Winners

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

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

Sarah Gillett February 2024 Highly Commended

An experiment on a bird in the air pump (after Joseph Wright of Derby)

by Sarah Gillett

Anna so wanted to stroke its soft white body that she poked her fingers into the cage when Maria wasn’t looking. The cockatoo stabbed, drawing blood with its curved beak, tongue waggling. They both screamed and it went back to preening itself, nibbling under its downy parts, closing its wings with a dry snap, smoothing down its combed head with grey claws. Maria said she deserved to get pecked, it wasn’t a pet and if anything happened to it then Papa would be filthy furious and lock her in the box under the stairs until they all forgot she was there, until she died. Anna, yelling, wished she could be a ghost and haunt Maria forever and ever and always. Shrieks crumpling to giggles, they washed their faces and fumbled each other into pale lilac silk dresses.

Downstairs the parlour table was set with wooden instruments, connected by brass tubing, polished handles, glass vessels. When Anna asked Papa what the gnarled slimy thing in the amber liquid was, he said it was a diseased human skull. The sisters shivered. Papa’s important friend placed the cockatoo inside a large glass jar and demonstrated the effects of something called a vacuum, counting seconds on a silver watch.

The white bird shone in the candlelight. It looked fragile and heavy, its feathers wide, its feet scrabbling then twitching slower. Maria hid her face but Anna could not look away. She wanted to touch the glossy black eye staring right at her. Around her, moving splashes of cheek and hair and cloth caught the light in time with the thumping of her heart. She had thought it was only in the shadows that everything was dark and treacherous. Time was slower there, the box had taught her that. She held her breath and waited.

About the Author

Sarah Gillett is an artist and writer from Lancashire, UK. She currently lives in London, where she investigates the life of things across space and time. She has a soft spot for meteorites, the colour blue, old dictionaries, glass paperweights and early postcards. In another life she would have been an astronaut. www.sarahgillett.com

Novella in Flash 2024 Results

Huge congratulations to the winners and highly commended writers in our 2024 Novella in Flash Award, selected by John Brantingham. Read their bios below.

Ad Hoc Fiction is publishing, Hereafter the first prize novella by US based writer, Sarah Freligh and the runner-up novellas, Nose Ornaments by Sudha Balagopal from the US and Marilyn’s Ghost by Jo Withers,from Australia.

Best wishes to our two highly commended authors, Jupiter Jones and Thomas McColl, and the shortlisted and longlisted writers for future publication of their novellas. And good luck to everyone who entered. It was a privilege to read your work. What a wonderful array of novellas!

You can read John Brantingham’s comments on the three winners and the two highly commended in his judge’s report and his general comments in his report and also his reading notes from when the short list was announced. We really appreciate his careful work over the past few months.

First prize winner:
Hereafter by Sarah Freligh

Sarah Freligh is the author of six books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis, and A Brief Natural History of Women, published in 2023 by Harbor Editions, and Dear You, Alien Buddha, August 2023. Recent work has appeared in the Cincinnati Review miCRo series, SmokeLong Quarterly, Sun Magazine, the Wigleaf 50, and in the anthologies New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), Best Microfiction (2019-22) and Best Small Fiction 2022. Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.

Runner-up
Nose Ornaments by Sudha Balagopal

Sudha Balagopal’s fiction straddles continents and cultures, blending thoughts and ideas from the east and the west. She is honored to have her writing in many fine journals including The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, CRAFT, The Maine Review and Bureau Dispatch. Her highly- commended novella-in-flash, Things I Can’t Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc fiction in 2021. She has stories included in Best Small Fictions, 2022 and 2023. When she’s not writing, she teaches yoga. Find her on Twitter @authorsudha or at www.sudhabalagopal.com

Runner-up
Marilyn’s Ghost by Jo Withers

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. Her work has featured in Best Microfictions 2020 and Wigleaf Top 50 2021. She has also been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize.

Highly Commended
Nine Inches of Rain by Jupiter Jones

Jupiter Jones lives in Wales and writes short and flash fictions. She is the author of three novellas-in-flash, The Death and Life of Mrs Parker, Lovelace Flats, and Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell. Being a proper nerd with very little social life, she is currently working on a PhD on the role of (dis)connectivity in the novella-in-flash. https://jupiter-jones.com/
@jupiterjonz

Highly Commended
The Man With the Glass Blown Head and Brick Wall Face by Thomas McColl
Thomas McColl lives in London and works as a Procedural Publisher at the House of Commons. He’s had two collections of poetry published – Being With Me Will Help You Learn (Listen Softly London Press, 2016) and Grenade Genie (Fly on the Wall Press, 2020) – and his short stories and poems have been published in magazines such as Fictive Dream, Bare Fiction, Here Comes Everyone and Smoke: A London Peculiar, and featured on BBC Radio Kent, BBC Radio WM and TV’s London Live.

Dawn Tasaka Steffler October 2023 First Prize

Détente

by Dawn Steffler

Because the internet said, children who lose a parent to suicide are more likely to die from suicide. Because for Tyler’s fourteenth birthday, I took him to Disneyland and thought we were having a good day, until his eyes brimmed with tears while we were in line and he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Mom — I don’t think I want to be here anymore.” And I knew he wasn’t talking about Space Mountain. Because my therapist said, “I know you’re angry. But you need to hold space for Tyler to grieve.” And I remember thinking, does no one give a fuck about me?

My husband hovers. I hear songs on the radio that croon “I’m sorry”, or I’ll see a heart-shaped cloud, or the Mexican place has a new banner, “Life is hard, tacos help.” I always ignore him. But two hours ago, Tyler barged into my bedroom, he’s receiving an award at tonight’s Senior Ceremony and his dress slacks are too short. I wanted to say, You’re just like your Dad, always leaving stuff to the last minute! But I didn’t. I said, “Would you like to look in your Dad’s closet?” And Tyler examined each hanger, the scrape of wire on wood, the rustle of fabric. He selected a navy suit and a pinstriped shirt still in the dry cleaner’s plastic sleeve. And when he emerged, I felt like I was looking at a ghost, except this ghost’s hair was shaggy and falling into its eyes.

And now I’m standing at the back of the gym. When Tyler accepts his commemorative plaque, the flyers on the table next to me flutter and ripple. And I whisper, “Fuck off.” I whisper, “Yes, he turned out amazing. No thanks to you.” I whisper, “Well, thank you. That means a lot.”

About the Author

Dawn Tasaka Steffler is a fiction writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a Smokelong QuarterlyEmerging Writer Fellow, StoryStudio Chicago StoryBoard Fellow, and Best of the Net nominee. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Many Nice Donkeys, Milk Candy Review, Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Stanchion, Ghost Parachute, and others. She truly does believe tacos make life better. Find her on Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky @DawnSteffler and at www.dawntasakasteffler.com