Congratulations to the winners of the third Jerboa Lit 500!
March 2026 prompt:
Genre: Isekai
Item: Rotary phone
Phrase: “he looked like you”
First Place
Wishful Thinking
By Keba Ghardt
"Listen," the faun said. "You're not allowed back here anymore."
Tiffany's stomach sank. "What do you mean?"
Scratching at his satyr horns, the faun's eyes bounced over the eavesdropping trees. "It's not my decision," the faun muttered over a bit lip. "It's just better for everyone if you stay on your side of the door."
The portal in the middle of the elder elm tree opened up into the attic of Tiffany's childhood home. It had taken some maneuvering for her to climb the stairs in secret, without her parents' intervention. How could her trusted friend turn her away? "But I...I'm champion of the enchanted forest!"
"I know."
"I'm the true queen's savior; I defeated the licorice king!"
"I know."
"I taught you all the power of friendship!"
"Please don't make this harder than it has to be."
Tiffany tossed her hair away from glistening eyes. "Well, why? Can you tell me that? I deserve an answer!"
The faun still wouldn't look at her. "Well, it's...mostly the cocaine."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Tiffany insisted with her hands in her pockets.
The faun twisted his fingers, little hooves tamping at the ground. "Look, it's not just one thing. Everything you brought across the border, from MTV to THC has had wildly unpredictable circumstances. The naiads are full of microplastics. The energy drinks kicked off pixie diabetes. The prince is still recovering; he looked like you after the magic mirror fiasco. There's a ban on anything from your world, and that includes you." Under his breath, he added, "Since the mono outbreak, it's especially you."
The heat was rising in Tiffany's cheeks. "But it's not fair!"
"Explaining KFC to my avian in-laws: that's not fair! Oh." The faun reached down by the tree roots and handed over a bright red rotary phone. "You should take this with you. Apparently, it's still cheating even if you can't see them."
Tiffany took the phone, cold and heavy in her hands. "But I...this is where I belong."
"Not anymore." For the first time, the faun met Tiffany's eyes. "Look, it's not your fault. You just...had to grow up."
Dropping the phone down by her side, Tiffany slumped against the doorframe. She picked at the splintering timber, that narrow barrier between two worlds. "I didn't mean to cause you all problems. I just wanted to escape mine."
"Tiffany," the faun sighed. "I can't help you. I'm sorry."
The disgraced champion turned away from the door. Her heart ached for the enchanted air, her magical past, the promise of adventure. But she was not a child anymore. And could no longer hide in fairytales.
"Tiff, wait!"
Tiffany turned, hope swelling in her chest. The little faun stepped closer, his voice a desperate whisper. "Do you have any cocaine?"
Keba Ghardt has been a playwright and performing storyteller, practiced in both gourmet desserts and gore effects. Harvesting anecdotes from ghost tours in Annapolis and Chicago's nerd burlesque, Keba has most recently applied a decade of kitchen experience to non-profit service in Washington DC. Appearing in The Raven Review, Levitate, and Touchstone Literary Magazine, Keba has also had short fiction featured in Word's Faire and Wicked Shadow Press anthologies. Keba is bipolar, non-binary, and bisexual, if there's time.
Second Place
Please Hold and Try Again
By Adam Porkolab
The morgonkas had been hammering the door for two hours.
Kael pressed his back against the wall and counted the planks. Fourteen across, nine up, the third from the left cracked and held together with some kind of sticky residue he’d found by the river. The marks on the doorframe said two hundred and seventeen days, but he’d missed a few early on.
The rotary phone sat in the corner, silent for now.
Currant-red Bakelite, the kind his grandmother kept on a rayon doily in the hallway. The cord trailed across the rammed-mud floor and ended in nothing — no jack, no wall, just frayed copper curling into dust.
The morgonkas hit the door again and the top hinge moaned. He’d named them on day thirty-two, when he realized that gnawing, munching grinding from behind their tusks was the closest thing to communication he’d get. Pig-shouldered, foul-breathed, dumber than the silt they wallowed in. Their real name probably ran twenty syllables and meant something beautiful: rose-soul-upheaval. He’d never know.
He picked up the iron bar he’d found in the blue forest.
The phone began to spin.
It always started the same way: a vibration in the floor, then the base rotating on packed earth, then faster, the handset sliding off and swinging by its cord in tightening circles, and the sound — that rising, keening wail that lived in the bones behind his ears. The phone spun like a top, Bakelite shrieking against dirt, the cord whipping grooves into the mud, and the walls shook, or the morgonkas shook them, or his hands shook, and it didn’t matter which.
He used to lunge for it. Grab it mid-spin, burn his palms on the friction-hot casing, and scream numbers into the receiver — his mother’s landline, his own cell, 911, random digits, his birthday, his address, please, please, please. He used to believe the right combination would stop the spinning and the walls would fold open and he’d be standing in his kitchen with the kettle going.
Now he sat with the iron bar across his knees and watched it spin and said nothing.
The phone slowed. Wobbled. Clattered still.
Silence, except for the morgonkas, who had never once taken a break.
He looked up. Cut into the crossbeam with something sharp were the words the previous tenant had left. He read them every morning the way other men read prayers:
he looked like you
He didn’t know who carved it. Didn’t know who it described. Didn’t know if the carver made it home or fed the morgonkas or simply walked into the river one morning and stayed.
Kael stood. The iron bar was warm from his grip. The morgonkas drove their skulls into the door and the cracked plank bowed inward and he braced it with his shoulder, thinking about the phone, and the number he hadn’t tried, because there was always one more number.
And that was the only thing that kept him from the river.
Adam Porkolab is a Hungarian writer and poet of Palóc heritage, working in both English and Hungarian across folk horror, science fiction, and literary fiction. He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Pécs and works by day as a software engineer. His short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Aurealis, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Folkloric, and Black Fox Review, and his poetry in erbacce-journal. He took first place in Marrow Magazine's Labor Pains Contest and an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest, and his poems were Highly Commended in the 2026 erbacce-prize. He lives in Pécs with his wife. More at adamporkolab.com.
Third Place
An Open Letter to the Judges of the 76th Annual Macy County Fair Pie-Baking Competition Regarding the Illegal Use of an Interdimensional Portal to Provide SOMEONE with an
By J.I. Locatelli
I ran out of space in the subject, but it is IMPERATIVE you STOP deleting my posts.
That subject should say: UNFAIR ADVANTAGE over other individuals who have spent their lives slaving over ovens to produce the most magnificent, delectable, and unforgettable pies imaginable.
Disclaimer: I am of sound mind and body. I fully understand the implications of what I am about to disclose to the WRONGED community of Macy County.
After my shocking, unbelievable, and most terrible loss at the 76th Pie-Baking competition (as you know, I’ve taken the blue ribbon for the last 8 years), something had to be done. What other evils will Samara Tolley cook up if left to her own devices?
Destroy our Christmas cookie decorating contest?
Upend the Macy County Quilting Competition?
Use a sewing machine for the hand-embroidery showcase?
Not on my watch.
She is NOT a pie-maker, and we ALL know it. There is no way she went from entering BURNT SLOP last year to this year’s (frankly overrated) blueberry pie.
With my Swarovski AX Visio Goggles, I waited in the untrimmed (HOA, do something about this!) bushes outside of her house.
After her husband and children had gone to bed, she snuck down the stairs. I crawled into her living room through an open window to get a better look at the crimes she was committing.
She opened what I thought was a linen closet.
NO.
The door led to another kitchen identical to Samara’s except less high-tech. There was even a rotary phone in there (who uses those?).
A much-better-dressed version of Samara came to the door. Our-Samara grabbed a backpack and passed to the other kitchen.
A clandestine exchange of ILLEGAL goods, I KNEW it.
I followed, using 12 years of classically-trained ballet to not cause a single floorboard to creak. I needed to hear them.
“How did the pie competition go?” Other-Samara asked.
“Wonderfully. We won 1st prize,” Our-Samara responded. “How’d your side go?”
“We’ve ended Mrs. Dowdy’s presidency with some well-placed blackmail.” Other-Samara high-fived her doppelganger.
I stifled my gasp. Being a lead actress throughout high school trained me to control my emotional reactions.
