EDITOR’S NOTE: ✍️   The Flash Memoir Contest remained open according to one site publicizing it. People thought this meant that Flash Memoir and Flash Fiction were running concurrently.  

Okay. Things happen.

The best solution seemed to be to turn this into a Flash Prose Contest and publish the best work from both genres. This is a win-win, right? 

The Winners of Writer Advice’s Flash Prose Contest

in order or appearance are:

Amber Sayer, whose story, “December 15, 2012” appears today.

Christine Robinson, whose story, “Glimmer of Light“ will appear on July 9.

Karin Cooper, whose story “Death’s Poetic License“ will appear on July 16.

Laura Shell, whose story “Because I Live Here and I’m Tired“ will appear on July 23.

and Linda Laino, whose story “Mentor“ will appear on July 30.

Our judges, who never talked to each other, had more consensus on scores than usual. Thanks to all of you judges! I keep your identities private, but you are free to tell people.

Mentor

By Linda Laino

She never wore underwear. I know this because she often stripped to wade into a pool or river just as casually as saying hello. I was impressed. She also liked to break the law. Nothing to do jail time over, but criminal enough to brag about to her friends. Slipping a book into the pocket of her long coat, or once, setting off the fire alarm at school. She abhorred drugs. Stealing was her heroin. I had nothing against drugs at the time. In fact, I was enjoying my addiction to a variety of them, but I was eager to try a new one.

“It’s easy,’ she said. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

 I looked her over and wondered if she’d stolen that cool halter dress she was wearing, or her big hoop earrings. I wore cut off shorts and mousy hair. She carried herself like a badass beauty queen. A solitary panther with the amity of a cocktail hostess. 

“It’s more fun than a pajama party!” she squealed. She’d never had a pajama party though. In fact, she never let anyone inside her house, which was dark and belched a bad smell when I came for her at the door.

“Don’t your parents ever ask how you score all this cool stuff?” I asked, our backs to her house  with its slumped frame and sooty windows. She ignored my question and we hopped into her cherry bimmer, where she looked and felt her most glamorous. Like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.

I’d never stolen anything before except a bottle of pink nail polish from Kresges when I was ten. My father smashed it to the ground. Only whores wore nail polish. But now, I was in training. Graduation was coming up and I ‘needed a path’ my father had said, thumb on his belt.

We spent the summer riding around in her stolen convertible casing the town, searching out the vulnerable, careless or stupid. I wasn’t stupid, I told my father. I was good at taking direction. “Lift that guy’s wallet out of his back pocket,” she said. “Stuff the sweater into your purse in the dressing room,” she said. “Slide the lipstick up into your sleeve,” she said.

“Go into the bathroom, slip off your underwear and put it in the trash,” she said.

Linda Laino is a visual artist, and writer living for twelve years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and loves finding beautiful things on the ground. She has been a waitress, a textile conservator, teacher and flower farmer, all in service to a lifetime of art making. www.lindalaino.com.

 

Because I Live Here And I’m Tired

By Laura Shell

I drove more than 100 miles that day and the last five were the most soul-sucking as I was stuck in a long line of cars like a vehicular centipede and couldn’t perform any slick passing maneuvers and the speed limit was 35 and I wanted to drive 65 because it had been a shit day and I just wanted to get home and relax in my recliner with my puppy but my fellow motorists and I were going at a speed that would make a snail applaud and the anxiety tightened my neck muscles and yeah the Slayer song probably added to said tension but finally the road I lived on arrived so I wheeled my Mustang around that corner like a molten blade through a slice of cheese and the g-forces pressed me into my leather seat and I screeched to the right into my driveway and parked at the top so I could get my mail and as I poured myself out of my metal equine an unmarked cop car appeared behind me with lights going and I was like fuuuuk and the cop raced from his vehicle and stood before me like a cage fighter and asked why I was going so fast on the road I lived on and I gave him my best defeatist look and told him Because I Live Here And I’m Tired and he was like Yeah I Get It and mumbled a warning as he slinked away.

