He Owed Me
by Hannah Retallick
When he died the man owed me £35 in petty cash and that was my first thought when I heard about The Accident, a collision between a camper van and lorry on the A55 which proved fatal for both drivers, the lorry man being the one who owed me £35, a twinkly-eyed neighbour, a single forty-something-year-old called Luca who smelt of cigarettes and bacon and always told me he loved my hair like that, like however it happened to be, up down blonde curly red straight black crimped, and we were starting to know each other quite well because he had got into the habit of rushing up to my front door and saying he needed to borrow some change to give as pocket money to his niece or for carpark tickets or for slot machines, so I would do the neighbourly thing and pluck coins from the dusty dish in my hallway, saying, ‘Here, hope that helps’, not knowing if I’d ever get it back but making a mental tally as though I needed to know how grateful he should be to me, and it was the selfishness of my first thought when I heard he’d died that meant I couldn’t bear to go to his funeral, crumbling under the weight of guilt, because £35 doesn’t matter in the face of death, and as the weeks passed I purged those thoughts completely and stopped torturing myself about the petty debt and my own failings and just wished I could ask Luca whether he really did love my hair like that, like however it happened to be, or whether he meant something else
About the Author
Hannah Retallick is from Anglesey, North Wales. She was home educated and then studied with the Open University, graduating with a First-class honours degree, BA in Humanities with Creative Writing and Music, before passing her Creative Writing MA with a Distinction. Hannah has gained recognition in many international competitions, including receiving Highly Commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2022 and winning the £2000 Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2024 – the biggest flash prize in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Something Very Human, is being released by Bridge House Publishing in November 2024. https://www.hannahretallick.co.uk/about
Sara Hills June 2024 First Prize
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.
RJ Dwyer, June 2024 Highly Commended
Prognosis
by R J Dwyer
You start by saying sorry.
“A tumour?” he asks, and you agree. He studies his palms. The collar of his shirt is stained, while the woman next-door sports a perfect white cardigan. He brings her laundry, and they all say – what a catch. When she goes he won’t be long after. A hammering sound travels in through the half-open window and you raise your voice over it. When he meets your eye, he’s on the edge of tears and you feel satisfied. It doesn’t matter as much what’s said now, he won’t remember the details. He leans towards you, too close, and you correct the distance. When he asks if she’s dying, you pause. Your heart beats too fast. It’s almost exciting when you don’t know which way they’ll go. He might fall to his knees. Or hit you. He could even shrug and say, no worries.
He tells you that she loved to swim – how from the shore he would watch her head rise and fall among the black rocks. Once, a cut on the sole of her foot, and patches of blood left on the sand.
He tells you of the loss of their baby.
He tells you how he always felt, deep down, that she never really loved him quite as much.
How some days now she calls him by another name and looks at him differently.
How he usually goes along with this, all the same.
Later you stop outside her room. The woman is sleeping, and he’s hunched over the bed. For a moment, you think you see him holding a pillow to her face. He has one hand on her chest and with the other he runs a small comb over her fringe. You stand back from the glass, trying to make yourself small.
About the Author
RJ Dwyer is a writer and doctor, currently pursuing an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. His stories have featured in the wurd Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, the Fish Anthology 2024, and the 2024 Anthology of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), among others. Dwyer was a winner in the 2024 Fish Flash Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2024 Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. He is fiction editor of Our Father, a Glasgow-based literary project, and has worked on the editorial team for three books released by indie publisher thi wurd. Contact: rjdwyer.writes@gmail.com
Mairead Robinson February 2024 First Prize
A Palimpsest of Cheerleaders
by Mairead Robinson
Mel’s in the bleachers, inspecting her shattered shin-bone, pantyhose around her ankles, thighs like a pair of suckling pigs. Sadie reckons Mel would’ve been crowned, but I think Sadie herself; even with her stomach bleeding out, she has that poise, that prom-queen pout. ‘Why d’you even care?’ I say, ‘We’re dead, remember?’
