In May, we challenged you to submit a 300 word flash fiction story containing the words spider, rainbow, and cake. From over 1,100 stupendous entries, we chose two Grand Prize Winners and three Runners-Up. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did! (For more excerpts, check out this forum thread.)

"Happy birthday Luna!" Mother said to me. I looked at the cake she was carrying. At first, I didn't notice it. But then I looked at it. I screamed in terror. There on my giant, rainbow cake was a huge, very long legged hairy SPIDER looking at me with all of it's big scary 8 different colored eyes. I ran for the garage. Mother dropped the cake.

The entire house had gone mad, screaming and running. Through the chaos, I searched for Spider, wanting to destroy it. I had picked up my father's old metal baseball bat from the garage.

"DIE YOU HORRIFIC HIDEOUS HAIRY SPIDER!!!!!!" I screamed as I charged towards the nasty, gnarled, disgusting thing.

Mother rushed over. She grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the eye. The look was a "Don't" look. I sat behind watching my mother calmly walk over to the spider and thwack it with her hand, as if she were slapping one of my siblings for doing something bad. I was confused. Did she know this spider????!

"YOU PROMISED NEVER TO SHOW YOU NASTY GNARLED FACE HERE EVER AGAIN AND YET HERE YOU ARE!" Mother slapped the spider again. Surprisingly, the spider shifted into a human man. He was handsome like Father.

"I'm sorry, Mother. It's just. I. I wanted to be there for Luna's 12th birthday, " he stuttered. I sat there, confused at the whole scene. The Spider was a man, and was calling Mother his own mother.

"Leave. Now, Justin. Leave. They know," Mother had a sudden urgency in her voice. It was nothing like Charlotte's Web. Later I asked what that was all about. Mother didn't talk. She only said, "The Past is past, Luna. There is absolutely no reason to find out the past if it has passed."

Lily B. is a soon to be sixth grade student this coming year. She loves to draw, video game, write, and create word searches for her friends. She is the oldest of three kids. She has had some things published before. Some of her favorite books include Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, and the three Percy Jackson series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Trials of Apollo, and Heroes of Olympus).