Fiction in a Flash Entries go from birth to death and beyond – in 99 words or less
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urderous spouses. Murderous strangers. Vignettes of love and friendship. Hauntings, literal and metaphorical. … and even Arts Alive! All in 99 words or less. The winning submissions to the North Coast Journal‘s Flash Fiction contest tell stories with grace and precision, or sometimes with a roughedged creativity that judges couldn’t resist. We invited three bookstores and our editorial staff to pick one winner and a sampling of other good reads, out of packet of more than 120 entries. Each group settled on a different top choice, and we’re highlighting all four, with comments by the selecting judges. We’re also printing a selection of the judges’ favorites, with little summaries above each title, so you can see who picked what. After the North Coast Journal’s judging, when five members of the editorial staff sat down to compare our individual rankings, we all wished we’d recorded the group session. Those sputtered “You liked that?” Those mumbled confessions: “OK, I gave way too many 4s.” “I was mean.” A strong concept, iffy execution. Mundane execution, salvaged by a great last line. We scored stories on a scale of 5 (really good) to 1 (WFT), and only calculated a group score for the top 40 or so contenders. And we were all over the map on those. More than half of our semi-finalists racked up widely diverging individual scores, ranging from 2 to 5 or 1 to 4. Our staff and the other judges were given time-stamped entries, with no names attached. Folks at the Booklegger noticed that the contest’s final days generated a higher ratio of strong submissions. “Did these writers spend more time fine tuning their words and editing their stories? Or is procrastination beneficial to the creative process?” they asked in a note from the store’s six judges. Maybe you’ll enter next time, and decide for yourself. — Carrie Peyton Dahlberg
ncj blake’s booklegger
Harry Harry really was right, single malt Scotch was better than blended. Lois swirled the snifter and let the potent fragrance tickle her nose. She closed her eyes and sipped. It tasted of caramel, smoke and the pungence of 100 proof. Lois grabbed the bottle from Harry’s private cabinet and settled in Harry’s favorite easy chair. In the humidor beside it rested Harry’s illegally imported Cuban cigars, which she would eventually compost. Harry had spent a lot on his little pleasures. That was over. Tonight she’d bask in the warmth of his Scotch. Tomorrow she’d worry about the blood stains. — Stephen Sottong ncj
The Ivy Planter “Mom, where did this come from?” I asked, pointing to the hand-crafted bamboo centerpiece on the dining room table overflowing with ivy. “I found it at a garage sale. It’s an ivy planter,” she said, whipping her hair to the side proudly. Mother was a florist. “Can I have it?” I asked, as innocently as I could muster. “Well sure!” she acquiesced, pleased
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LYNN JONES
12 NORTH COAST JOURNAL • THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2012 • northcoastjournal.com
that her purchase was admired by another. Mother never had a clue that she gave me my first bong. I kept it on my dresser all through-out high-school, never forgetting the ivy. — Bailey Fletcher ncj blake’s
Clarity She stood there in the midst of foot traffic in front of cut-out storefronts, staring at me from across the street, alone. A tiny shadowed face that fell down into forever … she just knew. Huge, obsidian, translucent eyes laced with long black lashes, caramel skin, hair hung like fat black curly strips of satin, pointed chin harboring a puckered pink bow of a mouth: all revealing no emotion. The everyday noise filtered into a long static, then faded into nothing. The next instant was wiped completely clean by the explosion; a large frothy orange blossom, like stained glass. — Jessica Johnston ncj blake’s
Thirty Seconds in the Life What time is my doctor’s appointment? It’s tomorrow at 9 a.m., Dad. Oh, that’s what I thought. Where is that … that … THING? It’s in the next room, Dad. I can get it whenever you want. That’s what I thought. No, I don’t need it. Are you going to … to … ? Yes, Dad. I’ve already done it. Oh, I thought you had. I sure do love you. I love you, too, Dad. What time is my doctor’s appointment? —Susan Christie
blake’s
Untitled I held my hands over the stranger’s fire on the beach that night. “I am not a cop,” I replied, when he asked. He did not ask me, if I am a cannibal. — Emily Cureton booklegger
To Take It All Back Let’s rewind. Where were we? Oh yeah, you were going on about how goddamn hot Josh Hutcherson is in The Hunger Games, and I was trying to block you out by concentrating on my sweltering coffee, inhaling the fumes deeply as if it would help mute you, which it didn’t. Does it ever? Now all I’m wishing for is to hear your voice. Anything would do at this moment. Any sound, noise, word. … The blood pounding in my ears is drowning everything else and I think it’s raining, but I can’t really tell. Fast forward. — Kaylee Savage-Wright