In honor of Marie Vibbert's upcoming novella, Multitude, we hosted a microfiction contest inviting you to imagine a moment of alien contact. We got some amazing submissions, and after much trial and tribulation, narrowed it down to a top three. In third place was "Let's Give You a Brother Today" by Corinne Hughes. You can read the piece and learn more about Corinne below! Congratulations to Corinne!
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"Let's Give You a Brother Today"
By Corinne Hughes
Katherine waited in the prison lobby beneath fluorescent lights and a red sign listing the rules: All visits must be pre-scheduled. No exceptions.
She had mailed Drew postcards for months—Nebraska sunsets, cornfields. A single line on each: Let me visit.
The charges against him were written in careful legal language—first-degree homicide, first-degree sexual assault.
When the door opened to the visiting room, Drew was already there at a metal table, flexing his fingers slowly, watching the skin stretch over the bones as if the movement might surprise him.
When she was five years old, she woke in the night to a bright light outside her window. A metal craft hovered over the yard. A small figure stepped onto the grass.
By morning, she had a little brother. Everyone remembered Drew as if he had always been there. Everyone but her.
Katherine sat across from him. She had asked for contact visitation instead of glass. She needed to see him closely.
Drew's left eyelid drooped slightly, like their father's. His front tooth crowded its neighbor the way it had after it grew back in. Freckles scattered across his cheeks like tiny constellations.
Yes. Human.
Drew had always been curious about what a body could do. Once he jumped from a quarry cliff just to learn how much pain a body could hold. He broke both ankles.
Drew opened a bag of Doritos and studied the triangular chip before biting it. Orange dust coated his fingers. He licked them thoughtfully.
"Still watching me," he said.
Katherine leaned closer across the metal table.
She strained to hear a heartbeat.
She wasn't sure which answer frightened her more—
whether the heartbeat meant he was human,
or that he had finally learned how to be one.
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Corinne Hughes is a writer based in Austin, Texas. Her work blends speculative fiction, poetry, and ecological observation, often exploring the uneasy boundary between human and nonhuman worlds. Her fiction appears in On the Run Fiction, and she is a recipient of the Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant. Her poetry appears in the 2025 Dwarf Stars Award Anthology, StarLine*, Scifaikuest, The Cozy Cosmic, and the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase.