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“Youth: The teenagers by the creek, in a way, were all her children …” by first-place winner Nina Dragicevic

“Half-life: Anik’s postcards from the outside world shepherded me through girlhood,” by second-place winner Sara Mang

Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson, 54, was a special education teacher in Toronto before landing at the Ministry of Education in the bureaucracy. He was always interested in writing, but efforts in his 20s were “not very organized or purposeful.” He hunkered down in the last five years and last December won the 2021 Black Orchid Novella Award for his 20,000-word story “The Man Who Went Down Under.” It will be published in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine this summer. He lives in Toronto with his partner and two children.

Amy was at the tail end of putting the baby down for its afternoon nap when the doorbell rang. The little bundle of Charlotte, sweaty and sticky, lay on the bed beside her, thumb in mouth, calm and beautiful now, but her face still red from screaming and crying. Amy closed her eyes again: did she need to answer the door? If it was someone canvassing for a charity she couldn’t afford to support, let them pass by. It could be Tom, home from work early; he often forgot his key and he’d push the bell again if he didn’t hear her feet on the hardwood. If he rang again and the baby woke and started to cry, she wouldn’t hold herself responsible for what came next.

Out the window, she couldn’t see down to the front door, but up the street a great white triangle, shining in the sun, its apex topped by a head, caught her eye; her mind amalgamated the sweeping shape into that of a bride in her wedding dress crossing the road. If Tom had asked her, she would’ve worn one of those. He still could. The image shifted, and the triangle detached from the head and she saw that it was a clear garbage bag, white in the reflected light, full of recycling, being held, now, at arm’s length, by an old woman. Amy shook her head and descended the stairs in something between a tiptoe and a run. She unbolted the door and swung it wide. It wasn’t Tom.

“Excuse me, Miss,” said the man on her porch, who didn’t look like he was collecting for any charity, other than, possibly himself. His head glistened in the sunlight under the few strands of hair matted to it; a striped shirt had too many buttons undone, revealing the pale cavity of his chest. “I’m writing a book on the Boyd Gang, the bank robbers who terrorized Toronto in the 1950s. You may have heard of them.” When he paused for her response, she met his gaze and found his old face not without its sympathetic features; his eyes and misaligned teeth smiled persuasively. “You may not know —”

“No, others have told me. Something about this house. They stayed here.”

“You do know,” he smiled.

“A little. Not as much as you, I’m sure.”

“Well, I’m a little obsessed,” he admitted. “What I really wanted to ask you was whether you might allow me to come into your house to look around, to see what it’s like here, and get a sense of where the gang hid out. For my book.”

Amy knew the folly of letting a stranger into her house, but she had promised herself, before Charlotte was born, that she wouldn’t succumb to the same anxieties that preyed on her sisters and friends, and become the worried mom who saw danger lurking in every balloon or unpeeled grape or homeless man sleeping beside the children’s playground. Still, she wasn’t crazy about having this man in the house, less from fear of him and more because of the mess inside. “You know we only rent part of the house. Just the front. There are two apartments in the back and then one in the basement,” she stalled.

“Yes,” agreed the stranger. “It’s always been a rooming house. When Boyd hid out here, Val Lesso’s family ran it as a rooming house. Lesso was an unsavoury character. I’ve always maintained it was him and not tough Lennie Jackson who shot Detective Tong on Dundas, on the bridge over the train tracks, just up at the top of Sorauren,” he gestured up the street, where she had seen the woman who wasn’t wearing a wedding dress. If he was lying, it was an elaborate ruse.

“Maybe you want to try the neighbours, and I could tidy up,” and Tom could come home, “and then you could take a look around.”

“Mess doesn’t bother me,” he smiled. Judging his appearance, she agreed. “No, this is the apartment I want. This is where the most remarkable scene in the whole history of the Boyd Gang took place. It’s going to be the pivotal scene in my book.” He lifted a rectangular box of a briefcase as if to demonstrate that it contained the manuscript.

Her arm was growing tired holding the door. She trusted her judgment and her spidey-sense wasn’t tingling This guy, while hardly normal, wasn’t dangerous. “Come in, then,” she said, stepping back from the screen.

