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We had an open prompt this season. Our only guidelines were that the entries be fiction with a minimum of 250 words, and a maximum of 750 words. So, enjoy the creativity and diversity!
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Thanks to our Guest Judge:
 Literary Agent Emily Williamson WOW was honored to have guest judge literary agent Emily Williamson choose this season’s top winners. Thank you, Emily, for sharing your time and efforts to make these contestants’ dreams come true! Emily’s bio: Emily Williamson represents a variety of projects in non-fiction and fiction, working with major publishers, university presses, and boutique imprints alike to find the perfect home for her clients' work. She began her editing career in 2011 with Chrysalis Editorial* in Washington, D.C. and founded Williamson Literary in 2016, driven by the desire to help great writers achieve their publishing goals. She has earned degrees from American University (1997) and Johns Hopkins University (2012).
As a writer, she understands the investment of time and heart it takes to follow this challenging path. It is the core of Williamson Literary--to support the careers of dedicated writers who deserve to see their ideas and imaginings realized. Williamson Literary is also about building relationships: agent-author, agent-publisher, author-publisher.
In the past, Emily spent 13 years as an archaeologist traveling all over the US and abroad in search of many things...sometimes finding nothing. It is this varied, nomadic past that has influenced her own writing and her particular interests as an agent. Emily does other things. She is a poet, a painter, loves the outdoors, traveling, playing with her nutty Border Collie, doing CrossFit, and watching football...not all at once. She is a native of New Jersey, cuts her own firewood, and is one of those annoying people who can't eat gluten.
Visit Williamson Literary: www.esjwilliamson.com
Follow Emily on X: @esjwilliamson
* If you'd like to inquire about Emily's services as an editor, please visit www.chrysaliseditorial.com. Williamson Literary does not charge any fees for representation.
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Note from Emily about the top three:
What I loved about these three was the whimsy blended with grief or longing or hurt. And there was some healing there too, or at least the promise of change (an explosive one in “Burning”), be it through process or catharsis. I was impressed with the way each author used something familiar and concrete (a visit to the doctor, a pan, a stove) to build a world both past and present, and to dive into the things unseen. And each story had a clear arc that was wrapped up well at the end—something tricky to do in 750 words!
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Now on to the winners!
Drum roll please....
1st Place: Tabbie Hunt
Bedford, UK
Congratulations, Tabbie!
Tabbie’s Bio:
Tabbie Hunt is a children’s book-packager turned freelancer. She writes in the small cracks between life and is particularly interested in failings, feelings, and funniness, with a side order of fantasy.
When she’s not pretending to be an adult, she rescues and fosters cats and dogs, who in turn rescue her right back. She lives up a hill with her husband, two sons, and a pile of beasts. She dreams of quietly going round the bend in the wilderness.
You can find her work in Daily Science Fiction, Gingerbread House, Alice says go Fuck Yourself, The Melting Pot, and Witcraft, among others.
She can be found at www.facebook.com/tabbie.hunt.9
Printable View
Broken Yesterdays
By Tabbie Hunt
His room looks pretty much like a normal doctor’s surgery, except for the floor to ceiling shelves full of empty jars. He smiles, gesturing to the black, plastic couch in the middle of the room.
‘It’s your skin, isn’t it?’ he says, as I sit. ‘Feels tight, like it doesn’t fit properly?’
‘Yes…how did you know?’
‘I see it a lot. Any lumps?
‘Loads!’
‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’
I undo my shirt and lie back. His hands are firm, in a reassuring, kind way.
‘I’d like to remove some of these, today. Is that ok?’
‘How d’you get them out?’
‘Ever watched blackhead extraction videos on YouTube?’
I chuckle and nod.
‘Well, it’s a similar process, but a notch more emotional!’
‘Now, what size to start you with?’ he says, scanning the shelves, eventually selecting a smallish jar. ‘I don’t want to overdo it, not for the first time.’
The pain is bearable: a firm push followed by tugging and a slight pop. I hear a tiny, soft thud—no more than the sound of a baby bird falling from its nest—and the process repeats.
‘What are they, exactly?’ I ask.
‘Well, so far we’ve got a messy miscarriage; the sudden death of your grandfather; a mother who couldn’t love; glandular fever; several dead pets; your sister’s betrayal; you downing yourself in your own mind—there’s a few of those—and—’
My chest explodes, and the doctor throws himself across my body. Sobs and tears rain down on us. Where he hasn’t covered me, my skin stings, as though struck by hailstones.
