All Ruth saw was more attention. And when the wrong kind of attention showed up, people like her paid for it. The June heat shimmered off the sidewalks, rising in waves that blurred the edges of palm trunks and lampposts. Humidity pressed against Ruth’s skin as she stepped out of the motel’s back corridor, the scent of salt from Matanzas Bay mingling with the sweetness of blooming jasmine. Her uniform clung to her back, damp before she’d even begun her rounds.

The results are in! Here's who won this year's fiction contest.Read Bethany Bruno’s story, “No Swimming at Monson’s,” available online January 2, 2026 “I saw the opening line congratulating me and said, ‘Wait, no way.’ I reread the email just to be sure it was real,” says Bruno about when she was notified that her short story “No Swimming at Monson’s” won first place, online and print publication, and a $1,000 prize. “It felt like a dream come true for the little girl who used to write ‘books’ o...

Every December my family brings out the mannequin and dresses it in Uncle Ray’s flannel, boots, and watch, a winter ritual that began as a joke and softened into something we never named after he died. Tonight, the candles burn low on the dining table, their light thin as breath, and when everyone drifts to the living room, I stay behind in the hush, facing the figure we’ve filled with his things. The coat still carries a trace of cedar and cigarette smoke. The watch on its wrist ticks with a borrowed steadiness, the kind that makes you listen harder in the dark.

The road runs straight as a taut string. On both sides, fields make a green and white quilt. Cotton blooms into fists. Corn lifts thin flags that clatter in the wind. Summer heat shakes the edges of the asphalt. Vultures wheel overhead and settle on fence posts like sentries who do not blink. I drive this road often. Groceries. Daycare pickup. Library returns. A loop of errands that feels safe until it does not. The first time I noticed the bodies, I was late for work. A raccoon lay with its paws...

The first thing my mother left me was a jar. Wide-mouthed, Mason glass, cloudy at the rim. She pressed it into my hands the morning she stopped speaking. Her lips moved like pale paper fluttering in the wind. “Keep it closed,” she mouthed.  Inside: a moth, its gray wings frantic against the glass. Dust fell in tiny storms, coating the sides in a powdery script I couldn’t read. The air inside shimmered faintly, as if it carried a pulse of its own. I carried it home, tucked agains...

My daughter Frankie doesn’t say my name. She knows it. I’ve heard her whisper it at night, curled up in her toddler bed, when the house is quiet and the shadows stretch across the floor. “Mommy,” she breathes, and for a second I believe I’ve dreamed it. At night, behind her door, she practices. Soft words slip out like secrets, as if she’s testing them before anyone can hear. Pressure shuts her down. But in the dark, when no one is watching, her voice feels safe. In the daylight, I try. I kneel. I call to her. She turns to me, eyes bright, smile full, but I can tell she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. She opens her mouth like she’s going to answer, but instead I hear bits of “Old McDonald” or sounds that don’t quite form words.

It started with a palm frond. One of those thick, green giants that fan out over Florida yards like they own the place. My Uncle Bob ripped one clean off the tree, held it high over his head, and marched barefoot around the pool. Jimmy Buffett’s “Volcano” blared from the lanai speakers, steel drums skipping over sun-soaked chaos. Kids doing cannonballs, adults sloshing bourbon in plastic cups, and bathing suits doubling as dinner clothes. He said nothing. Just grinned and kept moving. We followed. Every one of us. Cousins dripping pool water, aunts in cover-ups, and the dogs trotting at our heels, nails clicking on the pavement as if they were tap dancing. The conga line snaked through the screen door, into the kitchen, and around the card table stacked with paper plates and Publix potato salad. No one asked why.

It’s 1:17 a.m., and I’m sitting on the floor of my kitchen drinking Dr Pepper Blackberry out of the can like it’s medicine for a heartbreak I haven’t earned yet. I haven’t cried today, but I can feel it coming, crouched behind my molars. This beverage might be the gateway. The label promises “Delightfully Dark. Subtly Sweet,” which, coincidentally, is also how I described myself during a short-lived phase in college when I tried to brand myself as “the mysterious girl who reads Bukowski and wear...

The bell above the jewelry store door gives a soft chime as I step inside. The sound feels too gentle for what I have come to do. Rain slides down the glass behind me, distorting the lights of the parking lot. The air smells of polish and metal. Under the bright display cases, diamonds gleam like trapped lightning, each one waiting for someone to believe in it.

You were twenty-fourwhen your brain went silent.No dreams.No waking. But still they kept you warmbeneath the weight of wires,your skin bathed in fluorescent blue,your breath machine-fed. Not for you.For the small, curled possibility inside.They called it life,but what they meant was labor. They turned your bodyinto a hushed roomwithout windows,without voice. A vessel.A holding cell.Your name was Adriana.Say it aloud.Adriana Smith. Not “the mother.”Not “the mira...

