Congratulations to all winners

in Writer Advice’s Flash Fiction Contest

You’ll find a wide variety of stories to touch your hearts and inspire your thoughts. 

Want to enter our current contest, which includes flash fiction, non-fiction, lists, letters, and more? Please read our guidelines and tips by clicking on current contest.  

Winners are listed below along with the dates that their pieces will appear, followed by our weekly pieces.

 

7/01/25 Fiona Jensen  “On Being Seen”

7/08/25 Patricia Striar Rohner  “Joe”

7/15/25 Karin Cooper  “The Sacred Bite”

7/22/25 Tracie Adams   “Billie Jean is Not My Friend”

7/29/25 Amanda McIntyre  “The Weight of Silence”

8/05/25 John Maslowski  “Razor”

8/12/25 Sarah Heitler  “Don’t Step on the Cracks”

8/19/25 Victoria Large  “Waiting for Dark”

 

Waiting for Dark

By Victoria Large

Tommy was frantic with excitement when his Aunt Helen arrived on July 4. Helen’s sister-in-law was out of town, and her brother had to stay home with her niece, who feared fireworks as much as Tommy loved them.

When they arrived at the fairground, Helen realized she left her tote bag full of crayons and coloring books and toy cars at home. Meanwhile, her phone was barely charged.

So while they waited, they debated the shapes of clouds. They spotted winking planes and the ascent of a lost balloon against the shifting shades of dusk. They observed each new star.

Helen savored her nephew’s grin when sound and color finally erupted across the sky. But years later she mostly remembered how they celebrated each star – another and another and another – another step forward in time, another light countering the dark.

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Victoria Large holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her short fiction has appeared in various print and online publications, including Blink Ink, Carve Magazine, Crack the Spine, Monkeybicycle, and Painted Bride Quarterly.

Editor’s Note: This has such a powerful ending. It takes an ordinary moment and turns it into a poetic and universal one. The compression is outstanding. 

Interested in sharing your Flashes with Writer Advice? The current contest is Flash Prose. We’re looking for all kinds of prose, from fiction and non-fiction, to lists, letters, and texts, so take a look. Bet you have something under 750 words that suits our needs. Thanks!

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(Photo credit: Amanda Heitler)

 

She stares down at the pavement with a face of stone, having not moved an inch for the past minute. She is going to be late for her appointment now, but she knows that. Other pedestrians give her a polite berth as they go about their own daily business. Nobody has time for a small old woman obsessed with the cracks between paving stones. This will be a hard street. Brick. The tiling is regular, but the safe rectangles are very small. There will be no room for error.          

When had it stopped being a game? A long time ago, as a small child, her dad told her not to walk on the cracks between paving stones. There were bears under there and you shouldn’t wake them. They would dance from cracked tile to cracked tile in the middle of crowded streets paying no regard to the stares of bemused onlookers.

But over time, the charm of the game faded. The game faded, but never quite the practice. On some streets, it was easy. The stones being regular concrete squares, laid smoothly in a simple pattern, she didn’t really have to even look – though she still did of course. Others were laid long ago, irregular and difficult, requiring her full attention just to navigate. She remembers the first time she messed up. Twenty years old, smiling to herself and barely thinking as she strode eagerly down the stone stairs of a college building. She wasn’t even looking. One mistake and the bears got her as she planted her feet on the final step. She’d tried to shake it off, went about her lectures as normal. Told herself nothing was wrong. But that was the day her father’s health had first started to worsen. 

A fuzzy impression in his lungs on a scan found after an unrelated checkup. A consequence of a lifetime smoking indoors or a gift from the bears? He would go on to survive his tumor after an agonising six months but he would never never be quite the same after that – a fear now haunts his eyes and the struggle has weakened him. She stays with him during this time but she never tells him how she disappointed him that day on the stairs. She just tries never to do it again.