He caught the door before the spring could pull it shut, never stopping his monologue, “This is where they came after their first escape from the Don Jail. And it was while they were living here that they pulled off what was at the time, the biggest bank heist in the history of Toronto: over $46,000 at a bank in Leaside on Laird Avenue.”

“Excuse me,” he interrupted himself. “I’m too rude. My name’s Peter.” He held out a big hand gnarled with blue veins.

“Amy.” They shook hands and she felt his strong grip around her fingers.

“And they came back to the Lesso house — this house — where Val lived with his mother and father and of course Boyd was worried about what to do with his share of the money and Val Lesso’s father showed them a place where the flooring came up, right here in this very room,” he stood surveying the space. There was an old Turkish rug, threadbare in places, pinned to the floor by a velour couch they had inherited when Tom’s grandmother had moved into a home. Charlotte had spat up on it that morning and there was an archipelago of crusted milk across a cushion. Tom would love talking to Peter and learning about the strange things that happened in this house — she didn’t call it their home. Peter dropped his archaic briefcase, boxy and solid, on the dining room table and slid the catches. The lid popped open. “And they pulled up a few floorboards and Boyd and Jackson — Willie Jackson, not Lennie, no relation — hid their share of the money under the floor. Pretty smart, eh?” He pulled a spiral-bound notebook and pen from his case. “Not. Boyd was too trusting. When they came back the next day, Lesso Senior, leaving his wife behind, had taken all the money, and disappeared to Florida, but no one really knows. Maybe that’ll be my next book.” He laughed loudly. “What a story, Joseph Lesso in Florida, spending his fortune.” He was almost shouting, and his enthusiasm was beginning to disturb her.

“There’s a baby sleeping upstairs,” she said, and regretted it.

“The biggest bank-robbery in the history of Toronto — at the time — and all the money gone by noon the next day! Can you believe it? Excuse me, I’m going to roll up your rug. The hidey-hole should be underneath.” He didn’t wait for her permission but lifted an end of the couch off the rug, dropped to his knees, and with the notebook beside him, began to roll the carpet. A fleck of froth appeared in the corner of his mouth.

An insect buzzed in the air.

“What’s that,” he asked loudly, and Amy despaired that he could be constrained. He would wake Charlotte.

“A wasp,” she said calmly. “I think there’s a nest in the walls. They’re always in the house.” She’d been on to Tom to do something about them; he was a drywaller after all. Couldn’t he find a solution?

“A wasp?” shouted Peter. “I’m allergic. Anaphylactic.” He picked up his A4 notebook and took a swing at the insect. The buzzing stopped as the wasp rode the slipstream of air created by the whiffle, and then, now that war had been declared and the turbulence had passed, it made a direct attack, flying in a straight line to land, tiny feet, face, and stinger all touching down at once, just below Peter’s right eye. “Ow,” shouted Peter. “I’ve been stung. I’ve been stung!” The wasp made one last angry buzz and flew up into the air where it rested on an unmoving blade of the ceiling fan. “It’s going to be OK,” Peter recovered, still too loud, but with greater control. He rose from his knees and stepped to the table where his briefcase lay, its mouth gaping wide. “It’s going to be OK. I have an EpiPen. He reached his big hand inside the briefcase and came out with a yellow canister which he held aloft. “You’re going to need to help me. I really hate jabbing myself — I have a morbid fear of injections. Just jab it into my thigh. That’s the best place for it to go.” There was already a big red welt spreading on Peter’s face; his eye was being forced closed by the swelling. “Let’s do this fast. I don’t want to think about it too much. The injection can go through clothing, but it’s better if there’s nothing impeding it. I apologize, I’m going to need to,” he didn’t wait to finish his sentence before he was already undoing his belt buckle, “drop my pants.”

He wore a pair of briefs which hung loose above his pale legs.

Amy realized the canister Peter had handed her was the EpiPen’s case and not the injector itself. She found the lid, flipped it open, pulled out the device, and turned it this way and that, unable to see the needle. There was tiny writing all over it. Peter interrupted her and implored, “Take the blue cap off.” His voice sounded different, slightly higher in pitch. Was it the urgency of the situation or the swelling of the airpipe starting already? Sweat stood out on his forehead. His one eye had swollen shut. She ripped the cap off one end of the EpiPen.

