Many thanks to the 253 writers from Australia, Canada, England, Guyana, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, Ukraine, United States (and other undisclosed locations) who entered this writing contest!
First Prize: Diane Donovan
Second Prize: Kirby Wright
Third Prize: Corinna Underwood
Honorable Mention: Helen Picard
Judge: Glenn A. Bruce
Scriptwriter, Novelist, Political Writer
FIRST PRIZE: The Strange Voyage of A Scarecrow, A Garden and Mr Crawfield by Diane Donovan
Judge’s comments:
I tend towards humor as, at the minimum, a device for relief. In this case, however, I found The Strange Voyage of A Scarecrow, A Garden and Mr Crawfield to be the cleverest writing of the lot. The premise is fresh and original, the execution fun and fairly precise, the use of language specific, and the tone whimsical. A good use of flash. Fun stuff.
The Strange Voyage of A Scarecrow, A Garden and Mr Crawfield
By Diane Donovan
Dear Mrs Crawfield,
I am writing this letter in my position as the Constable in Charge of Stapleton Police Station, and hope to set your mind at rest regarding the whereabouts of your husband, Harold.
You will recall that six days hence an earthquake of alarming severity occurred. This earthquake, while causing damage to many institutions, fortunately resulted in no loss of life.
Your husband was in his garden when the earthquake struck. He, along with his vegetable garden, various tools and a scarecrow, were shaken down a bank into the river that flows, very prettily, I’m sure, alongside your home. By some miracle the garden bed remained intact, conveying Harold rather as a raft would, rapidly downstream. The river being deep and wide took Harold and his garden through the countryside at a reasonable rate of knots (his words, dear Mrs Crawfield, and I hope they convey his excellent and undimmed sense of humour), resulting in many miles being covered over a period of four days.
Harold slept in the strawberry cloche at night, it felt a little more secure, he said, and ate vegetables when hungry. It was a pleasant journey, he tells me, with the weather remaining mild, people on the riverbanks cheering him as he passed, and the scarecrow providing constant though silent companionship in the evenings. One could almost envy such a journey, but I assure you, dear Mrs Crawfield, that both Harold and I are cognisant of the worry his disappearance will have caused you.
At any event, this idyllic passage came to an end yesterday afternoon as Harold and his garden swirled on an aberrant current into a side branch of the river near my town. All may have been well but for Harold, having eaten the last carrot, pulled a parsnip from the soil. The earth crumbled, a hole formed and the whole garden began to disintegrate. Harold attempted to save the scarecrow, which had become more than an inanimate group of sticks and old clothes by this time, (I’m sure he won’t mind me telling you that he had begun calling it ‘James’) and he and the scarecrow were washed against the solid supports of a rail bridge. Harold broke both arms but fortunately his jacket hooked over a metal bolt and he was saved. The scarecrow was not.
Dear Mrs Crawfield, your husband, Harold, is safe in hospital and will be returned to you as soon as the doctor permits.
I remain your servant, Constable in Charge, Jonathan Hardy
SECOND PRIZE: The Sheep Woman of New Zealand by Kirby Wright
Judge’s comments:
The Sheep Woman of New Zealand was a very close second, if not an outright tie. The writing is strong and evocative, the emotional content powerful, the visuals clear (and metaphoric). The tarot setting is clever because it both sets up and offsets the true content; so it eases us into the story in a curious, unconventional manner. I like that. When it turns, the grim horrors of her life overpower us and we feel strongly for her. Well done.
The Sheep Woman of New Zealand
By Kirby Wright
The blonde hostess shuffles Archetype Cards and deals to those tabled at her cliff top home overlooking Muriwai Beach. One card per woman, face down. She knows important things are missing from their lives and wants to fill the voids. The meditation circle has become custom on Saturday mornings after group Pilates. Kauri trees frame the view. Later, the women will mingle in the kitchen and snack on scones.
The hostess requests a volunteer. A redhead in a halter-top raises her hand and flips over her card. She has The Fool. “I am my card,” she mumbles, staring out the bay window to the Tasman Sea. The black dots that are surfers remind her of animals grazing on an ever-shifting landscape of hills and dips. She says Garfunkle’s “Bright Eyes” haunts. She lives at a working ranch on the outskirts of Muriwai, where sheep grazed from her front door up the grassy rise of a hill. She considered them family. Her husband called the flock “our investment.” She supervised summer shearings, filled troughs, and handfed lambs their corn and barley. She loved the newborn smell. They comforted her during childless days on the ranch, in those blue hours between meals when self-doubt and longing switched the bright world to black and white. She named favorites: Wooly Willy, Big Mama, and Lambskin. Then her husband phoned the mobile butchers. The Home Kill truck rumbled onto the ranch and kicked up tiny dust tornadoes.
