦴
After our father passed, Ionuţ and I began to walk as one. Limbs wrapped around each other until we looked conjoined. I wore my father’s shriveled tongue around my neck as a memory of his biting words. Ionuţ used his intestines as a belt.
“Look,” he said, gesturing with the necrotic nub at the end of his wrist. “Fire.”
It took a moment for my eye – there was only one, now – to focus on the flicker of orange light in the distance. There were mounds of manipulated snow and bleached white columns. I inhaled sharply and stumbled over our feet, though my brother kept me upright.
“We have to,” I slurred; my jaw no longer closed. “Safety. Home.”
🦴
Our pace was nothing short of glacial. We subsisted solely on our father’s ribs, gnashing and slurping until they dissolved in our decaying mouths. We thanked him silently, too sickly to speak. We prayed when our ankles gave out and had no choice but to drag ourselves to the village.
I paid no mind to the skulls on sharpened stakes or the symbols made of twigs and twine because the heat came off the snug structures in waves. It was intoxicating, unlike anything I’d ever felt, and I moaned at the sensation. And someone screamed.
A child, with eyes like a pleading puppy and a drooling mouth.
I tried to shush her. I tried to reach for her, to coddle her, but had no fingers to grasp her with. Or strength to keep her still.
She spoke words I didn’t recognize, a throaty cry that brought the masses to the front of their hovels. They peered and whispered, though no one stepped forward.
The truth stole the last frozen breath from my lungs.
They were afraid. Of us.
I looked to Ionuţ to warn him, but he’d already accepted the inevitable. He buried his face in the snow and waited for the end to come. Bartley was right about death coming for us all.
No, I thought. We’re so close.
A man, thick and muscular, stepped before me and I lunged – for my brother, for myself.
Based in Portland, Oregon, Dee Mick spends her days making up stories as a full-time nanny and her nights as a neurodivergent creative with a passion for atypical family dynamics and character-driven storytelling. She is currently on the ISA Development Slate, where she was highlighted as a Staff Pick in October 2025, and is mentored by Randall Jahnson (The Doors, The Mask of Zorro). You can find her work produced by Tales to Terrify and published in Bog Matter Magazine. Feel free to keep up with her on Instagram!
Ember says: So vivid it left me picking bits of dead rat out of my teeth, and I'm not even mad.
“Not Today, Satan (Will Save Me)” (Third Place)
by Ryan “Rev” McLean
Clouds of sulfuric brimstone and ghastly wails envelop the grey-tiled floor between the shelves of king-size candy bars and brand name mints that all taste the same, and the section with bagged Wonka and Haribo candies paired with, for some reason, flavored sunflower seeds and those sourdough chips you always think are going to be better than they actually are. From between the filthy cracks of ancient grout arises gnarled, pitch black horns, followed by an enormous cloven figure of acidic vermillion skin. Its stature dwarfs the nearby display of Sour Patch Kid Oreos and racks of overpriced charging cables.
The creature’s voice invokes a chorus of tortured cherubs dry-humping a bed of nails: “Foolish mortals! What desperation could possibly trouble one so completely as to paint the forbidden 5-point star of Satan? Now that I am free from my infernal prison, I shall corrupt—”
He looks down at his hooved feet and sees not one, but at least fourteen pentagrams hastily drawn across the dirty floor with… hang on…
“—Is… is that strawberry Sour Ooze Tube candy gel?” He gingerly taps a keratin toe in the sticky goo. “Oh, come on! This is just disrespectful.”
His lament trails off with the sudden sound of relieved laughter. Satan spins around and sees a tiny bespectacled girl peek around the Pringles.
“FINALLY!” she yells.
Before the monstrous devil can utter another word, the kid bolts to him and joins him within the boundaries of the upside-down star. Her small fingers grip his goat leg like a child holding their mother’s hand before crossing the street.
She beams up at Satan. “Alright, let’s roll.”
Completely at a loss, the Devil looks around the small, clearly-closed convenience store. “Where the Home am I…?” he mutters.
The diminutive child tugs on his leg hairs. “C’mon, I’m in the star, let’s go already!”