I stopped in the other-kitchen, blinking at the bright daylight. It looked like a magazine from the 50s, and there was a letter on the table that said, “Marcy County Subdivision Welcomes President Tolley to our HOA Board.” Every letter said MARCY. Not Macy. I was in a different world.
Samara’d created an interdimensional portal to thwart me in every universe!
I’d seen enough. I snapped several photos and left.
Given my evidence that Samara DID NOT bake her own pie, I urge you to disqualify her from the competition and present me with my rightfully-deserved win. I’ve attached my images of the portal and her doppelganger as proof.
TO SAMARA: She looked like you, but you didn’t make the pie. You should be ASHAMED and DISQUALIFIED.
Respectfully,
Mary Dowdy
TRUE Champion Pie Baker
J.I. Locatelli lives in Miami, Florida, with her wife, Natalia, and dog, Antigone. She’s fascinated with the actions and interactions of people, which led to a degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a bad habit of writing. She wishes she was more of a sunshine and beaches person, but prefers a warm cup of tea, thunderstorms, and her laptop. Her short fiction can be found in Elegant Literature, Rat Bag Literature, Story Street, and the Of Love and Dragons anthology.
Fourth Place
Fowl Play or, Claws for Alarm
By Karen Mitani
Mrs. Tarsus, wings in a dance with pressure and lift, raised her beak to the morning sunshine.
What a glorious day to be a bird! she thought. Of course, she lived in Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France, so she thought it in French.
Peering back for her straggling husband over an outstretched wing, she accidentally flew into the open window of an ascending funicular. She slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the car and crumpled to the floor in a heap.
“Mon Dieu,” she muttered, rising. She was startled to find she could speak and that her knees bent forward. She gaped in shock at sausagy arms where her beautiful sable feathers once were.
“Quelle horreur!” she trilled. “Je suis humain!”
Through almost blind eyes, she spotted her husband Mr. Tarsus finally closing the gap. More successful at avoiding the funicular than she, he streaked past like an ebony contrail. She opened her rubbery lips to call out and thrust her bowling-ball head through the open window, but he was already beyond the boulevard.
“Ce qui se passe?” she exclaimed, noticing the inside of the car for the first time.
Walls patterned with delicate florals stretched beyond the dimensions of the car’s exterior appearance. Ornate rugs covered the floor. Colorful artwork hung in gilt frames. Books packed tightly on countless shelves. Mrs. Tarsus, feeling like she was being embraced by a vat of warm lard, had no idea what to do with any of it.
A voice mewed from a far corner. “Khuṇ s̄bāy dī h̄ịm?”
Mrs. Tarsus stepped backward on untrustworthy feet as a slight man with striking blue eyes emerged from the shadows.
“Pardon?” she asked.
The man nodded at a black rotary phone on a small table next to her.
Mrs. Tarsus wasn’t quite sure how she would perch on it in the state she was in.
The man picked up the receiver of a second rotary phone on his side of the room. He put it to his ear, and following his lead, she did the same.
“Can you understand me now?” he asked. Through the device, she heard his question translated into perfect French.
“Yes. What’s happened? One minute I’m flying over Pau and the next I’m a monstrosity of flesh!”
The man sighed. “The same thing happened to me when I wandered in here on my nightly prowl. I am a cat, originally.”
Mrs. Tarsus gasped, another first.
“Don’t fret,” the man said, raising a hand. “No more claws.”
“And your language?”
“Siamese.”
Mrs. Tarsus shuddered. “A Siamese tormented my husband once.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t me,” the man argued. “I didn’t waste much time chasing birds.”
“I wonder if he looked like you. I’d be interested to see, once this nightmare ends.”
“I’ve been here for days,” the man lamented. “The car never seems to reach the top.”
Mrs. Tarsus looked around. What use were books and art for a bird?
She silently cursed her husband for being such a slowpoke.
Karen Mitani is originally from Northwestern Ontario, Canada, and has lived in New York for twenty years. Her short fiction can be found in Rat Bag Lit Magazine, 72 Hours of Insanity, vol 13, Writers' Playground, and she recently won Writing Battle. She lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.