@@@

Laura Shell quit her day job in August of 2023 to become a full-time writer. She has been published in Citron Review, WINK, and many others. Her first anthology of paranormal stories titled The Canine Collection was just released. If she isn’t writing or reading or submitting weird fiction, she’s slinging snarky jabs at her husband of 35 years. You can find out more about her at https://laurashellhorror.wordpress.com.

Death’s Poetic License 

By Karin Cooper

A searing pain radiates from my chest. Though I find no comfort in it, I offer my hands to be held gently, for the other hands seek solace through their grasp.

I try to remember a poetic line from Goethe. Though I never understood it. 

The sounds are faint, barely audible whispers. Yet, the mouths surrounding me gape open wide,resembling frozen depictions of people yelling at the top of their lungs. 

Mesmerized by Picasso’s haunting depiction of horror in his masterpiece “Guernica,” I stand utterly transfixed and motionless before it in the Prado Museum. And now that visceral, transfixing experience replays once more.

Hang in there, Ms. Martin. 

The yelling voices are unrecognizable to me.

10:40 a.m. bell. End of the third period. Time and bells are the ebb and flow of a teacher’s life.

The softest glow of brightness flutters the pink organza-ruffled curtains of my childhood bedroom. But I’m in my classroom.

Will the students know to keep going forward? The day’s discussion question written on the board is hazy. A Separate Peace – Was jouncing the limb a planned, conscious decision on Gene’s part or an impulsive act? 

There’s not a lesson plan. Never needed one. Loud applause at the recognition ceremony for 25 years of teaching high school English, clutching my hands to my chest, the additional accommodation that I’ve never taken a sick day. Perfect attendance prizes just like during my school years. Now, each breath feels like a hard-won prize.

Not even childbirth disrupts my perfect attendance. You have a girl!  Fireworks explode outside.  A spectacular Fourth of July display outside the hospital window, J.J. tears drop down on Thomasina, I agree with J.J.’s name choice, my warrior’s love of history, and Thomas Jefferson. 

Fireworks?  No gunshots blare.

The back-to-school training. Sitting in the back with Ginny. The school Safety guy needs a volunteer. Ginny raises my arm. I discreetly give her the finger. Nothing loosens our bestie’s knot. 

Safety guy moves me around in front of the whiteboard. Keep my back to the board and always watch the class and door. But how will I write on the board? I don’t look at Ginny, so I won’t laugh. Safety guy’s warnings and student faces are blurring like a chalk drawing in the rain.  

What’s that poem? 

Terry, a back wall hugger always hidden in a hoody, stands up. My teacher’s instinct whispers that he’s about to answer the discussion question. ‘Impulsive,’ I think he says. The glint of a gun barrel catchesmy eye. A bullet flies over my shoulder. Period 3 class rushes out or burrows under desks. 

            I rush forward towards the flash.

The poem’s line comes to me. Now I understand. “Noble be man merciful and good.” 

I keep my eyes open. The light is bright, with shadows of figures leaning over me. Coco, Pookie, Oreo, Bongo, and Kona run toward my wide-open arms from under a rainbow. 

My body twitches and jerks. We’ve got you, Ms. Martin.

Let me go. I want to hug my puppies.

Shadows move to the kitchen table. Mom passes Johnny the ketchup. Dad reaches for salt. Katie laughs at Donnie feeding Coco green beans. The din of Nightly News in the background. I watch the vibrant Kodachrome film of an average day unfold, feeling warmth in the resplendent mundanity of life itself.

J.J. emerges from the shadows in combat fatigues leans against me. Tours of duty and sacrifice strengthen our love. Deafness is the diagnosis we hear. Our fingers intertwined a silent vow to learn sign language to support our Thomasina.

The light becomes midday, sparkling bright.  My beautiful Thomasina, in slow motion, head swivels, looks right at me, walks by with her college class in her summa cum laude signature cap and gown, mouths and signs,

I love you.

The brilliant simplicity of the fiddle resounds in “The AshokanFarewell.” The mixture of mourning and nostalgia comforts.

Lying on my chintz love-seat couch, Kona splayed across the yellow and white lap quilt Thomasina made for me as a Girl Scout. A cup of Earl Grey and a scone with clotted cream and lemon curd waits on the side table. Surrounded by my books and next to the window, white roses bloom outside.

