Hello KeePers!
As you may or may not know, Kingdom Pen regularly holds monthly picture prompt short story contests.
Each month, we send out a picture prompt through our newsletter, and we receive wonderful short story submissions inspired by each writer's own take on the picture!
Four judges (including yours truly), read and go through the (painstaking) process of choosing just one winner.
After much discussing, glasses-adjusting, and intense beard-stroking, we finally choose a winner, and share the short story winner in the next newsletter.
Last year, we received some amazing short stories by some very talented writers, so today, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and share the 2020 Newsletter Picture Prompt Short Story Winners with everyone here on Kingdom Pen!
Motivated both by wanting to reread all of the stories, and desiring to find a home for all these lovely stories on the KP website, I created this round up post for you all and am presenting it here for you today!
Thank you so much to all the amazing and talented writers who participated in the newsletter contests and let us read and enjoy their work!
Also, thank you to all the winners of the 2020 picture prompt short story contests for letting us include your stories in this round up post!
If you want to check out the talented artists who created these illustration we are using for these contests, just click the image and it will go to their website or social media.
Not part of the Kingdom Pen newsletter yet? Be sure to click the button below to sign up for free!
Okay, now I'll cut the chit-chat and head on with the short stories!
July's Winner
By Emily Bergren
Sometimes unexpected things happen.
You know?
There I was, casually eating my snack: a hamburger bun with A-1 sauce inside. Nothing else. It’s delicious. My mom says it’s gross. But then again, she likes salads with just lettuce and dressing...no gummy bears. Not even one potato chip in the whole thing.
Anyway, there I was, eating. Suddenly, I heard the call of the wild. I don’t mean I wanted to go exploring. It wasn’t like a silent call, either. Actually, it was loud. There was a deer on our deck. He was making a loud sound, looking right at me.
You know how you kind of get what dogs mean when they bark? It was like that with me and this deer. I knew what he was saying. He was saying, “Dude, I need some help.”
And I was like, “Sure, what’s up?”
And then he was like, “I’ll show you.”
So, I got up and went out on the deck. And the deer walked a few steps, then looked back to see if I was following him. Then, he leaped over the side of the deck and ran through our yard. I had to use the stairs. I’m glad the deck is pretty low to the ground, or else he may have gotten hurt.
There I was: following a deer through all the neighbors’ yards, wondering if they were watching me out of their windows. I half-expected old Mr. Wilkins to shout, “Milo! Get that deer out of my yard!” But he didn’t. He was probably taking his afternoon nap. Or eating his four o’clock bowl of banana oatmeal.
The deer led me out of the neighborhood. I was getting pretty winded, but I’m tough. Then, suddenly, he stopped for breath. He was panting. Right in front of him was the sign I’ve passed all my life. The sign with the deer on it. It is supposed to alert people that they might crash into one. It’s a pretty good idea. I think that the deer put it up so that if drivers hit them, they can just go like, “We warned you!”
I felt a raindrop. I looked up. The sky was going dark. I looked around to see if there was somewhere where we could take shelter. There was nothing except a dirty old umbrella that someone had left behind. I grabbed it and held it over the deer and me. Sorry, “I.” I held it over the deer and “I.”
I glanced over at the deer. And then I saw something that made my blood run cold. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before. He was hurt. He had an open wound on his shoulder. He had probably come to me for help. I should have given him my A-1 snack. Too late now. At least for him.
He slowly fell to his knees. I felt the way I did right before my dog died. It wasn’t too long before I went home. Alone.
Emily Bergren
Emily Bergren has been writing since she was very young, so young that she couldn't write the words and had to dictate to her mother. Her first book to be published, Memory Lane Was Moved, was released on August 15th, 2020 (if you've read it, she would love an honest review online!). Emily is also in the midst of querying agents to represent a manuscript for middle grade readers. She has finished several unpublished books and is currently part of a young writers' group that writes fiction for a school curriculum. Here is an author interview about Emily: https://bookgoodies.com/interview-with-author-emily-bergren/
August's Winner
By Rachel Wilkerson
My mum always said that I was born without sense, and she was right. Because if I had any sense at all, I wouldn’t be here right now.
