As I said in the last post, we had over 500 entries for this year's competition, and a word of thanks must go to the judges - Cathy Bryant, Kevlin Henney, Cathy Lennon, Angela Readman, Tim Stevenson and Rob Walton - for their hard work in reading through and making the difficult decisions.
Thanks to everyone who entered, and remember, if you weren't successful this time, there will be plenty more chances for you to be involved with National Flash-Fiction Day. Just go to the website at http://nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/ to find out more.
Below are a list of the top ten stories, and below that we have shared the stories so you can see for yourselves what great winners we have. Please join us in congratulating these fine writers!
First Place Winner: ‘The Jumper’ by Anne Patterson
Second Place Winner: ‘A One-Word Yet Possibly
Longer-Than-Necessary Personal Essay Dedicated to My Soon-to-Be Ex-Boyfriend
Who Doesn't Believe Me When I Tell Him I Can Write Something This Short That
Sums up Everything There Is to Say about Our Relationship, Our Future Together,
and His Allegedly Legendary Sexual Organ’ by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Third Place Winner: ‘Storm’ by Gemma Govier
Highly Commended Stories:
‘Jessie Learns How To Keep A Secret’ by Alison Wassell
‘Illumination’ by Judi
Walsh
‘When Words Aren’t Enough’ by
Lucy Welch
‘Christmas’ by James
Watkins
‘Always One’ by Tracy
Fells
‘Notes’ by Elaine Marie
McKay
‘Energy Efficient, Extremely Slim, Easy to Install’ by Ed Broom
First Place Winner:
‘The Jumper’
by Anne Patterson
I fell in love with a jumper last Christmas. A
wool-nylon-mohair mix picked up after the Christmas do. On the bus home, I
slipped it on. Mmm; aftershavy, inky, lagery with a touch of exercise. If it
were a scent it would be ‘Office Party’. A group email might have led to a
request to pop it into internal mail, so I hung on. I kept it in bed; close in
winter; further away in summer; like a lover. This Christmas, I’ll wear
it. Underneath I’ll wear nothing. If he asks for his jumper back I’ll give it to
him.
Second Place Winner:
‘A One-Word Yet Possibly
Longer-Than-Necessary Personal Essay Dedicated to My Soon-to-Be Ex-Boyfriend
Who Doesn't Believe Me When I Tell Him I Can Write Something This Short That
Sums up Everything There Is to Say about Our Relationship, Our Future Together,
and His Allegedly Legendary Sexual Organ’
by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Ha.
Third Place Winner:
‘Storm’
by Gemma Govier
First
there was the shock of soft raindrops on my cheeks and nose, then cold, damp
shoulders, thighs, knees. I felt if I ran I could protect my warm
skin. It even rained inside my mouth as I pushed against the wind.
Finally, with misted glasses, I am sodden. My socks squelch in my
shoes. I slow down my pace.
When
you finally said you were leaving, I was calm. It's not being wet, you
see, it's the process of getting wet.
Highly Commended Stories:
‘Jessie Learns How To Keep A Secret’
by Alison Wassell
‘She’s
a secret scribe,’ teased Jessie’s mother. Fuzzy and mellow from her first wine
Jessie took poems from the box under her bed and offered them as a birthday
gift. In the morning they lay in a pile beside her egg and soldiers. Jessie’s
mother kissed the top of her head.
‘I liked the one about the old lady best,’ she said. This was how Jessie
learned that no place is truly secret, nobody to be trusted. The old lady poem
had not been among those offered.
Jessie keeps
her poems in her head now, where they can’t be found.
‘Illumination’
by Judi
Walsh
It’s dark, and the bus is late. In the house opposite, the
woman talks with big gestures. The man turns his glass, half a revolution at a
time. He shouts and starts to leave. As he brushes past, she folds into her
seat like she has a slow puncture. She wipes something from her face: a tear,
or spittle perhaps? The bus arrives. “Oi, missy!” the driver shouts, and I
flash my card at him, racing upstairs to the back. I just manage to see her,
arms extended, mouthing something, no, singing something, twirling by
herself.
‘When Words Aren’t Enough’
by
Lucy Welch
He was like too many words crammed into a box. He'd
come into the cafe every morning for breakfast with all those words tangled
together behind his eyes. The P of Pain looping round the S bends in
Loss, caught within the sharp angles of the A of Anger. He'd do the
crossword and I'd imagine him looking through clues for the key to let the
words out. He'd leave it behind, unfinished. One day we worked on
it, all the staff, to the last square, and gave it back next morning.
That was when he first sang for us.
‘Christmas’
by James
Watkins
First
we dug a hole in the snow. Mama stepped into it naked; we filled snow back in
around her feet. She put her arms out and Papa draped tinsel all around
while I tied back her hair. We hung a bauble from each nipple and I looked for
the fairy to tie to her hairband. I couldn't find it, but attached a small
figurine of the Virgin Mary instead.
On
Christmas Day, Tom Raye the competition judge declared that ours was certainly
the most desirable tree and, according to Papa, had thought so every weeknight
for the last month.
‘Always One’
by Tracy
Fells
There’s always one. The nutter on the bus. An old lady, with
tight white curls like finger rolls, takes the seat behind you. She starts
plaiting your hair. Bit of a cheek, you think. What if your religion prohibits
plaits? What if hair plaiting sets off your narcolepsy? Her breath smells sweet
like pineapple chunks. You twist round to point out how she needs a licence to do
that, lady! She moves to another seat, but her fingers still fiddle at the
back of your neck. The other passengers shift and stare, as if you’re the one.
‘Notes’
by Elaine Marie
McKay
She
placed the first of them where he would see, then turned from the starkness of
its expectation. Later, with taciturn understanding, he wrote on the square of
paper in uncomplicated letters. DOOR.
In
time, the house was a patchwork of butter-coloured spaces that he filled with
the concrete of - FRIDGE, CHAIR, TELEPHONE, SANITARY TOWELS.
For
him, scouring the chaos of domesticity, stripping it back to its very
foundations so that it could be marked with simplicity, became soothing.
In
the evenings, he relaxed, sitting close to her amongst their words,
stroking her hair, drinking sweet tea from CUPS.
‘Energy Efficient, Extremely Slim, Easy to Install’
by Ed Broom
Trap
3 rasps like Hitchens in hospital before I twig that he’s pulled the old cough
‘n’ flush and bounding off the blocks so I slam the bolt and make like Bolt and
flick my belt to give him the Six Nations and I’m rinsing when he dead-legs me
down on the tinned Ambrosia tiles but I weeble up to double pump his eyes with
naturally derived lemon mint hand wash and Haystacks him into the unfavoured
middle Armitage Shanks leaving yours truly to dress, wash and claim my rightful
appointment with the Dyson Airblade VI. It’s a great drier.