“You are Sheep Woman,” the hostess says.
The redhead nods. “ I only see shadows.”
Sheep Woman watched three men stumble out of the truck. The driver and her husband shook hands. The men clapped and shouted. One kicked Wooly Willy. The driver returned to his truck—he gunned it and the rumble scared the flock up the rise. Big Mama hunkered down until the horn blared. The sheep disappeared, all except for a stray lamb on twig legs. She knew they would be herded into a pen below the crest, the only structure she couldn’t see. “Stay inside,” her husband had warned before Home Kill arrived. She watched him snatch the wayward lamb and vanish over the hill. She heard low voices mixing with whines of “Ma, ma, ma.” They sounded like a chorus of pleading children until the wail of whirling saws killed their song. The green hill turned black. The breeze carried a blood stench as she stood behind the screen washing a greasy skillet. The odor turned her old and ugly. She wanted to sell everything and move far away. Part of her wanted a divorce. The bigger part wanted to die.
The meditation circle is silent. Eyes remain fixed on the cards. The members know grace only comes when you forgive yourself, but sharing pain jumpstarts the process. The hostess asks for a second volunteer and a bride-to-be flips her card.
Sheep Woman leaves to check on the scones. The aroma of baking comforts. She pours Earl Gray into a white porcelain cup, cooling it with cream. She remembers the torturous sound of metal on hard surfaces and avoids striking the porcelain with her spoon. She gazes out to sea: a Takapu flies a wounded half-circle as waves spit toward shore. The surfers are gone.
The wind off the Tasman rattles the Kauri like bones.
THIRD PRIZE: Old Hats by Corinna Underwood
Judge’s comments:
Old Hats is my third choice, though in a way, it is my favorite representation of flash because it does what it has to do very efficiently in the fewest words. This is what I have always thought makes flash so appealing: economy and power. There is a complete story in very few sentences, and that story evokes strong emotion with a twisty end that is both real and poignant. A great little piece of writing.
Old Hats
By Corinna Underwood
“Time has been unkind to us,” she said with a broken voice.
With a love that had lasted over half a century, he replied, “Only where its abrasive moments have brushed against our surfaces. Inside we are still the same.”
“Let us make love,” she said optimistically, “only first you must blindfold me.”
“Why?” he asked, a little hurt. “You do not want to see me?”
“I want to see you as you were, as a dashing, young soldier. And you must blindfold yourself, so you can see me as a slender young bride.”
So he gently tied the silk around her eyes and then his own. They fumbled from their clothes and then forced the unfamiliar touch of flaccid skin and wasted muscle to the tune of groaning joints. Neither could mold the other into the past. Eventually, they fell asleep, back-to-back, still wearing their blindfolds.
HONORABLE MENTION: Drip by Helen Picard
Judge’s comments:
Drip was interesting and a bit braver than the others in terms of style. It captured the “drowning” feeling of common working folk with its water device. I felt the writing was very good, but didn’t feel as surprised as I did with the others—which I think is a premier quality of good flash. I gave Drip an Honorable Mention!
Drip
By Helen Picard
His scarf lifted like a branch in the wind. Traffic streamed by. His heels lifted, then his toes, and his feet left the ground. People flowed around him on the sidewalk, ignoring the floating man drowning in their midst.
If the walls of Wilson’s apartment were to disappear a warped figure would be visible, moving sluggishly. Around the strange figure hundreds of small creatures would dart like a cloud of starlings. The creatures are hundreds of fish, all in tanks lining the apartment walls.
Wilson himself is the murky figure, moving around the room sprinkling pungent flakes into the tanks.
He lived with no one, was friends with no one. It was only Wilson and dozens of iridescent, unblinking eyes. They lazed, eyeing him from the walls.
Wilson paid his exorbitant water bill on time and had no visitors: a landlord’s perfect tenant. The only reason Murphy, landlord of 48 Bleeker Street, had for pause was that when he put his ear to Wilson’s door he heard a quiet bubbling sound, like a bottomless bath running. On his weekly inspection of the hallways, between unsticking gum from the walls and collecting the occasional beer bottle, Murphy put his ear to 701 and wondered what Wilson kept inside.
Outside the day was rainy and all shifting watercolors.
