A Cock Among the Bathers
by Sara Hills
Tomorrow at the Tate Modern, while she’s studying Cézanne’s bathers, Jake will take off his pants. Jake, who’s old enough to know that public indecency’s a crime, old enough, sure — but still young enough to be stupid, reckless because he thinks he’s in love, thinks he can win her over if he makes a scene. And before she can grab his arm and say Jake, stop! he’ll have already left his smalls on the wooden floor, and he’ll stand full buck with arms outstretched, trying to achieve, well… bathing, she’ll guess, like one of Cézanne’s malformed women, oyster-white with willowed backs and tree-trunked hips, except Jake’s not a woman — he’s told her as much, said she can’t keep crying her heartbreaks, oppressing him with her problems unless she’s willing to see him as more. And of course she knows he’s a man, it’s his performance schtick she can’t take — his spotlighting, pushing, trying too hard — like tomorrow, at the Tate, when he’ll slip from his smalls before gobble-eyed children and gasping mothers with eye-covering hands, before men muttering Mate, you can’t! and What in God’s name! and Jake’s grin, his pearlescent grin! and his outstretched arms and his fur-tufted ass, cleft as a Cézannesque peach, and the Sir! Sir! from the gallery attendants and the neon security-ites with their walkie-talkies and Jake’s eyes pleading, pleading for her to see it as more than a scene, as a shared story, an anecdote for later, when they can say Remember the time at the Tate? like it’s enough of a something, and though he’ll be singing as they drag him away, tufted cleft in retreat, something falsetto or operatic about love, about water, second chances and firsts, the heat of her hand still echoing on his arm, despite herself, goddammit, she’ll laugh.
About the Author
Sara Hills is the author of TThe Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won or placed in the Smokelong Mikey, 2023, QuietManDave Prize for flash nonfiction, the Retreat West quarterly prize, National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and The Welkin Prize. Sara’s work has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, and the BIFFY 50, as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net.
Emily Rinkema June 2024 Second Prize
Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab
by Emily Rinkema
It’s his turn, and from the back seat he tosses out an easy one. “Would you rather eat a mile of garbage or a mile of worms?” I make eye contact through the mirror, ask some follow-ups: how fat are the worms? Fat. Are they alive? Yes. Would I have to eat everything in the garbage, or just the food-ish things? Everything, he says.
“Easy,” I say. “Worms.”
It’s a game we’ve been playing together since he could talk, since he started spending nights at my apartment, since he learned about worst case scenarios that didn’t involve choice.
I give him one I’ve been saving: “Would you rather drink a cup of your own pee, or half a cup of a stranger’s pee?”
He squeals. “My pee,” he says, and then, “Gross!”
We are a few minutes away now. I slow the car and turn onto an unmarked road. The first few times here we drove right past. When we get there, I’ll wait outside while he sits on a couch across from my sister, supervised, and she’ll cry and ask him questions that all end with the word me. He’ll spend the two-hour drive home silent and I will hate her for it, then hate myself for hating her, unsure which is worse.
“My turn,” he says, his voice low. “Would you rather have me live with you forever or have your arm chopped off with an axe?”
“Another easy one,” I say. I wink at him in the mirror, but he’s looking out the window. He looks just like her. I wonder which would hurt more, the blade severing the limb, or the moment just after, when you realize what’s been done.
About the Author
Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont. Her stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Phoebe Journal, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Bath Flash and Oxford Flash anthologies. You can read her work on her website (https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site) or follow her on X or IG (@emilyrinkema).
