Something Is Beginning, I Think Challenge Winners

This challenge wasn’t about clean starts. It was about that weird in-between where something is beginning, but no one really knows what yet. A lot of these stories leaned into hesitation, into pauses and false starts and that feeling that something is about to happen but hasn’t quite.

The strongest pieces knew where to hold you. They didn’t rush past the moment. They let you sit in it.

🏆 Winners

Return to Form by Cali Loria

Cali Loria stays close to the moment where hands hover over the typewriter can’t quite trust the act of pressing a key, and then lets that hesitation tip into motion without control, where writing begins but never settles into anything safe or stable.

The Library of Possible Prefaces by Tim Carmichael

Tim Carmichael creates a space where every step Margaret takes into the Library of Possible Prefaces feels like hesitation, where the work hovers in the moment before commitment and leaves her suspended between continuing and staying at the start.

The Hole in My Ceiling by Kera Hollow

Kera Hollow sets a quiet, strange arrival in motion as the widower traces a possible connection through the ceiling, letting each tentative scrape and pause carry both hope and the ache of not knowing what, if anything, waits on the other side.

Old Whores Never Die by Marie Wilson

Marie Wilson lets the start of performance and rehearsal stumble forward in fits, doubling back as memory and old habits interrupt. That sideways, restless pacing keeps any sense of arrival out of reach, leaving the beginning raw and unresolved.

Terminus by S. A. Crawford

S. A. Crawford maps the uneasy slide into a crisis not yet defined, letting each detail sharpen the sense of something going wrong while refusing to settle into answers.

🎖️ Runners-up

• Waiting by A. J. Schoenfeld
• These Tired Sides by Stephen A. Roddewig
• Off Into The Fog by Matthew J. Fromm
• Like Black Mercury by John R. Godwin
• Star Power Forward by Deanna Cassidy
• Turquoise Clouds in a Green Sky by Matthew Batham
• The Noise Complaint; normal is only a setting on a dryer by Cadma
• In the White by Kendall Defoe
• Harbinger of Despair by James U. Rizzi
• Welcome to the Teddy Bear Division by Philip Canterbury
• Tiny Fists by Adam Kolozetti
• Table Eleven by D. J. Reddall
• Still Life by Raistlin Allen
• Framed by Cristal S.
• America the Beautiful by J. Otis Haas

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• The Forest Wants Me Back by Bride of Sound
• Wishing Well by Nicky Frankly
• The Potty Stick by Sara Wilson
• Invitation by Randy Wayne Jellison-Knock
• Far From Home by Kimberly J Egan
• How about Phoenix? by Sasha Desideri
• Lap Cat by Erin Latham Shea
• The Shape the Memory Requires by Paul Stewart
• Frisson by Noah Husband
• A Night at the Skating Rink by Canute Limarider

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