With just under 650 stories submitted to the third annual Hint Fiction Contest in the last two weeks of April 2011, these were the winner and runner-up as selected by Joyce Carol Oates:
Winner:
HERO by Trenton Orris
They remembered him for the battles he fought in. She remembered him in the rocking chair on the porch at sunset, withered, telling fairy tales.
Runner-Up:
THE FORTUNE TELLER by Lis Anna
“Can you contact the dead?”
I pull a photo out of my back pocket.
She stares then hands it back. “He ain’t dead, honeypie.”