As the Devil prepares to address his new little companion, the smudged window to his right explodes inward, hailing shards of glass into the shop, though each piece melts before making contact with his bulky shoulders. A squad of malformed, inbred hillbillies leap through the new opening; their cultish hooting and hollering is loud and annoying.
The Devil frowns.
“Lil Num Nums! Where’d ya leave fo-er?” taunts a skinnier man with oversized overalls and a second nose on his cheek.
An older guy with a beard of bees and five fingers total between his two hands echoes “leave fo-er” with a breathy croak, followed by the fat one with neither shoes nor teeth and the hunched over, flannel-clad lumberjack with an axe for an arm. They all seem to ignore the ten-foot-tall demon, instead opting to gaze hungrily at the small girl. Several even lick their chops with whatever moisture their pox-covered tongues can muster.
The tiny child bravely steps forward, yet keeps her hand on Satan’s leg. “You’re outta luck, Cooter Hicks! If you and your cannibal brothers want to eat me, you’ll have to get past my new muscle!”
Seemingly for the first time, the quartet eye the hooved crimson beast currently melting the Milky Ways and Three Musketeers into a sloppy, brown mess dripping down the age-deformed shelves.
“T’ain’t scared o’ no goat,” chuckled Bee Beard.
“He’s not a goat, you mouthbreather! He’s Lucifer—”
“Actually, I go by Satan, now,” he interjects quietly, still unsure of what to make of all this.
“—and he’ll smite you if you try to take me!” The girl smiles triumphantly.
Awkwardly standing between them, the Devil looks at Cooter. “Uh, ‘smiting’ is more God’s thing, so I’m not going to ‘smite’ anything.”
The little kid continues undeterred. “Yeah! That’d be too easy! He’s going to drag you to Hell for a year of torture!”
“What? That’s Krampus, kid.”
“He’ll turn you to stone with his eyes!”
“That’s Medusa.”
“He’ll drive you mad with ravenous hunger until you kill each other!”
“Uh, the Wendigo?”
“He’ll kill you in seven days!”
“The chick from The Ring?”
“He’ll trick you into a maze and tickle you to death!”
“That’s—honestly, I have no idea what that is. Huh.”
Satan feels a tug on his leg fur and squats down. The little girl looks annoyed.
“Hey, uh, Satan?” she whispers innocently.
He holds up a finger to the cannibals and whispers back, “What’s up?”
Through gritted teeth, the girl hisses: “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing? What are you doing?”
She rolls her eyes. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
The Devil glances back at the commendably patient hillbillies. “It looks like you’re trying to get me to kill these guys.”
“Either that or take me with you to Hell.”
“I don’t even know you.”
She holds out her other small hand. “My name is Penny Price, and I’m trying really hard not to get The Hills Have Eyes-ed.”
Looking at all of the failed pentagrams along the floor of the dim gas station, Satan says “And you thought the person least likely to want to see someone tortured and eaten painfully was the Devil?”
She shrugs. “There’s no cell service out here.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with two claws. “That’s—I mean you have to—what?” His confusion almost devolves into laughter.
“‘Scuse me,” calls Cooter, “y’all mind if’n we start stabbin’ and roastin’ Lil Num Nums?”
Satan stands to his full height again. “Give us a minute. Can’t you see I’m with a client?”
The hillbillies nod and stand around looking uncomfortable; Lumberjack curiously looks at the back of a 5-Hour Energy and seems mildly impressed.
The Devil crouches down again. “Okay, so, what, you somehow know how to make summoning pentagrams? What are you, like, six?”
Penny puts both hands on her hips like a superhero. “Seven and a half!”
“Right, so how can you—”
She interrupts. “They’re just upside-down stars, Mr. Satan. It’s not that hard.”
NoShoes’n’Teeth is trying on sunglasses.
Satan sighs. “Okay, so you want my protection? You seem pretty smart for your age. You can’t just Home Alone it?”
She narrows her eyes. “That’s just a movie, sir.”
“Yeah? Well so is The Hills Have Eyes.”
“Touché,” admits Penny.
Cooter and Bee Beard are sharing a kid’s crossword puzzle.
