Woo hoo! You are
killing it on these contests,
@Jmack! Now finish that first novel, get yourself and agent, and get something published.
There were so many good stories this month I had more than I could pick, so my votes went to those I subjectively liked the most, as follows.
@m3mnoch got a vote for "Demon-X", purely because I'm a sucker for demon hunters vs demons (that's why I liked Supernatural) and because I *loved* the twist. Being half-human (which had always made the protagonist a laughing stock), as it turns out, also made him immune to all the normal demon-killing methods ... which made him a nightmare for hunters. I think it was that twist alone that made me pick this story.
@Nora got a vote for "The Esper's Tears", mainly because, again, I'm a huge
X-Men fan (and a fan of people with freaky psychic powers in general) and because I thought the emotions of the protagonist were fairly well done. I loved the father/daughter bond and the background on the protagonist. I also liked that, as bad as her circumstances were, she recognized that her powers still made her better off than other orphans. She came across a real and flawed, and I felt her pain when she thought her foster father was dead. And of course, as I said, I'm a sucker for people getting exploded by little girls with psychic powers.
@Alex Hormann got my vote just because of how mundane his protagonist's hunt ended up being. It was just a guy trying to get the cheapest labor possible! I loved that the story was fantastic (zombies!) while the actual goal of the guy being investigated was just to get some workers he didn't have to pay. It was the mundane motivations in a fantastical story that set this apart for me.
Finally, I want to say my favorite of the four I chose was
@LightRunner 's "The Boy Who Spoke Dakota", because it was just a sweet story overall. It instantly conjured fond memories of the middle grade and YA fantasy I read when I was younger, and I just fell in love with the little Loch Ness Monster (which, for some reason, I pictured as a purple cartoon squid). It stood out because it was so different from the others, featuring a normal kid who didn't even have special powers, just the ability to speak a different language. He wasn't a private eye or a witch or a psychic or anything else. Plus, I loved the ending, and I felt something when he reunited the little squid with Nessie.
That said, I was a big fan of many of the other stories as well (including
@Jmack 's!) so I'm glad it won.