Thumbing through Atlantic Monthly magazine, an interesting article catches my attention. The dying brain has at least 5 minutes of life after the body is dead. 

A soft and promising dawn light illuminates.  

The 4th-period bell rings. 

@@@

Karin Cooper is a college English professor. Her writing resume include plays, education essays, and book reviews.  Recent writing challenges have been completing a middle-grade novel about a young Angolan boy rescuing a pangolin, Pango and a novel with celestial intrigue and romance, Cake Baker.  A member of WFWA.

Glimmer of Light

By Christine Robinson

Simon ambled down the tree-lined street, enjoying the gray sky and the light mist that dampened his face. He chuckled at the other pedestrians, especially their thought bubbles which audibly popped with a spray of glitter.

<I look forward to returning to work tomorrow.>

<The sky is the same color as my favorite sweater.>

<Bread and canned meat with gravy makes my mouth water and my stomach feel   full.>

A particularly joyful person, whose thought bubbles revealed his recent promotion, even had his own fireworks display.

Satisfaction filled Simon with his own glitter embrace. He’d been productive that day, clearing an entire stack of paperwork from his inbox. Simon’s boss had complimented his hard work. The glitter around Simon rose to a shimmer.

He passed under a maple tree and touched a leaf, its silky texture reminding him of his wife Katrina’s cheek. The shimmer around him transformed to a small fireworks display.

Simon shivered with glee and rounded the corner to the grocery, stepping aside for a mom and four small children, stair-stepped in age from a toddler to a preteen.

<I love taking my children to the park.>

A steady glimmer surrounded the mom, trailing away toward her children.

<When we get to the park, I’m going to slide down the slide ten times, then swing as high as the sky.>

Simon chuckled at the oldest boy’s thoughts.

A cry from the youngest drew all eyes to her. “No. I don’t want to…” The toddler collapsed and the family paused, her older siblings watching as she writhed on the ground and her eyes rolled back into her head.

“One day she’ll learn,” the oldest boy said.

“We all do eventually. Let’s be patient.” The mom stroked the next youngest’s hair and cooed at him. The boy child looked wide-eyed at the glitter shimmering around his mother.

How well this mother handled the difficult toddler stage.

Stars shimmered around Simon.

Before the nanobot injections, divisiveness and hate had riddled their society. Negativity was now a thing of the past. Simon’s gratitude for the scientists’ hard work developing the nanobots brought on fireworks and an accompanying release of serotonin, relaxing him. All was right with his world.

When the door into the grocery store opened, a burst of cool air-conditioning chilled the sweat on Simon’s upper lip, and he was too busy enjoying his serotonin rush to step out of the way of an elderly man racing out of the store.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, mister,” erupted from Simon from the ground where the man had knocked Simon onto his back. Simon froze at the lapse in his self-editing. Oh no.

The nanobots responded with lightning efficiency, zipping the anger from his frontal cortex and along his nerves, passing the negativity through his body until it reached his fingertips, which tingled then numbed.

Simon winced at the pain and struggled to control his reaction. “Ah.”

Once again, the nanobots sprang into action, further numbing his hands. His legs shook with an electrical impulse as his thoughts spiraled with the pain.

A teenaged boy stepped over Simon.

“Ha, look at that guy. That’s hilarious!” Fireworks exploded around the teenager’s head, which he tilted back in ecstasy.

“How dare he,” Simon said, the muscle spasms still locking him in place. “How disrespectful, getting a high off another person’s misfortune.”

The nanobots worked at a frenzied pace, plucking thought after thought away, channeling them into Simon’s limbs, torso and ending in his brain. A vise gripped his head and he writhed.

“Someone call 9-1-1,” screamed a grocery clerk as he knelt over Simon but didn’t touch him. “Hey buddy, take a deep breath. It’s going to be ok.”

Would it, though?

Simon knew what happened when a person couldn’t gain control over negative thoughts. He’d handled their paperwork day-in and day-out. Despair filled him at the thought of the padded room he would sleep in tonight. Would anyone tell Katrina? He hoped she wouldn’t fall into a negative vortex, too. What happened to those who never escaped the vortex?

The nanobots tightened his chest and back muscles, crunching air from his lungs. His vision grew black as he struggled to inhale. A needle stung his left forearm.