“I just thought,” the little girl stares at the neon pink candy goo on the floor surrounding them, “that you might sympathize with someone who is alone and scared and feeling targeted by people who are more powerful than she is.”
Satan’s mind drifts back to his first day after being cast out of Heaven. He remembers the feelings of helplessness, of loneliness, of desperation…
Cooter clears his throat. “Ahem. Mah brothers’n me have been graciously patient, so’s if’n ya don’t mind, we’s gonna gut Lil Num Nums, now.”
As he continues to look at Penny, the Devil’s eyes flash with fire.
“Y’all smell somethin’ cookin’?” asks Lumberjack, who is now very much on fire along with his brothers.
NoShoes’n’Teeth licks his lips. “Whatever it is, I’d eat it!”
Seeing their situation, Cooter folds his skinny, burning arms. “Welp, I guess he wuddn’t a goat after all.”
And with that, all four incinerate, leaving only malformed skeletons and one burnt axe head.
Penny jumps up and down clapping her little hands, almost knocking her large glasses off. “I knew you’d help! Thanks Mr. Satan!”
The Devil begins to sink back through the floor. “Don’t mention it, kid.”
Rev is an English Teacher/Improv Comedian/Writer who has been writing semi-professionally since 2023. He loves to write stories inspired by folklore from around the world, and honestly thinks about folklore way too much. He even created a podcast about it (The Monster Smash League). He also writes fantasy, mystery, horror, and comedy. His friends call him "Rev" because he played a Reverend in a high school musical and apparently never moved on. Rev currently lives in Enoch, Utah with his cat, Buddy. Find him on Instagram and Bluesky under RevOTC, and his Substack is basnobeatha.substack.com.
Ember says: What a way to take refuge in the stars!
“There is Only Corn” (Honorable Mention 1)
by Moira Richardson
Somewhere around Nebraska, the corn began to take hold. The shift from city to country had been gradual, but now green cornstalks crowd the edge of the two-lane highway.
With a terrible sputter, the car shudders to a stop just outside a rundown Husk station. “Fucking Johnny,” I mutter, turning the key over and over and jamming my foot on the pedal as I try to restart. The car stays dead. My phone lost charge somewhere in Iowa. I’ll have to play damsel in distress. At this rate I’ll never make it to LA.
I remove the headscarf I’d worn to protect the sleek blowout Roberto had given me at my last appointment. The man is a wizard at making me a natural blonde. I slide my Prada sunglasses down the bridge of my nose and blow myself a kiss from red-stained lips. “You are thin. You are gorgeous,” I whisper.
I sashay across the highway, glad I’d grabbed the Manolos before I’d left Chicago. I might be a criminal now, technically, but I’ll make being on the run look good. And I hadn’t stolen the car anyway. I’m only borrowing it without permission.
The fuel pumps are empty. No cars. No people either. The only sign this place is actually in business is the light glowing inside the shack at the end of the parking lot.
I’m heading there when a ringing fills the crisp evening air. The sound is insistent, cutting through the silence of the lonely gas station and the empty highway beside it. I look around, trying to determine the source.
A light pole at the edge of the lot highlights a rectangular box with a scratched steel interior. I drift toward it.
The paint on the words has been scratched away. A corncob Husk logo sticker covers the beginning. I can make out -NE at the end. Inside the box, a black shape is attached to a curved silver cord. When it rings again, I know, instinctively, what to do. I grab hold of the black part and lift.
The ringing immediately ceases, but now what? A sound like chanting floats up from the object in my hand. I jump when a hand touches my shoulder.
I spin around, wielding the device like a weapon, dropping it when I see a bare-chested man in denim overalls standing before me. He has a sweep of sandy blond hair Roberto could only dream of recreating, and piercing blue eyes. The man is totally–“Hot!”
“You reckon? Bit chilly myself.”
He takes the black thing from me and lifts it to the side of his face. “May the corn bless you.” He returns it to the cradle, then holds out a large, tanned hand.
I’m thrilled to make skin-to-skin contact with the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in real life, even if he could use some lotion for his callused skin. My God, if I’d known the men in Nebraska looked like him, I’d have left Johnny months ago.