Catherine Ogston, June 2024 Third Prize
On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend
by Catherine Ogston
The faerie man is sitting next to me, just like last Friday and the one before that, while forest insects buzz and flit and the evening sunlight touches the nodding bluebell heads. So many dogs he mutters, as yet another runs past the signs telling their owners to keep them on a leash. A man walks on the path, a tripod and Cyclops-eyed camera tucked under one arm, followed by another. How about one of them, the faerie asks and I wrinkle my nose. The faerie hands me a bluebell and tells me that turning it inside out will win me the heart of my true love and so I try peeling the soft trumpet-headed petals but they tear like damp paper and fall groundward. Better keep practising, he tells me although we both know the heavy-scented flowers are about to sink down into the forest floor for another year. Last week the man versus bear debate came up and before I had completed my explanation the faerie man told me, with unsettling adamance, to always choose the bear. In his nimble fingers the delicate petals bend and fold obediently. Your sweetheart’s name starts with M he says and I sigh, ask him to do another one because I’ve had it with Marks and Mikes and Martins. No do-overs he tells me and we go back to sitting in silence, only the whisper of the leaves and ferns in our ears. One of the photographers strides past and the faerie says, maybe he is M and I reply that maybe he is a worse option than the bear. How can you tell asks the faerie and I agree, how can you ever, ever tell?
About the Author
Catherine Ogston lives in Scotland. Flash pieces have appeared in anthologies by Bath Flash Fiction Award, National Flash Fiction Day, Reflex Press plus others. She placed first in TD;LR Press 2022, Flash 500 in Nov 2023 and won the Scottish Association of Writers Flash Fiction trophy in March 2024. Catherine has been shortlisted twice at the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She also writes short stories and longer YA fiction. On X @CatherineOgston
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Ronald Jones, June 2024 Highly Commended
The Bee
by Ronald Jones
The bee that will kill John Smith rises from a flower. To this flower and the next, the bee is an angel, a miracle.
Had today been a Friday, John Smith would have stayed in, poured a small sherry, listened to Radio Four. He might have thought about various chores, admin, accounts…
But today is magnificent, and so will be John’s death. But John does not know this or understand. He does not hear angels or that distant buzz, for he is but a man, and when angels speak, man is deaf and blind.
Once, when John was barely twenty-one he dreamed of Alice, the girl then who is now the woman of the house. Alice sits inside, vaguely hearing the radio, the hum of the sun.
Through their engagement, they pretended they would never tire of each other, and that almost came to pass, even if both strayed the once, each pausing on a petal that seemed so lovely. In hindsight, two mistakes.
Hindsight says, “I told you so”, but hindsight lies. It is not hindsight that John lacked or Alice lacks, but vision, understanding a larger picture.
John’s son languishes in Maidstone Prison and this tiny prick will release him. And John and Alice have a daughter, Jennifer, a thin girl with certain difficulties who thinks of naked clowns and weeps constantly, but this insect kiss, the bee’s soft touch, will change every thing, the clowns will leave her and Jennifer will come home.
To the flower the bee is impossible, a droning 747, carrying a kiss of love. Now comes its greatest happy, auspicious moment.
Alice drifts; light glints on the Harveys. John opens the shed, the lawnmower gleams, the bee enters the garden.
About the Author
Born Wales, Irish-Welsh, RV Jones wrote full time from 1992 to 2015, edited judged and ran an on-line writing group. He published six books and “far too many” creative writing articles and stories – then spent eight years caring for asylum-seeing refugees, fighting Long Covid and burning out. He recently returned to writing. He lives in southern England, ten minutes from Salisbury Cathedral and twenty-five miles from Stonehenge.
Thank you again to everyone for entering. It is such a thrill to read so many diverse stories. Again, we supplied our fun virtual Last Minute Club badge for the final day entrants. But of course we appreciate everyone who enters at anytime during the four months of the competition. 
To remind everyone, The Last Minute Club, for intrepid flash fictioneers is only open on the final day. Anyone entering on Sunday 2nd June will receive a (virtual) Last Minute Club badge. Everyone loves badges don’t they? Our mini-competition to guess the colour of the badge is open on X and Facebook today, Saturday 1st June Feb. The first person to guess the colour (or colour combination of the new badge will receive The Weather Where You Are the 2023 Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (or another BFFA anthology of choice) We often give prizes to two people for near guesses. You won’t know the colour until first thing on Sunday morning.