I chuckled, and Martin told me to shut up. After all, we were on the roof of Castle Clair, and Martin was trying to remove the glass from one of the skylights above Coronation Hall.
Not a situation that either of us particularly relished, but orders were orders. I tugged the rope wrapped around one of the ornamental spires. Good. The knots were tight.
“Finished?” Martin asked, sweating heavily.
“Yep.” I sat back against the spire and took a bruised apple out of my pocket. I bit into it and tilted my head, eyeing his work. “Easy there, Mart. Don’t want to drop that on Karlin’s head, do we?”
I loved teasing him. Martin didn’t do well under stress at all, which I kept telling him was a weakness of the worst sort. I always said that if things go wrong, well, it won’t matter anymore, ‘cause you’ll be dead.
“Done.” Martin’s hands shook as he pulled the glass away. I wasn’t nervous by any means, but the sight of that beautiful glass in Martin’s hands did worry me a bit. I was relieved when he laid it on his folded coat.
Martin grinned at me. “We’re in, kid. You sure that rope will hold?”
“Of course it will hold. It always holds. Besides,” I smirked, “You know he trusts my knots.”
“Shut up.” Martin was sweating harder, if possible, than before. “I don’t understand why he keeps you, kid. You don’t take anything seriously. Trevor only sent you today because you’re the only one small enough.”
I looked up at the sky, watching the clouds. I nodded, satisfied, and crouched near the skylight. “You definitely wouldn’t fit, you know.”
Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Just go, before I throw you in and let the guards have you.”
I shrugged. But he was right; it was time to go. The cloud had covered the sun, so I wouldn’t cast a shadow into the hall below. I winked at Martin. “Wish me luck.”
“You don’t have any luck of your own, kid. What you’ve got you’ve stolen.”
I rolled my eyes and lowered myself through the skylight.
Now that I was actually doing this, I realized that my hands were damp and the knife at my thigh felt really heavy. It wasn’t nerves. It wasn’t. It was just my body’s usual way of preparing itself.
Martin fed me the rope, and I focused my eyes on the crowd below. Guards lined both sides of the deep red carpet leading to the throne. The nobility stood behind them. And there—I craned my head to see better and prayed to whoever was listening that Karlin the Second wouldn’t look up.
We were here to see him. See was the wrong word—we were here to kill him. To keep him from reaching Gerald, his uncle. The king.
We were here to stop his coronation.
I gripped the rope tighter in my left hand, and with my right I pulled the knife out of its sheath, my eyes on Karlin.
He walked confidently, and in a moment, he’d be below me. I’d only have to yank the rope and Martin would give me all the slack I’d need to land behind Karlin. The rest was up to me and my blade.
Now. I jerked the rope. Martin let it slide through his fingers and I went whooshing through the air, silent and deadly. I gripped the knife tighter, so intent on what I had to do that I didn’t see it coming.
Suddenly the rope went limp and I crashed to the floor, knife bouncing and landing out of reach. The crowd gasped and shrieked, and before I could even think about trying to get my blade, the guards had me and Karlin the Second was clapping.
“Nice try, boy,” he smiled, and tipped his head; I followed his gaze and saw a girl about my age, a bow in her hand, staring me down. “Fortunately for me, Bryn has practiced cutting ropes with her arrows for years.”
Rachel Wilkerson
Rachel Wilkerson is a twenty year old lover of words and stories living with her family of fourteen in rural southeastern Nebraska. She is a Daughter of the King, and her desire is to become more and more like Christ in everything she does. When she grows up, she wants to raise up a generation of Light-bearers who will love Him with their whole hearts. But for now, she keeps busy reading or writing something, milking cows, helping educate her younger siblings, and working with her family. She loves forgotten history, lonely back roads, and warm barefoot days.