When it’s over, he helps me sit up. I’m so weak he has to prop me up with pillows. His shirt is torn and soaked. My tears still drip from the ceiling, and more puddle on the floor.
‘Oh god,’ I whisper. ‘Did I do that? I’m so, so sorry.’
‘It’s ok,’ he says. ‘Quite normal.’
He gestures to the plug hole in the middle of the floor, and opens his shirt to reveal a substantial looking vest.
‘Graphene.’ He taps his chest. ‘Twice the stopping power of Kevlar.’
I risk a careful laugh. ‘Good to be prepared!’
‘That was actually quite a mild reaction. It's a deeply cathartic procedure. I think that’s enough for today, though.’
He shows me the jar. It’s nearly full to the brim with lots of black, jellylike blobs, varying in size from a pea to an olive. Their little white eyes stare adoringly up at me, and they are mewing most gorgeously.
‘Oh god, they’re so sweet,’ I say, reaching out, but the doctor slaps my hand away, screwing on the lid quickly.
‘Don’t touch them,’ he barks. ‘Don’t be fooled by them!’
‘What are they?’
‘They’re a very dangerous kind of spirit, called Broken Yesterdays. Untreated, they have the ability to distort not only the present, but the future too.’
I briefly review my life. ‘I'm thinking I've had them for some time.’
‘Yep, I’d guess you were no more than around two or three years old, maybe younger. It takes a while for the actual lumps to develop. The really nasty part is the subcutaneous network connecting the lumps.’
‘Ugh! How do I get rid of that?’
‘Removing the lumps damages the roots, but both will return. You’ll need to come back regularly, and you’ll need to change how you process bad experiences. Forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness, is an excellent antidote.’
He places the jar of spirits into my hands.
‘Now, I want you to be very clear on how to manage them. You don’t talk to them, and that includes cooing! If you have to look, fine, but don’t smile while you’re doing it, and wear sunglasses! Some of the cleverer ones can control you simply through eye contact! Just don't engage, ok? And above all else, do not open the jar!’
‘Can’t you just throw them away, or keep them?’ I ask.
‘No, they have to realise that you’re no longer prepared to feed them. Eventually, they’ll get so hungry they’ll turn on each other, and time takes care of the rest. Now, let’s make another appointment for a month from now.’
As I place the jar on the car seat next to me, I can’t help sneaking a sideways peek. The little black blobs are bumbling around each other, making tiny squeaks. They’re delightful, and I have no idea how I’ll find the strength to let them die.
***
What Tabbie Won:
- $400.00 Cash Prize
- $25 Amazon Gift Card
- Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
- Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin
2nd Place: Jennifer Thomas
Salem, Massachusetts
Congratulations, Jennifer!
Jennifer’s Bio:
Jennifer Thomas grew up in the wilds of Miami, Florida. She loved to watch the pelicans soar, so ugly they were beautiful. Seeing them die off from the effects of DDT in the 1970s made her a lifelong environmentalist. As a teenager she read vast amounts of science fiction, especially early feminist sci fi, which inspired her to imagine how the world could be different. For the past 40-ish years she has lived on the North Shore of Massachusetts, making a living as a machinist, science writer, and teacher (though not all at once). Recently she began writing flash fiction, delighting in how the Muse cavorts inside word count constraints. To Jennifer’s surprise, her stories have been accepted by several publications, including Flash Fiction Magazine, 365tomorrows, and now Women on Writing. You can find some of her work at www.jenniferthomas.net.
Printable View
Who Will Kill the Spiders?
By Jennifer Thomas
Your best friend passes cocktail shrimp, asparagus in prosciutto, and champagne to toast her daughter. Most of the guests arrive with cards, having enlisted a registry to send gifts right to the couple’s home. But you’ve gone old school, lugging a box through the warm Sunday rain into the den of festivities. When the bride rips off the wrapping paper, the guests coo like doves. A fifteen-inch cast iron pan. Everyone needs one, you tell her. You can cook anything in it. It will put iron in your blood. It will last forever.