Darkness overtook him as medics lifted him onto a stretcher, yet he’d never felt so light.

@@@

CC Robinson is a YA dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction author from Cincinnati. Her debut dystopian series, Divided, is available for pre-order wherever books are sold. Find pertinent details on her website https://ccrobinsonauthor.com. Joseph Agdalipe is a design student at the University of Cincinnati DAAP.

December 15, 2012

By Amber Sayer

Greta placed two small plates on the counter. She mindlessly opened the cabinet and grabbed homemade sourdough and two jars of peanut butter—crunchy for her daughter, smooth for her son.

She remembered feeling annoyed at the grocery store months ago over needing to purchase two kinds.

“I only like crunchy now,” her daughter had announced. “Extra crunchy, or I won’t eat it!”

Her daughter, then a full-fledged kindergarten graduate, seemed to be in a summer phase where suddenly everything she’d previously liked was “babyish.“

“I’ll put it on the list!”

They’d always been a smooth peanut butter family, an expectation her son wasn’t going to cede without a fight.

Greta remembered how his face flushed with anger, so much heat radiating off his body that it could be felt across the breakfast table.

“That’s not fair! I like smooth. She always gets her way cuz she’s older!”

The two argued back and forth, her daughter haranguing that smooth peanut butter is for babies, dramatically gesticulating with skinny arms polka dotted with mosquito bites.

“I’m not a baby,” her son had said, choking back tears. “I’m goin’ to school this year!”

It was true.

Both kids would soon be in school all day, her son starting kindergarten and her daughter, first grade.

Greta remembered that fight like it was yesterday, the August humidity making the kitchen feel like a greenhouse. The flypaper hanging by the pantry was twirling in the wake of the ceiling fan, though the fan blades did little more than move hot air from one part of the kitchen to another. Even the flypaper wasn’t working; she remembers the same green-eyed black fly incessantly buzzing as if pulled to orbit her in a halo by her unruly hair.

The bickering, the heat, the buzzing—it all became too much. Greta yanked the long ribbon of sticky paper down and threw the entire thing out the window.

“Enough!”

The kids arrested their scabbling, stunned into silence by the uncharacteristic crack in equanimity. Even the pesky fly seemed to finally settle, perhaps laying low to avoid becoming the next victim of defenestration.

The uneven whir of the fan was the only sound until the shock wore off and her son melted into tears, followed shortly by her daughter.

Now, just 10 days until Christmas, the frosty New England air seemed to penetrate every seam of the house. Every winter, Greta grumbled that it’d been a mistake to move to Sandy Hook instead of Florida. Today, she’d give anything to have chosen any other town in the world, even if it was in Antarctica.

She’d ignore the fly even if there were a whole cloud of them. The storm windows were locked in place anyway.

She’d give anything to hear her kids bickering. She’d buy every iteration of peanut butter from every store if it’d bring her daughter back.

Sounds of her son dumping Legos onto the floor in the next room snapped Greta back to the present. The kids had been building a replica of the space station now that they had enough Legos—an early Christmas gift from Grandpa.

Greta slathered smooth peanut butter on one slice of bread, and then uncapped the crunchy peanut butter.

It still had yesterday’s knife indentations, the valleys coated in glistening pools of separated oil.

“Mom, where’s Chloe?”

Her son’s innocent words caught her off guard. She hadn’t heard him come in.

His small body looked blurry.

“Why are you crying?”

Didn’t he understand anything that happened yesterday?

Selfishly, Greta wanted him to understand; she didn’t want to grieve alone, and yet she prayed his callow mind was too young to understand.

After all, even her fully-fledged mind had instinctively grabbed a half-eaten jar of peanut butter she’d never need to open again.

Greta realized this was the distinction between humans and monsters—monsters are capable of committing acts that transcend human understanding.

She closed the crunchy peanut butter and put it back in the cabinet, her human mind believing: just in case.

@@@

Amber Sayer is not new to the world of writing, as she is a professional health and fitness writer from Westfield, MA, USA. However, she hasn’t done any creative writing in over 20 years. As an autistic woman, Amber finds she is better able to communicate her thoughts and feelings through writing.