Fifth Place
Last Rites
By A Winchester
There’s a giraffe-shaped pothole on the side of the Dybbølsbro Bridge that swallows cyclists.
Not the whole cyclist—not literally. But whenever a too-cocky commuter passes when they shouldn’t, or fails to brake on a turn, the pothole is there to catch their swerves and swears.
Copenhageners call these tire-eating mishaps rites of passage. Francis Petersen calls them entertainment.
You see—or rather, only Francis sees—the other side of the pothole opens into her bedroom in Palm Desert, California. The nonagenarian spends her bedbound days watching her ceiling flash and pulse with cyclists.
“Lots of traffic today,” Francis will say, gazing upward. Or, “Raining cats and dogs,” she’ll muse, when her home health aide, Britta, visits.
Britta’s training suggests the best response is polite conversation.
“Mhmm” or a deflective “Are you hungry?” works. But never “That’s impossible”—contradicting mental states makes patients irritable.
So when Francis mentions her son visited, Britta goes along with the charade.
“Meals on Wheels come early?” Britta asks.
“It’s Arthur,” Francis says, wiping a crumb from her mouth. “Dropped by with these fantastic open-face sandwiches.”
Britta glances at a photograph of the late Arthur Petersen on Francis’ bedside table. It was taken at his law school graduation, and he’s holding his mother’s hand. He would have died not long after the photo was taken. Car crash.
“Mhmm,” Britta says, and clears Francis’ tray.
***
But Arthur did drop by.
Or, at least, a young man who was the spitting image of Arthur.
“Did you, uhh… order some smørrebrød?” the man asked, after tumbling through the giraffe on an especially damp Tuesday. He wasn’t sure how he arrived in Britta’s bedroom, but he did know that the best tips came from fast deliveries, and something at his core made him want to please the old lady. Or maybe he was just being polite.
Francis squinted and invited him to sit. The man adjusted his helmet and removed a box of open-faced sandwiches from his sizable backpack.
“Looks wonderful,” Francis mused. “Coffee?”
The delivery driver shook his aching head. Yet something—her voice, or her smile, or a certain familiarity—made him linger.
“I had a son,” Francis said. “He looked like you. Ambitious. Smart. Always in a rush. I imagine you’ll want to leave soon, too–”
She waved at the ceiling.
***
“They’re repairing the road today,” Francis tells Britta, as the aide affixes a blood pressure monitor. The cuff expands while Francis stares at the ceiling.
“Mhmm,” Britta says. “Are you hungry?”
Francis lets out a life-weary sigh and takes her eyes away from the traffic for a moment.
“I’ll miss the excitement,” she slurs. Francis’ voice is distant, as though closing with the portal itself, and Britta rushes to the rotary phone on Francis’ bedside, jams a finger into the dial: 9 (tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick)...
The traffic slows. A cargo bike trundles past. Francis recognizes a familiar backpack.
1 (tick…)
“I’ll miss the deliveries,” she sighs.
1 (tick…)
“But perhaps it’s time.”
She shuts her eyes.
And the portal closes.
A Winchester writes fiction for fun and copy for work. This story is inspired by A’s grandmother who, at 100, always enjoyed when visitors dropped in.
Honorable Mentions
Collect Call
By Aidan Bridges
In the distant realm of Val’nor, among the high elves of Drismool, there was an ancient legend passed down from father to son. It claimed that in the faraway mountains of Kalier, the wizard king Garvanak had created an artifact, and hidden it at the bottom of a mystical spring. The artifact, it was said, could contact another world.
Panting, Sam hauled themselves over the top of a rocky rise and rolled onto their side. They were beginning to worry those elves were just trying to get rid of them, sending them on a quest to the tallest, furthest mountain in a world where the fastest form of travel was still horse.
They pushed themselves up onto one elbow, blinking as they found themselves at the edge of a small pool of sparkling water.
It wasn’t deep, and they spotted a dark shape at the bottom. They reached their arm into the rippling water and felt no resistance as their hand closed around something metal—either the pond wasn’t enchanted, or its magic had deemed Sam worthy. They yanked.
In their hand they clutched an old rotary phone, covered in a thin layer of pond slime, its cord trailing behind it.