September's Winner
The Lake Called Peace
By Garth Shenk
Noria lay in the corner of what, at one time, might have been called a flat, now it wasn’t much more than a room of garbage. Like many of those dark and damp nights she lay among her rags alone in her little torn dress with the mice that wondered about the discarded bottles and cans. It was quiet and still. So still it seemed that her own heart was even barely beating, her breaths were slow and shallow as she drew from the stuffy damp air.
“Papa would be home soon,” she thought. Then at least there would be another living being nearby even though he would only come to fling at her words and insults that she didn’t understand then after much grumbling and stomping would fall asleep from the toxins that he used to stifle his scarred soul and hurting conscience.
If only she could have gone with Mother, at least then she wouldn’t be alone. Mother had always made her happy. She would have cried but was to tired and that empty alone feeling was so much a companion to her few years, that she wouldn’t have anyway. The door opened and a large figure stepped into the dirty room.
“How odd,” she thought to herself she hadn’t heard any of Papa’s heavy steps coming up the nearby stairs. The figure stepped through the decay and knelt down to her. She could now see the grey face of the man. It was slender and looked kind, or at least it was not angry and sad like most of the faces she knew.
“Hello Nori. My name is Gillion. Will you come with me?” His soft voice was startling in the silence.
“Where will you take me? Will you take me to Mother?” was her quiet whisper.
“Yes, little one, your Mother is there. Come, it is time.” He stooped and lifted her in his gentle arms and carried her out of the flat and down the precarious stairs. Once they stepped onto the planked walkway, he set her down to hold his hand and walk on her own.
“Oh, how strange! Where has the pavement gone?” She looked upon the narrow street and didn’t find the rutted and broken pavement that was so common to her, but instead there was water as if someone had made the way into a canal.
“To you it always seemed to be pavement, but to me it has always been water. You will find that many things are not the way you thought.” He set her into a boat of smooth grey wood, after setting himself in the small craft, they set off driven by his long swift strokes. Noria watched as the decaying buildings drifted past
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the place of rest,” he answered.
“Where is that?”
“It is on the banks of the lake called Peace. All waters flow to that place. I have come to guide you there. That is my job, you see. I am a guide to lead people through the gray places.”
They had now passed the last of the buildings and joined to another channel that was much swifter. Noria lay on the bottom of the small boat watching the stars above her and listened as the water trickled along the side of the boat. The cool, clean breeze whispered sleep in her ear and she soon drifted off.After some time Noria was awakened by a sound. Ahead she could see twinkling lights along a shore, and heard a soft voice coming over the water to her. It was the sound of a mother but there was also something else, something deeper and stronger. It was the voice a father. As they came upon the shore there stood Mother and Father. Not the sad and tired woman who bore her, and not the drunken, angry man who staggered home every night. It was Mother and Father who she had heard in the wind that blew through the feeble town and in the twinkling stars that she watched from the window. This was where her heart belonged, in infinite joy and the endless company of Mother and Father.
Garth Shenk
Garth Shenk lives as a farmer and a concreter in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who by some divine call has
been fixed to stories, in the cinema, in books, and due to the goodness of God has been inspired with a
few of his own.
October's Winner
By Emily Bergren
“In a City Called Gowaconelian…”
In a city called Gowaconelian, on a street called Brankinsberg, a robot named Cuconscicle was keeping a grave secret. Now, to the readers who may be wondering at the strange names, if one were only to look into the short history of Gowaconelian, he or she would discover that the city’s founder (a rather eccentric man by the name of Tom Smith) created his own dictionary full of strange words and used several of them constantly. So, it was no surprise that a city emerged by the name of Gowaconelian, or that a street came about by the name of Brankinsberg, or a restaurant called Catascity Cake (which is the setting of this story).
Now, nobody knows exactly how Cuconscicle found the back door of Catascity to be unlocked, or why no one was in the kitchen, or (and this is important) how Cuconscicle learned to cook so marvelously.
But he did.
He snuck in one day, cooked up a storm, and left the delicious-looking mess for the bewildered staff of Catascity Cake to find. The cooks and chefs didn’t know what to do with the food, but it was cluttering up their workspace, so they dumped it on an empty table in the dining room so they could continue working.