Wilson felt numb when he thought of returning to his work cubicle. He moved slowly around his apartment, gathering his things, feeling that his feet were weighted down.
Drip.
As Wilson tightened his usual necktie under his collar he felt a sharp, wet sensation burst on the crown of his head. He felt around his hair, which was thin and dry. He looked up. The ceiling plaster wasn’t wrinkled with moisture. He must have imagined it.
He grabbed his briefcase and locked the door behind him. He felt a light, cool rushing down his head and over his shoulders. He shook himself like a dog, and then each foot, feeling the chill there too.
He waited at the elevator, staring at his funhouse reflection in the metal doors.
Drip.
The elevator dinged just as Wilson felt another drip of moisture on his head, and he felt coolness cascade down his body. His step into the elevator was with unusual effort, as if some force were holding back his leg.
The doors closed and Wilson felt more queer as the elevator descended.
Drip.
When the elevator doors opened, he could hardly walk. Each step was with great effort, and he moved lethargically out the door.
Drip.
Soon each step was with enormous effort as he moved lifelessly towards the crosswalk. There was a delay to the will of his limbs in starting forwards, a sluggishness as if … Wilson realized that he was trudging through waist-deep water, even if no water was there.
Drip.
His tie flicked upwards and floated over his shoulder as he strained forwards.
Drip.
The water was rising faster now. He tried to jump up, to swim away from the invisible tide, but there was nowhere to go, nothing he could do to stop it.
Drip.
A woman ruffled her umbrella in annoyance as she stepped around him.
Drip.
He felt the water around his neck now, then over his chin, inside his mouth, above his eyes.
Drip.
As his strength left him he released his briefcase. In the cloud of papers that flurried through the air, slowly and strangely like dead leaves, his arms reached out, weightless. The light turned red. Pedestrians gathered at the curb and stared into space, waiting to cross. His flooded blue eyes stared blankly with them.
SHORTLIST (Alphabetical)
I Dream For Ronnie
By Rex Arrasmith
Whoa! That was a doozy.
He said his name was Asa and he was 15 years old. I told him my name and that I was from his future. This was only a dream. Only a dream? I think not. I am a time traveler, a dream weaver. Through shared family genes, I can dream with anyone no longer living. Asa is my great-great grandfather. Instead of a blacksmith apprentice, he is a pirate. A pirate, that is, only in his dreams. His parrot told me Asa had to go back to help on the family farm because his three older brothers went to fight with General Lee.
“How do you do that? I can never remember my dreams.” My uncle rubs his eyes and whispers.
My uncle Ronnie is my best friend. He is my confidant, playmate, idol, and protector. He is three years older than me. I have been following him around ever since I could follow him around. Lately, I have been sleeping at his house to avoid my father. I like telling Ronnie stories. They usually start with my latest dream. In my dreams, I have strength. I have powers. The reality is, my father can be a mean drunk. He doesn’t like my stories, my attitude, or me, most of the time. My uncle has stepped between us more than once. Lucky for me, my dad loves his younger brother Ron and encourages our friendship and never seems to remember the night before.
“What did you dream last night?” Ronnie asks over oatmeal, ignoring the split lip and darkening bruise on my bare shoulder.
“Oh! Last night was the best one yet,” I proclaim.
She said her name was Mary. She asked who I was and was very curious about my “manner of dress.” HA, manner of dress. I told her my shorts and tee-shirt were the way we dress in my time. She looked at me like I was naked. She was dressed, she said, for a formal ball where she fully expected to meet her prince. Was I him, she asked? Lady Mary always met her prince in her dream. Then she would wake up and be just Mary Crow, spinster schoolteacher. I told her she was my great-great grandmother and her prince would come, after the war.
Ronnie showed me how the library works.
“You mean I can borrow any of these and they will let me take them home?”
I learned to read by reading his beloved comic books. He indulged my overactive imagination.
“How fast do you think the Flash can run? Faster than Superman can fly?” “Do you think if Spider-Man gets married, his kids will be like him or Mary Jane?” “I wonder what the Hulk eats.” My questions and his patience were endless. I counted on him to be there for me. He was my muse and the only audience for my stories, my dreams.
Hey Ronnie, it’s me, yeah, in your dream. You look good in your Yankees uniform. Glad to hear boot camp was more fun than you expected. Don’t forget what I taught you about dreams. You’re as strong as the Hulk and as fast as the Flash. I wanted you to know, I will take good care of your baseball cards and comic books. The Yankees are lucky to have you. I can follow you into your dreams now. Don’t worry too much about Vietnam. Let’s play Monopoly until we wake up.