Would this… really work?
Sam had never used a real rotary phone before, but they’d had a plastic toy one as a kid. They dialed the numbers slowly, pulling from a decades-old memory.
The other line rang. They held their breath.
The line clicked over to the voicemail that their mom had let them record when they were five, and then never changed:
Hi, this is Sammy! Me and Mom aren’t here right now, so leave a message! Okay… bye! --BEEP--
Sam hadn’t even thought about what to say if she didn’t answer. They cleared their throat. “Uh, hey Mom. It’s Sam. Um, I just wanted to call and let you know I’m okay, and I miss you, and—”
There was a click as the other line was yanked off the receiver. “Sammy?!” Her voice. Her voice! “Mom! Mom, yeah, it’s me!”
“Where are you?” Sam heard the rustle of Mom pulling on her jacket. “Stay right there, I’m on my way.”
“No! No, listen, you can’t—” The words came tumbling out. The hidden attic door that opened into what should have been empty air, but wasn’t. How it vanished when they went through.
How the land inside was beautiful and magical, and felt like anything could be possible if they believed enough. They didn’t mention the danger—this was still their mother.
“And,” they said. “I keep seeing people I know, or sort-of know? Like in The Wizard of Oz. And there’s this guy… I think he might have been my Dorothy.”
“He looked like you?”
“No, more like… felt like me, I guess?”
A moment of crackling silence. A sigh. “You’re not kidding. You’re really gone, aren’t you?” “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”
“Are you eating okay? Are you safe?”
Sam laughed, feeling warm. “Yeah.”
Aidan Bridges is a hobbyist writer from the Pacific Northwest who simply cannot sit still. They spend their time jumping between writing short fiction of various genres, editing their spouse's novel drafts, and planning next week’s session of Dungeons and Dragons. They love crafting stories that balance humor and heart, and attempting to tease depth and richness out of simple ideas. When they’re not working on a project, Aidan can be found playing games with their spouse under the strict supervision of their cat, Miss Stella Pebbles.
Power Hour
By Chad Frame
Berry
“Ugh. Tastes like Sweet Tarts and battery acid.”
“It's not about flavor,” Harrison tells you. “It's about efficiency.”
“Is it safe?” you ask, squinting at the small print.
Harrison snatches the empty bottle and thumps four more 5 Hour Energy shots on your desk.
His sleeve rides up, exposing his gold Rolex, probably on purpose.
“Want your name on the building?” Harrison asks. “This is how you fucking do it. I made 50K on Tesla volatility already this morning.”
“Damn.” You reach for another.
Harrison flashes too-white teeth. You wonder if, before the money, he looked like you.
Grape
“I definitely feel it. It tingles.”
“Yeah,” Harrison says, eyeing the next three bottles in line. “That means it's working.”
You feel yourself locking in. The math is mathing. The trades are trading. You update a spreadsheet, reply to emails, look into promising new futures. Let's take a bite out of Apple, you think, then smirk at your own lame joke.
By the water cooler, Harrison high-fives Humphreys and Jacobs, a constellation of dimples, hair gelled into concrete stillness. They laugh when they glance your way. Wait—are they laughing at you?
Watermelon
Now you're cooking with gas. Buy, sell. Buy, sell. All the patterns laid out like blueprints to fortune. Why couldn't you see it before? Harrison sends you a message on Teams with Humphreys and Jacobs copied. A meme with a sloped silhouette of a bottle of 5 Hour Energy and the all-caps text IF YOU DRINK FIVE 5 HOUR ENERGIES IN ONE DAY YOU UNLOCK THE SECRET POWER HOUR. You can hear them snickering from two cubicles over but you just sold for a profit and started tackling crypto so the joke’s pretty much on them.
Cherry
“Ever notice the outerflesh of cherries is different from the pit you know I read somewhere they’re related to almonds but I can't really taste—”
But nobody's there and the office is dark and fucking Harrison managed to make bank on Etherium before he went home but you won't let him win and it's getting hot in here and you open more browser tabs and swap between them typing do stimulants raise body temperature / how to start your own cryptocurrency / is the name joltcoin taken / can google steal your idea from typing it in / why is my left arm tingling / why do i see the shimmering outline of a door
Blue Raspberry
You step through the door into an all-white room.
