Not a lot of wiggle room in a 99-word story. This year’s crop of flash fiction contest entries kept it short, but not always sweet or simple. Chosen once again by yours truly, poet and novelist David Holper, retired children’s librarian JoAnn Bauer, Booklegger owner Jennifer McFadden and retired Booklegger co-owner Nancy Short, the winning author and finalists brought us distilled narratives of every stripe. Dive into their offerings ready to sample the supernatural, melancholy, family bonds, risks, remembrance and maybe murder. Find a cozy chair and a beverage, then settle in for tales ranging from familiar to fantastic.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Winner
The Birth of the First Siren
By Harmony Mooney, Eureka
The princess escaped the palace with enough to purchase a sailing vessel and small crew for the journey. At sea, a whirlpool captured the ship, and the sailors perished, but the princess became something else. She became part of the shipwreck and part of the sea.
Over the years, the princess made that shipwreck her home; ate her fill of mollusks, crustaceans, seaweed and sharks; learned to swim skillfully through strong currents; sunbathed on the rocky coasts of the islands; befriended dolphins, mermaids and ghosts; grew razor sharp teeth and webbing between fingers and toes; hunted sailors with lullabies.
This story took several unexpected turns. Halfway through the first sentence it’s clear that we are not embarking on a conventional fairytale path. As the princess becomes “part of the shipwreck and part of the sea,” fully abandoning not only her royal role, but her human identity, the story turns mythic, the shedding of a former self an act of freedom. — Jennifer McFadden
This tale is both an epic and a miniature, a dark fairy tale with an anti-hero princess that haunts the imagination. It also feels like an allegory of disaster and survival, and making a home somewhere new as the heroine transforms herself into something fearless and ferocious. — Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Mom’s Apple Stamps
By Mitch Finn, Eureka
The stamps from the apples coated Mom’s Mason jars. Whenever she peeled them off the apples, they left trails of glue on the rind. She washed them in an old colander. Mom ate Braeburn slices fresh off her paring knife. Along with walnuts, blue cheese and balsamic vinaigrette, she liked diced Fujis on mixed greens. Granny Smiths were the basis for her chutney and pies. For some reason, she found it fit to save every sticker. I wasn’t sure what to do with the jars. Mom had all kinds of stuff like that when we cleaned out her house.
How can such a mundane object evoke so many memories? — JoAnn Bauer
How May I Help You?
By Sue Greene, Arcata
Eight stories up, she adjusted her headset.
Her caller was angry. None of her polite scripted responses, closely monitored by the company, made him any happier.
She listened, watching the drops of rain running down the call center window, racing towards the ledge to freefall into the fetid puddles in the street. Gravity sucks, she thought.
Her caller took a breath. She began another scripted response. Halfway through it, she hit the disconnect button.
Nobody believes you’ll hang up on them when you’re the one talking. They think it’s a bad connection.
She learned this long ago.
Despite the required brevity, the author effectively conveyed how long, tedious, and bleak the hours at a call center must feel. I was so glad when the character disconnected the call! It was the only bit of power available to her. — Jennifer McFadden
Having spent many hours on the other end of these calls, this is a reminder that the frustration goes both ways and that there are many ways of coping! — JoAnn Bauer
Painting a grim picture of a woman working the phones at a help line, we sense the claustrophobic limitations of her life — mostly shown through the protagonist’s observations of the caller, the weather, herself — and we see her use the only agency she has left: hanging up on an angry caller. — David Holper
Phew
By Kristi Patterson, Eureka
My brother ran faster than me. He was up and over the gate before I had reached the watering trough. “Help me!” I screamed. He’s the one who’d thrown rocks at the bull —whose hot breath reached my neck as I leapt for the gate. I hit it, reached over the barbed wire, threw myself over the top, and fell 6 feet to the ground. Morning brought bruises.
“What happened to you?” Gram asked.
My brother’s eyes pleaded to keep quiet as he slid his bowl of Cap’n Crunch across the table to me.
A timeless story. All of us as children had adventures and even near-death experiences that our parents were never privy to. I love how the story starts in the middle, “My brother was faster than me.” We are dropped right into dramatic action. The theme of family dynamics is artfully illustrated as the siblings negotiate silently in Gram’s presence. I suspect Cap’n Crunch and sibling loyalty won out over Gram’s potential sympathy, concern and imposition of justice. — Nancy Short
Every pair of siblings has a “Please don’t tell Gram” story, and this one gives us the calamity and the negotiation with economy and humor. — Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
The Night Janitor in Winter
By Kristi Patterson, Eureka
The night janitor flicks a switch, and a fluorescent buzz illuminates muddy tiles and splattered toilets. He fake smiles widely in the mirror, grimacing at another space where a tooth used to be.