But as she grows older her coordination and focus for the task fail her and she does make more mistakes. She watches the decline of her mum. A victim of time and a slowly eroding brain. She sees her dad unable to even bring himself to cry at her funeral. She hugs him as his own health gets worse and worse and slowly he slips away from her entirely. But she never tells him. She can never tell him how she failed him. Always, throughout it all, the only thing she can do is try to do better.

Of course, she is older now, wiser. Bears did not take her parents from her, she knows that. There is nothing but concrete under the paving stones. But none of that is going to stop her wondering how the world would look if she had just stepped a little differently. None of that is going to stop her from trying to do better. She will manage not to disappoint them again.

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Sarah Heitler is a 29 year old woman from Glasgow who has been writing for almost all her life. A philosophy graduate, teacher and regular performer in the local live poetry scene, her work tends to focus on intimate and vulnerable aspects of the human experience and taking uncommon perspectives. 

Editor’s Note: We feel this does an outstanding job of showing the cost of obsessions–especially obsessions related to pleasing parents and others. The line “When had it stopped being a game?” resonated. What do you obsess about?

Please come back next week for our next story, and feel free to let us know what you think of this one. Or ask any questions you have. Many thanks. 

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Razor

By John Maslowski

It’s better than under the bridge.   

This time the shelter only had 250 residents packed into a facility designed for 100 souls. Like sardines in a metal box. 

I was crying. No. It was the frost on my eyebrows melting.

Black, red, blue, purple, green, pink.

Every day the hue of my skin morphed just a little bit.

My legs were puffed like a balloon. End stage kidney failure.

I could drain the fluid from my limbs with a razor. Wash it first. Don’t want an infection.

Of course. The razor.

The blood was warm as it oozed from my throat.

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John Maslowski is an award-winning writer and filmmaker originally from Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 11, he began writing short stories and poems. He recently began writing flash fiction. When not writing or making films he is travelling, reading, exercising and spending time with family and friends. 

Editor’s Note: The story is as stark, which fits the situation. Every word counts and the warmth at the end is a sad contrast to the narrator’s anguish. We cared about this unhoused man. 

Please come back next week for our next story, and feel free to let us know what you think of this one. Or ask any questions you have. Many thanks. 

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The Weight of Silence

By Amanda McIntyre 

I wonder why I chose that day to end a life. It wasn’t like it was a special day or different from all the others. It began in the same way they all do. Me creeping to the bathroom so I didn’t awaken the beast. Carefully avoiding any bottles left abandoned on the floor, as I always did. I learned that lesson early.

That morning, something felt heavier in the air, as though the silence itself was bracing for impact. I stared at myself in the cracked mirror; my reflection fractured into jagged pieces. The person staring back at me, wasn’t me. Not the me I used to be, and certainly not the me I wanted to be. A beautiful violet colour bore witness to the latest argument.

A muffled snore from the bedroom broke the stillness, a sound I had grown numb to over the years. It used to annoy me, then it used to comfort me, and now it was just there, like everything else. The constant hum of our shared decay.

I went back to the bedroom; the light crept through the curtains illuminating the chaos of our lives. The scattered clothes, the upturned ashtray spilling its contents across the bedside table, the faint smell of something burnt. And the beast, oblivious to it all, cocooned in a tangle of sheets. A face peaceful, almost childlike.

I could see Joshua in that face. His cherubic features stared back at me. Was that what pushed me over the edge? His absence. The hollow space where his tiny breaths had once been. His time with us was so short. Precious and short.

It had been two years since he was taken from us. Stolen in the night. I never stopped grieving. The weight of it bore down on me, an unbearable void. The beast filled that void with any substance that temporarily provided succour. Always, the beast blamed me.

There was no specific thought process, no conscious premeditation. The decision snapped into place, like a dry twig underfoot. I suppose you could argue that there was subconscious pre-meditation. Layer upon layer in every attack on my person. The constant erosion of my sense of self. The pain. The fear. The shame…especially the shame.

Afterwards, I just sat quietly on the end of the bed, rocking to comfort myself. It was done. Finished. There would be no more arguments. The body lay still, an eerie contrast to the chaos it had embodied. The sound of a passing car broke the spell, a harsh reminder that the world outside carried on, oblivious.

The moments after were a blur. My hands trembled as I stared at the body; I had never thought myself capable of taking a life. It felt like the room was shrinking; the walls pressing in like silent witnesses to my act. The light through the curtains had shifted, sharper now, cutting through the haze in my mind. I reached for my mobile phone.

‘Police please. I’ve just killed my wife.’

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Amanda McIntyre is a published author of a memoir detailing her family’s harrowing Covid journey, entitledDying to Live. A retired primary school headteacher, she is an aspiring picture book author and mother of three grown-ups. She has two Labradors and enjoys exploring the Scottish countryside with them. More information is available at https://amandamcintyrebooks.com.

Editor’s Note: We loved the vivid imagery, the way the story is revealed, and the surprise ending. This seemed original, honest, and just a bit scary. Well done!

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Billie Jean is Not My Friend

By Tracie Adams

The boys in our fourth-grade class snap my bra strap, taunting me, “You better serve those pancakes before they get cold.” Billie Jean laughs like a hyena. I hate her more than I hate them. She is an early bloomer, and the boys watch her buxom body bouncing as she skips rope on the playground, their tongues wagging like dogs panting for water.

The sound of Billie Jean laughing stirs rage I have never known. I fire words at her like poison darts, “You think you’re so hot, but all you are is fat, fat, fat.”

She smiles and hurls a fast ball with an unexpected curve, “You’re just jealous because all you are is flat, flat, flat.”

By the time we are in high school, I have learned to steer clear of the hunting grounds behind the cafeteria, where she gathers with a nest of bullies to smoke, waiting like black widows to trap their next victim. Unsuspecting girls who dare to wear pink or get their names called out in assembly for honor roll are quickly gobbled up, their books knocked out of their hands, the back of their skirts yanked over their heads.

The last week of senior year, something happens that I will never understand. A boy in gym class backs me in a corner, and just as he’s about to throw a dodgeball at my face, Billie Jean descends on him like a bolt of lightning on a clear day. She knocks the ball from his hand and twists his arm behind his back, leaning in close to hiss between gritted teeth, “Only sissies pick on little girls.”

Back in the locker room, I try to make eye contact with her, but she just slams her locker and stiffly stomps away, flipping her hair over her square shoulders, the smell of stale smoke trailing behind her. When she’s a no-show at graduation, someone whispers, “I heard her mom died.” She is branded a dropout. In the yearbook, she is among the “not pictured.”  And just like that, she disappears.

***

Today I clip her obituary out of the paper and hang it on my fridge: “Billie Jean Wilson lost her long battle with breast cancer at the age of 59. She is preceded in death by her parents, one brother, and a son, survived by an aunt in Georgia.”

Cold air meets me at the door of the funeral home where the service is underway, the pews empty except for one elderly woman, hunched in the front row, her head tilting toward the pastor giving the eulogy, “Billie Jean was a gardener. The Children’s Hospital will surely miss her volunteer work in the memorial garden, where she served faithfully for two decades after losing her only child to a rare bone disease.”

I’m ugly crying, drawing the attention of the woman in the front row, who comes to introduce herself as the aunt. “I’m so glad you came. Were you friends with my niece?”

I part my lips to say something honest like No, she was just someone I wish I had known. But the woman’s hopeful expression steers me in the direction of kindness, compelling me to gift her with a lie which might bring some comfort. “She was special,” I nod as I say, “I will never forget her.” The tears pooling in my eyes are reflected on the old woman’s face like sunshine in a deep puddle. I leave her standing over the casket, her back a bit more erect, her shoulders a bit less collapsed, her chin a bit higher.

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Tracie Adams, author of Our Lives in Pieces, writes flash memoir and fiction from rural Virginia. Her work, widely published in literary journals, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. More at tracieadamswrites.com and X @1funnyfarmAdams.

Editor’s Note: The more we read the more we ached for both the narrator and the girl / woman she’s writing about. This feels believable and honest. Could be that we’re drawn to character driven stories. The author’s work was so good that we bent our rule about sticking to one seen. Great work!

 The Sacred Bite

By Karin Cooper

Do You Like Cake?

Would you take a bite of a wedding cake sample that predicts your true eternal love?

The question ignited our brunch table. Girlfriends froze with mimosas halfway to their lips, then erupted in responses ranging from laughter to thoughtful murmurs—like a symphony warming
up.

Engaged couples competed for rare sampling appointments.

Rumors floated about an angel baker, though no one had ever glimpsed celestial wings.

Each cake story was second-hand. A coworker’s sister’s friend went with her fiancé. One bite, and the sweetness curdled on their tongues. They broke up immediately and still couldn’t
stomach cake—or each other.

“Yuck,” we agreed, reaching for our drinks.

Meanwhile, a cousin’s neighbor’s daughter savored her “velvet cream” bite only to have her fiancé announce, “I don’t love you.”

“Just an excuse,” we reasoned with knowing glances.

Even a rumored health-conscious couple passed the bite challenge only to ban all simple-carbs from their reception.

“Who wants a wedding without cake?” We concurred guests come for the dress but stay for cake.

The romantics insisted true love couldn’t be canceled by mere cake. The divorced wished they’d known sooner.

Nervously twisting my engagement ring, I reflected on five beautiful years with Luke. We shared intimate confidences and cherished each other’s passions.  On autumn Sundays, he’d grip his lucky blue-white mug so tightly his knuckles whitened, willing his Cowboys to victory. He teased my love for white cake while saving every rose-decorated frosted piece for me.

A year ago, we became engaged. Whenever asked about setting a date, we always replied, “almost ready.”

“What about you?” The question was directed at me.

I deflected with a question: “The cake bite tests eternal love? Do we even know what eternal love is?”

My friends were silent, each parsing her own interpretation.

My grandmother’s embroidered verse hung in my hallway: Love never fails. Yet love comes with an expiration date—every wedding reminder of until death do us part. Not forever.

My parents’ twenty-five years weathered fights, money troubles, and illness. Mom said, “Love isn’t feeling, it’s choosing to stay when leaving would be easier.” Was that eternal love—that daily choice?

After lunch, I pulled up the bakery’s page on my phone. A rare empty slot glared from tomorrow’s calendar. It seemed providential. My finger hovered before I tapped “confirm.” The
appointment locked in with a soft chime that echoed with finality.

I only had to convince Luke.

Driving up the winding mountain roads, I wrestled with what truly makes love last. Was it something mystical—some destined compatibility the cake could divine? Or was it something we build
daily through choices and commitment?

Arriving at the small bakery, Luke’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel. Our eyes met briefly—neither of us speaking what we both feared. That a single bite might reveal truths we weren’t prepared to face.

And if the cake left a bitterness, I would miss cake for the rest of my life. But maybe that was the price of certainty.

A faint aroma of lavender and rose wafted through the tiny bakery. Only one cake sat on the counter. And one plate, two forks, and a knife.

“Perfect,” I whispered, gazing at the flawless creation: a small, two-layer masterpiece crowned with glossy pearl-white frosting and delicate roses in three distinct shades of white.

Semile, the luminous baker shimmered in the bakery light, cut one slice. The knife slid effortlessly through, revealing perfect white cake texture with ivory filling. She nodded, gesturing for us
to take a bite.

I closed my eyes, plunging into a world of flavor. The first taste was smooth, perfect white chocolate truffle. The cake dissolved in my mouth, leaving an unfamiliar flavor.
My tongue searched for more—a mixture of pleasure and puzzlement, like a baby’s first experience of sweetness or the initial thrill of any new sensation.

I savored the cake before opening my eyes, hesitant—afraid his gaze wouldn’t meet mine. Luke opened his eyes at the same moment. Our lips met in a gentle kiss.

Semile intoned with celestial calm, “Keep your love worthy.”