Not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed before a high-pitched scream erupted from the dining room, through the swinging doors of the kitchen, and into the ears of the frazzled kitcheneers (a word that Tom Smith came up with which basically means “cooks and chefs”). The reason for the scream was this: one of the customers had seated himself at the table where all of the food was and had tasted it.
All of Catascity Cake’s staff came running to see what had caused the outcry. It turned out it was a scream of joy (which is a sound that people don’t hear very often...why is that?). All of the food that Cuconscicle had prepared was eaten, customers started leaving rave reviews on the restaurant’s website, and by the time the last person had wiped their smiling mouth, ten people were on the phone recommending Catascity Cake to their friends.
This was unusual. Catascity Cake did not sell very tasty food.
The restaurant’s staff called an emergency meeting after closing time to discuss the sudden change.
“Who made that food?” asked the boss, whose name was Mr. Scary Boots. First name: Scary. Last name: Boots. Needless to say, he was always dressed in his rain gear.
No one answered. They wished they could speak but knew it wouldn’t be honest.
“Alright. I’m going to be watching all of you tomorrow. I want to know who the person is that I’m going to promote. This isn’t a bad thing. So, you don’t need to be scared to tell the truth.”
Mr. Scary Boots kept his word. He watched. And watched. And watched. But no one was seen making delicious soups or spicy pizzas. There were no good customer reviews that day. Soon, everyone stopped thinking about what had happened. They figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
They were wrong.
Because the minute that Mr. Scary Boots stopped watching, everyone in the kitchen heard a ruckus in the dining room, and out they went. Turns out, it was a child having a tantrum. Quite a crowd had gathered. The mother was very embarrassed when all of the cooks and chefs came bustling out to watch. They stayed and watched for quite a long time. When they finally adjourned back to their workstations, there was a knock at the door. One of the chefs, a man by the name of Too Much Parsley (which was funny, he had that problem whenever he made soup), opened the door.
And there was a complete five course dinner. There was salad with italian dressing and topped with shredded cheese. There was bread and spaghetti and chocolate cake and, best of all, chicken gnocchi soup (italian-style). It was steaming hot. The kitcheneers rushed to the sink. There was a sky-high stack of dishes inside.
That sort of thing has continued to this day. Cuconscicle likes to watch the people in the windows enjoying what he had cooked. He likes to watch the children gobbling up the cakes and cookies he had baked. He enjoys the secrecy of it all, and the skulking about, and the hiding. He’s hidden in the oven once, and that almost fried his batteries. But most of all, the idea that people are enjoying what he cannot eat makes him content.
He even tried to share some of his creations with me. I politely refused. I prefer dead rats.
Emily Bergren
Emily Bergren has been writing since she was very young, so young that she couldn't write the words and had to dictate to her mother. Her first book to be published, Memory Lane Was Moved, was released on August 15th, 2020 (if you've read it, she would love an honest review online!). Emily is also in the midst of querying agents to represent a manuscript for middle grade readers. She has finished several unpublished books and is currently part of a young writers' group that writes fiction for a school curriculum. Here is an author interview about Emily: https://bookgoodies.com/interview-with-author-emily-bergren/
November's Winner
The Parakalo Phone Booth
By Lilly Anderson
Treacherous, desolate, never-ending; these are just some of the words people like to use to describe my home. They never intend to stay here long, but of course, plans often get torn to shreds.
‘To the city of Epithymía!’ they cry out as they enter my desert front door, but rarely does their statement come to fruition. Because the Parakalo road isn’t one you can cross alone. Not without the phone booth.
A young man limps by, barely moving an inch at a time. His fine clothes are drenched in sweat and dust, and the blood that once filled his rosy cheeks now drains from the animal bite in his shin. As he passes by me, he scowls at the bright red phone booth that I rest on.
“Would you like to make a call?” I ask the man.
He scoffs, “Make a call? I’ve already called the doctor using that phone booth and no one picked up. Not one. I’m not going to waste any more of my time on that phone booth. It’s never worked and never will.” The man tries to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand but ends up marking it with dirt, blood, and more sweat. He passes the phone booth.
