Editor’s Note: We appreciate all of this year’s story submissions. It’s always a difficult choice to make, but thank you all for your time and effort. In addition to the story winners printed here, honorable mentions can be found online here.
First Place
The Delicious Witching Hour
By Daniel Schmidt
Three o’ clock now strikes again
The witching hour is here my friend
Old clocks sound their lonesome knell
Echoes of a requiem bell
Shadows creep, cats scream with strife
What was once dead now comes to life
Three o’ clock is here at last
Little stands between now and past
Fearful winds and waning light
Beware to those who walk tonight
Things are here, all shapes and size
The air grows chill as spirits rise
Witching hour before morning
Lonesome souls forgo the warning
Driven by an unseen force
Ruled by yearning’s hopeless remorse
Chasing what is dead and gone
Seeking to find it, pressing on
Be brave, my friends, if you trod
On this spot at Milledge and Broad
Prepare for what comes around
Know that this place is hallowed ground
Filled with spirits known so well
You’ll be bewitched with taste and smell
Too late now to run and flee
Await your fate on bended knee
But behold! What do you quaff?
Sweet grease and frosted orange froth!
Chili dogs and onion rings
Back with you now, the food of kings!
Three o’ clock is here at last
Reunited with joys of past
Worth the journey and despair
Delicious spirits fill the air
Crooning out on Milledge Ave
The ghostly cry of “WHAT’LL YA HAVE?!”
Second Place
Boulevard
By Will Donnelly
We hadn’t lived in Boulevard long—only a few months—when it became clear that we’d need to decorate our lawn for Halloween. Our neighbors next door, the Cogburns, had been decorating theirs ever since we’d moved in at the end of August, and Russ Cogburn was ribbing me about it every morning.
“Yard’s looking empty,” he’d say, thumbs in his belt loops, nodding in our direction. “Y’all got to get with the program.”
I don’t think he meant to shame us, and besides, he was right. The Harkers across the street had cobwebs across their front porch. The Steins down the way had a broom-riding witch swaying from the bough of an oak. Ghosts and mummies and vampires stood up and down the street, their frayed costumes billowing like South Georgia moss.
But no one outdid the Cogburns. By late September, two unsettlingly realistic skeletons were positioned climbing out of the earth beside their sidewalk. On October 1st, a pair of bloody arms dangled on a rope beneath a tree. By the 5th, a disfigured head, its tongue curling like a dried worm, graced their porch.
“You got some catching up to do, Davis.”
That’s me—Davis. Or us, really. My first name’s Paul, but Russ has never called me that.
And so we, the Davises, piled into the car and drove to Cofer’s to see what we could find.
On the way out of the neighborhood, Kathryn pointed to what had been the Jameses’ home down the block. “Did they move?” she said. “And if so, how didn’t we know about it?”
She wasn’t wrong. A fresh “FOR SALE” sign stood planted just beside their front walk.
“Strange,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything.” But we didn’t know the Jameses all that well anyway.
At the store, the kids, Colter and Sara, picked out a 10-foot-tall skeleton, a few jokey tombstones, and a huge pumpkin to carve. We took it home, set it up, took photos, and were proud of our newfound sense of belonging in the neighborhood.
“Weak.”
This from Russ, later that evening, standing on the street, eyeing our display. I was glad the children weren’t around.
“I don’t’ know,” I said to him. “Our skeleton’s huge.”
“Davis,” he said, shaking his head. “It looks so fake.”
“So?”
“You want scary, man! Real! Here, let me show you how it’s done.” He motioned me to follow until we stood in front of his home. “Look,” he said, pointing with his head toward a shapeless form wrapped in a bloody sheet, propped against the stairs to the porch. “That was Misty’s idea.” Misty being Russ’ wife.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“A torso,” he said, as if it were obvious. “A disemboweled one.”
“Just looks like some old rags tied around a rock to me.”
Russ scoffed. “You need to raise your game, Davis.” He shook his head, spat and walked inside.
When I went back inside my own place, Kathryn said, “Did something die around here recently? A deer or maybe a raccoon?” She wrinkled her nose.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “But your nose is sharper than mine.”
“Smells awful. Oh, and the Gomezes have moved out, too,” she said.
“So everybody’s leaving Boulevard, and nobody’s telling anyone when they go. Hm.”
The next morning, six new arms, pale and bruise-speckled, jutted from the dirt in front of the Cogburns’ house like a macabre picket fence, and by then, I could smell the dead animal, too, whatever it was.