‘Posthumously,’ she snaps. Her tear-brim gaze moves beyond Mel, and I know she’s seeing the blue silk draped wraith-like on its hanger, the strappy shoes, the simple silver locket. I’ve seen her touching fingers to the hollow of her throat, mouthing, ‘Me?’
The field’s Elysium green. Palimpsest. Miss Ingram chalked it on the board; a parchment erased, marks beneath still visible; squeak of plimsols on the locker room floor, jocks charging out, ball flying high, crowd on their feet, and us, mid-routine, twizzling pom-poms on the T-stretch, hearts wide open to Danny Markham’s bullets as he riddled the squad, taking us all out.
Mel was sweet on Danny, mistook dark-eyed hatred for love-sick brooding, and hoped for his corsage on prom night. ‘Fat chance,’ says Sadie as she lunges, hands on hips, elbows out. I joined because Mom said college, and who knew cheerleading scholarships were a thing? So, there I was, and here I am, effaced by kite-high Danny, his Pa’s M16 spitting fire. He was troubled, wailed Mel, blasted leg a right angle, fatal bullet lodged in her heart like Cupid’s flinty arrowhead.
Shadow-shapes stand in the dug-outs. Our mothers, so small, wispy as smoke. Mel hops over and suggests we do the lead-in, so we’re high-kicking, pike jumping, pom-poms razzle-dazzling as we holler the chant, as if they could hear us, as if we could scribe ourselves anew beneath the yearbook obituaries, as if there was anything left save all this ache, this longing.
About the Author
Mairead Robinson writes and teaches in the South West, UK. Her work has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Crow and Cross Keys, The Molotov Cocktail (Flash Monster 2023), Free Flash Fiction, Full House Literary, Voidspace, and in various anthologies too. She is supposed to be working on a novel, but has become hopelessly addicted to Flash Fiction. She won second prize in BFFA, October, 2023. Mairead tweets at @Judasspoon and skeets @maireadwrites.bsky.social
Jo Withers February 2024 Second Prize
All The Things That We Are Not
by Jo Withers
The soldiers came quickly, took us to the shelter (not a house, not a home). Said we’d be safe here (not happy). Inside, women and children (not men, not husbands, not brothers, not fathers) huddled together (not together, in the same space).
We’re all the same now (not people). It had always happened somewhere else before (not real, not us).
We knew each other by our clothes (not names) what we were wearing when the bombs fell (not like snow, not like tears). Some in business suits, some in school uniform; a waitress in her coffee-stained apron, a baker with flour splattered up her arm (not white, dotted red with blood).
We ran into the streets at the sound of the explosions, torn from our past lives (not present, not future, gone). The sky filled with smoke (not birds, not clouds, not sun). We ran from the explosions and the screams (not away, just further, still heard, still haunting).
They pulled us into trucks, drove us to safety (not sure, not certain). Took us to the bunker with no windows (not night, not day) gave us water and food. We were grateful although we were cold and scared because at least we were here (not outside, not captured, not dead).
Yesterday we were at work, at school, at home (not cocooned weeping in the dark). If today was like every day before (not shredded, not eviscerated, not annulled) I would meet my sister after work. Her office was south of the city where the damage was worst (not hopeful, not likely) and whole streets were now gaping holes (not pathways, not roads) and although the soldiers return every hour, bringing more people, reuniting family and friends, each time the door opens they are strangers (not her, not her, not her).
About the Author
Jo Withers spent the first thirty-five years of her life in Northern England before moving to South Australia in 2008 where she now resides with her husband, children and a motley crew of elderly pets.She works in her local kindergarten and finds the children’s quirky comments are a constant source of inspiration for her ‘world off-kilter’ brand of fiction.Jo has previously won prizes at The Caterpillar, Reflex Press, FlashBack Fiction, Furious Fiction, Retreat West, Molotov Cocktail and SmokeLong Quarterly. Her work has featured in Best Microfictions 2020 and Wigleaf Top 50 2021. She has also been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. Her novella-in-flash, Marilyn’s Ghost, which was a runner-up in the Bath 2024 Novella-in-Flash Award is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction this spring.
