Treanor Wooten Baring, of Houston, Texas, won the spring 2022 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest for her story, “The Unseen.”
Honorable mentions were awarded to Goldie Goldbloom for “The Hours” and Bradford Gyori for “Docking The Blue Impossible.” Read all three winning pieces here.
Also, be aware—and beware—we begin accepting submissions for our first-ever summer Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition on June 6. Cheers — The Editor
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition-winning story for winter 2022 is “Heart Full Of Crows,” by Arthur Pike. To read it, just scroll down this page. Our honorable mention winners are Haley Kennedy, of northern California, for her story, “Birthday Cake,” and Mona Susan Power, of Minneapolis, for “War Bundle.” Susan Power has been here before: Her story, “Straw Dogs,” took the top prize in the 2021 Screw Turn Flash contest. Congratulations to all three of our flash fiction winners—and many thanks to our contest judge, Tara Lynn Masih.
Twice each year, The Screw Turn contest awards publication and cash prizes for excellence in supernatural fiction of between 250 and 1,000 words. For your reading enjoyment, all three stories are posted below, and will soon be available on the Screw Turn Story Page.
Our summer 2022 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition opens in early June. If you’re a writer who is interested in entering, keep an eye on this website for announcements.
Meanwhile, The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, our contest for full-length supernatural short stories of up to 10,000 words, opens for will be open for submissions as of February 15, with a deadline of April 30. If you’re a writer of supernatural fiction, have a look at our competition guidelines.
WINNER, WINTER 2022
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
My Daddy had what you call a heart full of crows. He’d sit outside our rented cabin of an afternoon with his pistol, plinking at birds, missing wide most times, until finally he’d take out the sun and that’d be the day.
This sitting out shooting would attract the attention of the management which you’d think my Daddy would be adverse to after going to such lengths to sweep over his tracks, throw his implements in rivers, wipe clean all he touched, stand ever ready with a new name for the registry.
It was a regular place, the management said, running with regular tenants. Lay down your arms, the management said. But my Daddy was the kind of man whose actions persuade. Turns out he’d tapped into some vein of deep desire running just under the skin of that place. Before long, most of the rest of the regulars were out in the afternoon, peppering away.
It would have been a good time to stay inside but I was growing, growing hard, a foot or two a day. I launched up to the ceiling then curled back in on myself like some ram’s horn, doubling, tripling up. All this growth was the reason my Daddy had to cut me down to size.
He used whatever came to hand—slap to the face, knuckle to the chin, knee to the back on the cold, hard floor. This was the daily round, mine to take until I got my size. But the time did come quick enough to wrest myself back from him. One afternoon of my seventeenth year, I lifted that gun out of his hand, woke him from his sleep, and made my good-byes. [continue reading…]
HONORABLE MENTION, WINTER 2022
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
She walked in barefoot. Her tiny toes and fingers caked in mud. Before I could say anything, before I could ask “Where’s your mother?” or “My god, are you ok?” she held out her hands toward me and said “soap?”
I’d been making a cake. Victoria sponge, blackberry-basil compote, and almond meringue. Too clever a cake for my customers, but it made the shop smell amazing. My ex-husband, in all his high-end affectation, would have loved to serve such a cake.
The muddy girl arrived as I was piping the lilies. Sugar flowers for the anniversary of my separation. I think it’s brutally unfair that we can’t eat away our mourning, but I choose to coat my despair in frosting.
I led the girl to the dish sink. We washed our hands together, her on my step stool. She couldn’t have been more than five, wearing an adult’s Unity t-shirt and running shorts as if dressed from a lost and found.
“You make cakes,” she said.
“I do. Are you here to order a cake?”
She shook her head. “I’m leaving Belmin.”
“Do you live in Belmin?”
“I don’t like Belmin.”
I asked her name, but she just looked at her feet and said, “muddy.”
The town of Belmin, renamed for the company that jump-started its economy, is 13 miles from my bakery doorstep. The Belmin Company made a name for itself designing animatronics for theme parks. They famously unveiled their line of dolphins by allowing visitors to feed them. Not one person recognized they were tossing trout to a machine. I’m still not sure where the trout went.
After acquiring ComfortPet, a purveyor of online emotional support “animals,” Belmin took over 700 acres of our local forest to build its campus. The compound fence is so high, you might think it a prison. But the front gates suggest a theme park with a 20-foot scene of the evolution of man, culminating in a cubic, winking robot.
I deliver to them most weekends. I am the only baker who works every day. Cakes with Gundams, with videogame consoles, with pulpy sci-fi scenes. Palatable nerd eccentricities erected in delicate fondant. They are always celebrating themselves.
We finished cleaning up. Muddy was unscratched, but her pupils were unusually dilated. Huge saucers, like a Disney princess, despite the harsh fluorescent lights. She watched me without fear.
“What kind of cakes?” she asked. [continue reading…]
Volume II of our print anthology, “21st Century Ghost Stories,” has just been published. It contains all of our Summer 2018 to Summer 2021 winning and honorable mention stories from The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest and The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—30 fine supernatural short stories in all!
