Our second annual Thanksgiving Horror Stories contest generated many more tales of woe than last year's edition. But out of the thousands of awful holidays, these are the worst—or are they the best—as well as this year's winner.

Here are all the stories that deserve an honorable mention this year. Each author was awarded a gold star (if they didn't already have one). I made up the titles, but the stories are all theirs. Click on the author's name to read about their Turkey Day torture.

Those are all excellent stories, but there can be only one winner. This one is amazing because it starts off with a comedic mishap involving porn and a mild drug overdose and ends with an additional epilogue of horror. It's funny, heartbreaking, well-written, and—most importantly—concise. The winner of this year's contest is RobotsOnRocketships for her story Sex, Drugs, and Embarrassment. Here it is:

Thanksgiving 2002. I had gone away to college just a couple months before, started getting terrible stomach aches that I attributed to stress. Went to the doctor, got an ultrasound, a bloodtest, and a sweet Oxycontin RX. The night before Thanksgiving, I go home to my parents' house. My mother's being particularly neurotic and it's all a little intense so I retire to my room and take an Oxycontin. Take my laptop out, head over to my profile on Suicide Girls (member, NOT a model) and (fatefully) decide to pop a couple more Oxys. Within 10 minutes, it's apparent that I am much more intoxicated than is pleasant and I'm getting increasingly nauseated. I stand up to go to the bathroom but immediately fall against the closet door, banging loudly, before proceeding to vomit all over my childhood bed. I retched loud enough to send my mother flying down the hall, bursting into my room into a horror show of Internet porn & copious vomit.

My mother, not being well versed in the "porn site with a social network aspect" scene, sees my open laptop with my face under the banner of what is clearly a porn site & completely LOSES her shit. Screaming, crying etfuckingcetera. I vaguely and lamely try to explain but I don't wanna touch the SuicideGirls thing so I'm showing her the pills, telling her they made me sick and I fall asleep. I didn't wake up for something like 12 hours and when I wake up, my entire extended family is already there for Thanksgiving dinner. I shower and get ready and when I walk in the room, there's a weird heavy silence, like everyone stopped their conversations at the same time. I convince myself that I must be trippin' because as pissed and horrified as my mom is, no Louisiana southern Baptist grand dame like my mere is going to announce her family scandals like that.

Then I realize there are no children in the room, all the uncles and aunties and grammas but not one kid. WTF. And Pastor Greg, my childhood Sunday school teacher was there? So now, I'm starting to really trip out,is this a fucking intervention? My mom turns to me and says, "We want to talk to you, as a family..." and I'm off....

"Oh my god, Mom, how dare you! I told you I only started taking the pills a week ago and what else do you want me to say? I don't do porn, not that its your business, I just like girls, okay? I'm bisexual, is that what you think I need to announce to everyone?"

"No, sweetie, no. Not at all. We wanted you to be with your family when you heard: your doctor called us yesterday—you have cancer"

Yeah. Fuck Thanksgiving.

Yup, that sure is horrible. The good news is that not only has RobotsOnRocketships been in remission for five years now, she's also the winner of a case of Stoli vodka so she can wash away the pain of those awful memories. Please email us to redeem your prize.

Thanks to all who participated. I can't wait to do it again at Christmas.

[Illustration by Contributing Illustrator Sam Spratt, based on Norman Rockwell's "Thanksgiving." Check out Sam's newly redesigned portfolio website and become a fan of his Facebook Artist's Page.]