"Caretakers" by Gabriel Munro—Our March 2023 Gold Medal Winner

Gabriel Munro is our first place winner from the contest posted in our March 2023 issue and his story will be published in the June 2023 edition. Congratulations, Gabriel!

What the judges had to say:

“This was such an interesting and unique approach to the prompt image.”

“The writer puts care into his / her language, as well as the characters. The imagery lightens the load on a heavy theme.”

“This author...elevates tired folklore to a new level and deftly weaves it into a humanistic tale that underscores the value in family relationships... Well done! ”

“Rich in character and symbolism, this story engages the reader from the outset and maintains the suspense through to the end... The sense of tone and the atmosphere make this a unique and appealing piece of writing.”

Meet Gabriel

As a lover of music and words, Gabriel spreads his writing across several mediums. Professionally, he writes commercials for radio stations across Canada. In the after-hours, he’s a musician who writes folk-rock and classical compositions. He also volunteers doing communications work for Amarok Society, an organization that ensures the accessibility of education overseas. He always has a short story or poem in the works. Gabriel’s writing has appeared in Literally Stories, Haunted MTL, and Broken Pencil Magazine. He has received a great deal of encouragement from Blank Spaces Magazine, which has published his work twice and nominated him for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.

Caretakers

an excerpt of Gabriel’s winning story

On her last evening before leaving for university, Jenny handed me a shotgun and took me outside.

“Does mom know we’re going out?” I asked, half my mind still in grade 9 math.

“She knows.”

The shotgun always made Jenny look dangerous and cool, but in my skinny arms it felt like I was carrying a sleeping alligator. I crunched carefully across the gravel driveway. 
“Isn’t it getting late for hunting?”

“Yep,” she said. Jenny had her backpack and ballcap and no explanations.

We turned right at the highway, toward the town sign.

Entering Clayton, home of the world’s biggest shovel!

“Lucky you get to leave,” I sighed, calling the world’s biggest spade a spade. She’d always been too smart for Clayton. When she becomes an architect she’ll never build anything as stupid as that big shovel.

“I guess.”

She led me down the road to the dirt trail that crossed the forest. My red jacket popped out among all the green and brown; Jenny was a camo ghost.

“Full moon tonight,” she said. “You’re gonna have to start paying attention to that.”

“Okay.”

“It waxes left to right, like the opposite of reading. You can track it with an app.”

“Why do I need to know when it’s full?”

“Werewolves, obviously,” she said. I smirked.

We abandoned the trail at a scorched log and hiked through a tangled valley. I didn’t mind that Jenny wasn’t talkative. All the mindless chatter in Clayton wasn’t worth a meal of her silence.

We scraped through branches and brush, and then she pointed. A cement door frame opened into the side of the hill.

“This is it.”

I stared at the moss-covered bricks and concrete. I knew it was manmade, but it wore nature’s clothes. Trees grew around it, over it, cradling the passageway in hungry roots. It smelled of mud, and was either a bomb shelter or an ancient temple for the god of decay.

…

to read the rest of the story, order your copy of the June 2023 issue.