White floor, white walls. White desk with an honest-to-God white rotary phone.
Somehow, you understand that's exactly what it is. A phone. Honest. To God.
You're not surprised when it rings. Jangling and old-timey, clear as anything, you hear the bell rattle in the frame.
You almost swear you hear a distant voice agree with you, shouting, “Clear!”
With a surge of energy, you pick up the receiver.
Everyone gets one question.
“Hello?” you say. “God? Would you like to invest in Joltcoin?”
Chad Frame is the author of Little Black Book, nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, Cryptid, and Smoking Shelter, winner of the Moonstone Chapbook Contest. He is Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry and improv performance troupe, and the founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival. Chad is a three-time winner of Writing Battle, a winner of the Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction, a multi-time winner of Twisted Tournament, and a frequent final placer in various NYC Midnight competitions. His work appears in Rattle, Strange Horizons, Off Topic Publishing, Pedestal, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, on iTunes from the Library of Congress, and elsewhere, including being archived on the moon with The Lunar Codex. Chad works as an executive in the luxury beauty market and also teaches writing courses in-person and online.
Frozen in Time
By Chloe Paige
I have built a home in the rafters of our house.
I can watch anything from up here, perched on my maroon paisley-patterned sofa balanced precariously across the timber joists. I dig my toes into my avocado green shag rug draped over a beam. Earthy smoke from my incense curls past my coffee table lava lamp. A rubbery lava blob seethes against its glass, churning round and round in endless pink. Baby pink.
Time can’t move me up here. I am frozen in it.
At the other end of my ceiling home, dusty dead flies find their graves underneath the rabbit-ear antennae of my box television—always switched off, because I’m too busy watching you.
And time sure has moved you. Below, you fuss over your gleaming stainless-steel cooktop, stirring a pot of pasta alfredo with your trembling liver-spotted hands. That hunched spine better be smarting you real bad, acting like my Douglas down there. Talking like my husband, walking like him, wearing all his clothes. No matter how much he looked like you, my good Douglas is gone, lost to time. And you’re what’s left, the dregs of him: a balding, withered man who flinches whenever we make eye contact.
The baby pink blob in my lava lamp splits into three.
I watch you dig a smartphone from your pocket. The glaring blue light from its screen bleaches your jowls. You squint at its non-existent buttons before dialling.
Despite being unplugged, my rotary phone rings. Its shrill wailing echoes across my banana yellow wallpaper, my mint green pendant light, your suicidally white tile flooring, your white glass cabinets, and your white marble dining table you only set for two these days. Those sharp corners aren’t child friendly. Not that you’d notice.
One of the three baby pink blobs sinks to the bottom of my lava lamp.
When you glance up to see me watching you, you wince. Only then do I answer the phone, cradling the cherry red receiver between my ear and shoulder.
‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ you sigh through it.
I don’t need to eat. I am drunk on watching.
Of course, I don’t reply, so you set your smartphone on the counter. Time trickles through my receiver, caressing my cheek like chubby toddler hands. The clink of you setting the table tumbles through, too. As well as the glugging of pouring wine, a garlic haze, smoked butter. On the plates, a creamy white sauce drenches dozens of white pasta spirals.
What troublesome things to lodge in a toddler’s throat.
I slam the receiver down so hard it rattles the rafters and rocks the empty crib on its joists.
You sit alone at your dining table set for two, staring into space, watching nothing like how you weren’t watching her. Forty years, and I hope you’ve felt every minute of that time pass.
When you leave for bed, I watch you go. I watch you from the home I built in the rafters, frozen in time.
Chloe Paige is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer from the salty shores of Wadawurrung Country (Geelong, Australia). She is published in a small handful of online and print literary journals, and has won the Elegant Literature Award, NYC Midnight, and The Booby Prize, alongside shortlisting multiple times for the Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction. Chloe adores strong verbs, flouting the writing rules, and rambling about literary devices to people who truly couldn't care less.
Chloe is in the early stages of her debut novel, but you can distract her from writing by finding her on Instagram and Bluesky.