The Dark Mile

No purchase or entry fee is required to enter. The The Dark Mile is presented by Second Mile Press LLC (“Second Mile Press”). Submitting an entry confirms you have read, understood and agreed to these rules.

1. What this is

We are looking for 5 original scary flash fiction stories to publish — on this website, and in a printed zine: the first Second Mile Press scary-fiction collection. One will be named the Grand Prize Winner and 4 more will be named Selected Stories. The competition is free to enter.

2. When

Submissions open Thursday, October 1 and close Thursday, October 15 at 11:59pm CT. Entries after the deadline are not considered. We close early if we reach 100 entries.

3. Who can enter

You must be 18 or older and live in the United States. We'd rather say so plainly than take an entry we can't pay: prizes go out as checks in the mail.

Owners of Second Mile Press, and their immediate family, cannot enter. Anyone reading or judging for this competition cannot enter. Void where prohibited.

4. Your entry

One story per writer, 1,000 to 2,000 words, in English. Scary fiction, broadly read — horror, suspense, the supernatural, psychological dread, or your own answer to the brief. The word counter on the entry form is the count that decides.

Your story must not have been published before — by a magazine, press, journal, anthology or similar. Simultaneous submissions elsewhere are fine; if your story is accepted somewhere else while we are reading, email us and we'll withdraw it.

5. Artificial intelligence

The story has to be written by you. Fiction generated in whole or substantial part by an AI writing tool is not eligible.

Ordinary spelling, grammar and proofreading tools are fine. Nobody is disqualified for using a spellchecker. The line is between tools that check what you wrote and tools that write it for you.

This protects all of us. Nobody can say for certain what a generative model was trained on or whose work it reproduces, and we are about to print these stories and sell them. If a story is yours, the question of who owns it has an answer — and that answer is what lets you grant the permissions in section 10 and what keeps you, and us, clear of somebody else's copyright.

6. What you're promising us

By entering you confirm that you are the author, that the story is original to you, that you own or control the rights needed to let us publish it, and that it does not knowingly infringe anyone else's copyright or other rights. You confirm it is not plagiarised.

We may ask about authorship if a genuine question arises, and we may disqualify an entry — before or after the announcement — if we reasonably conclude these things are not true. If a problem comes to light after publication we may take the story off the site and stop further printing where that is practical.

7. How we judge

Entries are first read by our screening team, who see the title and story text only — not your name. The strongest go to a final round read by Second Mile Press. Readers tell us about any entrant they know, and step back from that story.

We read for storytelling, originality, the writing itself, how well it uses the flash form, and whether it actually frightens anybody. Decisions are final, and we don't send individual feedback.

8. What the 5 selected writers get

The Grand Prize Winner receives $250. Each of the 4 other selected writers receives $50. Every one of the 5 is published on this website, printed in the zine, credited by name, and sent a free copy of the finished zine.

We pay by check in the mail. If you're selected we send a private link asking where to send it; we need a US address within 90 days of the announcement. Tax on your prize is yours to handle.

9. Entering is not the same as being selected

Entering gives us no right to publish your story. We take nothing from the stories we don't select, beyond being allowed to receive, store and read them in order to judge the competition. If your story is not selected, we have no continuing right to it of any kind.

If your story is selected, the terms in the next section apply — and they apply because you agreed to them when you entered, not because of an offer made afterwards. We would rather you knew the arrangement before you pressed Submit than be surprised by it on Halloween.

10. What a selected story grants us

You keep the copyright. You are giving us permission to publish your story. You are not selling it, and we do not become its owner.

For a selected story, you allow Second Mile Press to:

• publish it on secondmilepress.com;
• print it as part of this particular Second Mile Press scary-fiction zine;
• print, distribute, advertise and sell copies of that zine;
• use your name, the title, an agreed short bio and reasonable excerpts to promote the story, the competition and the zine.

That is the whole of it. These permissions cover this story and this zine, and nothing else.

11. Exclusivity: 30 days

For 30 days from the day we first publish your story on this site, please don't let anyone else publish it. After that it's yours to place wherever you like.

One thing that outlasts those 30 days: we keep the right to leave your story on this site and to go on printing and selling this zine. Otherwise a month after publication we'd have to stop selling it.

12. No royalties on this one

The payment in section 8 is the whole of what we pay for the permissions in section 10. There are no per-copy royalties on this first zine.

We pay for the cover art, editing, design, proofs, printing, contributor copies, marketing and distribution, and we keep what the zine earns. We're telling you that here rather than in small print. You are never asked to buy copies.

13. Editing

We'll copyedit and typeset your story for the zine. We will not change what it says or means without your approval — beyond formatting and obvious typos — and you'll see it before it is printed.

14. Dates

We announce the Grand Prize Winner and the selected writers on Halloween — Saturday, October 31, 2026 — and publish the selected stories on this site the same day. Everyone who entered hears by email either way.

The printed zine comes later. We commission the cover once we know which stories are in it, so the artwork answers to the writing — which means we are not giving a print date at the point you enter. We'll keep the selected writers posted as it comes together.

15. If plans change

We can change, pause or call off the competition if something outside our control makes running it properly impossible, and we'll email everyone who has entered if we do. Nothing in this section lets us take rights in your story beyond the ones you agreed to when you entered.

16. Your information

We store your name, email and entry to run the competition and tell you the result. We will email every entrant about the result, because that is what you entered for. Anything beyond that only happens if you tick the separate box on the form — entering does not put you on our mailing list. The detail is in our privacy policy.

17. Agreeing to all this

The entry form asks you to confirm that you have read and agree to these rules, that you wrote the story, that it is original to you, and that you own the rights needed to submit it. You cannot submit without that.

18. Who we are

Second Mile Press LLC, Austin, Texas. Get in touch if any of this is unclear — we would much rather answer a question than have you not enter.

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