By Ruth Walker
2014 Winner: Young Adult

One: Outside Main Station

Keep low, tight to the ground.

Lesser sun is still high but soon prime sun will set and I haven’t enough to fill my tell. I stop. Listen. Lift my nose just high enough to catch what’s on the air.

Undeserving animal. Close by. The sweatstink as clear as Blessed Leader’s vision.

I hold my breath. Wait. And then I hear it. Breath of one in a struggle. Trying to keep still, knowing something’s near.

Truetell, I’m coming anyway. [Read more…]

by Kevin Craig
2014 Honourable Mention: Young Adult

CHAPTER ONE

I’m trapped in my bedroom again, impatiently waiting for the screaming to end. I know it won’t. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed and rock back and forth. My therapy position.

Mom and Dad are down the hall in the living room, screaming about dividing assets. Again. She claims the contents of the den, and he gets the credenza in the dining room. Sheer madness. Not once in the hour since the blow up began have either one of them volunteered to take me. Through the whole entire list of the inventory of their lives, I have been left off the tally. In fact, my name—my existence—hasn’t even come up. [Read more…]