THE LOCKED BOX IN MY CLOSET
By Annie Dawid
Here I keep diaries and the letters Sharon wrote from Harvard, which I didn’t show to the detectives because they’re too personal. For instance, she had a pregnancy scare from a fling in Boulder, but then her period came. And I think she was in love with the Knockout from Newton—infatuated, anyway.
It’s so bizarre, Sal. She’s one of those Jews with blond hair and bright blue eyes. But she’s RELIGIOUS. She keeps the Sabbath!!! (For Christ’s sake, I keep thinking, in 1994!!!) And she’s also a virgin, another anachronism. (If you don’t know that word, look it up, as Dad would say.) But she has this calmness about her I’ve never seen anyone younger than Grandma possess. Could this be because of her “faith”? I use quotation marks because whenever I think of that word, I picture Mom and Dad’s “Blind Faith” album, with that gorgeous half-naked girl on the cover. My roommate looks a lot like her.
I didn’t want the doctors to read this. As much as I wish they could know the “real” Sharon—as much as anyone is real—I’m scared of bursting their proverbial bubble. I don’t think they could handle the truth. It wouldn’t fix anything. I can’t talk to Marilyn about it either, because she has her own fake Sharon she idolizes, only her gaga admiration is based on all the “bad” things Sharon did.
After the murder, Dr. Mom sent me to a shrink. Coincidentally, I was into wearing all black then, but I stopped. Sally the punker, Sharon the hippie: both of us behind the times. Maybe that’s why she got so much over on the doctors, because she appealed to their sense of nostalgia. She was going to change the world, too, via her journalism, just like the doctors once thought they’d do with medicine. They spent three years in Togo teaching the indigenous people about sewage and disease. Now Dr. Mom’s clients are all yuppie babies, and Dr. Dad makes lots o’ bucks operating on all the stressed out men having coronaries at their silicon chip jobs. Wow—the world’s really changed, huh. I suppose you would call Sharon an idealist. Dr. Dad called me a nihilist when I was 13, then made me look it up. It’s pretty accurate—before and now.
Shrink: Tell me what’s on your mind.
Me: Nothing.
Shrink: I imagine it’s very hard for you right now, after your sister’s brutal murder. Do you worry you might be next?
And so on. He called me a survivor, which really pissed me off. I quit. The doctors went to this guy for a year. Maybe that’s what’s kept them together. Who knows? If it isn’t too horrible to say so, they seem like they love each other more now. Like my sister’s death made them closer, ironed out the gunk in their marriage. They’d hate to hear me say such a thing, but it’s true. For instance, Dr. Dad has cut back all overtime, except emergencies, and Dr. Mom is majorly into the communal meal experience. Now it’s a rule we have to have dinner “as a family” four nights a week. Which is ironic, because it was always Sharon who was off somewhere calling (or not calling) to say she couldn’t make dinner. Me, I don’t do clubs or teams or any of that high school crap. Mostly I hang out with Marilyn or by myself, go to movies, drink coffee on Pearl Street and write in my diary. The doctors think I’m pretty boring.
Being Free
By Noorya Khan
Mashal was sitting in the car, waiting for her parents and 7-year-old son to bring things from the mart. They were going on a vacation together and her son loved to munch during the journey.
Her car was parked a little away from the store; the pole light next to the car illuminated the street ahead of her. In the faint light, she saw a stooped figure moving towards her car. His tattered clothes and unclean attire told her he was a beggar. She kept watching, skeptical until he crossed her car. He went by, but for the second he was passing, a little seed of worry grew in her mind and she thought; I don’t want to die.
She laughed at her little scare: He wasn’t going to kill you. She unconsciously looked towards her right, from where the mini mart was in sight, her thoughts drifting away. She thought how people and circumstances changed you and your entire way of looking at life. I don’t want to die, was, All I want to do is die, a few months ago.
Her mind took her back to the sting of his sharp nails scraping along her cheeks, the pull of his strong hands plucking her hair out of her scalp, the maniacal voice tearing through her eardrums. That lonely sitting in the dark, for hours, after the storm of kicks and fists subsided. When she picked up her broken self and cleaned the mess of bruises and purple blotches, the storm always left.
Later she found herself listening to the traumatized rant of her mind:
I want to die.
I want to die.
I want to die.
She was amazed how at one point of life your circumstances can make you feel so trapped that you wish for death and how when they change, when you find yourself getting free, the idea of death sounds rather distant. How, now, the idea seemed very strange but still oddly familiar. Now, after she was free from the demon that had trapped her for ten years.