Fifteen minutes pass and a bone-thin old man with skin tanned to the crisp and a half-burnt coon-skin cap walks by.
“You don’t happen to have any water or food on ya do you? Watermelon would be particularly delightful.”
“I’m afraid not,” I reply “but you could make a call to the Myalo Pepóni cafe.They deliver to the desert and they make wonderful strawberry smoothies.”
“You are fooling yourself there foxy. That phone booth is a hoax. Or maybe a better way to put it is... phony! Ha! I’ll have better luck finding something to drink and eat in the city. If I can make it...” The old man’s brow furrows and he passes by.
By the time the old man fades into the distance another traveler comes into view. He rides a horse whose ribs bulge beneath its skin and wears a large hat that is half-filled with sand. He studies a map twice his size while jewing on a piece of straw.
“Hello there,” I say “would you like to make a call?”
“A call! What for? With this map, I’ll be in the city of Epithymía in no time!”
I peer down at his map, “Hmmm… Well, I’m afraid that is a map of the Saharan Desert, not of the Parakalo road.”
“What?! Impossible!” He quickly folds his map and stuffs it in his bag.
He clears his throat “It doesn't matter what map it is anyway. I can make it with or without a map”
“Are you sure you don’t want to make a call for a guide? The Parakalo road is a long and twisted one.”
“Oh, don’t bother yourself. I’ve made it this far, a few dozen more miles is no issue.”
The horse huffed causing some sand from the man’s hat to spill into his eyes.
“Gaah! Shut up Elliot! We must continue on.”
The man and his horse pass by.
Dusk arrives, and my eyes begin to droop.
“Excuse me, sir,” says the voice of a young girl. My eyes snap back open. Standing in front of the phone booth is a girl with braids, glasses, and a rather large backpack.
“I’m a bit lost. Or… more like a lot lost. I got separated from my brother John Jon in a sandstorm. I’m hoping that he made his way to the city and I’ll find him there... Can you direct me to the City of Epithymía?”
“I can’t. My pack and I have stayed close together on the Parakalo road our whole lives. But I know someone who can. Would you like to give them a call?”
“What if it doesn’t work? I heard many strange things about that phone booth from other travelers. Some say it doesn’t work, some say it’s fake, and some say it's useless and you're better off traveling on your own. ”
“You could listen to them and try to make it to Epithymia on your own, or you could take the chance and make a call. The choice is up to you.”
The girl rubs her thumb across her backpack straps.
“I’ll make the call.”
She opens the door to the phone booth, steps in, and holds the sand encrusted phone up to her ear.
“Hello? Can you help me find my way to the city of Epithymia?”
Lilly Anderson
Lilly Anderson is a 16-year-old graphic novel enthusiast who lives in the middle of nowhere in Texas. Where she spends most of her time annoying her siblings, juggling too many hobbies, and trying to become a master writer, (Heavy emphasis on trying). She dreams of someday being the main character (or better yet sidekick) of an epic fantasy novel. As she waits for adventure to come knocking on her door, she writes characters who are currently on epic adventures of their own.
December's Winner
Two Castles in the Sky
By Amoura Martinez
In 1725 France, two friends had a dream.
Everyday after school Pierre and Louis hid away in the attic of Pierre’s home. There they surrounded themselves with paper from Perrie’s father’s factory, his aunt’s old paints, graphite stolen from school, and a imagination too big for their family’s comfort. Pierre found beauty in the details of art.
He meticulously sketched the faces of those on the streets, fellow classmates, his mother, and the baker that always handed Pierre and Louis a biscuit on their way to school. Whenever someone saw Pierre’s sketch of them, they swore it was like looking into a colorless mirror.
Louis found most joy from art in the infinite shades of colors. Louis would spend hours mixing paints to achieve the perfect colors that would collide together on the canvas like a symphony.
“What it’d be like to be Charles Le Brun!” Pierre said for not the first or last time. “To be able to paint and eat danishes all day.”
