McSweeney’s Twenty-Minute Stories Grand-Prize Winner

The winning story has been published online: “Untitled,” by David Kennerly. It is so short and tied together that it seems a shame to excerpt any of it, but I post the first sentence to help draw you in.

He had always tried to be a gentleman, courteous, respectful in the most thorough way, and believed he was doing his utmost to continue this philosophy when he realized he was having a heart attack, there was no way he could land the plane anywhere else, and he saw the beautifully ordered expanse of backyards open up before him like a shining path, the center line composed of fences and lit by the glint of the sun.