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by Rebecca Mitchell 1998 Short Story Contest Honorable Mention
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I should’ve been home an hour ago. Should’ve taken a long hot shower and climbed into my cozy bed with it’s plaid sheets. Instead, I’m sitting in a bathtub rocking and holding a hysterical teenager. When I was just about to leave the girl’s dorm, had just finished my last progress note, that’s when she’d awoken screaming. It was the third time this week. In her struggle to run from the vivid nightmare, she’d gone to the bathroom mirrors. Looking for what I’m not sure. I suppose, for answers. Hell, I’d spent my whole life looking for them and never had the courage to look in the mirror. When I’d approached, she’d irrationally backed herself into the bathtub. It was a fit of sobbing, yelling, and desperate breathing. The kind of panic that contorts the face into shapes seemingly inhuman. The wild-eyed look of an animal or a drug addict, but she is neither. |
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by Leopold McGinnis 1998 Short Story Contest Honorable Mention
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As I trudge my way through the unfazed sea of snow I realize how close to paradise I presently am. Also I realize how badly I want to get out of it and into a nice hot bath. There's a certain serenity in a fresh blanket of snow, when the wind's not blowing and all is calm. When you are warm inside your clumsy snow suit and all sounds muffled by your scarf wrapped close around your head. It is as if you no longer have a body, no feelings, no emotions and you are sucked out into the vacuum of an empty blue winter's sky. You are the environment, you belong here. That's why there are so many hazards in your way to stop you from escaping it. In this case, the deep snow. You fall about like a clunky fool who's learning to dance, trying to rush wherever you're headed. And the smooth blanket of snow, so organized and serenely draped across everything, sparkling, relaxed tries its best to keep you from getting there. |
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by Larry Gwartney 1998 Short Story Contest Honorable Mention
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"What the hell?" Archer Simondson awoke with a start. Turning his one good ear to the sounds drifting through the cracks in the yellowed panes of the bedroom window, he lay still and listened. Low, almost purring, clucks and squawks filtered in from the chicken coop. Heavy thumps echoed from the barn as Porgy and Bess, the white-stockinged draft horses, clomped around on their wood-floored stalls.When the wind turned just right, even the grunts and squeals of the sty at the far end of the farm yard floated in. As punctuation, Rick, the ancient bantam rooster Archer’s wife had named after one of her favorite movie characters, pierced the pre-dawn air with a warm up cockadoo. Though he listened hard, Archer could hear nothing out of the ordinary. Still, the strange coldness that had awakened him continued to roll around in his stomach. |
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by Mary Hazzard 1998 Short Story Contest Honorable Mention
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"Moveless,"Polly Chancellor says. The trees beyond the porch where she sits, on this late Cape Cod afternoon in September, are as still as trees in a photograph. "William put that word into one poem three times, and Dorothy made him take it out. Too bad." "Only twice," her husband says, not looking up from the proofs in his lap. "No, three times." "He left one of them in. And Dorothy was right." Austin must be right too, but Polly hopes he won't pursue it, since she can't now recall which of Wordsworth's poems she was talking about. She leans back in the blue canvas chair and focuses on the trees, locust and pine. Balancing her glass on the palm of her hand, she feels suspended between the silver-gray siding of the house and the empty green marsh beyond. There are no motor bikes today, only the burr of chickadees and the rush of traffic on Route 6 across the bay. |
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