She thought about the demon. Should she refer to him as a demon? She was glad to ask this question of herself. This was new too.
Because now that she was out of that bubble in which both of them were trapped, she could see he had his own demons. Unsolved, unattended mysteries, or rather miseries, that came out as strong outbursts. She could see his demons now in the form of a violent mother and a ghost of a father.
She wished him a free life too and decided not to call him a demon from now onwards. He also had the right to live normally and she had seen little remnants of the normality after their marriage, in the initial years, when his addiction had not taken full control of him.
Happy footsteps and laughter approached her, bringing her back from her detour to that dark niche in her mind which, she was happy to realize, was getting lighter day by day. Her son came running towards her and started showing her all the munchies he had bought for the trip. She smiled and put an arm around her son’s shoulders and absorbed all the excitement and thrill dripping from his face.
The circumstances change; as the former have, maybe these will too, but she wanted to remember every bit of these. She wanted to enjoy the fact that her surroundings made her think: I don’t want to die.
It was Winter When
By Dawn Lodge
I used my finger to trace a pattern into the condensation, to see past the place where we were. We sat at the top of the bus; it was winter and it felt it just as much inside as it did outside. I wrote my name and then yours and before I could finish the love heart, there was too much water running down the window and our names distorted. I rubbed them out with the sleeve of my coat before anyone could see it, the mess of it all.
Every seat was taken so Helen had to stay downstairs with the bags. She stood at the front of the bus near the driver, too anxious to take the seat reserved for the elderly and disabled. I didn’t like her enough to laugh at her awkwardness. I felt the cold everywhere, the kind of cold that only a hot bath can thaw, and I fell into a dream. I could have been watching a film it was so vivid, the neon of the shops on the wet streets below making the images in my mind cinematic. I saw you move your hand towards mine, fingertips searching for a response. I saw you move closer, pressing your shoulder to mine, your thigh to my thigh. I felt the knot in my stomach as the orange glow from the street lamps flooded a fake warmth over us and I felt the pull of you: that need.
In the early hours, slightly high from too much wine and so much travelling, I went to bed where Helen was already sleeping. Walking past you, you reached out to stop me and my fingers, eager to touch yours, held on for a second and I felt that pull again, the harpoon grasp of lust. The sky outside was a pregnant bruise swollen with snow and it made us feel like we were alone.
Fresh Meat
By Alan Morris
Northeast, Northwest, Northwest, Northeast, the boots swing first one way then another. A moment before they had danced on air, scrabbling for a foothold they could not find. Above, a hempen rope creaks like a coffin lid as the corpse dangles from the gallows tree. The crowd disperses—some to taverns, others to brothels, a few back to work. The corpse, the focus of so much gleeful anticipation … No longer of any interest. This corpse is not intended to be interred in clay or cast unceremoniously into a lime-filled pit.
No, this corpse is for Anatomist Hall where death delights to aid the living.
Not so much a place as a source of smell: Alcohol, Abbatoir, a soupson of the graveyard’s bubbling hot wax isinglass cauldron. Don’t enquire about the contents.
Doctors and dissectors armed with lancet, probe and saw seek to answer the question: What is life? How to reignite it? Now, that is the question. Could electricity provide the vital spark?
Mr. Grubb calls the meeting to order. “Today my friends will decide … Our subject is fresh, almost warm … his limbs still pliant, no sign of corruption or putrefaction yet. Yes, very fresh … FRESH MEAT.’’
The experiment to revive the dead is staged upon a stage. The crowd pay their tuppences and shuffle in, cushions a penny extra. Mr. Grubb presides as master of ceremonies. In the background apparatus hums, sparks fly up.
The corpse sits slumped in the middle of the stage, electrodes attached. At the back the assistant—he should have been called Igor—cranks the handle. Grubb gives the signal. “Now!” The lever is thrown … a jolt … the corpse gasps. The audience gasps. Again the lever is thrown and the corpse opens a baleful eye. The audience stares back. Again. The corpse rises and, arms outstretched, staggers towards the audience. The audience sways back.
Mr. Grubb, losing control of himself and his experiment, produces a lancet and slits the corpse’s throat from ear to ear.
Future performances are banned. (History does not reveal whether Mary Shelley was one of those carried fainting from the auditorium.)
One final thought as you close your eyes: Don’t sleep too long or too deep.
Remember—we are all just fresh meat.
