Flash Fiction 2025

Our talented readers again crammed fantastic stories into 99 words or fewer for the Journal’s annual Flash Fiction Contest. Retired children’s librarian JoAnn Bauer, NCJ Managing Editor Jennifer Fumiko Cahill, poet and novelist David Holper, Booklegger owner Jennifer McFadden and retired Booklegger co-owner Nancy Short returned as judges, diving into diminutive dramas, sample-sized stories and teeny-tiny tales. (The shortest is a microscopic 28 words.) This year’s winner is Michael McLaurin, who tends bar at Dead Reckoning Tavern when he’s not writing, and who says he “tried to do something that’s kind of outside of my wheelhouse.” Well, it worked.

Winner

Flight

By Michael McLaurin

When you see the sun start to go down, you move your ass across this field, to that house over yonder. Don’t you knock or make a peep until it’s full dark and you see that lantern in the window. When that lady come out you talk to her nice and you do what she say, no question. You may have to wait a day, maybe two, but when she put you on that train you head straight for that baggage car and you look for me. I’ll see you there. Godspeed. We’ll meet again on the other side.

The intensity of the scene revs up immediately with layers of fear, frustration and urgency, all of which the speaker makes us feel. But what strikes me most is how much the speaker’s words illuminate what must be a frightened kid on their own, about to take on a dangerous journey. We get a sense of someone we never see or hear from but for whom we are holding our breath.

— Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

Relying solely on dialect, we hear the character’s hard-won advice to someone still enslaved, illuminating the dangers ahead, the trustworthy woman and the ultimate goal of freedom. Though we never see the person hearing this advice, part of the strength of this piece is that we know how vital the advice is, as well as the need to remember every detail.

— David Holper

‘Flight’ is full of urgency. The words being conveyed are of the utmost importance, and the listener’s life depends on them. The diction and tone immediately alert the reader that the stakes are high and there is no time to waste. I hung on every word.

— Jennifer McFadden

It is rare for a short monologue to so thoroughly portray a distinct character, time and place with word choice and rhythm. I was transfixed by the force of this story.

— Nancy Short

Finalists

The Oregon Trail

By Lauri Rose

Mama’s cherry wood bureau. Grandma’s China. Hazel the milk cow gone lame. The cast iron lye pot. Father’s anvil. Mama and the new baby. Westward bound no more.

This terse list evokes memories of all the books and movies I’ve seen about the westward movement. Pioneers had to leave so much behind that what was taken took on huge significance. I also appreciate the ambiguity. A hopeful reading is that a new home has been found. More bleakly, has all been lost somewhere along the way? 

— JoAnn Bauer

Utilizing just a brief list of things and people left behind, the narrator paints a bleak picture of making a journey westward, suggesting both a new life and the trauma that cannot help but follow. 

— David Holper

In a succinct tale of heartbreak, the writer’s list of what has been abandoned on the Oregon Trail is beyond poignant. Sadness distilled. A chronicle of loss.

— Nancy Short

Anticipation

By Elly Roversi

Towering trees loomed over the small car zipping along the one lane road. My stomach dropped with each speeding mile. The man next to me to me was silent, eyes on the road. His energy was murky. I kept my mouth shut, hands shoved beneath my legs. My feet looked small in leather shoes. We pulled onto a lane, pastures stretched along both sides. A large house loomed at the end, paint peeling, dogs lurking around the corners. My father pounded on the door. My grandfather glared at me from under massive eyebrows while my father sped away.

To be a child at the whim of angry men is scary business, a feeling conveyed through the details of the speaker sitting on their hands and the smallness of their feet and the strange dogs. The anticipation isn’t over once the destination is reached, either.

— Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

The series of short, declarative sentences and detail foreshadow a disturbing tension. And when the protagonist arrives at her grandfather’s house, and her father leaves for good, that tension manifests perfectly in the grandfather’s glaring and his “massive eyebrows.”

— David Holper

This is one of those stories that benefits from its restraint. Every line is potent. The silence of the driver is menacing and the narrator’s fear is palpable, though it’s not overtly expressed. The storyteller makes themself as small and silent as possible, knowing only that they are headed somewhere they don’t want to go. I was scared of what would unfold when they got there.

