100 Word Short Story Contest Winners
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1st Place: Bob Thurber
with “Match Game”
Bob Thurber is the author of "Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel" and four collections of short fiction. Over the years his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at www.BobThurber.net.
Match Game
Well past her due date and feeling unrelenting pressure, Mary visited
the restroom for the fifth time, while Jack recalculated the tip. As he slid
from the booth, the waitress leaned in, a cigarette resting in the V of two
fingers.
“Light?”
She was a slim, red-haired woman with lacquered fingernails.
She held the cigarette an inch from her glossy mouth.
Jack didn’t smoke, but he patted his pockets anyway.
“Sorry,” he grimaced.
“Don’t be!”
She pressed a book of matches into Jack’s palm.
“My number’s inside,” she whispered.
One year later, Jack used those matches to light birthday candles.
2nd Place:
Margarita Meklina
with “Cure”
Born in Leningrad, Margarita Meklina emigrated to the US in the early nineties with a refugee status. Employed as a night loader at UPS, she kept writing during the day sending her prose to Russia. The result was six collections of fiction published in Moscow (two of them in collaboration with writer Lida Yusupova and late poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko). Meklina’s awards include the Andrei Bely Prize (2003), the Yeltsin Center’s Russian Prize (2008), the Aldanov Literary Prize (2018) for her writing in Russian, as well as The Perito Prize (2nd place) and the Norton Girault Literary Prize’s Honorable Mention (2019) for her writing in English. Author of two books in English, the novel The Little Gaucho Who Loved Don Quixote, and a collection of short stories A Sauce Stealer, she shares her life between Dublin, Ireland, and California, but her favorite habitat is the cloud (she works in IT).
Cure
The pianist fell ill. Her disease was as rare as her musical talent. Pain in the spine radiated into the pedal. The white cloud went over her right eye and swept over her long black hair, which illustriously covered piano keys. To raise money for surgery, she recorded the album with the rhythms of her heart. Was her partner told about the tumor? He took all proceeds and purchased the Bösendorfer grand, her childhood dream. She opened the lid and lay on vibrating strings as in a surgical theatre, tender thumps of hammers making her feel in good hands.
3rd Place:
Matt Leibel
with “Museum of Numbers”
Matt Leibel’s short fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Portland Review, Carolina Quarterly, Wigleaf, DIAGRAM, and Juked. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis. He lives in San Francisco and works as a marketing copywriter.
The Museum of Numbers
At the Museum of Numbers, we baked pie in the pi room, drove laps in an Infinity around the infinity room, ate donuts and hula-hooped in the zero room, drank 7&7s in the 49 room, and were baffled as to what room 4 was even for. We liked the museum two-fifths as much as we’d liked the Museum of Fractions, exponentially less than the Museum of Exponents, and 999 billion times more than the Museum of Unfair Comparisons.
Honorable Mention in alphabetical order by last name:
SALLY BASMAJIAN is an escapee from the corporate broadcasting world. Before fleeing the business, she was Bell Media’s Vice President and General Manager, Comedy and Drama. Sally has recently completed a women’s thriller. In the past year, her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Fifteen Stories High, and Gardens of Enchantment. She lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.
Athena
A thousand puny spears slash my thigh. The enemy chokes on my garnet blood. Flourishing my sword, I advance.
Once I had a father, god of gods. In treachery, Zeus impregnated my mother, then swallowed her whole.
She survived—for a time. When she died, I rose with a wordless howl. Embryo no more, my body twined with muscles. I struck his brain, screaming hatred for my mother’s murderer.
At birth, I sprang from his reeking head. He cursed me. Now, I’m both warlike and chaste—eternally.
Patience, I tell myself. When he least expects it, I’ll have my vengeance.
DAVID GALEF has published extremely short fiction in Nanoism and Microfiction Monday Magazine and extremely long fiction in the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress. His latest book is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook. His day job is English professor and creative writing program director at Montclair State University. www.davidgalef.com, @dgalef
SEVEN LIES
Which of your seven lies will you use tonight?
“I’m sorry, I have a headache.” Used after bad Chinese takeout.
“Maybe tomorrow.” To be used when you’ve already made plans.
“I haven’t been feeling too sexy lately.” Always usable.
“My hair’s still wet.” Used despite the hair dryer.
“I’m just not in the mood.” Used after spotting urine outside the toilet.
“There’s this TV show I really want to watch.” Can’t use this anymore with live streaming.
“Hmm . . . it’s awfully late.” Can’t use this before ten p.m
.Here’s the one you never use:
“I don’t love you anymore.”
GRETCHEN HEFFERAN is an American living in Brighton, England. She is receiving her MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Sussex University. She has had poems published in Agni, Brittle Star, and Quick Fictions to name a few. She runs Backlash Press with a society of working artists that support one another through friendship, crits, and wine.
Nostalgia for the Beast
By god, how we’ve missed you in our primate hearts though our brains are too big to admit it – we create our own predators now – would you believe we hunt one another? Instinct replaced by self-inflicted progress. Eh. Well. Mere wind to seed, simple diagnosis, a pending condition, leading to certain death. You’ll see us ignoring it, our faces haloed in enabling blue light. But. Every so often, I’ll watch rain collect in minuscule wires. The screen window, like cells of a dragonfly’s wing, when magnified. Or other delicate things that fly and die with the seasons. You. Me. Humanity.
MIKE ITAYA lives in southern Alabama, where he works in a library. His work appears or is forthcoming in Oracle Fine Arts Review, The Airgonaut, Bending Genres, decomP Magazine, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Belletrist Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Orson's Review, Déraciné Magazine, Cowboy Jamboree, and The Lindenwood Review.
Plague
You moved us away from the city to the heart of nothing.
“Liza,” you said, “we could get pregnant,” except when you said it, looming, it sounded like, “Liza, we are getting pregnant.”
I learned to dread the body.
You gave me lists to be a better wifeparentmother.
You wrote words like “motherhood,” but my body revulsed.
I don’t think my body knew about your lists.
Talking of thoughts, I wonder about yours:
I wonder when you decided I was nothing more than a vessel.
I wonder what you’ll think, returning to a dark home with only me in it.
“cj petterson” is the pen name of Marilyn A. Johnston who lives in historic Mobile, Alabama. She writes contemporary romantic suspense and mystery novels, and her non-fiction and fiction short stories have appeared in several anthologies. A veteran of communication media in the corporate world, Marilyn is a member of Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime and their online Guppy group, Alabama Writers Conclave, Alabama Writers Forum, and a charter member of the Mobile Writers Guild. Visit cj petterson on her blog at www.lyricalpens.com and cjpetterson/author on Facebook Discover more of her work at Amazon Central Author Page ( http://amzn.to/1NIDKC0 )
CAJUN JUSTICE
Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina stripped the land, except for a copse of pine and a sea of marsh grass, a gator hunter found the body of Tommy Bourque, brother to Constable Hoss Bourque, my boss.
Investigating the death, I followed the stink of methamphetamine to a trailer—there sat Hoss.
Damned if he didn’t feed his own brother to the gators.
When Hoss raised an AR15 and bullets peppered my Jeep, I stomped the gas pedal.
A quick stop, a lit match, and the dry grass erupted in flames.
Ignoring the screams, I put the inferno in my rearview.