The guests chatter about their own cast iron pan experiences, then start to play the “Bride or Groom?” guessing game (Who said “I love you” first?). Time, the trickster, slides in beside you, come to push you off balance. He shows you the bride’s life ahead as a feast, overlaid on the feast of your own life gone by. The feasts use the same ingredients, varying only in their preparation—temperatures, spices, combinations, amounts (Who wants the most kids?). In the thrall of Time, you perceive the two lives as identical yet entirely different, and your head tilt-a-whirls. But seeing the bride’s smooth, beaming face, cast iron pan in her hands (Who’s the better cook?), you regain your balance.
In that moment you wonder: why did you buy the pan, adorn its box, and bestow it on the bride in person? You let yourself remember. Your husband brought his cast iron pan into your marriage, forty years ago. For a decade before that, he caught wild things—catfish, venison, quail—and fried them in that pan over campfires. You, on the other hand, caught intruding bugs in a cup and threw them outside, and re-homed mice skittering from behind the stove to the woods nearby (Who will kill the spiders?).
As a newlywed, you domesticated the pan, anointing it with oil, bathing it with warm water, sponging it with care. Its skin became more lustrous with use, even as yours crinkled and mottled with age (Who cares more about their looks?).
Nothing proved more practical, more steadfast, more permanent, than that cast iron pan. Your husband was practical and steadfast, but not permanent (Who is crazier?). After he died, you left the cast iron pan on the back burner, unused. You accumulated new pans in a variety of sizes, coated with those chemicals that end up in ice caps, sea creatures, and people. You hoped that new pans would help you make perfect omelets and béchamels. They did not.
A cacophony of raunchy wedding night jokes yanks you out of your reverie. You resolve to resurrect the old pan. It belonged to your marriage, but you didn’t have to let it go (Who holds a grudge longer?).
At home that evening, you retrieve the pan, taking comfort in its heft and solidity (Who hogs the bed?). You scrape stubborn black flecks from its underside, then attack its inside—salt, oil, and heat your weapons. A knot loosens in your chest as the rust of neglect burns away.
You burnish your pan and restore it to its place on the front burner. Time—more benevolent now—pokes his head into the kitchen, marveling at the half-century of ingredients your pan transformed. You tell him your wistful dream for the bride (Who can’t imagine life without the other?). Time nods and smiles.
***
What Jennifer Won:
- $300.00 Cash Prize
- $25 Amazon Gift Card
- Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
- Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin
3rd Place: Nicole Brogdon
Austin, Texas
Congratulations, Nicole!
Nicole’s Bio:
Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Bright Flash, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, 101Words, Centifictionist, etc. Best Microfiction 2024, and Smokelong Microfiction Finalist. Twitter @NBrogdonWrites!
Printable View
Burning
By Nicole Brogdon
Mother is a big oven. People are always pulling objects out of her into the air. She slides food in, then out, of herself—trays and morsels, poultry or potatoes, crisped skins topped with caramelized onion curls. Feeding people. Especially, feeding the two children the doctor pulled out of her.
Today, her big daughter yells at her. So Mother starts overheating. Burning, thermostat broken, flashing hot, for all that she ever yanked out of herself and served her daughter—cheesy cornbread, favorite banana muffins, and more.
Long ago she wanted to be something more than an appliance, but she couldn’t think what. She came from a long line of ovens. Her great-grandmother was a lovely wood-burning stove, with curved feet. Her family members see her as a GE—square, functional, with a burnished front handle and dark, inscrutable glass. Unbreakable. Gradually her children left the kitchen, then the house. She remains, a right-angled hole.
Her husband lowers her door, staring inside her box. “What’s for lunch? Isn’t this a self-cleaning oven? Filthy! Toasty crusts, covering the bottom. Clean it!” Slam. Years ago, when he first carried her across the threshold, he installed her here, polishing her front with a red cloth. Whistling at her LED flourishes, admiring her steam.
Meanwhile, the daughter throws everything out of her mouth at her mother, hand over fist, even teeth, one by one like pebbles. “How can you put up with him? You damage me! You never taught me how to be a real woman!”
Ungrateful, these big children. What can she do? She can’t shove her grown daughter back in, like sliding a body into a crematorium. She wouldn’t fit. Three grandchildren run past, making a choo choo train, one grabbing a marinara-stained rag hanging from the oven handle, wiping his nose with it. There’s no pushing offspring back in.