“Name’s Cornelius.”
“Brittany.”
For a moment the two of us just stare at each other.
I imagine our beautiful babies, all of them flaxen-haired perfection. After the kids went off to school, Cornelius and I would work the runways of New York and Paris, a powerhouse supermodel duo. I could figure out the logistics later. The first thing would be making the babies anyway.
I’m about to ask if he wants to come to LA, when I remember Johnny’s stupid car.
I give my most pitiful sigh, followed by my soon-to-be-famous megawatt smile. “My car ran out of gas.” I pout prettily as I point back across the highway. Johnny’s red-and-white classic convertible gleams like something straight out of a calendar against the cornfield and fading sunset backdrop.
“I’d love to help you, ma’am,” Cornelius says, “But this here’s corn country.”
“Um?”
He points at the pumps where a sign reads “CAUTION: 100% ethanol.”
I don’t get it.
“Newer vehicles only,” he says, reading my confusion. He keeps talking, but I stop listening, focusing instead on imagining his slim but ripped arms taking me into his embrace.
“Oh. It’ll be fine,” I say, finally. “No biggie.”
Five minutes later, I understand why Cornelius had tried to stop me. It wasn’t that he knew the car would, like, explode or whatever, which okay, it didn’t exactly explode, but Johnny won’t be cruising that thing anytime soon. Cornelius tried to stop me because he was already in love. Or at least totally hot for me.
We spent the night together.
Not like that.
We shared his corn chowder dinner–well, I had a bite–and talked all night. Cornelius had grown up right here, with a big family of corn lovers. In fact, he kind of didn’t have any other interests, other than his Dad. Men always say I’ve got Daddy issues, but they’ve never met Cornelius. He was all corn, corn, corn, the Colonel, more corn, more Colonel.
We’d work on his conversation skills. Nobody’s perfect.
Cornelius pours me a big glass of a pale brown liquid. It tastes kinda like Coke, but wrong. Too sweet. Flat.
“The Colonel has given me so many blessings,” Cornelius says. I’m half zoned out at this point. “Look, the Colonel knew I wanted a bride and here you are.”
“Bride?” I say, snapping back to attention. I don’t trust I’ve heard him correctly.
Cornelius flashes his perfect teeth in a big smile.
I can’t help myself. I lean forward and kiss him right on the lips.
When the first light fills the station, Cornelius takes my hand. “Come on,” he says, his voice husky. “Let’s go see the Colonel.”
At the edge of the field, Cornelius has me take off my shoes. He’s already barefoot. Weird, but okay.
Around us the cornstalks whisper, a dry shushing sound that follows us as we walk. Not gonna lie, it’s low-key spooky. I’ll be glad when I take him away from all of this. The air smells of movie theaters with the buttery popcorn that never tastes good enough to justify the calorie count. I’m suddenly glad about the no shoes thing as my feet sink into the bare earth as we get deeper into the field.
Finally, we reach a break in the corn. The green opens up into an expanse of flattened corn stalks. In the center, a giant ear of corn scintillates in the morning sunshine.
I realize instantly my mistake as I stare up at it.
The Colonel isn’t Cornelius’s military father. He wasn’t taking me to meet his Dad. He meant Kernel. With a capital K.
Only corn.
There’s only corn.
“The Kernel likes you,” Cornelius whispers into my ear as I step forward, drawn to the shimmering cob.
The husk falls open with a rustling sigh, revealing pulsating golden kernels within. Corn silks stream up my legs, whispering softly as they rush over my skin. They’re warm. Alive. The silk wraps around my neck and slides down my throat, consuming me.
The world fills with golden light, the corn’s sussurations the only sound I can hear over my own heartbeat, my quickened intakes of breath.
Then, there is silence and I understand.
“Corn is life,” I whisper.
Cornelius squeezes my hand and I’m back in the field, smiling over at my new fiance.
I forget about Johnny, forget about LA, forget about modeling. Everything I’d thought I wanted seems so small.
There is only corn.
