The 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition was judged by:
- Tim Craig
- Amanda Huggins
- Fiona J Mackintosh
- Johanna Robinson
The winning and highly commended stories can be read below and will appear in the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology. Thank you again to our four judges; their job is always extremely difficult and this year it was decided that it would be fairest 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
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar
All my lovers
gone before the toothpaste flattened out, leaving behind ellipses of passion on my thighs, tumbler stains on the nightstand, coat hangers, belt buckles, cigarette ash, Altoids tins, dimes and nickels, nail clippers, beard butter, and hairs in the bathroom—embedded in the grout between tiles, suspended in the clouds of shaving foam, curled up on the soap bar like commas. On owl nights, I watch the lakes and lagoons asterisked in the wall map, places I said I wanted to visit with them, and their faces float like bubbles in bath water, their eyebrows question marks, their mouths full stops.
SECOND PLACE
Fiona Barker
Shouting in Silence
Arguments with my mother need more than words. With our hands we can really punch it out. I can solidify my thoughts. It starts slowly, smooth shapes, softly sculpting the air, articulating forbidden fruit. Anger makes her sign faster. Frustration makes my fingers burn. I throw everything out into the space between us, a teetering tower of teenage angst. Only then can we pull it apart, examining each piece and replacing it more carefully, gently building something stronger.
JOINT THIRD PLACE
Alan S. Falkingham
The Boy in the Leopard Skin Shorts
When I first met Keegan, he was beautiful, in the way only the young can ever be. It was the cusp of summer, before we ran away together to LA, headlong into a life both magical and flawed in equal measures. And though we watched ourselves unravel, until our eyes became red-rimmed and our arms pockmarked, I still see him how he was. Not hunched over that pipe on a naked divan, but in his leopard-skin shorts, somersaulting off the roof of the pool house and entering the water straight and clean, like a needle puncturing skin.
JOINT THIRD PLACE
Sally Simon
Afterbirth
After you thrust yourself from my body, the nurse brings me an orange cut into wedges. The room smells like Florida, where I once saw an alligator sleep with its mouth open. The peel feels like leather. Not the supple leather of a fine Italian bag. More like the jacket Marcus wore when he picked me up for prom on his Harley. The juice explodes in my mouth, not unlike your father. Your father who left before you kicked. Who never gave me flowers, or oranges. I close my eyes to savor the sweetness. I open them, and you cry.
HIGHLY COMMENDED (in alphabetical order by title)
Kik Lodge
Arthur Rimbaud Speaks to His Shadow
Can we sit still and wait till the sun comes? The grass is soft, our backs are not old yet. Your mum will be in bed, thick in dream. Your dad will be in the hills far from here, his big hands full of war. You are young just once, folk say, not twice. Men hold their heads up but down they dip, backs kink, the shine in day, the art in night, get blocked not clocked by the grind. Can we sit still and wait till the sun comes up? Can we be young twice, three times, or more?
#
Sudha Balagopal
Reds
What can you tell your aching heart when your husband's face glows for Ami,
when he says, ‘We'll dance at Reds again, green eyes,’ as she checks his blood pressure and peers into his ears, blue eyes squinting,
when he encloses her hands in his, whispers, ‘You were magic last night,’ then buries a kiss in her palm,
when after she pats him goodbye, he declares, ‘I'm going to marry her, Mother,’
except,
press fist to chest and remember, forty-five years ago you twirled love-drunk in his arms at Reds, before the music, the dance and the lights disappeared.
#
Jan Kaneen
The Fate of Small Creatures
We were brown-seed eye-tiny with tawny-soft feathers; needle-teeth nibblers, whisker-twitch tender. We were earth-clad or air-bent, all gentle-nest small things. We pecked or we scurried or fluttered or dug, and our colours were ochre and bullrush and earth-straw. We lived tiny and balanced by roots and dark-water, died quiet, unnoticed in mist-muted dusk-mud.
***
You were huge-brained humongous with massive potential, striding like giants regardless of small things.
***
We darkened. We sharpened. We hardened, grew stronger, swelled by your ruins, your wastelands your twilight. Now we watch from the shadows, hate-biding our time, ghost-eyed and tooth-clawed soft-gentle no longer.
#
Caroline Greene
The Return of a Native
She took him to her childhood home. For the first time, he heard her speak of nets and moorings, bluffs and inlets, shingle and dunlin, words that had never rolled over her tongue before, not with him. He had tasted only the dusty names of streets, tube lines and bars.
But there was someone here who shared her language, spoke it with vowels that curled inside his mouth, consonants that toyed on his lips, phrases that lit up her eyes.
Once, the city boy had asked, ‘Do you miss home?’
‘No,’ she had answered, the word stinging, now, like salt.
#
Liz Meyer
The Song of the Thieving Magpie
One for sorrow. The first came early. Non-viable the doctors said.
Two for joy. Twins, we were told at the 16-week scan. That joy was short lived.
Three for a girl. I was going to call her Ruby.
Four for a boy. I was going to call him Zac.
Five for silver. Money talks but it was never enough.
Six for gold. She had golden blonde hair. They didn’t care about her. They wouldn’t have left her alone like that if they had.
Seven for a secret, never to be told. Mummy, she calls me. I am a mother now.
#
Hugh Behm-Steinberg
The Tsar
I read a post from someone who said her great grandfather played the violin for the Tsar of Russia. My own great grandfather had also played the violin for the Tsar. My wife said that she too had an uncle who played for the Tsar.
I began asking around: hundreds of violinists. Were we all related? There couldn’t be that many Jewish violinists the Tsar might desire, even though everyone knows Russia’s a music loving nation.
I counted; the Tsar must have had at least 100,000 Jewish violinists, a thousand orchestra’s worth. It must have sounded glorious.
It didn’t help.