— Jennifer McFadden

Hyacinth

By Amantha Wood

Her belly fluttered. Sweating from the humidity, she tugged the zipper of her work pants, straining the fabric over her belly. The pill hadn’t worked, just a little bleeding. She stayed pregnant.

Later, after her shift, they paddled the swamp. Drunk on moonshine, gliding between cypress trees, they snagged in the hyacinth. She plunged her paddle through the thick mat of green foliage. Liquor, making loose her grasp, they watched as the paddle sank into the water. She laughed, swallowing heavy air.

“You made us a burden,” he chided, drawing his paddle, pushing them away from the choking hyacinth.

Water hyacinth makes a fine metaphor for this moment — something beautiful or an obstruction, depending. The man’s response to the dropped paddle speaks to both the literal snag and the pregnancy. The final image of “the choking hyacinth” doesn’t bode well.

— Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

In the humid atmosphere of the South, the narrator focuses on a pregnant woman and her lover paddling through a swamp. They’re both literally and metaphorically stuck, and the man’s comment that the pregnancy is her fault suggests worse obstacles ahead.

— David Holper

The imagery is so well done in this story. The swamp, the difficulty of paddling through the “choking” hyacinth — nothing is going smoothly for this pair. They are both flailing, though in different ways. The word burden stings and ends the episode with a bitter feeling.

— Jennifer McFadden

Mr. MacPherson Was A Barber

By Amantha Wood

“The MacPherson family remains clear in my memory for few reasons,” Uncle Hugh’s voice trembled.

“One, despite a quarantine sign on the family door, I often visited young Dougie MacPherson’s bedside to play cards. When I returned home, mother, beside herself with anxiety, gave me a hot bath in which she plunged large tablets of chloride mercury as a possible disinfectant.”

Uncle Hugh’s tremor shook the Queen of Hearts as he discarded.

“Two, I remember when my father remarked to Mr. MacPherson at young Dougie’s funeral that the raise in young men’s haircut prices to 15 cents was absurd.”

This piece, about an elderly man reminiscing about the past, takes us to an era when life was very different, but the characters’ concerns (or lack thereof) are familiar. Ignoring medical caution (like a quarantine sign), the use of truly questionable health treatments, and rising prices are still issues making the news. What I loved the most, though, was the pettiness in the last line. That Uncle Hugh’s memories of the McPherson family include not only Dougie’s terrible illness and death, but also Mr. McPherson’s price increase at the barbershop struck me as very funny but also very human. In the end, our memories might not all be beautiful. Some things just stick in the craw.

— Jennifer McFadden

The Statue

By Larry Crist

I still miss the statue. I grew up with it. I thought it lent the town class. 

Nothing stood there now. The statue had been voted down, taken away, losing narrowly in an election limited to the town’s boundaries and immediate population. They never asked those of us who grew up with it, who attended homecoming parades, Kinetic Sculpture races and all the myriad events — we who had cruised the plaza 10,000 times on lonely weekends looking for love and entertainment — inhabited now by itinerant weed pickers from somewhere else, with little sense of history.

The statue is gone and, perhaps, more appropriately situated now. However, strong feelings both for and against its removal still remain. Here’s an heartfelt expression of one of those sides.

— JoAnn Bauer

PMS

By Elly Roversi

They were the only ones left at work. Mike’s pen drummed against the desk. Sonia made her shopping list. Mike’s pen drummed. Sonia glared at Mike’s bald spot. Mike sighed and clicked his pen. Sonia imagined strangling Mike. Mike drummed his pen. Sonia pictured Mike’s head getting ripped off by a T-Rex’s sharp teeth. Mike tapped his foot and pen. Sonia picked up her laptop and got up to leave. Mike whistled tunelessly. Sonia smashed her laptop into Mike’s head and walked out, heels clicking in the silence.

I think this story captures an emotion that is probably universal — a level of irrational irritation that can seize a person and build to seismic levels. 
I laughed aloud and was grateful to not be in the room with Sonia. 

— Nancy Short

Mother May I 

By Nancy Resnick

At 40, these lines aren’t going anywhere. More than one person has told me I have classic RBF— resting bitch face. Never been one to throw away smiles. 

