The winners of the first contest period of 2009

1st Place: Sweet Like Maple Sugar by Jeffrey DeRego

2nd Place: Black Cats and Hungry Ghosts by Natalie L. Sin

Thank you all for writing and reading the stories on our site. This contest period was the most heavily contested so far, and selecting winners has gotten more and more difficult.

Haven’t had cigarette in twelve hours now.

Offices all look the same. Sure, one company sets up cubicles and the other has rows of desks with those Cicso Voice Over IP telephones on them, but ultimately, they all radiate the same feeling. The office feeling, the one that tells you that you’re uncomfortably middle-class and in the long run going absolutely nowhere and you better shut up and be happy about it if you want to keep your job. (more…)

Please see Verse 1 of The Minister

The Minster: Verse 2

Against the gentle whump, whump, whump, of the helicopter blades, Paul Jollie listened to the last thirty seconds of the mp3 over and over again. He’d put the earpieces of his ipod underneath the bulky headphones to try and drown out the noise of the ancient Huey he was now sat in. He was studying the photographs of the living room of the old croft where the attack had happened. He tried to visualise the knock at the door, the surprise of the occupants, that final desperate struggle and what had happened after the tape stopped, after the bloody violence ended. He had listened to the MP3 over and over again, studying to every nuance of Joe Wyndhams voice as he described the Minister and that final line, the voice of the Minister himself; that drawn out Scottish brogue dripping with menace. No matter how many times he listened, he couldn’t gather any further information from it and yet every time he listened to the recording the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention. (more…)