Lust, envy, greed, wrath, sloth, gluttony and pride. What a collection of sins to make the heart beat faster. This is the second anthology of short stories we have published that explores these dark human motivations. Our first anthology, The Seven Deadly Sins, was published in 2012 and was so popular that we thought it timely to run another competition and publish a second volume of wicked tales. Here we present to you the thirty highly commended and three prize-winning stories from the Stringybark Seven Deadly Sins Award 2017.
I never thought pinking-shears would be sharp enough to kill someone.
But then I didn’t expect to find a dead body in my sewing room either. A very dead body. I knew this because of the circle of wine-black blood.
A man without trousers.
— From “Not With the Good Scissors” by Barb Ettridge
Danny stared through the glass at the young, voluptuous woman, her turquoise bikini luminous in the subdued street lighting. A gaggle of men formed a half-circle outside the window in Amsterdam’s red-light district. Danny’s bestie, Si, egged him on.
“Go on, Dan, she’s the one. Look at those t**s, dude!”
Danny’s heart sank. Why had he agreed to have his stag do in Amsterdam?
— From “Caged Birds” by Susan Carey
There she is again, the bitch, bending over to pick up the morning’s paper with her come-and-get-me arse pointed in my direction. I know she does it on purpose – probably imagines me peering through the curtains like some sad case waiting for his morning dose of booty. And she'd be right. I’ve been obsessed with her ever since she arrived.
— From “A Matter of Taste” by Graham D’Elboux
