Time to pick out your costumes early and choose your masks for this Halloween. Our theme for the second drabble contest in 2025 is “The Masks. We Wear.” Halloween is the night of nights on which we take off our fake masks and skins to let our true selves roam free. Can you feel the darkness that lies within you snaking its way to the surface? Shed your inhibitions and live free for the night, leave your old self behind, and become what you've always wanted to be.
No matter if you wear a mask all year round or just for one night, editor Kai Delmas is looking for 100-word stories to feature in Apex Magazine. These stories must be exactly 100 words—no more, no less—and center around the theme of “The Masks We Wear.” (The word count does not include the title.) Interpret the theme as you will, it doesn't have to focus on Halloween, but make it dark and strange. Three winners will be selected, and their stories will be published in Apex Magazine issue 151, releasing in October 2025. Submissions for this drabble contest open on July 10th, 2025 and will close July 24th, 2025. Payment is $0.08 per word.
About the editor: Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems. His fiction can be found in Zooscape,Utopia Science Fiction,Crepuscular, and several Shacklebound anthologies. His debut drabble collection, "Darkness Rises, Hope Remains," was published by Shacklebound Books. You can support him at: patreon.com/kaidelmas and find him at a
