The Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction recognizes an emerging fiction writer who is experimenting with form and expanding the boundaries of storytelling. Our first runner-up is Maz Do with “When the Moths Came” published in issue 72 of McSweeney’s Quarterly.
August when the moths came. The air: murky, damp, shimmering. Everything clung to everything. Everything tasted of everything else. The streets smelled of piss, a dirty finger pressed to the back of your throat. They smelled of rot, which flared and inflamed the nostrils. And we were alone, even though we were together. Us and the moths.
The moths nested in the double-paned windows that overlooked an old teak tree. There they nursed their larvae, milky, swaddled by light and time. In those long, fading days, the hours stretched like taffy.