Moira Richardson lives at the edge of corn country, aka Southwestern Pennsylvania, with her partner, Nick, and three grumpy cats. When she isn’t writing weird stories, she enjoys wandering alleyways on brainstorming walks and pretending to be a rat on the internet. Her short fiction has been published, or is forthcoming by, The Hoolet’s Nook, Stanchion, Quotidian Bagatelle, Rat Bag Lit, Cupid’s Arrow, Twist Magazine, ELA Literary Magazine, Dragon Tomes Publishing, Writer’s Workout, Curated Micro Fiction, and others. You can find out more at www.ohmoira.com and @moirariom.bsky.social.
Ember says: This story was so punny and weird and fun! There is only corn.
“Left” (Honorable Mention 2)
by Dani Lucas
Waves lapped at the threshold of 172 Rainbow Street.
Sam paused in the middle of tying up her skiff, took note of the foaming sea. This late in the day, it should have been calm. Something to keep an eye on. She stepped onto the porch; saltwater sloshed around her ankles.
“Swim,” said a voice, directly into her shoulder blade.
Sam almost smiled.
“No, Miri.” She craned her neck, meeting the eyes of the toddler on her back. “It’s not safe. And I have to work.”
“Work.” Miri’s thumb crept into her mouth. The soft, rhythmic suction sounds just inches away from her ear made Sam twitchy, though after three months, she was getting used to it.
The front door opened with a solid push, its bottom rail scraping along the waterlogged carpet. “U.S. Salvage Corps,” she said. She didn’t shout; the announcement was a pure formality. She could feel when a home was abandoned.
“Talvage,” Miri said around her thumb.
Sam crouched and slid the carrier from her shoulders, depositing Miri on the floor. Fifteen minutes, she figured, kneading her sore neck with her knuckles. A quick search, in and out.
Forty-six days.
Three thousand fifteen dollars.
“It’s doable,” she said aloud.
“Doable,” came the mournful echo, two syllables, doo-bull. Miri stood where she’d been set, her little limbs rigid, her round brown eyes fixed on Sam. Her lower lip trembled, and she reached out beseechingly.
“It’s okay.” Sam knelt; the carpet squelched beneath her knees. “I’ll be right back. Can you say right back?”
Miri did not say right back. Instead, she flung herself forward with the reckless, absolute trust of a toddler. Her little skull hit Sam’s shoulder like a battering ram; chubby, merciless hands yanked her head down by the hair.
“No. No pulling.” Sam extracted her ponytail from Miri’s tiny claws. Her eyes watered. “Remember? We don’t do that.”
“Up,” Miri entreated, her baby face set in an incongruous frown that would have been funny had Sam not had a job to do. “Up.”
“Not yet.” She second-guessed it as soon as she’d said it. The room looked safe enough—but so had most of Florida before the sea rose and swallowed it, huge gulping mouthfuls at a time. Cape Canaveral was the last land standing. Millions of sandbags and truckloads of riprap and thousands of tons of soil had been sacrificed on the altar of preserving, for as long as possible, the final gateway to the stars.
It would be their way out.
Forty-six days.
Three thousand fifteen dollars.
Though of course, all of that would be for naught if Miri crashed through a rotten floorboard first.
Cold sweat prickling along her hairline, Sam relented, hoisting Miri onto her hip. She clamped onto Sam like a crayfish.
“You know the drill,” Sam said. Miri didn’t answer. Her tiny, razor-sharp nails dug into Sam’s neck.
Sam searched and cleared the kitchen first: no nonperishables, no MREs, no spices. Nothing that the Corps could repurpose, and given the overpowering reek of mildew, she wouldn’t have trusted it anyway.
Bathrooms next, and here she found ibuprofen and disinfectant, bagged and logged them for redistribution. She also unearthed a sealed jar of La Mer and, tamping down her excitement, tucked it carefully into her bag, though not before Miri inspected it thoroughly, little fingers tracing the letters with solemn concentration.
Bedrooms last, and she knew as soon as she saw them there’d be little of use. Drawers stood open, closets ransacked, beds stripped. A flashlight went into her logbook; a box of nasal strips, a poor runner-up to the La Mer, into her bag.
