Fiction 59: adult winners

First Place

Academic on the Prowl

He’s eating petite sausages with his fingers, sucking the tips semi-clean before speaking. Gut extended like a handshake, he gets much too close.

Pepper sauce on his trendy scarf and now your cheek. Patches on his faux intellectual elbows. The greasy shine of his John Lennon glasses.

His Doberman stare.

What’s the Latin for “I’m not your bitch”?

Ki Koenig
Chico

We caught up with this year’s winner (and last year’s second-place finisher) Kiara “Ki” Koenig via email in Seattle, where she was—appropriately enough—moderating a writing panel called Calling Your Muse at the Association of Writing & Writing Programs’ national writing conference. The Yuba College associate professor is also slated to take part in the upcoming Wordfire Creative Writing Conference at Butte College on April 26 (visit www.buttewordfire.org for more info), and she is the managing editor of Floodplane (www.floodplane.org), an online literary journal.

Second Place

Broken

It was not that I loved you anymore, really. It was just that on Friday night, with my thighs crammed into shimmering spandex, I wanted you to see me and remember the time I wore my red bikini and we ate LSD at the creek and cooked steak together, eating it only with our hands and your folding knife.

Sadie Rose Casey
Paradise

This is Sadie Rose Casey’s second second-place finish in the Fiction 59 Contest (she also placed in 2011). The Paradise resident has been working on her writing chops in the interim on her fashion and general-interest blog, Sadie Deluxe, and has recently opened a vintage clothing store with the same name (6190 Skyway, Paradise). Visit www.sadiedeluxe.blogspot.com to read her blog and www.shopsadiedeluxe.com for info on her shop.

Third Place

Industry

He racked his brain; hung it up like his dusted oilskin and hat—retired.

He still felt the years of wait/weight, despite the hanging up of things.

He remembered the picking of blackberries, plump dark spots of summer, for the making of Nonni’s pies; fingers smart from hidden thorns, Levi’s stained in purple hues. Now that was industry.

Angela Youngblood
Chico

Ukiah native Angela Youngblood came to Chico for school and fell in love with the town. After graduating from Chico State with an English degree in 2010, she decided to stick around. She’s now on the board of directors at the 1078 Gallery, and in addition to serving as the gallery’s volunteer coordinator, she’s recently begun collaborating as a writer with the members of the multidiscipline Uncle Dad’s Art Collective.

Honorable Mentions

Half

You grew up down the street from me, didn’t you?

You did, I remember you well. We climbed the soft-shelled almond tree and ate the meat like it was candy. You cut a worm into halves with the thorn from a rosebush, and promised me the pieces would crawl, newly whole, away from one another. They didn’t move.

Darcy Cooper
Chico

The Big Time

Every family has a black sheep. Archie put the groceries in his mother’s fridge and tossed the lonely, lidless mayonnaise. As he quietly reached for her glass pipe, she jerked awake and smacked his hand. “You think you know better than me, Mr. Big? Where’s your brother?” He placed $20 on the counter on his way out the door.

Ginny Ball
Chico

Normandy

My father used to sleepwalk his way through the cornfield. He said he was never dreaming of corn. Gary asked one time, “What then?” Dad turned his good side to him and said, “June 6, 1944, face up in the water, wave after wave.” Mom and I didn’t say anything, Gary just nodded and got up from the table.

Rachael Newkirk
Chico

Allison’s Mommy Qualifies for an Upgrade

Mommy’s aweese on her phone. Mommy says mommy’s busy; hass to do sumptin. Mommy looks funny wit da light up her nose, fozen like a faiwy feeze spell. One time, when Mommy was in da showwa, I held it oder da potty. Den I membered she told Dahween it’s smart and she loved it. So I juss dipped it.

Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff
Chico

Away

I dreamt that my son was a robin, with pliers where his beak should be. He cut a hole in his brass cage as he warbled. I wrestled with the windows, but the house had no ceiling and he was already a flash of red against blue sky, no more mine than the sun that hung above us both.

Darcy Cooper

The Legacy

Her father’s microscope collected dust in the attic for 15 years after his death, a mute symbol of how he had lived: focused, logical, pragmatic, emotionally unavailable—examining life in microscopic detail. In college she dated her biology professor and gave him the microscope. He returned it when they broke up, saying, “It reminds me too much of you.”

Dan Gordon
Chico

Tuesday Crossword #59 (31 Down, 15 Letters)

“Psychological crutch it says; what kind of question is this?” The elderly man peers about as if someone played some cruel joke. Realizing he was alone only kindled his sparked anger. He grips his head as to squeeze soaked thoughts amongst the leftover souvenirs of his memory. And breaks the end of his pen to let ideas drip in.

Andrew Hopper
Paradise

Allergies

Moments after devirginization, Cole knew his pledge as a vegetarian had ended. It had been so romantic and such a lesser endeavor than his vegan associates. Two weeks later, Aubry left him. “I don’t even like animals,” he thought aloud and he loved the taste of steak. Allergic to cats since childhood, he wondered what they might taste like.

Scott Bailey
Chico

Do the Math

Eight years out of 10, she did love him. Through magical nights in Jamaica and sunny days building a home; through the glorious birth of three children and the incomprehensible death of one; through lauded anniversary celebrations and quiet, quick affairs; the years always balanced out. But now in their 33rd year, she thinks, a decision must be made.

Ginny Ball

Loads of Potential in Real Up-and-Coming Neighborhood

Escrow closed; remodel complete; newness newly worn off: the house was now what all Seymour Borhaze family residences became: a prison. He paced the yard; repaired the Sisyphean appliances, roof, rain gutters. The wife/kids conscribed his every action. But at night, online, he plotted escape: first, flights to Thailand. But, always, eventually, single-family homes. Real fixer-uppers.

Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff

Precipitation

When the rain stopped, Sandoval didn’t mind. He enjoyed the predictable, pale days, the low-slung sun. With rationing, he griped—who didn’t? But when the Mayor, with “heart heavy,” said, “Be like roots and find new land,” the place-memories gushed. All “The Firsts”: Clay’s first picnic; his own first kiss. A new list now, too: “The Lasts.”

Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff