First Place Winner

M16 Annie strikes again … or does she? In this last ditch effort to save ma from the chair, see if our heroes prevail!!

JUSTICE ROCKS

by Edward F. Fitzgerald

                She looked into her rearview mirror and knew in that instant that something was horribly wrong.
The back seat was gone.
That explained that racket a moment ago. Yes, the floor had fallen out of the rusted Edsel, taking the back seat and her father with it. Peaches skidded to a stop so hard that her Minnie Mouse earrings slapped together in front of her face. Blowing her blonde bangs out of her eyes, she frowned.
It was her brother, Stretch, who had insisted that she use this car for the trip to the penitentiary. To save Ma. Or “M16 Annie,” as them television folks called her. Yet Peaches  knew Stretch hated their parents. It made Peaches suspicious that the stuff Stretch had poured into the gas tank before they left was not really the “high fiber” he had claimed.
Pap looked shaken but unhurt as he reached the rear of the car, grabbed the bumper and hauled himself up to his feet, where he crouched, spitting out one tooth and grinning through the other two as he waved the envelope at her.
The evidence.
The video that would save Ma from the chair.
The video of Ma outside the Hungry Cockroach soliciting curb crawlers as they cruised by dripping saliva.  The video Pap had made for their divorce case, to prove Ma wasn’t making her money on EBay. But it also proved that she couldn’t have been over to Nashville that night robbing Farmer’s Fidelity and shooting that guard.
Peaches frowned again and sucked on the Edsel’s dipstick as she wondered again how anyone could ever think a fifty-year old lady coulda done that. Then, again, how many women stood six eight in steel-tipped gunboat shoes, and how many had wild gray hair and wore oldentimey blue pinafores that drug along the street behind them? Whom is exactly whom everone said done the deed.
“Oh, my Lord, Pap,” she squealed, the truth hitting Peaches like a salmon flying off a snapped line. “It was Stretch! Done up in Ma’s duds and wearing a fright wig!”
She saw Pap’s eyes alit with truth and that quart of white lightning he’d drunk. They both knew that gigantic Stretch had always enjoyed wearing Ma’s dresses, and he had twice writ poems, which clinched his guilt.
“Roll it, Peaches,” Pap cried unintelligibly from the roof, the evidence clenched in his mouth. “Justice rocks.”

Second Place Winner

Who followed her, swallowed in the inky balk of night, invisible but unrelenting in his pursuit?

OUT OF TIME

By LaKeisha Giles

She looked into her rearview mirror and knew in that instant that something was horribly wrong. Only darkness appeared to be following her, but Carol knew that there was someone behind her. There had to be. She attempted to swallow the lump that was forming in her throat with no luck. Her mouth was completely dry. She was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her fingers ached, but she couldn't relax. Not now. She glanced into her rearview mirror again, searching for signs of movement. There was none.
A wave of panic washed over her, as she began to swerve unsteadily along the dark winding road. She tried to decide what to do. Should she pull over and wait for him? She eyed the dark, open fields that lay beside the deserted country road. Nah, that was too dangerous. Should she turn around and try to find him? She glanced quickly at the clock in her car. 10:40 p.m. No, no time to turn around. Not even enough time to slow her speed.
Her breathing began to become irregular. Beads of sweat began to spring to life all over her forehead, even though it was cool inside the rickety old car. She unwillingly loosened her tight grip on the steering wheel, then pushed up her turn signal, signaling a right turn. She tapped the brakes as she made a sharp right turn. The squealing of her tires pierced the air. She slowed to a stop in front of an old, country farmhouse. Her parent's house. She sat there for a moment, before opening her door slowly.
"Took you long enough," said a deep voice in the distance. She jumped backwards, but managed to muffle her scream.
"Jake, is that you?" Carol asked softly. She took a few timid steps forward. As her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, she saw him leaning casually against his car. He laughed.
"I passed you a few miles back. You were driving too slowly. I was ready to get this over with."
"Let's go ask them."
"They already left."
"What?"
"Carol," replied Jake, "your parents left. It's over. Your mother admitted that you were having an affair. She said she couldn't lie for you anymore."
"Jake, wait, I can explain!" She shrieked desperately. But he didn't hear her. Even though he was still standing in front of her, he was already gone.

Third Place Winner

Enjoy this tale's ironic twist on the premise that professors know all!!

THE LESSON

by Mark H. Bloom

"She looked into her rearview mirror and knew in that instant that something was horribly wrong."

Professor Gus Tilden peered over the rims of his bifocals to his class. "Tsk, tsk," he muttered aloud. "Note how the author, in his haste to draw us into the heroine's predicament, has resorted to cliché and, worse, a tired sentence structure."

The professor, gray-haired and impatient, dropped the manuscript into the tubular wastebasket. He had to teach these worthless would-be's to cherish the language they so often abused. "The overused 'looked.' The repeated 'that.' Ignoring the rule I've emphasized: avoid the verb 'to be.' All this in the first sentence!"

Exasperated, Tilden raised his voice. "Such careless misuse of the English language is a crime."

A shy student in the back row asked, "B-but Professor, did you read the chase scene that followed?"

"No!" Tilden's word exploded in the lecture hall like a warning shot. "Just as the editor of a literary magazine would have done, I stopped after that first sentence." He stooped to retrieve the manuscript, which he shook over his head threateningly. "Grab the reader, but don't butcher the language in your attempt. That sin leads to failure, both of this course and in your future endeavors."

Shaken, the students sat in hushed awe. They had never witnessed Tilden's ire before. Since the pile of short stories on his desk represented their first efforts at creative prose, they knew their turns would surely come.

The shy voice from the back broke the spell. "P-professor? Are you saying that I've failed this course?"

Tilden, still breathing heavily from his outburst, tore the manuscript into ragged pieces. "Yes," he said, as he tossed the pieces into the air like so much confetti. "If you don't improve, I'll make sure you never publish so much as a letter to the editor."

The student stood on quivering legs. All eyes turned toward him. "But Professor Tilden," he said, weighing a magazine in his hand, "I got that initial sentence from a story I found in here. I simply took the original story in a different direction."

"Plagiarism does not help your case, Ernest."

Ernest quietly flipped open the magazine to a marked page and held it open for all to see. "But Professor, the sentence you despise so much was composed over thirty years ago by an eager young man named Gus Tilden."