Painted Walls
By Will Walton
She dipped the roller in the pan then smeared streaks of pink across the blue wall. Drops of paint ran down like tears. It made her think back to the tadpoles skimming blindly across the top of the water in the stream behind her childhood home. She smoothed down the runs and dipped the roller again. She heard the old hardwood floor creaking, footsteps passing by in the hall—one door being opened and shut and then another.
Niobe!?
In here, she hollered.
He opened the bedroom door. She was standing with her back to him, facing the painted wall, holding the roller with her left, her right, contouring her stomach.
Why did you do this?! he asked. We talked about this! We agreed to wait this time!
She turned her head slightly and rested her chin on her shoulder, said nothing. He waited for a moment, then walked out of the empty room and back down the hall. She put on one more row.
After unscrewing the roller from its extension, she dropped it in a bucket of water to soak. She poured the leftover paint from the pan back into the can and beat the lid down tight with the butt-end of a flathead, then wedged the tip of her middle finger between the label and the handle and watched it rise and fall into the fold of her fingers as she stood up. The drop cloth she left spread out on the floor, and then walked over to the closet.
She slid the door open, took a breath. Sitting in the back corner, up under a hanging row of tagged clothing, was another can of paint—dried runs of baby blue down its side. She sat the pink on top and let the handle fall to the side.
She was sliding the door closed, and then she stopped. Put her hands to her stomach. Smiled. It was the second time in a long time—the first came earlier that day, just before she bought the paint.
LONGLIST (Alphabetical)
Talal Gedeon Achi, Regina
Ema Augustyniak, Sisters
Harold Bauld, Aerodynamics
Jordan Bidwell, Quicksand, Georgia
Devyani Borade, Unpaid Debts
Sophie Buchel, Poppy
Fiona Cassim, Shadows
Sierra Donahue, Before We Woke
Kyle Ewers, The Cabin
Catherine Fischer, Fallow
James Freeze, A Friend Remembered
Josh Gaines, City Vignette: Riverfront
Van G. Garrett, Shutterbug
Marie Gethins, Waiting for the Big One
David Gibson, Work-Life Balance
Joseph Giordano, At the Cemetery
Marian Green, Good News
Grace Haddon, Ghosts
Bruce Haedrich, Brown Eyed Girl
Alan Dennis Harris, The Decision
Alyson Hilbourne, I Don’t Like Mondays
Judy Hodgetts, Tom’s Chair
Justin Hoo, Dead Air
Caroline Hurley, Am I Dying, Nurse?
Ashlie Hyer, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Camillus John, The Woman Who Shagged Halloween
Kayla Kade, Mila
Tony Kicinski, Ginger, the Cat
Victoria Lach, Barilla
Victoria Lach, Vancomycin
Susanne Lee, Food
John S. Lewis, Sins of the Father
Kit Lai Loke, The Visitor
Sharon Lowry, No Sex Please
Beverly C. Lucey, Short Cuts
Fabiyas M V, Sharngadharan
Karl MacDermott, Hard Shoulder
Bhavin Marolia, An Unhealed Wound
Simone Martel, The Confession Scene
Tyrean Martinson, The Jacket
Deirdre McGrath, Marina’s Pact
Alex McLean, Cat and Mouse
Perry McDaid, Boundaries
Catherine Meara, Evidence of God
Gargi Mehra, The Cell
Douglas W. Milliken, Dead Actors
Alan Morris, Elf Shot
Alan Morris, I Only Wanted to See Them Dance
Stephanie Musarra, August Heat
Linda Musita, Canibales
Amos Njoku, Running Away From Tony
Pat O’Rourke, Edge of Insanity
Judith Papworth, Don’t Say Goodbye …
Finbar Rafferty, Hemingway or Fitzgerald?
Matt Robinson, Marie’s Plan
Kim Russell, The Bay Tree
Maire Ryan, Lucy’s Reconstruction
Elizabeth Scott, Natural Disasters
Rose Servitova, The Professor
Georgene Smith Goodin, Disaster Management
Joshua Steele, My Friend
Jennifer Stuart, Greatness
Pablo Tavarez, Divorced
Uliana Tatsakovych, Paint It and Live It
Jagriti Thakur, Papa and the Crimson Clouds
Matt Turner, Blind Metropolis
Corinna Underwood, Back End of the Year
Robert Walton, One Stone
Stephanie Weigle, Routine
David J. Wing, The Search
Lockard Young, Carol M.
Justin Zipprich, Baby Bird
BRILLIANT FLASH FICTION 
All the stories are wonderful !!