STORYGLOSSIA Issue 23, September 2007
ISSN 1545-2824
Winner of the 2007 STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize
Watch the Flashlight Girls Run by Stephanie Dickinson
Ditto's kept me in the van for almost two years now. I know because I scratched the days on the floor of the van right under the foam rubber we slept on before the heater broke. Three hundred and sixty-five days made a year and I had plenty of sets past that. I scraped six lines and then keyed a slanting seventh to finish the week . . .
Finalists
Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken by Matt Bell
In the morning, Maureen and I open the store for the first time together, something we'll do over and over during the next three months. While she shows me where to get sanitizer buckets and towels, Maureen says, "When I was sixteen I had my first abortion." Later, while showing me how to tray biscuits she tells me about her second, which she had when she was eighteen . . .
My Brother, The Snakes, and Me by Lydia R. Cooper
My brother raises the gun again. Sitting on the top step, my head is level with his waist. He only has to lean forward slightly to rest the cool rim of the Luger against my forehead. "It's loaded now," he says . . .
Turtle Eggs by Elizabeth Farnum
They drove for half an hour in silence before he asked, "You think its morning sickness?" He swerved to avoid a washout, and a tree branch grazed her cheek through the open window. Zoe already had a bruise on her arm from bouncing against the door handle of the truck during one of these swerves . . .
Rutting Season by Larry T. Menlove
"Did you hit it?" Already, I feel like a dumb-shit. I stoop down so that the deer is between us. The woman's face and ears are silhouetted in the double headlamps, while stray hairs from her pony tail jerk and twitch in the wind. I can smell her perfume. She waves her hand in front of the deer's snout. I hear this spraying sound, and I wonder if I know her. Then I feel the stinging in my eyes . . .