Sam froze on the threshold of the last room. A crib stood, empty, in the corner. She had the urge to shield Miri’s eyes.
It should have been a standard salvage op.
In the bathroom, she’d found Tylenol.
In the kitchen, rice.
And in the bedroom:
Miri.
She felt a flash of rage at the unfairness of it all. These people, wherever they’d gone, they’d taken their baby. Of course they had. It was probably a great baby.
But Miri was a great baby, too.
“Bunny.”
Sam jolted. Miri was pointing at a stuffed rabbit, abandoned in the corner. Its ears drooped sadly. There was a yellow ribbon around its neck.
“No, Miri.” Sam was already turning away. They’d need to make good time to get to the market before closing.
“Bunny.” Without warning, Miri hurled her entire bodyweight backward; Sam nearly dropped her. “Bunny!”
“We don’t have space—”
“Bunny,” Miri cried piteously, stretching out her little hands toward the toy. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. And Sam, against her will, felt her heart break for all things left behind.
🐰
As they drifted through the Cocoa Village Market, Miri clung to the rabbit, gnawing its left ear with her three ferocious teeth.
Sam turned in her logbook and salvage first. Given the financial crisis, she probably wouldn’t see her paycheck for at least three weeks, maybe longer. But that was fine; her ticket to Luna was already paid for. She just needed three grand more for Miri’s.
And forty-six days was plenty of time.
Corps work complete, Sam could now focus on the rest of her cargo. The pontoon anchored by the old amphitheater could always be counted on to buy luxuries, La Mer and Le Labo and L’Occitane. She disposed of the cream easily, added ninety-five dollars to her tally.
Two thousand nine hundred twenty.
The nasal strips were trickier. Her first target—a gently bobbing wooden pallet piled high with toiletries—offered her just a buck. And the tiki bar-turned-general store wasn’t interested at all. Finally, near sunset, Sam found a buyer, a heavily tattooed man in an inflatable raft; he offered her three dollars plus an applesauce pouch, which Miri accepted gravely, never taking her eyes from him.
Two thousand nine hundred seventeen.
Sam sat back, letting herself smile, just a little. It had been a good day, a nearly hundred-dollar day. With a little more luck, a few more days like this one—
A low, deep rumbling began, one that made her teeth hurt. She grabbed for Miri reflexively, scanning the water—for what, she wasn’t sure.
Voices, low murmurs turning into cries of distress and fury. East. People were pointing east. She turned, following the outrage.
And she watched as the sky above Cape Canaveral tore in two, rent by the U.S.S. Aeneas and its trail of smoke and flame.
🐰
“An early departure. Captain’s discretion,” they said later.
“Couldn’t risk hurricane season.”
Most insulting of all: “It was in the terms and conditions.”
Sam sat in the skiff, numb, staring up at the spot where the Aeneas had vanished.
She’d had forty-six days. Forty-six days.
And yet.
There would be no second ticket, no new life on Luna. Not for her, not for Miri. They’d been left.
For good, this time.
“Bunny.”
Sam swiped tears from her face and looked down. Miri held the stuffed rabbit in her chubby hands, its ear bedraggled and damp. She offered it to Sam. “Bunny,” she said again.
Then, when Sam made no move to take it: “Mama, bunny.”
Sam exhaled.
Moving slowly, she wrapped Miri, and the rabbit, in her arms. Miri nestled in, warm and solid.
Sam pressed her cheek to Miri’s head. She felt her hummingbird heart, heard her soft breathing.
And she gazed out over the water, holding on to all that was left.
🐰
Dani Lucas is a writer, former library shelver, current library patron, semicolon aficionado, and cat person. She lives in the American Midwest with her husband, their daughter, and the spirit of their beloved cat. You can reach her at danilucaswrites@gmail.com.
Ember says: "Left me needing a fireproof bunny to snuggle"
“A Hero for Everyone” (Honorable Mention 3)
by Red Bayou
The soft light of the TV makes my blankets glow blue like a flickering starfield. The clock promises it's almost time. 4:56 PM. Four more minutes until Space Race.
