The 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition was judged by:
- Christopher Allen
- Joanna Campbell
- Tracy Fells
- Damhnait Monaghan
The winning and highly commended stories can be read below and will appear in the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology. Thank you again to our four judges; their job this year was extremely difficult, with an extra round of voting required to reach our final ten. In the end, they were unable to separate the two stories vying for third place and we felt the fairest thing would be to award two third place prizes.
Congratulations again to all our prize-winning and highly commended authors, and to all those who were shortlisted. And, a big thank you to everyone who entered this year’s competition and trusted us with their stories.
FIRST PLACE
Jan Kaneen
Just a Word to the Snowblind
One day you’ll only be able to see snowscapes on hi-res screens, or in the faded pages of magazines – peach-weak sunlight leaching wintery mauves onto bone white roofs and tracks and forests, yesterday’s legend of snow upon snow upon snow upon snow.
But I will forever see: bilcut – snow-that-coats-roads-like-ice-on-a-mountain, and bohkolat – snow-of-different-deepnesses-that-masks-hazards-beneath and, aidu – snow-on-a-track-after-reindeer-have-trod-it.
And I’ll remember stamping hooves and long-gone herds, fireside warmth and the laughter of children and wish my heart was hard-packed calsa, frozen stony to the core, numb to the scorch of white-hot grief, the blistering loss of home and meaning.
SECOND PLACE
Marie Gethins
Why my mother-in-law sits in the corner sucking leftover chicken bones
Because her reminiscences are different from mine. Waiting for her sister to come back from church with their shoes, so she could use them for the next mass. On a winter’s night, jostling with other children to view TV through a priest’s window. One roast chicken for seven hungry mouths.
The kitchen flatscreen flashes disaster news as I help her clear plates, heavy with lunch detritus. She piles up tibia, humerus, femur; settles into a chair to watch. I scrape, rinse and load the dishwasher, but place a wishbone on the sill to dry.
JOINT THIRD PLACE
Sherry Morris
Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw, 1993
At first, I’m shocked. Young skinny women pose outside financial-district streetlight halos on biting November nights. As a steamy tram trundles me homeward after teaching Business English, I turn away. But the imagined lives of these eight kobiety – their high-heeled feet, bare legs, short skirts and shorter coats – fill my world. They’re simply women working too. I befriend them in my ex-pat mind, secure a window seat for my nightly five-second pass-by. Worry. Count them as they smoke in a row, trying not to shiver in rain, ice and snow. And when there are only seven, I worry even more.
JOINT THIRD PLACE
Emma Phillips
Things We Learned About Sarajevo During the Siege
If you didn’t escape through the tunnel or leave courtesy of a bomb or the keen eye of a sniper, then the only way out was via your imagination.
- You can’t eat words.
- People can bear more than they think but if you pack enough mortar into a building it will crack.
- You can’t eat hindsight.
- You can put a gun to the skull of a Bosnian, Serb or Croat, but when you pull the trigger, we’re only blood.
- You can’t eat sorrow.
- If you close your eyes, pigeons could be doves.
HIGHLY COMMENDED (in alphabetical order by title)
Pippa O’Driscoll
birds of paradise (see also: dumb, stupid birds)
In another world, pheasants would be birds of paradise, but in England they’re just dumb, stupid birds. Their plumage blazes in the shed’s twilight, even as they hang from the rafters, neck-cocked and rotting. The best hiding place as a place to hide from hiding and I’m unlooked for here. Slurred voice calls angry, then coaxing, then angry, and I shrink into the gloom. Footsteps tramp past. The pheasants’ tails tickle my head but it’s okay. It’s better in here. In here, there’s just me and the dead birds, our guts still intact, slowly ageing in the cool, gamy dark.
Pippa O’Driscoll
Fat Caterpillars
My favourite rosebush was besieged by caterpillars in the week before our wedding. Plump, luxurious heads pillaged, glossy green leaves munched down to what I now know is the petiole. Destruction so great, I felt compelled to look up the collective noun: an army. But I couldn't bear to kill them. Instead, I called my husband-to-be and, every morning, we watched them gobble the bush down their caterpillary gullets. A quiet small tradition formed. By the morning of the wedding, the bush was thin spindles. All flowers and leaves vanished. We kissed over it. The caterpillars: fat, happy and gone.
Andrew Deathe
Here the Stream Floods
Here the stream floods wider and shallower, moving faster. It ripples as it crosses every stone, adding another voice to its multitudinous chattering. Where it flows into narrower, more concentrated channels, it runs quieter, deeper. Clear water becomes dark undercurrent. It swirls below, like guilt in a gut.
The laundresses surge through sunlit streets, laughing and calling over each other. At the steps down to the lavoir they are forced into single file. The river-filled basin darkens their thoughts and dampens their voices. One says slyly, ‘Have you heard…?’ and the belly of another churns in fearful anticipation of exposure.
Slawka G. Scarso
Richter Scale 8
Half an hour before the earthquake hits, they have lunch, they play in the garden, they water the plants, they walk the dog, they go to sleep, they watch TV and complain there's nothing there to watch, they gossip, they fight, they don't call their loved ones, they don't say I miss you, they don't say I'm sorry, because even if the dog starts to bark, even if the cat behaves funny and the ants climb out of their tunnels, there is no real way of telling when you only have thirty minutes left. Twenty-nine now.
Hannah Whiteoak
Siren’s Song
They wanted it, you know, those sailors. If they didn’t, they would have stuffed wax in their ears, or bound themselves to the masts of their ships. It is hardly our fault they were careless. We acted only on our nature. And if, once their ships were dashed, we stripped flesh from their bones to feed our chicks, well, who can blame us? Fledglings need to eat. How else will they grow? How else will they achieve their potential? Do not tell us how to raise our daughters; keep your sons at home if you want to keep them safe.
Tommy Dean
When Grief Auditions
In the pumpkin patch, the father stands with his hands in his pockets, mindful of their potential for violence, and watches his son stomp on the gourds. The vines yank at his feet, spurring him. Fall, the swirl of smoke, the stink of decay, the thrust of a new chill will find them in their most vulnerable moments – shaving, folding laundry, heads between their lover’s legs, and the bitter taste will greet them with all that they can no longer have, their hands gripping the people in front of them, voiceless to this desire of holding on until something wilts.