In a room across town, where the rent is cheap and the paint is chipped, sits the janitor’s wife eating cold oatmeal. There’s no money for sweetness or warmth — in their food or their apartment.
The janitor whistles, swishing the mop. He can count on three things: Winter brings rain, mud doesn’t ask questions, porcelain never needs comfort.
This may be one of the bleakest things I’ve ever read, but even quiet desperation deserves a voice. — JoAnn Bauer
Should Have Left the Porchlight On
By Bill Morris, Eureka
He’d been drinking when the doorbell rang. He would have been drinking if the doorbell hadn’t rung.
He got up and shuffled heavily to the door. On the step stood a masked figure with a large blade, black cloak.
Halloween. He’d forgotten all about goddamn Halloween.
“Wait here for one second, I’ll go grab you something.”
In the kitchen, rummaging through doors, his wife: “Who is it?”
“Trick-or-Treater. We got any candy?”
“Honey? Halloween was last week.”
There’s a subgenre of flash fiction I call the joke story — and this is one of the most successful I’ve seen of that form. There’s something truly funny about a man so inebriated he doesn’t recognize the Grim Reaper when he comes to call, and I found the indirect delivery of the punch line very satisfying. — Nancy Short
Why Not
By Bill Morris, Eureka
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
We had been there too long and probably shouldn’t have come at all.
“It seems like an awful risk,” she said.
“All risks are awful. That’s what makes them risks.”
“If we win?”
“Barcelona, Rio, the Keys. Anywhere.”
“If we lose?”
“It will be an interesting winter.”
“Fine. But I don’t want to watch.”
“Here,” I still had some bills in my pocket, everything else was waiting on the table.
“Then everything on black. Take this and buy us a drink.”
The wheel and the room began to slowly spin.
Told mostly through the clipped dialogue of a couple at a roulette table, a clear picture of their lives emerges. They pin their hopes on a big bet to help them escape the toil of their lives, but we sense, when the wheel stops spinning, it’s more likely to be, as he says, “an interesting winter.” — David Holper
The Wild
By Meriah Miracle, Eureka
Scuffed white shoes slipped down moss covered rocks. Undiscovered treasures awaited her under the trickling waterfall. Bugs she couldn’t yet name chattered. Frogs croaked despite their uninvited guests. A cow skull stared from downstream. It was the first and last time her siblings brought her to their special place. They were moving to the city and leaving the only home she’d ever known. In this place though — across the cow pasture, through the pen with the charging bull, at the end of the stream — was one final moment for this 4 year old to belong to the wild.
The lovely details in this story build a scene in just a few lines, and the momentous occasion and the sibling dynamics are revealed with similar brevity. The final image of the penned bull feels connected to the future of this child’s feral nature. — Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Shallow Grave
By Sue Greene, Arcata
I don’t want to tell you your business; you’re doing a fine job! But I’d use a square shovel for the corners there.
Pretty out here, isn’t it? You picked a good spot. Your husband will like it. Quiet and peaceful. Shady, but not too close to the trees; then you’d have root problems. And not many coyotes around to mess things up before it snows. That’s important if you’re going shallow like that.
Yeah, I’d invest in a square shovel. It makes for a neat, snug hole.
And it’s better for smoothing over- once you’re finished.
I love the tone here. Just a little friendly yet sinister advice! — Jennifer McFadden
Told solely through the monologue of someone watching a woman dig a shallow grave for her dead husband, we root around (pun intended) for explanations: Was the husband’s death a murder? Is the witness giving advice the one who will replace the dead husband? — David Holper
Listen, men will stop and give you unsolicited advice, even when you’re digging a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. But they aren’t bad tips, and the dark humor builds steadily. — Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Checklist
By Meriah Miracle, Eureka
“Are you sure you want to do this?” She ignored him.
Each year since her diagnosis checked off one more thing she couldn’t do. Bathe? Check. Feel her left foot? Check. Swallow food? Check.
She hovered in the doorway of the small plane, smiling for the first time since she last danced.
They wouldn’t know she’d never been skydiving. Not until after.
At the last moment, her brain almost betrayed her, but she grabbed the side of the door with her functioning hand and pulled herself into the open air.
Freedom? Check.
If only for 60 seconds.
