December 2020 Storytwigs Competition Winners
For our inaugural Storytwigs competition, we asked writers to submit up to three 100-word micro-stories on based on the prompt “Salt.” We received over 200 submissions from writers all over the world, including students from 15+ US colleges, and we selected these seven pieces as the most outstanding entries. Storytwigs has new competitions every month, and more information on this month’s competition is available here.
1st place — Memory Like an Elephant, by Hannah Lee Ahn
In the Californian desert, a man builds The Jungle. It boasts the newest animatrons, little boats bobbing along a false river. Tickets fly. Water sluices each and every visitor, carefully amassing delicate skin cells, nervous enzymes; an entire universe in a dish. After fifty years of declining ridership, it is quietly retired and left to condense. The last settlement dies out - by the time the newcomers land their spaceships, only a desiccated cake remains. One of their young - perhaps a little girl - ventures across the sunken path, salt crunching beneath. Free of their matrices, the particles finally lapse into dust.
2nd place — Bogart, by Alexander Kim
My shark and I are in love but sometimes it misses the ocean. Today I came home to find it crying on my rug. I said “I have a gift for you,” and presented the shark with a fedora. Recently it has become obsessed with Humphrey Bogart.
The fedora cocked on its head, the shark looked up at me and said “Here’s looking at you, kid.” I said “Kiss me as if it were the last time.” I had this sad feeling like it really might be the last time but I hid it. And tasted salt.
3rd place — Common Chemicals for 200, by Koby Rosen
Commonly referred to as NaCl
What is salt?
Can you be more specific?
...I’m not, I don’t know
Alright, Nancy, Mark any guess?...
We were looking for table salt
Pick again...
Pick a category Tom
Are you alright?
Cut. Take five minutes
We’ve never stopped shooting mid-game
He can’t speak
Fair point
Who screen tested him?
Mary did, I think
No it was Dan
No, it was Laura
Does he have any guests in the audience?
He the one with the sister?
No that’s Mark
He brought no one?
Laura can you try to calm him down?
Where’d he go?
4th place — Weapon of Choice, by Hannah Lee Ahn
Guns always seemed excessive to you: a blinding point of metal shearing through muscle, blood spattering white plaster. But you live alone and your bedroom window opens onto the street. Maybe you’ll get a baseball bat. “Nah, I don’t play. That’s my bat I use to bash people’s heads in.” You imagine tasting your own tears as you flee, heart pounding, a kitchen knife plunging into a stranger’s chest. That desperate taste. The cold sweat of a man breaking a window, looking to steal something, anything. You buy a taser to keep under your pillow. Electricity craves salt, doesn’t it?
5th place — Origin Story, by Sal Kang
When my parents died, grandmother made me bathe in salt. It purifies and cleanses you, she said. Later that year, I moved to the countryside to live with her. I didn’t care for all the mountains and fields, but I liked how the unpaved roads turned marshy every time it rained. If I was lucky, I could catch a worm. One day, I even brought one back to the house. Not wanting to run all the way to the water pump to clean it, I just buried it in salt. Not my fanciest murder, but yeah, that was the first.
Honorable mention — A History of Violence, by Riley Parker
I awoke in a circle of salt. Its infinite edge seemed to protect me from the horrid creature mere inches from my invisible cage. Circling me, its oily skin gesticulated as its sunken mouth muttered syllables unfamiliar to my ears. The ghastly, pale figure waved its chain to and fro, and a sudden wind traveled through me; each vertebra snapping off another. I screamed and the creature stepped back, its eye a glint of fear. Under normal circumstances I would strike, but my claw laid limp across the stone floor. “Begone, daemon,” were the last words I ever heard.
Honorable mention — Alice in Saltland, by Leah Mueller
I wander into a watery dimension filled with sodium-rich foods. Gigantic platters of fries, glistening with grease. Punch bowls as big as cars, overflowing with cocktail peanuts. Pretzels the size of garden hoses. Ceaseless, torrential rain.
Battered umbrella, too flimsy to keep my pigtails dry. Worn Mary Janes slosh through puddles. I clutch my skirt’s hem, so the wind won’t blow it over my head.
It’s no use. Every time I find the exit, someone or something moves it further away. I cry for help, but no one answers.
When it rains, it pours.
Honorable mention — Purple Salt, by Aya
Hendrix pulled at the ruffles of his purple jacket. “Mom, I don’t want to go to the church,” the nine year old said.
“I told you, if you wanted to go as that ungodly singer, Prince, you have to show Pastor Jacob,” she said coldly.
The two passed children marveling at the candy they’d received as they approached the Pastor.
“Halloween isn’t an excuse to immortalize sinners,” the Pastor said as he sprinkled Hendrix with salt. “This’ll protect you from the demon inside you.”