Thanksgiving, she reaches down with her silicone rubber mitts, checking on the hot turkey, the bird’s curvy ankles crossed and tied with a bow. On the second rack, a pan of hot drippings simmers beside a mound of scalding shiny mashed potatoes in a Pyrex. She’s managing all that, oily run-off sizzling inside her, smoking the kitchen. She is bending, lifting, stretching, sweating, while the family plays Parcheesi on the big table, the grandchildren, imitating wild animals, growling, screeching, one barking, “Hungry!”
The father guffaws, sucking down beers. The adult son sits in his underwear, twirling his beard hairs, pulling them out. No one gives a thought, a hand, or a potholder, to her. Until her adult children begin pelting her with wadded up paper napkins, her son chanting over and over, “Why can’t we have pot roast?”, the daughter moaning, “How come you never bought me tennis lessons?”, both of them peppering her with, “Help me!” And, “Why’d you never tell me who my real daddy was?”
She remembers him from long ago—the maintenance man in tight corduroys, stroking her stainless steel front. Al, from Al’s Appliances. “My, she shines like a diamond,” he said. “Built to perform. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.” The one time she strayed. Al’s hands inside her, carefully stroking, warming her, turning on her bulbs, oiling her hinges. Dampening her glass. My God.
Her lazy husband caught them, but he didn’t put it together. Ambling in, a giant Pepsi bottle in his hand, he said, “She don’t work. Should I buy a new one?”
Al stood up, resting his large palm on her glass. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Lemme spend a few hours with her. Replace a part, get her going. She’s solid, this model. A new one will only last you 2 to 4 years.” Al hiked up his belt buckle. “Scheduled obsolescence.”
She wants Al, a man who appreciates her features, to return. To wipe down her cool-to-touch doors, climb inside her, and really look. How she wants another tuneup.
The littlest grandchild up-ends the Parcheesi set. Her daughter stands, smacking the oven. “Another ruined holiday! No one needs all this meat, anyway!”
“Heh!” Her husband yawns. “I’ve got a joke. What’s the difference between your mother and an oven?” The kids laugh.
Drippings bubble over inside the oven. Another hot flash.
“Mom’s burning dinner,” says her son, glancing at the smoking box.
A muffled Pop resonates inside the oven. Any minute, there’ll be a blazing fire. Orange and yellow flames, dancing, licking the air. Devouring them all.
***
What Nicole Won:
- $200.00 Cash Prize
- $25 Amazon Gift Card
- Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
- Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin
 RUNNERS UP (In no particular order):
Congratulations to the runners-up! It was very close, and these stories are excellent in every way.
Click on their entries to read:
Broken Chains and Spilt Milk by Deidre Bennett, West Virginia
Guadalupe and the Roses by Susan Strauss, Los Angeles, California
Where There is a Fight, So There is She by Sophie Goldstein, Los Angeles, California
Things Lose Their Shape During Pregnancy by Amy Lynn Hardy, Buffalo, New York
Satellite by Haley Addison, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Merci by Amanda J. Conley, Seattle, Washington
A Charmed Life by Kel Schmutz, Clemson, South Carolina
What the Runners Up Won:
- $25 Amazon Gift Card
- Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
- Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin
HONORABLE MENTIONS (In no particular order):
Congratulations to our Spring 2024 Contest Honorable Mentions! Your stories stood out and are excellent in every way.
Sweet Potato Pie by D. Slayton Avery, Vermont
Renaissance by Patti Cavaliere, Shelton, Connecticut
The Last Reunion by Julie Flanders, Cincinnati, Ohio
Maternal Instincts by Terri Cash, Hudson, Ohio
Disturbance at the Northern Border by Anne Freeman, Melbourne, Australia
Enough by Marlene Archie, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Life Times Nine by Sudha Balagopal, Arizona
The Haunting by Jane Johnson, Olathe, Kansas
Tread Lightly on the Land by Cindy Strube, Petaluma, California
No Looking Back by Dallas Miller, Bowling Green, Ohio
What the Honorable Mentions Won:
IN CLOSING:
This brings the Spring 2024 Flash Fiction Contest officially to a close. Although we’re not able to provide a prize to every contestant, we will always give our heartfelt thanks for your participation and contribution, and for your part in making WOW! all that it can be. We hope to read more of your work. Write on!
Check out the latest Contest:
https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/contest.php
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