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Gayathiri Dhevi Appathurai February 2024 Third Prize
How to make a realistic Paper Rose
by Gayathiri Dhevi Appathurai
First, you can choose what colour and type of rose you want to make.
My father would disagree; after all, he didn’t want a girl, but what choice did he have with me?
Take a sheet of paper. It should be flexible but not too delicate.
My mother would disagree; a girl should be delicate, or else what would the family think of her upbringing?
Cut 3 squares of that paper, even 4. Size doesn’t matter. The bigger, the better.
My parents would disagree; girls can never have a big ego. So why give them so much learning?
Take one square and fold diagonally, repeat two more folds, making it small.
My grandma would disagree; a woman shouldn’t feel small to obey a man. Isn’t that how we preserve family values?
Draw an arc, cut the top, and a little at the bottom. You get a creased flower shape with a hole, but it isn’t complete yet.
My family would disagree; marriage completes a woman. What really does a solitary life accomplish?
Curl the edges of a flower, cut one pie shape, and glue the open edges together like a cone; one segment remains untethered.
My husband would disagree; a woman must be tethered to her man’s will. How else can marriage work?
Repeat steps 4 through 6 for other squares, cutting one segment more each time. You get smaller flower cones and more segments separated.
My family would disagree; separation is never a choice. Why would a man hit his woman unless she angered him?
Curl and make cones out of the lone segments. Assemble from largest to smallest cones and adjust until the flower looks whole.
My parents would agree. A woman must always adjust. No more questions.
Finally, this is it. You are done.
I agree.
About the Author
Gayathiri Dhevi Appathurai has an Engineering degree in Electronics & Instrumentation and works in the Information Technology Industry. Her stories have been shortlisted and published in the anthologies of Bristol Short Story Prize ‘21 , Edinburgh Flash Fiction Prize ‘22, Oxford flash fiction Prize summer ‘21 (Finalist). She is a Flash Fiction finalist in London Independent Story Prize, 2nd half ‘21. She is a trained Indian Classical Carnatic vocalist and has performed in renowned Fine arts venues in southern India. Her other creative pursuits include painting and sculpting. She lives with her husband in Mumbai, India.
Pilar García Claramonte February 2024 Highly Commended
Four Conditions of the Heart
by Pilar García Claramonte
-0-
Doctors are avoiding the zero conditional. No-one tells me, “If a brain is deprived of oxygen for twelve minutes, it never recovers fully.”
You sleep. I watch. We share this arctic cubicle with the beep and whirr of machines. One shivering certainty rises stark-naked with your in-breath and falls in time with your chest: If you die, I die. If you die, I die.
-1-
Fourteen days since you collapsed on our kitchen floor. Doctors use the first conditional daily now: “If your partner doesn’t wake soon, we’ll need to make decisions.”
Your first conditionals were much easier.
If I promise coffee in bed forever, will you marry me?
If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Daisy.
If we retire next year, we’ll grow old by the sea.
-2-
It’s been thirty-two days. I hold your hand in one hand and write, with the other, the probable results of hypothetical situations. The complexity of the second conditional, scribbled on the back of hospital leaflets, is my foothold through this labyrinth.
If you woke, you would live significantly impaired, physically and mentally.
If you lived, you would not manage to breathe on your own.
At the end of the day, I scatter scraps of leaflets amongst binned paper cups. Acrid coffee coats my tongue across the dark drive home.
If you spoke, I know what you would tell me to do.
-3-
I tackle the third conditional in the classroom. The hardest of the four.
“You have to imagine the probable result of something unreal, impossible, something that didn’t actually happen,” I explain.
I write on the whiteboard: If, eighteen months ago, he had lived …
I pause, marker pen in the air. “In this conditional, there’s often a sense of regret.”
I wipe the board and start another sentence.
About the Author
Pilar García Claramonte wishes that she had discovered the joy of creative writing much earlier in life. Now retired, she spends her time between the Kent coast, Oxford and the Basque Country, where she was born, trying to make up for lost time, aided and abetted by some great teachers and writing buddies. She was also highly commended in the June 2023 Bath Flash Fiction Award