A portrait of a woman’s spirit as she faces the inexorable decline of a body ravaged by disease. She is steadfast and unflinching as she loses function, seemingly devoid of denial, but also of joy. Yet, in this skydiving scene she smiles, “for the first time since she last danced.” She has reclaimed autonomy. In the face of certain death, she reverses the negative checklist to chalk up a positive, “Freedom.” She controls her fate, attaining a moment of joy. — Nancy Short
The Closet
By Kristi Patterson, Eureka
The floor of the closet feels icy on her belly and elbows as Carrie lies there in the darkness. She brushes the hems of long Sunday School dresses out of her eyes. The only sound is the crunch from her own teeth as she devours cookies out of a large box she stole from the pantry. They soothe the humiliation of stepping on the scale at Weight Watchers in front of church ladies who clapped for her 1-pound weight loss and wished her a happy 11th birthday.
The 11-year-old protagonist is enduring all kinds of confinement: the expectations of the church ladies, the constraint of long Sunday school dresses, the darkness and cold, which she has retreated to for comfort and perhaps in defiance of the adult expectations. Alone, miserable, on the floor and in the dark, she is, in a small way, asserting her individuality. In a way, her unhealthy habit may for now be saving her life. — Nancy Short
Nobody should have an 11th birthday like this one. The writer let us feel Carrie’s isolation and mortification, and the details had me right there with her in the darkness of the closet, and at the excruciating scene at Weight Watchers. — Jennifer McFadden
This author hits the shame button squarely on the mark: a girl hiding in a closet, binging on cookies, and wincing at the memory of the church ladies at Weight Watchers applauding her 1-pound weight loss and then congratulating her on her miserable 11th birthday. — David Holper
The Tunnel Rat
By Tony Cometto, Hydesville
Paul Stevens crawled from a tunnel southeast of Saigon for the last time 50 years ago. Demons chased him ever since.
He gazed at a leaden sky, then sideways at the barrel of a revolver pressed against his temple. He thumbed the hammer back and gently squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Shocked, he put the gun down. He examined the unfired cartridge. The primer had not gone off. It was a defective factory round. Virtually impossible.
Quietly he said out loud, “Hummf, things seem to be looking up.”
This person has decided to take charge of his fate after a lifetime of struggle and loss. He methodically, unemotionally, goes about committing suicide. Yet, his reaction to the failure of his attempt, which was “virtually impossible,” is not disappointment. A ray of hope glimmers. The story succinctly captures a moment of transformation, of grace. — Nancy Short
June Bugs
By Meriah Miracle, Eureka
June bugs crunched under her bicycle tires as she circled the ring of the streetlight. The sun behind the horizon cast a red glow, and she imagined herself an invincible giant riding a fiery chariot. Nothing so powerful would be scared of the dark left behind as her father’s brake lights faded from view.
“There’s no need to be dramatic,” her Grandmother had said. “You’ll see him again.”
But she wouldn’t.
As the story opens the red glow of the fading sun, the sound of crunching June bugs under bicycle tires, and the receding brake lights signal and ending. The young girl at the heart of the story, envisions herself as gigantic and invincible to stay off the fear building inside her. This poignant, potent scene is beautifully executed. — Jennifer McFadden
Focusing on what will likely become one of the darker days of her life, the author paints a vivid picture of a girl riding her bike under the ring of a streetlight, crunching June bugs with her bicycle tires, and knowing, despite what her grandmother says, her dad is gone forever. — David Holper
Nowhere does the narrator tell us what this girl feels or fears, but we get it through the images and imaginings, laid out as simply as the last line. And in 71 words? A flex. — Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Back in the Day
By Jane Bowen
The hot autumn wind kicks up a dust vortex, and I lean further into the shade of the camouflage netting. The Fed-loaded helicopter hovers near the ridge, men leaning out to shake their heads at the bare ground below.
The copter leaves, and I bid it farewell with a two-fingered salute and a hoarse cry of victory. Three days ago, the bare slope was a lush garden. Now, my summer’s work is miles away, drying in a nondescript shed in an unremarkable valley.
I return to my dusty work, packing up camp until next year.
A little bit of Humboldt County history from the CAMP days. — JoAnn Bauer
Blue Lake Day
By Nancy Resnick, McKinleyville
Teal flowing over milk chocolate. Purple glints. Glass-smooth in parts, intriguing craggy bits. Round and heavy in my hand. The size of a bocce ball, maybe? But I’ve only played once.
I covet this rock. It will go in my backpack, no matter what it displaces, no matter how bumpy the river crossing, no matter how slippery and treacherous the ground I need to cover.
This fine day has already proven itself. Floating on the cool green surface, seeing the tall hills beyond, and then — the bald eagle skimming the water upriver.
It is enough.
When so much of our lives seem fraught — what a great reminder that it’s possible to walk away into the wild and find peace and joy again. — JoAnn Bauer
This article appears in Flash Fiction 2024.