Luke and I married a month later, our vows echoing ancient promises of protection, trust, hope, and perseverance.

The cake symbolized the communion of our eternal love.

And I understand each day that the sacred bite challenge revealed a truth beyond flavor—it’s about making every moment worthy of that first, revelatory moment.
 
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“Pages of the Heart” will appear in the anthology And God Made Pets (July 2025). Karin Cooper writes for the website Travelingladies.net and works as an educational specialist copywriter. After retiring from 25 years of teaching college composition, she’s honored to be published by Writer’s Advice.

Editor’s Note: We appreciated the positive tone in this as well as the love, the tension, and the unknown element. In addition it provided an excellent contrast to other pieces. Well done!

Please come back next week for our next story, and feel free to let us know what you think of this one. Many thanks. 

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JOE

By Patricia Striar Rohner

They sent me to prep school because I killed a cat.

It was a mangy creature, lingering around our house. It slept on the front steps, scratched at the door, and left behind dead birds and frogs. I fed it occasionally, but it kept appearing with stiff little corpses. One day, I placed it in a sack, added a few rocks, and tossed it into the backyard pond. The creature emitted this awful mewing sound on the way down—like a busted wheel or a baby crying underwater. 

My kid brother told my mom. That was the final straw. I’d already flunked algebra, got picked up for kicking over a mailbox, and acted like a slob. My dad, emotionally locked up and long gone, had left when I was five. However, my grandfather paid for my prep school education.

Off I went to New Hampshire, into the woods, with weed in my duffle, a couple of girlie mags, and a pair of hiking boots. My buddy Dan, who went to school in Maine, said if you got caught smoking weed, they made you shovel snow for five days straight. He said, “Bring boots.”

My roommate was a scrawny, nervous kid from Jersey named Frances—I called him Frankie. He wasn’t too bad, kind of clueless. I told him about my French teacher, Mademoiselle La Perles. She was this cute blonde with curly hair and a body that made me want to flunk French. Every time I had class, Frankie wanted updates.

French was taught three times a week. Mademoiselle only spoke French, though most of us didn’t understand. I liked watching her write on the board—her pale arm stretching up, blouse tugging out of her skirt, just a glimpse of skin. I could smell sex. I got off on the way she blushed when she caught me staring. It made me feel like I had control. I wasn’t just some kid getting pushed around by life.

She made me sit up. I was sprawled in my chair, legs wide.

“Why are you sitting like that?” she asked—in English.

“It’s comfortable.”

“Sit up. Pull your legs in.”

She turned pink. I loved that. I liked making her uncomfortable. It gave me power I had never experienced at home. My dad, Charlie, was a bully. He would come home drunk, yelling, hitting the wall, shoving my mom. He made me feel small and useless. So, when I made Mademoiselle flustered, I thought I was turning the tables. She was me back then, and I was in charge.

But I also liked her, not just her body. Something about the way she tried to maintain control made me want to unravel her, to see what lay beneath that good-teacher composure.

One day after class, I asked if she could tutor me.

“You will have to study harder,” she said. “Write the conjugations on flash cards.”

“Flash cards?”

“Try them.”

I knew flash cards weren’t going to fix anything, but I said I’d try. She walked off as I stood there watching her go, thinking.

In the next class, I brought in yellow three-by-five cards and dropped them on her desk. I wanted to show you.

“Can you test me after class?” She rolled her eyes.

After class, she said, “Sit down, Joe.”

We went through the verbs. I got a few right. Then more. She looked almost impressed.

“You helped me,” I said, smiling. I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Merci beaucoup.”

She looked embarrassed but didn’t pull away right away.

“May I come back tomorrow with the next conjugation?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” she said, cheeks turning red.

The verb manger—to eat—was my favorite. It felt dirty in my mouth. Suggestive. I laid it on thick. She knew. I could see her stiffen and become nervous. I touched her hand again. She let it sit for a second.

“May I walk you out?” I asked after class.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

But I followed her to her old red Volvo in parking lot, coated in a layer of road salt. She loaded her bag into the passenger seat, eyes darting.