I squeeze the blanket in my lap, my feet too excited to be still. I bite the corner of my thumb to stifle a squeal. It bleeds. I stop. For now.
The remote is close, the VCR on standby; Mom's old exercise tape's ready to be recorded over. Just in case we suddenly go stay with Grandma again.
The image is a little fuzzy, but it's there. A tiger tries to sell me my favorite cereal, but I don't have money. I hum the jingle, bumping the volume up one notch, careful to go no higher. It's almost loud enough to silence the yelling. Almost.
The commercial ends; I wait for the real show to start; all three parts of Space Race shown on TV for the first time, one each night. The boom of the theme echoes. I rush to turn it down two notches. Still, for a second, it's all I can hear. For a second, anyway.
The screen goes black as the words scroll over star-speckled darkness: SPACE RACE: PART I.
The scene pivots, and I can't stifle my squeak this time. It's Buck Clawson, the greatest movie-star ever. His broody opening scene fills the whole screen. Safe. A hero for everyone. His infamous squint is cast to the galaxies sprinkled beyond the Captain's bridge, like he’s looking for the places that need him most.
I wonder when he'll find my house.
His Captain's uniform shines silver and blue, a blast-gun holstered at his hip. He's running from the Chaos Coalition, headed to Veraskia to enter and win the Great Space Race to wish for galactic peace! I've seen Part I at least fifty times. I know every line, every explosion, every heroic squint. I'm not in my room anymore, I'm on the bridge. The light on my face isn't from the screen, but the control panel.
He calls me Kid—like Billy the Kid—and I'm the steadiest shot in the galaxy, not limp-wristed. I'm the one who blasted us through an asteroid field with one eye closed. I'm not weird in space. Not different. I've got a real Dad.
I lean closer to the screen, feeling for the controls as I clench the blanket. Me and Buck just outran a Coalition Charger, and I'm the one who warned him about it! We make a good team. Buck says so.
The second night, my excitement is even greater. They're showing never-before-seen footage that was trimmed for the PG-13 release! 4:56 PM. Channel 47. The VCR is already recording. This time, my journal’s open, pen ready.
The cover’s spacesuit-blue, the inside half-full of our adventures. I have pages from all his movies. "Buck Clawson and the Den of Snakes," where I'm his deputy, and I save him from a secret ambush in Rattlesnake Canyon that only I know about. "Buck Clawson and the Second Superhero," where I discover my own powers—super speed—at the exact right moment to stop his nemesis from firing a bomb at the city. The list is ever growing. Sometimes, I even rewrite old ones, making them better.
During Part II, where Buck sways a crew of foul-mouthed space pirates to join his cause, I scribble notes. I have a lot of cool ideas for these new scenes. I need to make my part bigger. Not just a useful sidekick, but important.
I'll invent a secret weapon, a jammer that disables the Coalition's tracker. That's it. In my new chapter, I'm the one who saves the ship from getting trailed to the hideout. At the end, Buck claps me on the shoulder, saying, "I couldn't have done it without you, Kid."
I finish the revision and close the journal, my newest chapter complete. Tomorrow, we finish this. Tomorrow, we win it all; peace for the entire galaxy.
The final night feels different. My room feels smaller. The TV seems bigger, even through my swollen shiner. I don't feel like I want to squeak anymore. I smear my palms over the covers, wiping the sweat off. I don't have my journal out; I'll save the story for after. I have to pilot the controls.
I wait for the clock to change, picking at my cuticle. It bleeds again. I don't hum the jingle, only wait.
The words SPACE RACE: PART III hit, and I gasp as I'm teleported on board. After the first hour and a half, it's everything I dreamed. Buck is in the final race, the Galaxia Circuit, the most dangerous in the universe. We're going to win. He's going to get the girl, the brilliant mechanic Vixie, and I'm going to leave a trail of explosions that’ll be talked about for a hundred years.
The roar of thrusters rattles my chest across the last stretch, every distant slam of a door a momentary misfire. The ship shoulders a cheap shot from the rear. I'm at the weapons station, swiveling around. My fingers hover over the big red button.
"Lock on to that ship!" Buck commands, cutting over the alarms.
