AllFlash
The following flash fiction stories were submitted to Janet Reid’s flash contests over the years. (Her blog is an impressive resource of publishing tips and writing advice. You can find it here.)
The rules of the contests vary, but most challenge the writer to:
-
Write a story of 100 words or fewer (a story has a beginning, middle and end by definition)
-
Include 5 prompt words (the prompt words change, and include occasional bonus words which even Google has barely heard of!)
Here’s my first winner from 2015. The words were FERAL, NUMB, WRY, SCENE and SUIT. Here’s what I came up with (note that some of these words I included in larger words, which is allowed):
Scene from tomorrow:
No Chance Lake. Flaming fiberglass on the water.
Eyes of the crowd melting in numb denial. Eddie’s singed hair awry, fireproof suit not so fireproof.
Engine split in rotiferal defeat.
Scene from today:
Slim Chance Lake. Sprinting hull racing water.
Numberless eyes wide in denial. Eddie wearing his wry smile like a trump suit. Beneath, fauna scatter in poriferal terror, whispering “Neptune’s loose!”
Scene from yesterday:
Big Chance Lake. Marie tinkers beneath the hood, feral eyes narrow on each gear. Suitors galore have numbed her hard heart and Eddie should have kept his eyes on the dowry.
Here’s what Janet said about the entry:
Things to notice here: obviously the reverse chronology. The name of lake changes each day. “Rotiferal” and “poriferal.”
And holy smokes, just read this out loud.
Then there’s this: “fauna scatter in poriferal terror, whispering “Neptune’s loose!”
That sentence is sublime. It says everything about speed and noise without saying anything about volume or velocity. In other words: gorgeous subtle writing.
Here’s another contest winner. This one is a eulogy, written the morning after my mother died in 2020. The prompt words were COLD, BLUE, SHIVER, FOX and SOX (if you’re scouring for the last two, I enjambed them in multiple words, one of which spanned two lines):
So much depends upon the
Cold
Blue
Shivering shadows
So much depends upon
Tamperproof:
Oxazepam in the morning
Clozapine at night
Beds unmade
In the evening shade
of
My mother’s
Cold
Blue
Shivering smile
So much depends upon
Loss,
That fucking word
The not-heard
Shard
Of
Memory lost,
Of
Years spent
Tossed
By gutless words
(You never heard) like
Cognition
Recognition
Dementia
Alzheimer’s
So much depends upon
Fate
My father
His oxygen taken
Stolen like breath
From a
Cold
Blue
Shivering
Dawn.
Here’s my last contest winner, from 2019. This entry featured a different prompt: use the phrase “If she’d had pearls she would have been clutching them.” There were no stipulations about how to use the phrase. Inspired by the stunning opening of Skinny Dip, one of my favorite books by Carl Hiaasen, I wrote the following:
If
Marlena thought to wear a life jacket
She’d
Be having a better time of it. Instead, all my wife
Had
Around her neck was my string of diamonds, thrown like
Pearls
Before swine into the abyss of infidelity. As
She
Tumbled head-over-heels toward the churning wake, I knew I
Would
Have no problem explaining her absence. Cruise officials
Have
No real legal recourse, especially when the captain has
Been
Recently entangled with a certain passenger in several sweaty,
Clutching
Versions of down dog, as her vengeful selfies will surely show
Them.