“Thanks for helping me,” I said.

She got in and started the engine. Before pulling out, she looked at me. Then she was gone, and I stood there watching the car disappear. I don’t know what I expected. I wanted… proof that I could be more than the guy who drowned a cat.

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Patricia Striar Rohner has published ten short stories in literary magazines, two novels,  and one children’s book, which she illustrated. Her next novel, 2 Poppins Lane, will be published in October 2025. It is about the sexual abuse of children.

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Editor’s Note: Maybe I’m particularly fond of this because I was once taught high school. The beginning and ending were particularly strong and Joe’s feelings sounded authentic. Nice work.  

On Being Seen

By Fiona Jensen

 Illustration by Thunder Savage:

As a medical intern, I wear these dull green scrubs stamped down the side of the leg with the message, ‘Property of the Royal Alexandra Hospital.’  It is unclear in my mind if the message refers to the pants or to me.  I certainly feel like I am the property of the Royal Alexandra Hospital.  I trudge its linoleum hallways in pursuit of x-rays, patients needing consults and, occasionally, but only when the work slows down, a bathroom where I can lean against the graffitied coolness of the stall wall and rest for a few breaths.  Day and night blur together in a fluorescent haze of exhaustion. 

“Doctor, I need an order for a sleeping pill for Mrs F in bed 16.”

“But my leg is so itchy; can’t you make it stop?”   

“Describe the correct procedure for placing a chest tube under these conditions.” 

“Alerting you to a critical potassium level for Mr T in 5 -24.”

“Tuna sandwich or egg?”

“Don’t go in there – there is diarrhea all over the floor.”

“You didn’t sign the second requisition.”

None of these people know or care to know about my pet rabbit or that I grew up amid the Arctic snows or that a good half of the time I am so overwhelmed I can feel the pressure of tears unshed behind my eyeballs.  I am the property of the Royal Alexandra Hospital – an impersonal, invisible technician in scrubs.

I am standing in a trauma room with the detritus of  packaging torn from sterile dressings beneath my feet, the mingled tang of bodily fluids I didn’t care to think about in the air and the haunting silence that comes after the machines stop beeping. I can hear the bereaved relatives sobbing quietly. The three adult children are focused on supporting their mother; their spouses take turns handing off the sleeping toddler and baby snatched up from their cots when there was no time to find a sitter.  A chaplaincy intern, perhaps ten years older than me, is with them.

“Yes. Do you know which funeral home you will be using?  The hospital will call them to make the arrangements, but for now there is no hurry.  Take all the time you need to be with him.”

A racing tightness still grips my body – the last of the adrenalin I had generated, tightly focused on doing everything I could to bring the man through.  It lingers in my body past need, but even so I am struggling to focus my eyes on the note I am writing at the back counter.  My head droops to the hard surface of the desk as I drowse off momentarily. 

The chaplaincy intern approaches.  I expect she has some query on behalf of the grieving family.  She extends a plastic cup of orange juice toward me.  “How are you doing?” she asks quietly, looking straight at me.

I am gob-smack stunned. Somehow she has penetrated my invisibility and knows that I exist.  It seems so improbable.  She not only knows that I exist, but she is speaking to me as if I am a person. She sees me and in that one small question, she offers kindness.

I don’t even like orange juice, but this cup… this cup implies I have a right to be doing something other than maintaining mechanical indifference.  It implies that I, too, might feel pain in painful circumstances.  The orange juice sluices my mouth with cold sweetness. It goes down smoothly and nourishes me to the depths of my being.

I will remember her face forever.  

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From a childhood divided between Scottish castles and the tundra of the Canadian Arctic, Fiona’s experiences have tumbled across the raising-up of a brace of strong-souled kids, a career in psychiatry, laughter with friends, bizarre health adventures and an enduring drive to create.

Editor’s Note: This is so honest and contemporary. It resonated with us. The world needs more chaplaincy interns like the woman in this piece.