A newer-model Coalition Charger’s hot on our tail.
“Yes, Captain,” I whisper, lining up the crosshairs. Breathe in. Hold. I'm the steadiest shot in the galaxy. Buck says so.
"Fire!"
My fist slams the button.
Sccchhooooooommmmmm!
The lasers beam forth, hitting the fighter dead center. It erupts into a fireball, the Coalition's last general finally gone. I exhale. We did it.
The bridge on the TV erupts with roaring cheers. An alien slaps Buck's back. Vixie grins, leaning in—kissing him! I'm smiling so wide it's painful.
This is it. This is what it's like being part of the crew—a family. To belong, to be brave— "We showed those cocksuckers."
I plummet back to Earth.
I think it's Dad at first, but it's Buck. He's looking at Vixie, that trademark squint lingering long after the explosion and the kiss.
The word sticks, drowning out the rest of the dialogue. I'm holding my breath again, like there's been a breech in the hull.
The people on the screen keep cheering. The celebration continues without me.
The TV suddenly seems too loud. I turn it down again. I watch the rest, pulling my blanket closer. He wins. He gets the girl. The special effects are the best I've ever seen. It's the greatest ending ever, as it should be.
It should be.
But peace was never really for the entire galaxy, was it?
I turn off the TV as the credits roll. I walk over to my desk and open my journal. The blue cover seems duller. My pen's right where I left it, waiting to conclude our next great adventure. I open it to the first page, to the neat, hopeful title: "Buck Clawson and The Deep Space Sidekick."
Two tears darken the paper, smudging the ink. I rip the page out. Then the one before it. And the next. I rip out all of it; all the stories where I'm the Kid, the deputy, the sidekick. All the times I was pretending to be what I'm not. The torn pages turn the trash can into a monument. I open my journal to a fresh page. A new beginning—my own. The pen’s weightless. I press the tip to the paper. The glossy ink flies freely; the title sprawling in spacesuit-blue:
“A Hero for Everyone: Captain Cocksucker”
Red Bayou is a queer and autistic writer with an affinity for odd fantasy. Find him on Bluesky at @pupbayou.bsky.social
Ember says: ”A Hero for Everyone” is the kind of story that rewards rereading. Go on—scroll back up!
Just Missed Placing
This list contains stories that were discussed by the judges and actively considered for the top six places. Presented alphabetically:
Between Spaces by J.I. Locatelli
Breaking Hearts, Breaking Legs by Elly Franklin
Coffee in Action: 5 Stars, Out of a Possible Trillion by Sy Power
Drift by Corrie Haldane
No Signal by Aurora Hill
The Song of the North Star by MM Schreier
The Long List
Presently alphabetically:
A Goodbye Algorithm by Jon Casper
A Jolly Rogering by JA Logwood
A Twin Thing by Daniel Clark-Mudge
r/TrueConfessions: Robbie Is Rotten by Jenn Keohane
Rules of Love, Rewritten Again and Again by Jo Binns
Somewhere Between Ink and Starlight by Lily Luz
The Heavens Find Small Ways by Alysa Levi-D'Ancona
The Second Request by Glen Creed
Twelve Times Twelve by Deidra Whitt Lovegren
We're Aliens, Not Monsters by Anthea Jones
Judge Shoutouts
Judges were given the opportunity to call out a particular story from the contest that they enjoyed, no matter where it placed.
Judge 1: “Can They Both Be True?” by Charlotte “Lottie” Ludema — “This was such a fun take on the book with ever-changing pages, and a cute romance to boot!”
Judge 2: “Even in the Valley” by Anthony Everett — “Haunting and visceral, this story explored the lines between family, faith, and hunger with a sharpness that left me breathless!”
Judge 3: “Antiquated Technology” by Jessica Hinners — “Fun premise, intriguing use of the prompts, and humorous. Just super enjoyable to read.”
Judge 4: “The Song of the North Star” by MM Schreier — “Wonderful prose, and the subtle way it unfolds really enhances the impact.”
Thank You!
All of us had such a blast with our first contest—we hope you’ll join us for our next one: Drabble-abble-abble!