The finalists for May were:

You Break It by Adele Gallogly
Vigil by Paul D’Arcy
Endurance Sport by JR Walsh
Morning in Rapunzel’s Tower by Bob Thurber
The Corner Seat by the Pond by Stephanie Lye
The First Nip by Jimmy Mack

The winner of the May 2026 Story of the Month is…

The Corner Seat by the Pond

The Big Score by Gordon Brown
and
The Notebook by Paul D’Arcy

Colby Wrasse is still stumbling towards an uncertain future.

Bait shops. Docks. Reflection of the mountain on the water. I keep it in a chest under my bed, buried under my graduation robes, grandad’s smile, and my favorite dive bar.

Nobody suspects a thing.

Gordon Brown grew up in the deserts of Syria and now lives in the deserts of Nevada. Since arriving in the New World, his work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Weird Horror Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, and elsewhere. His horror haiku chapbook, Skin Crawls, is available from Cuttlefish Books. He spends his time writing feverishly and looking after his cats, of which he has none.

Sarah Sorensen (she/her) MA, MLIS is a queer writer based in the Metro Detroit area. She’s honored to be named a 2025 Best Small Fictions author and runner-up in the 2025 RockPaperPoem Poetry Contest. Sarah’s poetry chapbook, Light Splits Down the Wolf’s Tooth is now available through Bottlecap Press.

Elodie A. Roy is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Her short stories appear in The Stinging Fly, 3:AM Magazine, Flash Frog, New World Writing, Blink-Ink, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Finchale Award for Short Fiction (New Writing North) and won a scholarship from the Faber Academy. She is currently working on her debut novel, East, an excerpt of which was shortlisted as part of the 2026 Huddersfield Literature Festival’s 20/20 Competition.

Scott Burau is a writer living between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Key West, Florida. His work has most recently appeared in San Antonio Review and Mouthful of Salt.

The malt liquor has lost its teeth, leaving only a dull headache. Your hands twitch with the clamorous weight of words unwritten. The night remains heavy and unfinished.

Johannes Springenseiss is a world citizen and raconteur. He mostly writes speculative fiction and creative essays.

Pages of song lyrics. Then drawings. Then letters, written like she was already gone.

I put it back. Exactly how I found it.

At dinner, she said, “Why are you being weird?”

“Burn the plans,” I said. “Keep the songs.”

Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.

Ralph Goldswain writes microfiction for pleasure in his London home. He also likes experiencing all the things London offers.