The four winning and commended entries, along with the judge's comments, are now available from the HappenStance online shop in the STORY anthology. See below for extracts from these four very different stories.

 

From Katy Darby’s Going Out

 

 “You sound beautiful,” he says. Years of practice have allowed him to perfect his technique of speaking clearly with his mouth full. She sighs, a tremble in it, and he angles the receiver away from his mouth and takes another bite of sandwich. She’s quiet tonight. Hesitant. He finishes chewing, the phone clamped at an awkward angle to his ear. She still hasn’t said anything in reply.

    “You always sound beautiful, of course,” he adds. “To me.”

    She clears her throat. “I don’t feel it. I feel like death.”

    He shakes his head and grins. The shadow of him, reflected in his flatscreen monitor, shakes too.

    “But your voice sounds husky. Sexy. Women with colds sound like Lauren Bacall. I love it.”

    “I don’t,” she says. “I feel like a man.”

    “Well, you can’t have one.”

    A pause. It’s a shared joke between them, this form of words. I feel like an idiot. Well, you can’t have one. But it’s near the knuckle, and she’s sensitive. She gurgles a breathless, sheepish laugh and he slumps back in his chair in relief. She’s accepted his joke, his offering. But then again, what would she do without him? Who else would she call? He often wonders.

 

 

From Sarah Evans’ Perfect Curls

 

“All brain surgery has its risks,” he said. “But the tumour is well defined. It should come out relatively cleanly. I don’t anticipate problems. Of course this kind of surgery can lead to changes.”

    “What sort of changes?”

    “The tumour is in the prefrontal cortex, the centre of emotion. You shouldn’t lose any of your cognitive skills. But other effects, they’re unpredictable.”

    He carried on, provided an unnecessary level of detail. He would shave my tangle of unruly curls, cut through my scalp, saw through the skull, remove the growth, then put it all back together. I looked at the maple tree outside his window, its vibrant reds and purples. Would it look the same afterwards?

    I cried all night. Will cradled me in his arms. “I’ll always love you,” he vowed. “You’ll still be you.” He couldn’t bear to think anything else.

     The surgery was declared a success. As he peeled off his bloodied latex gloves, my surgeon would have thought he’d done a good day’s work. I lay there in that hospital bed feeling numb, but that was to be expected after all I’d been through. It took a while for the changes to become apparent.

 

 

From Martin Parker’s Eric and Tracy and the Tree of Knowledge:

 

    God peered over his garden wall and saw two small pink figures standing in his orchard. “Are you Mankind?” said God.  “And, if so, why are there two of you already? It’s not quite what I was expecting. After all, I am God and I had anticipated taking a distinctly hands-on role in your creation. Clay…and ribs…perhaps a snake and some sex… All that sort of thing. But I wasn’t going to start until after the weekend.”

    “Thanks for the thought,” said one of the little pink figures, “but it seems to have been organised already. I am already Eric and this is already Tracy; and what we already are is an item. Mankind as well, if you like; but chiefly an item. We already have a mortgage, a Ford Fiesta, arguments, dandruff and occasional sex. And we have already managed this on our own, thank you.”

 

 

From Diane Jackman’s Shoreline:

 

The cars are lined up on the gravelled path parallel to the shoreline. Thirteen, sometimes fewer, never more. The mort-men see to that. Keeping the score is one of their duties—the  most compassionate. It prevents excess.

    Inside the cars men and women sit, invariably alone, blank-eyed. They turn their heads through ninety degrees and gaze at the brown-grey shingle shelving upwards above the brown-grey sea. Huge gulls, silver, brown-grey, wheel and scream.

    Each car contains a story of loss, grief, despair. These stories have driven the watchers to this place.