Leaving him: better late than never. I’m done confusing need and loneliness with happily ever after. My biological clock, ticking too loud to hear that he didn’t want kids. Steamy goodbye sex a bonus, leaving this tiny speck — precious gift or lethal hand grenade? I couldn’t do worse than my mom. My Magic 8-ball says “outlook cloudy” — but I can feel my mouth lifting as my hands cradle my belly.

I love the tough narrator, a no-nonsense realist who has no time for sentimentality. Yet despite the murky future, she finds herself overtaken by a quietly joyful anticipation as she considers impending parenthood. 

— Nancy Short

A Co-dependent Conversation

By Stevie Lou Díaz

 The other day I was talking to William. William reminded me I was late with his breakfast again. He said he didn’t appreciate having his schedule thrown off and that I rely on him for so many things: exercise, emotional support, networking. The least I could do is give him his breakfast on time. I took it all in stride, except for when he started to suggest I had maybe gained some weight. I told him we both had gained weight, but only one of us looks really toned up. Also, one of us is a horse.  

Many Flash Fiction Contest entries employ a surprise ending, but this one really did surprise and amuse me. How often a conversation about real issues veers into personal aspersions!  There’s not often a comeback that settles the discussion with such finality.

— JoAnn Bauer

The Best Day of My Life

By Jane B. Mackie

During just one year in my thirties, I was a bridesmaid in six weddings. I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I didn’t mind, exactly. But one Saturday, just for fun, I put on a thrift store wedding dress and parked myself at a downtown hotel bar. “It’s a long story,” I told everyone, smiling. I got drunk on French 75s all the kindly strangers bought me. I’m married now and I never told my husband — initially, so I wouldn’t seem crazy. Now I can’t tell him because, if I’m honest, it was the best day of my life.

The woman in this story is my new hero. Ladies, what if you could enjoy the spotlight, good wishes and a princess-level dress without lifetime commitment? The shift from being afraid to look nuts to not wanting to make her husband feel second best adds interest to an already enjoyable lark. 

— Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

This delightful piece reveals a great deal in its opening: “I was a bridesmaid in six weddings. I didn’t even have a boyfriend.” From there, we follow this young woman go have the time of her life at a downtown hotel bar, only to learn that now she is married to a man to whom she can tell none of this — and all that suggests about her life with him.

— David Holper

I love the spirit of this! The narrator constructed a situation, inserted herself at the center of the story, and let the world around her respond. The generosity and camaraderie she received from a handful of strangers is both amusing and heartwarming. That she never tells her husband that the experience topped her own real wedding day is a great finishing touch.

— Jennifer McFadden

One Star Review

By Harmony Mooney

Review from customer: Don’t hire Bob if you actually want to rid your house of demons. We left him to do his exorcism while we ran errands. I didn’t expect that a professional exorcist needed to be micromanaged. We returned home to find him leading two demons in a Zumba session. He even gave us tips on keeping them in good shape. We asked him what they were still doing in our house and Bob had the audacity to act offended. 

Response from owner: My business website clearly advertises my service as an exercise class for demons and ghosts. 

In this time of ubiquitous ads for services and their accompanying Yelp reviews — I found this a very refreshing take on this trend. It does pay to read carefully and spelling still matters!

— JoAnn Bauer

Meet the Family

By Neil Tarpey

While waiting, I studied the Wanted posters. One bank-robbing killer
had a jagged scar above his eyebrow.

When the stagecoach arrived, my sister got off with a cowboy dressed in black. 

“Welcome home to Timbertown, Daisy,” I said, hugging her.

“Greetings, Silas.” Daisy kissed my cheek. 

“This here’s Jake. He’s wanting us to get hitched. Jake, meet my brother. He owns the bank.”

Jake, with a jagged scar above his eyebrow, smiled like a fox. “Howdy, Silas.”

“C’mon, Jake, I’ll show you around. First, let’s go meet your future father-in-law, Sheriff Gideon. He’ll give you a place to stay.”

Westerners are often portrayed as laconic and the understated style of this conversation seems to fit that stereotype. In a very few words, we’re given all the clues from the black clothing to the foxy smile and when Silas finishes his “welcome” speech — one can only imagine what Jake will do next.

— JoAnn Bauer

A tidy period piece. We are transported to the Old West and witness the undoing of a scoundrel. Masterfully told, the scene unfolds at a leisurely pace, with plenty of description, and a punchline.

— Nancy Short

This article appears in Flash Fiction 2025.