HONORABLE MENTION, 2021 The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY SCOTT DUNCAN
The Kid shifted in bed. A great weight had been lifted from him, raising him upon a pedestal and exposing him to air and light. Or maybe someone just took off his blanket.
“Wake up, cabrón.” El Viejo again.
“No way, man, let me sleep!”
“Hey, you can’t squat here. Get your lazy white ass up!”
The Kid sat up and scratched his arm. “White ass?”
He looked down. Where his arm should have been, there was something like a fish, covered in yellowish fur. It looked like the arm of a boss, a cop, a rich guy, a president, or some redneck who calls everyone snowflake. It was the arm of a WASP, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
HONORABLE MENTION, 2021
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY MARIE RAVEN
In my country, we live with dragons. Our region is remote and the way dangerous, but travelers, perhaps having heard a rook in a distant land, come to seek the truth in the rumor.
Every legend of a dragon is the tragedy of an adventurer. One narrow path winds up our mountain, from soft moss in the blue-green forest to hard stone beyond the last stunted trees. There, provisions spoil and nightmares invade sleep.
They’ve heard of the fiery breath and diamond scales of a dragon who has spent a thousand lifetimes stealing precious things. Those stories don’t explain that this is the dragon of Hate, or that the only thing you take from a dragon’s hoard is what the hoard takes from you. Rumors are never quite truth.
There is a dragon on the mountain, but so too are there dragons throughout the journey to get there. A forest along the way is so laden with songbirds they look like fruit ready to drop from the trees. Here is the place of the hoard of Intentions, and seekers return broken by the drag of things left unfinished in their lives. There is another dragon to the south who hoards Dreams. No one returns from going that way at all. [continue reading…]
One of my favorite Screw Turn Flash Fiction Pieces . . .
Is Tongues, by the Irish writer Emma Murtagh. I just find it to be one of the most chilling sudden pieces we’ve ever published. Have a read . . . and don’t forget that submissions to the current Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition are due before the clock strikes 12 at the end of January 31.
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition, for very short stories (under 1,001 words) incorporating a supernatural theme or element, comes around only once a year. But the time is now—and for our 2021 Screw Turn, we will be accepting submissions until January 31.
One extra-good piece of news for people who like to write uncanny fiction on a miniature scale: Our cash awards are bigger this year, with $1,000 for the winner, and $200 for each of two honorable mentions.
If you’re thinking about entering, have a look at our complete contest guidelines.
Volume II of our print anthology, “21st Century Ghost Stories,” has just been published. It contains all of our Summer 2018 to Summer 2021 winning and honorable mention stories from The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest and The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—30 fine supernatural short stories in all!