She felt a sharp jab in her thumb. “Ow!”

The flood of adrenalin was immediate; it wasn’t the joyous endorphin high of exercise, or even the pervasive determination of childbirth. No, it was a terrible hollow feeling of too much caffeine, low blood sugar, jittery raw emotions and tears close to the surface.

“No,” screamed Peter, his pants around his ankles. “You used my EpiPen. That’s my EpiPen. Mine.”

“What am I going to do now?” His legs, both thin and flabby, grew mottled as large red islands stood out in relief on them. “My book.” Peter began to cry. “My book. I’ll never finish my book.”

Amy was lost. She felt teary and weak and on edge as the adrenalin took hold. Charlotte’s cries pulled at her body.

“A phone,” cried Peter. “Call 9-1-1.”

“Where’s yours?” Amy asked.

“I don’t have one. Get yours. Get your phone.” His voice was higher still and she could hear the rattle of a wheeze when he drew in breath.

Amy stumbled up the stairs, happy to escape from the world she had been thrown into, happy to get to Charlotte. But there was no relief; the baby had worked herself into a frenzy. Wide angry eyes stared at her and she felt, through the jittering rush of adrenalin, a physical ache in her chest as her milk came in. Little fingers were clenched in terrible fists. Amy pulled an arm out of her shirt and grabbed Charlotte with one hand while she slipped her breast out of her bra with the other and then in one motion mushed the little head into her nipple. Silence. The baby had stopped crying, but tears rolled down Amy’s face.

She remembered: the phone was not upstairs. She didn’t bring it up when she put Charlotte down; she wouldn’t take the chance of an alert chiming at the crucial moment when sleep stole over the baby.

With one hand clasping Charlotte to her half-naked torso and the other on the banister she shakily descended to the first floor.

Peter sat on the hardwood beneath the dining room table. His voice had lost tone and came out as a raspy whisper: “Did you get the phone?”

“Not yet. I’m looking.” Her cell lay on the kitchen table and with Charlotte still pressed to her breast, she dialed one-handed: 9-1-1. She told the operator the address of the house where Edwin Boyd had hidden his share of the bank robbery money under the floorboards, and now Peter sat beside the rolled up rug while his windpipe swelled closed and he tried to drag breath into his body.

Back in the living room she leaned over and dropped the cellphone onto the floor. It was hard to lower herself to the ground while nursing Charlotte, but she managed.

“I called 9-1-1,” said Amy.

“Thank you,” whispered Peter. His eyes, which had always been protuberant, bulged even more. A pool formed in one and trickled down his face.

Was it her fault Peter was dying? She hadn’t asked him to swipe at the wasp. “I’m sorry I bungled the EpiPen.”

Peter shook his head no. He reached out a hand and Amy took it. It was still big, but it didn’t feel strong anymore. She held it while Charlotte nursed. A noise that might be a siren sounded in the distance, but then faded. Really, the hospital wasn’t so far. Peter looked into her eyes and she tried to smile reassuringly to him, but she could feel him dying even as they sat there and decided that reassuring wasn’t a very honest emotion at this stage and maybe she should just try and sit with him and be with him and she didn’t have to make any promises or say anything. She stopped thinking and looked into his eyes and held his hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. They sat. Time stopped having meaning. There was a raspy rattle that was cut off halfway through as if someone had thrown a switch. His eyes stared at her and she felt, in her discombobulated state of too much adrenalin, that she could feel Peter’s spirit leave the body and a vacuum open up, trying to drag her soul through the glassy membrane of her eyes and out into his body. She held steady. And resisted. Charlotte released her nipple and dribbled milk down her chest. The siren approached now, but Peter was dead.

The door opened, and Tom, his dark hair streaked with drywall dust, stepped through. He surveyed the scene, Peter lying with his pants around his ankles, the rug rolled back, the cellphone on the floor, the couch dislodged at the wrong angle, her with her top half-on, sitting, holding the dead man’s hand under the dining room table, the briefcase open above them.

“What the hell’s going on?”

The toothless baby smiled and gurgled at the sound of her father’s voice.

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