Russ cornered me as I walked out to pick up the Athens Banner-Herald before work.
“You going to add anything else before Halloween?” he said.
I didn’t respond to this, but said instead, “Listen, is it a thing around here to just up and move away without telling the neighbors?”
“It happens,” he shrugged. “Some folks just pull up roots and relocate, I suppose. I don’t take umbrage in it.”
Already I could see a new “FOR SALE” sign in front of the McWhorters’ home down the way. I said, “It all just seems so… sudden.”
“Well,” said Russ, “most people around here don’t end up going far. Boulevard, I mean. Once you spend a little time here, parts of you never really leave.”
I mulled this over and, for half a second, I swear I saw a yellowed finger on one of the hands in the Cogburns’ yard twitch. My thoughts built like storm clouds, struggling to congeal.
“Oh well,” said Russ. “Hey, happy Halloween!”
Third Place Winner
Nowhere Road
By Philip Weinrich
“I hope you like Italian as much as I do,” Ted called from the kitchen while he stirred the bubbling pot of sauce. “It’s from a recipe I picked up when I was a cook at DePalma’s. Everything’s from scratch.” He took a taste, scrunched his nose, then added several shakes of basil while he stirred.
“Tell me, Gina,” Ted asked as he leaned over and opened the oven to check on the garlic bread. “What brought you to Athens? Are you alone down here?” He popped his head around the corner. “Sorry, I meant, ‘Do you have any family here?’ Don’t worry, I saw on your dating profile that you were from up North, so I was curious.”
“STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!” he thought. “She’s going to think you’re some kind of demented…” He had to get control. ”What about you?” he asked as casually as he could. “Do you think I fit my profile?” As Gina nodded her head, a buzzer went off behind him and he quickly turned back to the kitchen saying, “Whoops! Gotta go throttle that annoying timer!”
He grabbed two potholders and poured the pasta into a colander. The steam fogged his glasses, which almost made him drop the pot. He was glad that she wasn’t in the kitchen where she could see how nervous he was. He’d always been shy around girls, high school having been particularly torturous. College wasn’t much better. He hated sorority girls, mainly because they dated everybody, and he wanted something more permanent.
All his recent dates had not ended well, and he hoped that this one didn’t continue the pattern. Gina was just the type of girl he had been looking for; long black hair, athletic build, quiet, with piercing blue eyes. He would do anything to keep her.
Ted sprinkled some olive oil on the pasta so it wouldn’t stick together while he finished the last of his preparations. He put the garlic bread in a basket and set it on the table. “Here’s something to tide you over,” he said and hurried back toward the kitchen. “It’s my own recipe.” He heard Gina’s muffled response. “Don’t fill up on that,” he chuckled, “or you’ll kill your appetite. That’s what Mother used to say!”
Ted pulled two plates out of the cupboard and loaded them with spaghetti. “I’ll bet you’re starving,” he said. He dipped the ladle into the pot and spread the sauce over the noodles. He scooped up three meatballs for each of them and placed them just so. A couple of quick chops on a stalk of scallions and he garnished his creation better than any of the chefs he saw on TV.
“Dinner is served,” Ted said, and placed a steaming plate in front of Gina, who stared numbly in front of her. He sat in the chair next to her and gently pulled the duct tape from her mouth. She moaned softly, but was otherwise unresponsive. An acrid whiff of sulfur tinged the air as Ted struck a match and lit the candles. Gina blinked and, as her eyes adjusted to the light, she began to wail at what she saw. The bodies of four women in increasing stages of decomposition were seated at the table with her.
“I hope you don’t mind company on our date,” Ted said, twirling the pasta around his fork. “I told them it would be rude if they stayed, but they just wouldn’t listen.” He put the fork in his mouth and mumbled, “I think they’re jealous that I’ve found someone new.”
Terrified, Gina looked frantically around her for an escape. She saw the knife at her plate but, when she reached for it, she realized that her hands were tied to the armrests. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked between bites of garlic bread. “The girls won’t eat my cooking anymore, but I really am a good chef. It’d be a shame for you to just waste away.”
Gina’s wail intensified into a shriek so loud that it rattled the dinnerware. The sound echoed in the open mouths of his previous “dates,” and Ted remembered how each one of them had sounded in their turn. “We can’t have you screaming,” he said, calmly replacing the tape across her mouth. “It’s not polite. Besides,” he added with a grin, “no one will hear you out here anyways.” He took another bite of pasta. “They don’t call it ‘Nowhere Road’ for nothing…”
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