The night shift at the rest stop smells of diesel and boiled peanuts. The vending plaza hums behind me, its fans and fluorescent lights working harder than the people inside. I sweep the tiled floor in small arcs, the broom whispering over chip crumbs and cigarette ash. The mop bucket waits beside the door, metal dented, water clouded by a day of other people’s shoes. A paper map curls on the brochure rack, its folds cutting Florida clean through the gulf.

I scattered him at Bathtub Beach just after sunrise, the tide curling warm around my ankles. I parked beside a dune tangled with sea oats and lifted the urn from the passenger seat. Its metal was slick with condensation, cold against my palms, as if I carried something still alive. The horizon split orange, soft and sharp at once. I stepped onto the limestone shelf where he used to squat with a bucket of shrimp and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He never caught much, but he’d sit for hours, talking tides and mangrove snapper, swearing you could smell rain before it came. Just toss me in the ocean when I go. I want to be fish food.

Toilet Bowl Funeral The first time Goldie died, my father flushed him without ceremony. “Quick and painless,” he muttered. I leaned over the bowl, watching the orange body spiral down. My mother ruffled my hair and said, “That’s life,” before boiling spaghetti. But the next morning, Goldie was back. He filled the toilet tank, scales brushing porcelain, one cloudy eye staring at me as if we’d both made a mistake. My father cursed but could not bring himself to flush again. “He wants somethi...

Feeds: PO AD LIB. It appeared one morning in blue ink on her whiteboard, just below her weight and care times—another piece of coded hospital language I wasn’t meant to understand. Another mysterious acronym in a sea of them, bobbing somewhere between hope and heartbreak. I stared at those three words for a long time. After five weeks of bracing myself for bad news and interpreting every beep, chart, and monitor, here was a phrase so quiet I nearly missed it. In the NICU, everything meant something, and anything could mean everything. Where one small change could unravel everything or stitch something back together. No one warns you that birth can drop you into another world. Where day and night are meaningless and your child’s life depends on machines that sound like alarms in a spaceship.

He used to make her omelets on Sundays. Mushrooms, green peppers, cheese grated thin. He called it his specialty. He poured coffee into her cup before his own and kissed her forehead through the steam. She used to think that meant love. The whisk against the bowl, the scrape of the spatula, the sound of him humming while she sat barefoot in the kitchen. Love had a sound back then. Now the whisk means she is late. He comes home at six. Always six. She has fifteen minutes to get...

The day after Mary Ellen was arrested, Mama made biscuits and gravy. I woke to the smell of bacon grease popping in the skillet, thick and salty, mixed with something heavier—flour catching on cast iron. The air already felt thick, even with the windows cracked. I slipped on my Sunday dress, the pale blue one with the peter-pan collar and padded barefoot through the hallway. The fan in the living room pushed warm air around like it was doing something. The linoleum in the kitchen was cool, cracked at the corners. My bare heels stuck to it when I walked.

The faucet in the laundry room had been leaking for weeks. Slow, consistent, an off-beat metronome tapping out the things he hadn’t gotten around to. Kyle didn’t mind it anymore. The drip kept him company when the house got too quiet. He sat at the kitchen table in his work boots, eating a bowl of cornflakes gone soft. It was nearly noon, and the sun cut a sharp line across the floor. He stared at the wall beside the fridge, where the paint peeled like bark. He could fix it. He had the tools.

I find the disc at the bottom of the glove box, under expired insurance cards and a pen that will never write again. The paper sleeve says KAYLA’S SUMMER MIX <3 in blue Sharpie. The ink has bled, the edges curled by heat. The car smells like sunscreen and coconut lotion that never leaves Florida upholstery. I slide the mixed CD into the stereo. The screen glows TRACK 01. The first guitar riff bursts through the speakers, and the years fold back. We were seventeen, working at the Flamingo Inn off the highway and swimming on our days off. Milo burned songs on his family’s desktop through LimeWire, watching the download bars crawl forward while pop-ups blinked in the corners. We believed a summer could live inside a plastic circle. He lifted the disc to the kitchen light and watched the dye flash green and purple. He said a good mix begins with a sprint. Track 01: “Mr. Brightside” — The Killers (2004)

The morning feels ordinary. A breeze rattles the windows of the houses along Hermosa Beach. Bacon smoke drifts from a cottage kitchen and mingles with the briny air. Farther down the shoreline, gulls wheel overhead, their cries sharp, almost mocking, puncturing the stillness of the day. The tide hums against the sand with steady rhythm, a sound so constant that no one listens anymore. Two children run ahead, small shadows flickering across the bright sand. Sarah, the older sister, sprints with her braids flying, her voice ringing with excitement. Her younger brother, Michael, stumbles after her with the clumsy confidence of nineteen months. He nearly falls once, catches himself, then erupts into laughter. Their giggles float above the surf like a fragile net trying to hold the morning together.