It was an exceptionally difficult choice but we’ve finally picked our winners from The Avenues Writing Center micro fiction contest.

After many hours of reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, deliberation, and re-deliberation our panel of experts (hmmm…sort of experts) has chosen winners. We had so much fun reading the creative gems sent into us by these writers and wunderkinds. Believe me when I say that this choice was not easy; we loved all of them.

And now it’s my great pleasure to present our winners and their pieces (from 3 to 1), illustrations by the brilliantly talented students themselves:

3.
Eleanor Davol

Humpty Dumpty was sitting on a wall on Wall Street when suddenly he looked up and saw the World Trade Center. He was so mesmerized by it that he lost his balance and suddenly felt the air rushing up from below him as he fell down.

He fell onto the pavement beneath him and broke into a million pieces. As he was on the ground he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the road coming closer and closer toward him. Five policemen on horses suddenly were towering above him. They tried to put the pieces of Humpty Dumpty back together again but they couldn’t because he fell apart again after each try.

As the police men carried him away he saw the World Trade Center above him. That was the last thing he saw before he got dumped into the Hudson River.

2.
Robert Burns

A soft hissing sound came from the sewer, “Tssst tsssssssst”.

“Whuwhuwhutt??” The homeless girl said in shock, “Whwhwhos there?” she sat up on the dirty curb, sticky with rotten gum. She stood up and peeked into the barred sewer, her parched, blonde dreadlocks covering her face. There was something there, but it was probably something she had never seen nor heard before.

“Hello, friend?… You do not deserve to be in that yucky cage, I will get you out.”

And so the woman dipped one of her extremely long dreads into the mucky, mucky sewer. She felt something, weight on her dry hair. Something was slithering up it, twirling it. It started coming out of the sewer on her single thick dreadlock. It was a creature she’d never seen before, something of a different origin than New York City. A snake. “What are you?” The strange creature swiveled onto the sidewalk, “Your not from here are you? Are you from outer space?…” her forehead wrinkled in amazement. She looked around for a while, she could not believe there was something outside New York City.

1.
Pilar  Galvin

The sirens echoed down the vacant alleys

Pools of sewage glimmered from the lights of the moving shadow box

Drunk dilly dalliers giggle under the lamp posts

A gargantuan structure ascending with silhouettes of the late night shifts

A man on a pile of newspapers, on a worn bench, scratching his eye and holding a clinking cup of coffee

A women clammers around in towering red heels and a tight red dress

The sirens echoed down the vacant alleys