Louis tried to brush his dark hair out of his eyes but just stained it with blue paint instead.
“It’s fun to daydream about that and all, but my father wants me to be a professor like him. The only reason he lets me come over here every day is because he thinks I’m studying with you.”
Pierre sighed. “My father’s the same.” Pierre lifted up a half-finished sketch of the town clerk and flipped it to the blank side of the page “He wants me to make and sell paper.” Pierre flipped the page back to the sketch “not to ‘mark it up with useless sketches’”.
Time passed, and Louis left painting to study for college. After intense studying sleepless nights, Louis got into the top college in France and became a successful professor like his father. He also married his sweet-heart and had three daughters and three sons. A day before Pierre’s nineteenth birthday, his father suddenly passed away from scarlet fever. The paper manufacturing company immediately landed in Pierre’s hands. Pierre worked endlessly to keep his father’s business afloat and to provide for his mother and sister. After a few long years of struggle and the business almost going bankrupt, Pierre pulled through and even got married and had two sons.
Pierre and Louis kept in touch through letters which often confessed how they wished they still sketched and painted, but how their jobs made it so that even lifting a fork to their mouths was an effort. Louis and Pierre would also write much about their children. Louis would report how brilliant his children were and how they excelled in school. And Pierre expressed his daily struggle of keeping the house from burning down by his sons Joseph and Jacques and their strange inventions.
Everyday when Joseph and Jacques got home from school, they would take every strange part they found laying around the town or from friends to build all sorts of contraptions. From gadgets which made cooking ‘more efficient’ to paper boats durable enough to pass through a rocky river for miles. And even more crazy than their actual inventions were their ideas for ones. They would go on and on about ideas for inventions that either made guests laugh or make a hasty departure for the exit. Their most recent craze was the notion that if they harnessed the gas lighter than air, hydrogen, as you harness a horse for a carriage, they could create a flying carriage.
“Imagine flying over Paris!” Joseph said one night at dinner “Not with wings of course, but floating… like a cloud. You could see the world from a bird's perspective.”
Pierre exchanged looks with his wife, and she spoke up, “Darling, this is fun and all, but you’re sixteen now. Shouldn’t you focus more on studying and preparing for when the paper factory is passed down to you?”
Jacques stabbed his potato with his fork “Auntie Este said the same thing.”
“The paper factory takes years to learn to run. If your father learned more from your grandfather before he passed, we’d probably be having Crème brûlée right now.”
Joseph and Jacques nodded and stared at their Crème brûlée-less dinner.
Pierre leaned back in his chair “A floating machine you say?”
Joseph, Jacques, and their mother all looked at him.
“Flying would be pretty magnificent. Quite the human achievement.”
“And it’s possible too with hydrogen!” said Jacques “It can be done if you-”
“Then go for it.” Pierre said “People will try to take this opportunity away from you, but don’t let it happen. And who knows, it might work.”
Joseph and Jacques looked at each other both with grins and their imaginations souring. Because of their father’s words, for the first time they knew that their dream was possible, and that nothing was going to stop them from achieving it.
Amoura Martinez
A thirteen-year-old book lover who would rather spend time with fictional characters, than real people. When she is not reading or writing she is usually baking, watching movies with friends, and exploring the woods in her yard. She’d love to travel the world one day with her friends and maybe even publish a book, (if she ever finishes one). But, as of now, she is perfectly content with sending time in her time in the little made-up worlds of her own.
Again, thank you so much to all the writers for sharing your wonderful stories!
And I hope everyone enjoyed reading these short stories as much as I did.
If you want to participate in future Newsletter Picture Prompt contests, or read 2021's winners each month, sign up to our newsletter here!
Take heart, be courageous and keep on writing!
- Kathleen Ramm
Become an Unstoppable Writer!
Wow! These are all so great!
Thanks for hosting these picture prompt contests! I don’t write short stories often, but I was inspired by all the previous short story winners to write and submit one!
They are all so creative!
All of these stories were utterly spectacular!! Congratulations to all of the winners!! 💗