DaRK PaRTY would like to give a hearty “Thank you” to everyone who entered. It takes courage and the mark of a true writer to enter a fiction writing contest. We wish we could make you all winners. But it is the nature of contests to demand that we select only a few.

So without further ado – we give you our four champions.

The judges were impressed with the emotional impact of Edmund Jonah’s “The Table.” Edmund conveyed loss and regret with incredible skill as he guided the reader through what appears to be an ordinary sale of a table.

The Table
By: Edmund Jonah

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I went in and sidled through lots of secondhand furniture before I touched the oak table.

“You have an eye,” said the salesman. “We got it yesterday at a country house auction. The old lady just died.”

I wept. It was my mother’s. We had not spoken in five years.

About Edmund Jonah
A grandfather of three beautiful girls from Tel Aviv, Edmund was born in Calcutta, India of Iraqi/Jewish origin. He was educated by Belgian and Canadian Jesuits in the Himalayas. Edmund moved to London at age 22, married, and immigrated to Israel with his wife and daughter. “I live in a great country,” he says. He currently has a novel with an agent and has published many short stories.

First Runner-Up (Second Place)

The judges were impressed with Alexander Vermitsky’s simple, yet complicated story about the complexities of marriage, love, and relationships. “The Marriage” shines with emotional honesty and powerful detail.

The Marriage
By: Alexander Vermitsky

He sat on the tile, legs crossed, waiting for her to come home. His hope: she’d notice the simplicity, a newborn quality to the quiet, his calm. She came in carrying two spider plants bought at Mr. Seto’s nursery.

“What a tangled mess,” she said, motioning for him to get off the floor and help.

About Alexander Vermitsky
Alexander is a 29-year-old poet and writer who lives in Towson, Maryland (a suburb of Baltimore). For some unknown reason he likes Pat Benetar’s “I am a Warrior.” Try not to hold it against him.

Second Runner-Up (Third Place)

Albert Kwak’s mirthful “Untitled” made one of the judges laugh so loud that milk poured out of her nostrils. Oddly, she was drinking a Coke. His story about a troubled phobic was what his parents would probably call a “knee-slapper.”

Untitled
By: Albert Kwak

Todd Draco feared germs. “What do you have in your mouth, Todd?” asked the psychologist. His cheeks bulged like a squirrel hoarding away chestnuts.

“Swallow it,” she said. “Swallow it. What are you so afraid of?”

And for the first time in nine years, Todd Draco did the unthinkable: he swallowed his own spit.

About Albert Kwak
Albert Kwak is a 22-year-old hermit who lives with his three pet turtles and his Writer’s Digest magazines. Rarely does he party; he goes out to make no friends. He is a virgin living under tyrannical rule of his parents, and is constantly mocked for reading and writing, the two most important facets which have shaped his life. He wonders every day (and in every nightmare) if his writing is, in fact, as atrocious as they say.

Third Runner-Up (Fourth Place)

The judges added a fourth place category to honorably mention Francis Rabbit’s “The Clearing Past Exit 57.” His impressive horror tale about the unexpected reunion of man and wife scared the hell out of one of our more timid judges.

The Clearing Past Exit 57
By: Francis Rabbit

Never thought I’d end up here. I raise my hand, but cars keep roaring by. Lana left me three years ago; now she’s about five feet away. I thought she’d left, didn’t love me. Wasn’t nearly right enough. She found another love past exit fifty-seven. My feet sink further downward and I scream.

About Francis Rabbit
Escaped from a mutant lab experiment gone wrong, bitten by a radioactive spider, sent on a rocket ship from an exploding planet while exposed to cosmic radiation, crash landing frozen in the Arctic wastes after the second World War and thawed in the eighties by a benevolent millionaire with a talking car, Rabbit Francis finds himself in a world he's never understood -- suburbia. His background decidedly in science fiction, he escaped to the land of UFOs in New Mexico, studied under golden age writer Jack Williamson, and returned, unpublished, to suburbia, and to a soul-molting work life that deadened his talent nearly completely. The tiny spark that remains here is hoped to be the Phoenix-like rebirth of his writing life.

Labels: Contest, Writing

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